OF THE U N I VERS ITY Of ILLINOIS 104 - R&St 13 — The person charging this material is re- sponsible for its return to the library from which it was withdrawn on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University. To renew call Telephone Center, 333-8400 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/twopathslovesmeiOOrusk Illustrated Cabinet edition Cbe XT wo paths Lovers JVIeime Val D'Hrno & Che pleasures of england & /* by jfohn Ruskin (Merrill and Baker publishers jfc JVcw Xorh ^ ^ CONTENTS THE TWO PATHS. LECTURE L page The Deteriorative Tower of Conventional Art over Nations, ....... 9 LECTURE II. The Unity of Art, . . . . . *36 LECTURE III. Modern Manufacture and Design, . . . *54 LECTURE IV. The Influence of Imagination in Architecture, . . 77 LECTURE V. The Work of Iron, in Nature, Art, and Policy, . 103 APPENDICES, 135 LOVE’S MEINIE, LECTURE I. The Robin, . . . . . . . 157 LECTURE II. The Swallow, ....... 180 The Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret, 211 LOVE’S MEINIE. FIGURE. i. Long Feathers of Robins Wing . 2 << it it ti it 3. The Swallow on the Wing 4. A Reptilian or Dragon’s Wing 5. Section of Wing .... 6 . Wing of a Seagull, open 7. u . “ “ CLOSED but helplessness and blindness, — except the worse fate than the being blind yourselves — that of becoming Leaders of the blind? Do not think that I am speaking under excited feeling, or in any exaggerated terms. I have written the words I use, that I may know what I say, and that you, if you choose, may see what I have said. For, indeed, I have set before you to- night, to the best of my power, the sum and substance of the system of art to the promulgation of which I have devoted my life hitherto, and intend to devote what of life may still be spared to me. I have had but one steady aim in all that I have ever tried to teach, namely — to declare that whatever was great in human art was the expression of man’s delight in God’s work. And at this time I have endeavoured to prove to you — if you investigate the subject you may more entirely prove to yourselves — that no school ever advanced far which had not the love of natural fact as a primal energy. But it is still more important for you to be assured that the conditions of life and death in the art of nations are also the conditions of POWER OB 1 CONVENTIONAL ART. 35 life and death in your own ; and that you have it, each in his power at this very instant, to determine in which direction his steps are turning. It seems almost a terrible thing to tell you, that all here have all the power of knowing at once what hope there is for them as artists ; you would, perhaps, like better that there was some unremovable doubt about the chances of the future — some possibility that you might be ad- vancing, in unconscious ways, towards unexpected successes — some excuse or reason for going about, as students do so often, to this master or the other, asking him if they have genius, and whether they are doing right, and gathering, from his careless or formal replies, vague flashes of encouragement, or fitfulnesses of despair. There is no need for this — no ex- cuse for it. All of you have the trial of yourselves in your own power ; each may undergo at this instant, before his own judgment seat, the ordeal by fire. Ask yourselves what is the leading motive which actuates you while you are at work. I do not ask you what your leading motive is for working — that is a different thing ; you may have families to support — par- ents to help — brides to wfin ; you may have all these, or other such sacred and pre-eminent motives, to press the morning’s labour and prompt the twilight thought. But when you are fairly at the work, what is the motive then which tells upon every touch of it ? If it is the love of that which your work represents — if, being a landscape painter, it is love of hills and trees that moves you — if, being a figure painter, it is love of human beauty and human soul that moves you — if, being a flower or animal painter, it is love, and wonder, and delight in petal and in limb that move you, then the Spirit is upon you, and the earth is yours, and the fulness thereof. But if, on the other hand, it is petty self-complacency in your own skill, trust in precepts and laws, hope for academical or popu- lar approbation, or avarice of wealth, — it is quite possible that by steady industry, or even by fortunate chance, you may win the applause, the position, the fortune, that you desire ; — but one touch of true art you will never lay on canvas or on stone as long as you live. Make, then, your choice, boldly and consciously, for one n n OU THE TWO PATHS. way or other it must be made. On the dark and dangerous side are set, the pride which delights in self-contemplation — the indolence which rests in unquestioned forms — the igno- rance that despises what is fairest among God’s creatures, and the dulness that denies what is marvellous in His working : there is a life of monotony for your own souls, and of misguid- ing for those of others. And, on the other side, is open to your choice the life of the crowned spirit, moving as a light in creation — discovering always — illuminating always, gaining every hour in strength, yet bowed down every hour into deeper humility ; sure of being right in its aim, sure of being irresistible in its progress ; happy in what it has securely done — happier in what, day by day, it may as securely hope ; happiest at the close of life, when the right hand begins to forget its cunning, to remember, that there never was a touch of the chisel or the pencil it wielded, but has added to the knowledge and quickened the happiness of mankind. LECTURE H THE UNITY OF ART. Part of an Address* delivered at Manchester , 14 th March , 1859. It is sometimes my pleasant duty to visit other cities, in the hope of being able to encourage their art students ; but here it is my pleasanter privilege to come for encouragement my- * I was prevented, by press of other engagements, from preparing this address with the care I wished ; and forced to trust to such expres- sion as I could give at the moment to the points of principal impor- tance ; reading, however, the close of the preceding lecture, which I thought contained some truths that would bear repetition. The whole was reported, better than it deserved, by Mr. Pitman, of the Manches- ter Couriei\ and published nearly verbatim. I have here extracted, from the published report, the facts which I wish especially to enforce ; and have a little cleared their expression ; its loose and colloquial char- acter I cannot now help, unless by re-writing the whole, which it seems not worth while to do. THE UNITY OF ART. 37 self. I do not know when I have received so much as from the report read this evening by Mr. Hammersley, bearing upon a subject which has caused me great anxiety. For I have always felt in my own pursuit of art, and in my en- deavors to urge the pursuit of art on others, that while there are many advantages now that never existed before, there are certain grievous difficulties existing, just in the very cause that is giving the stimulus to art — in the immense spread of the manufactures of every country which is now at- tending vigorously to art. We find that manufacture and art are now going on always together ; that where there is no manufacture there is no art. I know how much there is of pretended art where there is no manufacture : there is much in Italy, for instance ; no country makes so bold pretence to the production of new art as Italy at this moment ; yet no country produces so little. If you glance over the map of Europe, you will find that where the manufactures are strong- est, there art also is strongest. And yet I always felt that there was an immense difficulty to be encountered by the stu- dents who were in these centres of modem movement. They had to avoid the notion that art and manufacture were in any respect one. Art may be healthily associated with manufac- ture, and probably in future will always be so ; but the stu- dent must be strenuously warned against supposing that they can ever be one and the same thing, that art can ever be fol- lowed on the principles of manufacture. Each must be fol- lowed separately ; the one must influence the other, but each must be kept distinctly separate from the other. It would be well if all students would keep clearly in their mind the real distinction between those words which we use so often, “Manufacture,” “Art,” and “Fine Art.” “Manu- facture ” is, according to the etymology and right use of the word, “the making of anything by hands,” — directly or indi- rectly, with or without the help of instruments or machines. Anything proceeding from the hand of man is manufacture ; but it must have proceeded from his hand only, acting mechanically, and uninfluenced at the moment by direct in- telligence. 38 THE TWO PATHS. Then, secondly, Art is the operation of the hand and the intelligence of man together ; there is an art of making ma- chinery ; there is an art of building ships ; an art of making carriages ; and so on. All these, properly called Arts, but not Fine Arts, are pursuits in which the hand of man and his head go together, working at the same instant. Then Fine Art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together. Recollect this triple group ; it will help you to solve many difficult problems. And remember that though the hand must be at the bottom of everything, it must also go to the top of everything ; for Fine Art must be produced by the hand of man in a much greater and clearer sense than manu- facture is. Fine Art must always be produced by the subtlest of all machines, which is the human hand. No machine yet contrived, or hereafter contrivable, will ever equal the fine machinery of the human fingers. Thoroughly perfect art is that which proceeds from the heart, which involves all the noble emotions ; — associates with these the head, yet as in- ferior to the heart ; and the hand, yet as inferior to the heart and head ; and thus brings out the whole man. Hence it follows that since Manufacture is simply the opera- tion of the hand of man in producing that which is useful to him, it essentially separates itself from the emotions ; when emotions interfere with machinery they spoil it: machinery must go evenly, without emotion. But the Fine Arts cannot go evenly ; they always must have emotion ruling their mechanism, and until the pupil begins to feel, and until all he does associates itself with the current of his feeling, he is not an artist. But pupils in all the schools in this country are now exposed to all kinds of temptations which blunt their feelings. I constantly feel discouraged in addressing them because I know not how to tell them boldly what they ought to do, when I feel how practically difficult it is for them to do it. There are all sorts of demands made upon them in every direction, and money is to be made in every conceivable way but the right way. If you paint as you ought, and study as you ought, depend upon it the public will take no notice of you TEE UNITY OF ART. 39 for a long while. If you study wrongly, and try to draw the attention of the public upon you, — supposing you to be clever students — you will get swift reward ; but the reward does not come fast when it is sought wisely ; it is always held aloof for a little while ; the right roads of early life are very quiet ones, hedged in from nearly all help or praise. But the wrong roads are noisy, — vociferous everywhere with all kinds of de- mand upon you for art which is not properly art at all ; and in the various meetings of modern interests, money is to be made in every way ; but art is to be followed only in one way. That is what I want mainly to say to you, or if not to you yourselves (for, from what I have heard from your excellent master to-night, I know you are going on all rightly), you must let me say it through you to others. Our Schools of Art are confused by the various teaching and various inter- ests that are now abroad among us. Everybody is talking about art, and writing about it, and more or less interested in it ; everybody wants art, and there is not art for everybody, and few who talk know what they are talking about ; thus stu- dents are led in all variable ways, while there is only one way in which they can make steady progress, for true art is always and will be always one. Whatever changes may be made in the customs of society, whatever new machines we may invent, whatever new manufactures we may supply, Fine Art must remain what it was two thousand years ago, in the days of Phidias ; two thousand years hence, it will be, in all its prin- ciples, and in all its great effects upon the mind of man, just the same. Observe this that I say, please, carefully, for I mean it to the very utmost. There is but one right way of do- ing any given thing required of an artist ; there may be a hun- dred wrong, deficient, or mannered ways, but there is only one complete and right way. Whenever two artists are try- ing to do the same thing with the same materials, and do it in different ways, one of them is wrong ; he may be charm- ingly wrong, or impressively wrong — various circumstances in his temper may make his wrong pleasanter than any per- son’s right ; it may for him, under his given limitations of knowledge or temper, be better perhaps that he should err in 40 THE TWO PATHS. his own way than try for anybody else’s — but for all that his way is wrong, and it is essential for all masters of schools to know what the right way is, and what right art is, and to see how simple and how single all right art has been, since the beginning of it. But farther, not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them, without any choice, or more in- tense perception of one point than another, owing to our spe- cial idiosyncrasies. Thus, when Titian or Tintoret look at a human being, they see at a glance the whole of its nature, outside and in ; all that it has of form, of colour, of passion, or of thought ; saintliness, and loveliness ; fleshly body, and spiritual power ; grace, or strength, or softness, or whatso- ever other quality, those men will see to the full, and so paint, that, when narrower people come to look at what they have done, every one may, if he chooses, find his own special pleasure in the work. The sensualist will find sensu- ality in Titian ; the thinker will find thought ; the saint, sanc- tity ; the colourist, colour ; the anatomist, form ; and yet the picture will never be a popular one in the full sense, for none of these narrower people will find their special taste so alone consulted, as that the qualities which would ensure their grati- fication shall be sifted or separated from others ; they are checked by the presence of the other qualities which ensure the gratification of other men. Thus, Titian is not soft enough for the sensualist, Correggio suits him better ; Titian is not defined enough for the formalist, — Leonardo suits him better ; Titian is not pure enough for the religionist, — Raphael suits him better ; Titian is not polite enough for the man of the world, — Vandyke suits him better ; Titian is not forcible enough for the lovers of the picturesque, — Rembrandt suits him better. So Correggio is popular with a certain set, and Vandyke with a certain set, and Rembrandt with a certain set All are great men, but of inferior stamp, and therefore Van- dyke is popular, and Rembrandt is popular,* but nobody *And Murillo, of all true painters the narrowest, feeblest, and most superficial, for those reasons the most popular. THE UNITY OF ART 41 cares much at heart about Titian ; only there is a strange under-current of everlasting murmur about his name, which means the deep consent of all great men that he is greater than they — the consent of those who, having sat long enough at his feet, have found in that restrained harmony of his strength there are indeed depths of each balanced power more wonderful than all those separate manifestations in in- ferior painters : that there is a softness more exquisite than Correggio’s, a purity loftier than Leonardo’s, a force mightier than Rembrandt’s, a sanctity more solemn even than Raf- faelle’s. Do not suppose that in saying this of Titian, I am return- ing to the old eclectic theories of Bologna ; for all those eclec- tic theories, observe, were based, not upon an endeavour to unite the various characters of nature (which it is possible to do), but the various narrownesses of taste, which it is impossi- ble to do. Rubens is not more vigorous than Titian, but less vigorous ; but because he is so narrow-minded as to enjoy vigour only, he refuses to give the other qualities of nature, which would interfere with that vigour and with our percep- tion of it. Again, Rembrandt is not a greater master of chia- roscuro than Titian ; — he is a less master, but because he is so narrow-minded as to enjoy chiaroscuro only, he withdraws from you the splendour of hue which would interfere with this, and gives you only the shadow in which you can at once feel it. Now all these specialties have their own charm in their own way : and there are times when the particular humour of each man is refreshing to us from its very distinctness ; but the effort to add any other qualities to this refreshing one instantly takes away the distinctiveness, and therefore the exact character to be enjoyed in its appeal to a particular humour in us. Our enjoyment arose from a weakness meet- ing a weakness, from a partiality in the painter fitting to a partiality in us, and giving us sugar when we wanted sugar, and myrrh when we wanted myrrh ; but sugar and myrrh are not meat : and when we want meat and bread, we must go to better men. 42 TEE TWO PATES. The eclectic schools endeavoured to unite these opposite partialities and weaknesses. They trained themselves under masters of exaggeration, and tried to unite opposite exaggera- tions. That was impossible. They did not see that the only possible eclecticism had been already accomplished ; — the eclecticism of temperance, which, by the restraint of force, gains higher force ; and by the self-denial of delight, gains higher delight. This you will find is ultimately the case with every true and right master ; at first, while we are tyros in art, or before we have earnestly studied the man in question, we shall see little in him ; or perhaps see, as we think, de- ficiencies ; we shall fancy he is inferior to this man in that, and to the other man in the other ; but as we go on studying him we shall find that he has got both that and the other ; and both in a far higher sense than the man who seemed to possess those qualities in excess. Thus in Turner’s lifetime, when people first looked at him, those who liked rainy weather, said he was not equal to Copley Fielding ; but those who looked at Turner long enough found that he could be much more wet than Copley Fielding, when he chose. The people who liked force, said that “Turner was not strong enough for them ; he was effeminate ; they liked De Wint, — nice strong tone ; — or Cox — great, greeny, dark masses of colour — solemn feeling of the freshness and depth of nature ; — they liked Cox — Turner was too hot for them.” Had they looked long enough they would have found that he had far more force than De Wint, far more freshness than Cox when he chose, — only united with other elements ; and that he didn’t choose to be cool, if nature had appointed the weather to be hot. The people who liked Prout said “ Turner had not firmness of hand — he did not know enough about archi- tecture — he was not picturesque enough.” Had they looked at his architecture long, they would have found that it con- tained subtle picturesquenesses, infinitely more picturesque than anything of Prout’s. People who liked Callcott said that “Turner was not correct or pure enough — had no classical taste.” Had they looked at Turner long enough they would have found him as severe, when he chose, as the THE UNITY OF ART. 43 greater Poussin ; — Callcott, a mere vulgar imitator of other men’s high breeding. And so throughout with all thoroughly great men, their strength is not seen at first, precisely because they unite, in due place and measure, every great quality. Now the question is, whether, as students, we are to study only these mightiest men, who unite all greatness, or whether we are to study the works of inferior men, who present us with the greatness which we particularly like ? That question often comes before me when I see a strong idiosyncrasy in a student, and he asks me what he should study. Shall I send him to a true master, who does not present the quality in a prominent way in which that student delights, or send him to a man with whom he has direct sympathy ? It is a hard question. For very curious results have sometimes been brought out, especially in late years, not only by students following their own bent, but by their being withdrawn from teaching altogether. I have just named a very great man in his own field — Prout. We all know his drawings, and love them : they have a peculiar character which no other archi- tectural drawings ever possessed, and which no others can possess, because all Prout’s subjects are being knocked down or restored. (Prout did not like restored buildings any more than I do.) There will never be any more Prout draw- ings. Nor could he have been what he was, or expressed with that mysteriously effective touch that peculiar delight in broken and old buildings, unless he had been withdrawn from all high art influence. You know that Prout was born of poor parents — that he was educated down in Cornwall ; — and that, for many years, all the art-teaching he had was his own, or the fishermen’s. Under the keels of the fishing-boats, on the sands of our southern coasts, Prout learned all that he needed to learn about art. Entirely by himself, he felt his way to this particular style, and became the painter of pict- ures which I think we should all regret to lose. It becomes a very difficult question what that man would have been, had he been brought under some entirely wholesome artistic in- fluence. He had immense gifts of composition. I do not 44 THE TWO PATHS. know any man who had more power of invention than Prout, or who had a sublimer instinct in his treatment of things ; but being entirely withdrawn from all artistical help, he blun- ders his way to that short-coming representation, which, by the very reason of its short-coming, has a certain charm we should all be sorry to lose. And therefore I feel embar- rassed when a student comes to me, in whom I see a strong instinct of that kind : and cannot tell whether I ought to say to him, “ Give up all your studies of old boats, and keep away from the sea-shore, and come up to the Boyal Academy in London, and look at nothing but Titian.” It is a difficult thing to make up one’s mind to say that. However, I believe, on the whole, we may wisely leave such matters in the hands of Providence ; that if we have the power of teaching the right to anybody, we should teach them the right ; if we have the power of showing them the best thing, we should show them the best thing ; there will always, I fear, be enough want of teaching, and enough bad teaching, to bring out very curious erratical results if we want them. So, if we are to teach at all, let us teach the right thing, and ever the right thing. There are many attractive qualities inconsistent with rightness ; — do not let us teach them, — let us be content to waive them. There are attractive qualities in Burns, and attractive qualities in Dickens, which neither of those writers would have pos- sessed if the one had been educated, and the other had been studying higher nature than that of cockney London ; but those attractive qualities are not such as we should seek in a school of literature. If we want to teach young men a good manner of writing, we should teach it from Shakspeare, — not from Burns ; from Walter Scott, — and not from Dickens. And I believe that our schools of painting are at present in- efficient in their action, because they have not fixed on this high principle what are the painters to whom to point ; nor boldly resolved to point to the best, if determinable. It is becoming a matter of stem necessity that they should give a simple direction to the attention of the student, and that they should say, “ This is the mark you are to aim at ; and you are not to go about to the print-shops, and peep in, to see THE UNITY OF ART. 45 how this engraver does that, and the other engraver does the other, and how a nice bit of character has been caught by a new man, and why this odd picture has caught the popular attention. You are to have nothing to do with all that ; you are not to mind about popular attention just now ; but here is a thing which is eternally right and good : you are to look at that, and see if you cannot do something eternally right and good too.” But suppose you accept this principle : and resolve to look to some great man, Titian, or Turner, or whomsoever it may be, as the model of perfection in art ; — then the question is, since this great man pursued his art in Venice, or in the fields of England, under totally different conditions from those pos- sible to us now — how are you to make your study of him effective here in Manchester ? how bring it down into patterns* and all that you are called upon as operatives to produce ? how make it the means of your livelihood, and associate inferior branches of art with this great art ? That may become a seri- ous doubt to you. You may think there is some other way of producing clever, and pretty, and saleable patterns than going to look at Titian, or any other great man. And that brings me to the question, perhaps the most vexed question of all amongst us just now, between conventional and perfect art. You know that among architects and artists there are, and have been almost always, since art became a subject of much discussion, two parties, one maintaining that nature should be always altered and modified, and that the artist is greater than nat- ure ; they do not maintain, indeed, in words, but they main- tain in idea, that the artist is greater than the Divine Maker of these things, and can improve them ; while the other party say that he cannot improve nature, and that nature on the whole should improve him. That is the real meaning of the two parties, the essence of them ; the practical result of their several theories being that the Idealists are always producing more or less formal conditions of art, and the Realists striving to produce in all their art either some image of nature, or rec- ord of nature ; these, observe, being quite different things, the image being a resemblance, and the record, something 46 THE TWO PATHS. which will give information about nature, but not necessarily imitate it.* * * * * * * * You may separate these two groups of artists more distinctly in your mind as those who seek for the pleasure of art, in the relations of its colours and lines, without caring to convey any truth with it ; and those who seek for the truth first, and then go down from the truth to the pleasure of colour and line. Marking those two bodies distinctly as separate, and thinking over them, you may come to some rather nota- ble conclusions respecting the mental dispositions which are involved in each mode of study. You will find that large masses of the art of the world fall definitely under one or the other of these heads. Observe, pleasure first and truth after- wards, (or not at all,) as with the Arabians and Indians ; or, truth first and pleasure afterwards, as with Angelico and all other great European painters. You w T ill find that the art whose end is pleasure only is pre-eminently the gift of cruel and savage nations, cruel in temper, savage in habits and con- ception ; but that the art which is especially dedicated to nat- ural fact always indicates a peculiar gentleness and tender- ness of mind, and that all great and successful work of that kind will assuredly be the production of thoughtful, sensitive, earnest, kind men, large in their views of life, and full of vari- ous intellectual power. And farther, when you examine the men in whom the gifts of art are variously mingled, or uni- versally mingled, you will discern that the ornamental, or pleasurable power, though it may be possessed by good men, is not in itself an indication of their goodness, but is rather, unless balanced by other faculties, indicative of violence of temper, inclining to cruelty and to irreligion. On the other hand, so sure as you find any man endowed "with a keen and separate faculty of representing natural fact, so surely you will find that man gentle and upright, full of nobleness and breadth of thought. I will give you two instances, the first * The portion of the lecture here omitted was a recapitulation of that part of the previous one which opposed conventional art to natural art THE UNITY OF ART. 47 peculiarly English, and another peculiarly interesting because it occurs among a nation not generally very kind or gentle. I am inclined to think that, considering all the disadvan- tages of circumstances and education under which his genius was developed, there was perhaps hardly ever born a man with a more intense and innate gift of insight into nature than our own Sir Joshua Reynolds. Considered as a painter of individuality in the human form and mind, I think him, even as it is, the prince of portrait painters. Titian paints nobler pictures, and Vandyke had nobler subjects, but neither of them entered so subtly as Sir Joshua did into the minor varieties of human heart and temper ; and when you consider that, with a frightful conventionality of social habitude all around him, he yet conceived the simplest types of all feminine and childish loveliness that in a northern climate, and with gray, and white, and black, as the principal colours around him, he yet became a colourist who can be crushed by none, even of the Venetians ; — and that with Dutch painting and Dresden china for the prevailing types of art in the saloons of his day, he threw himself at once at the feet of the great mas- ters of Italy, and arose from their feet to share their throne— I know not that in the whole history of art you can produce another instance of so strong, so unaided, so unerring an in- stinct for all that was true, pure, and noble. Now, do you recollect the evidence respecting the character of this man, — the two points of bright peculiar evidence given by the sayings of the two greatest literary men of his day, Johnson and Goldsmith? Johnson, who, as you know, was always Reynolds’ attached friend, had but one complaint to make against him, that he hated nobody “ Reynolds,” he said, “ you hate no one living ; I like a good hater ! ” Still more significant is the little touch in Goldsmith’s “ Retalia- tion. You recollect how in that poem he describes the vari- ous persons who met at one of their dinners at St. James’s Coffee-house, each person being described under the name of some appropriate dish. You will often hear the concluding lines about Reynolds Quoted — " He shifted his trumpet,” & c 48 THE TWO PATHS. less often, or at least less attentively, the preceding ones, far more important — “Still born to improve us in every part — His pencil our faces, liis manners our heart and never, the most characteristic touch of all, near the be- ginning “ Our dean shall be venison, just fresh from the plains; Our Burke shall be tongue, with a garnish of brains. To make out the dinner, full certain I am, That Rich is anchovy, and Reynolds is lamb." The other painter whom I would give you as an instance of this gentleness is a man of another nation, on the whole I suppose one of the most cruel civilized nations in the world — the Spaniards. They produced but one great painter, only one ; but he among the very greatest of painters, Velasquez. You would not suppose, from looking at Velasquez’ portraits generally, that he w*as an especially kind or good man ; you perceive a peculiar sternness about them ; for they were as true as steel, and the persons whom he had to paint being not generally kind or good people, they were stern in expression, and Velasquez gave the sternness ; but he had precisely the same intense perception of truth, the same marvellous instinct for the rendering of all natural soul and all natural form that our Reynolds had. Let me, then, read you his character as it is given by Mr. Stirling, of Kier : — “ Certain charges, of what nature we are not informed, brought against him after his death, made it necessary for his executor, Fuensalida, to refute them at a private audience granted to him by the king for that purpose. After listening to the defence of his friend, Philip immediately made answer : ‘I can believe all you say of the excellent disposition of Diego Velasquez.’ Having lived for half his life in courts, he was yet capable both of gratitude and generosity, and in the misfortunes, he could remember the early kindness of Oliva- res. The friend of the exile of Loeches, it is just to believe that he was also the friend of the all-powerful favourite at TEE UNITY OF ART. 49 Buenretiro. No mean jealousy ever influenced his conduct to his brother artists ; he could afford not only to acknowl- edge the merits, but to forgive the malice, of his rivals. His character was of that rare and happy kind , in which high intel- lectual power is combined with indomitable strength of will , and a winning sweetness of temper , and which seldom fails to raise the possessor above his fellow-men, making his life a * laurelled victory, and smooth success Be strewed before his feet.’” I am sometimes accused of trying to make art too moral ; yet, observe, I do not say in the least that in order to be a good painter you must be a good man ; but I do say that in order to be a good natural painter there must be strong elements of good in the mind, however warped by other parts of the character. There are hundreds of other gifts of paint- ing which are not at all involved with moral conditions, but this one, the perception of nature, is never given but under certain moral conditions. Therefore, now you have it in your choice ; here are your two paths for you : it is required of you to produce conventional ornament, and you may approach the task as the Hindoo does, and as the Arab did, without nature at all, with the chance of approximating your disposi- tion somewhat to that of the Hindoos and Arabs ; or as Sir Joshua and Velasquez did, with, not the chance, but the cer- tainty, of approximating your disposition, according to the sincerity of your effort — to the disposition of those great and good men. And do you suppose you will lose anything by approaching your conventional art from this higher side? Not so. I called, with deliberate measurement of my expression, long ago, the decoration of the Alhambra “ detestable,” not merely because indicative of base conditions of moral being, but be- cause merely as decorative work, however captivating in some respects, it is wholly wanting in the real, deep, and intense qualities of ornamental art. Noble conventional decoration belongs only to three periods. First, there is the convem tional decoration of the Greeks, used in subordination to their 50 THE TWO PATES. sculpture. There are then the noble conventional decoration of the early Gothic schools, and the noble conventional ara- besque of the great Italian schools. All these were reached from above, all reached by stooping from a knowledge of the human form. Depend upon it you will find, as you look more and more into the matter, that good subordinate orna- ment has ever been rooted in a higher knowledge ; and if you are again to produce anything that is noble, you must have the higher knowledge first, and descend to all lower service ; condescend as much as you like, — condescension never does any man any harm, — but get your noble standing first. So, then, without any scruple, whatever branch of art you may be inclined as a student here to follow, — whatever you are to make your bread by, I say, so far as you have time and power, make yourself first a noble and accomplished artist ; under- stand at least what noble and accomplished art is, and then you will be able to apply your knowledge to all service what- soever. I am now going to ask your permission to name the masters whom I think it would be well if we could agree, in our Schools of Art in England, to consider our leaders. The first and chief I will not myself presume to name ; he shall be distinguished for you by the authority of those two great painters of whom we have just been speaking — Reynolds and Velasquez. You may remember that in your Manchester Art Treasures Exhibi- tion the most impressive things were the works of those two men — nothing told upon the eye so much ; no other pictures retained it with such a persistent power. Now, I have the testimony, first of Reynolds to Velasquez, and then of Velasquez to the man whom I want you to take as the master of all your English schools. The testimony of Reynolds to Velasquez is very striking. I take it from some fragments which have just been published by Air. William Cotton — precious fragments — of Reynolds’ diaries, which I chanced upon luckily as I was coming down here : for I was going to take Velasquez’ testi- mony alone, and then fell upon this testimony of Reynolds to Velasquez, written most fortunately in Reynolds’ own hand — you may see the manuscript. “ What we are all,” said Rey- TEE UNITY OF ART. 51 Holds, “ attempting to do with great labor, Velasquez does at once .” Just think what is implied when a man of the enor- mous power and facility that Reynolds had, says he was “ try- ing to do with great labor” what Velasquez “ did at once.” Having thus Reynolds’ testimony to Velasquez, I will take Velasquez’ testimony to somebody else. You know that Velas- quez was sent by Philip of Spain to Italy, to buy pictures for him. He went all over Italy, saw the living artists there, and all their best pictures when freshly painted, so that he had every opportunity of judging ; and never was a man so capable of judging. He went to Rome and ordered various works of living artists ; and while there, he was one day asked by Salva- tor Rosa what he thought of Raphael. His reply, and the ensuing conversation, are thus reported by Boschini, in curious Italian verse, which, thus translated by Dr. Donaldson, is quoted in Mr. Stirling’s Life of Velasquez : — “The master ” [Velasquez] “stiffly bowed his figure tall And said, ‘ For Rafael, to speak the truth — I always was plain-spoken from my youth — I cannot say I like his works at all. ’ “ ‘Well,’ said the other ” [Salvator], “ * if you can run down So great a man, I really cannot see What you can find to like in Italy ; To him we all agree to give the crown.’ “ Diego answered thus : ‘ I saw in Venice The true test of the good and beautiful ; First in my judgment, ever stands that school, And Titian first of all Italian men is.’ ’’ “ Tizian ze quel che porta la handier a. ” Learn that line by heart, and act, at all events for some time to come, upon Velasquez’ opinion in that matter. Titian is much the safest master for you. Raphael’s power, such as it was, and great as it was, depended wholly upon transcendental characters in his mind ; it is “ Raphaelesque,” properly so called ; but Titian’s power is simply the power of doing right. "Whatever came before Titian, he did wholly as it ought to be 52 THE TWO PATHS. done. Do not suppose that now in recommending Titian to you so strongly, and speaking of nobody else to-night, I am retreating in anywise from what some of you may perhaps rec- ollect in my works, the enthusiasm with which I have always spoken of another Venetian painter. There are three Vene- tians who are never separated in my mind — Titian, Veronese, and Tintoret. They all have their own unequalled gifts, and Tintoret especially has imagination and depth of soul which I think renders him indisputably the greatest man ; but, equally indisputably, Titian is the greatest painter ; and therefore the greatest painter who ever lived. You may be led wrong by Tintoret * in many respects, wrong by Raphael in more ; all that you learn from Titian will be right. Then, with Titian, take Leonardo, Rembrandt, and Albert Durer. I name those three masters for this reason : Leonardo has powers of subtle drawing which are peculiarly applicable in many ways to the drawing of fine ornament, and are very useful for all students. Rembrandt and Durer are the only men whose actual work of hand you can have to look at ; you can have Rembrandt’s etchings, or Durer’s engravings actually hung in your schools ; and it is a main point for the student to see the real thing, and avoid judging of masters at second-hand. As, however, in obeying this principle, you cannot often have opportunities of studying Venetian painting, it is desirable that you should have a useful standard of colour, and I think it is possible for you to obtain this. I cannot, indeed, without entering upon ground which might involve the hurting the feelings of living artists, state exactly what I believe to be the relative position of various painters in England at present with respect to power of colour. But I may say this, that in the peculiar gifts of colour which will be useful to you as students, there are only one or two of the pre-Raphaelites, and William Hunt, of the old Water Colour Society, who would be safe guides for you ; and as quite a safe guide, there is nobody but William Hunt, because the pre-Raphaelites are all more or less affected by enthusiasm and by various morbid conditions of intellect and temper ; but old William Hunt — I am sorry to say “ old,” but * See Appendix L — “ Riglit and Wrong." THE UNITY OP ART . 53 I say it in a loving way, for every year that has added to his life has added also to his skill — William Hunt is as right as the Venetians, as far as he goes, and what is more, nearly as inimitable as they. And I think if we manage to put in the principal schools of England a little bit of Hunt’s work, and make that somewhat of a standard of colour, that we can ap- ply his principles of colouring to subjects of all kinds. Until you have had a work of his long near you ; nay, unless you have been labouring at it, and trying to copy it, you do not know the thoroughly grand qualities that are concentrated in it. Simplicity, and intensity, both of the highest character ; simplicity of aim, and intensity of power and success, are involved in that man s unpretending labour. Finally, you cannot believe that I would omit my own favourite, Turner. I fear from the very number of his works left to the nation, that there is a disposition now rising to look upon his vast bequest with some contempt. I beg of you, if in nothing else, to believe me in this, that you cannot further the art of England in any way more distinctly than by giving attention to every fragment that has been left by that man. The time will come when his full power and right place win be acknowledged ; that time wiU not be for many a day yet : nevertheless, be assured — as far as you are inclined to give the least faith to anything I may say to you, be as- sured— that you can act for the good of art in England in no better way than by using whatever influence any of you have in any direction to urge the reverent study and yet more reverent preservation of the works of Turner. I do not say ‘‘ the exhibition ” of his works, for we are not altogether ripe for it : they are still too far above us ; uniting, as I was telling you, too many qualities for us yet to feel fully their range and their influence ; but let us only try to keep them safe from harm, and show thoroughly and conveniently what we show of them at all, and day by day their greatness will dawn upon us more and more, and be the root of a school of art in Eng- land, which I do not doubt may be as bright, as just, and as refined as even that of Venice herself. The dominion of the sea seems to have been associated, in past time, with dominion 54 TEE TWO PATES. in the arts also : Athens had them together ; Venice had them together ; but by so much as our authority over the ocean is wider than theirs over the iEgean or Adriatic, let us strive to make our art more widely beneficent than theirs, though it cannot be more exalted ; so working out the fulfilment, in their wakening as well as their warning sense, of those great words of the aged Tin tore t : “Sempre si fa il Mare Maggiore.” LECTURE m. modern manufacture and design. A Lecture delivered at Bradford, March, 1859. It is with a deep sense of necessity for your indulgence that I venture to address you to-night, or that I venture at any time to address the pupils of schools of design intended for the advancement of taste in special branches of manufacture. No person is able to give useful and definite help towards such special applications of art, unless he is entirely familiar with the conditions of labour and natures of material involved in the work ; and indefinite help is little better than no help at all. Nay, the few remarks which I propose to lay before you this evening will, I fear, be rather suggestive of difficulties than helpful in conquering them : nevertheless, it may not be altogether unserviceable to define clearly for you (and this, at least, I am able to do) one or two of the more stem general obstacles which stand at present in the way of our success in design ; and to warn you against exertion of effort in any vain or wasteful way, till these main obstacles are removed. The first of these is our not understanding the scope and dignity of Decorative design. With all our talk about it, the very meaning of the words “ Decorative art ” remains confused and undecided. I want, if possible, to settle this question for you to-night, and to show you that the principles on which you MODERN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN. 55 must work are likely to be false, in proportion as they are narrow ; true, only as they are founded on a perception of the connection of all branches of art with each other. Observe, then, first — the only essential distinction between Decorative and other art is the being fitted for a fixed place ; and in that place, related, either in subordination or command, to the effect of other pieces of art. And all the greatest art which the world has produced is thus fited for a place, and subor- dinated to a purpose. There is no existing highest-order art but is decorative. The best sculpture yet produced has been the decoration of a temple front — the best painting, the deco- ration of a room. Raphael’s best doing is merely the wall-col- ouring of a suite of apartments in the Vatican, and his car- toons were made for tapestries. Correggio’s best doing is the decoration of two small church cupolas at Parma ; Michael Angelo’s of a ceiling in the Pope’s private chapel ; Tintoret’s, of a ceiling and side wall belonging to a charitable society at Venice ; while Titian and Veronese threw out their noblest thoughts, not even on the inside, but on the outside of the common brick and plaster walls of Venice. Get rid, then, at once of any idea of Decorative art being a degraded or a separate kind of art. Its nature or essence is simply its being fitted for a definite place ; and, in that place, forming part of a great and harmonious whole, in companion- ship with other art ; and so far from this being a degradation to it — so far from Decorative art being inferior to other art because it is fixed to a spot — on the whole it may be consid- ered as rather a piece of degradation that it should be port- able. Portable art— independent of all place — is for the most part ignoble art. Your little Dutch landscape, which you put over your sideboard to-day, and between the windows to- morrow, is a far more contemptible piece of work than the ex- tents of field and forest with which Benozzo has made green and beautiful the once melancholy arcade of the Campo Santo at Pisa ; and the wild boar of silver which you use for a seal, or lock into a velvet case, is little likely to be so noble a beast as the bronze boar who foams forth the fountain from under his tusks in the market-place of Florence. It is, indeed, pos- 56 TEE TWO PATES . sible that the portable picture or image may be first-rate of its kind, but it is not first-rate because it is portable ; nor are Titian’s frescoes less than first-rate because they are fixed ; nay, very frequently the highest compliment you can pay to a cab- inet picture is to say — It is as grand as a fresco.” Keeping, then, this fact fixed in our minds, — that all art may be decorative, and that the greatest art yet produced has been decorative, — we may proceed to distinguish the orders and dignities of decorative art, thus : — L The first order of it is that which is meant for places where it cannot be disturbed or injured, and where it can be perfectly seen ; and then the main parts of it should be, and have always been made, by the great masters, as perfect, and as full of nature as possible. You will every day hear it absurdly said that room deco- ration should be by flat patterns— by dead colours — by con- ventional monotonies, and I know not what. Now, just be assured of this — nobody ever yet used conventional art to decorate with, when he could do anything better, and knew that what he did would be safe. Nay, a great painter will always give you the natural art, safe or not Correggio gets a commission to paint a room on the ground floor of a palace at Parma : any of our people — bred on our fine modern principles — would have covered it with a diaper, or with stripes or flourishes, or mosaic patterns. Not so Correggio : he paints a thick trellis of vine-leaves, with oval openings, and lovely children leaping through them into the room ; and lovely children, depend upon it, are rather more desirable decorations than diaper, if you can do them — but they are not quite so easily done. In like manner Tintoret has to paint the whole end of the Council Hall at Venice. An orthodox decorator would have set himself to make the wall look like a wall — Tintoret thinks it would be rather better, if he can manage it, to make it look a little like Para- dise ; — stretches his canvas right over the wall, and his clouds right over his canvas ; brings the light through his clouds — * all blue and clear — zodiac beyond zodiac ; rolls away the vaporous flood from under the feet of saints, leaving them at MODERN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN. 57 last in infinitudes of light — unorthodox in the last degree, but, on the whole, pleasant. And so in all other cases whatever, the greatest decorative art is wholly unconventional— downright, pure, good painting and sculpture, but always fitted for its place ; and subordi- nated to the purpose it has to serve in that place. II. But if art is to be placed where it is liable to injury — to wear and tear ; or to alteration of its form ; as, for in- stance, on domestic utensils, and armour, and weapons, and dress ; in which either the ornament will be worn out by the usage of the thing, or will be cast into altered shape by the play of its folds ; then it is wrong to put beautiful and perfect art to such uses, and you want forms of inferior art, such as will be by their simplicity less liable to injury ; or, by reason of their complexity and continuousness, may show to advantage, however distorted by the folds they are cast into. And thus arise the various forms of inferior decorative art, respecting which the general law is, that the lower the place and office of the thing, the less of natural or perfect form you should have in it ; a zigzag or a chequer is thus a better, because a more consistent ornament for a cup or platter than a landscape or portrait is : hence the general definition of the true forms of conventional ornament is, that they consist in the bestowal of as much beauty on the object as shall be con- sistent with its Material, its Place, and its Office. Let us consider these three modes of consistency a little. (A.) Conventionalism by cause of inefficiency of material. If, for instance, we are required to represent a human figure with stone only, we cannot represent its colour ; we reduce its colour to whiteness. That is not elevating the human body, but degrading it ; only it would be a much greater degradation to give its colour falsely. Diminish beauty as much as you will, but do not misrepresent it. So again, when we are sculpturing a face, we can’t carve its eye- lashes. The face is none the better for wanting its eyelashes it is injured by the want ; but would be much more injured by a clumsy representation of them. 5S THE TWO PATHS. Neither can we carve the hair. We must be content with the conventionalism of vile solid knots and lumps of marble, instead of the golden cloud that encompasses the fair human face with its waving mystery. The lumps of marble are not an elevated representation of hair — they are a degraded one ; yet better than any attempt to imitate hair with the incapable material. In all cases in which such imitation is attempted, instant degradation to a still lower level is the result. For the effort to imitate shows that the workman has only a base and poor conception of the beauty of the reality — else he would know his task to be hopeless, and give it up at once ; so that all endeavours to avoid conventionalism, when the material demands it, result from insensibility to truth, and are among the worst forms of vulgarity. Hence, in the greatest Greek statues, the hair is very slightly indicated — not because the sculptor disdained hair, but because he knew what it was too well to touch it insolently. I do not doubt but that the Greek painters drew hair exactly as Titian does. Modern attempts to produce finished pictures on glass result from the same base vulgarism. No man who knows what painting means, can endure a painted glass window which emulates painter’s work. But he rejoices in a glowing mosaic of broken colour : for that is what the glass has the special gift and right of producing.* (b. ) Conventionalism by cause of inferiority of place. When w T ork is to be seen at a great distance, or in dark places, or in some other imperfect w r ay, it constantly becomes necessary to treat it coarsely or severely, in order to make it effective. The statues on cathedral fronts, in good times of design, are variously treated according to their distances : no fine execution is put into the features of the Madonna who rules the group of figures above the south transept of Bouen at 150 feet above the ground ; but in base modern work, as Milan Cathedral, the sculpture is finished without any refer- ence to distance ; and the merit of every statue is supposed *See Appendix II., Sir Joshua Reynolds’s disappointment. MODERN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN 59 to consist in the visitor’s being obliged to ascend three hun- dred steps before he can see it. (c.) Conventionalism by cause of inferiority of office. When one piece of ornament is to be subordinated to an- other (as the moulding is to the sculpture it encloses, or the fringe of a drapery to the statue it veils), this inferior orna- ment needs to be degraded in order to mark its lower office ; and this is best done by refusing, more or less, the introduc- tion of natural form. The less of nature it contains, the more degraded is the ornament, and the fitter for a humble place ; but, however far a great workman may go in refusing the higher organisms of nature, he always takes care to retain the magnificence of natural lines ; that is to say, of the infinite curves, such as I have analyzed in the fourth volume of “ Modern Painters.” His copyists, fancying that they can fol- low him without nature, miss precisely the essence of all the work ; so that even the simplest piece of Greek conventional ornament loses the whole of its value in any modern imitation of it, the finer curves being always missed. Perhaps one of the dullest and least justifiable mistakes which have yet been made about my writing, is the supposition that I have attacked or despised Greek work. I have attacked Palladian work, and modern imitation of Greek work. Of Greek work itself I have never spoken but with a reverence quite infinite : I name Phidias always in exactly the same tone with which I speak of Michael Angelo, Titian, and Dante. My first statement of this faith, now thirteen years ago, was surely clear enough. We shall see by this light three colossal images standing up side by side, looming in their great rest of spirituality above the whole world horizon. Phidias, Michael Angelo, and Dante, — from these we may go down step by step among the mighty men of every age, securely and certainly observant of di- minished lustre in every appearance of restlessness and effort, until the last trace of inspiration vanishes in the tottering affectation or tortured insanities of modern times.” (“ Mod- ern Painters, vol. ii., p. 253.) This was surely plain speaking enough, and from that day to this my effort has been not less continually to make the heart of Greek work known than the 60 THE TWO PATHS. heart of Gothic : namely, the nobleness of conception of form derived from perpetual study of the figure ; and my complaint of the modern architect has been not that he followed the Greeks, but that he denied the first laws of life in theirs as in all other art. The fact is, that all good subordinate forms of ornamenta- tion ever yet existent in the world have been invented, and others as beautiful can only be invented, by men primarily exercised in drawing or carving the human figure. I will not repeat here what I have already twice insisted upon, to the students of London and Manchester, respecting the degrada- tion of temper and intellect which follows the pursuit of art without reference to natural form, as among the Asiatics : here, I will only trespass on your patience so far as to mark the inseparable connection between figure-drawing and good ornamental work, in the great European schools, and all that are connected with them. Tell me, then, first of all, what ornamental work is usually put before our students as the type of decorative perfection ? Raphael's arabesques ; are they not? Well, Raphael knew a little about the figure, I suppose, before he drew them. I do not say that I like those arabesques ; but there are certain qualities in them which are inimitable by modem designers ; and those qualities are just the fruit of the master’s figure study. What is given the student as next to Raphael’s work ? Cinquecento ornament generally. Well, cinquecento gener- ally, with its birds, and cherubs, and wreathed foliage, and clustered fruit, was the amusement of men who habitually and easily carved the figure, or painted it. All the truly fine specimens of it have figures or animals as main parts of the design. “Nay, but,” some anciently or medievally minded person will exclaim, “ we don’t want to study cinquecento. We want severer, purer conventionalism.” What will you have? Egyptian ornament ? Why, the whole mass of it is made up of multitudinous human figures in every kind of action — and magnificent action ; their kings drawing their bows in their chariots, their sheaves of arrows rattling at their shoulders j MODERN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN. 61 the slain falling under them as before a pestilence ; their cap- tors driven before them in astonied troops ; and do you ex- pect to imitate Egyptian ornament without knowing how to draw the human figure ? Nay, but you will take Christian ornament— purest mediaeval Christian — thirteenth century! Yes : and do you suppose you will find the Christian less hu- man ? The least natural and most purely conventional orna- ment of the Gothic schools is that of their painted glass ; and do you suppose painted glass, in the fine times, was ever wrought without figures ? We have got into the way, among our other modern wretchednesses, of trying to make windows of leaf diapers, and of strips of twisted red and yellow bands, looking like the patterns of currant jelly on the top of Christ- mas cakes ; but every casement of old glass contained a saint’s history. The windows of Bourges, Chartres, or Rouen have ten, fifteen, or twenty medallions in each, and each medallion contains two figures at least, often six or seven, representing every event of interest in the history of the saint whose life is in question. Nay, but, you say those figures are rude and quaint, and ought not to be imitated. Why, so is the leafage rude and quaint, yet you imitate that. The coloured border pattern of geranium or ivy leaf is not one whit better drawn, or more like geraniums and ivy, than the figures are like fig- ures ; but you call the geranium leaf idealized — why don’t you call the figures so ? The fact is, neither are idealized, but both are coventionalized on the same principles, and in the same way ; and if you want to learn how to treat the leafage, the only way is to learn first how to treat the figure. And you may soon test your powers in this respect. Those old workmen were not afraid of the most familiar subjects. The windows of Chartres were presented by the trades of the town, and at the bottom of each window is a representation of the proceedings of the tradesmen at the business which en- abled them to pay for the window. There are smiths at the forge, curriers at their hides, tanners looking into their pits, mercers selling goods over the counter— all made into beauti- ful medallions. Therefore, whenever you want to know whether you have got any real power of composition or adap- 62 TEE TWO PATES. tation in ornament, don’t be content with sticking leaves to- gether by the ends, — anybody can do that ; but try to conven- tionalize a butcher’s or a greengrocer’s, with Saturday night customers buying cabbage and beef. That will tell you if you can design or not. I can fancy your losing patience with me altogether just now. “ We asked this fellow down to tell our workmen how to make shawls, and he is only trying to teach them how to caricature.” But have a little patience with me, and examine, after I have done, a little for yourselves into the history of or- namental art, and you will discover why I do this. You will discover, I repeat, that all great ornamental art whatever is founded on the effort of the workman to draw the figure, and, in the best schools, to draw all that he saw about him in liv- ing nature. The best art of pottery is acknowledged to be that of Greece, and all the power of design exhibited in it, down to the merest zigzag, arises primarily from the workman having been forced to outline nymphs and knights ; from those helmed and draped figures he holds his power. Of Egyptian ornament I have just spoken. You have everything given there that the workman saw ; people of his nation employed in hunting, fighting, fishing, visiting, making love, building, cooking — everything they did is drawn, magnificently or fa- miliarly, as was needed. In Byzantine ornament, saints, or animals which are types of various spiritual power, are the main subjects ; and from the church down to the piece of en- amelled metal, figure, — figure, — figure, always principal. In Norman and Gothic work you have, with all their quiet saints, also other much disquieted persons, hunting, feasting, fight- ing, and so on ; or whole hordes of animals racing after each other. In the Bayeux tapestry, Queen Matilda gave, as well as she could, — in many respects graphically enough, — the whole history of the conquest of England. Thence, as you increase in power of art, you have more and more finished figures, up to the solemn sculptures of Wells Cathedral, or the cherubic enrichments of the Venetian Madonna dei Mira- coll Therefore, I will tell you fearlessly, for I know it is true, yon must raise your workman up to life, or you will never get MODERN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN. 63 from him one line of well-imagined conventionalism. We have at present no good ornamental design. We can’t have it yet, and we must be patient if we want to have it. Do not hope to feel the effect of your schools at once, but raise the men as high as you can, and then let them stoop as low as you need ; no great man ever minds stooping. Encourage the students, in sketching accurately and continually from nature anything that comes in their way — still life, flowers, animals ; but, above all, figures ; and so far as you allow of any differ- ence between an artist’s training and theirs, let it be, not in what they draw, but in the degree of conventionalism you re- quire in the sketch. For my own part, I should always endeavour to give thor- ough artistical training first ; but I am not certain (the experi- ment being yet untried) what results may be obtained by a truly intelligent practice of conventional drawing, such as that of the Egyptians, Greeks, or thirteenth century French, which consists in the utmost possible rendering of natural form by the fewest possible lines. The animal and bird drawing of the Egyptians is, in their fine age, quite magnificent under its conditions ; magnificent in two ways— first, in keenest per- ception of the main forms and facts in the creature ; and, secondly, in the grandeur of line by which their forms are abstracted and insisted on, making every asp, ibis, and vulture a sublime spectre of asp or ibis or vulture power. The way for students to get some of this gift again ( some only, for I believe the fulness of the gift itself to be connected with vital superstition, and with resulting intensity of reverence ; people were likely to know something about hawks and ibises, when to kill one was to be irrevocably judged to death) is never to pass a day without drawing some animal from the life, allow- ing themselves the fewest possible lines and colours to do it with, but resolving that whatever is characteristic of the ani- mal shall in some way or other be shown.* I repeat, it can- not yet be judged what results might be obtained by a nobly practised conventionalism of this kind ; but, however that * Plate 75 in Vol. V. of Wilkinson’s student an idea of how to set to work. “Ancient Egypt” will give the 64 THE TWO PATHS. may be, the first fact, — the necessity of animal and figure drawing, is absolutely certain, and no person who shrinks from it will ever become a great designer. One great good arises even from the first step in figure drawing, that it gets the student quit at once of the notion of formal symmetry. If you learn only to draw a leaf well, you are taught in some of our schools to turn it the other way, opposite to itself ; and the two leaves set opposite w T ays are called “ a design : ” and thus it is supposed possible to pro- duce ornamentation, though you have no more brains than a looking-glass or a kaleidoscope has. But if you once learn to draw the human figure, you will find that knocking two men’s heads together does not necessarily constitute a good design ; nay, that it makes a very bad design, or no design at all ; and you will see at once that to arrange a group of two or more figures, you must, though perhaps it may be desirable to bal- ance, or oppose them, at the same time vary their attitudes, and make one, not the reverse of the other, but the compan- ion of the other. I had a somewhat amusing discussion on this subject with a friend, only the other day ; and one of his retorts upon me was so neatly put, and expresses so completely all that can either be said or shown on the opposite side, that it is well worth while giving it you exactly in the form it was sent to me. My friend had been maintaining that the essence of ornament consisted in three things : — contrast, series, and symmetry. I replied (by letter) that “ none of them, nor it isn’t ornament : and here,” — (sketching this figure at the side) — “you have symmetry ; but it isn’t ornament.” My friend replied : — “ Your materials were not ornament, because you did not A * all of them together, would produce ornament. Here ” — (making a ragged blot with the back of my pen ment : here, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,” — writing the numerals) — “ You have series ; but on the paper) — “ you have iWMj contrast ; but it isn’t orna- MODERN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN. 65 a PP x y tnem. I send them to yon back, made up into a choice sporting neckerchief : Symmetrical figure Contrast .... Series . Unit of diaper. Comer ornaments. Border ornaments. Each figure is converted into a harmony by being revolved on its two axes, the whole opposed in contrasting series.” My answer was— or rather was to the effect (for I must ex- pand it a little, here) — that his words, “ because you did not apply them,” contained the gist of the whole matter that the application of them, or any other things, was precisely the essence of design ; the non-application, or wrong applica- tion, the negation of design : that his use of the poor ma- terials was in this case admirable; and that if he could explain to me, in clear words, the principles on which he had so used them, he would be doing a very great service to all students of art. 66 THE TWO PATHS. “Tell me, therefore (I asked), these main points : “ 1. How did you determine the number of figures you would put into the neckerchief? Had there been more, it would have been mean and ineffective, — a pepper-and-salt sprinkling of figures. Had there been fewer, it would have been monstrous. How did you fix the number ? “ 2. How did you determine the breadth of the border and relative size of the numerals? “ 3. Why are there two lines outside of the border, and one only inside ? Why are there no more lines ? Why not three and two, or three and five ? Why lines at all to separate the barbarous figures ; and why, if lines at all, not double or treble instead of single ? “4. Why did you put the double blots at the corners? Why not at the angles of the chequers, — or in the middle of the border ? “It is precisely your knowing why not to do these things, and why to do just what you have done, which constituted your power of design ; and like all the people I have ever known who had that power, you are entirely unconscious of the essential laws by which you work, and confuse other people by telling them that the design depends on symmetry and series, when, in fact, it depends entirely on your own sense and judgment.” This was the substance of my last answer — to which (as I knew beforehand would be the case) I got no reply ; but it still remains to be observed that -with all the skill and taste (especially involving the architect’s great trust, harmony of proportion), which my friend could bring to bear on the ma- terials given him, the result is still only — a sporting necker- chief — that is to say, the materials addressed, first, to reck- lessness, in the shape of a mere blot ; then to computativeness, in a series of figures ; and then to absurdity and ignorance, in the shape of an ill-drawn caricature — such materials, how- ever treated, can only work up into what will please reckless, computative, and vulgar persons, — that is to say, into a sport- ing neckerchief. The difference between this piece of orna- mentation and Correggio’s painting at Parma lies simply and MODERN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN. 67 wholly in the additions (somewhat large ones), of truth and of tenderness : in the drawing being lovely as well as sym- metrical— and representative of realities as well as agreeably disposed. And truth, tenderness, and inventive application or disposition are indeed the roots of ornament — not contrast, nor symmetry. It ought yet farther to be observed, that the nobler the ma- terials, the less their symmetry is endurable. In the present case, the sense of fitness and order, produced by the repeti- tion of the figures, neutralizes, in some degree, their reckless vulgarity ; and is wholly, therefore, beneficent to them. But draw the figures better, and their repetition will become painful. You may harmlessly balance a mere geometrical form, and oppose one quatrefoil or cusp by another exactly like it. But put two Apollo Belvideres back to back, and you will not think the symmetry improves them. Whenever the materials of ornament are noble , they must be various ; and repetition of parts is either the sign of utterly bad, hopeless, and base work ; or of the intended degradation of the parts in which such repetition is allowed, in order to foil others more noble. Such, then, are a few of the great principles, by the enforce- ment of which you may hope to promote the success of the modern student of design ; but remember, none of these prin- ciples will be useful at all, unless you understand them to be, in one profound and stern sense, useless.* That is to say, unless you feel that neither you nor I, nor any one, can, in the great ultimate sense, teach anybody how to make a good design. If designing could be taught, all the world would learn : as all the world reads — or calculates. But designing is not to be spelled, nor summed. My men continually come to me, in my drawing class in London, thinking I am to teach them what is instantly to enable them to gain their bread. “ Please, sir, show us how to design.” “ Make designers of us.” And I shall endeavour for the future to put my self-contradictions in short sentences and direct terms, in order to save sagacious persons the trouble of looking for them. 63 THE TWO PATHS. you, I doubt not, partly expect me to tell you to-night how to make designers of your Bradford youths. Alas ! I could as soon tell you how to make or manufacture an ear of wheat, as to make a good artist of any kind. I can analyze the wheat very learnedly for you — tell you there is starch in it, and car- bon, and silex. I can give you starch, and charcoal, and flint ; but you are as far from your ear of wheat as you were before. All that can possibly be done for any one who wants ears of wheat is to show them where to find grains of wheat, and how to sow them, and then, with patience, in Heaven’s time, the ears will come — or wall perhaps come — ground and weather permitting. So in this matter of making artists — first you must find your artist in the grain ; then you must plant him ; fence and weed the field about him ; and with patience, ground and weather permitting, you may get an artist out of him — not otherwise. And what I have to speaK to you about, to- night, is mainly the ground and the weatner, it being the first and quite most material question in this matter, whether the ground and weather of Bradford, or the ground and weather of England in general, — suit wheat. And observe in the outset, it is not so much what the pres- ent circumstances of England are, as what we wish to make them, that we have to consider. If you will tell me what you ultimately intend Bradford to be, perhaps I can tell you what Bradford can ultimately produce. But you must have your minds clearly made up, and be distinct in telling me what you do want. At present I don’t know what you are aiming at, and possibly on consideration you may feel some doubt whether you know yourselves. As matters stand, all over England, as soon as one mill is at work, occupying two hundred hands, we try, by means of it, to set another mill at work, occupying four hundred. That is all simple and comprehensive enough — but what is it to come to ? How many mills do we want ? or do we indeed want no end of mills ? Let us entirely understand each other on this point before we go any farther. Last week, I drove from Bochdale to Bolton Abbey ; quietly, in order to see the country, and certainly it was well worth while. I never went over a more interesting twenty miles than those between MODERN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN. 69 Rochdale and Burnley. Naturally, the valley has been one of the most beautiful in the Lancashire hills ; one of the far away solitudes, full of old shepherd ways of life. At this time there are not,— I speak deliberately, and I believe quite literally, there are not, I think, more than a thousand yards of road to be traversed anywhere, without passing a furnace or mill. Now, is that the kind of thing you want to come to every- where ? Because, if it be, and you tell me so distinctly, I think I can make several suggestions to-night, and could make more if you give me time, which would materially advance your object. The extent of our operations at present is more or less limited by the extent of coal and ironstone, but w T e have not yet learned to make proper use of our clay. Over the greater part of England, south of the manufacturing dis- tricts, there are magnificent beds of various kinds of useful clay ; and I believe that it would not be difficult to point out modes of employing it which might enable us to turn nearly the whole of the south of England into a brickfield, as we have already turned nearly the whole of the north into a coal-pit. I say “ nearly ” the whole, because, as you are doubtless aware, there are considerable districts in the south composed of chalk renowned up to the present time for their downs and mutton. But, X think, by examining carefully into the conceivable uses of chalk, we might discover a quite feasible probability of turn- ing all the chalk districts into a limekiln, as we turn the clay districts into a brickfield. There would then remain nothing but the mountain districts to be dealt with ; but, as we have not yet ascertained all the uses of clay and chalk, still less have we ascertained those of stone ; and I think, by draining the useless inlets of the Cumberland, Welsh, and Scotch lakes, and turning them, with their rivers, into navigable reservoirs and canals, there would be no difficulty in working the whole of our mountain districts as a gigantic quarry of slate and granite, from which all the rest of the world might be sup- plied with roofing and building stone. Is this, then, what you want ? You are going straight at it at present ; and I have only to ask under what limitations I am to conceive or describe your final success ? Or shall there 70 THE TWO PATHS. be no limitations ? There are none to your powers ; every day puts new machinery at your disposal, and increases, with your capital, the vastness of your undertakings. The changes in the state of this country are now so rapid, that it would be wholly absurd to endeavour to lay down laws of art education for it under its present aspect and circumstances ; and there- fore I must necessarily ask, how much of it do you seriously intend within the next fifty years to be coal-pit, brickfield, or quarry? For the sake of distinctness of conclusion, I will suppose your success absolute : that from shore to shore the whole of the island is to be set as thick with chimneys as the masts stand in the docks of Liverpool : and there shall be no meadows in it ; no trees ; no gardens ; only a little corn grown upon the housetops, reaped and threshed by steam : that you do not leave even room for roads, but travel either over the roofs of your mills, on viaducts ; or under their floors, in tun- nels : that, the smoke having rendered the light of the sun unserviceable, you work always by the light of your own gas : that no acre of English ground shall be without its shaft and its engine ; and therefore, no spot of English ground left, on which it shall be possible to stand, without a definite and cal- culable chance of being blown off it, at any moment, into small pieces. Under these circumstances, (if this is to be the future of England,) no designing or any other development of beautiful art will be possible. Do not vex your minds, nor waste your money with any thought or effort in the matter. Beautiful art can only be produced by people who have beautiful things about them, and leisure to look at them ; and unless you pro- vide some elements of beauty for your workmen to be sur- rounded by, you will find that no elements of beauty can be invented by them. I was struck forcibly by the bearing of this great fact upon our modern efforts at ornamentation in an afternoon walk, last week, in the suburbs of one of our large manufacturing towns. I was thinking of the difference in the effect upon the designer’s mind, between the scene which I then came upon, and the scene which would have presented itself to the MODERN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN. Ti. eyes of any designer of the middle ages, when he left his workshop. Just outside the town I came upon an old Eng- lish cottage, or mansion, I hardly know which to call it, set close under the hill, and beside the river, perhaps built some- where in the Charles’s time, with mullioned windows and a low arched porch ; round which, in the little triangular gar- den, one can imagine the family as they used to sit in old summer times, the ripple of the river heard faintly through the sweetbrier hedge, and the sheep on the far-off wolds shin- ing in the evening sunlight. There, uninhabited for many and many a year, it had been left in unregarded havoc of ruin ; the garden-gate still swung loose to its latch ; the gar- den, blighted utterly into a field of ashes, not even a weed taking root there ; the roof torn into shapeless rents ; the shutters hanging about the windows in rags of rotten wood ; before its gate, the stream which had gladdened it now soak- ing slowly by, black as ebony, and thick with curdling scum j the bank above it trodden into unctuous, sooty slime : far in front of it, between it and the old hills, the furnaces of the city foaming forth perpetual plague of sulphurous darkness ; the volumes of their storm clouds coiling low over a waste of grassless fields, fenced from each other, not by hedges, but by slabs of square stone, like gravestones, riveted together with iron. That was your scene for the designer’s contemplation in his afternoon walk at Rochdale. Now fancy what was the scene which presented itself, in his afternoon walk, to a designer of the Gothic school of Pisa— Nino Pisano, or any of his men. On each side of a bright river he saw rise a line of brighter palaces, arched and pillared, and inlaid with deep red por- phyry, and with serpentine ; along the quays before their gates were riding troops of knights, noble in face and form, dazzling in crest and shield ; horse and man one labyrinth of quaint colour and gleaming light— the purple, and silver, and scarlet fringes flowing over the strong limbs and clashing mail, like sea- waves over rocks at sunset. Opening on each side from the river were gardens, courts, and cloisters ; long successions of white pillars among wreaths of vine ; leaping 72 THE TWO PATHS. of fountains through buds of pomegranate and orange : and still along the garden-paths, and under and through the crim- son of the pomegranate shadows, moving slowly, groups of the fairest women that Italy ever saw — fairest, because purest and thoughtfullest ; trained in all high knowledge, as in all courteous art — in dance, in song, in sweet wit, in lofty learn- ing, in loftier courage, in loftiest love — able alike to cheer, to enchant, or save, the souls of men. Above all this scenery of perfect human life, rose dome and bell-tower, burning with white alabaster and gold ; beyond dome and bell-tower the slopes of mighty hills, hoary with olive ; far in the north, above a purple sea of peaks of solemn Apennine, the clear, sharp-cloven Carrara mountains sent up their steadfast flames of marble summit into amber sky ; the great sea itself, scorching with expanse of light, stretching from their feet to the Gorgonian isles ; and over all these, ever present, near or far — seen through the leaves of vine, or imaged with all its march of clouds in the Arno’s stream, or set with its depth of blue close against the golden hair and burning cheek of lady and knight, — that untroubled and sacred sky, which was to all men, in those days of innocent faith, indeed the unquestioned abode of spirits, as the earth was of men ; and which opened straight through its gates of cloud and veils of dew into the awfulness of the eternal world ; — a heaven in which every cloud that passed was literally the chariot of an angel, and every ray of its Evening and Morning streamed from the throne of God. M hat think you of that for a school of design ? I do not bring this contrast before you as a ground of hopelessness in our task ; neither do I look for any possible renovation of the Republic of Pisa, at Bradford, in the nine- teenth century ; but I put it before you in order that you may be aware precisely of the kind of difficulty you have to meet, and may then consider with yourselves how far you can meet it. To men surrounded by the depressing and monot- onous circumstances of English manufacturing life, depend upon it, design is simply impossible. This is the most dis- tinct of all the experiences I have had in dealing with the MODEEN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN. 73 modern workman. He is intelligent and ingenious in the highest degree —subtle in touch and keen in sight : but he is, generally speaking, wholly destitute of designing power. And if you want to give him the power, you must give him the materials, and put him in the circumstances for it. De- sign is not the offspring of idle fancy : it is the studied result of accumulative observation and delightful habit. Without observation and experience, no design — without peace and pleasurableness in occupation, no design — and all the lectur- ings, and teachings, and prizes, and principles of art, in the world, are of no use, so long as you don’t surround your men with happy influences and beautiful things. It is impossible for them to have right ideas about colour, unless they see the lovely colours of nature unspoiled ; impossible for them to supply beautiful incident and action in their ornament, unless they see beautiful incident and action in the world about them. Inform their minds, refine their habits, and you form and refine their designs ; but keep them illiterate, uncomfortable, and in the midst of unbeautiful things, and whatever they do will still be spurious, vulgar, and valueless. I repeat, that I do not ask you nor wish you to build a new Pisa for them. We don’t want either the life or the decora- tions of the thirteenth century back again ; and the circum- stances with which you must surround your workmen are those simply of happy modern English life, because the de- signs you have now to ask for from your workmen are such as will make modern English life beautiful. All that gor- geousness of the middle ages, beautiful as it sounds in description, noble as in many respects it was in reality, had, nevertheless, for foundation and for end, nothing but the pride of life — the pride of the so-called superior classes ; a pride which supported itself by violence and robbery, and led in the end to the destruction both of the arts themselves and the States in which they flourished. The great lesson of history is, that all the fine arts hitherto — having been supported by the selfish power of the noblesse, and never having extended their range to the comfort or the relief of the mass of the people — the arts, I say, thus prac- 74 THE TWO PATHS. tised, and thus matured, have only accelerated the ruin of the States they adorned ; and at the moment when, in any king- dom, you point to the triumphs of its greatest artists, you point also to the determined hour of the kingdom’s decline. The names of great painters are like passing bells : in the name of Velasquez, you hear sounded the fall of Spain ; in in the name of Titian, that of Venice ; in the name of Leonardo, that of Milan ; in the name of Raphael, that of Rome. And there is profound justice in this ; for in propor- tion to the nobleness of the power is the guilt of its use for purposes vain or vile ; and hitherto the greater the art, the more surely has it been used, and used solely, for the decora- tion of pride,* or the provoking of sensuality, xlnother course lies open to us. "VVe may abandon the hope — or if you like the words better — we may disdain the temptation, of the pomp and grace of Italy in her youth. For us there can be no more the throne of marble — for us no more the vault of gold — but for us there is the loftier and lovelier privilege of bringing the power and charm of art within the reach of the humble and the poor ; and as the magnificence of past ages failed by its narrowness and its pride, ours may prevail and continue, by its universality and its lowliness. And thus, between the picture of too laborious England, which we imagined as future, and the picture of too luxurious Italy, which we remember in the past, there may exist — there will exist, if we do our duty — an intermediate condition, neither oppressed by labour nor wasted in vanity — the con- dition of a peaceful and thoughtful temperance in aims, and acts, and arts. We are about to enter upon a period of our world’s history in which domestic life, aided by the arts of peace, will slowly, but at last entirely, supersede public life and the arts of war. For our own England, she will not, I believe, be blasted throughout with furnaces ; nor will she be encumbered with palaces. I trust she will keep her green fields, her cottages, and her homes of middle life ; but these ought to be, and I * Whether religious or profane pride, — chapel or banqueting room,— is no matter. MODERN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN. 75 trust will be enriched with a useful, truthful, substantial form of art. We want now no more feasts of the gods, nor martyr- doms of the saints ; we have no need of sensuality, no place for superstition, or for costly insolence. Let us have learned and faithful historical painting — touching and thoughtful rep- resentations of human nature, in dramatic painting ; poetical and familiar renderings of natural objects and of landscape *, and rational, deeply-felt realizations of the events which are the subjects of our religious faith. And let these things we want, as far as possible, be scattered abroad and made ac- cessible to all men. So also, in manufacture : we require work substantial rather than rich in make ; and refined, rather than splendid in design. Your stuffs need not be such as would catch the eye of a duchess ; but they should be such as may at once serve the need, and refine the taste, of a cottager. The pre- vailing error in English dress, especially among the lower orders, is a tendency to flimsiness and gaudiness, arising mainly from the awkward imitation of their superiors.* It should be one of the first objects of all manufacturers to pro- duce stuffs not only beautiful and quaint in design, but also adapted for every-day service, and decorous in humble and secluded life. And you must remember always that your business, as manufacturers, is to form the market, as much as * If their superiors would give them simplicity and economy to imitate, it would, in the issue, be well for themselves, as well as for those whom they guide. The typhoid fever of passion for dress, and all other display, which has struck the upper classes of Europe at this time, is one of the most dangerous political elements we have to deal with. Its wickedness I have shown elsewhere (Polit. Economy of Art, p. 62, et seq .) ; but its wickedness is, in the minds of most persons, a matter of no importance. I wish I had time also to show them its danger. I cannot enter here into political investigation ; but this is a certain fact, that the wasteful and vain expenses at present indulged in by the upper classes are hastening the advance of republicanism more than any other element of modern change. No agitators, no clubs, no epidemical errors, ever were, or will be, fatal to social order in any na- tion. Nothing but the guilt of the upper classes, wanton, accumulated, reckless, and merciless, ever overthrows them. Of such guilt they have now much to answer for — let them look to it in time, THE TWO PATHS. 76 to supply it. If, in shortsighted and reckless eagerness for wealth, you catch at every humour of the populace as it shapes itself into momentary demand — if, in jealous rivalry with neighbouring States, or with other producers, you try to attract attention by singularities, novelties, and gaudinesses — to make every design an advertisement, and pilfer every idea of a successful neighbour’s, that you may insidiously imitate it, or pompously eclipse — no good design will ever be possi- ble to you, or perceived by you. You may, by accident, snatch the market ; or, by energy, command it ; you may obtain the confidence of the public, and cause the ruin of opponent houses ; or you may, with equal justice of fortune, be ruined by them. But whatever happens to you, this, at least, is certain, that the whole of your life will have been spent in corrupting public taste and encouraging public ex- travagance. Every preference you have won by gaudiness must have been based on the purchasers vanity ; every de- mand you have created by novelty has fostered in the con- sumer a habit of discontent ; and when you retire into in- active life, you may, as a subject of consolation for your declining years, reflect that precisely according to the extent of your past operations, your life has been successful in re- tarding the arts, tarnishing the virtues, and confusing the manners of your country. But, on the other hand, if you resolve from the first that, so far as you can ascertain or discern what is best, you will produce what is best, on an intelligent consideration of the probable tendencies and possible tastes of the people whom you supply, you may literally become more influential for all kinds of good than many lecturers on art, or many treatise-writers on morality. Considering the materials dealt with, and the crude state of art knowledge at the time, I do not know that any more wide or effective influence in public taste was ever exercised than that of the Staffordshire manufacture of pottery under William Wedgwood, and it only rests with the manu- facturer in every other business to determine whether he will, in like manner, make his wares educational instruments, or mere drugs of the market. You all should be, in a certain IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE , 77 sense, authors : you must, indeed, first catch the public eye, as an author must the public ear \ but once gain your audi- ence, or observance, and as it is in the writer’s power thence- forward to publish what will educate as it amuses— so it is in yours to publish what will educate as it adorns. Nor is this surely a subject of poor ambition. I hear it said continually that men are too ambitious : alas ! to me, it seems they are never enough ambitious. How many are content to be merely the thriving merchants of a state, when they might be its guides, counsellors, and rulers— wielding powers of subtle but gigantic beneficence, in restraining its follies while they sup- plied its wants. Let such duty, such ambition, be once ac- cepted in their fulness, and the best glory of European art and of European manufacture may yet be to come. The paintings of Raphael and of Buonaroti gave force to the false- hoods of superstition, and majesty to the imaginations of sin ; but the arts of England may have, for their task, to inform the soul with truth, and touch the heart with compassion. The steel of Toledo and the silk of Genoa did but give strength to oppression and lustre to pride : let it be for the furnace and for the loom of England, as they have already richly earned, still more abundantly to bestow, comfort on the indi- gent, civilization on the rude, and to dispense, through the peaceful homes of nations, the grace and the preciousness of simple adornment, and useful possession. LECTURE IV. INFLUENCE OF IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. An Address Delivered to the Members of the Architectural Association, in Lyon’s Inn Hall, 1857. If we were to be asked abruptly, and required to answer briefly, what qualities chiefly distinguish great artists from feeble artists, we should answer, I suppose, first, their sen- sibility and tenderness ; secondly, their imagination ; and 78 THE TWO PATHS. thirdly, their industry. Some of us might, perhaps, doubt the justice of attaching so much importance to this last char- acter, because we have all known clever men who were indo- lent, and dull men who were industrious. But though you may have known clever men who were indolent, you never knew a great man who was so ; and, during such investigation as I have been able to give to the lives of the artists whose works are in all points noblest, no fact ever looms so large upon me — no law remains so steadfast in the universality of its application, as the fact and law that they are all great workers : nothing concerning them is matter of more aston- ishment than the quantity they have accomplished in the given length of their life ; and when I hear a young man spoken of, as giving promise of high genius, the first question I ask about him is always — Does he work ? But though this quality of industry is essential to an artist, it does not in anywise make an artist ; many people are busy, whose doings are little worth. Neither does sensibility make an artist ; since, as I hope, many can feel both strongly and nobly, who yet care nothing about art. But the gifts which distinctively mark the artist — without which he must be feeble in life, forgotten in death — with which he may become one of the shakers of the earth, and one of the signal lights in heaven — are those of sympathy and imagination. I will not occupy your time, nor incur the risk of your dissent, by endeavouring to give any close definition of this last word. We all have a general and sufficient idea of imagination, and of its work with our hands and in our hearts : we understand it, I sup- pose, as the imaging or picturing of new things in our thoughts ; and we always show an involuntary respect for this power, wherever we can recognize it, acknowledging it to be a greater power than manipulation, or calculation, or observa- tion, or any other human faculty. If we see an old woman spinning at the fireside, and distributing her thread dexter* ously from the distaff, we respect her for her manipulation — if we ask her how much she expects to make in a year, and she answers quickly, we respect her for her calculation — if IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 79 she is watching at the same time that none of her grand- children fall into the fire, we respect her for her observation — yet for all this she may still be a commonplace old woman enough. But if she is all the time telling her grandchildren a fairy tale out of her head, we praise her for her imagination, and say, she must be a rather remarkable old woman. Precisely in like manner, if an architect does his working- drawing well, we praise him for his manipulation — if he keeps closely within his contract, we praise him for his honest arith- metic — if he looks well to the laying of his beams, so that nobody shall drop through the floor, we praise him for his observation. But he must, somehow, tell us a fairy tale out of his head beside all this, else we cannot praise him for his imagination, nor speak of him as we did of the old woman, as being in any wise out of the common way, a rather remarkable architect. It seemed to me, therefore, as if it might interest you to-night, if we were to consider together what fairy tales are, in and by architecture, to be told — what there is for you to do in this severe art of yours “ out of your heads,” as well as by your hands. Perhaps the first idea which a young architect is apt to be allured by, as a head-problem in these experimental days, is its being incumbent upon him to invent a “ new style ” worthy of modern civilization in general, and of England in particu- lar ; a style worthy of our engines and telegraphs ; as expan- sive as steam, and as sparkling as electricity. But, if there are any of my hearers who have been im- pressed with this sense of inventive duty, may I ask them first, whether their plan is that every inventive architect among us shall invent a new style for himself, and have a county set aside for his conceptions, or a province for his practice ? Or, must every architect invent a little piece of the new style, and all put it together at last like a dissected map ? And if so, when the new style is invented, what is to be done next ? I will grant you this Eldorado of imagination — but can you have more than one Columbus ? Or, if you sail in company, and divide the prize of your discovery and the hon- our thereof, who is to come after you clustered Columbuses ? 30 THE TWO PATHS. to what fortunate islands of style are your architectural de« scendants to sail, avaricious of new lands ? When our desired style is invented, will not the best we can all do be simply-— to build in it ? — and cannot you now do that in styles that are known? Observe, I grant, for the sake of your argument, what perhaps many of you know that I would not grant other- wise — than a new style can be invented. I grant you not only this, but that it shall be wholly different from any that was ever practised before. We will suppose that capitals are to be at the bottom of pillars instead of the top ; and that but- tresses shall be on the tops of pinnacles instead of at the bot- tom ; that you roof your apertures with stones which shall neither be arched nor horizontal ; and that you compose your decoration of lines which shall neither be crooked nor straight. The furnace and the forge shall be at your service : you shall draw out your plates of glass and beat out your bars of iron till you have encompassed us all, — if your style is of the prac- tical kind, — with endless perspective of black skeleton and blinding square, — or if your style is to be of the ideal kind — you shall wreathe your streets with ductile leafage, and roof them with variegated crystal — you shall put, if you will, all London under one blazing dome of many colours that shall light the clouds round it with its flashing, as far as to the sea. And still, I ask you, What after this ? Do you suppose those imaginations of yours will ever lie down there asleep beneath the shade of your iron leafage, or within the coloured light of your enchanted dome? Not so. Those souls, and fancies, and ambitions of yours, are wholly infinite ; and, whatever may be done by others, you will still want to do something for yourselves ; if you cannot rest content with Palladio, nei- ther will you with Paxton : all the metal and glass that ever were melted have not so much weight in them as will clog the wings of one human spirit’s aspiration. If you will think over this quietly by yourselves, and can get the noise out of your ears of the perpetual, empty, idle, incomparably idiotic talk about the necessity of some novelty in architecture, you will soon see that the very essence of 9. Style, properly so called, is that it should be practised for IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 81 ages, and applied to all purposes ; and that so long as any- given style is in practice, all that is left for individual imagina- tion to accomplish must be within the scope of that style, not in the invention of a new one. If there are any here, there- fore, who hope to obtain celebrity by the invention of some strange way of building which must convince all Europe into its adoption, to them, for the moment, I must not be under- stood to address myself, but only to those who would be con- tent with that degree of celebrity which an artist may enjoy who works in the manner of his forefathers which the builder of Salisbury Cathedral might enjoy in England, though he did not invent Gothic ; and which Titian might enjoy at Venice, though he did not invent oil painting. Addressing myself then to those humbler, but wiser, or rather, onfy wise students who are content to avail themselves of some system of building already understood, let us consider together what room for the exercise of the imagination may be left to us under such conditions. And, first, I suppose it will be said, or thought, that the architect’s principal field for exercise of his invention must be in the disposition of lines, mouldings, and masses, in agreeable proportions. Indeed, if you adopt some styles of architecture, you cannot exercise invention in any other way. And I admit that it requires genius and special gift to do this rightly. Not by rule, nor by study, can the gift of graceful proportionate design be obtained ; only by the intuition of genius can so much as a single tier of facade be beautifully arranged ; and the man has just cause for pride, as far as our gifts can ever be a cause for pride, who finds himself able, in a design of his own, to rival even the simplest arrangement of parts in one by Sanmicheli, Inigo Jones, or Christopher Wren. Invention, then, and genius being granted, as necessary to accomplish this, let me ask you, What, after all, with this special gift and genius, you have accomplished, when you have arranged the lines of a building beautifully ? In the first place you will not, I think, tell me that the beauty there attained is of a touching or pathetic kind. A well-disposed group of notes in music will make you some- 82 THE TWO PATHS. times weep and sometimes laugh. You can express the depth of all affections by those dispositions of sound : you can give courage to the soldier, language to the lover, consolation to the mourner, more joy to the joyful, more humility to the devout Can you do as much by your group of lines ? Do you suppose the front of Whitehall, a singularly beautiful one, ever inspires the two Horse Guards, during the hour they sit opposite to it, with military ardour ? Do you think that the lovers in our London walk down to the front of Whitehall for consolation when mistresses are unkind ; or that any person wavering in duty, or feeble in faith, was ever confirmed in purpose or in creed by the pathetic appeal of those har- monious architraves ? You will not say so. Then, if they cannot touch, or inspire, or comfort any one, can your archi- tectural proportions amuse any one ? Christmas is just over ; you have doubtless been at many merry parties during the period. Can you remember any in which architectural pro- portions contributed to the entertainment of the evening? Proportions of notes in music were, I am sure, essential to your amusement ; the setting of flowers in hair, and of ribands on dresses, were also subjects of frequent admiration with you, not inessential to your happiness. Among the juvenile members of your society the proportion of currants in cake, and of sugar in comfits, became subjects of acute interest; and, when such proportions were harmonious, motives also of gratitude to cook and to confectioner. But did you ever see either young or old amused by the architrave of the door ? Or otherwise interested in the proportions of the room than as they admitted more or fewer friendly faces ? Nay, if all the amusement that there is in the best proportioned architect- ure of London could be concentrated into one evening, and you were to issue tickets for nothing to this great propor- tional entertainment ; — how do you think it would stand be- tween you and the Drury pantomine ? You are, then, remember, granted to be people of genius — great and admirable ; and you devote your lives to your art, but you admit that you cannot comfort anybody, you cannot encourage anybody, you cannot improve anybody, and you IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 83 cannot amuse anybody. I proceed then farther to ask, Can you inform anybody ? Many sciences cannot be considered as highly touching or emotional ; nay, perhaps not specially amusing; scientific men may sometimes, in these respects, stand on the same ground with you. As far as we can judge by the results of the late war, science helps our soldiers about as much as the front of Whitehall ; and at the Christmas par- ties, the children wanted no geologists to tell them about the behaviour of bears and dragons in Queen Elizabeth’s time. Still, your man of science teaches you something ; he may be dull at a party, or helpless in a battle, he is not always that ; but he can give you, at all events, knowledge of noble facts, and open to you the secrets of the earth and air. Will your architectural proportions do as much ? Your genius is granted, and your life is given, and what do you teach us ? — Nothing, I believe, from one end of that life to the other, but that two and two make four, and that one is to two as three is to six. You cannot, then, it is admitted, comfort any one, serve or amuse any one, nor teach any one. Finally, I ask. Can you be of Use to anyone? “Yes, ’’you reply ; “certainly we are of some use — we architects — in a climate like this, where it always rains.’* You are of use certainly ; but, pardon me, only as builders — not as proportionalists. We are not talking of building as a protection, but only of that special work which your genius is to do ; not of building substantial and comfortable houses like Mr. Cubitt, but of putting beautiful fayades on them like Inigo Jones. And, again, I ask — Are you of use to any one ? Will your proportions of the fa9ade heal the sick, or clothe the naked? Supposing you devoted your lives to be mer- chants, you might reflect at the close of them, how many, fainting for want, you had brought corn to sustain ; how many, infected with disease, you had brought balms to heal ; how widely, among multitudes of far-away nations, you had scat- tered the first seeds of national power, and guided the first rays of sacred light. Had you been, in fine, anything else in the World hut architectural designers, you might have been of some use or good to people. Content to be petty tradesmen, you would have saved the time of mankind ; — rough-handed 84 : THE TWO PATHS. daily labourers, you would have added to their stock of food or of clothing. But, being men of genius, and devoting youf lives to the exquisite exposition of this genius, on what achieve- ments do you think the memories of your old age are to fasten ? Whose gratitude will surround you with its glow, or on what accomplished good, of that greatest kind for which men show no gratitude, will your life rest the contentment of its close ? Truly, I fear that the ghosts of proportionate lines will be thin phantoms at your bedsides — very speechless to you ; and that on all the emanations of your high genius you will look back with less delight than you might have done on a cup of cold water given to him who was thirsty, or to a single mo- ment when you had “prevented with your bread him that fled.” Do not answer, nor think to answer, that with your great works and great payments of workmen in them, you would do this ; I know you would, and will, as Builders ; but, I re- peat, it is not your building that I am talking about, but your brains ; it is your invention and imagination of whose profit I am speaking. The good done through the building, observe, is done by your employers, not by you — you share in the benefit of it. The good that you personally must do is by your designing ; and I compare you with musicians who do good by their pathetic composing, not as they do good by employ- ing fiddlers in the orchestra ; for it is the public who in reality do that, not the musicians. So clearly keeping to this one question, what good we architects are to do by our genius ; and having found that on our proportionate system we can do no good to others, will you tell me, lastly, what good we can do to ourselves ? Observe, nearly every other liberal art or profession has some intense pleasure connected with it, irrespective of any good to others. As lawyers, or physicians, or clergymen, you would have the pleasure of investigation, and of historical reading, as part of your work : as men of science you would be rejoicing in curiosity perpetually gratified respecting the laws and facts of nature : as artists you would have delight in ■watching the external forms of nature : as day labourers or IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 85 petty tradesmen, supposing you to undertake such work with as much intellect as you are going to devote to your designing, you would find continued subjects of interest in the manufac- ture or the agriculture which you helped to improve ; or in the problems of commerce which bore on your business. But your architectural designing leads you into no pleasant jour- neys, — into no seeing of lovely things, — no discerning of just laws, — no warmths of compassion, no humilities of veneration, no progressive state of sight or soul. Our conclusion is — must be — that you will not amuse, nor inform, nor help any- body ; you will not amuse, nor better, nor inform yourselves ; you will sink into a state in which you can neither show, nor feel, nor see, anything, but that one is to two as three is to six. And in that state what should we call ourselves ? Men ? I think not. The right name for us would be — numerators and denominators. Vulgar Fractions. Shall we, then, abandon this theory of the soul of architect- ure being in proportional lines, and look whether we can find anything better to exert our fancies upon ? May we not, to begin with, accept this great principle — that, as our bodies, to be in health, must be generally exer- cised, so our minds, to be in health, must be generally culti- vated ? You would not call a man healthy who had strong arms but was paralytic in his feet ; nor one who could walk well, but had no use of his hands ; nor one who could see well, if he could not hear. You would not voluntarily reduce your bodies to any such partially developed state. Much more, then, you would not, if you could help it, reduce your minds to it. Now, your minds are endowed with a vast num- ber of gifts of totally different uses — limbs of mind as it were, which, if you don’t exercise, you cripple. One is curiosity ; that is a gift, a capacity of pleasure in knowing ; which if you destroy, you make yourselves cold and dull. Another is sym- pathy ; the power of sharing in the feelings of living creatures, which if you destroy, you make yourselves hard and cruel. Another of your limbs of mind is admiration ; the power of en j°y^ n S beauty or ingenuity, which, if you destroy, you make yourselves base and irreverent. Another is wit ; or the power 86 TEE TWO PATES. of playing with the lights on the many sides of truth ; which if you destroy, you make yourselves gloomy, and less useful and cheering to others than you might be. So that in choos- ing your way of work it should be your aim, as far as possible, to bring out all these faculties, as far as they exist in you ; not one merely, nor another, but all of them. And the way to bring them out, is simply to concern yourselves attentively with the subjects of each faculty. To cultivate sympathy you must be among living creatures, and thinking about them ; and to cultivate admiration, you must be among beautiful things and looking at them. All this sounds much like truism, at least I hope it does, for then you will surely not refuse to act upon it ; and to con- sider farther, how, as architects, you are to keep yourselves in contemplation of living creatures and lovely things. You all probably know the beautiful photographs which have been published within the last year or two of the porches of the Cathedral of Amiens. I hold one of these up to you, (merely that you may know what I am talking about, as of course you cannot see the detail at this distance, but you will recognise the subject.) Have you ever considered how much sympathy, and how much humour, are developed in filling this single doorway * with these sculptures of the history of St. Honore (and, by the way, considering how often we Eng- lish are now driving up and down the Rue St. Honore, we may as well know as much of the saint as the old architect cared to tell us). You know in all legends of saints who ever were bishops, the first thing you are told of them is that they didn’t want to be bishops. So here is St. Honore, who doesn’t want to be a bishop, sitting sulkily in the corner ; he hugs his book with both hands, and won’t get up to take his cro- sier ; and here are all the city aldermen of Amiens come to poke him up ; and all the monks in the town in a great puzzle what they shall do for a bishop if St. Honore won’t be ; and here’s one of the monks in the opposite corner who is quite cool about it, and thinks they’ll get on well enough without * The tympanum of the south transept door ; it is to he found gener- ally among all collections of architectural photographs. IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 87 St. Honore, — you see that in his face perfectly. At last St. HonoiA consents to be bishop, and here he sits in a throne, and has his book now grandly on his desk instead of his knees, and he directs one of his village curates how to find relics in a wood ; here is the wood, and here is the village curate, and here are the tombs, with the bones of St. Victo- rien and Gentien in them. After this, St. Honore performs grand mass, and the mira- cle occurs of the appearance of a hand blessing the wafer, which occurrence afterwards was painted for the arms of the abbey. Then St. Honore dies ; and here is his tomb with his statue on the top ; and miracles are being performed at it — a deaf man having his ear touched, and a blind man grop- ing his way up to the tomb with his dog. Then here is a great procession in honour of the relics of St. Honore ; and under his coffin are some cripples being healed ; and the coffin itself is put above the bar which separates the cross from the lower subjects, because the tradition is that the figure on the crucifix of the Church of St. Firmin bowed its head in token of acceptance, as the relics of St. Honore passed beneath. Now just consider the amount of sympathy with human nature, and observance of it, shown in this one bas-relief ; the sympathy with disputing monks, with puzzled aldermen, with melancholy recluse, with triumphant prelate, with palsy- stricken poverty, with ecclesiastical magnificence, or miracle- working faith. Consider how much intellect was needed in the architect, and how much observance of nature before he could give the expression to these various figures — cast these multitudinous draperies — design these rich and quaint frag- ments of tombs and altars — weave with perfect animation the entangled branches of the forest. But you will answer me, all this is not architecture at all — it is sculpture. Will you then tell me precisely where the the separation exists between one and the other ? We will begin at the very beginning. I will show you a piece of what you will certainly admit to be a piece of pure architecture ; * * See Appendix III., “ Classical Architecture.” 88 THE TWO PATHS. it is drawn on the back of another photograph, another of these marvellous tympana from Notre Dame, which you call, I suppose, impure. Well, look on this picture, and on this. Don’t laugh ; you must not laugh, that’s very improper ol you, this is classical architecture. I have taken it out of the essay on that subject in the “ Encyclopaedia Britannica.” Yet I suppose none of you would think yourselves particu- larly ingenious architects if you had designed nothing more than this ; nay, I will even let you improve it into any grand proportion you choose, and add to it as many windows as you choose ; the only thing I insist upon in our specimen of pure architecture is, that there shall be no mouldings nor orna- ments upon it. And I suspect you don’t quite like your ar- chitecture so “pure” as this. We want a few mouldings, you will say — just a few. Those who want mouldings, hold up their hands. We are unanimous, I think. Will, you, then, design the profiles of these mouldings yourselves, or will you copy them ? If you wish to copy them, and to copy them always, of course I leave you at once to your authorities, and your imaginations to their repose. But if you wish to design them yourselves, how do you do it ? You draw the profile according to your taste, and you order your mason to cut it. Now, will you tell me the logical difference between drawing the profile of a moulding and giving that to be cut, and drawing the folds of the drapery of a statue and giving those to be cut. The last is much more difficult to do than the first ; but degrees of difficulty constitute no specific differ- ence, and you will not accept it, surely, as a definition of the difference between architecture and sculpture, that “ archi- tecture is doing anything that is easv, and sculpture anything that is difficult.” It is true, also, that the carved moulding represents nothing, and the carved drapery represents something ; but you will not, I should think, accept, as an explanation of the difference between architecture and sculpture, this any more than the other, that “ sculpture is art which has meaning, and archi- tecture art which has none.” Where, then, is your difference ? In this, perhaps, you wifi IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 89 say ; that whatever ornaments we can direct ourselves, and get accurately cut to order, we consider architectural. The ornaments that we are obliged to leave to the pleasure of the workman, or the superintendence of some other designer, we consider sculptural, especially if they are more or less ex- traneous and incrusted— not an essential part of the build- ing. Accepting this definition, I am compelled to reply, that it is in effect nothing more than an amplification of my first one that whatever is easy you call architecture, whatever is diffi- cult you call sculpture. For you cannot suppose the arrange- ment of the place in which the sculpture is to be put is so diffi- cult or so great a part of the design as the sculpture itself. For instance : you all know the pulpit of Niccolo Pisano, in the baptistry at Pisa. It is composed of seven rich relievi , surrounded by panel mouldings, and sustained on marble shafts. Do you suppose Niccolo Pisano’s reputation — such part of it at least as rests on this pulpit (and much does) — depends on the panel mouldings, or on the relievi ? The panel mould- ings are by his hand ; he would have disdained to leave even them to a common workman ; but do you think he found any difficulty in them, or thought there was any credit in them ? Having once done the sculpture, those enclosing lines were mere child’s play to him ; the determination of the diameter of shafts and height of capitals was an affair of minutes ; his work was in carving the Crucifixion and the Baptism. Or, again, do you recollect Orcagna’s tabernacle in the chuich of San Michele, at Florence ? That, also, consists of rich and multitudinous bas-reliefs, enclosed in panel mould- ings, with shafts of mosaic, and foliated arches sustaining the canopy. Do you think Orcagna, any more than Pisano, if his spirit could rise in the midst of us at this moment, would tell us that he had trusted his fame to the foliation, or had put his soul’s pride into the panelling ? Not so ; he would tell you that his spirit was in the stooping figures that stand round the couch of the dying Virgin. # Or, lastly, do you think the man who designed the proces- sion on the portal of Amiens was the subordinate workman? 90 TEE TWO PATES, that there was an architect over him, restraining him within certain limits, and ordering of him his bishops at so much a mitre, and his cripples at so much a crutch ? Not so. Here , on this sculptured shield, rests the Master’s hand ; this is the centre of the Master’s thought ; from this, and in subordina- tion to this, waved the arch and sprang the pinnacle. Hav- ing done this, and being able to give human expression and action to the stone, all the rest — the rib, the niche, the foil, the shaft — were mere toys to his hand and accessories to his conception : and if once you also gain the gift of doing this, if once you can carve one fronton such as you have here, I tell you, you would be able — so far as it depended on your inven- tion — to scatter cathedrals over England as fast as clouds rise from its streams after summer rain. Nay, but perhaps you answer again, our sculptors at present do not design cathedrals, and could not. No, they could not ; but that is merely because we have made architecture so dull that they cannot take any interest in it, and, therefore, do not care to add to their higher knowledge the poor and com- mon knowledge of principles of building. You have thus separated building from sculpture, and you have taken away the power of both ; for the sculptor loses nearly as much by never having room for the development of a continuous work, as you do from having reduced your work to a continuity of mechanism. You are essentially, and should always be, the same body of men, admitting only such difference in operation as there is between the work of a painter at different times, who sometimes labours on a small picture, and sometimes on the frescoes of a palace gallery. This conclusion, then, we arrive at, must arrive at ; the fact being irrevocably so : — that in order to give your imagination and the other powers of your souls full play, you must do as all the great architects of old time did — you must yourselves be your sculptors. Phidias, Michael Angelo, Orcagna, Pisano, Giotto, — which of these men, do you think, could not use his chisel? You say, “It is difficult ; quite out of your way.” I know it is ; nothing that is great is easy ; and nothing that is great, so long as you study building without sculpture, can IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 91 be in your way. I want to put it in your way, and you to find your way to it. But, on the other hand, do not shrink from the task as if the refined art of perfect sculpture were always required from you. For, though architecture and sculpture are not separate arts, there is an architectural manner of sculp- ture ; and it is, in the majority of its applications, a compar- atively easy one. Our great mistake at present, in dealing with stone at all, is requiring to have all our work too refined ; it is just the same mistake as if we were to require all our book illustrations to be as fine work as Raphael’s. John Leech does not sketch so well as Leonardo da Vinci ; but do you think that the public could easily spare him; or that he is wrong in bringing out his talent in the way in which it is most effect- ive ? Would you advise him, if he asked your advice, to give up his wood-blocks and take to canvas ? I know you would not ; neither would you tell him, I believe, on the other hand, that because he could not draw as well as Leonardo, therefore he ought to draw nothing but straight lines with a ruler, and circles with compasses, and no figure-subjects at all. That would be some loss to you ; would it not ? You would all be vexed if next week’s Punch had nothing in it but proportion- ate lines. And yet, do not you see that you are doing pre- cisely the same thing with your powers of sculptural design that he would be doing with his powers of pictorial design, if he gave you nothing but such lines. You feel that you cannot carve like Phidias ; therefore you will not carve at all, but only draw mouldings ; and thus all that intermediate power which is of especial value in modern days, — that popu- lar power of expression which is within the attainment of thousands, — and would address itself to tens of thousands, — is utterly lost to us in stone, though in ink and paper it has become one of the most desired luxuries of modern civili- zation. Here, then, is one part of the subject to which I would espe- cially invite your attention, namely, the distinctive character which may be wisely permitted to belong to architectural sculpture, as distinguished from perfect sculpture on one side, and from mere geometrical decoration on the other. 92 THE TWO PATHS. And first, observe what an indulgence we have in the dis. tance at which most work is to be seen. Supposing we were able to carve eyes and lips with the most exquisite precision, it would all be of no use as soon as the work was put far above the eye ; but, on the other hand, as beauties disappear by be- ing far withdrawn, so will faults ; and the mystery and con- fusion which are the natural consequence of distance, while they would often render your best skill but vain, will as often render your worst errors of little consequence ; nay, more than this, often a deep cut, or a rude angle, will produce in certain positions an effect of expression both startling and true, which you never hoped for. Not that mere distance will give ani- mation to the work, if it has none in itself ; but if it has life at all, the distance will make that life more perceptible and powerful by softening the defects of execution. So that you are placed, as workmen, in this position of singular advantage, that you may give your fancies free play, and strike hard for the expression that you want, knowing that, if you miss it, no one will detect you ; if you at all touch it, nature herself will help you, and with every changing shadow and basking sunbeam bring forth new phases of your fancy. But it is not merely this privilege of being imperfect which belongs to architectural sculpture. It has a true privilege of imagination, far excelling all that can be granted to the more finished work, which, for the sake of distinction, I will call, — and I don’t think we can have a much better term — “ furniture sculpture ; ” sculpture, that is, which can be moved from place to furnish rooms. For observe, to that sculpture the spectator is usually brought in a tranquil or prosaic state of mind ; he sees it as- sociated rather with what is sumptuous than sublime, and under circumstances which address themselves more to his comfort than his curiosity. The statue which is to be pa- thetic, seen between the flashes of footmen’s livery round the dining-table, must have strong elements of pathos in itself ; and the statue which is to be awful, in the midst of the gossip of the drawing-room, must have the elements of awe wholly in itself. But the spectator is brought to your IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 93 work already in an excited and imaginative mood. He has been impressed by the cathedral wall as it loomed over the low streets, before he looks up to the carving of its porch —and his love of mystery has been touched by the silence and the shadows of the cloister, before he can set himself to decipher the bosses on its vaulting. So that when once he begins to observe your doings, he will ask nothing better from you, nothing kinder from you, than that you would meet this imaginative temper of his half way that you would farther touch the sense of terror, or satisfy the expecta- tion of things strange, which have been prompted by the mystery or the majesty of the surrounding scene. And thus, your leaving forms more or less undefined, or carrying out your fancies, however extravagant, in grotesqueness of shadow or shape, will be for the most part in accordance with the temper of the observer ; and he is likely, therefore, much more willingly to use his fancy to help your meanings, than his judgment to detect your faults. Again. Remember that when the imagination and feelings are strongly excited, they will not only bear with strange things, but they will look into minute things with a delight quite unknown in hours of tranquillity. You surely must remember moments of your lives in which, under some strong excitement of feeling, all the details of visible objects presented themselves with a strange intensity and insistance, whether you would or no ; urging themselves upon the mind, and thrust upon the eye, with a force of fascination which you could not refuse. Now, to a certain extent, the senses get into this state whenever the imagination is strongly excited. Things trivial at other times assume a dignity or significance which we cannot explain ; but which is only the more attrac- tive because inexplicable : and the powers of attention, quick- ened by the feverish excitement, fasten and feed upon the minutest circumstances of detail, and remotest traces of intention. So that what would, at other times be felt as more or less mean or extraneous in a work of sculpture, and which would assuredly be offensive to the perfect taste in its moments of languor, or of critical judgment, will be grateful, and even n THE TWO PATHS. sublime, when it meets this frightened inquisitiveness, this fas- cinated watchfulness, of the roused imagination. And this is all for your advantage ; for, in the beginnings of your sculp- ture, you will assuredly find it easier to imitate minute cir- cumstances of costume or character, than to perfect the anat- omy of simple forms or the flow of noble masses ; and it will be encouraging to remember that the grace you cannot per- fect, and the simplicity you cannot achieve, would be in great part vain, even if you could achieve them, in their appeal to the hasty curiosity of passionate fancy ; but that the sympathy which would be refused to your science will be granted to your innocence : and that the mind of the general observer, though wholly unaffected by the correctness of anatomy or propriety of gesture, will follow you with fond and pleased concurrence, as you carve the knots of the hair, and the pat- terns of the vesture. Farther yet. We are to remember that not only do the associated features of the larger architecture tend to excite the strength of fancy, but the architectural laws to which you are obliged to submit your decoration stimulate its ingenuity. Every crocket which you are to crest with sculpture, — every foliation which you have to fill, presents itself to the specta- tor’s fancy, not only as a pretty thing, but as a problematic thing. It contained, he perceives immediately, not only a beauty which you wished to display, but a necessity which you were forced to meet ; and the problem, how to occupy such and such a space with organic form in any probable way, or how to turn such a boss or ridge into a conceivable image of life, becomes at once, to him as to you, a matter of amusement as much as of admiration. The ordinary condi- tions of perfection in form, gesture, or feature, are willingly dispensed with, when the ugly dwarf and ungainly goblin have only to gather themselves into angles, or crouch to carry corbels ; and the want of skill which, in other kinds of work, would have been required for the finishing of the parts, will at once be forgiven here, if you have only disposed in- geniously what you have executed roughly, and atoned for the rudeness of your hands by the quickness of your wits. IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 95 Hitherto, however, we have been considering only the cir- cumstances in architecture favourable to the development of the powers of imagination. A yet more important point for us seems, to me, the place which it gives to all the objects of imagination. For, I suppose, you will not wish me to spend any time in proving, that imagination must 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 — the landscape painter, for in- stance, gets little help from the aspects of beautiful humanity ; the historical painter, less, perhaps, than he ought, from the accidents of wild nature ; and the pure sculptor, still less, from the minor details of common life. 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 ad- vantage to your art ? From visions of angels, down to the least important gesture of a child at play, whatever may be conceived of Divine, or beheld of Human, may be dared or adopted by you : throughout the kingdom of animal life, no creature is so vast, or so minute, that you cannot deal with it, or bring it into service ; the lion and the crocodile will couch about your shafts ; the moth and the bee will sun themselves upon your flowers ; for you, the fawn will leap ; for you, the snail be slow ; for you, the dove smooth her bosom ; and the hawk spread her wings toward the south. All the wide world of vegetation blooms and bends for you ; the leaves tremble 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 trivial, — to be ennobled by your touch ? As there 96 THE TWO PATHS. is nothing in life, so there is nothing in lifelessness which has not its lesson for you, or its gift; and when you are tired of watching the strength of the plume, and the tender- ness of the leaf, you may walk down to your rough river shore, or into the thickest markets of your thoroughfares, and there is not a piece of tom cable that will not twine into a perfect moulding ; there is not a fragment of cast-away mat- ting, or shattered basket-work, that will not work into a chequer or capital. 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. Now, in that your art presents all this material to you, you have already much to rejoice in. But you have more to re- joice in, because all this is submitted to you, not to be dis- sected or analyzed, but to be sympathized with, and to bring out, therefore, what may be accurately called the moral part of imagination. We saw that, if we kept ourselves among lines only, we should have cause to envy the naturalist, be- cause he was conversant with facts ; but you will have little to envy now, if you make yourselves conversant with the feel- ings that arise out of his facts. For instance, the naturalist coming upon a block of marble, has to begin considering im- mediately how far its purple is owing to iron, or its whiteness to magnesia ; he breaks his piece of marble, and at the close of his day, has nothing but a little sand in his crucible and some data added to the theory of the elements. But you ap- proach your marble to sympathize with it, and rejoice over its beauty. You cut it a little indeed ; but only to bring out its veins more perfectly ; and at the end of your day’s work you leave your marble shaft with joy and complacency in its perfectness, as marble. When you have to watch an animal instead of a stone, you differ from the naturalist in the same way. He may, perhaps, if he be an amiable naturalist, take delight in having living creatures round him ; — still, the ma- IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 97 jor part of liis work is, or has been, in counting feathers, separating fibres, and analyzing structures. But your work is always with the living creature ; the thing you have to gel at in him is his life, and ways of going about things. It does not matter to you how many cells there are in his bones, or how many filaments in his feathers ; what you want is his moral character and way of behaving himself ; it is just that which your imagination, if healthy, will first seize — just that which your chisel, if vigorous, will first cut. You must get the storm spirit into your eagles, and the lordliness into your lions, and the tripping fear into your fawns ; and in order to do this, you must be in continual sympathy with every fawn of them ; and be hand-in-glove with all the lions, and hand- in-claw with all the hawks. And don’t fancy that you will lower yourselves by sympathy with the lower creatures ; you cannot sympathize rightly with the higher, unless you do with those : but you have to sympathize with the higher, too — with queens, and kings, and martyrs, and angels. Yes, and above all, and more than all, with simple humanity in all its needs and ways, for there is not one hurried face that passes you in the street that will not be impressive, if you can only fathom it. All history is open to you, all high thoughts and dreams that the past fortunes of men can suggest, all fairy land is open to you — no vision that ever haunted forest, or gleamed over hill-side, but calls you to understand how it came into men’s hearts, and may still touch them ; and all Paradise is open to you— yes, and the work of Paradise ; for in bringing all ihis, in perpetual and attractive truth, before the eyes of your fellow-men, you have to join in the employ- ment of the angels, as well as to imagine their companies. And observe, in this last respect, what a peculiar impor- tance, and responsibility, are attached to your work, when you consider its permanence, and the multitudes to whom it is addressed. We frequently are led, by wise people, to con- sider what responsibility may sometimes attach to words, which yet, the chance is, will be heard by few, and forgotten as soon as heard. But none of your words will be heard by few, and none will be forgotten, for five or six hundred years, 98 THE TWO PATHS. if you build well. You will talk to all who pass by ; and all those little sympathies, those freaks of fancy, those jests in stone, those workings-out of problems in caprice, will occupy mind after mind of utterly countless multitudes, long after you are gone. You have not, like authors, to plead for a hearing, or to fear oblivion. Do but build large enough, and carve boldly enough, and all the world will hear you ; they cannot choose but look. I do not mean to awe you by this thought ; I do not mean that because you will have so many witnesses and watchers, you are never to jest, or do anything gaily or lightly ; on the contrary, I have pleaded, from the beginning, for this art of yours, especially because it has room for the whole of your character — if jest is in you, let the jest be jested ; if math- ematical ingenuity is yours, let your problem be put, and your solution worked out, as quaintly as you choose ; above all, see that your work is easily and happily done, else it will never make anybody else happy ; but while you thus give the rein to all your impulses, see that those impulses be headed and centred by one noble impulse ; and let that be Love — triple love — for the art which you practise, the creation in which you move, and the creatures to whom you minister. I. I say, first, Love for the art which you practise. Be as- sured that if ever any other motive becomes a leading one in your mind, as the principal one for exertion, except your love of art, that moment it is all over with your art. I do not say you are to desire money, nor to desire fame, nor to desire position ; you cannot but desire all three ; nay, you may — if you are willing that I should use the word Love in a dese- crated sense — love all three ; that is, passionately covet them, yet you must not covet or love them in the first place. Men of strong passions and imaginations must always care a great deal for anything they care for at all ; but the whole question is one of first or second. Does your art lead you, or your gain lead you ? You may like making money exceedingly ; but if it come to a fair question, whether you are to make five hundred pounds less by this business, or to spoil your building, and you choose to spoil your building, there’s ed IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 99 end of you. So you may be as thirsty for fame as a cricket is for cream ; but, if it come to a fair question, whether you are to please the mob, or do the thing as you know it ought to be done ; and you can’t do both, and choose to please the mob, it’s all over with you — there’s no hope for you ; nothing that you can do will ever be worth a man’s glance as he passes by. The test is absolute, inevitable — Is your art first with you ? Then you are artists ; you may be, after you have made your money, misers and usurers ; you may be, after you have got your fame, jealous, and proud, and wretched, and base : but yet, as long as you won’t spoil your work , you are artists. On the other hand — Is your money first with you, and your fame first with you ? Then, you may be very charitable with your money, and very magnificent with your money, and very graceful in the way you wear your reputation, and ver} r court- eous to those beneath you, and very acceptable to those above you ; but you are not artists. You are mechanics, and drudges. II. You must love the creation you work in the midst of. For, wholly in proportion to the intensity of feeling which you bring to the subject you have chosen, will be the depth and justice of our perception of its character. And this depth of feeling is not to be gained on the instant, when you want to bring it to bear on this or that. It is the result of the gen- eral habit of striving to feel rightly ; and, among thousands of various means of doing this, perhaps the one I ought spe- cially to name to you, is the keeping yourselves clear of petty and mean cares. Whatever you do, don’t be anxious, nor fill your heads with little chagrins and little desires. I have just said, that you may be great artists, and yet be miserly and jealous, and troubled about many things. So you may be ; but I said also that the miserliness or trouble must not be in your hearts all day. It is possible that you may get a habit of saving money ; or it is possible, at a time of great trial, you may yield to the temptation of speaking unjustly of a rival, — and you will shorten your powers and dim your sight even by this ; — but the thing that you have to dread far more than any such unconscious habit, or any such momentary fall — is the constancy of small emotions ; — the anxiety whether 100 THE TWO PATHS. Mr. So-and-so will like your work ; whether such and such a workman will do all that you want of him, and so on ; — not wrong feelings or anxieties in themselves, but impertinent, and wholly incompatible with the full exercise of your imag- ination. Keep yourselves, therefore, quiet, peaceful, with your eyes open. It doesn’t matter at all what Mr. So-and-so thinks of your work ; but it matters a great deal what that bird is doing up there in its nest, or how that vagabond child at the street corner is managing his game of knuckle-down. And remem- ber, you cannot turn aside from your own interests, to the birds’ and the children’s interests, unless you have long before got into the habit of loving and watching birds and children ; so that it all comes at last to the forgetting yourselves, and the living out of yourselves, in the calm of the great world, or if you will, in its agitation ; but always in a calm of your own bringing. Do not think it wasted time to submit your- selves to any influence which may bring upon you any noble feeling. Kise early, always w T atch the sunrise, and the way the clouds break from the daw r n ; you will cast your statue- draperies in quite another than your common w*ay, when the remembrance of that cloud motion is with you, and of the scarlet vesture of the morning. Live always in the spring- time in the country ; you do not know what leaf-form means, unless you have seen the buds burst, and the young leaves breathing low in the sunshine, and wondering at the first showier of rain. But above all, accustom yourselves to look for, and to love, all nobleness of gesture and feature in the human form ; and remember that the highest nobleness is usually among the aged, the poor, and the infirm ; you will find, in the end, that it is not the strong arm of the soldier, nor the laugh of the young beauty, that are the best studies for you. Look at them, and look at them reverently ; but be assured that endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty ; and that it is not in the high church pews, where the gay dresses are, but in the church free seats, where the widows’ w r eeds are, that you may see the faces that will fit best between the angels’ wfings, in the church porch. IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 101 m. And therefore, lastly, and chiefly, you must' love the creatures to whom you minister, your fellow-men ; for, if you do not love them, not only will you be little interested in the passing events of life, but in all your gazing at hu- manity, you will be apt to be struck only by outside form, and not by expression. It is only kindness and tender- ness which will ever enable you to see what beauty there is in the dark eyes that are sunk with weeping, and in the paleness of those fixed faces which the earth’s adversity has compassed about, till they shine in their patience like dying watchfires through twilight. But it is not this only which makes it needful for you, if you would be great, to be also kind ; there is a most important and all-essential reason in the very nature of your own art. So soon as you desire to build largely, and with addition of noble sculpture, you will find that your work must be associative. You cannot carve a whole cathedral yourself — you can carve but few and simple parts of it. Either your own work must be disgraced in the mass of the collateral inferiority, or you must raise your fellow-designers to correspondence of power. If you have genius, you will your- selves take the lead in the building you design ; you will carve its porch and direct its disposition. But for all subsequent advancement of its detail, you must trust to the agency and the invention of others ; and it rests with you either to repress what faculties your workmen have, into cunning subordination to your own ; or to rejoice in discovering even the powers that may rival you, and leading forth mind after mind into fellow- ship with your fancy, and association with your fame. I need not tell you that if you do the first — if you endeavour to depress or disguise the talents of your subordinates — you are lost ; for nothing could imply more darkly and decisively than this, that your art and your work were not beloved by you ; that it was your own prosperity that you were seeking, and your own skill only that you cared to contemplate. I do not say that you must not be jealous at all ; it is rarely in human nature to be wholly without jealousy ; and you may be forgiven for going some day sadly home, when you find some youth, unpractised and unapproved, giving the life-stroke to 102 THE TWO PATHS. his work which you, after years of training, perhaps, cannot reach ; but your jealousy must not conquer — your love of your building must conquer, helped by your kindness of heart. See —I set no high or difficult standard before you. I do not say that you are to surrender your pre-eminence in mere un- selfish generosity. But I do say that you must surrender your pre-eminence in your love of your building helped by your kindness ; and that whomsoever you find better able to do what will adorn it than you, — that person you are to give place to ; and to console yourselves for the humiliation, first, by your joy in seeing the edifice grow more beautiful under his chisel, and secondly, by your sense of having done kindly and justly. But if you are morally strong enough to make the kindness and justice the first motive, it will be better ; — best of all, if you do not consider it as kindness at all, but bare and stem justice ; for, truly, such help as we can give each other in this world is a debt to each other ; and the man who perceives a superiority or a capacity in a subordinate, and neither confesses, nor assists it, is not merely the with- holder of kindness, but the committer of injury. But be the motive what you will, only see that you do the thing ; and take the joy of the consciousness that, as your art em- braces a wider field than all others — and addresses a vaster multitude than all others — and is surer of audience than all others — so it is profounder and holier in Fellowship than all others. The artist, when his pupil is perfect, must see him leave his side that he may declare his distinct, perhaps oppo- nent, skill. Man of science wrestles with man of science for priority of discovery, and pursues in pangs of jealous haste his solitary inquiry. You alone are called by kindness, — by necessity, — by equity, to fraternity of toil ; and thus, in those misty and massive piles which rise above the domestic roofs of our ancient cities, there was — there may be again — a mean- ing more profound and true than any that fancy so commonly has attached to them. Men say their pinnacles point to heaven. Why, so does every tree that buds, and every bird that rises as it sings. Men say their aisles are good for worship. Why, so is every mountain glen, and rough sea-shore. But this they IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY. 103 have of distinct and indisputable glory, — that their mighty walls were never raised, and never shall be, but by men who love and aid each other in their weakness that all their in- terlacing strength of vaulted stone has its foundation upon the stronger arches of manly fellowship, and all their changing grace of depressed or lifted pinnacle owes its cadence and completeness to sweeter symmetries of human soul. LECTURE V. THE WORK OF IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY. A Lecture Delivered at Tunbridge Wells, February, 1858. When first I heard that you wished me to address you this evening, it was a matter of some doubt with me whether I could find any subject that would possess any sufficient in- terest for you to justify my bringing you out of your comfort- able houses on a winter’s night. When I venture to speak about my own special business of art, it is almost always be- fore students of art, among whom I may sometimes permit myself to be dull, if I can feel that I am useful : but a mere talk about art, especially without examples to refer to (and I have been unable to prepare any careful illustrations for this lecture), is seldom of much interest to a general audience. As I was considering what you might best bear with me in speaking about, there came naturally into my mind a subject connected with the origin and present prosperity of the town you live in ; and, it seemed to me, in the out-branchings of it, capable of a very general interest. When, long ago (I am afraid to think how long), Tunbridge Wells was my Switzer- land, and I used to be brought down here in the summer, a sufficiently active child, rejoicing in the hope of clambering sandstone cliffs of stupendous height above the common* there used sometimes, as, I suppose, there are in the lives of all children at the Wells, to be dark days in my life— days of condemnation to the pantiles and band — under which calam- 104 THE TWO PATHS. ities my only consolation used to be in watching, at every turn in my walk, the welling forth of the spring over the orange rim of its marble basin. The memory of the clear water, sparkling over its saffron stain, came back to me as the strongest image connected with the place ; and it struck me that you might not be unwilling, to-night, to thiuk a little over the full significance of that saffron stain, and of the power, in other ways and other functions, of the steelly ele- ment to which so many here owe returning strength and life ; — chief as it has been always, and is yet more and more mark- edly so day by day, among the precious gifts of the earth. The subject is, of course, too wide to be more than suggest- ively treated ; and even my suggestions must be few, and drawn chiefly from my ow r n fields of work ; nevertheless, I think I shall have time to indicate some courses of thought which you may afterwards follow out for yourselves if they in- terest you ; and so I will not shrink from the full scope of the subject which I have announced to you — the functions oi Iron, in Nature, Art, and Policy. "Without more preface, I will take up the first head. L Iron in Nature. — 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 : and when you see rusty iron in other places you generally think, not only that it spoils the places it stains, but that it is spoiled itself — that rusty iron is spoiled iron. For most of our uses it generally is so ; and because we cannot use a rusty knife or razor so well as a polished one, we suppose it to be a great defect in iron that it is subject to rust. But not at all. On the contrary, the most perfect and useful state of it is that ochreous stain ; and therefore it is endowed with so ready a disposition to get itself into that state. 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 certain 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 IRON, IN NATURE , ART, AND POLICY. 105 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 accurate sense of the word, ‘‘breath of life.” The nervous power of life is a different thing ; but the supporting element of the breath, without which the blood, and therefore the life, cannot be nourished, is this oxygen. 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 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 useful— for, indeed, as I shall be able to show you presently — the main service of this metal, and of all other metals, to us, is not in making knives, and scissors, and pokers, and pans, but 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. There is only one metal which does not rust readily ; and that, in its influence on Man hitherto, has caused Death rather than Life ; it will not be put to its right use till it is made a pavement of, and so trodden under foot. Is there not something striking in this fact, considered largely as one of the types, or lessons, furnished by the in- animate creation ? Here you have your hard, bright, cold, lifeless metal good enough for swords and scissors — but not for food. 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 106 TEE TWO PATES. with forest 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 sub- stance of which it is made sucks and breathes the brilliancy of the atmosphere; 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 with 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 insig- nificant 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 winch 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 min- ister 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.” 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 be- sides that marble. It stains the great earth wheresoever you can see it, far and wide — it is the colouring substance ap- pointed to colour the globe for the sight, as w^ell 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 w r ould like them always white — not pure white, but dirty white — the wiiite of thaw, with all the chill of snow in it, but none of its brightness ? That is what the colour of the earth would be without its iron ; that would be its colour, 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 IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY. 107 your gardens, yellow and fine, like plots of sunshine between the flower-beds ; fancy them all suddenly turned to the colour of ashes. That is what they would be without iron ochre. Think of your winding 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 unto these drab sands.” That is what they would be, without iron. Iron is in some sort, therefore, the sunshine and light of landscape, so far as that light depends on the ground ; but it is a source of another kind of sunshine, quite as important to us in the way we live at present — sunshine, not of landscape, but of dwelling-place. In these days of swift locomotion I may doubtless assume that most of my audience have been somewhere out of Eng- land — have been in Scotland, or France, or Switzerland. Whatever may have been their impression, on returning to their own country, of its superiority or inferiority in other respects, they cannot but have felt one thing about it — the comfortable look of its towns and villages. Foreign towns are often very picturesque, very beautiful, but they never have quite that look of warm self-sufficiency and wholesome quiet with which our villages nestle themselves down among the green fields. If you will take the trouble to examine into the sources of this impression, you will find that by far the greater 108 THE TWO PATHS. part of that warm and satisfactory appearance depends upon the rich scarlet colour of the bricks and tiles. It does not belong to the neat building — very neat building has an un- fortable rather than a comfortable look — but it depends on the warm building ; our villages are dressed in red tiles as our old women are in red cloaks ; and it does not matter how worn the cloaks, or how bent and bowed the roof may be, so long as there are no holes in either one or the other, and the sobered but un extin guishable colour still glows in the shadow of the hood, and burns among the green mosses of the gable. And what do you suppose dyes your tiles of cottage roof ? You don’t paint them. It is nature who puts all that lovely vermilion into the clay for you ; and all that lovely vermilion is this oxide of iron. Think, therefore, what your streets of towns would become — ugly enough, indeed, already, some of them, but still comfortable-looking — if instead of that warm brick red, the houses became all pepper-and-salt colour. Fancy your country villages changing from that homely scarlet of theirs which, in its sweet suggestion of laborious peace, is as honourable as the soldiers’ scarlet of laborious battle — sup- pose all those cottage roofs, I say, turned at once into the colour of unbaked clay, the colour of street gutters in rainy weather. That’s what they would be, without iron. There is, however, yet another effect of colour in our Eng- lish country towns which, perhaps, you may not all yourselves have noticed, but for which you must take the word of a sketcher. They are not so often merely warm scarlet as they are warm purple ; — a more beautiful colour still : and they owe this colour to a mingling with the vermilion of the deep grayish or purple hue of our fine Welsh slates on the more respectable roofs, made more blue still by the colour of in- tervening atmosphere. If you examine one of these Welsh slates freshly broken, you will find its purple colour clear and vivid ; and although never strikingly so after it has been long exposed to weather, it always retains enough of the tint to give rich harmonies of distant purple in opposition to the green of our woods and fields. Whatever brightness or power there is in the hue is entirely owing to the o^ide of iron. IRON, IN NATURE , ART, AND POLICY. 109 Without it the slates would either be pale stone colour, or cold gray, or black. Thus far we have only been considering the use and pleas- antness 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 language, 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 interest- ing to us, and as beautiful for us, as she can. The clay, being a soft and changeable substance, she doesn’t take much pains about, as we have seen, till it is baked ; she brings the colour 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 carrying on very strange work with this limestone and flint of* hers : laying down beds of them at the bottom of the sea; building islands out of the sea ; filling chinks and veins in moun- tains with curious treasures ; petrifying mosses, and trees, and shells ; in fact, carrying on all sorts of business, subterranean or submarine, which it would be highly de- sirable for us, who profit and live by it, to notice as it goes on. And apparently 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 colours in them. The pretty colours in her limestone-books form those variegated marbles which all mankind have taken delight to polish and build with from the beginning of time ; 110 THE TWO PATHS. and the pretty colours in her flint-books form those agates jaspers, cornelians, bloodstones, onyxes, cairngorms, chryso* prases, which men have in like manner 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 instead 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 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 colours of those of Siena, the deep russet of the Rosso antico, and the blood-colour of all the precious jaspers that enrich the tem- ples 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 ap- plied — the oxide of iron that stains your Tunbridge springs. 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, therefore, 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 ploughman. I spoke just now of the effect in the roofs of our villages of their purple slates : but if the slates are beautiful even in their flat and formal rows on house-roofs, much more are they beautiful on the rugged crests and flanks of their native mountains. Have you ever considered, in speaking as we do so often of distant blue 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 IRON, IN NATURE , ART, \ AND POLICY. Ill lovely dark purple colour of our Welsh 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 structure. But when you see this dark colour 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 Tunbridge friend, the oxide of iron. But this is not all. It is necessary for the beauty of hill scenery that Nature should colour not only her soft rocks, but her hard ones ; and she colours 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 profound respect for purple, used it of stone long ago. You have all heard of “porphyry” as among the most precious of the harder mas- sive stones. The colour which gave it that noble name, as well as that which gives 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 substance— your humble oxide of iron. And last of all : A nobler colour than all these— the noblest colour ever seen on this earth— one which belongs to a strength greater than that of the Egyptian granite, and to a beauty greater than that of the sunset or the rose— is still mysteriously con- nected with the presence of this dark iron. I believe it is not ascertained on what the crimson of blood actually depends ; but the colour is connected, of course, with its vitality, and that vitality with the existence of iron as one of its substantial elements. Is it not strange to find this stern and strong metal mingled so delicately in our human life, that we cannot even blush without its help? Think of it, my fair and gentle hearers; how terrible the alternative— sometimes you have actually no choice but to be brazen-faced, or iron-faced ! In this slight review of some of the functions of the metal, you observe that I confine myself strictly to its operations as 112 THE TWO PATHS. a colouring element. I should only confuse your conception of the facts, if I endeavoured to describe its uses as a sub- stantial element, either in strengthening rocks, or influencing vegetation by the decomposition of rocks. I have not, there- fore, even glanced at any of the more serious uses of the metal in the economy of nature. But what I wish you to cany clearly away with you is the remembrance that in all these uses the metal would be nothing without the air. The pure metal has no power, and never occurs in nature at all except in meteoric stones, whose fall no one can account for, and which are useless after they have fallen : in the necessary work of the world, the iron is invariably joined with the oxygen, and would be capable of no service or beauty what- ever without it. H Iron in Art. — Passing, then, from the offices of the metal in the operations of nature to its uses in the hands of man, you must remember, in the outset, that the type which has been thus given you, by the lifeless metal, of the action of body and soul together, has noble antitype in the operation of all human power. All art worthy the name is the energy — neither of the human body alone, nor of the human soul alone, but of both united, one guiding the other : good craftsman- ship and work of the fingers, joined with good emotion and work of the heart There is no good art, nor possible judgment of art, when these two are not united ; yet we are constantly trying to separate them. Our amateurs cannot be persuaded but that they may produce some kind of art by their fancy or sensi- bility, without going through the necessary manual toil. That is entirely hopeless. Without a certain number, and that a very great number, of steady acts of hand — a practice as care- ful and constant as would be necessary to learn any other manual business — no drawing is possible. On the other side, the workman, and those who employ him, are continually try- ing to produce art by trick or habit of fingers, without using their fancy or sensibility. That also is hopeless. Without mingling of heart-passion with hand-power, no art is possible.* * No fine art, that is. See the previous definition of fine art at p. 38. IRON, IN NATURE , ART , AiVD POLIO 7. 113 The highest art unites both in their intensest degrees : the action of the hand at its finest, with that of the heart at its fullest. Hence it follows that the utmost power of art can only be given in a material capable of receiving and retaining the in- fluence of the subtlest touch of the human hand. That hand is the most perfect agent of material power existing in the universe ; and its full subtlety can only be shown when the material it works on, or with, is entirely yielding. The chords of a perfect instrument will receive it, but not of an imperfect one ; the softly bending point of the hair pencil, and soft melting of colour, will receive it, but not even the chalk or pen point, still less the steel point, chisel, or marble. The hand of a sculptor may, indeed, be as subtle as that of a painter, but all its subtlety is not bestowable nor expressible : the touch of Titian, Correggio, or Turner,* is a far more marvellous piece of nervous action than can be shown in anything but colour, or in the very highest conditions of executive expression in mu- sic. In proportion as the material worked upon is less delicate, the execution necessarily becomes lower, and the art with it. This is one main principle of all work. Another is, that what- ever the material you choose to work with, your art is base if it does not bring out the distinctive qualities of that material. The reason of this second law is, that if you don’t want the qualities of the substance you use, you ought to use some other substance : it can be only affectation, and desire to dis- play your skill, that lead you to employ a refractory substance, and therefore your art will all be base. Glass, for instance, is eminently, in its nature, transparent. If you don’t want transparency, let the glass alone. Do not try to make a win- dow look like an opaque picture, but take an opaque ground to begin with. Again, marble is eminently a solid and massive substance. Unless you want mass and solidity, don’t work in marble. If you wish for lightness, take wood ; if for freedom, take stucco ; if for ductility, take glass. Don’t try to carve feathers, or trees, or nets, or foam, out of marble. Carve white limbs and broad breasts only out of that. * See Appendix IV., “Subtlety of Hand.” 114 THE TWO PATHS. So again, iron is eminently a ductile and tenacious substance — tenacious above all things, ductile more than most. When you want tenacity, therefore, and involved form, take iron. It is eminently made for that. It is the material given to the sculptor as the companion of marble, with a message, as plain as it can well be spoken, from the lips of the earth-mother, “ Here’s for you to cut, and here’s for you to hammer. Shape this, and twist that. What is solid and simple, carve out ; what is thin and entangled, beat out. I give you all kinds of forms to be delighted in ; — fluttering leaves as well as fair bodies ; twisted branches as well as open brows. The leaf and the branch you may beat and drag into their imagery : the body and brow you shall reverently touch into their imagery. And if you choose rightly and work rightly, what you do shall be safe afterwards. Your slender leaves shall not break off in my tenacious iron, though they may be rusted a little with an iron autumn. Your broad surfaces shall not be unsmoothed in my pure crystalline marble — no decay shall touch them. But if you carve in the marble what will break with a touch, or mould in the metal what a stain of rust or verdigris will spoil, it is your fault — not mine.” These are the main principles in this matter ; which, like nearly all other right principles in art, we moderns delight in contradicting as directly and specially as may be. We con- tinually look for, and praise, in our exhibitions the sculpture of veils, and lace, and thin leaves, and all kinds of impossible things pushed as far as possible in the fragile stone, for the sake of showing the sculptor’s dexterity.* On the other hand, * I do not mean to attach any degree of blame to the effort to repre- sent leafage in marble for certain expressive purposes. The later works of Mr. Munro have depended for some of their most tender thoughts on a delicate and skilful use of such accessories. And in general, leaf sculpture is good and admirable, if it renders, as in Gothic work, the grace and lightness of the leaf by the arrangement of light and shadow — supporting the masses well bv strength of stone below ; but all carv- ing is base which proposes to itself slightness as an aim, and tries to imi- tate the absolute thinness of thin or slight things, as much modern wood carving does. I saw in Italy, a year or two ago, a marble sculpture of birds’ nests. IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY. 115 we cast our iron into bars — brittle, though an inch thick — sharpen them at the ends, and consider fences, and other work, made of such materials, decorative ! I do not believe it would be easy to calculate the amount of mischief done to our taste in England by that fence iron-work of ours alone. If it were asked of us by a single characteristic, to distinguish the dwell- ings of a country into two broad sections ; and to set, on one side, the places where people were, for the most part, simple, happy, benevolent, and honest ; and, on the other side, the places where at least a great number of the people were so- phisticated, unkind, uncomfortable, and unprincipled, there is, I think, one feature that you could fix upon as a positive test : the uncomfortable and unprincipled parts of a country would be the parts where people lived among iron railings, and the comfortable and principled parts where they had none. A broad generalization, you will say ! Perhaps a little too broad ; yet, in all sobriety, it will come truer than you think. Con- sider every other kind of fence or defence, and you will find some virtue in it ; but in the iron railing none. There is, first, your castle rampart of stone — somewhat too grand to be con- sidered here among our types of fencing ; next, your garden or park wall of brick, which has indeed often an unkind look on the outside, but there is more modesty in it than unkind- ness. It generally means, not that the builder of it wants to shut you out from the view of his garden, but from the view of himself : it is a frank statement that as he needs a certain portion of time to himself, so he needs a certain portion of ground to himself, and must not be stared at when he digs there in his shirt-sleeves, or plays at leapfrog with his boys from school, or talks over old times with his wife, walking up and down in the evening sunshine. Besides, the brick wall has good practical service in it, and shelters you from the east wind, and ripens your peaches and nectarines, and glows in autumn like a sunny bank. And, moreover, your brick wall, if you build it properly, so that it shall stand long enough, is a beautiful thing when it is old, and has assumed its grave purple red, touched with mossy green. Next to your lordly wall, in dignity of enclosure, comes 116 THE TWO PATHS. your close-set wooden paling, which is more objectionable, be- cause it commonly means enclosure on a larger scale than people want. Still it is significative of pleasant parks, and well-kept field walks, and herds of deer, and other such aris- tocratic pastoralisms, which have here and there their proper place in a country, and may be passed without any discredit. Next to your paling, comes your low stone dyke, your mountain fence, indicative at a glance either of wild hill coun- try, or of beds of stone beneath the soil ; the hedge of the mountains — delightful in all its associations, and yet more in the varied and craggy forms of the loose stones it is built of ; and next to the low stone wall, your lowland hedge, either in trim line of massive green, suggested of the pleasances of old Elizabethan houses, and smooth alleys for aged feet, and quaint labyrinths for young ones, or else in fair entanglement of eglantine and virgin’s bower, tossing its scented luxuriance along our country waysides ; — how many such you have here among your pretty hills, fruitful with black clusters of the bramble for boys in autumn, and crimson hawthorn berries for birds in winter. And then last, and most difficult to class among fences, comes your handrail, expressive of all sorts of things ; sometimes having a knowing and vicious look, which it learns at race-courses ; sometimes an innocent and tender look, which it learns at rustic bridges over cressy brooks ; and sometimes a prudent and protective look, which it learns on passes of the Alps, where it has posts of granite and bars of pine, and guards the brows of cliffs and the banks of torrents. So that in all these kinds of defence there is some good, pleasant, or noble meaning. But what meaning has the iron railing ? Either, observe, that you are living in the midst of such bad characters that you must keep them out by main force of bar, or that you are yourself of a character requiring to be kept inside in the same manner. Your iron railing al- ways means thieves outside, or Bedlam inside ; it can mean nothing else than that. If the people outside were good for anything, a hint in the way of fence would be enough for them ; but because they are violent and at enmity with you, you are forced to put the close bars and the spikes at the top. IRON, IN NATURE \ ART, AND POLICY. 117 Last summer I was lodging for a little while in a cottage in the country, and in front of my low window there were, first some beds of daisies, then a row of gooseberry and currant bushes, and then a low wall about three feet above the ground, covered with stone-cress. Outside, a corn-field, with its green ears glistening in the sun, and a field path through it, just past the garden gate. From my window I could see every peasant of the village who passed that way, with basket on arm for market, or spade on shoulder for field. When I was in- clined for society, I could lean over my wall, and talk to any- body ; when I was inclined for science, I could botanize all along the top of my wall— there were four species of stone- cress alone growing on it ; and when I was inclined for exer- cise, I could jump over my wall, backwards and forwards. That s the sort of fence to have in a Christian country ; not a thing which you can’t walk inside of without making yourself look like a wild beast, nor look at out of your window in the morning without expecting to see somebody impaled upon it in the night. And yet farther, observe that the iron railing is a useless fence— it can shelter nothing, and support nothing ; you can’t nail your peaches to it, nor protect your flowers with it, nor make anything whatever out of its costly tyranny ; and be- sides being useless, it is an insolent fence it says plainly to everybody who passes — “You may be an honest person, but, also, you may be a thief: honest or not, you shall not get in here, for I am a respectable person, and much above you ; you shall only see what a grand place I have got to keep you out of— look here, and depart in humiliation.” This, however, being in the present state of civilization a frequent manner of discourse, and there being unfortunately many districts where the iron railing is unavoidable, it yet re- mains a question whether you need absolutely make it ugly, no less than significative of evil. You must have railings round your squares in London, and at the sides of your areas; but need you therefore have railings so ugly that the constant sight of them is enough to neutralise the effect of all the schools of art in the kingdom ? You need not. Far from 118 THE TWO PATHS. such necessity, it is even in your power to turn all your police force of iron bars actually into drawing masters, and natural historians. Not, of course, without some trouble and some expense ; you can do nothing much worth doing, in this world, without trouble, you can get nothing much worth hav- ing without expense. The main question is only — what is worth doing and having : — Consider, therefore, if this be not. Here is your iron railing, as yet, an uneducated monster ; a sombre seneschal, incapable of any words, except his per- petual “Keep out ! ” and “ Away with you ! ” Would it not be worth some trouble and cost to turn this ungainly ruffian porter into a well-educated servant ; who, while he was severe as ever in forbidding entrance to evilly-disposed people, should yet have a kind word for well-disposed people, and a pleasant look, and a little useful information at his command, in case he should be asked a question by the passers-by ? We have not time to-night to look at many examples of ironwork ; and those I happen to have by me are not the best; ironwork is not one of my special subjects of study ; so that I only have memoranda of bits that happened to come into picturesque subjects which I was drawing for other reasons. Besides, external ironwork is more difficult to find good than any other sort of ancient art ; for when it gets rusty and broken, people are sure, if they can afford it, to send it to the old iron shop, and get a fine new grating instead ; and in the great cities of Italy, the old iron is thus nearly all gone : the best bits I remember in the open air were at Brescia ; — fantastic sprays of laurel-like foliage rising over the garden gates ; and there are a few fine fragments at Verona, and some good trellis-work enclosing the Scala tombs ; but on the whole, the most interesting pieces, though by no means the purest in style, are to be found in out-of-the-way provincial towns, where people do not care, or are unable, to make polite altera- tions. The little town of Bellinzona, for instance, on the south of the Alps, and that of Sion on the north, have both of them complete schools of ironwork in their balconies and vineyard gates. That of Bellinzona is the best, though not very old— I suppose most of it of the seventeenth century ; still it is very IRON ; IN NATURE, ART , AND POLICY. 119 quaint and beautiful. Here, for example, (see frontispiece), are two balconies, from two different bouses ; one has been a cardinal’s, and the hat is the principal ornament of the bal- cony ; its tassels being wrought with delightful delicacy and freedom ; and catching the eye clearly even among the mass of rich wreathed leaves. These tassels and strings are pre- cisely the kind of subject fit for ironwork — noble in ironwork, they would have been entirely ignoble in marble, on the grounds above stated. The real plant of oleander standing in the window enriches the whole group of lines very happily. The other balcony, from a very ordinary-looking house in the same street, is much more interesting in its details. It is shown in the plate as it appeared last summer, with convol- vulus twined about the bars, the arrow-shaped living leaves mingled among the leaves of iron ; but you may see in the centre of these real leaves a cluster of lighter ones, which are those of the ironwork itself. This cluster is worth giving a little larger to show its treatment. Fig. 2 (in Appendix V°) is the front view of it : Fig. 4, its profile. It is composed of a large tulip in the centre ; then two turkscap lilies ; then two pinks, a little conventionalized ; then two narcissi ; then two nonde- scripts, or, at least, flowers I do not know ; and then two dark buds, and a few leaves. I say, dark buds, for all these flowers have been coloured in their original state. The plan of the group is exceedingly simple : it is all enclosed in a pointed arch (Fig. 3, Appendix V.) : the large mass of the tulip form- ing the apex ; a six-foiled star on each side ; then a jagged star ; then a five-foiled star ; then an unjagged star or rose ; finally a small bud, so as to establish relation and cadence through the whole group. The profile is very free and fine, and the upper bar of the balcony exceedingly beautiful in effect ; none the less so on account of the marvellously sim- ple means employed. A thin strip of iron is bent over a square rod ; out of the edge of this strip are cut a series of tiiangular openings widest at top, leaving projecting teeth of iron (Appendix, Fig. 5) ; then each of these projecting pieces gets a little sharp tap with the hammer in front, which 120 THE TWO PATHS. beaks its edge inwards, tearing it a little open at the same time, and the thing is done. The common forms of Swiss ironwork are less naturalistic than these Italian balconies, depending more on beautiful ar- rangements of various curve ; nevertheless, there has been a rich naturalist school at Fribourg, where a few bell-handles are still left, consisting of rods branched into laurel and other leafage. At Geneva, modern improvements have left nothing ; but at Annecy, a little good work remains ; the bal- cony of its old hotel de ville especially, with a trout of the lake — presumably the town arms — forming its central orna- ment. I might expatiate all night — if you would sit and hear me — on the treatment of such required subject, or introduction of pleasant caprice by the old workmen ; but we have no more time to spare, and I must quit this part of our subject — the rather as I could not explain to you the intrinsic merit of such ironwork without going fully into the theory of curvi- linear design ; only let me leave with you this one distinct as- sertion — that the quaint beauty and character of many natural objects, such as intricate branches, grass, foliage (especially thorny branches and prickly foliage), as well as that of many animals, plumed, spined, or bristled, is sculpturally expressible in iron only, and in iron would be majestic and impressive in the highest degree ; and that every piece of metal work you use might be, rightly treated, not only a superb decoration, but a most valuable abstract of portions of natural forms, holding in dignity precisely the same relation to the painted representation of plants, that a statue does to the painted form of man. It is difficult to give you an idea of the grace and interest which the simplest objects possess when their forms are thus abstracted from among the surrounding of rich circumstance which in nature disturbs the feebleness of our attention. In Plate 2, a few blades of common green grass, and a wild leaf or two — just as they were thrown by nature. — are thus abstracted from the associated redundance of the forms about them, and shown on a dark ground : every cluster of herbage would furnish fifty such groups, and every such IRON . , IN NATURE , .ItfT 7 , .4i\ r D POLICY. 121 group would work into iron (fitting it, of course, rightly to its service) with perfect ease, and endless grandeur of result. III. Iron in Policy. — Having thus obtained some idea of the use of iron in art, as dependent on its ductility, I need not, certainly, say anything of its uses in manufacture and commerce ; we all of us know enough, — perhaps a little too much — about them. So I pass lastly to consider its uses in policy ; dependent chiefly upon its tenacity — that is to say, on its power of bearing a pull, and receiving an edge. These powers, which enable it to pierce, to bind, and to smite, ren- der it fit for the three great instruments, by which its politi- cal action may be simply typified ; namely, the Plough, the Fetter, and the Sword. On our understanding the right use of these three instru- ments, depend, of course, all our power as a nation, and all our happiness as individuals. I. The Plough. — I say, first, on our understanding the right use of the plough, with which, in justice to the fairest of our labourers, we must always associate that feminine plough — the needle. The first requirement for the happi- ness of a nation is that it should understand the function in this world of these two great instruments : a happy nation may be defined as one in which the husband’s hand is on the plough, and the housewife’s on the needle ; so in due time reaping its golden harvest, and shining in golden vesture : and an unhappy nation is one which, acknowledging no use of plough nor needle, will assuredly at last find its storehouse empty in the famine, and its breast naked to the cold. Perhaps you think this is a mere truism, which I am wast- ing your time in repeating. I wish it were. By far the greater part of the suffering and crime which exist at this moment in civilized Europe, arises simply from people not understanding this truism — not knowing that prod- uce or wealth is eternally connected by the laws of heaven and earth with resolute labour ; but hoping in some way to cheat or abrogate this everlasting law of life, and to feed where they have not furrowed, and be warm where they have not woven. 122 THE TWO PATHS . I repeat, nearly all onr misery and crime result from this one misapprehension. The law of nature is, that a certain quantity of work is necessary to produce a certain quantity of good, of any kind whatever. If you want knowledge, you must toil for it : if food, you must toil for it ; and if pleasure, you must toil for it. But men do not acknowledge this law, or strive to evade it, hoping to get their knowledge, and food, and pleasure for nothing ; and in this effort they either fail of getting them, and remain ignorant and miserable, or they obtain them by making other men work for their bene- fit ; and then they are tyrants and robbers. Yes, and worse than robbers. I am not one who in the least doubts or dis- putes the progress of this century in many things useful to mankind ; but it seems to me a very dark sign respecting us that we look with so much indifference upon dishonesty and cruelty in the pursuit of wealth. In the dream of Nebuchad- nezzar it was only the feet that were part of iron and part of clay ; but many of us are now getting so cruel in our avarice, that it seems as if, in us, the heart were part of iron, and part of clay. From what I have heard of the inhabitants of this town, I do not doubt but that I may be permitted to do here what I have found it usually thought elsewhere highly improper and absurd to do, namely, trace a few Bible sentences to their practical result. You cannot but have noticed how often in those parts of the Bible which are likely to be oftenest opened when people look for guidance, comfort, or help in the affairs of daily life, namely, the Psalms and Proverbs, mention is made of the guilt attaching to the Oppression of the poor. Observe : not the neglect of them, but the Oppression of them : the word is as frequent as it is strange. You can hardly open either of those books, but somewhere in their pages you will find a de- scription of the wicked man’s attempts against the poor : such as — “ He doth ravish the poor when he getteth him into his net.” “ He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages ; his eyes are privily set against the poor.” IRON, IN NATURE , ART, AND POLICY. 123 “In his pride he doth persecute the poor, and blesseth the covetous, whom God abhorreth.” “ His mouth is full of deceit and fraud ; in the secret places doth he murder the innocent. Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread ? They have drawn out the sword, and bent the bow, to cast down the poor and needy.” “ They are corrupt, and speak wickedly concerning oppres- sion.” “ Pride compasseth them about as a chain, and violence as a garment.” “ Their poison is like the poison of a serpent. Ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth.” Yes: “Ye weigh the violence of your hands : weigh these words as well. The last things we ever usually think of weighing are Bible words. We like to dream and dispute over them ; but to weigh them, and see what their true con- tents are— anything but that. Yet, weigh these ; for I have purposely taken all these verses, perhaps more striking to you read in this connection, than separately in their places, out of the Psalms, because, for all people belonging to the' Estab- lished Church of this country these Psalms are appointed les- sons, portioned out to them by their clergy to be read once through every month. Presumably, therefore, whatever por- tions of Scripture we may pass by or forget, these at all events, must be brought continually to our observance as useful for direction of daily life. Now, do we ever ask ourselves what the real meaning of these passages may be, and who these wicked people are, who are “ murdering the innocent? ” You know it is rather singular language this !— rather strong lan- guage, we might, perhaps, call it— hearing it for the first time. Murder! and murder of innocent people !— nay, even a sort of cannibalism. Eating people,— yes, and God’s people, too- eating My people as if they were bread ! swords drawn, bows bent, poison of serpents mixed ! violence of hands weighed, measured, and trafficked with as so much coin ! where is all this going on ? Do you suppose it was only going on in the time of David, and that nobody but Jews ever murder the 124 THE TWO PATHS. poor? If so, it would surely be wiser not to mutter and mumble for our daily lessons what does not concern us ; but if there be any chance that it may concern us, and if this de- scription, in the Psalms, of human guilt is at all generally ap- plicable, as the descriptions in the Psalms of human sorrow are, may it not be advisable to know wherein this guilt is being committed round about us, or by ourselves ? and when we take the words of the Bible into our mouths in a congrega- tional way, to be sure whether we mean merely to chant a piece of melodious poetry relating to other people— (we know not exactly to whom) — or to assert our belief in facts bearing somewhat stringently on ourselves and our daily business. And if you make up your minds to do this no longer, and take pains to examine into the matter, you will find that these strange words, occurring as they do, not in a few places only, but almost in every alternate psalm and every alternate chap- ter of proverb, or prophecy, with tremendous reiteration, were not written for one nation or one time only ; but for all nations and languages, for all places and all centuries ; and it is as true of the wicked man now as ever it was of Nabal or Dives, that “his eyes are set against the poor.” Set against the poor, mind you. Not merely set away from the poor, so as to neglect or lose sight of them, but set against, so as to afflict and destroy them. This is the main point I •want to fix your attention upon. You will often hear sermons about neglect or carelessness of the poor. But neglect and carelessness are not at all the points. The Bible hardly ever talks about neglect of the poor. It always talks of oppression of the poor — a very different matter. It does not merely speak of passing by on the other side, and binding up no wounds, but of drawing the sword and ourselves smiting the men down. It does not charge us with being idle in the pest- house, and giving no medicine, but with being busj r in the pest-house, and giving much poison. May we not advisedly look into this matter a little, even to- night, and ask first, Who are these poor ? No country is, or ever will be, without them : that is to say, without the class which cannot, on the average, do more 125 IRON, IN NATURE , ART , AND POLICY. by its labour than provide for its subsistence, and which has no accumulations of property laid by on any considerable scale. Now there are a certain number of this class whom we cannot oppress with much severity. An able-bodied and in- telligent workman— sober, honest, and industrious, will almost always command a fair price for his work, and lay by enough in a few years to enable him to hold his own in the labour market. But all men are not able-bodied, nor intelligent, nor industrious ; and you cannot expect them to be. Nothing appears to me at once more ludicrous and more melancholy than the way the people of the present age usually talk about the morals of labourers. You hardly ever address a labour- ing man upon his prospects in life, without quietly assuming that he is to possess, at starting, as a small moral capital to begin with, the virtue of Socrates, the philosophy of Plato, and the heroism of Epaminondas. “Be assured, my good man, you say to him,— “ that if you work steadily for ten hours a day all your life long, and if you drink nothing but water, or the very mildest beer, and live on very plain food, and never lose your temper, and go to church every Sunday’ and always remain content in the position in which Provi- dence has placed you, and never grumble nor swear ; and al- ways keep your clothes decent, and rise early, and use every opportunity of improving yourself, you will get on very well, and never come to the parish.” All this is exceedingly true ; but before giving the advice so confidently, it would be well if we sometimes tried it prac- tically ourselves, and spent a year or so at some hard manual labour, not of an entertaining kind— ploughing or digging, for instance, with a very moderate allowance of beer ; nothing but bread and cheese for dinner ; no papers nor muffins in the morning ; no sofas nor magazines at night ; one small room for parlour and kitchen ; and a large family of children always in the middle of the floor. If we think we could, un- der these circumstances, enact Socrates or Epaminondas en- tirely to our own satisfaction, we shall be somewhat justified m requiring the same behaviour from our poorer neighbours ; but if not, we should surely consider a little whether among 126 THE TWO PATHS. the various forms of the oppression of the poor, we may not rank as one of the first and likeliest — the oppression of ex- pecting too much from them. But let this pass ; and let it be admitted that we can never be guilty of oppression towards the sober, industrious, intelli- gent, exemplary labourer. There will always be in the -world some who are not altogether intelligent and exemplary ; we shall, I believe, to the end of time find the majority somewhat unintelligent, a little inclined to be idle, and occasionally, on Saturday night, drunk ; we must even be prepared to hear of reprobates who like skittles on Sunday morning better than prayers ; and of unnatural parents who send their children out to beg instead of to go to school. Now these are the kind of people whom you can oppress, and whom you do oppress, and that to purpose, — and with all the more cruelty and the greater sting, because it is just their own fault that puts them into your power. You know the words about wicked people are, “ He doth ravish the poor when he getteth him into his net.” This getting into the net is constantly the fault or folly of the sufferer — his own heed- lessness or his own indolence ; but after he is once in the net, the oppression of him, and making the most of his distress, are ours. The nets which -we use against the poor are just those worldly embarrassments which either their ignorance or their improvidence are almost certain at some time or other to bring them into : then, just at the time when we ought to hasten to help them, and disentangle them, and teach them how to manage better in future, we rush forward to pillage them, and force all we can out of them in their ad- versity. For, to take one instance only, remember this is liter- ally and simply what we do, whenever we buy, or try to buy, cheap goods — goods offered at a price which we know cannot be remunerative for the labour involved in them. "Whenever we buy such goods, remember we are stealing somebody’s labour. Don’t let us mince the matter. I say, in plain Saxon, stealing — taking from him the proper reward of his work, and putting it into our own pocket. You know well enough that the thing could not have been offered you at that price, un- IRON , IN NATURE , ^LWZ) POLICY. 127 less distress of some kind had forced the producer to part with it. You take advantage of this distress, and you force as much out of him as you can under the circumstances. The old barons of the middle ages used, in general, the thumb- screw to extort property ; we moderns use, in preference, hun- ger or domestic affliction : but the fact of extortion remains precisely the same. Whether we force the man’s property from him by pinching his stomach, or pinching his fingers, makes some difference anatomically ; — morally, none whatso- ever : we use a form of torture of some sort in order to make him give up his property ; we use, indeed, the man’s own anxieties, instead of the rack ; and his immediate peril of staivation, instead of the pistol at the head ; but otherwise we differ from Front de Bceuf, or Dick Turpin, merely in be- ing less dexterous, more cowardly, and more cruel. More cruel, I say, because the fierce baron and the redoubted high- wayman are reported to have robbed, at least by preference, only the rich ; we steal habitually from the poor. We buy our liveries, and gild our prayer-books, with pilfered pence out of children’s and sick men’s wages, and thus ingeniously dispose a given quantity of Theft, so that it may produce the largest possible measure of delicately distributed suffering. But this is only one form of common oppression of the poor —only one way of taking our hands off the plough handle, and binding another’s upon it. This first way of doing it is the economical way— the way preferred by prudent and virtuous people. The bolder way is the acquisitive way : — the way of speculation. You know we are considering at present the various modes in which a nation corrupts itself, by not acknowledging the eternal connection between its plough and its pleasure ; — by striving to get pleasure, without working for it. Well, I say the first and commonest way of doing so is to try to get the product of other people’s work, and enjoy it ourselves, by cheapening their labour in times of distress : then the second way is that grand one of watching the chances of the market ; the way of speculation. Of course there are some speculations that are fair and honest— speculations made with our own money, and which do not involve in their sue- 128 THE TWO PATHS. cess the loss, by others, of what we gain. But generally mod- em speculation involves much risk to others, with chance of profit only to ourselves : even in its best conditions it is merely one of the forms of gambling or treasure hunting ; it is either leaving the steady plough and the steady pilgrimage of life, to look for silver mines beside the way ; or else it is the full stop beside the dice-tables in Vanity Fair — investing all the thoughts and passions of the soul in the fall of the cards, and choosing rather the wild accidents of idle fortune than the calm and accumulative rewards of toiL And this is destructive enough, at least to our peace and virtue. But is usually destructive of far more than our peace, or our virtue. Have you ever de- liberately set yourselves to imagine and measure the suffering, the guilt, and the mortality caused necessarily by the failure of any large-dealing merchant, or largely-branched bank? Take it at the lowest possible supposition — count, at the few- est you choose, the families whose means of support have been involved in the catastrophe. Then, on the morning after the intelligence of ruin, let us go forth amongst them in earnest thought ; let us use that imagination which we waste so often on fictitious sorrow, to measure the stern facts of that multitudinous distress ; strike open the private doors of their chambers, and enter silently into the midst of the domestic misery ; look upon the old men, who had reserved for their failing strength some remainder of rest in the evening-tide of life, cast helplessly back into its trouble and tumult ; look upon the active strength of middle age suddenly blasted into incapacity — its hopes crushed, and its hardly earned rewards snatched away in the same instant — at once the heart with- ered, and the right arm snapped ; look upon the piteous chil- dren, delicately nurtured, whose soft eyes, now large with wonder at their parents’ grief, must soon be set in the dimness of famine ; and, far more than all this, look forward to the length of sorrow beyond — to the hardest labour of life, now to be undergone either in all the severity of unexpected and inexperienced trial, or else, more bitter still, to be begun again, and endured for the second time, amidst the ruins of cherished hopes and the feebleness of advancing years, ein- IRON \ IN NATURE , ART, AND POLICY . 129 bittered by the continual sting and taunt of the inner feeling that it has all been brought about, not by the fair course of appointed circumstance, but by miserable chance and wanton treachery ; and, last of all, look beyond this— to the shattered destinies of those who have faltered under the trial, and sunk past recovery to despair. And then consider whether the hand which has poured this poison into all the springs of life be one whit less guiltily red with human blood than that which literally pours the hemlock into the cup, or guides the dagger to the heart? We read with horror of the crimes of a Borgia or a Tophana ; but there never lived Borgias such as live now in the midst of us. The cruel lady of Ferrara slew only in the strength of passion— she slew only a few, those who thwarted her purposes or who vexed her soul ; she slew sharply and suddenly, embittering the fate of her victims with no foretastes of destruction, no prolongations of pain ; and, finally and chiefly, she slew, not without remorse, nor without pity. But we, in no storm of passion — in no blindness of wrath, — we, in calm and clear and untempted selfishness, pour our poison— not for a few only, but for multitudes ; — not for those who have wronged us, or resisted, — but for those who have trusted us and aided we, not with sudden gift of mer- ciful and unconscious death, but with slow waste of hunger and weary rack of disappointment and despair ;— we, last and chiefly, do our murdering, not with any pauses of pity or scorching of conscience, but in facile and forgetful calm of mind — and so, forsooth, read day by day, complacently, as if they meant any one else than ourselves, the words that for- ever describe the wicked : “ The poison of asps is under their lips, and their feet are swift to shed blood.” You may indeed, perhaps, think there is some excuse for many in this matter, just because the sin is so unconscious ; that the guilt is not so great when it is unapprehended, and that it is much more pardonable to slay heedlessly than pur- posefully. I believe no feeling can be more mistaken, and that in reality, and in the sight of heaven j the callous indiffer- ence which pursues its own interests at any cost of life, though it does not definitely adopt the purpose of sin, is a 130 THE TWO PATHS. state of mind at once more heinous and more hopeless than the wildest aberrations of ungoverned passion. There may be, in the last case, some elements of good and of redemption still mingled in the character ; but, in the other, few or none. There may be hope for the man who has slain his enemy in anger ; hope even for the man who has betrayed his friend in fear ; but what hope for him who trades in unregarded blood, and builds his fortune on unrepented treason ? But, however this may be, and wdierever you may think yourselves bound in justice to impute the greater sin, be as- sured that the question is one of responsibilities only, not of facts. The definite result of all our modern haste to be rich is assuredly, and constantly, the murder of a certain number of persons by our hands every year. I have not time to go into the details of another — on the whole, the broadest and terriblest way in which we cause the destruction of the poor — namely, the way of luxury and waste, destroying, in improvi- dence, what might have been the support of thousands ; * but if you follow out the subject for yourselves at home — and what I have endeavoured to lay before you to-night will only be useful to you if you do — you will find that wherever and whenever men are endeavouring to make money hastily , and to avoid the labour which Providence has appointed to be the only source of honourable profit ; — and also wherever and whenever they permit themselves to spend it luxuriously , without reflecting how far they are misguiding the labour of others ; — there and then, in either case, they are literally and infallibly causing, for their own benefit or their own pleasure, a certain annual number of human deaths ; that, therefore, * The analysis of this error will be found completely carried out in my lectures on the political economy of art. And it is an error worth analyzing ; for until it is finally trodden under foot, no healthy political, economical, or moral action is possible in any state. I do not say this impetuously or suddenly, for I have investigated this subject as deeply, and as long, as my own special subject of art; and the principles of political economy which I have stated in those lectures are as sure as the principles of Euclid. Foolish readers doubted their certainty, be- cause I told them I had “ never read any books on Political Economy.” Did they suppose I had got my knowledge of art by reading books ? IRON, IN NATURE , ART, AND POLICY. 131 the choice given to every man born into this world is, simply, whether he will be a labourer, or an assassin ; and that who- soever has not his hand on the Stilt of the plough, has it on the Hilt of the dagger. It would also be quite vain for me to endeavour to follow out this evening the lines of thought which would be sug- gested by the other two great political uses of iron in the Fetter and the Sword : a few words only I must permit my- self respecting both. 2. The Fetter. — As the plough is the typical instrument of industry, so the fetter is the typical instrument of the restraint or subjection necessary in a nation — either literally, for its evil-doers, or figuratively, in accepted laws, for its wise and good men. You have to choose between this figurative and literal use ; for depend upon it, the more laws you accept, the fewer penalties you will have to endure, and the fewer punish- ments to enforce. For wise laws and just restraints are to a noble nation not chains, but chain mail — strength and defence, though something also of an incumbrance. And this neces- sity of restraint, remember, is just as honourable to man as the necessity of labour. You hear every day greater numbers of foolish people speaking about liberty, as if it were such an honourable thing : so far from being that, it is, on the whole, and in the broadest sense, dishonourable, and an attribute of the lower creatures. No human being, however great or powerful, was ever so free as a fish. There is always some- thing that he must, or must not do ; while the fish may do whatever he likes. All the kingdoms of the world put to- gether are not half so large as the sea, and all the railroads and wheels that ever were, or will be, invented are not so easy as fins. You will find, on fairly thinking of it, that it is his Restraint which is honourable to man, not his Liberty ; and, what is more, it is restraint which is honourable even in the lower animals. A butterfly is much more free than a bee ; but you honour the bee more, just because it is subject to certain laws which fit it for orderly function in bee society. And throughout the world, of the two abstract things, liberty and restraint, restraint is always the more honourable. It is 132 THE TWO PATHS. true, indeed, that in these and all other matters you never can reason finally from the abstraction, for both liberty and restraint are good when they are nobly chosen, and both are bad when they are basely chosen ; but of the two, I repeat, it is restraint which characterizes the higher creature, and betters the lower creature : and, from the ministering of the arch- angel to the labour of the insect, — from the poising of the planets to the gravitation of a grain of dust, — the power and glory of all creatures, and all matter, consist in their obedience, not in their freedom. The Sun has no liberty — a dead leaf has much. The dust of which you are formed has no liberty. Its liberty will come — with its corruption. And, therefore, I say boldly, though it seems a strange thing to say in England, that as the first power of a nation consists in knowing how to guide the Plough, its second pow- er consists in knowing how to wear the Fetter : — 3. The Sword. — And its third power, which perfects it as a nation, consist in knowing how to wield the sword, so that the three talismans of national existence are expressed in these three short words — Labour, Law, and Courage. This last virtue we at least possess ; and all that is to be alleged against us is that we do not honour it enough. I do not mean honour by acknowledgment of service, though some- times we are slow in doing even that. But we do not honour it enough in consistent regard to the lives and souls of our soldiers. How wantonly we have wasted their lives you have seen lately in the reports of their mortality by disease, which a little care and science might have prevented ; but we regard their souls less than their lives, by keeping them in ignorance and idleness, and regarding them merely as instruments of battle. The argument brought forward for the maintenance of a standing army usually refers only to expediency in the case of unexpected war, whereas, one of the chief reasons for the maintenance of an army is the advantage of the military system as a method of education. The most fiery and head- strong, who are often also the most gifted and generous of your youths, have always a tendency both in the lower and upper classes to offer themselves for your soldiers : others, IRON \ IN NATURE , ART, \ AND POLICY. 133 weak and unserviceable in a civil capacity, are tempted or en- trapped into the army in a fortunate hour for them : out of this fiery or uncouth material, it is only a soldier’s discipline which can bring the full value and power. Even at present, by mere force of order and authority, the army is the salva- tion of myriads ; and men who, under other circumstances, would have sunk into lethargy or dissipation, are redeemed into noble life by a service which at once summons and directs their energies. How much more than this military education is capable of doing, you will find only when you make it edu- cation indeed. We have no excuse for leaving our private soldiers at their present level of ignorance and want of refine- ment, for we shall invariably find that, both among officers and men, the gentlest and best informed are the bravest ; still less have we excuse for diminishing our army, either in the present state of political events, or, as I believe, in any other conjunction of them that for many a year will be possible in this world. You may, perhaps, be surprised at my saying this ; perhaps surprised at my implying that war itself can be right, or nec- essary, or noble at all. Nor do I speak of all war as neces- sary, nor of all war as noble. Both peace and war are noble or ignoble according to their kind and occasion. No man has a profounder sense of the horror and guilt of ignoble war than I have : I have personally seen its effects, upon nations, of un- mitigated evil, on soul and body, with perhaps as much pity, and as much bitterness of indignation, as any of those whom you will hear continually declaiming in the cause of peace. But peace may be sought in two ways. One way is as Gideon sought it, when he built his altar in Ophrah, naming it, “ God send peace,” yet sought this peace that he loved, as he was ordered to seek it, and the peace was sent, in God’s way : — “the country was in quietness forty years in the days of Gideon. And the other way of seeking peace is as Menahem sought it when he gave the King of Assyria a thousand talents of silver, that “his hand might be with him.” That is, you may either win your peace, or buy it win it, by resistance to evil buy it, by compromise with evil. You may buy 134 THE TWO PATHS. your peace, with silenced consciences ; — you may buy it, with broken vows, — buy it, with lying words,— buy it, with base connivances, — buy it, with the blood of the slain, and the cry of the captive, and the silence of lost souls — over hemi- spheres of the earth, while you sit smiling at your serene hearths, lisping comfortable prayers evening and morning, and counting your pretty Protestant beads (which are flat, and of gold, instead of round, and of ebony, as the monks’ ones were), and so mutter continually to yourselves, “Peace, peace,” when there is No peace ; but only captivity and death, for you, as well as for those you leave unsaved ; — and yours darker than theirs. I cannot utter to you what I would in this matter ; we all see too dimly, as yet, what our great world-duties are, to allow any of us to try to outline their enlarging shadows. But think over what I have said, and as you return to your quiet homes to-night, reflect that their peace was not won for you by your own hands ; but by theirs who long ago jeoparded their lives for you, their children ; and remember that neither this in- herited peace, nor any other, can be kept, but through the same jeopardy. No peace was ever won from Fate by subter- fuge or agreement ; no peace is ever in store for any of us, but that which we shall win by victory over shame or sin ; — vic- tory over the sin that oppresses, as well as over that which corrupts. For many a year to come, the sword of every right- eous nation must be whetted to save or subdue ; nor will it be by patience of others’ suffering, but by the offering of your own, that you ever will draw nearer to the time when the great change shall pass upon the iron of the earth ; — when men shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks ; neither shall they learn war any more. APPENDICES. APPENDIX I BIGHT AND WRONG. Keadkrs who are using my Elements of Drawing may be sur prised by my saying here that Tintoret may lead them wrong : while in the Elements he is one of the six men named as be- ing “always right.” I bring the apparent inconsistency forward at the begin- ning of this Appendix, because the illustration of it will be farther useful in showing the real nature of the self-contra- diction which is often alleged against me by careless readers. It is not only possible, but a frequent condition of human action, to do right and be right— yet so as to mislead other people if they rashly imitate the thing done. For there are many rights which are not absolutely, but relatively right right only for that person to do under those circumstances, not for this person to do under other circumstances. Thus it stands between Titian and Tintoret. Titian is al- ways absolutely Eight. You may imitate him with entire security that you are doing the best thing that can possibly be done for the purpose in hand. Tintoret is always rela- tively Eight — relatively to his own aims and peculiar powers. But you must quite understand Tintoret before you can be sure what his aim was, and why he was then right in doing what would not be right always. If, however, you take the pains thus to understand him, he becomes entirely instructive and exemplary, just as Titian is ; and therefore I have placed him among those are “ always right,” and you can only study him rightly with that reverence for him. 136 THE TWO PATHS. Then the artists who are named as “ admitting question of right and wrong,” are those who from some mischance of cir- cumstance or short-coming in their education, do not always do right, even with relation to their own aims and powers. Take for example the quality of imperfection in drawing form. There are many pictures of Tintoret in which the trees are drawn with a few curved flourishes of the brush instead of leaves. That is (absolutely) wrong. If you copied the tree as a model, you would be going very wrong indeed. But it is relatively, and for Tintoret’s purposes, right. In the nature of the superficial work you will find there must have been a cause for it Somebody perhaps wanted the picture in a hurry to fill a dark comer. Tintoret good-naturedly did all he could — painted the figures tolerably — had five minutes left only for the trees, when the servant came. “ Let him wait another five minutes.” And this is the best foliage we can do in the time. Entirely, admirably, unsurpassably right, under the conditions. Titian would not have worked under them, but Tintoret was kinder and humbler ; yet he may lead you wrong if you don’t understand him. Or, perhaps, another day, somebody came in while Tintoret was at work, who tor- mented Tintoret An ignoble person ! Titian would have have been polite to him, and gone on steadily with his trees. Tintoret cannot stand the ignobleness ; it is unendurably re- pulsive and discomfiting to him. “ The Black Plague take him — and the trees, too ! Shall such a fellow see me paint ! ” And the trees go all to pieces. This, in you, would be mere ill-breeding and ill-temper. In Tintoret it was one of the necessary conditions of his intense sensibility ; had he been capable, then, of keeping his temper, he could never have done his greatest works. Let the trees go to pieces, by all means ; it is quite right they should ; he is always right. But in a background of Gainsborough you would find the trees unjustifiably gone to pieces. The carelessness of form there is definitely purposed by him ; — adopted as an advisable thing ; and therefore it is both absolutely and relatively wrong ; — it indicates his being imperfectly educated as a painter, and not having brought out all his powers. It may APPENDICES, 137 still happen that the man whose work thus partially errone- ous is greater far, than others who have fewer faults. Gains- borough’s and Reynolds’ wrongs are more charming than al- most anybody else’s right. Still, they occasionally are wrong — but the Venetians and Velasquez,* never. I ought, perhaps, to have added in that Manchester address (only one does not like to say things that shock people) some words of warning against painters likely to mislead the stu- dent. For indeed, though here and there something may be gained by looking at inferior men, there is always more to be gained by looking at the best ; and there is not time, with all the looking of human life, to exhaust even one great painter’s instruction. How then shall we dare to waste our sight and thoughts on inferior ones, even if we could do so, which we rarely can, without danger of being led astray ? Nay, strictly speaking, what people call inferior painters are in general no painters. Artists are divided by an impassable gulf into the men who can paint, and who cannot. The men who can paint often fall short of what they should have done ; — are repressed, or defeated, or otherwise rendered inferior one to another: still there is an everlasting barrier between them and the men who cannot paint — who can only in various popular ways pre- tend to paint. And if once you know the difference, there is always some good to be got by looking at a real painter — seldom anything but mischief to be got out of a false one ; but do not suppose real painters are common. I do not speak of living men ; but among those who labour no more, in this England of ours, since it first had a school, we have had only five real painters Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hogarth, Rich- ard Wilson, and Turner. The reader may, perhaps, think I have forgotten Wilkie. No. I once much overrated him as an expressional draughts- man, not having then studied the figure long enough to be able to detect superficial sentiment. But his colour I have never praised ; it is entirely false and valueless. An d it would be unjust to English art if I did not here express my regret * At least after his style was formed ; early pictures, like the Adora- tion of the Magi in our Gallery, are of little value. 138 THE TWO PATHS, [ that the admiration of Constable, already harmful enough in England, is extending even into France. There was, perhaps, the making, in Constable, of a second or third-rate painter, if any careful discipline had developed in him the instincts which, though unparalleled for narrowness, were, as far as they went, true. But as it is, he is nothing more than an industrious and innocent amateur blundering his way to a superficial expression of one or two popular aspects of com- mon nature. And my readers may depend upon it, that all blame which I express in this sweeping way is trustworthy. I have often had to repent of over-praise of inferior men ; and continually to repent of insufficient praise of great men ; but of broad condemnation, never. For I do not speak it but after the most searching examination of the matter, and under stern sense of need for it : so that whenever the reader is entirely shocked by what I say, he may be assured every word is true.* It is just because it so much offends him, that it was neces- sary : and knowing that it must offend him, I should not have ventured to say it, without certainty of its truth. I say “ cer- tainty,” for it is just as possible to be certain whether the drawing of a tree or a stone is true or false, as whether the drawing of a triangle is ; and what I mean primarily by say- ing that a picture is in all respects worthless, is that it is in all respects False : which is not a matter of opinion at all, but a matter of ascertainable fact, such as I never assert till I have ascertained. And the thing so commonly said about my writ- ings, that they are rather persuasive than just; and that though my ‘‘language” may be good, I am an unsafe guide in art criticism, is, like many other popular estimates in such mat- ters, not merely untrue, but precisely the reverse of the truth ; it is truth, like reflections in water, distorted much by the shaking receptive surface, and in every particular, upside * He must, however, he careful to distinguish hlame — however strongly expressed, of some special fault or error in a true painter, — from these general statements of inferiority or worthlessness. Thus he will find me continually laughing at Wilson’s tree -painting ; not because Wilson could not paint, but because he had never looked at a tree. APPENDICES. 139 down. For my ‘‘language,” until within the last six or seven years, was loose, obscure, and more or less feeble ; and still, though I have tried hard to mend it, the best I can do is in- ferior to much contemporary work. No description that I have ever given of anything is worth four lines of Tennyson ; and in serious thought, my half-pages are generally only worth about as much as a single sentence either of his, or of Carlyle’s. They are, I well trust, as true and necessary ; but they are neither so concentrated nor so well put. But I am an entirely safe guide in art judgment : and that simply as the necessary result of my having given the labour of life to the determination of facts, rather than to the following of feelings or theories. Not, indeed, that my work is free from mistakes ; it admits many, and always must admit many, from its scat- tered range ; but, in the long run, it will be found to enter sternly and searchingly into the nature of what it deals with, and the kind of mistake it admits is never dangerous, consist- ing, usually, in pressing the truth too far. It is quite easy, for instance, to take an accidental irregularity in a piece of architecture, which less careful examination would never have detected at all, for an intentional irregularity ; quite possible to misinterpret an obscure passage in a picture, which a less earnest observer would never have tried to interpret. But mistakes of this kind— honest, enthusiastic mistakes— are never harmful ; because they are always made in a true direc- tion,— falls forward on the road, not into the ditch beside it ; and they are sure to be corrected by the next comer. But the blunt and dead mistakes made by too many other writers on art — the mistakes of sheer inattention, and want of sym- pathy — are mortal. The entire purpose of a great thinker may be difficult to fathom, and we may be over and over again more or less mistaken in guessing at his meaning ; but the real, profound, nay, quite bottomless, and unredeemable mis- take, is the fool’s thought — that he had no meaning. I do not refer, in saying this, to any of my statements re- specting subjects which it has been my main work to study : as far as I am aware, I have never yet misinterpreted any picture of Turner’s, though often remaining blind to the half 140 THE TWO PATHS. of what he had intended : neither have I as yet found any- thing to correct in my statements respecting Venetian archi- tecture ; * but in casual references to what has been quickly seen, it is impossible to guard wholly against error, without losing much valuable observation, true in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, and harmless even when erroneous. APPENDIX n. Reynolds’ disappointment. It is very fortunate that in the fragment of Mason’s MSS., published lately by Mr. Cotton in his “ Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Notes,” f record is preserved of Sir Joshua’s feelings respect- ing the paintings in the window of New College, which might otherwise have been supposed to give his full sanction to this mode of painting on glass. Nothing can possibly be more curious, to my mind, than the great paintei’s expectations ; or his having at all entertained the idea that the qualities of colour which are peculiar to opaque bodies could be obtained in a transparent medium ; but so it is : and with the simplic- ity and humbleness of an entirely great man he hopes that Mr. Jervas on glass is to excel Sir Joshua on canvas. Hap- pily, Mason tells us the result. “ With the copy Jervas made of this picture he was griev- ously disappointed. ‘ I had frequently,’ he said to me, ‘ pleased myself by reflecting, after I had produced what I thought a brilliant effect of light and shadow on my canvas, how greatly that effect would be heightened by the trans- parency which the painting on glass would be sure to pro- duce. It turned out quite the reverse.’” * The subtle portions of the Byzantine Palaces, given in precise meas- urements in the second volume of the “Stones of Venice, ’ were alleged by architects to be accidental irregularities. They will be found, by every one who will take the pains to examine them, most assuredly and indisputably intentional, — and not only so, but 0B0 of the principal subjects of the designer's care. f Smith, Soho Square, 1859. APPENDICES. 141 APPENDIX HI. CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE. This passage in the lecture was illustrated by an enlargement cf the woodcut, Fig. 1 ; but I did not choose to disfigure the middle of this book with it. It is copied from the 49th plate of the third edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Edin- burgh, 1797), and represents an English farmhouse arranged Fig. i. on classical principles. If the reader cares to consult the work itself, he will find in the same plate another composi- tion of similar propriety, and dignified by the addition of a pediment, beneath the shadow of which “a private gentleman who has a small family may find conveniency.” APPENDIX IV. SUBTLETY OF HAND. I HAD intended in one or other of these lectures to have spoken at some length of the quality of refinement in Colour, but found the subject would lead me too far. A few words U2 THE TWO PATHS. are, however, necessary in order to explain some expressions in the text. “ Refinement in colour ” is indeed a tautological expression, for colour, in the true sense of the word, does not exist until it is refined. Dirt exists, — stains exist, — and pigments exist, easily enough in all places ; and are laid on easily enough by all hands ; but colour exists only where there is tenderness, and can be laid on only by a hand which has strong life in it. The law concerning colour is very strange, very noble, in some sense almost awfuL In every given touch laid on canvas, if one grain of the colour is inoperative, and does not take its full part in producing the hue, the hue will be imperfect. The grain of colour which does not work is dead. It infects all about it with its death. It must be got quit of, or the touch is spoiled. We acknowledge this instinctively in our use of the phrases “dead colour,” “killed colour,” “foul colour.” Those words are, in some sort, literally true. If more colour is put on than is necessary, a heavy touch when a light one would have been enough, the quantity of colour that was not wanted, and is overlaid by the rest, is as dead, and it pollutes the rest. There will be no good in the touch. The art of painting, properly so called, consists in laying on the least possible colour that will produce the required re- sult, and this measurement, in all the ultimate, that is to say, the principal, operations of colouring, is so delicate that not one human hand in a million has the required lightness. The final touch of any painter properly so named, of Correggio — Titian — Turner — or Reynolds — would be always quite invisi- ble to any one watching the progress of the work, the films of hue being laid thinner than the depths of the grooves in mother-of-pearl. The work may be swift, apparently careless, nay, to the painter himself almost unconscious. Great painters are so organized that they do their best work without effort ; but analyze the touches afterwards, and you will find the struct- ure and depth of the colour laid mathematically demonstrable to be of literally infinite fineness, the last touches passing away at their edges by untraceable gradation. The very essence of APPENDICES. 143 a master’s work may thus be removed by a picture-cleaner in ten minutes. Observe, however, this thinness exists only in portions of the ultimate touches, for which the preparation may often have been made with solid colours, commonly, and literally, called “ dead colouring,” but even that is always subtle if a master lays it — subtle at least in drawing, if simple in hue ; and far- ther, observe that the refinement of work consists not in lay- ing absolutely little colour, but in always laying precisely the right quantity. To lay on little needs indeed the rare light- ness of hand ; but to lay much, — yet not one atom too much, and obtain subtlety, not by withholding strength, but by pre- cision of pause, — that is the master’s final sign-manual — power, knowledge, and tenderness all united. A great deal of colour may often be wanted ; perhaps quite a mass of it, such as shall project from the canvas ; but the real painter lays this mass of its required thickness and shape with as much precision as if it were a bud of a flower which he had to touch into blos- som ; one of Turner’s loaded fragments of white cloud is mod- elled and gradated in an instant, as if it alone were the sub- ject of the picture, when the same quantity of colour, under another hand, would be a lifeless lump. The following extract from a letter in the Literary Gazette of 13th November, 1858, which I was obliged to write to de- fend a questioned expression respecting Turner’s subtlety of hand from a charge of hyperbole, contains some interesting and conclusive evidence on the point, though it refers to pencil and chalk drawing only : — “ I must ask you to allow me yet leave to reply to the ob- jections you make to two statements in my catalogue, as those objections would otherwise diminish its usefulness. I have asserted that, in a given drawing (named as one of the chief in the series), Turner’s pencil did not move over the thousandth of an inch without meaning ; and you charge this expression with extravagant hyperbole. On the contrary, it is much within the truth, being merely a mathematically accurate description of fairly good execution in either drawing or engraving. It is only necessary to measure a piece of any ordinary good work to 144 TEE TWO PATES. ascertain this. Take, for instance, Finden’s engraving at the 180th page of Rogers’ poems ; in which the face of the figure, from the chin to the top of the brow, occupies just a quarter of an inch, and the space between the upper lip and chin as nearly as possible one-seventeenth of an inch. The whole mouth occupies one-third of this space, say one-fiftieth of an inch, and within that space both the lips and the much more difficult inner corner of the mouth are perfectly drawn and rounded, with quite successful and sufficiently subtle expression. Any artist will assure you that in order to draw a mouth as well as this, there must be more than twenty gradations of shade in the touches ; that is to say, in this case, gradations changing, with meaning, within less than the thousandth of an inch. “ But this is mere child’s play compared to the refinement of a first-rate mechanical work — much more of brush or pencil drawing by a master’s hand. In order at once to furnish you with authoritative evidence on this point, I wrote to Mr. Kings- ley, tutor of Sidney-Sussex College, a friend to whom I always have recourse when I want to be precisely right in any matter ; for his great knowledge both of mathematics and of natural science is joined, not only with singular powers of delicate experimental manipulation, but with a keen sensitiveness to beauty in art. His answer, in its final statement respecting Turner’s work, is amazing even to me, and will, I should think, be more so to your readers. Observe the successions of meas- ured and tested refinement : here is No. 1 : — “ ‘ The finest mechanical work that I know, which is not optical, is that done by Nobert in the way of ruling lines. I have a series ruled by him on glass, giving actual scales from •000024 and *000016 of an inch, perfectly correct to these places of decimals, and he has executed others as fine as *000012, though I do not know how far he could repeat these last with accuracy.’ “ This is No. 1, of precision. Mr. Kingsley proceeds to No. 2 : — “ ‘ But this is rude work compared to the accuracy necessary for the construction of the object-glass of a microscope such as Rosse turns out.’ APPENDICES. 145 “ I am sorry to omit the explanation which follows of the ten lenses composing such a glass, * each of which must be exact in radius and in surface, and all have their axes coinci- dent : ’ but it would not be intelligible without the figure by which it is illustrated ; so I pass to Mr. Kingsley’s No. 3 : — “‘I am tolerably familiar,’ he proceeds, ‘with the actual grinding and polishing of lenses and specula, and have pro- duced by my own hand some by no means bad optical work, and I have copied no small amount of Turner’s work, and I still look with awe at the combined delicacy and precision of his hand ; it beats optical work out of sight. In optical work, as in refined drawing, the hand goes beyond the eye, and one has to depend upon the feel ; and when one has once learned what a delicate affair touch is, one gets a horror of all coarse work, and is ready to forgive any amount of feebleness, sooner than that boldness which is akin to impudence. In optics the distinc- tion is easily seen when the work is put to trial ; but here too, as in drawing, it requires an educated eye to tell the differ- ence when the work is only moderately bad ; but with “bold ” work, nothing can be seen but distortion and fog : and I heartily wish the same result would follow the same kind of handling in drawing ; but here, the boldness cheats the un- learned by looking like the precision of the true man. It is very strange how much better our ears are than our eyes in this country : if an ignorant man were to be “ bold ” with a violin, he would not get many admirers, though his boldness was far below that of ninety -nine out of a hundred drawings one sees.’ “ The words which I have put in italics in the above extract are those which were surprising to me. I knew that Turner’s was as refined as any optical work, but had no idea of its go- ing beyond it. Mr. Kingsley’s word ‘ awe’ occurring just be- fore, is, however, as I have often felt, precisely the right one. When once we begin at all to understand the handling of any truly great executor, such as that of any of the three great Ve- netians, of Correggio, or Turner, the awe of it is something greater than can be felt from the most stupendous natural scenery. For the creation of such a system as a high human intelligence, endowed with its ineffably perfect instruments of 146 THE TWO PATHS. eye and hand, is a far more appalling manifestation of Infinite Power, than the making either of seas or mountains. “ After this testimony to the completion of Turner’s work, I need not at length defend myself from the charge of hyper- bole in the statement that, ‘ as far as I know, the galleries of Europe may be challenged to produce one sketch * that shall equal the chalk study No. 45, or the feeblest of the memoranda in the 71st and following frames ; ’ which memoranda, how- ever, it should have been observed, are stated at the 44th page to be in some respects ‘ the grandest work in grey that he did in his life.’ For I believe that, as manipulators, none but the four men whom I have just named (the three Vene- tians and Correggio) were equal to Turner ; and, as far as I know, none of those four ever put their full strength into sketches. But whether they did or not, my statement in the catalogue is limi ted by my own knowledge : and, as far as I can trust that knowledge, it is not an enthusiastic statement, but an entirely calm and considered one. It may be a mistake but it is not a hyperbole.” APPENDIX V. I can only give, to illustrate this balcony, fac-similes of rough memoranda made on a single leaf of my note-book, with a tired hand ; but it may be useful to young students to see them, in order that they may know the difference between notes made to get at the gist and heart of a thing, and notes made merely to look neat. Only it must be observed that the best characters of free drawing are always lost even in the most careful fac- simile ; and I should not show even these slight notes in wood- cut imitation, unless the reader had it in his power, by a * A sketch, observe, — not a finished drawing. Sketches are only proper subjects of comparison with each other when they contain about the same quantity of work : the test of their merit is the quantity of truth told with a given number of touches. The assertion in the Cata- logue which this letter was written to defend, was made respecting thb sketch of Rome, No. 101. APPENDICES. 147 glance at the 21st or 35th plates in Modern Painters (and yet better, by trying to copy a piece of either of them), to ascer- tain how far I can draw or not. I refer to these plates, be- cause, though I distinctly stated in the preface that they, to- gether with the 12th, 20th, 34th, and 37th, were executed on the steel by my own hand, (the use of the dry point in the foregrounds of the 12th and 21st plates being moreover wholly different from the common processes of etching) I find it constantly assumed that they were engraved for me — as if direct lying in such matters were a thing of quite common usage. Fig. 2 is the centre-piece of the balcony, but a leaf-spray is omitted on the right-hand side, having been too much buried among the real leaves to be drawn. Fig. 3 shows the intended general ef- fect of its masses, the five-leaved and six- leaved flowers being clearly distinguish- able at any distance. Fig. 4 is its profile, rather carefully drawn at the top, to show the tulip and turkscap lily leaves. Underneath there is a plate of iron beaten into broad thin leaves, which gives the 148 TEE TWO PATES. centre of the balcony a gradual sweep outwards, like the side of a ship of war. The central profile is of the greatest im- Fig. 4. portance in ironwork, as the flow of it affects the curves of the whole design, not merely in surface, as in marble carving, but in their intersections, when the side is seen through the front The lighter leaves, b b } are real bindweed. APPENDICES. 149 Fig. 5 shows two of the teeth of the border, illustrating their irregularity of form, which takes place quite to the ex- tent indicated. Fig. 6 is the border at the side of the balcony, showing the most interesting circumstance in the treatment of the whole, namely, the enlargement and retraction of the teeth of the cornice, as it approaches the wall. This treatment of the Fig. 5. Fig. 6. whole cornice as a kind of wreath round the balcony, having its leaves flung loose at the back, and set close at the front, as a girl would throw a wreath of leaves round her hair, is pre- cisely the most finished indication of a good workman’s mind to be found in the whole thing. Fig. 7 shows the outline of the retracted leaves accurately. Fig. 7. It was noted in the text that the whole of this ironwork had been coloured. The difficulty of colouring ironwork rightly, and the necessity of doing it in some way or other, have been the principal reasons for my never having entered heartily into this subject ; for all the ironwork I have ever seen look beautiful was rusty, and rusty iron will not answer modern purposes. Nevertheless it may be painted, but it needs some one to do it who knows what painting means, and few of us do — certainly none, as yet, of our restorers of deco- ration or writers on colour. 150 THE TWO PATHS. It is a marvellous thing to me that book after book should appear on this last subject, without apparently the slightest consciousness on the part of the writers that the first necessity of beauty in colour is gradation, as the first necessity of beauty in line is curvature, — or that the second necessity in colour is mystery or subtlety, as the second necessity in line is softness. Colour ungradated is wholly valueless ; colour unmysterious is wholly barbarous. Unless it looses itself and melts away towards other colours, as a true line loses itself and melts away towards other lines, colour has no proper ex- istence, in the noble sense of the word. What a cube, or tetrahedron, is to organic form, ungradated and unconfused colour is to organic colour ; and a person who attempts to ar- range colour harmonies without gradation of tint is in pre- cisefy the same category, as an artist who should try to com- pose a beautiful picture out of an accumulation of cubes and parallelopipeds. The value of hue in all illuminations on painted glass of fine periods depends primarily on the expedients used to make the colours palpitate and fluctuate ; inequality of brill- iancy being the condition of brilliancy, just as inequality of accent is the condition of power and loveliness in sound. The skill with which the thirteenth century illuminators in books, and the Indians in shawls and carpets, use the minutest atoms of colour to gradate other colors, and confuse the eye, is the first secret in their gift of splendour : associated, however, with so many other artifices -which are quite instinctive and unteachable, that it is of little use to dwell upon them. Deli- cacy of organization in the designer given, you will soon have all, and without it, nothing. However, not to close my book with desponding words, let me set dowm, as many of us like such things, five Laws to which there is no exception what- ever, and which, if they can enable no one to produce good colour, are at least, as far as they reach, accurately condem- natory of bad colour. 1. All good colour is gradated. A blush rose (or, better still, a blush itself), is the type of rightness in arrangement of pure hue. APPENDICES. 151 2. All harmonies of colour depend for their vitality on THE ACTION AND HELPFUL OPERATION OF EVERY PARTICLE OF COLOUR THEY CONTAIN. 3. The final particles of colour necessary to the complete- ness OF A COLOUR HARMONY ARE ALWAYS INFINITELY SMALL ; either laid by immeasurably subtle touches of the pencil, or pro- duced by portions of the colouring substance, however dis- tributed, which are so absolutely small as to become at the in- tended distance infinitely so to the eye. 4. No COLOUR HARMONY IS OF HIGH ORDER UNLESS IT INVOLVES indescribable tints. It is the best possible sign of a colour when nobody who sees it knows what to call it, or how to give an idea of it to any one else. Even among simple hues the most valuable are those which cannot be defined ; the most precious purples will look brown beside pure purple, and purple beside pure brown ; and the most precious greens will be called blue if seen beside pure green, and green if seen beside pure blue. 5. The finer the eye for colour, the less it will require to gratify it intensely. But that little must be supremely good and pure, as the finest notes of a great singer, which are so near to silence. And a great colourist will make even the ab- sence of colour lovely, as the fading of the perfect voice makes silence sacred LOVE’S MEINIE LECTURES ON GREEK AND ENGLISH BIRDS GIVEN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD ADVICE. I publish these lectures at present roughly, in the form in which they were delivered, — (necessarily more brief and broken than that which may be permitted when time is not limited,) — because I know that some of their hearers wished to obtain them for immediate reference. Ultimately, I hope, they will be completed in an illustrated volume, containing at least six lectures, on the Bobin, the Swallow, the Chough, the Lark, the Swan, and the Sea-gull. But months pass by me now, like days ; and my work remains only in design. I think it better, therefore, to let the lectures appear separately, with provisional wood-cuts, afterwards to be bettered, or replaced by more finished engravings. The illustrated volume, if ever finished, will cost a guinea ; but these separate lectures a shil- ling, or, if long, one shilling and sixpence each. The guinea’s worth will, perhaps, be the cheaper book in the end ; but I shall be glad if some of my hearers feel interest enough in the subject to prevent their waiting for it. The modern vulgarization of the word “ advertisement ” renders, I think, the use of * advice * as above, in the sense of the French ‘ avis ’ (passing into our old English verb ‘ avise ’) on the whole, preferable. Brantwood, June t 1873 . LOVE’S MEINIE. “ 11 etoit tout couvert d’oisiaulx.” Romance of the Rose. LECTURE I. THE robin. 1. Among the more splendid pictures in the Exhibition of the Old Masters, this year, you cannot but remember the Vandyke portraits of the two sons of the Duke of Lennox. J think you cannot but remember it, because it would be diffi- cult to find, even among the works of Vandyke, a more strik- ing representation of the youth of our English noblesse ; nor one in which the painter had more exerted himself, or with better success, in rendering the decorous pride and natural grace of honourable aristocracy. Vandyke is, however, inferior to Titian and Velasquez, in that his effort to show this noblesse of air and persons ?nay always be detected ; also the aristocracy of Vandyke’s day were already so far fearful of their own position as to feel anxiety that it should be immediately recognized. And the effect of the painter’s conscious deference, and of the equally conscious pride of the boys, as they stood to be painted, has been some- what to shorten the power of the one, and to abase the dig- nity of the other. And thus, in the midst of my admiration of the youths’ beautiful faces, and natural quality of majesty, set off by all splendours of dress and courtesies of art, I could not forbear questioning with myself what the true value was, in the scales of creation, of these fair human beings who set so high a value on themselves ; and, — as if the only answer, 158 LOVE'S MEIN IE. — the words kept repeating themselves in my ear, “ Ye are of more value than many sparrows.” 2. Passeres, arpovOoL , — the things that open their wings, and are not otherwise noticeable ; small birds of the land and wood ; the food of the serpent, of man, or of the stronger creatures of their own kind, — that even these, though among the simplest and obscurest of beings, have yet price in the eyes of their Maker, and that the death of one of them cannot take place but by His permission, has long been the subject of declamation in our pulpits, and the ground of much senti- ment in nursery education. But the declamation is so aim- less, and the sentiment so hollow, that, practically, the chief interest of the leisure of mankind has been found in the de- struction of the creatures which they professed to believe even the Most High would not see perish without pity ; and, in re- cent days, it is fast becoming the only definition of aristoc- racy, that the principal business of its life is the killing of sparrows. Sparrows, or pigeons, or partridges, what does it matter? “ Centum mille perdrices plumbo confecit ; ” * that is, indeed, too often the sum of the life of an English lord ; much ques- tionable now, if indeed of more value than that of many spar- rows. 3. Is it not a strange fact, that, interested in nothing so much for the last two hundred years, as in his horses, he yet left it to the farmers of Scotland to relieve draught horses from the bearing-rein ; f is it not one equally strange that, master of the forests of England for a thousand years, and of its libraries for three hundred, he left the natural history of birds to be written by a card-printer’s lad of Newcastle? Written, and not written, for indeed we have no natural his- tory of birds written yet. It cannot be written but by a scholar and a gentleman ; and no English gentleman in re- cent times has ever thought of birds except as flying targets, or flavourous dishes. The only piece of natural history worth the name in the English language, that I know of, is in the * The epitaph on Count Zachdarm, in “ Sartor Resartus.” f Sir Arthur Helps. “ Animals and their Masters, ’’ p. 67. TEE ROBIN. 159 few lines of Milton on the Creation. The only example of a proper manner of contribution to natural history is in White’s Letters from Selborne. You know I have always spoken of Bewick as pre-eminently a vulgar or boorish person, though of splendid honour and genius ; his vulgarity shows in noth' ing so much as in the poverty of the details he has collected, with the best intentions, and the shrewdest sense, for English ornithology. His imagination is not cultivated enough to enable him to choose, or arrange. 4. Nor can much more be said for the observations of mod- ern science. It is vulgar in a far worse way, by its arrogance and materialism. In general, the scientific natural history of a bird consists of four articles, — first, the name and estate of the gentleman whose gamekeeper shot the last that was seen in England ; secondly, two or three stories of doubtful origin, printed in every book on the subject of birds for the last fifty years ; thirdly, an account of the feathers, from the comb to the rump, with enumeration of the colours which are never more to be seen on the living bird by English eyes ; and, lastly, a discussion of the reasons why none of the twelve names which former naturalists have given to the bird are of any further use, and why the present author has given it a thirteenth, which is to be universally, and to the end of time, accepted. 5. You may fancy this is caricature ; but the abyss of con- fusion produced by modern science in nomenclature, and the utter void of the abyss when you plunge into it after any one useful fact, surpass all caricature. I have in my hand thirteen plates of thirteen species of eagles ; eagles all, or hawks all, or falcons all — whichever name you choose for the great race of the hook-headed birds of prey — some so like that you can’t tell the one from the other, at the distance at which I show them to you, all absolutely alike in their eagle or falcon character, having, every one, the falx for its beak, and every one, flesh for its prey. Do you suppose the unhappy student is to be allowed to call them all eagles, or all falcons, to begin with, as would be the first condition of a wise nomenclature, establishing resemblance by specific name, before marking 160 LOVE'S MEINIE. variation by individual name ? No such luck, the plates of the thirteen birds one by one, their names off the back : — The first The second, The third, The fourth, The fifth, The sixth, The seventh, The eighth, The ninth, The tenth, The eleventh The twelfth, I hold you up and read you is an Aquila. a Halisetus. a Milvus. a Pandion. an Astur. a Falco. a Pernis. a Circus, a Buteo. an Archibuteo. an Accipiter. an Erythropus. And the thirteenth, a Tinnunculus. There’s a nice little lesson to entertain a parish schoolboy with, beginning his natural history of birds ! 6. There are not so many varieties of robin as of hawk, but the scientific classifiers are not to be beaten. If they cannot find a number of similar birds to give different names to, they will give two names to the same one. Here are two pictures of your own redbreast, out of the two best modem works on ornithology. In one, it is called “ Motacilla rubecula;” in the other, “ Bubecula familiaris.” 7. It is indeed one of the most serious, as one of the most absurd, weaknesses, of modem naturalists to imagine that any presently invented nomenclature can stand, even were it adopted by the consent of nations, instead of the conceit of individuals. It will take fifty years’ digestion before the re- cently ascertained elements of natural science can permit the arrangement of species in any permanently (even over a limited period) nameable order ; nor then, unless a great man is born to perceive and exhibit such order. In the meantime, the simplest and most descriptive nomenclature is the best. Every one of these birds, for instance, might be called falco in Latin, hawk in English, some word being added to dis- tinguish the genus, which should describe its piincipal aspect THE ROBIN. 161 or habit. Falco montium, Mountain Hawk ; Falco silvarum, Wood Hawk ; Falco procellarum, Sea Hawk ; and the like! Then, one descriptive epithet would mark species. Falco montium, aureus, Golden Eagle ; Falco silvarum, apivorus, Honey Buzzard ; and so on ; and the naturalists of Vienna! Paris, and London should confirm the names of known creat- ures, in conclave, once every half century, and let them so stand for the next fifty years. 8. In the meantime, you yourselves, or, to speak more generally, the young rising scholars of England,— all of 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 wilh some day or other, give you clue to historical points of in- terest. Take, for example, the common English name of this low-flying falcon, the most tameable and affectionate of his tribe, and therefore, I suppose, fastest vanishing from field and wood, the buzzard. The name comes from the Latin “ buteo, still retained by the ornithologists ; but, in its original form, valueless, to you. But when you get it com- fortably corrupted into Prove^al “ Busac,” (whence gradually the French busard, and our buzzard,) you get from it the de- lightful compound “busacador,” “adorer of buzzards”— meaning, generally, a sporting person ; and then you have Dante’s Bertrand de Born, the first troubadour of war, bear- ing witness to you how the love of mere hunting and falconry was already, in his day, degrading the military classes, and, so far from being a necessary adjunct of the noble disposition of lover or soldier, was, even to contempt, showing itself separate from both. “ Le ric home, cassador, M’enneion, el buzacador. Parian de volada, d’austor, Ne jamais d’armas, ni d’amor.” 162 LOVE'S ME1NTE. The rich man, the chaser, Tires me to death ; and the adorer of buzzards. They talk of covey and hawk, And never of arms, nor of love. “ Cassador,” of course, afterwards becomes “ chasseur, ” and “austor” “vautour.” But after you have read this, and fa miliarized your ear with the old word, how differently Milton’s phrase will ring to you, — “Those who thought no better of the Living God than of a buzzard idol,” — and how literal it becomes, when we think of the actual difference between a member of Parliament in Milton’s time, and the Busacador of to-day ; — and all this freshness and value in the reading, observe, come of your keeping the word which great men have used for the bird, instead of letting the anatomists blunder out a new one from their Latin dictionaries. 9. There are not so many nameable varieties, I just now said, of robin as of falcon ; but this is somewhat inaccurately stated. Those thirteen birds represented a very large proportion of the entire group of the birds of prey, which in my sevenfold classi- fication I recommended you to call universally, “hawks.” The robin is only one of the far greater multitude of small birds which live almost indiscriminately on grain or insects, and which I recommended you to call generally “ sparrows ; ” but of the robin itself, there are two important European varieties — one red-breasted, and the other blue-breasted. 10. You probably, some of you, never heard of the blue- breast ; very few, certainly, have seen one alive, and, if alive, certainly not wild in England. Here is a picture of it, daintily done,* and you can see the pretty blue shield on its breast, perhaps, at this distance. Vain shield, if ever the fair little thing is wretched enough to set foot on English ground ! I find the last that was seen was shot at Margate so long ago as 1842, — and there seems to be no official record of any visit before that, since Mr. Thomas Embledon shot one on Newcastle town moor in 1816. But this rarity of visit to us is strange ; other birds have no such * Mr. Gould’s, in his “ Birds of Gr«a*. Britain.’* THE ROBIN. 163 clear objection to being shot, and really seem to come to Eng- land expressly for the purpose. And yet this blue-bird — (one can’t say “ blue robin ” — I think we shall have to call him “bluet,” like the cornflower) — stays in Sweden, where it sings so sweetly that it is called “ a hundred tongues.” 11. That, then, is the utmost which the lords of land, and masters of science, do for us in their watch upon our feathered suppliants. One kills them, the other writes classifying epi- taphs. We have next to ask what the poets, painters, and monks have done. The poets — among whom I affectionately and reverently class the sweet singers of the nursery, mothers and nurses — have done much ; very nearly all that I care for your thinking of. The painters and monks, the one being so greatly under the influence of the other, we may for the present class to- gether; and may almost sum their contributions to ornithology in saying that they have plucked the wings from birds, to make angels of men, and the claws from birds, to make devils of men. If you were to take away from religious art these two great helps of its — I must say, on the whole, very feeble — imagina- tion ; if you were to take from it, I say, the power of putting wings on shoulders, and claw^s on fingers and toes, how won- derfully the sphere of its angelic and diabolic characters would be contracted ! Reduced only to the sources of expression in face or movements, you might still find in good early sculpt* ure very sufficient devils ; but the best angels would resolve themselves, I think, into little more than, and not often into so much as, the likenesses of pretty women, with that grave and (I do not say it ironically) majestic expression which they put on, when, being very fond of their husbands and children, they seriously think either the one or the other have misbe- haved themselves. 12. And it is not a little discouraging for me, and may well make you doubtful of my right judgment in this endeavour to lead you into closer attention to the bird, with its wings and claws still in its own possession ; — it is discouraging, I say, to 164 LOVE'S MEINIE. observe that the beginning of such more faithfu? and accurate observation in former art, is exactly coeval with the commence- ment of its decline. The feverish and ungraceful natural history of Paul, called, “ of the birds,” Paolo degli Uccelli, produced, indeed, no harmful result on the minds of his con- temporaries ; they watched in him, with only contemptuous admiration, the fantasy of zoological instinct which filled his house with painted dogs, cats, and birds, because he was too poor to fill it with real ones. Their judgment of this morbidly naturalistic art was conclusively expressed by the sentence of Donatello, when going one morning into the Old Market, to buy fruit, and finding the animal painter uncovering a pict- ure, which had cost him months of care, (curiously symbolic in its subject, the infidelity of St. Thomas, of the investigatory fingering of the natural historian,) “ Paul, my friend,” said Donatello, “ thou art uncovering the picture just when thou shouldst be shutting it up.” 13. No harm, therefore, I repeat, but, on the contrary, some wholesome stimulus to the fancy of men like Luca and Dona- tello themselves, came of the grotesque and impertinent zoology of Uccello. But the fatallest institutor of proud modern anatomical and scientific art, and of all that has polluted the dignity, and darkened the charity, of the greater ages, was Antonio Polla- juolo of Florence. Antonio (that is to say) the Poulterer — so named from the trade of his grandfather, and with just so much of his grandfather’s trade left in his own disposition, that being set by Lorenzo Ghiberti to complete one of the ornamental festoons of the gates of the Florentine Baptistery, there, (says Vasari) “ Antonio produced a quail, which may still be seen, and is so beautiful, nay, so perfect, that it wants nothing but the power of flight.” 14. Here, the morbid tendency was as attractive as it was subtle. Ghiberti himself fell under the influence of it ; allowed the borders of his gates, with their fluttering birds and bossy fruits, to dispute the spectators’ favour with the re- ligious subjects they enclosed ; and, from that day forward, minuteness and muscularity were, with curious harmony of THE ROBIN. 165 evil, delighted in together ; and the lancet and the microscope, in the hands of fools, were supposed to be complete substi- tutes for imagination in the souls of wise men : so that even the best artists are gradually compelled, or beguiled, into compliance with the curiosity of their day ; and Francia, in the city of Bologna, is held to be a “kind of god, more particu- larly” (again I quote Vasari) “after he had painted a set of caparisons for the Duke of Urbino, on which he depicted a great forest all on fire, and whence there rushes forth an im- mense number of every kind of animal, with several human figures. This terrific, yet truly beautiful representation, was all the more highly esteemed for the time that had been ex- pended on it in the plumage of the birds, and other minutne in the delineation of the different animals, and in the diversity of the branches and leaves of the various trees seen therein ; ” and thenceforward the catastrophe is direct, to the ornitho- logical museums which Breughel painted for gardens of Eden, and to the still life and dead game of Dutch celebrities. 15. And yet I am going to invite you to-day 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 in your study of the greatest art. But the difference in our motive of examination will entirely alter the result. To paint birds that we may show how mi- nutely we can paint, is among the most contemptible occupa- tions of art. To paint them, that we may show how beautiful they are, is not indeed one of its highest, but quite one of its pleasantest and most useful ; it is a skill within the reach of every student of average capacity, and which, so far as ac- quired, will assuredly both make their hearts kinder, and their lives happier. Without further preamble, I will ask you to look to-day, more carefully than usual, at your well-known favourite, and to think about him with some precision. 16. And first, Where does he come from ? I stated that my lectures were to be on English and Greek birds ; but we are apt to fancy the robin all our own. How exclusively, do you suppose, he really belongs to us ? You would think this was 166 LOVE'S MEIN IE. the first point to be settled in any book about him. T have hunted all my books through, and can’t tell you how much he is our own, or how far 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, — their villas in Italy, and shooting boxes in Scotland. The country in which they build their nests is their proper home, — the country, 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 hemi- sphere 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 in- habits, — 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. 17. Now, here is this entirely familiar bird, the robin. Quite the first thing that strikes me about it, looking at it as a painter, is the small effect it seems to have had on the minds of the southern nations. I trace nothing of it definitely, either in the art or literature of Greece or Italy. I find, even, no definite name for it ; you don’t know if Lesbia’s “passer ” had a red breast, or a blue, or a brown. And yet Mr. Gould says it is abundant in all parts of Europe, in all the islands of the Mediterranean, and in Madeira and the Azores. And then he says — (now notice the puzzle of this), — “ In many parts of the Continent it is a migrant, and, contrary to what obtains with us, is there treated as a vagrant, for there is scarcely a coun- try across the water in which it is not shot down and eaten. ” “In many parts of the Continent it is a migrant.” In what parts — how far — in what manner ? 18. 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 THE ROBIN. 1(>7 sufficient reason for their reticence. He has a curious fancy in his manner of travelling. Of all birds, you would think he was likely to do it in the cheerfulest way, and he does it in the saddest. Do you chance to have read, in the Life of Charles Dickens, how fond he was of taking long walks in the night and alone ? The robin, en voyage, is the Charles Dickens of birds. He always travels in the night, and alone ; rests, in the day, wherever day chances to find him ; sings a little, and pretends he hasn’t been anywhere. He goes as far, in the winter, as the north-west of Africa ; and in Lombardy, arrives from the south early in March ; but does not stay long, going on into the Alps, where he prefers wooded and wild districts. So, at least, says my Lombard informant. I do not find him named in the list of Cretan birds ; but even if often seen, his dim red breast was little likely to make much impression on the Greeks, who knew the flamingo, and had made it, under the name of Phoenix or Plicenicopterus, the centre of their myths of scarlet birds. They broadly em- braced the general aspect of the smaller and more obscure species, under the term £ovQo Fig. 5. 71. I say the down-stroke is as effective as the bird chooses ; that is to say, it can be given with exactly the quantity of im- pulse, and exactly the quantity of supporting power, required at the moment. Thus, when the bird wants to fly slowly, the wings are fluttered fast, giving vertical blows ; if it wants to pause absolutely in still air, (this large birds cannot do, not be- ing able to move their wings fast enough,) the velocity becomes vibration, as in the humming-bird : but if there is wind, any of the larger birds can lay themselves on it like a kite, their own weight answering the purpose of the string, while they keep the wings and tail in an inclined plane, giving them as much gliding ascent as counteracts the fall. They nearly all, how- ever, use some slightly gliding force at the same time ; a single stroke of the wing, with forward intent, seeming enough to enable them to glide on for half a minute or more without stirring a plume. A circling eagle floats an inconceivable time without visible stroke : (fancy the pretty action of the inner wing, backing air instead of water, which gives exactly the 198 LOVE'S HEIN IE. breadth of circle he chooses). But for exhibition of the com- plete art of flight, a swallow on rough water is the master of masters. A seagull, with all its splendid power, generally has its work cut out for it, and is visibly fighting ; but the swal- low plays with wind and wave as a girl plays with her fan, and there are no words to say how many things it does with its wings in any ten seconds, and does consum- mately. The mystery of its dart remains always in- explicable to me ; no eye can trace the bending of bow that sends that living arrow. But the main structure of the noble weapon we may with little pains un- derstand. 72. In the sections a and b of Fig. 5, I have only represented the quills of the outer part of the wing. The relation of these, and of the inner quills, to the bird’s body may be very simply shown. Fig. 6 is a rude sketch, typically representing the wing of any bird, but actually founded chiefly on the seagull’s. It is broadly composed of two fans, a and b. The outmost fan, a, is carried by the bird’s hand ; of which I rudely sketch the contour of the bones at a. The innermost fan, b, is carried by the bird’s fore-arm, from wrist to elbow, b. The strong humerus, c, corresponding to our arm from TEE SWALLOW. 199 shoulder to elbow, has command of the whole instrument. No feathers are attached to this bone ; but covering and pro- tecting ones are set in the skin of it, completely filling, when the active wing is open, the space between it and the body. But the plumes of the two great fans, a and b, are set into the bones ; in Fig. 8, farther on, are shown the projecting knobs on the main arm bone, set for the reception of the quills, which make it look like the club of Hercules. The connection of the still more powerful quills of the outer fan with the bones of the hand is quite beyond all my poor anatomical perceptions, and, happily for me, also beyond needs of artistic investigation. Fig. 7. 73. The feathers of the fan a are called the primaries. Those of the fan b, secondaries. Effective actions of flight, whether for support or forward motion, are, I believe, all executed with the primaries, every one of which may be briefly described as the strongest scymitar that can be made of quill substance ; flexible within limits, and elastic at its edges — carried by an elastic central shaft — twisted like a windmill sail — striking with the flat, and recovering with the edge. The secondary feathers are more rounded at the ends, and frequently notched ; their curvature is reversed to that of the primaries ; they are arranged, when expanded, somewhat in the shape of a shallow cup, with the hollow of it downwards, holding the air therefore, and aiding in all the pause and buoyancy of flight, but little in the activity of it. Essentially they are the brooding and covering feathers of the wing ; ex- A\j\j LOVE'S MEINIE. quisitely beautiful — as far as I have yet seen, most beautiful — in the bird whose brooding is of most use to us ; and which has become the image of all tenderness. “How often would I have gathered thy children . . . and ye would not.” 74. Over these two chief masses of the plume are set others which partly complete their power, partly adorn and protect them ; but of these I can take no notice at present. All that I want you to understand is the action of the two main masses, as the wing is opened and closed. Fig. 7 roughly represents the upper surface of the main feathers of the wing closed. The secondaries are folded over the primaries ; and the primaries shut up close, with their THE SWALLOW. 201 outer edges parallel, or nearly so. Fig. 8 roughly shows the outline of the bones, in this position, of one of the larger pigeons.* 75. Then Fig. 9 is (always sketched in the roughest way) the outer, Fig. 10 the inner, surface of a seagull’s wing in this position. Next, Fig. 11 shows the tops of the four lowest feathers in Fig. 9, in mere outline ; a separate (pulled off, so that they can be set side by side), b shut up close in the folded wing, c opened in the spread wing. Fig. 9. 76. And now, if you will yourselves watch a few birds in flight, or opening and closing their wings to prune them, you will soon know as much as is needful for our art purposes ; and, which is far more desirable, feel how very little we know, to any purpose, of even the familiar creatures that are our companions. Even what we have seen to-day f is more than appears to * I find even this mere outline of anatomical structure so interferes with the temper in which I wish my readers to think, that I shall with- draw it in my complete edition. f Large and somewhat carefully painted diagrams were shown at the lecture, which I cannot engrave but for my complete edition. 202 LOVE'S MEIN IE. have been noticed by the most careful painters of the great schools ; and you will continually fancy that I am inconsistent with myself in pressing you to learn, better than they, the anatomy of birds, while I violently and constantly urge you to refuse the knowledge of the anatomy of men. But you will find, as my system developes itself, that it is absolutely consistent throughout. I don’t mean, by telling you not to study human anatomy, that you are not to know how many fingers and toes you have, nor how you can grasp and walk Fig. 10. with them ; and, similarly, when you look at a bird, I wish you to know how many claws and wing-feathers it has, and how it grips and flies with them. Of the bones, in either. I shall show you little ; and of the muscles, nothing but what can be seen in the living creature, nor, often, even so much. 77. And accordingly, when I now show you this sketch of my favourite Holbein, and tell you that it is entirely disgrace- ful he should not know what a wing was, better, — I don’t mean that it is disgraceful he should not know the anatomy of it, but that he should never have looked at it to see how the feathers lie. THE SWALLOW. 203 Now Holbein paints men gloriously, but never looks at birds ; Gibbons, the woodcutter, carves birds, but can’t men ; —of the two faults the last is the worst ; but the right is in looking at the whole of nature in due comparison, and with universal candour and tenderness. 78. At the whole of nature, I say, not at super-nature— at 2C4 LOVE'S MEINIE. what you suppose to be above the visible nature about you. If you are not inclined to look at the wings of birds, which God has given you to handle and to see, much less are you to contemplate, or draw imaginations of, the wings of angels, which you can’t see. Know your own world first — not deny- ing any other, but being quite sure that the place in which you are now put is the place with which you are now con- cerned ; and that it will be wiser in you to think the gods themselves may appear in the form of a dove, or a swallow, than that, by false theft from the form of dove or swallow, you can represent the aspect of gods. 79. One sweet instance of such simple conception, in the end of the Odyssey, must surely recur to your minds in con- nection with our subject of to-day, but you may not have no- ticed the recurrent manner in which Homer insists on the thought. When Ulysses first bends and strings his bow, the vibration of the chord is shrill, “ like the note of a swallow.” A poor and unwarlike simile, it seems ! But in the next book, when Ulysses stands with his bow lifted, and Telem- achus has brought the lances, and laid them at his feet, and Athena comes to his side to encourage him, — do you recollect the gist of her speech? “You fought,” she says, “ nine years for the sake of Helen, and for another’s house : — now, re- turned, after all those wanderings, and under your own roof, for it, and its treasures, will you not fight, then?” And she herself flies up to the house-roof, and thence, in the form of the swallow , guides the arrows of vengeance for the viola- tion of the sanctities of home. 80. To-day, then, I believe verily for the first time, I have been able to put before you some means of guidance to un- derstand the beauty of the bird which lives with you in your own houses, and which purifies for you, from its insect pesti- lence, 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 de- parture, and showing better her loving-kindness by her faith- ful return. Type sometimes of the stranger, she has softened 205 THE SWALLOW. us to hospitality ; type always of the suppliant, she has en- chanted us to mercy ; and in her feeble presence, the coward- ice, or the wrath, of sacrilege has changed into the fidelities of sanctuary. Herald of our summer, she glances through our days of gladness ; numberer of our years, she would teach us to apply our hearts to wisdom ;-and yet, so little have we re- garded 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 journeying : I cannot learn how she builds, nor how she chooses the place of her wandering, nor how she traces the path of her return. Eemaining thus blind and careless to the true ministries of the humble creature 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 temples 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 un- intended praise, of “ the Swallow, twittering from her straw- built shed.” THE RELATION BETWEEN MICHAEL ANGELO AND TINTORET SEVENTH OF THE COURSE OF LECTURES ON SCULPTURE, DELIVERED AT OXFORD, 1870-71. I have printed this Lecture separately, that strangers visiting the Galleries may be able to use it for reference to the draw- ings. But they must observe that its business is only to point out what is to be blamed in Michael Angelo, and that it assumes the facts of his power to be generally known. Mr. Tyrwhitt s statement of these, in his “ Lectures on Christian Art,” will put the reader into possession of all that may justly be alleged in honour of him. Corpus Christi College, 1st Mag, 1872 . THE RELATION BETWEEN MICHAEL ANGELO AND TINTORET. The Seventh of the Course of Lectures on Sculpture delivered at Oxford , 1870-71. In preceding lectures on sculpture I have included references to tlie art of painting, so far as it proposes to itself the same object as sculpture, (idealization of form) ; and I have chosen for the subject of our closing inquiry, the works of the two masters who accomplished or implied the unity of these arts. Tintoret entirely conceives his figures as solid statues : sees them in his mind on every side ; detaches each from the other by imagined air and light ; and foreshortens, interposes, or involves them, as if they were pieces of clay in his hand. On the contrary, Michael Angelo conceives his sculpture partly as if it were painted ; and using (as I told you formerly) his pen like a chisel, uses also his chisel like a pencil ; is some- times as picturesque as Kembrandt, and sometimes as soft as Correggio. It is of him chiefly that I shall speak to-day ; both because it is part of my duty to the strangers here present to indicate for them some of the points of interest in the drawings form- ing part of the University collections ; but still more, because I must not allow the second year of my professorship to close, without some statement of the mode in which those collec- tions may be useful or dangerous to my pupils. They seem at present little likely to be either ; for since I entered on my 212 TEE RELATION BETWEEN duties, no student has ever asked me a single question re- specting these drawings, or, so far as I could see, taken the slightest interest in them. There are several causes for this which might be obviated — there is one which cannot be. The collection, as exhibited at present, includes a number of copies which mimic in vari- ously injurious ways the characters of Michael Angelo’s own work ; and the series, except as material for reference, can be of no practical service until these are withdrawn, and placed by themselves. It includes, besides, a number of original drawings which are indeed of value to any laborious student of Michael Angelo’s life and temper ; but w T hich owe the greater part of this interest to their being executed in times of sickness or indolence, when the master, however strong, was failing in his purpose, and, however diligent, tired of his work. It will be enough to name, as an example of this class, the sheet of studies for the Medici tombs, No. 45, in which the lowest figure is, strictly speaking, neither a study nor a working drawing, but has either been scrawled in the feverish languor of exhaustion, which cannot escape its sub- ject of thought ; or, at best, in idly experimental addition of part to part, beginning with the head, and fitting muscle af- ter muscle, and bone after bone to it, thinking of their place only, not their proportion, till the head is only about one twentieth part of the height of the body : finally, something between a face and a mask is blotted in the upper left-hand corner of the paper, indicative, in the weakness and frightful- ness of it, simply of mental disorder from overwork ; and there are several others of this kind, among even the better drawings of the collection, which ought never to be exhibited to the general public. It would be easy, however, to separate these, with the ac- knowledged copies, from the rest ; and, doing the same with the drawings of Raphael, among which a larger number are of true value, to form a connected series of deep interest to artists, in illustration of the incipient and experimental methods of design practised by each master. I say, to artists. Incipient methods of design are not, and MICHAEL ANGELO AND T1NT0RET. 213 ought not to be, subjects of earnest inquiry to other people : and although the re-arrangement of the drawings would ma- terially increase the chance of their gaining due attention, there is a final and fatal reason for the want of interest in them displayed by the younger students namely, that these designs have nothing whatever to do with present life, with its passions, or with its religion. What their historic value is, and relation to the life of the past, I will endeavour, so far as time admits, to explain to-day. The course of Art divides itself hitherto, among all nations of the world that have practised it successfully, into three great periods. The first, that in which their conscience is undeveloped, and their condition of life in many respects savage ; but, nevertheless, in harmony with whatever conscience they pos- sess. The most powerful tribes, in this stage of their intel- lect, usually live by rapine, and under the influence of vivid, but contracted, religious imagination. The early predatory activity of the Normans, and the confused minglings of relig- ious subjects with scenes of hunting, war, and vile grotesque, in their first art, will sufficiently exemplify this state of a people ; having, observe, their conscience undeveloped, but keeping their conduct in satisfied harmony with it. The second stage is that of the formation of conscience by the discovery of the true laws of social order and personal virtue, coupled with sincere effort to live by such laws as they are discovered. All the Arts advance steadily during this stage of national growth, and are lovely, even in their deficiencies, as the buds of flowers are lovely by their vital force, swift change, and continent beauty. The third stage is that in which the conscience is entirely formed, and the nation, finding it painful to live in obedience to the precepts it has discovered, looks about to discover, also, a compromise for obedience to them. In this condition of mind its first endeavour is nearly always to make its religion pompous, and please the gods by giving them gifts and en- tertainments, in which it may piously and pleasurably share 214 TEE RELATION BETWEEN itself ; so that a magnificent display of the powers of art it has gained by sincerity, takes place for a few years, and is then followed by their extinction, rapid and complete exactly in the degree in which the nation resigns itself to hypocrisy. The works of Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Tin tore t, be- long to this period of compromise in the career of the great- est nation of the world ; and are the most splendid efforts yet made by human creatures to maintain the dignity of states with beautiful colours, and defend the doctrines of theology with anatomical designs. Farther, and as an universal principle, we have to remem- ber that the Arts express not only the moral temper, but the scholarship, of their age ; and we have thus to study them under the influence, at the same moment of, it may be, de- clining probity, and advancing science. Now in this the Arts of Northern and Southern Europe stand exactly opposed. The Northern temper never accepts the Catholic faith with force such as it reached in Italy. Our sincerest thirteenth century sculpture is cold and formal com- pared with that of the Pisani ; nor can any Northern poet be set for an instant beside Dante, as an exponent of Catholic faith : on the contrary, the Northern temper accepts the scholarship of the Reformation with absolute sincerity, while the Italians seek refuge from it in the partly scientific and completely lascivious enthusiasms of literature and painting, renewed under classical influence. We therefore, in the north, produce our Shakespeare and Holbein ; they their Petrarch and Raphael. And it is nearly impossible for you to study Shakespeare or Holbein too much, or Petrarch and Raphael too little. I do not say this, observe, in opposition to the Catholic faith, or to any other faith, but only to the attempts to sup- port whatsoever the faith may be, by ornament or eloquence, instead of action. Every man who honestly accepts, and acts upon, the knowledge granted to him by the circumstances of his time, has the faith which God intends him to have ; — as- suredly a good one, whatever the terms or form of it — every man who dishonestly refuses, or interestedly disobeys the MICHAEL ANGELO AND TIN TO RET. 215 knowledge open to him, holds a faith which God does not mean him to hold, and therefore a bad one, however beauti- ful or traditionally respectable. Do not, therefore, I entreat you, think that I speak with any purpose of defending one system of theology against another ; least of all, reformed against Catholic theology. There probably never was a system of religion so destructive to the loveliest arts and the loveliest virtues of men, as the modern Protestantism, which consists in an assured belief in the Divine forgiveness of all your sins, and the Divine correct- ness of all your opinions. But in their first searching and sincere activities, the doctrines of the Reformation produced the most instructive art, and the grandest literature, yet given to the world ; while Italy, in her interested resistance to those doctrines, polluted and exhausted the arts she already pos- sessed. Her iridescence of dying statesmanship — her magnif- icence of hollow piety, were represented in the arts of Venice and Florence by two mighty men on either side — Titian and Tin tore t, — Michael Angelo and Raphael. Of the calm and brave statesmanship, the modest and faithful religion, which had been her strength, I am content to name one chief representative artist at Venice, John Bellini. Let me now map out for you roughly, the chronological re- lations of these five men. It is impossible to remember the minor years, in dates ; I will give you them broadly in decades, and you can add what finesse afterwards you like. Recollect, first, the great year 1480. Twice four’s eight — you can’t mistake it. In that year Michael Angelo was five years old ; Titian, three years old ; Raphael, within three years of being born. So see how easily it comes. Michael Angelo five years old — and you divide six between Titian and Raphael, — three on each side of your standard year, 1480. Then add to 1480, forty years — an easy number to recollect, surely ; and you get the exact year of Raphael’s death, 1520. In that forty years all the new effort, and deadly catastro- phe took place. 1480 to 1520. Now, you have only to fasten to those forty years, the life 210 THE RELATION BETWEEN of Bellini, who represents the best art before them, and of Tintoret, who represents the best art after them. I cannot fit you these on with a quite comfortable exact- ness, but with very slight inexactness I can fit them firmly. John Bellini was ninety years old when he died. He lived fifty years before the great forty of change, and he saw the forty, and died. Then Tintoret is born ; lives eighty * years after the forty, and closes, in dying, the sixteenth century, and the great arts of the world. Those are the dates, roughly ; now for the facts connected with them. John Bellini precedes the change, meets, and resists it vic- toriously to his death. Nothing of flaw or failure is ever to be discerned in him. Then Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Titian, together, bring about the deadly change, playing into each other’s hands — Michael Angelo being the chief captain in evil ; Titian, in nat- ural force. Then Tintoret, himself alone nearly as strong as all the three, stands up for a last fight, for Venice, and the old time. He all but wins it at first ; but the three together are too strong for him. Michael Angelo strikes him down ; and the arts are ended. “E. disegno di Michel Agnolo.” That fatal motto was his death-warrant. And now, having massed out my subject, I can clearly sketch for you the changes that took place from Bellini, through Michael Angelo, to Tintoret. The art of Bellini is centrally represented by two pictures at Venice : one, the Madonna in the Sacristy of the Frari, with two saints beside her, and two angels at her feet ; the second, the Madonna with four Saints, over the second altar of San Zaccaria. In the first of these, the figures are under life size, and it represents the most perfect kind of picture for rooms ; in * If yon like to have it with perfect exactitude, recollect that Bellini died at true ninety, — Tintoret at eighty-two ; that Bellini’s death was four years before Raphael’s and that Tintoret was born four years before Bellini’s death. MICHAEL ANGELO AND TIN TO RET. 217 which, since it is intended to be seen close to the spectator, every right kind of finish possible to the hand may be wisely lavished ; yet which is not a miniature, nor in any wise petty, or ignoble. In the second, the figures are of life size, or a little more, and it represents the class of great pictures in which the boldest execution is used, but all brought to entire comple- tion. These two, having every quality in balance, are as far as my present knowledge extends, and as far as I can trust my judgment, the two best pictures in the world. Observe respecting them — First, they are both wrought in entirely consistent and per- manent material. The gold in them is represented by paint- ing, not laid on with real gold. And the painting is so se- cure, that four hundred years have produced on it, so far as I can see, no harmful change whatsoever, of any kind. Secondly, the figures in both are in perfect peace. No ac- tion takes place except that the little angels are playing on musical instruments, but with uninterrupted and effortless gesture, as in a dream. A choir of singing angels by La Rob- bia or Donatello would be intent on their music, or eagerly rapturous in it, as in temporary exertion : in the little choirs of cherubs by Luini in the Adoration of the Sheperds, in the Cathedral of Como, we even feel by their dutiful anxiety that there might be danger of a false note if they were less atten- tive. But Bellini’s angels, even the youngest, sing as calmly as the Fates weave. Let me at once point out to you that this calmness is the attribute of the entirely highest class of art : the introduction of strong or violently emotional incident is at once a confes- sion of inferiority. Those are the two first attributes of the best art. Faultless workmanship, and perfect serenity ; a continuous, not mo- mentary, action, — or entire inaction. You are to be interested in the living creatures ; not in what is happening to them. Then the third attribute of the best art is that it compels you to think of the spirit of the creature, and therefore of ita face, more than of its body. 218 TEE RELATION BETWEEN And the fourth is that in the face, you shall be led to see only beauty or joy ; — never vileness, vice, or pain. Those are the four essentials of the greatest art. I repeat them, they are easily learned. 1. Faultless and permanent workmanship. 2. Serenity in state or action. 3. The Face principal, not the body. 4. And the Face free from either vice or pain. It is not possible, of course, always literally to observe the second condition, that there shall be quiet action or none ; but Bellini’s treatment of violence in action you may see ex- emplified in a notable way in his St. Peter Martyr. The sol- dier is indeed striking the sword down into his breast ; but in the face of the Saint is only resignation, and faintness of death, not pain — that of the executioner is impassive ; and, while a painter of the later schools would have covered breast and sword with blood, Bellini allows no stain of it ; but pleases himself by the most elaborate and exquisite painting of a soft crimson feather in the executioner’s helmet. Now the changes brought about by Michael Angelo — and permitted, or persisted in calamitously, by Tintoret — are in the four points these : 1st. Bad workmanship. The greater part of all that these two men did is hastily and incompletely done ; and all that they did on a large scale in colour is in the best qualities of it perished. 2nd. Violence of transitional action. The figures flying, — falling, — striking, or biting. Scenes of Judgment, — battle, — martyrdom, — massacre ; anything that is in the acme of instantaneous interest and violent gesture. They cannot any more trust their public to care for anything but that. 3rd. Physical instead of mental interest. The body, and its anatomy, made the entire subject of interest : the face, shad- owed, as in the Puke Lorenzo,* unfinished, as in the Twilight, * Julian, rather. See Mr. Tyrwhitt’s notice of the lately discovered error, in his Lectures on Christian Art. MICHAEL ANGELO AND UNTO RET. 219 or entirely foreshortened, backshortened, and despised, among labyrinths of limbs, and mountains of sides and shoulders. 4th. Evil chosen rather than good. On the face itself, in- stead of joy or virtue, at the best, sadness, probably pride, often sensuality, and always, by preference, vice or agony as the subject of thought. In the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo, and the Last Judgment of Tintoret, it is the wrath of the Dies Irse, not its justice, in which they delight ; and their only passionate thought of the coming of Christ in the clouds, is that all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Those are the four great changes wrought by Michael An- gelo. I repeat them : 111 work for good. Tumult for Peace. The Flesh of Man for his Spirit. And the Curse of God for His Blessing. Hitherto, I have massed, necessarily, but most unjustly, Miohael Angelo and Tintoret together, because of their com- mon relation to the art of others. I shall now proceed to distinguish the qualities of their own. And first as to the general temper of the two men. Nearly every existing work by Michael Angelo is an attempt to execute something beyond his power, coupled with a fevered desire that his power may be acknowledged. He is always matching himself either against the Greeks whom he cannot rival, or against rivals whom he cannot forget. He is proud, yet not proud enough to be at peace ; melancholy, yet not deeply enough to be raised above petty pain ; and strong be- yond all his companion workmen, yet never strong enough to command his temper, or limit his aims. Tintoret, on the contrary, works in the consciousness of supreme strength, which cannot be wounded by neglect, and is only to be thwarted by time and space. He knows pre- cisely all that art can accomplish under given conditions ; de- termines absolutely how much of what can be done, he will himself for the moment choose to do ; and fulfils his purpose with as much ease as if, through his human body, were work- ing the great forces of nature. Not that he is ever satisfied 220 TEE RELATION BETWEEN witli what he has done, as vulgar and feeble artists are satisfied. He falls short of his ideal, more than any other man ; but not more than is necessary ; and is content to fall short of it to that degree, as he is content that his figures, however well painted, do not move nor speak. He is also entirely uncon- cerned respecting the satisfaction of the public. He neither cares to display his strength to them, nor convey his ideas to them ; when he finishes his work, it is because he is in the humour to do so ; and the sketch wdiich a meaner painter would have left incomplete to show how cleverly it was begun, Tintoret simply leaves because he has done as much of it as he likes. Both Raphael and Michael Angelo are thus, in the most vital of all points, separate from the great Venetian. They are always in dramatic attitudes, and always appealing to the public for praise. They are the leading athletes in the gym- nasium of the arts ; and the crowd of the circus cannot take its eyes away from them, while the Venetian walks or rests with the simplicity of a wild animal ; is scarcely noticed in his occasionally swifter motion ; when he springs, it is to please himself ; and so calmly, that no one thinks of estimating the distance covered. I do not praise him wholly in this. I praise him only for the well-founded pride, infinitely nobler than Michael Ange- lo’s. You do not hear of Tintoret’s putting any one into hell because they had found fault with his work. Tintoret would as soon have thought of putting a dog into hell for laying his paws on it. But he is to be blamed in this — that he thinks as little of the pleasure of the public, as of their opinion. A great painter’s business is to do what the public ask of him, in the way that shall be helpful and instructive to them. His relation to them is exactly that of a tutor to a child ; he is not to defer to their judgment, but he is carefully to form it ; — not to consult their pleasure for his own sake, but to consult it much for theirs. It was scarcely, however, possible that this should be the case between Tintoret and his Venetians ; he could not paint for the people, and in some respects he was happily protected by his subordination to the senate. Raphael MICHAEL ANGELO AND TINTOUET. 221 and Michael Angelo lived in a world of court intrigue, in which it was impossible to escape petty irritation, or refuse themselves the pleasure of mean victory. But Tintoret and Titian, even at the height of their reputation, practically lived as craftsmen in their workshops, and sent in samples of their wares, not to be praised or cavilled at, but to be either taken or refused. I can clearly and adequately set before you these relations between the great painters of Venice and her senate — rela- tions which, in monetary matters, are entirely right and exem- plary for all time — by reading to you two decrees of the Senate itself, and one petition to it. The first document shall be the decree of the Senate for giving help to John Bellini, in finishing the compartments of the great Council Chamber ; granting him three assistants — one of them Victor Carpaccio. The decree, first referring to some other business, closes in these terms : * “ There having moreover offered his services to this effect our most faithful citizen, Zuan Beilin, according to his agree- ment employing his skill and all speed and diligence for the completion of this work of the three pictures aforesaid, pro- vided he be assisted by the under written painters. “Be it therefore put to the ballot, that besides the afore- said Zuan Beilin in person, who will assume the superintend- ence of this work, there be added Master Victor Scarpaza, with a monthly salary of five ducats ; Master Victor, son of the late Mathio, at four ducats per month ; and the painter, Hieronymo, at two ducats per month ; they rendering speedy and diligent assistance to the aforesaid Zuan Beilin for the painting of the pictures aforesaid, so that they be completed well and carefully as speedily as possible. The salaries of the w T hich three master painters aforesaid, with the costs of col- ours and other necessaries, to be defrayed by our Salt office with the monies of the great chest. “ It being expressly declared that said pensioned painters be tied and bound to work constantly and daily, so that said * From the invaluable series of documents relating to Titian and his times, extricated by Mr. Rawdon Brown from the archives of Venice, and arranged and translated by him. 222 THE RELATION BETWEEN three pictures mav be completed as expeditiously as possible ; the artists aforesaid being pensioned at the good pleasure of this Council. “ Ayes. 23 “ Noes 3 €i Neutrals 0” This decree is the more interesting to us now, because it is the precedent to which Titian himself refers, when he first of- fers his services to the Senate. The petition which I am about to read to you, was read to the Council of Ten, on the last day of May, 1513, and the original draft of it is yet preserved in the Venice archives. “ 1 Most Illustrious Council of Ten. “ ‘ Most Serene Prince and most Excellent Lords. “ * I, Titian of Serviete de Cadore, having from my boyhood upwards set myself to learn the art of painting, not so much from cupidity of gain as for the sake of endeavouring to ac- quire some little fame, and of being ranked amongst those who now profess the said art “ ‘And altho heretofore, and likewise at this present, I have been earnestly requested by the Pope and other potentates to go and serve them, nevertheless, being anxious as your Seren- ity’s most faithful subject, for such I am, to leave some memo- rial in this famous city ; my determination is, should the Signory approve, to undertake, so long as I live, to come and paint in the Grand Council with my whole soul and ability ; commencing, provided your Serenity think of it, with the bat- tle-piece on the side towards the “ Piazza,” that being the most difficult ; nor down to this time has any one chosen to assume so hard a task. “ ‘ I, most excellent Lords, should be better pleased to re- ceive as recompense for the work to be done by me, such acknowledgments as may be deemed sufficient, and much less ; but because, as already stated by me, I care solely for my honour, and mere livelihood, should your Serenity approve, you will vouchsafe to grant me for my life, the next brokers- patent in the German factory,* by whatever means it may be- * Fondaco de Tedeschi. I saw the last wrecks of Giorgione’s frescoes on the outside of it in 1845. MICHAEL ANGELO AND TINTORET. 223 come vacant ; notwithstanding other expectancies ; with the terms, conditions, obligations, and exemptions, as in the case of Messer Zuan Bellini ; besides two youths whom I purpose bringing with me as assistants ; they to be paid by the Salt office ; as likewise the colours and all other requisites, as con- ceded a few months ago by the aforesaid most Illustrious Council to the said Messer Zuan ; for I promise to do such work and with so much speed and excellency as shall satisfy your Lordships to whom I humbly recommend myself.’ ” “ This proposal,” Mr. Brown tells us, “ in accordance with the petitions presented by Gentil Bellini and Alvise Vivarini, was immediately put to the ballot,” and earned thus — the decision of the Grand Council, in favour of Titian, being, ob- serve, by no means unanimous : — “Ayes 10 “ Noes 6 “Neutrals 0” Immediately follows on the acceptance of Titian’s services, this practical order : “We, Chiefs of the most Illustrious Council of Ten, tell and inform you Lords Proveditors for the State ; videlicet the one who is cashier of the Great Chest, and his successors, that for the execution of what has been decreed above in the most Illustrious Council aforesaid, you do have prepared all necessaries for the above written Titian according to his petition and demand, and as observed with regard to Juan Bellini, that he may paint ut supra ; paying from month to month the two youths whom said Titian shall present to you at the rate of four ducats each per month, as urged by him because of their skill and sufficiency in said art of painting, tho’ we do not mean the payment of their salary to commence until they begin work ; and thus will you do. Given on the 8th of June, 1513.” That is the way, then, great workmen wish to be paid, and that is the way wise men pay them for their work. The per- fect simplicity of such patronage leaves the painter free to do precisely what he thinks best : and a good painter always produces his best, with such license. 224 TEE kuLATION BETWEEN And now I shall take the four conditions of change in sue. cession, and examine the distinctions between the tw'o mas. ters in their acceptance of, or resistance to, them. I. The change of good and permanent workmanship forbad and insecure workmanship. You have often heard quoted the saying of Michael Angelo, that oil-painting was only fit for women and children. He said so, simply because he had neither the skill to lay a single touch of good oil-painting, nor the patience to over- come even its elementary difficulties. And it is one of my reasons for the choice of subject in this concluding lecture on Sculpture, that I may, with direct ref- erence to this much quoted saying of Michael Angelo, make the positive statement to you, that oil-painting is the Art of arts ; * that it is sculpture, drawing, and music, all in one, in- volving the technical dexterities of those three several arts ; that is to say — the decision and strength of the stroke of the chisel ; — the balanced distribution of appliance of that force necessary for gradation in light and shade ; — and the pas- sionate felicity of rightly multiplied actions, all unerring, which on an instrument produce right sound, and on canvas, living colour. There is no other human skill so great or so wonderful as the skill of fine oil-painting ; and there is no other art whose results are so absolutely permanent. Music is gone as soon as produced — marble discolours, — fresco fades, — glass darkens or decomposes — painting alone, well guarded, is practically everlasting. Of this splendid art Michael Angelo understood nothing ; he understood even fresco, imperfectly. Tintoret understood both perfectly ; but he — when no one would pay for his col- ours, (and sometimes nobody would even give him space of wall to paint on)— used cheap blue for ultramarine ; and he worked so rapidly, and on such huge spaces of canvas, that between damp and dry, his colours must go, for the most * I beg that this statement may be observed with attention. It is of great importance, as in opposition to the views usually held respecting the grave schools of painting. MICHAEL ANGELO AND T1NT0RET. 225 part ; but any complete oil-painting of his stands as well as one of Bellini’s own : while Michael Angelo’s fresco is defaced already in every part of it, and Lionardo’s oil-painting is all either gone black, or gone to nothing. II. Introduction of dramatic interest for the sake of excite- ment. I have already, in the Stones of Venice , illustrated Tintoret’s dramatic power at so great length, that I will not, to-day, make any farther statement to justify my assertion that it is as much beyond Michael Angelo’s as Shakspeare’s is beyond Milton’s — and somewhat with the same kind of differ- ence in manner. Neither can I speak to-day, time not per- mitting me, of the abuse of their dramatic power by Venetian or Florentine ; one thing only I beg you to note, that with full half of his strength, Tintoret remains faithful to the serenity of the past ; and the examples I have given you from his work in S. 50,* are, one, of the most splendid drama, and the other of the quietest portraiture, ever attained by the arts of the middle ages. Note also this respecting his picture of the Judgment, that, in spite of all the violence and wildness of the imagined scene, Tintoret has not given, so far as I remember, the spectacle of any one soul under infliction of actual pain. In all previous representations of the Last Judgment there had at least been one division of the picture set apart for the representation of torment ; and even the gentle Angelico shrinks from no ortho- dox detail in this respect : but Tintoret, too vivid and true in imagination to be able to endure the common thoughts of hell, represents indeed the wicked in ruin, but not in agony. They are swept down by flood and whirlwind — the place of them shall know them no more, but not one is seen in more than the natural pain of swift and irrevocable death. III. I pass to the third condition ; the priority of flesh to spirit, and of the body to the face. * The upper photograph in S. 50 is, however, not taken from the great Paradise, which is in too dark a position to be photographed, but from a study of it existing in a private gallery, and every way inferior. I have vainly tried to photograph portions of the picture itself. 226 TEE RELATION BETWEEN In this alone, of the four innovations, Michael Angelo and Tintoret have the Greeks with them ; — in this, alone, have they any right to be called classical. The Greeks gave them no excuse for bad workmanship ; none for temporary passion ; none for the preference of pain. Only in the honour done to the body may be alleged for them the authority of the ancients. You remember, I hope, how often in my preceding lectures I had to insist on the fact that Greek sculpture was essentially d7rpoo-aj7ros ; — independent, not only of the expression, but even of the beauty of the face. Nay, independent of its being so much as seen. The greater number of the finest pieces of it which remain for us to judge by, have had the heads broken away ; — we do not seriously miss them either from the Three Fates, the Ilissus, or the Torso of the Vatican. The face of the Theseus is so far destroyed by time that you can form little conception of its former aspect. But it is otherwise in Christian sculpture. Strike the head off even the rudest statue in the porch of Chartres and you will greatly miss it — the harm would be still worse to Donatello’s St. George : — and if you take the heads from a statue of Mino, or a painting of Angelico — very little but drapery will be left ; — drapery made redundant in quantity and rigid in fold, that it may conceal the forms, and give a proud or ascetic reserve to the actions, of the bodily frame. Bellini and his school, indeed, rejected at once the false theory, and the easy mannerism, of such religious design ; and painted the body without fear or reserve, as, in its subordination, honourable and lovely. But the inner heart and fire of it are by them always first thought of, and no action is given to it merely to show its beauty. Whereas the great culminating masters, and chiefly of these, Tintoret, Correggio, and Michael Angelo, delight in the body for its own sake, and cast it into every conceivable attitude, often in violation of all natural probability, that they may ex- hibit the action of its skeleton, and the contours of its flesh. The movement of a hand with Cima or Bellini expresses men- tal emotion only ; but the clustering and twining of the fin- gers of Correggio’s St. Catherine is enjoyed by the painter just in the same way as he would enjoy the twining of the MICHAEL ANOELO AND TINTORET. 227 branches of a graceful plant, and he compels them into intrica- cies which have little or no relation to St. Catherine’s mind. In the two drawings of Correggio, (S. 13 and 14,) it is the rounding of limbs and softness of foot resting on clouds which are principally thought of in the form of the Madonna ; and the countenance of St. John is foreshortened into a section, that full prominence may be given to the muscles of his arms and breast. So in Tintoret’s drawing of the Graces (S. 22), he has entirely neglected the individual character of the Goddesses, and been content to indicate it merely by attributes of dice or flower, so only that he may sufficiently display varieties of contour in thigh and shoulder. Thus far then, the Greeks, Correggio, Michael Angelo, Raphael, in his latter design, and Tintoret, in his scenic de- sign, (as opposed to portraiture) are at one. But the Greeks, Correggio, and Tintoret, are also together in this farther point ; that they all draw the body for true delight in it, and with knowledge of it living ; while Michael Angelo and Raphael draw the body for vanity, and from knowledge of it dead. The Venus of Melos, — Correggio’s Venus, (with Mercury teaching Cupid to read), — and Tintoret’s Graces, have the forms which their designers truly liked to see in women. They may have been wrong or right in liking those forms, but they carved and painted them for their pleasure, not for vanity. But the form of Michael Angelo’s Night is not one which he delighted to see in women. He gave it her, because he thought it was fine, and that he would be admired for reach- ing so lofty an ideal.* Again. The Greeks, Correggio, and Tintoret, learn the body from the living body, and delight in its breath, colour, and motion, f * He had, indeed, other and more solemn thoughts of the Night than Correggio ; and these he tried to express by distorting form, and mak- ing her partly Medusa-like. In this lecture, as above stated, I am only dwelling on points hitherto unnoticed of dangerous evil in the too much admired master. | Tintoret dissected, and used clay models, in the true academical manner, and produced academical results thereby , but all his fine work is done from life, like that of the Greeks. 228 THE RELATION BETWEEN Raphael and Michael Angelo learned it essentially from the corpse, and had no delight in it whatever, but great pride in showing that they knew all its mechanism ; they therefore sac- rifice its colours, and insist on its muscles, and surrender the breath and fire of it, for what is — not merely carnal, — but os- seous, knowing that for one person who can recognize the loveliness of a look, or the purity of a colour, there are a hun- dred who can calculate the length of a bone. The boy with the doves, in Raphael’s cartoon of the Beauti- ful Gate of the Temple, is not a child running, but a surgical diagram of a child in a running posture. Farther, when the Greeks, Correggio, and Tintoret, draw the body active, it is because they rejoice in its force, and when they draw it inactive, it is because they rejoice in its re- pose. But Michael Angelo and Raphael invent for it ingen- ious mechanical motion, because they think it uninteresting when it is quiet, and cannot, in their pictures, endure any person’s being simple-minded enough to stand upon both his legs at once, nor venture to imagine any one’s being clear enough in his language to make himself intelligible without pointing. In all these conditions, the Greek and Venetian treatment of the body is faithful, modest, and natural ; but Michael An- gelo’s dishonest, insolent, and artificial. But between him and Tintoret there is a separation deeper than all these, when we examine their treatment of the face. Michael Angelo’s vanity of surgical science rendered it impos- sible for him ever to treat the body as well as the Greeks treated it ; but it left him wholly at liberty to treat the face as ill ; and he did : and in some respects very curiously worse. The Greeks had, in all their work, one type of face for beau- tiful and honourable persons ; and another, much contrary to it, for dishonourable ones ; and they were continually setting these in opposition. Their type of beauty lay chiefly in the undisturbed peace and simplicity of all contours ; in full roundness of chin ; in perfect formation of the lips, showing neither pride nor care ; and, most of all, in a straight and firm line from the brow to the end of the nose. MICHAEL ANGELO AND TINTORET. 229 The Greek type of dishonourable persons, especially satyrs, fauns, and sensual powers, consisted in irregular excrescence and decrement of features, especially in flatness of the upper part of the nose, and projection of the end of it into a blunt knob. By the most grotesque fatality, as if the personal bodily in- jury he had himself received had passed with a sickly echo into his mind also, Michael Angelo is always dwelling on this satyric form of countenance; — sometimes violently carica- tures it, but never can help drawing it ; and all the best profiles in this collection at Oxford have what Mr. Kobinson calls a “nez retrousse but what is, in reality, the nose of the Greek Bacchic mask, treated as a dignified feature. For the sake of readers who cannot examine the drawings themselves, and lest I should be thought to have exaggerated in any wise the statement of this character, I quote Mr. Rob- inson’s description of the head, No. 9 — a celebrated and en- tirely authentic drawing, — (on which, I regret to say, my own pencil comment in passing is merely “ brutal lower lip, and broken nose : ”) — “ This admirable study was probably made from nature, ad- ditional character and more powerful expression having been given to it by a slight exaggeration of details, bordering on caricature (observe the protruding lower lip, ‘ nez retrousse/ and overhanging forehead). The head, in profile, turned to the right, is proudly planted on a massive neck and shoulders, and the short tufted hair stands up erect. The expression is that of fierce, insolent self-confidence and malevolence ; it is engraved in facsimile in Ottley’s ‘ Italian School of Design,’ and it is described in that work p. 33, as ‘ Finely expressive of scornfulness and pride, and evidently a study from nature.’ “ Michel Angelo has made use of the same ferocious-looking model on other occasions — see an instance in the well-known ‘Head of Satan’ engraved in Woodburn’s Lawrence Gallery (No. 16), and now in the Malcolm Collection. “ The study on the reverse of the leaf is more slightly ex- ecuted ; it represents a man of powerful frame, carrying a hog or boar in his arms before him, the upper part of his body thrown back to balance the weight, his head hidden by that of the animal, which rests on the man’s right shoulder. 230 TEE RELATION BETWEEN “The power displayed in every line and touch of these drawings is inimitable — the head was in truth one of the ‘teste divine,’ and the hand which executed it the ‘mano ter- ribile,’ so enthusiastically alluded to by Vasari.” Passing, for the moment, by No. 10, a “ young woman of majestic character, marked by a certain expression of brood- ing melancholy,” and “wearing on her head a fantastic cap or turban;” — by No. 11, a bearded man, “ wearing a conical Phrygian cap, his mouth wide open,” and his expression “ ob- streperously animated ; ” — and by No. 12, “ a middle-aged or old man, with a snub nose, high forehead, and thin, scrubby hail',” we will go on to the fairer examples of Divine heads in No. 32. “This splendid sheet of studies is probably one of the * carte stupendissime di teste divine,’ which Vasari says (Vita, p. 272) Michel Angelo executed, as presents or lessons for his artistic friends. Not improbably it is actually one of those made for his friend Tommaso dei Cavalieri, who, when young, was desirous of learning to draw.” But it is one of the chief misfortunes affecting Michael An- gelo’s reputation, that his ostentatious display of strength and science has a natural attraction for comparatively weak and pedantic persons. Amd this sheet of Vasari’s “ teste divine ” contains, in fact, not a single drawing of high quality — only one of moderate agreeableness, and two caricatured heads, one of a satyr with hair like the fur of animals, and one of a monstrous and sensual face, such as could only have occurred to the sculptor in a fatigued dream, and which in my own notes I have classed with the vile face in No. 45. Returning, however, to the divine heads above it, I wish you to note “ the most conspicuous and important of all,” a study for one of the Genii behind the Sibylla Libyca. This Genius, like the young woman of a majestic character, and the man with his mouth open, wears a cap, or turban ; oppo- site to him in the sheet, is a female in profile, “ wearing a hood of massive drapery.” And, when once your attention is di MICHAEL ANGELO AND TINTOLtET. 231 rected to this point, you will perhaps be surprised to find how many of Michael Angelo’s figures, intended to be sub- lime, have their heads bandaged. If you have been a student of Michael Angelo chiefly, you may easily have vitiated your taste to the extent of thinking that this is a dignified costume ; but if you study Greek work, instead, you will find that noth- ing is more important in the system of it than a finished dis- position of the hair ; and as soon as you acquaint yourself with the execution of carved marbles generally, you will perceive these massy fillets to be merely a cheap means of getting over a difficulty too great for Michael Angelo’s patience, and too exigent for his invention. They are not sublime arrangements, but economies of labour, and reliefs from the necessity of de- sign ; and if you had proposed to the sculptor of the Venus of Melos, or of the Jupiter of Olympia, to bind the ambrosial locks up in towels, you would most likely have been instantly bound, yourself ; and sent to the nearest temple of iEscula- pius. I need not, surely, tell you, — I need only remind, — how in all these points, the Venetians and Correggio reverse Michael Angelo’s evil, and vanquish him in good ; how they refuse caricature, rejoice in beauty, and thirst for opportunity of toil. The waves of hair in a single figure of Tintoret’s (the Mary Magdalen of the Paradise) contain more intellectual design in themselves alone than all the folds of unseemly linen in the Sistine chapel put together. In the fourth and last place, as Tintoret does not sacrifice, except as he is forced by the exigencies of display, the face for the body, so also he does not sacrifice happiness for pain. The chief reason why we all know the “ Last Judgment ” of Michael Angelo, and not the “ Paradise ” of Tintoret, is the same love of sensation which makes us read the Inferno of Dante, and not his Paradise ; and the choice, believe me, is our fault, not his : some farther evil influence is due to the fact that Michael Angelo has invested all his figures with picturesque and palpable elements of effect, while Tintoret has only made them lovely in themselves and has been com tent that they should deserve, not demand, your attention. 232 TEE RELATION BETWEEN You are accustomed to think the figures of Michael Angelo sublime — because they are dark, and colossal, and involved, and mysterious — because in a word, they look sometimes like shadows, and sometimes like mountains, and sometimes like spectres, but never like human beings. Believe me, yet once more, in what I told you long since — man can invent nothing nobler than humanity. He cannot raise his form into any- thing better than God made it, by giving it either the flight of birds or strength of beasts, by enveloping it in mist, or heaping it into multitude. Your pilgrim must look like a pil- grim in a straw hat, or you will not make him into one with cockle and nimbus ; an angel must look like an angel on the ground, as well as in the air ; and the much-denounced pre- Baphaelite faith that a saint cannot look saintly unless he has thin legs, is not more absurd than Michael Angelo’s, that a Sibyl cannot look Sibylline unless she has thick ones. All that shadowing, storming, and coiling of his, when you look into it, is mere stage decoration, and that of a vulgar kind. Light is, in reality, more awful than darkness — modesty more majestic than strength ; and there is truer sublimity in the sweet joy of a child, or the sweet virtue of a maiden, than in the strength of Antgeus, or thunder-clouds of iEtna. Now, though in nearly all his greater pictures, Tintoret is entirely carried away by his sympathy wdth Michael Angelo, and conquers him in his own field ; — outflies him in motion, outnumbers him in multitude, outwits him in fancy, and out- flames him in rage, — he can be just as gentle as he is strong : and that Paradise, though it is the largest picture in the world, without any question, is also the thoughtfullest, and most precious. The Thoughtfullest ! — it would be saying but little, as far as Michael Angelo is concerned. For consider of it yourselves. You have heard, from your youth up, (and all educated persons have heard for three centuries), of this Last Judgment of his, as the most sublime picture in existence. The subject of it is one which should certainly be interest- ing to you, in one of two ways. MICHAEL ANGELO AND TINT ORE T. 233 If you never expect to be judged for any of your own doings, and the tradition of the coming of Christ is to you as an idle tale — still, think what a wonderful tale it would be, were it well told. You are at liberty, disbelieving it, to range the fields — Elysian and Tartarean, of all imagination. You may play with it, since it is false ; and what a play would it not be, well written ? Do you think the tragedy, or the mir- acle play, or the infinitely Divina Commedia of the Judgment of the astonished living who were dead ; — the undeceiving of the sight of every human soul, understanding in an instant all the shallow, and depth of past life and future, — face to face with both, — and with God : — this apocalypse to all intellect, and completion to all passion, this minute and individual drama of the perfected history of separate spirits, and of their finally accomplished affections !— think you, I say, all this was well told by mere heaps of dark bodies curled and convulsed in space, and fall as of a crowd from a scaffolding, in writhed concretions of muscular pain ? But take it the other way. Suppose you believe, be it never so dimly or feebly, in some kind of Judgment that is to be ; — that you admit even the faint contingency of retribution, and can imagine, with vivacity enough to fear, that in this life, at all events, if not in another — there may be for you a Visitation of God, and a questioning — What hast thou done ? The picture, if it is a good one, should have a deeper interest, surely on this postulate ? Thrilling enough, as a mere im- agination of what is never to be— now, as a conjecture of what is to be, held the best that in eighteen centuries of Christian- ity has for men’s eyes been made ; — Think of it so ! And then, tell me, whether you yourselves, or any one you have known, did ever at any time receive from this picture any, the smallest vital thought, warning, quickening, or help ? It may have appalled, or impressed you for a time, as a thun- der-cloud might : but has it ever taught you anything — chas- tised in you anything — confirmed a purpose — fortified a re- sistance purified a passion ? I know that for you, it has done none of these things ; and I know also that, for others, it has done very different things. In every vain and proud 234 THE RELATION BETWEEN designer wlio has since lived, that dark carnality of Michael Angelo’s has fostered insolent science, and fleshly imagination. Daubers and blockheads think themselves painters, and arb received by the public as such, if they know how to fore- shorten bones and decipher entrails ; and men with capacity of art either shrink away (the best of them always do) into petty felicities and innocencies of genre painting — landscapes, cattle, family breakfasts, village schoolings, and the like ; or else, if they have the full sensuous art-faculty that would have made true painters of them, being taught, from their youth up, to look for and learn the body instead of the spirit, have learned it, and taught it to such purpose, that at this hour, when I speak to you, the rooms of the Royal Academy of Eng- land, receiving also what of best can be sent there by the masters of France, contain not one picture honourable to the arts of their age ; and contain many which are shameful in their record of its manners. Of that, hereafter. I will close to-day by giving you some brief account of the scheme of Tintoret’s Paradise, in justifi- cation of my assertion that it is the though tfullest as well as mightiest picture in the world. In the highest centre is Christ, leaning on the globe of the earth, which is of dark crystal. Christ is crowned with a glory as of the sun, and all the picture is lighted by that glory, descending through circle beneath circle of cloud, and of fly- ing or throned spirits. The Madonna, beneath Christ, and at some interval from Him, kneels to Him. She is crowned with the Seven stars, and kneels on a cloud of angels, whose wings change into ruby fire, where they are near her. The three great Archangels meeting from three sides, fly towards Christ. Michael delivers up his scales and sword. He is followed by the Thrones and Principalities of the Earth ; so inscribed — Throni — Principatus. The Spirits of the Thrones bear scales in their hands ; and of the Prince- doms, shining globes : beneath the wings of the last of these are the four great teachers and lawgivers, St. Ambrose. St. Jerome, St. Gregory, St. Augustine, and behind St. Aug us- MICHAEL ANGELO AND TINTORET. 235 cine stands his mother, watching him, her chief joy in Para- dise. Under the Thrones, are set the Apostles, St. Paul separated a little from the rest, and put lowest, yet principal ; under St. Paul, is St. Christopher, bearing a massive globe, with a cross upon it : but to mark him as the Christ-bearer, since here in Paradise he cannot have the child on his shoulders, Tintoret has thrown on the globe a flashing stellar reflection of the sun round the head of Christ. All this side of the picture is kept in glowing colour, — the four Doctors of the church have golden mitres and mantles ; except the Cardinal, St. Jerome, who is in burning scarlet, his naked breast glowing, warm with noble life, — the darker red of his robe relieved against a white glory. Opposite to Michael, Gabriel flies toward the Madonna, having in his hand the Annunciation lily, large, and triple- blossomed. Above him, and above Michael, equally, extends a cloud of white angels, inscribed “ Serafim ; ” but the group following Gabriel, and corresponding to the Throni following Michael, is inscribed “ Cherubini.” Under these are the great prophets, and singers and foretellers of the happiness or of the sorrow of time. David, and Solomon, and Isaiah, and Amos of the herdsmen. David has a colossal golden psaltery laid horizontally across his knees ; — two angels behind him dictate to him as he sings, looking up towards Christ ; but one strong angel sweeps down to Solomon from among the cherubs, and opens a book, resting it on the head of Solomon, who looks down earnestly, unconscious of it ; — to the left of David, separate from the group of prophets, as Paul from the apostles, is Moses, dark-robed in the full light, withdrawn far behind him, Abraham, embracing Isaac with his left arm, and near him, pale St. Agnes. In front, nearer, dark and colossal, stands the glorious figure of Santa Giustina of Padua ; then a little subordinate to her, St. Catherine, and, far on the left, and high, St. Barbara leaning on her tower. In front, nearer, flies Raphael ; and under him is the four-square group of the Evangelists. Beneath them, on the left, Noah ; on the right, Adam and Eve, both floating unsupported by cloud or angel • 236 TEE RELATION BETWEEN Noah buoyed by the Ark, which he holds above him, and it is this into which Solomon gazes down, so earnestly. Eve’s face is, perhaps, the most beautiful ever painted by Tintoret — full in light, but dark-eyed. Adam floats beside her, his figure fad- ing into a winged gloom, edged in the outline of fig-leaves. Far down, under these, central in the lowest part of the pict- ure, rises the Angel of the Sea, praying for Venice ; for Tin- toret conceives his Paradise as existing now, not as in the fu- ture. I at first mistook this soft Angel of the Sea for the Magdalen, for he is sustained by other three angels on either side, as the Magdalen is, in designs of earlier time, because of the verse, “ There is joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner that repenteth.” But the Magdalen is on the right, behind St. Monica ; and on the same side, but lowest of all, Rachel, among the angels of her children, gathered now again to her for ever. I have no hesitation in asserting this picture to be by far the most precious work of art of any kind whatsoever, now existing in the world ; and it is, I believe, on the eve of final destruction ; for it is said that the angle of the great council- chamber is soon to be rebuilt ; and that process will involve the destruction of the picture by removal, and, far more, by repainting. I had thought of making some effort to save it by an appeal in London to persons generally interested in the arts ; but the recent desolation of Paris has familiarized us with destruction, and I have no doubt the answer to me would be, that Venice must take care of her own. But re- member, at least, that I have borne witness to you to-day of the treasures that we forget, while we amuse ourselves with the poor toys, and the petty, or vile, arts, of our own time. The years of that time have perhaps come, when we are to be taught to look no more to the dreams of painters, either for knowledge of Judgment, or of Paradise. The anger of Heaven will not longer, I think, be mocked for our amuse- ment ; and perhaps its love may not always be despised by our pride. Believe me, all the arts, and all the treasures of men, are fulfilled and preserved to them only, so far as they have chosen first, with their hearts, not the curse of God, but MICHAEL ANGELO AND TIN TO RET. 237 His blessing. Our Earth is now encumbered with ruin, Heaven is clouded by Death. May we not wisely judge selves in some things now, instead of amusing ourselves the painting of judgments to come ? , our our- with The Ancient Shores op Arno, VAL D’ARNO TEN LECTURES ON THE TUSCAN ART DIRECTLY ANTECEDENT TO THE FLOREN- TINE YEAR OF VICTORIES GIVEN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD IN MICHAELMAS TERM, 1873 VAL D’ARNO LECTURE L NICHOLAS THE PISAN. 1. On this day, of this month, the 20th of October, six hundred and twenty-three years ago, the merchants and trades- men of Florence met before the church of Santa Croce ; marched through the city to the palace of their Podesta ; de- posed their Podesta ; set over themselves, in his place, a knight belonging to an inferior city ; called him “ Captain of the People ; ” appointed under him a Signory of twelve Ancients chosen from among themselves ; hung a bell for him on the tower of the Lion, that he might ring it at need, and gave him the flag of Florence to bear, half white, and half red. The first blow struck upon the bell in that tower of the Lion began the tolling for the passing away of the feudal sys- tem, and began the joy-peal, or carillon, for whatever deserves joy, in that of our modern liberties, whether of action or of trade. 2. Within the space of our Oxford term from that day, namely, on the 13th of December in the same year, 1250, died, at Ferentino, in Apulia, the second Frederick, Emperor of Germany ; the second also of the two great lights which in his lifetime, according to Dante’s astronomy, ruled the world, — whose light being quenched, “ the land which was once the residence of courtesy and valour, became the haunt 242 VAL D'ARNO. of all men who are ashamed to be near the good, or to speak to them.” “ In sill paese chadice e po riga solea valore e cortesia trovar si prima che federigo bavessi briga, or puo sicuramente indi passarsi per qualunche lasciassi per vergogna di ragionar co buoni, e appressarsi. ” Purg., Cant. 16. 3. The “ Paese che Adice e Po riga” is of course Lom- bardy; and might have been enough distinguished by the name of its principal river. But Dante has an especial reason for naming the Adige. It is always by the valley of the Adige that the power of the German Caisars descends on Italy ; and that battlemented bridge, which doubtless many of you re- member, thrown over the Adige at Yerona, was so built that the German riders might have secure and constant access to the city. In which city they had their first stronghold in Italy, aided therein by the great family of the Montecchi, Montacutes, Mont-aigu-s, or Montagues ; lords, so called, of the mountain peaks ; in feud with the family of the Cappel- letti, — hatted, or, more properly, scarlet-hatted, persons. And this accident of nomenclature, assisted by your present famil- iar knowledge of the real contests of the sharp mountains with the flat caps, or petasoi, of cloud, (locally giving Mont Pilate its title, “ Pileatus,”) may in many points curiously illustrate for you that contest of Frederick the Second with Innocent the Fourth, w T hich in the good of it and the evil alike, represents to all time the war of the solid, rational, and earthly authority of the King, and State, with the more or less spectral, hooded, imaginative, and nubiform authority of the Pope, and Church. 4. It will be desirable also that you clearly learn the ma- terial relations, governing spiritual ones, — as of the Alps to their clouds, so of the plains to their rivers. And of these rivers, chiefly note the relation to each other, first, of the Adige and Po ; then of the Arno and Tiber. For the Adige, NICHOLAS THE PISAN. 243 representing among the rivers and fountains of waters the channel of Imperial, as the Tiber of the Papal power, and the strength of the Coronet being founded on the white peaks that look down upon Hapsburg and Hohenzollern, as that of the Scarlet Cap in the marsh of the Campagna, “ quo tenuis in sicco aqua destituisset,” the study of the policies and arts of the cities founded in the two great valleys of Lombardy and Tuscany, so far as they were affected by their bias to the Emperor, or the Church, will arrange itself in your minds at once in a symmetry as clear as it will be, in our future work, secure and suggestive. 5. “ Tenuis, in sicco.” How literally the words apply, as to the native streams, so to the early states or establishings of the great cities of the world. And you will find that the policy of the Coronet, with its tower-building ; the policy of the Hood, with its dome-building ; and the policy of the bare brow, with its cot-building, — the three main associations of human energy to which we owe the architecture of our earth, (in contradistinction to the dens and caves of it,) — are curi- ously and eternally governed by mental laws, corresponding to the physical ones which are ordained for the rocks, the clouds, and the streams. The tower, which many of you so well remember the daily sight of, in your youth, above the “winding shore” of Thames, — the tower upon the hill of London ; the dome which still rises above its foul and terrestrial clouds ; and the walls of this city itself, which has been “alma,” nourishing in gen- tleness, to the youth of England, because defended from ex- ternal hostility by the difficultly fordable streams of its plain, may perhaps, in a few years more, be swept away as heaps of useless stone ; but the rocks, and clouds, and rivers of our country will yet, one day, restore to it the glory of law, of religion, and of life. 6. I am about to ask you to read the hieroglyphs upon the architecture of a dead nation, in character greatly resembling our own, — in laws and in commerce greatly influencing our own ; — in arts, still, from her grave, tutress of the present world. I know that it will be expected of me to explain the 244 VAL D'ARNO. merits of her arts, without reference to the wisdom of her laws ; and to describe the results of both, without investi- gating the feelings which regulated either. I cannot do this; but I will at once end these necessarily vague, and perhaps premature, generalizations ; and only ask you to study some portions of the life and work of two men, father and son, citizens of the city in which the energies of this great people were at first concentrated ; and to deduce from that study the conclusions, or follow out the inquiries, which it may naturally suggest. 7. It is the modern fashion to despise Vasari. He is indeed despicable, whether as historian or critic, — not least in his ad- miration of Michael Angelo ; nevertheless, he records the traditions and opinions of his day ; and these you must accu- rately know, before you can wisely correct. I will take leave, therefore, to begin to-day with a sentence from Vasari, which many of you have often heard quoted, but of which, perhaps, few have enough observed the value. “Niccola Pisano finding himself under certain Greek sculptors who were carving the figures and other intaglio ornaments of the cathedral of Pisa, and of the temple of St. John, and there being, among many spoils of marbles, brought by the Pisan fleet,* some ancient tombs, there was one among the others most fair, on which was sculptured the hunting of Meleager.” f Get the meaning and contents of this passage well into your minds. In the gist of it, it is true, and very notable. 8. You are in mid thirteenth century ; 1200-1300. The Greek nation has been dead in heart upwards of a thousand years ; its religion dead, for six hundred. But through the wreck of its faith, and death in its heart, the skill of its hands, and the cunning of its design, instinctively linger. In * “ Armata.” The proper word for a land army is “esercito.” t Vo1 - P- 60, of Mrs. Foster’s English translation, to which I shall always refer, in order that English students may compare the context if they wish. But the pieces of English which I give are my own direct translation, varying, it will be found, often, from Mrs. Foster’s, in mi- nute, hut not unimportant, particulars. NICHOLAS THE PISAN. 245 the centuries of Christian power, the Christians are still unable to build but under Greek masters, and by pillage of Greek shrines ; and their best workman is only an apprentice to the ‘ Grseculi esurientes ’ who are carving the temple of St. John. 9. Think of it. Here has the New Testament been de- clared for 1200 years. No spirit of wisdom, as yet, has been given to its workmen, except that which has descended from the Mars Hill on which St. Paul stood contemptuous in pity. No Bezaleel arises, to build new tabernacles, unless he has been taught by Daedalus. 10. It is necessary, therefore, for you first to know pre- cisely the manner of these Greek masters in their decayed power ; the manner which Vasari calls, only a sentence be- fore, “ That old Greek manner, blundering, disproportioned,” — Goffa, e sproporzionata. “Goffa,” the very word which Michael Angelo uses of Perugino. Behold, the Christians despising the Dunce Greeks, as the Infidel modernists despise the Dunce Christians.* 11. I sketched for you, when I was last at Pisa, a few arches of the apse of the duomo, and a small portion of the sculpture of the font of the Temple of St. John. I have placed them in your rudimentary series, as examples of “quella vecchia maniera Greca, goffa e sproporzionata.” My own judgment respecting them is, — and it is a judgment founded on knowledge which you may, if you choose, share with me, after working with me, — that no architecture on this grand scale, so delicately skilful in execution, or so daintily disposed in proportion, exists elsewhere in the world. 12. Is Vasari entirely wrong then ? No, only half wrong, but very fatally half wrong. There are Greeks, and Greeks. This head with the inlaid dark iris in its eyes, from the font of St. John, is as pure as the sculpture of early Greece, a hundred years before Phidias ; and it is so delicate, that having drawn with equal care this and the best work of the Lombardi ■“Compare “Ariadne Florentina,” § 46. 246 VAL D'ARNO. at Venice (in the church of the Miracoli), I found this to possess the more subtle qualities of design. And yet, in the cloisters of St. John Lateran at Rome, you have Greek work, if not contemporary with this at Pisa, yet occupying a paral- lel place in the history of architecture, which is abortive, and monstrous beyond the power of any words to describe. Vasari knew no difference between these two kinds of Greek work. Nor do your modern architects. To discern the dif- ference between the sculpture of the font of Pisa, and the span- drils of the Lateran cloister, requires thorough training of the hand in the finest methods of draughtsmanship ; and, sec- ondly, trained habit of reading the mythology and ethics of design. I simply assure you of the fact at present ; and if you work, you may have sight and sense of it. 13. There are Greeks, and Greeks, then, in the twelfth cen- tury, differing as much from each other as vice, in all ages, must differ from virtue. But in Vasari’s sight they are alike ; in ours, they must be so, as far as regards our present purpose. As men of a school, they are to be summed under the general name of ‘ Byzantines ; ’ their work all alike showing specific characters of attenuate, rigid, and in many respects offen- sively unbeautiful, design, to which Vasari’s epithets of “goffa, e sproporzionata ” are naturally applied by all persons trained only in modern principles. Under masters, then, of this By- zantine race, Niccola is working at Pisa. 14. Among the spoils brought by her fleets from Greece, is a sarcophagus, with Meleager’s hunt on it, wrought “ con bellissima maniera,” says Vasari. You may see that sarcophagus — any of you who go to Pisa ; — touch it, for it is on a level with your hand ; study it, as Nic- cola studied it, to your mind’s content. Within ten yards of it, stand equally accessible pieces of Niccola’s own work and of his son’s. Within fifty yards of it, stands the Byzantine font of the chapel of St. John. Spend but the good hours of a single day quietly by these three pieces of marble, and you may learn more than in general any of you bring home from an entire tour in Italy. But how many of you ever yet went into that temple of St John, knowing what to look for ; or NICHOLAS THE PISAN 247 spent as much time in the Campo Santo of Pisa, as you do in Mr. Ryman’s shop on a rainy day ? 15. The sarcophagus is not, however, (with Vasari’s pardon) in * bellissima maniera ’ by any means. But it is in the clas- sical Greek manner instead of the Byzantine Greek manner. You have to learn the difference between these. Now I have explained to you sufficiently, in “Aratra Pente- lici,” what the classical Greek manner is. The manner and matter of it being easily summed — as those of natural and unaffected life ; — nude life when nudity is right and pure ; not otherwise. To Niccola, the difference between this natural Greek school, and the Byzantine, was as the difference between the bull of Thurium and of Delhi, (see Plate 19 of “ Aratra Pentelici ”). Instantly he followed the natural fact, and became the Father of Sculpture to Italy. 16. Are we, then, also to be strong by following the natural fact? Yes, assuredly. That is the beginning and end of all my teaching to you. But the noble natural fact, not the ignoble. You are to study men ; not lice nor entozoa. And you are to study the souls of men in their bodies, not their bodies only. Mulready’s drawings from the nude are more degraded and bestial than the worst grotesques of the Byzantine or even the Indian image makers. And your modern mob of English and American tourists, following a lamplighter through the Vati- can to have pink light thrown for them on the Apollo Belvi- dere, are farther from capacity of understanding Greek art, than the parish charity boy, making a ghost out of a turnip, with a candle inside. 17. Niccola followed the facts, then. He is the Master of Naturalism in Italy. And I have drawn for you his lioness and cubs, to fix that in your minds. And beside it, I put the Lion of St. Mark’s, that you may see exactly the kind of change he made. The Lion of St. Mark’s (all but his wings, wffiich have been made and fastened on in the fifteenth century), is in the central Byzantine manner ; a fine decorative piece of work, descending in true genealogy from the Lion of Nemea, 248 VAL D'ABNO. and the crested skin of him that clothes the head of the Her- acles of Camarina. It has all the richness of Greek Daedal work, — nay, it has fire and life beyond much Greek Daedal work ; but in so far as it is non-natural, symbolic, decorative, and not like an actual lion, it would be felt by Niccola Pisano to be imperfect. And instead of this decorative evangelical preacher of a lion, with staring eyes, and its paw on a gospel, he carves you a quite brutal and maternal lioness, with affec- tionate eyes, and paw set on her cub. 18. Fix that in your minds, then. Niccola Pisano is the Master of Naturalism in Italy, — therefore elsewhere ; of Nat- uralism, and all that follows. Generally of truth, common- sense, simplicity, vitality, — and of all these, with consummate power. A man to be enquired about, is not he ? and will it not make a difference to you whether you look, when you travel in Italy, in his rough early marbles for this fountain of life, or only glance at them because your Murray’s Guide tells you, — and think them “ odd old things ” ? 19. We must look for a moment more at one odd old thing — the sarcophagus which was his tutor. Upon it is carved the hunting of Meleager ; and it was made, or by tradition re- ceived as, the tomb of the mother of the Countess Matilda. I must not let you pass by it without noticing two curious co- incidences in these particulars. First, in the Greek subject which is given Niccola to read. The boar, remember, is Diana’s enemy. It is sent upon the fields of Calydon in punishment of the refusal of the Calydo- nians to sacrifice to her. ‘ You have refused me ,’ she said ; ‘ you will not have Artemis Laphria, Forager Diana, to range in your fields. You shall have the Forager Swine, instead.’ Meleager and Atalanta are Diana’s servants, — servants of all order, purity, due sequence of season, and time. The orbed architecture of Tuscany, with its sculptures of the suc- cession of the labouring months, as compared with the rude vaults and monstrous imaginations of the past, was again the victory of Meleager. 20. Secondly, take what value there is in the tradition that this sarcophagus was made the tomb of the mother of the Plate I.— The Pisan Latona. Angle of Panel of the Adoration, in Niccola’s Pulpit. NICHOLAS THE PISAN. 249 Countess Matilda. If you look to the fourteenth chapter of the third volume of “Modern Painters,” you will find the mythic character of the Countess Matilda, as Dante employed it, explained at some length. She is the representative of Natural Science as opposed to Theological. 21. Chance coincidences merely, these ; but full of teaching for us, looking back upon the past. To Niccola, the piece of marble was, primarily, and perhaps exclusively, an example of free chiselling, and humanity of treatment. What else it was to him, — what the spirits of Atalanta and Matilda could be- stow on him, depended on what he was himself. Of which Yasari tells you nothing. Not whether he was gentleman or clown — rich or poor — soldier or sailor. Was he never, then, in those fleets that brought the marbles back from the rav- aged Isles of Greece ? was he at first only a labourer’s boy among the scaffoldings of the Pisan apse, — his apron loaded with dust — and no man praising him for his speech ? Rough he was, assuredly ; probably poor ; fierce and energetic, be- yond even the strain of Pisa, — just and kind, beyond the cus- tom of his age, knowing the Judgment and Love of God : and a workman, with all his soul and strength, all his days. 22. You hear the fame of him as of a sculptor only. It is right that you should ; for every great architect must be a sculptor, and be renowned, as such, more than by his build- ing. But Niccola Pisano had even more influence on Italy as a builder than as a carver. For Italy, at this moment, wanted builders more than carvers ; and a change was passing through her life, of which external edifice was a necessary sign. I complained of you just now that you never looked at the Byzantine font in the temple of St. John. The sacristan generally will not let you. He takes you to a particular spot on the floor, and sings a musical chord. The chord returns in prolonged echo from the chapel roof, as if the building were all one sonorous mar- ble befl. Which indeed it is ; and travellers are always greatly amused at being allowed to ring this bell ; but it never occurs to them to ask how it came to be ringable : — how that tintinnabulate 250 VAL D 'ARNO. roof differs from tlie dome of the Pantheon, expands into the dome of Florence, or declines into the whispering gallery of St. Paul’s. 23. When you have had full satisfaction of the tintinnabu- late roof, you are led by the sacristan and Murray to Niccola Pisano’s pulpit ; which, if you have spare time to examine it, you find to have six sides, to be decorated wdth tablets of sculpture, like the sides of the sarcophagus, and to be sus- tained on seven pillars, three of w r hich are themselves carried on the backs of as many animals. All this arrangement had been contrived before Niccola’s time, and executed again and again. But behold ! between the capitals of the pillars and the sculptured tablets there are interposed five cusped arches, the hollow beneath the pulpit showing dark through their foils. You have seen such cusped arches before, you think ? Yes, gentlemen, you have ; but the Pisans had not. And that intermediate layer of the pulpit means — the change, in a word, for all Europe, from the Parthenon to Amiens Cathe- dral. For Italy it means the rise of her Gothic dynasty ; it mean the duomo of Milan instead of the temple of Paestum. 24 I say the duomo of Milan, only to put the change well before your eyes, because you all know that building so welL The duomo of Milan is of entirely bad and barbarous Gothic, but the passion of pinnacle and fret is in it, visibly to you, more than in other buildings. It will therefore serve to show best what fulness of change this pulpit of Niccola Pisano signifies. In it there is no passion of pinnacle nor of fret. You see the edges of it, instead of being bossed, or knopped, or crock- eted, are mouldings of severest line. No vaulting, no clustered shafts, no traceries, no fantasies, no perpendicular flights of aspiration. Steady pillars, each of one polished block ; useful capitals, one trefoiled arch between them ; your panel above it ; thereon your story of the founder of Christianity. The whole standing upon beasts, they being indeed the foundation of us, (which Niccola knew far better than Mr. Darwin) ; Eagle to carry your Gospel message — Dove you think it ought to be ? Plate II. — Niccola Pisano’s Pulpit. NICHOLAS THE PISAN 251 Eagle, says Niccola, and not as symbol of St. John Evangelist only, but behold ! with prey between its claws. For the Gos- pel, it is Niccola’s opinion, is not altogether a message that you may do whatever you like, and go straight to heaven. Finally, a slab of marble, cut hollow a little to bear your book ; space enough for you to speak from at ease, — and here is your first architecture of Gothic Christianity ! 25. Indignant thunder of dissent from German doctors, — clamour from French savants. ‘ What ! and our Treves, and our Strasburg, and our Poictiers, and our Chartres! And you call this thing the first architecture of Christianity ! * Yes, my French and German friends, very fine the buildings you have mentioned are ; and I am bold to say I love them far better than you do, for you will run a railroad through any of them any day that you can turn a penny by it. I thank you also, Germans, in the name of our Lady of Strasburg, for your bullets and fire ; and I thank you, Frenchmen, in the name of our Lady of Rouen, for your new haberdashers’ shops in the Gothic town ; — meanwhile have patience with me a little, and let me go on. 26. No passion of fretwork, or pinnacle whatever, I said, is in this Pisan pulpit. The trefoiled arch itself, pleasant as it is, seems forced a little ; out of perfect harmony with the rest (see Plate II.). Unnatural, perhaps, to Niccola? Altogether unnatural to him, it is; such a thing never would have come into his head, unless some one had shown it him. Once got into his head, he puts it to good use ; per- haps even he will let this somebody else put pinnacles and crockets into his head, or at least, into his son’s, in a little while. Pinnacles, — crockets, — it may be, even traceries. The ground- tier of the baptistery is round-arched, and has no pinnacles ; but look at its first story. The clerestory of the Duomo of Pisa has no traceries, but look at the cloister of its Campo Santo. 27. I pause at the words ; — for they introduce a new group of thoughts, which presently we must trace farther. The Holy Field ; — field of burial. The “ cave of Machpelah which is before Mamre,” of the Pisans. “ There they buried 252 VAL D'AliNO. Abraham, and Sarah his wife ; there they buried Isaac, and Eebekah his wife ; and there I buried Leah.” How do you think such a field becomes holy, — how sep- arated, as the resting-place of loving kindred, from that other field of blood, bought to bury strangers in ? When you have finally succeeded, by your gospel of mam- mon, in making all the men of your own nation not only strangers to each other, but enemies ; and when your every churchyard becomes therefore a field of the stranger, the kneeling hamlet will vainly drink the chalice of God in the midst of them. The field will be unholy. No cloisters of noble history can ever be built round such an one. 28. But the very earth of this at Pisa was holy, as you know. That “ armata ” of the Tuscan city brought home not only marble and ivory, for treasure ; but earth, — a fleet’s burden, — from the place where there was healing of soul’s leprosy : and their field became a place of holy tombs, pre- pared for its office with earth from the land made holy by one tomb ; which all the knighthood of Christendom had been pouring out its life to win. 29. I told you just now that this sculpture of Niccola’s was the beginning of Christian architecture. How do you judge that Christian architecture in the deepest meaning of it to differ from all other ? All other noble architecture is for the glory of living gods and men ; but this is for the glory of death, in God and man. Cathedral, cloister, or tomb, — shrine for the body of Christ, or for the bodies of the saints. All alike signifying death to this world ; — life, other than of this world. Observe, I am not saying how far this feeling, be it faith, or be it imagination, is true or false ; — I only desire you to note that the power of all Christian work begins in the niche of the catacomb and depth of the sarcophagus, and is to the end definable as architecture of the tomb. 30. Not altogether, and under every condition, sanctioned in doing such honour to the dead by the Master of it. Not every grave is by His command to be worshipped. Graves there may be — too little guarded, yet dishonourable ; — “ ye JOHN THE PISAN. 253 are as graves that appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them. 5 ' And graves too much guarded, yet dishonourable, “which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but are within full of all uncleanness. ” Or graves, themselves honourable, yet which it may be, in us, a crime to adorn. “For they indeed killed them, and ye build their sepulchres. ” Questions, these, collateral ; or to be examined in due time ; for the present it is enough for us to know that all Christian architecture, as such, has been hitherto essentially of tombs. It has been thought, gentlemen, that there is a fine Gothic revival in your streets of Oxford, because you have a Gothic door to your County Bank : Bemember, at all events, it was other kind of buried treas- ure, and bearing other interest, which Niccola Pisano’s Gothic was set to guard. LECTURE n. JOHN THE PISAN. 31. I closed my last lecture with the statement, on which I desired to give you time for reflection, that Christian archi- tecture was, in its chief energy, the adornment of tombs, — having the passionate function of doing honour to the dead. But there is an ethic, or simply didactic and instructive architecture, the decoration of which you will find to be nor- mally representative of the virtues which are common alike to Christian and Greek. And there is a natural tendency to adopt such decoration, and the modes of design fitted for it, in civil buildings.* 32. Civil, or civic, I say, as opposed to military. But again observe, there are two kinds of military building. One, the robber’s castle, or stronghold, out of which he issues to pil- lage ; the other, the honest man’s castle, or stronghold, into *“ These several rooms were indicated by symbol and device: Vic- tory for the soldier, Hope for the exile, the Muses for the poets, Mer- cury for the artists, Paradise for the preacher. ” — (Sagacius Gazata, of the Palace of Can Grande, I translate only Sismondi’s quotation.) 254 VAL L'ARNO. which he retreats from pillage. They are much like each other in external forms ; — but Injustice, or Unrighteousness, sits in the gate of the one, veiled with forest branches, (see Giotto’s painting of him) ; and Justice or Righteousness enters by the gate of the other, over strewn forest branches. Now, for example of this second kind of military architecture, look at Carlyle’s account of Henry the Fowler,* and of his build- ing military towns, or burgs, to protect his peasantry. In such function you have the first and proper idea of a walled town,— a place into which the pacific country people can re- tire for safety, as the Athenians in the Spartan war. Your fortress of this kind is a religious and civil fortress, or burg, defended by burgers, trained to defensive war. Keep always this idea of the proper nature of a fortified city : — Its walls mean protection, — its gates hospitality and triumph. In the language familiar to you, spoken of the chief of cities: “Its walls are to be Salvation, and its gates to be Praise.” And recollect always the inscription over the north gate of Siena : “ Cor magis tibi Sena pandit.” — “More than her gates, Siena opens her heart to you.” 33. When next you enter London by any of the great lines, I should like you to consider, as you approach the city, what the feelings of the heart of London are likely to be on your approach, and at what part of the railroad station an inscrip- tion, explaining such state of her heart, might be most fitly inscribed. Or you would still better understand the differ- ence between ancient and modern principles of architecture by taking a cab to the Elephant and Castle, and thence walk- ing to London Bridge by what is in fact the great southern entrance of London. The only gate receiving you is, how- ever, the arch thrown over the road to carry the South-East- ern Railway itself ; and the only exhibition either of Salvation or Praise is in the cheap clothes’ shops on each side ; and especially in one colossal haberdasher’s shop, over which you may see the British flag waving (in imitation of Windsor Cas- tle) when the master of the shop is at home. 34. Next to protection from external hostility, the two ne- * “ Frederick,” vol. i. JOHN TEE P1SAE. 255 cessities in a city are of food and water supply the latter essentially constant. You can store food and forage, but water must flow freely. Hence the Fountain and the Mercato become the centres of civil architecture. Premising thus much, I will ask you to look once more at this cloister of the Campo Santo of Pisa. 35. On first entering the place, its quiet, its solemnity, the perspective of its aisles, and the conspicuous grace and pre- cision of its traceries, combine to give you the sensation of having entered a true Gothic cloister. And if you walk round it hastily, and, glancing only at a fresco or two, and the con- fused tombs erected against them, return to the uncloistered sunlight of the piazza, you may quite easily carry away with you, and ever afterwards retain, the notion that the Campo Santo of Pisa is the same kind of thing as the cloister of Westminster Abbey. 36. I will beg you to look at the building, thus photo- graphed, more attentively. The “ long-drawn aisle ” is here, indeed, — but where is the “fretted vault”? A timber roof, simple as that of a country barn, and of which only the horizontal beams catch the eye, connects an entirely plain outside wall with an interior one, pierced by round-headed openings ; in which are inserted pieces of com- plex tracery, as foreign in conception to the rest of the work as if the Pisan armata had gone up the Rhine instead of to Crete, pillaged South Germany, and cut these pieces of tra- cery out of the windows of some church in an advanced stage of fantastic design at Nuremberg or Frankfort. 37. If you begin to question, hereupon, who was the Ital- ian robber, whether of marble or thought, and look to your Vasari, you find the building attributed to John the Pisan ; * —and you suppose the son to have been so pleased by his father’s adoption of Gothic forms that he must needs borrow them, in this manner, ready made, from the Germans, and thrust them into his round arches, or wherever else they would go. ‘The present traceries are of Bfteenth century work, founded on Giovanni’s design. 258 VAL D'ARNO. We will look at something more of his work, however, bo fore drawing such conclusion. 38. In the centres of the great squares of Siena and Peru- gia, rose, obedient to engineers’ art, two perennial fountains. Without engineers’ art, the glens which cleave the sand-rock of Siena flow with living water ; and still, if there be a hell for the forger in Italy, he remembers therein the sweet grotto and green wave of Fonte Branda. But on the very summit of the two hills, crested by their great civic fortresses, and in the centres of their circuit of walls, rose the two guided wells ; each in basin of goodly marble, sculptured — at Perugia, by John of Pisa, at Siena, by James of Quercia. 39. It is one of the bitterest regrets of my life (and I havi many which some men would find difficult to bear,) that I never saw, except when I was a youth, and then with sealed eyes, Jacopo della Quercia’s fountain.* The Sienese, a little while since, tore it down, and put up a model of it by a mod- em carver. In like manner, perhaps, you will some day knock the Elgin marbles to pieces, and commission an Academician to put up new ones, — the Sienese doing worse than that (as if the Athenians were themselves to break their Phidias’ work). But the fountain of John of Pisa, though much injured, and glued together with asphalt, is still in its place. 40. I will now read to you what Vasari first says of him, and it. (I. 67.) “Nicholas had, among other sons, one called John, who, because he always followed his father, and, under his discipline, intended (bent himself to, with a 'will,) sculpture and architecture, in a few years became not onty equal to his father, but in some things superior to him ; wherefore Nicho- las, being now old, retired himself into Pisa, and living quietly there, left the government of everything to his son. Accord- ingly, when Pope Urban IV. died in Perugia, sending was made for John, who, going there, made the tomb of that Pope of marble, the which, together with that of Pope Martin IV., was afterwards thrown down, when the Perugians en- * I observe that Charles Dickens had the fortune denied to me. “ The market-place, or great Piazza, is a large square, with a great broker* nosed fountain in it.” (“ Pictures from Italy.”) Plate III. — The Fountain oe Perugia. JOHN THE PISAN. 257 larged their vescovado ; so that only a few relics are seen sprinkled about the church. And the Perugians, having at the same time brought from the mountain of Pacciano, two miles distant from the city, through canals of lead, a most abundant water, by means of the invention and industry of a friar of the order of St. Silvester, it was given to John the Pisan to make all the ornaments of this fountain, as well of bronze as of marble. On which he set hand to it, and made there three orders of vases, two of marble and one of bronze. The first is put upon twelve degrees of twelve-faced steps ; the second is upon some columns which put it upon a level with the first one;” — (that is, in the middle of it,) “and the third, which is of bronze, rests upon three figures which have in the middle of them some griffins, of bronze too, which pour water out on every side.” 41. Many things we have to note in this passage, but first I will show you the best picture I can of the thing itself. The best I can ; the thing itself being half destroyed, and what remains so beautiful that no one can now quite rightly draw it ; but Mr. Arthur Severn, (the son of Keats’s Mr. Sev- ern,) was with me, looking reverently at those remains, last summer, and has made, with help from the sun, this sketch for you (Plate III.) ; entirely true and effective as far as his time allowed. Half destroyed, or more, I said it was, — Time doing grievous work on it, and men worse. You heard Vasari saying of it, that it stood on twelve degrees of twelve-faced steps. These —worn, doubtless, into little more than a rugged slope — have been replaced by the moderns with four circular steps, and an iron railing ; * the bas-reliefs have been carried off from the panels of the second vase, and its fair marble lips choked with asphalt : — of what remains, you have here a rough but true image. In which you see there is not a trace of Gothic feeling or design of any sort. No crockets, no pinnacles, no foils, no vaultings, no grotesques in sculpture. Panels between pillars, * In Mr. Severn’s sketch, the form of the original foundation is ap- proximately restored. 258 VAL D 'ARNO. panels carried on pillars, sculptures in those panels like the Metopes of the Parthenon ; a Greek vase in the middle, and griffins in the middle of that. Here is your font, not at all of Saint John, but of profane and civil-engineering John. This is his manner of baptism of the town of Perugia. 42. Thus early, it seems, the antagonism of profane Greek to ecclesiastical Gothic declares itself. It seems as if in Peru- gia, as in London, you had the fountains in Trafalgar Square against Queen Elinor’s Cross ; or the viaduct and railway sta- tion contending with the Gothic chapel, which the master of the large manufactory close by has erected, because he thinks pinnacles and crockets have a pious influence ; and will pre- vent his workmen from asking for shorter hours, or more wages. 43. It seems only ; the antagonism is quite of another kind, — or, rather, of many other kinds. But note at once how complete it is — how utterly this Greek fountain of Perugia, and the round arches of Pisa, are opposed to the school of design which gave the trefoils to Niccola’s pulpit, and the traceries to Giovanni’s Campo Santo. The antagonism, I say, is of another kind than ours ; but deep and wide ; and to explain it, I must pass for a time to apparently irrelevant topics. You were surprised, I hope, (if you were attentive enough to catch the points in what I just now read from Vasari,) at my venturing to bring before you, just after I had been using violent language against the Sienese for breaking up the work of Quercia, that incidental sentence giving account of the much more disrespectful destruction, by the Perugians, of the tombs of Pope Urban IV., and Martin IV. Sending was made for John, you see, first, when Pope Urban IV. died in Perugia — whose tomb was to be carved by John ; the Greek fountain being a secondary business. But the tomb was so well destroyed, afterwards, that only a few relics remained scattered here and there. The tomb, I have not the least doubt, was Gothic ; — and the breaking of it to pieces was not in order to restore it after- wards, that a living architect might get the job of restoration. Here is a stone out of one of Giovanni Pisano’s loveliest Gothic JOHN THE PISAN 259 buildings, which I myself saw with my own eyes dashed out, that a modern builder might be paid for putting in another. But Pope Urban’s tomb was not destroyed to such end. There was no qualm of the belly, driving the hammer, — qualm of the conscience probably ; at all events, a deeper or loftier antagonism than one on points of taste, or economy. 44. You observed that I described this Greek profane man- ner of design as properly belonging to civil buildings, as opposed not only to ecclesiastical buildings, but to military ones. Justice, or Kighteousness, and Veracity, are the characters of Greek art. These may be opposed to re- ligion, when religion becomes fantastic ; but they must be opposed to war, when war becomes unjust. And if, per- chance, fantastic religion and unjust war happen to go hand in hand, your Greek artist is likely to use his hammer against them spitefully enough. 45. His hammer, or his Greek fire. Hear now this ex- ample of the engineering ingenuities of our Pisan papa, in his younger days. “ The Florentines having begun, in Niccola’s time, to throw down many towers, which had been built in a barbarous manner through the whole city ; either that the people might be less hurt, by their means, in the fights that often took place between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, or else that there might be greater security for the State, it appeared to them that it would be very difficult to ruin the Tower of the Death- watch, which was in the place of St. John, because it had its walls built with such a grip in them that the stones could not be stirred with the pickaxe, and also because it was of the loftiest ; whereupon Nicholas, causing the tower to be cut, at the foot of it, all the length of one of its sides ; and closing up the cut, as he made it, with short (wooden) under-props, about a yard long, and setting fire to them, when the props were burned, the tower fell, and broke itself nearly all to pieces : which was held a thing so ingenious and so useful for such affairs, that it has since passed into a custom, so that when it is needful, in this easiest manner, any edifice may be thrown down.” 2G0 VAL D'ARNO. 46. ‘When it is needful.’ Yes; but when is that? H instead of the towers of the Death-watch in the city, one could ruin the towers of the Death-watch of evil pride and evil treasure in men’s hearts, there would be need enough for such work both in Florence and London. But the walls of those spiritual towers have still stronger ‘ grip ’ in them, and are fireproof with a vengeance. “ Le mure me parean clie ferro fosse, • • • e el mi dixe, il fuoco eterno Chentro lalioca, le dimostra rosse. 1 ’ But the towers in Florence, shattered to fragments by this ingenious engineer, and the tombs in Perugia, which his son will carve, only that they also may be so well destroyed that only a few relics remain, scattered up and down the church, — are these, also, only the iron towers, and the red-hot tombs, of the city of Dis ? Let us see. 47. In order to understand the relation of the tradesmen and working men, including eminently the artist, to the general life of the thirteenth century, I must lay before you the clearest elementary charts I can of the course which the fates of Italy were now appointing for her. My first chart must be geographical. I want you to have a clearly dissected and closely fitted notion of the natural boundaries of her states, and their relations to surrounding ones. Lay hold first, firmly, of your conception of the valleys of the Po and the Arno, running counter to each other — opening east and opening west, — Venice at the end of the one, Pisa at the end of the other. 48. These two valleys — the hearts of Lombardy and Etruria — virtually contain the life of Italy. They are entirely differ- ent in character : Lombardy, essentially luxurious and worldly, at this time rude in art, but active ; Etruria, religious, in- tensely imaginative, and inheriting refined forms of art from before the days of Porsenna. 49. South of these, in mid-Italy, you have Romagna, — the JOHN THE PISAN. 261 valley of the Tiber. In that valley, decayed Rome, with her lust of empire inextinguishable ; — no inheritance of imagina- tive art, nor power of it ; dragging her own ruins hourly into more fantastic ruin, and defiling her faith hourly with more fantastic guilt. South of Romagna, you have the kingdoms of Calabria and Sicily, — Magna Graecia, and Syracuse, in decay ; — strange spiritual fire from the Saracenic east still lighting the volcanic land, itself laid all in ashes. 50. Conceive Italy then always in these four masses : Lom- bardy, Etruria, Romagna, Calabria. Now she has three great external powers to deal with : the western, France — the northern, Germany — the eastern, Arabia. On her right the Frank ; on her left the Saracen ; above her, the Teuton. And roughly, the French are a religious chivalry; the Germans a profane chivalry ; the Saracens an infidel chiv- alry. What is best of each is benefiting Italy ; what is worst, afflicting her. And in the time we are occupied with, all are afflicting her. What Charlemagne, Barbarossa, or Saladin did to teach her, you can trace only by carefullest thought. But in this thirteenth century all these three powers are adverse to her, as to each other. Map the methods of their adversity thus : — 51. Germany, (profane chivalry,) is vitally adverse to the Popes ; endeavouring to establish imperial and knightly power against theirs. It is fiercely, but frankly, covetous of Italian territory, seizes all it can of Lombardy and Calabria, and with any help procurable either from robber Christians or robber Saracens, strives, in an awkward manner, and by open force, to make itself master of Rome, and all Italy. 52. France, all surge and foam of pious chivalry, lifts her- self in fitful rage of devotion, of avarice, and of pride. She is the natural ally of the church ; makes her own monks the proudest of the Popes ; raises Avignon into another Rome ; prays and pillages insatiably ; pipes pastoral songs of inno- cence, and invents grotesque variations of crime ; gives grace to the rudeness of England, and venom to the cunning of Italy. She is a chimera among nations, and one knows not whether 262 VAL D'ARNO. to admire most the valour of Guiscard, the virtue of St. Louis or the villany of his brother. 53. The Eastern powers — Greek, Israelite, Saracen — are at once the enemies of the Western, their prey, and their tutors. They bring them methods of ornament and of merchandise, and stimulate in them the worst conditions of pugnacity, big- otry, and rapine. That is the broad geographical and polit- ical relation of races. Next, you must consider the conditions of their time. 54. I told you, in my second lecture on Engraving, that before the twelfth century the nations were too savage to be Christian, and after the fifteenth too carnal to be Christian. The delicacy of sensation and refinements of imagination necessary to understand Christianity belong to the mid period when men risen from a life of brutal hardship are not yet fallen to one of brutal luxury. You can neither comprehend the character of Christ while you are chopping flints for tools, and gnawing raw bones for food ; nor when you have ceased to do anything with either tools or hands, and dine on gilded capons. In Dante’s lines, beginning “ I saw Bellincion Berti walk abroad In leathern girdle, with a clasp of bone,” you have the expression of his sense of the increasing luxury of the age, already sapping its faith. But when Bellincion Berti walked abroad in skins not yet made into leather, and with the bones of his dinner in a heap at his door, instead of being cut into girdle clasps, he was just as far from capacity of being a Christian. 55. The following passage, from Carlyle’s “ Chartism,” ex- presses better than any one else has done, or is likely to do it, the nature of this Christian era, (extending from the twelfth to the sixteenth century,) in England, — the like being entirely true of it elsewhere : — “ In those past silent centuries, among those silent classes, much had been going on. Not only had red deer in the New and other forests been got preserved and shot ; and treacher* JOHN TEE PISAN. 263 ies* of Simon de Montfort, wars of Red and White Roses, battles of Crecy, battles of Bosworth, and many other battles, been got transacted and adjusted ; but England wholly, not without sore toil and aching bones to the millions of sires and the millions of sons of eighteen generations, had been got drained and tilled, covered with yellow harvests, beautiful and rich in possessions. The mud-wooden Caesters and Chesters had become steepled, tile-roofed, compact towns. Sheffield had taken to the manufacture of Sheffield whittles. Worstead could from wool spin yarn, and knit or weave the same into stockings or breeches for men. England had property valu- able to the auctioneer ; but the accumulate manufacturing, commercial, economic skill which lay impalpably warehoused in English hands and heads, what auctioneer could estimate ? “ Hardly an Englishman to be met with but could do something ; some cunninger thing than break his fellow- creature’s head with battle-axes. The seven incorporated trades, with their million guild-brethren, with their hammers, their shuttles, and tools, what an army, — fit to conquer that land of England, as we say, and hold it conquered ! Nay, strangest of all, the English people had acquired the faculty and habit of thinking, — even of believing ; individual con- science had unfolded itself among them ; — Conscience, and Intelligence its handmaid, f Ideas of innumerable kinds were circulating among these men ; witness one Shakspeare, a wool-comber, poacher or whatever else, at Stratford, in War- wickshire, who happened to write books ! — the finest human figure, as I apprehend, that Nature has hitherto seen fit to make of our widely Teutonic clay. Saxon, Norman, Celt, or Sarmat, I find no human soul so beautiful, these fifteen hun- dred known years ; — our supreme modern European man. * Perhaps not altogether so, any more than Oliver’s ! dear papa Car- lyle. We may have to read him also, otherwise than the British popu- lace have yet read, some day. f Observe Carlyle’s order of sequence. Perceptive Reason is the Handmaid of Conscience, not Conscience hers. If you resolve to do right, you will soon do wisely ; but resolve only to do wisely, and you will never do right. 264 VAL D'AHNO. TTim England had contrived to realize : were there not ideas ? “ Ideas poetic and also Puritanic, that had to seek utter- ance in the notablest way ! England had got her Shaks- peare, but was now about to get her Milton and Oliver Crom- well. This, too, we will call a new expansion, hard as it might be to articulate and adjust ; this, that a man could actually have a conscience for his own behoof, and not for his priest’s only ; that his priest, be he who he might, would henceforth have to take that fact along with him.” 56. You observe, in this passage, account is given you of two things — (a) of the development of a powerful class of tradesmen and artists ; and, (b) of the development of an in- dividual conscience. In the savage times you had simply the hunter, digger, and robber ; now you have also the manufacturer and salesman. The ideas of ingenuity with the hand, of fairness in exchange, have occurred to us. "We can do something now with our fingers, as well as with our fists ; and if we want our neigh- bours’ goods, we will not simply carry them off, as of old, but offer him some of ours in exchange. 57. Again ; whereas before we were content to let our priests do for us all they could, by gesticulating, dressing, sacrificing, or beating of drums and blowing of trumpets ; and also direct our steps in the way of life, without any doubt on our part of their own perfect acquaintance with it, — we have now got to do something for ourselves — to think something for ourselves ; and thus have arrived in straits of conscience which, so long as we endeavour to steer through them hon- estly, will be to us indeed a quite secure way of life, and of all living wisdom. 58. Now the centre of this new freedom of thought is in Germany ; and the power of it is shown first, as I told you in my opening lecture, in the great struggle of Frederick IL with Pome. And German freedom of thought had certainly made some progress, when it had managed to reduce the Pope to disguise himself as a soldier, ride out of Pome by moonlight, and gallop his thirty-four miles to the seaside be* Plate IV.— Norman Imageky. JOHN THE PISAN. 265 fore summer dawn. Here, clearly, is quite a new state of things for the Holy Father of Christendom to consider, dur- ing such wholesome horse-exercise. 59. Again ; the refinements of new art are represented by France — centrally by St. Louis with his Sainte Chapelle. Happily, I am able to lay on your table to-day — having placed it three years ago in your educational series — a leaf of a Psalter, executed for St. Louis himself. He and his artists are scarcely out of their savage life yet, and have no notion of adorning the Psalms better than by pictures of long-necked cranes, long-eared rabbits, long-tailed lions, and red and white goblins putting their tongues out.* But in refinement of touch, in beauty of colour, in the human faculties of order and grace, they are long since, evidently, past the flint and bone stage, — refined enough, now, — subtle enough, now, to learn anything that is pretty and fine, whether in theology or any other matter. 60. Lastly, the new principle of Exchange is represented by Lombardy and Venice, to such purpose that your Mer- chant and Jew of Venice, and your Lombard of Lombard Street, retain some considerable influence on your minds, even to this day. And in the exact midst of all such transition, behold, Etru- ria with her Pisans — her Florentines, — receiving, resisting, and reigning over all : pillaging the Saracens of their marbles — binding the French bishops in silver chains ; — shattering the towers of German tyranny into small pieces, — building with strange jewellery the belfry tower for newly-conceived Christianity ; — and, in sacred picture, and sacred song, reach- ing the height, among nations, most passionate, and most pure. I must close my lecture without indulging myself yet, by addition of detail ; requesting you, before W'e next meet, to fix these general outlines in your minds, so that, without dis- turbing their distinctness, I may trace in the sequel the rela- tions of Italian Art to these political and religious powers ; * I cannot go to the expense of engraving this most subtle example ; hut Plate IY. shows the average conditions of temper and imagination in religious ornamental work of the time. 266 VAL D 'ARNO. and determine with what force of passionate sympathy, or fidelity of resigned obedience, the Pisan artists, father and son, executed the indignation of Florence and fulfilled the piety of Orvieto. LECTURE ITL SHIELD AND APBON. 61. I laid before you, in my last lecture, first lines of the chart of Italian history in the thirteenth century, which I hope gradually to fill with colour, and enrich, to such degree as may be sufficient for all comfortable use. But I indicated, as the more special subject of our immediate study, the nas- cent power of liberal thought, and liberal art, over dead tra- dition and rude workmanship. To-day I must ask you to examine in greater detail the exact relation of this liberal art to the illiberal elements which surrounded it. 62. You do not often hear me use that word “ Liberal ” in any favourable sense. I do so now, because I use it also in a very narrow and exact sense. I mean that the thirteenth cen- tury is, in Italy’s year of life, her 17th of March. In the light of it, she assumes her toga virilis ; and it is sacred to her god Liber. 63. To her god Liber , — observe : not Dionusos, still less Bacchus, but her own ancient and simple deity. And if you have read with some care the statement I gave you, with Carlyle’s help, of the moment and manner of her change from savageness to dexterity, and from rudeness to refinement of life, you will hear, familiar as the lines are to you, the invoca- tion in the first Georgic with a new sense of its me anin g : — “Vos. O clarissima mundi Lamina, labentem coelo quae ducitis annum, Liber, et alma Ceres ; vestro si munere tellus Chaoniam pingui glandem mutavit arista, Poculaqu' inventis Acheloia miscuit uvis, Munera vestra cano. ’’ SHIELD AND APRON. 267 These gifts, innocent, rich, full of life, exquisitely beautiful in order and grace of growth, I have thought best to symbol- ize to you, in the series of types of the power of the Greek gods, placed in your educational series, by the blossom of the wild strawberry ; which in rising from its trine cluster of trine leaves, — itself as beautiful as a white rose, and always single on its stalk, like an ear of corn, yet with a succeeding blossom at its side, and bearing a fruit which is as distinctly a group of seeds as an ear of corn itself, and yet is the pleas- antest to taste of all the pleasant things prepared by nature for the food of men,* — may accurately symbolize, and help you to remember, the conditions of this liberal and delight- ful, yet entirely modest and orderly, art, and thought. 64. You will find in the fourth of my inaugural lectures, at the 98th paragraph, this statement, — much denied by modern artists and authors, but nevertheless quite unexceptionally true, — that the entire vitality of art depends upon its having for object either to state a true thing, or adorn a serviceable one. The two functions of art in Italy, in this entirely liberal and virescent phase of it, — virgin art, we may call it, retaining the most literal sense of the words virga and virgo, — are to mani- fest the doctrines of a religion which now, for the first time, men had soul enough to understand ; and to adorn edifices or dress, with which the completed politeness of daily life might be invested, its convenience completed, and its decorous and honourable pride satisfied. 65. That pride was, among the men who gave its character to the century, in honourableness of private conduct, and use- ful magnificence of public art. Not of private or domestic art : observe this very particularly. “ Such was the simplicity of private manners,” — (I am now quoting Sismondi, but with the fullest ratification that my knowledge enables me to give,) — “ and the economy of the richest citizens, that if a city enjoyed repose only for a few years, it doubled its revenues, and found itself, in a sort, en- * I am sorry to pack my sentences together in this confused way. But I have much to say ; and cannot always stop to polish or adjust it as I used to do. 268 VAL D 'ARNO. cumbered with its riches. The Pisans knew neither of the lux- ury of the table, nor that of furniture, nor that of a number of servants ; yet they were sovereigns of the whole of Sardinia, Corsica, and Elba, had colonies at St. Jean d’Acre and Constan- tinople, and their merchants in those cities carried on the most extended commerce with the Saracens and Greeks.” * 66. “ And in that time,” (I now give you my own transla- tion of Giovanni Villani,) “the citizens of Florence lived sober, and on coarse meats, and at little cost ; and had many customs and playfulnesses which were blunt and rude ; and they dressed themselves and their wives with coarse cloth ; many wore merely skins, with no lining, and all had only leathern buskins ; f and the Florentine ladies, plain shoes and stockings with no ornaments ; and the best of them were con- tent with a close gown of coarse scarlet of Cyprus, or camlet girded with an old-fashioned clasp-girdle ; and a mantle over all, lined with vaire, with a hood above ; and that, they threw over their heads. The women of lower rank were dressed in the same manner, with coarse green Cambray cloth ; fifty pounds was the ordinary bride’s dowry, and a hundred or a hundred and fifty would in those times have been held brill- iant, (‘ isfolgorata,’ dazzling, with sense of dissipation or ex- travagance ;) and most maidens were twenty or more before they married. Of such gross customs were then the Floren- tines ; but of good faith, and loyal among themselves and in their state ; and in their coarse life, and poverty, did more and *Sismondi ; French translation, Brussels, 1838 ; vol. ii. , p. 275. f I find this note for expansion on the margin of my lecture, but had no time to work it out : — ‘ This lower class should be either barefoot, or have strong shoes — wooden clogs good. Pretty Boulogne sabot with purple stockings. Waterloo Road — little girl with her hair in curlpapers, — a coral necklace round her neck — the neck bare — and her boots of thin stuff, worn out, with her toes coming through, and rags hanging from her heels, — a profoundly accurate type of English national and political life. Your hair in curlpapers — borrowing tongs from every foreign nation, to pinch you into manners. The rich ostentatiously wearing coral about the bare neck ; and the poor — gold as the stones, and indecent.* SHIELD AND APRON. 269 braver things than are done in our days with more refinement and riches.” 67. I detain you a moment at the words “scarlet of Cyprus, or camlet.” Observe that camelot (camelet) from Ka/jLrjXuTrj, camel’s skin, is a stuff made of silk and camel’s hair originally, afterwards of silk and wool. At Florence, the camel’s hair would always have reference to the Baptist, who, as you know, in Lippi’s picture, wears the camel’s skin itself, made into a Florentine dress, such as Villani has just described, “col tassello sopra,” with the hood above. Do you see how important the word “ Capulet ” is becoming to us, in its main idea ? 68. Not in private nor domestic art, therefore, I repeat to you, but in useful magnificence of public art, these citizens expressed their pride : — and that public art divided itself into two branches — civil, occupied upon ethic subjects of sculpture and painting ; and religious, occupied upon scriptural or tra- ditional histories, in treatment of which, nevertheless, the nascent power and liberality of thought were apparent, not only in continual amplification and illustration of scriptural story by the artist’s own invention, but in the acceptance of profane mythology, as part of the Scripture, or tradition, given by Divine inspiration. 69. Nevertheless, for the provision of things necessary in domestic life, there developed itself, together with the group of inventive artists exercising these nobler functions, a vast body of craftsmen, and, literally, manufacturers, workers by hand, who associated themselves, as chance, tradition, or the accessibility of material directed, in towns which thencefor- ward occupied a leading position in commerce, as producers of a staple of excellent, or perhaps inimitable, quality ; and the linen or cambric of Cambray, the lace of Mechlin, the wool of Worstead, and the steel of Milan, implied the tranquil and hereditary skill of multitudes, living in wealthy industry, and humble honour. 70. Among these artisans, the weaver, the ironsmith, the goldsmith, the carpenter, and the mason necessarily took the principal rank, and on their occupations the more refined arts 270 VAL D'ARNO. were wholesomely based, so that the five businesses may be more completely expressed thus : — The weaver and embroiderer, The iron smith and armourer, The goldsmith and jeweller, The carpenter and engineer, The stonecutter and painter. You have only once to turn over the leaves of Lionardo’s sketch book, in the Ambrosian Library, to see how carpentry is connected with engineering, — the architect was always a stonecutter, and the stonecutter not often practically sepa- rate, as yet, from the painter, and never so in general con- ception of function. You recollect, at a much later period, Kent’s description of Cornwall’s steward : “Kent. You cowardly rascal! — nature disclaims in thee, a tailor made thee ! Cornwall. Thou art a strange fellow — a tailor make a man ? Kent. Ay, sir ; a stonecutter, or a painter, could not have made him so ill ; though they had been but two hours at the trade. ” 71. You may consider then this group of artizans with the merchants, as now forming in each town an important Tiers Etat, or Third State of the people, occupied in service, first, of the ecclesiastics, who in monastic bodies inhabited the cloisters round each church ; and, secondly, of the knights, who, with their retainers, occupied, each family their own fort, in allied defence of their appertaining streets. 72. A Third Estate, indeed ; but adverse alike to both the others, to Montague as to Capulet, when they become disturb- ers of the public peace ; and having a pride of its own, — hereditary still, but consisting in the inheritance of skill and knowledge rather than of blood, — which expressed the sense of such inheritance by taking its name habitually from the master rather than the sire ; and which, in its natural antagon- ism to dignities won only by violence, or recorded only by heraldry, you may think of generally as the race whose bear- ing is the Apron, instead of the shield. 73. When, however, these two, or in perfect subdivision SHIELD AND APRON. 271 three, bodies of men, lived in harmony, — the knights remain- ing true to the State, the clergy to their faith, and the work- men to their craft, — conditions of national force were arrived at, under which all the great art of the middle ages was ac- complished. The pride of the knights, the avarice of the priests, and the gradual abasement of character in the crafts man, changing him from a citizen able to wield either tools in peace or weapons in war, to a dull tradesman, forced to pay mercenary troops to defend his shop door, are the direct causes of common ruin towards the close of the sixteenth century. 74. But the deep underlying cause of the decline in national character itself, was the exhaustion of the Christian faith. None of its practical claims were avouched either by reason or experience ; and the imagination grew weary of sustaining them in despite of both. Men could not, as their powers of reflection became developed, steadily conceive that the sin 3 of a life might be done away with, by finishing it with Mary’s name on the lips ; nor could tradition of miracle for ever resist the personal discovery, made by each rude disciple by himself, that he might pray to all the saints for a twelvemonth together, and yet not get what he asked for. 75. The Keformation succeeded in proclaiming that ex- isting Christianity was a lie ; but substituted no theory of it which could be more rationally or credibly sustained ; and ever since, the religion of educated persons throughout Europe has been dishonest or ineffectual ; it is only among the labouring peasantry that the grace of a pure Catholicism, and the patient simplicities of the Puritan, maintain their imaginative dignity, or assert their practical use. 76. The existence of the nobler arts, however, involves the harmonious life and vital faith of the three classes whom we have just distinguished ; and that condition exists, more or less disturbed, indeed, by the vices inherent in each class, yet, on the whole, energetically and productively, during the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. But our present subject being Architecture only, I will limit your attention altogether to the state of society in the great age of 272 VAL D 'ARNO. architecture, the thirteenth century. A great age in all ways ; but most notably so in the correspondence it presented, up to a just and honourable point, with the utilitarian energy of our own days. 77. The increase of wealth, the safety of industry, and the conception of more convenient furniture of life, to which we must attribute the rise of the entire artist class, were accom- panied, in that century, by much enlargement in the concep- tion of useful public works : and — not by private enterprise, — • that idle persons might get dividends out of the public pocket, — but by public enterprise, — each citizen paying down at once his share of what was necessary to accomplish the benefit to the State, — great architectural and engineering efforts were made for the common service. Common, observe ; but not, in our present sense, republican. One of the most ludi- crous sentences ever written in the blindness of party spirit is that of Sismondi, in which he declares, thinking of these public works only, that ‘the architecture of the thirteenth century is entirely republican.’ The architecture of the thir- teenth century is, in the mass of it, simply baronial or ec- clesiastical ; it is of castles, palaces, or churches ; but it is true that splendid civic works were also accomplished by the vigour of the newly risen popular power. “The canal named Naviglio Grande, which brings the waters of the Ticino to Milan, traversing a distance of thirty miles, was undertaken in 1179, recommended in 1257, and, soon after, happily terminated ; in it still consists the wealth of a vast extent of Lombardy. At the same time the town of Milan rebuilt its walls, which were three miles round, and had sixteen marble gates, of magnificence which might have graced the capital of all Italy. The Genovese, in 1276 and 1283, built their two splendid docks, and the great wall of their quay ; and in 1295 finished the noble aque- duct which brings pure and abundant waters to their city from a great distance among then’ mountains. There is not a single town in Italy which at the same time did not under- take works of this kind ; and while these larger undertak- ings were in progress, stone bridges were built across the SHIELD AND APRON. 273 rivers, the streets and piazzas were paved with large slabs of stone, and every free government recognized the duty of providing for the convenience of the citizens.” * 78. The necessary consequence of this enthusiasm in use- ful building, was the formation of a vast body of craftsmen and architects ; corresponding in importance to that which the railway, with its associated industry, has developed in modern times, but entirely different in personal character, and rela- tion to the body politic. Their personal character was founded on the accurate knowledge of their business in all respects ; the ease and pleas- ure of unaffected invention ; and the true sense of power to do everything better than it had ever been yet done, coupled with general contentment in life, and in its vigour and skill. It is impossible to overrate the difference between such a condition of mind, and that of the modern artist, who either does not know his business at all, or knows it only to recog- nize his own inferiority to every former workman of distinc- tion. 79. Again : the political relation of these artificers to the State was that of a caste entirely separate from the noblesse ; j* paid for their daily work what was just, and competing with each other to supply the best article they could for the money. And it is, again, impossible to overrate the difference be- tween such a social condition, and that of the artists of to-day, struggling to occupy a position of equality in wealth with the noblesse, — paid irregular and monstrous prices by an entirely ignorant and selfish public ; and competing with each other to supply the worst article they can for the money. I never saw anything so impudent on the walls of any ex- hibition, in any country, as last year in London. It was a daub professing to be a “ harmony in pink and white ” (or some such nonsense ;) absolute rubbish, and which had taken about a quarter of an hour to scrawl or daub — it had no pre- * Simondi, vol. ii. chap. 10. f The giving of knighthood to Jacopo della Quereia for his lifelong service to Siena, was not the elevation of a dexterous workman, but grace to a faithful citizen. 274 VAL D 'ARNO. tence to be called painting. The price asked for it was two hundred and fifty guineas. 80. In order to complete your broad view of the elements of social power in the thirteenth century, you have now farther to understand the position of the country people, who main- tained by their labour these three classes, whose action you can discern, and whose history you can read ; while, of those who maintained them, there is no history, except of the an- nual ravage of their fields by contending cities or nobles ; — and, finally, that of the higher body of merchants, -whose influ- ence was already beginning to counterpoise the prestige of noblesse in Florence, and who themselves constituted no small portion of the noblesse of Venice. The food-producing country was for the most part still possessed by the nobles ; some b} r the ecclesiastics ; but a portion, I do not know how large, was in the hands of peas- ant proprietors, of whom Sismondi gives this, to my mind, completely pleasant and satisfactory, though, to his, very pain- ful, account : — “They took no interest in public affairs ; they had assem- blies of their commune at the village in which the church of their parish was situated, and to which they retreated to de- fend themselves in case of war ; they had also magistrates of their own choice ; but all their interests appeared to them en- closed in the circle of their own commonality ; they did not meddle with general politics, and held it for their point of honour to remain faithful, through all revolutions, to the State of which they formed a part, obeying, without hesita- tion, its chiefs, whoever they were, and by whatever title they occupied their places.” 81. Of the inferior agricultural labourers, employed on the farms of the nobles and richer ecclesiastics, I find nowhere due notice, nor does any historian seriously examine their manner of life. Liable to every form of robbery and oppres- sion, I yet regard their state as not only morally but physi- cally happier than that of riotous soldiery, or the lower class of artizans, and as the safeguard of every civilized nation, through all its worst vicissitudes of folly and crime. Nature SHIELD AND APRON 275 has mercifully appointed that seed must be sown, and sheep folded, whatever lances break, or religions fail ; and at this hour, while the streets of Florence and Verona are full of idle politicians, loud of tongue, useless of hand and treacher- ous of heart, there still may be seen in their market-places, standing, each by his heap of pulse or maize, the grey-haired labourers, silent, serviceable, honourable, keeping faith, un- touched by change, to their country and to Heaven.* 82. It is extremely difficult to determine in what degree the feelings or intelligence of this class influenced the archi- tectural design of the thirteenth century ; — how far afield the cathedral tower was intended to give delight, and to what simplicity of rustic conception Quercia or Ghiberti appealed by the fascination of their Scripture history. You may at least conceive, at this date, a healthy animation in all men’s minds, and the children of the vineyard and sheepcote crowd- ing the city on its festa days, and receiving impulse to busier, if not nobler, education, in its splendour. f 83. The great class of the merchants is more difficult to define ; but you may regard them generally as the examples of whatever modes of life might be consistent with peace and justice, in the economy of transfer, as opposed to the military license of pillage. They represent the gradual ascendancy of foresight, pru- dence, and order in society, and the first ideas of advantageous national intercourse. Their body is therefore composed of the most intelligent and temperate natures of the time, — uniting themselves, not directly for the purpose of making money, but to obtain stability for equal institutions, security of property, and pacific relations with neighbouring states. Their guilds form the only representatives of true national council, unaffected, as the landed proprietors were, by merely local circumstances and accidents. 84. The strength of this order, when its own conduct was * Compare “ Sesame and Lilies,” sec. 38, p. 58. (P. 86 of the small edition of 1882.) f Of detached abbeys, see note on Education of Joan of Arc, “ Se- same and Lilies,” sec. 82, p. 106. (P. 158 of the small edition of 1882.) 276 VAL D 'ARNO. upright, and its opposition to the military body was not in avaricious cowardice, but in the resolve to compel justice and to secure peace, can only be understood by you after an exam- ination of the great changes in the government of Florence during the thirteenth century, which, among other minor achievements interesting to us, led to that destruction of the Tower of the Death-watch, so ingeniously accomplished by Niccola Pisano. This change, and its results, will be the subject of my next lecture. I must to-day sum, and in some farther degree make clear, the facts already laid before you. 85. We have seen that the inhabitants of every great Italian state may be divided, and that very stringently, into the five classes of knights, priests, merchants, artists, and peasants. No distinction exists between artist and artizan, except that of higher genius or better conduct ; the best artist is assur- edly also the best artizan ; and the simplest workman uses his invention and emotion as well as his fingers. The entire body of artists is under the orders (as shopmen are under the orders of their customers), of the knights, priests, and mer- chants, — the knights for the most part demanding only fine goldsmiths’ work, stout armour, and rude architecture ; the priests commanding both the finest architecture and painting, and the richest kinds of decorative dress and jewellery, — while the merchants directed works of public use, and were the best judges of artistic skill. The competition for the Baptistery gates of Florence is before the guild of merchants ; nor is their award disputed, even in thought, by any of the candidates. 86. This is surely a fact to be taken much to heart by our present communities of Liverpool and Manchester. They probably suppose, in their modesty, that lords and clergymen are the proper judges of art, and merchants can only, in the modem phrase, ‘know what they like,’ or follow humbly the guidance of their golden-crested or flat-capped superiors. But in the great ages of art, neither knight nor pope shows signs of true power of criticism. The artists crouch before them, or quarrel with them, according to their own tempers. To the merchants they submit silently, as to just and capable SHIELD AND APRON. 277 judges. And look what men these are, who submit. Dona- tello, Ghiberti, Quercia, Luca ! If men like these submit to the merchant, who shall rebel ? 87. But the still franker, and surer, judgment of innocent pleasure was awarded them by all classes alike : and the inter- est of the public was the final rule of right, — that public being always eager to see, and earnest to learn. For the stories told by their artists formed, they fully believed, a Book of Life ; and every man of real genius took up his function of illustrating the scheme of human morality and salvation, as naturally, and faithfully, as an English mother of to-day giv- ing her children their first lessons in the Bible. In this endeavour to teach they almost unawares taught themselves ; the question “How shall I represent this most clearly?” be- came to themselves, presently, “How w r as this most likely to have happened ? ” and habits of fresh and accurate thought thus quickly enlivened the formalities of the Greek pictorial theology ; formalities themselves beneficent, because restrain- ing by their severity and mystery the wantonness of the newer life. Foolish modern critics have seen nothing in the Byzan- tine school but a barbarism to be conquered and forgotten. But that school brought to the art-scholars of the thirteenth century, laws which had been serviceable to Phidias, and symbols which had been beautiful to Homer : and methods and habits of pictorial scholarship wdiich gave a refinement of manner to the work of the simplest craftsman, and became an education to the higher artists which no discipline of liter- ature can now bestow, developed themselves in the effort to decipher, and the impulse to re-interpret, the Eleusinian divinity of Byzantine tradition. 88. The words I have just used, “ pictorial scholarship,” and “ pictorial theology,” remind me how strange it must appear to you that in this sketch of the intellectual state of Italy in the thirteenth century I have taken no note of literature itself, nor of the fine art of Music with which it was associated in minstrelsy. The corruption of the meaning of the w 7 ord “ clerk,” from “ a chosen person ” to “ a learned one,” partly indicates the position of literature in the war between the 278 VAL D 'ARNO. golden crest and scarlet cap ; but in tbe higher rants, liter* ature and music became the grace of the noble’s life, or the occupation of the monk’s, without forming any separate class, or exercising any materially visible political power. Masons or butchers might establish a government, — but never trouba- dours : and though a good knight held his education to be im- perfect unless he could write a sonnet and sing it, he did not esteem his castle to be at the mercy of the “ editor ” of a manuscript. He might indeed owe his life to the fidelity of a minstrel, or be guided in his policy by the wit of a clown ; but he was not the slave of sensual music, or vulgar literature, and never allowed his Saturday reviewer to appear at table without the cock’s comb. 89. On the other hand, what was noblest in thought or say- ing was in those times as little attended to as it is now. I do not feel sure that, even in after times, the poem of Dante has had any political effect on Italy ; but at all events, in his life, even at Verona, where he was treated most kindly, he had not half so much influence with Can Grande as the rough Count of Castelbarco, not one of whose words was ever written, or now remains ; and whose portrait, by no means that of a man of literary genius, almost disfigures, by its plainness, the otherwise grave and perfect beauty of his tomb. LECTURE IV. PAETED PER PALE. 90. The chart of Italian intellect and policy which I have endeavoured to put into form in the last three lectures, may, I hope, have given you a clear idea of the subordinate, yet partly antagonistic, position which the artist, or merchant, — whom in my present lecture I shall class together, — occupied, with respect to the noble and priest. As an honest labourer, he was opposed to the violence of pillage, and to the folly of pride : as an honest thinker, he was likely to discover any latent absurdity in the stories he had to represent in their PARTED PER PALE. 279 nearest likelihood ; and to be himself moved strongly by the true meaning of events which he was striving to make ocularly manifest. The painter terrified himself with his own fiends, and reproved or comforted himself by the lips of his own saints, far more profoundly than any verbal preacher ; and thus, whether as craftsman or inventor, was likely to be fore- most in defending the laws of his city, or directing its refor- mation. 91. The contest of the craftsman with the pillaging soldier is typically represented by the war of the Lombard League with Frederick II. ; and that of the craftsman with the hypo- critical priest, by the war of the Pisans with Gregory IX. (1241). But in the present lecture I wish only to fix your at- tention on the revolutions in Florence, which indicated, thus early, the already established ascendancy of the moral forces which were to put an end to open robber-soldiership ; and at least to compel the assertion of some higher principle in war, if not, as in some distant day may be possible, the cessation of war itself. The most important of these revolutions was virtually that of which I before spoke to you, taking place in mid-thirteenth century, in the year 1250, — a very memorable one for Chris- tendom, and the very crisis of vital change in its methods of economy, and conceptions of art. 92. Observe, first, the exact relations at that time of Chris- tian and Profane Chivalry. St. Louis, in the winter of 1248-9. lay in the isle of Cyprus, with his crusading army. He had trusted to Providence for provisions ; and his army was starv- ing. The profane German emperor, Frederick II., was at war with Venice, but gave a safe-conduct to the Venetian ships, which enabled them to carry food to Cyprus, and to save St. Louis and his crusaders. Frederick had been for half his life excommunicate, — and the Pope (Innocent IV.) at deadly spirit- ual and temporal war with him ; — spiritually, because he had brought Saracens into Apulia ; temporally, because the Pope wanted Apulia for himself. St. Louis and his mother both wrote to Innocent, praying him to be reconciled to the kind heretic who had saved the whole crusading army. But the 280 VAL D 'ARNO. Pope remained implacably thundrous ; and Frederick, wear? of quarrel, stayed quiet in one of his Apulian castles for a year. The repose of infidelity is seldom cheerful, unless it be criminal. Frederick had much to repent of, much to regret, nothing to hope, and nothing to do. At the end of his year’s quiet he was attacked by dysentery, and so made his final peace with the Pope, and heaven, — aged fifty-six. 93. Meantime St. Louis had gone on into Egypt, had got his army defeated, his brother killed, and himself carried captive. You may be interested in seeing, in the leaf of his psalter which I have laid on the table, the death of that brother set down in golden letters, between the common letters of ultramarine, on the eighth of February. 94. Providence, defied by Frederick, and trusted in by St. Louis, made such arrangements for them both ; Providence not in anywise regarding the opinions of either king, but very much regarding the facts, that the one had no business in Egypt, nor the other in Apulia. No two kings, in the history of the world, could have been happier, or more useful, than these two might have been, if they only had had the sense to stay in their own capitals, and attend to their own affairs. But they seem only to have been born to show what grievous results, under the power of dis- contented imagination, a Christian could achieve by faith, and a philosopher by reason.* 95. The death of Frederick II. virtually ended the soldier power in Florence ; and the mercantile power assumed the authority it thenceforward held, until, in the hands of the Medici, it destroyed the city. We will now trace the course and effects of the three revolu- tions which closed the reign of War, and crowned the power of Peace. * It must not be thought that this is said in disregard of the nobleness of either of these two glorious Kings. Among the many designs of past years, one of my favorites was to write a life of Frederick II. But I hope that both his, and that of Henry II. of England, will soon be written now, by a man who loves them as well as I do, and knows them far better. PARTED PER PALE. 281 96. In the year 1248, while St. Louis was in Cyprus, I told you Frederick was at war with Venice. He was so because she stood, if not as the leader, at least as the most important ally, of the great Lombard mercantile league against the German military power. That league consisted essentially of Venice, Milan, Bologna* and Genoa, in alliance with the Pope ; the Imperial or Gliibel- line towns were, Padua and Verona under Ezzelin ; Mantua, Pisa, and Siena. I do not name the minor towns of north Italy which associated themselves with each party : get only the main localities of the contest well into your minds. It was all concentrated in the furious hostility of Genoa and Pisa ; Genoa fighting really very piously for the Pope, as well as for herself; Pisa for her own hand, and for the Emperor as much as suited her. The mad little sea falcon never caught sight of another water-bird on the wing, but she must hawk at it ; and as an ally of the Emperor, balanced Venice and Genoa with her single strength. And so it came to pass that the victory of either the Guelph or Ghibelline party depended on the final action of Florence. 97. Florence meanwhile was fighting with herself, for her own amusement. She was nominally at the head of the Guelphic League in Tuscany ; but this only meant that she hated Siena and Pisa, her southern and western neighbours. She had never declared openly against the Emperor. On the contrary, she always recognized his authority, in an imagina- tive manner, as representing that of the Csesars. She spent her own energy chiefly in street-fighting, — the death of Buondelmonti in 1215 having been the root of a series of quarrels among her nobles which gradually took the form of contests of honour ; and were a kind of accidental tournaments, fought to the death, because they could not be exciting or dignified enough on any other condition. And thus the man- ner of life came to be customary, which you have accurately, with its consequences, pictured by Shakspeare. Samson bites his thumb at Abraham, and presently the streets are impas- sable in battle. The quarrel in the Canongate between the Leslies and Seytons, in Scott’s ‘Abbot,’ represents the same 282 VAL D'ARNO. temper ; and marks also, what Shakspeare did not so distinctly, because it would have interfered with the domestic character of his play, the connection of these private quarrels with political divisions which paralyzed the entire body of the State. — Yet these political schisms, in the earlier days of Italy, never reached the bitterness of Scottish feud,* because they were never so sincere. Protestant and Catholic Scotsmen faithfully believed each other to be servants of the devil ; but the Guelph and Ghibelline of Florence each respected, in the other, the fidelity to the Emperor, or piety towards the Pope, which he found it convenient, for the time, to dispense with in his own person. The street fighting was therefore more general, more chivalric, more good- humoured ; a word of offence set all the noblesse of the town on fire ; every one rallied to his post ; fighting began at once in half a dozen places of recognized convenience, but ended in the evening ; and, on the following day, the leaders determined in contended truce who had fought best, buried their dead triumphantly, and better fortified any weak points, which the events of the previous day had exposed at their palace corners. Florentine dispute was apt to centre itself about the gate of St. Peter, f the tower of the cathedral, or the fortress-palace of the IJberti, (the family of Dante’s Bel- lincion Berti and of Farinata), which occupied the site of the present Palazzo Vecchio. But the streets of Siena seem to have afforded better barricade practice. They are as steep as they are narrow — extremely both ; and the projecting stones on their palace fronts, which were left, in building, to sustain, on occasion, the barricade beams across the streets, are to this day important features in their architecture. 98. Such being the general state of matters in Florence, in this year 1248, Frederick writes to the Uberti, who headed the Ghibellines, to engage them in serious effort to bring the * Distinguish always the personal from the religious feud ; personal feud is more treacherous and violent in Italy than in Scotland ; but not the political or religious feud, unless involved with vast material interests. f Sismondi, vol. iL, chap. ii. ; G. Yillani, vi., 33. PARTED PER PALE. 283 city distinctly to the Imperial side. He was besieging Parma ; and sent his natural son, Frederick, king of Antioch, with sixteen hundred German knights, to give the Ghibellines assured preponderance in the next quarrel. The Uberti took arms before their arrival ; rallied all their Ghibelline friends into a united body, and so attacked and carried the Guelph barricades, one by one, till their antago- nists, driven together by local defeat, stood in consistency as complete as their own, by the gate of St. Peter, ‘Scherag- gio.’ Young Frederick, with his German riders, arrived at this crisis ; the Ghibellines opening the gates to him ; the Guelphs, nevertheless, fought at their outmost barricade for four days more ; but at last, tired, withdrew from the city, in a body, on the night of Candlemas, 2nd February, 1248 ; leaving the Ghibellines and their German friends to work their pleasure, — who immediately set themselves to throw down the Guelph palaces, and destroyed six-and- thirty of them, towers and all, with the good help of Niccola Pisano, — for this is the occasion of that beautiful piece of new engineering of his. 99. It is the first interference of the Germans in Floren- tine affairs which belongs to the real cycle of modern history. Six hundred years later, a troop of German riders entered Florence again, to restore its Grand Duke ; and our warm- hearted and loving English poetess, looking on from Casa Guidi windows, gives the said Germans many hard words, and thinks her darling Florentines entirely innocent in the matter. But if she had had clear eyes, (yeux de lin * the Romance of the Rose calls them,) she would have seen that white-coated cavalry with its heavy guns to be nothing more than the rear-guard of young Frederick of Antioch ; and that Florence’s own Ghibellines had opened her gates to them. Destiny little regards cost of time ; she does her justice at that telescopic distance just as easily and accurately as close at hand. 100. “ Frederick of Antioch.” Note the titular coincidence. The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch ; here we have our lieutenant of Antichrist also named from that town. * Lynx. 284 VAL D 'ARNO. The anti-Christian Germans got into Florence upon Sunday morning ; the Guelphs fought on till Wednesday, which was Candlemas ; — the Tower of the Death-watch was thrown down next day. It was so called because it stood on the Piazza of St. John ; and all dying people in Florence called on St. John for help ; and looked, if it might be, to the top of this highest and best-built of towers. The wicked anti- Christian Ghibellines, Nicholas of Pisa helping, cut the side of it “ so that the tower might fall on the Baptistery. But as it pleased God, for better reverencing of the blessed St. John, the tower, which was a hundred and eighty feet high, as it was coming down, plainly appeared to eschew the holy church, and turned aside, and fell right across the square ; at which all the Florentines marvelled, (pious or impious,) and the people (anti-Ghib ellin e ) were greatly delighted.” 101. I have no doubt that this story is apocryphal, not only in its attribution of these religious scruples to the falling tower ; but in its accusation of the Ghibellines as having definitely intended the destruction of the Baptistery. It is only modern reformers who feel the absolute need of enforc- ing their religious opinions in so practical a manner. Such a piece of sacrilege would have been revolting to Farinata ; how much more to the group of Florentines whose temper is cen- trally represented by Dante’s, to all of whom their “ bel San Giovanni ” was dear, at least for its beauty, if not for its sanc- tity. And Niccola himself was too good a workman to be- come the instrument of the destruction of so noble a work, — not to insist on the extreme probability that he was also too good an engineer to have had his purpose, if once fixed, thwarted by any tenderness in the conscience of the collaps- ing tower. The tradition itself probably arose after the rage of the exiled Ghibellines had half consented to the destruction, on political grounds, of Florence itself ; but the form it took is of extreme historical value, indicating thus early at least the suspected existence of passions like those of the Crom- wellian or Garibaldian soldiery in the Florentine noble ; and the distinct character of the Ghibelline party as not only anti- Papal, but profane. PARTED PER PALE. 285 102. Upon the castles, fend the persons of their antagonists, however, the pride, or fear, of the Ghibellines had little mercy ; and in their day of triumph they provoked against themselves nearly every rational as well as religious person in the com- monwealth. They despised too much the force of the newly- risen popular power, founded on economy, sobriety, and common sense ; and, alike by impertinence and pillage, in- creased the irritation of the civil body ; until, as aforesaid, on the 20th October, 1250, all the rich burgesses of Florence took arms ; met in the square before the church of Santa Croce, (“where,” says Sismondi, “ the republic of the dead is still assembled to-day,”) thence traversed the city to the pal- ace of the Ghibelline podesta ; forced him to resign ; named Uberto of Lucca in his place, under the title of Captain of the People ; divided themselves into twenty companies, each, in its own district of the city, having its captain* and standard ; and elected a council of twelve ancients, constituting a seniory or signoria, to deliberate on and direct public affairs. 103. What a perfectly beautiful republican movement ! thinks Sismondi, seeing, in all this, nothing but the energy of a multitude ; and entirely ignoring the peculiar capacity of this Florentine mob, — capacity of two virtues, much forgotten by modern republicanism, — order, namely ; and obedience ; together with the peculiar instinct of this Florentine multi- tude, which not only felt itself to need captains, but knew where to find them. 104. Hubert of Lucca — How came they, think you, to choose him out of a stranger city, and that a poorer one than their own? Was there no Florentine then, of all this rich and eager crowd, who was fit to govern Florence ? I cannot find any account of this Hubert, Bright mind, of Ducca ; Villani says simply of him, “ Fu il primo capitano di Firenze.” They hung a bell for him in the Campanile of the Lion, and gave him the flag of Florence to bear ; and before the * ‘Corporal,’ literally. 286 VAL D 'ARNO. day was over, that 20th of October, he had given every one of the twenty companies their flags also. And the bearings of the said gonfalons were these. I will give you this heraldry as far as I can make it out from Villani ; it will be very useful to us afterwards ; I leave the Italian when I cannot translate it : — 105. A. Sesto, (sixth part of the city,) of the other side of Arno. Gonfalon 1. Gules ; a ladder, argent. 2. Argent ; a scourge, sable. 3. Azure ; (una piazza bianca con nicchi vermigli). 4. Gules ; a dragon, vert. B. Sesto of St. Peter Scheraggio. 1. Azure ; a chariot, or. 2. Or ; a bull, sable. 3. Argent ; a lion rampant, sable. 4 (A lively piece, “pezza gag- liarda ” ) Barry of (how many?) pieces, argent and sable. You may as well note at once of this kind of bearing, called ‘ gagliarda ’ by Villani, that these groups of piles, pales, bends, and bars, were called in English heraldry ‘Restrial bearings,’ “ in respect of their strength and solid substance, which is able to abide the stresse and force of any triall they shall be put unto.” * And also that, the number of bars being uncer- tain, I assume the bearing to be ‘ barry,’ that is, having an even number of bars ; had it been odd, as of seven bars, it should have been blazoned, argent ; three bars, sable ; or, if so divided, sable, three bars argent. This lively bearing was St. Pulinari’s. Guillim, sect, ii. } chap. 3, PARTED PER PALE. 287 C. Sesto of Borgo. 1. Or ; a viper, vert. 2. Argent ; a needle, (?) (agu- glia) sable. 3. Yert ; a horse unbridled ; draped, argent, a cross, gules. D. Sesto of St. Brancazio. 1. Vert ; a lion rampant, proper. 2. Argent ; a lion rampant, gules. 3. Azure; a lion rampant, argent. E. Sesto of the Cathedral gates. 1. Azure ; a lion (passant ?) or. 2. Or ; a dragon, vert. 3. Argent ; a lion rampant, azure, crowned, or. F. Sesto of St. Peter’s gates. 1. Or ; two keys, gules. 2. An Italian (or more definitely a Greek and Etruscan bear- ing ; I do not know how to blazon it;) concentric bands, argent and sable. This is one of the remains of the Greek expressions of storm ; hail, or the Trinacrian limbs, being put on the giant’s shields also. It is connected besides wtih the Cretan labyrinth, and the circles of the Inferno. 3. Parted per fesse, gules and vai (I don’t know if vai means grey — not a proper heraldic colour — or vaire). 288 VAL D'ARNO. 106. Of course Hubert of Lucca did not determine these bearings, but took them as he found them, and appointed them for standards ; * he did the same for all the country par- ishes, and ordered them to come into the city at need. “And in this manner the old people of Florence ordered itself ; and for more strength of the people, they ordered and began to build the palace which is behind the Badia, — that is to say> the one which is of dressed stone, with the tower ; for before there was no palace of the commune in Florence, but the sign- ory abode sometimes in one part of the town, sometimes in another. 107. “ And as the people had now taken state and signory on themselves, they ordered, for greater strength of the peo- ple, that all the towers of Florence — and there were many 180 feet high f — should be cut down to 75 feet, and no more; and so it was done, and with the stones of them they walled the city on the other side Arno.” 108. That last sentence is a significant one. Here is the central expression of the true burgess or townsman temper, — resolute maintenance of fortified peace. These are the walls which modern republicanism throws down, to make boulevards over their ruins. 109. Such new order being taken, Florence remained quiet for — full two months. On the 13th of December, in the same year, died the Emperor Frederick H. ; news of his death did not reach Florence till the 7th January, 1251. It had chanced, according to Villani, that on the actual day of his death, his Florentine vice-regent, Binieri of Montemerlo, was killed by a piece of the vaulting % of his room falling on him as he slept. And when the people heard of the Emperor’s death, “ which was most useful and needful for Holy Church, and for our commune,” they took the fall of the roof on his lieu- tenant as an omen of the extinction of Imperial authority, and resolved to bring home all their Guelphic exiles, and that the * We will examine afterwards ttie heraldry of the trades, chap, xi., Villani. f 120 braccia. \ “Una volta ch’ era sopra la camera. ** FARTED PER PALE. 289 Gliibellines should be forced to make peace with them. Which was done, and the peace really lasted for full six months • when, a quarrel chancing with Ghibelline Pistoja, the Floren- tines, under a Milanese podesta, fought their first properly communal and commercial battle, with great slaughter of Pis- tojese. Naturally enough, but very unwisely, the Florentine Gliibellines declined to take part in this battle ; w r hereupon the people, returning flushed with victory, drove them all out, and established pure Guelph government in Florence, chang- ing at the same time the flag of the city from gules, a lily argent, to argent, a lily gules ; but the most ancient bearing of all, simply parted per pale, argent and gules, remained always on their carroccio of battle, — “ Non si muto mai.” 110. “ Non si muto mai.” Villani did not know how true his words were. That old shield of Florence, parted per pale, argent and gules, (or our own Saxon Oswald’s, parted per pale, or and purpure,) are heraldry changeless in sign ; declar- ing the necessary balance, in ruling men, of the Rational and Imaginative powers ; pure Alp, and glowing cloud. Church and State — Pope and Emperor — Clergy and Laity, — all these are partial, accidental — too often, criminal — oppo- sitions ; but the bodily and spiritual elements, seemingly adverse, remain in everlasting harmony, Not less the new bearing of the shield, the red fleur-de-lys, has another meaning. It is red, not as ecclesiastical, but as free. Not of Guelph against Ghibelline, but of Labourer against Knight. No more his serf, but his minister. His duty no more ‘servitium,’ but ‘ministerium,’ ‘mestier.’ We learn the power of word after word, as of sign after sign, as we fol- low the traces of this nascent art. I have sketched for you this lily from the base of the tower of Giotto. You may judge by the subjects of the sculpture beside it that it was built just in this fit of commercial triumph ; for all the outer bas-reliefs are of trades. 111. Draw that red lily then, and fix it in your minds as the sign of the great change in the temper of Florence, and in her laws, in mid-thirteenth century ; and remember also, when you go to Florence and see that mighty tower of the 290 VAL D'ARNO. Palazzo Vecchio (noble still, in spite of the calamitous and accursed restorations which have smoothed its rugged ouh line, and effaced with modern vulgarisms its lovely sculpture) — terminating the shadowy perspectives of the Uffizii, or dominant over the city seen from Fesole or Bellosguardo, — that, as the tower of Giotto is the notablest monument in the world of the Religion of Europe, so, on this tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, first shook itself to the winds the Lily stan- dard of her liberal, — because honest, — commerce. LECTURE V. PAX VOBISCUM. 112. My last lecture ended with a sentence which I thought, myself, rather pretty, and quite fit for a popular newspaper, about the ‘ lily standard of liberal commerce. ’ But it might occur, and I hope did occur, to some of you, that it would have been more appropriate if the lily had changed colour the other way, from red to white, (instead of white to red,) as a sign of a pacific constitution and kindly national purpose. 113. I believe otherwise, however ; and although the change itself was for the sake of change merely, you may see in it, I think, one of the historical coincidences which contain true instruction for us. Quite one of the chiefest art-mistakes and stupidities of men has been their tendency to dress soldiers in red clothes, and monks, or pacific persons, in black, white, or grey ones. At least half of that mental bias of young people, which sus- tains the wickedness of war among us at this day, is owing to the prettiness of uniforms. Make all Hussars black, all Guards black, all troops of the line black ; dress officers and men, alike, as you would public executioners ; and the num- ber of candidates for commissions will be greatly diminished. Habitually, on the contrary, you dress these destructive rustics and their officers in scarlet and gold, but give your productive rustics no costume of honour or beauty ; you give PAX VOBISCUM. 291 your peaceful student a costume which he tucks up to his waist, because he is ashamed of it ; and dress your pious rectors, and your sisters of charity, in black, as if it were their trade instead of the soldier’s to send people to hell, and their own destiny to arrive there. 114. But the investiture of the lily of Florence with scarlet is a symbol, — unintentional, observe, but not the less notable, — of the recovery of human sense and intelligence in this matter. The reign of war was past ; this was the sign of it ; — the red glow, not now of the Towers of Dis, but of the Carita, “che appena fora dentro al fuoco nota.” And a day is coming, be assured, when the kings of Europe will dress their peaceful troops beautifully ; will clothe their peasant girls “in scarlet, with other delights,” and “put on orna- ments of gold upon their apparel ; ” when the crocus and the lily will not be the only living things dressed daintily in our land, and the glory of the wisest monarchs be indeed, in that their people, like themselves, shall be, at least in some dim likeness, “arrayed like one of these.” 115. But as for the immediate behaviour of Florence her- self, with her new standard, its colour was quite sufficiently significant in that old symbolism, when the first restrial bear- ing was drawn by dying fingers dipped in blood. The Guelph- ic revolution had put her into definite political opposition with her nearest, and therefore, — according to the custom and Christianity of the time, — her hatefullest, neighbours, — Pistoja, Pisa, Siena, and Volterra. What glory might not be acquired, what kind purposes answered, by making pacific mercantile states also of those benighted towns ! Besides, the death of the Emperor had thrown his party everywhere into discouragement ; and what was the use of a flag which flew no farther than over the new palazzo ? 116. Accordingly, in the next year, the pacific Florentines began by ravaging the territory of Pistoja ; then attacked the Pisans at Pontadera, and took 3000 prisoners ; and finished by traversing, and eating up all that could be ate in, the country of Siena ; besides beating the Sienese under the castle of Montalcmo. Returning in triumph after these benev- 292 VAL D'ARNO. olent operations, they resolved to strike a new piece of money in memory of them, — the golden Florin ! 117. This coir tve placed in your room of study, to be the first of the s^nes of coins which I hope to arrange for you, not chronologically, but for the various interest, whether as regards art or history, which they should possess in your general studies. “ The Florin of Florence,” (says Sismondi), “through all the monetary revolutions of all neighbouring countries, and while the bad faith of governments adulterated their coin from one end of Europe to the other, has always remained the same ; it is, to-day,” (I don’t know when, exactly, he wrote this, — but it doesn’t matter), “ of the same weight, and bears the same name and the same stamp, which it did when it w T as struck in 1252.” It was gold of the purest title (24 carats), weighed the eighth of an ounce, and carried, as you see, on one side the image of St. John Baptist, on the other the Fleur-de-lys. It is the coin which Chaucer takes for the best representation of beautiful money in the Par- doner’s Tale : this, in his judgment, is the fairest mask of Death. Villani’s relation of its moral and commercial effect at Tunis is worth translating, being in the substance of it, I doubt not, true. 118. “And these new florins beginning to scatter through the world, some of them got to Tunis, in Barbary ; and the King of Tunis, who was a worthy and wise lord, was greatly pleased with them, and had them tested ; and finding them of fine gold, he praised them much, and had the legend on them interpreted to him, — to wit, on one side * St. John Bap- tist,’ on the other ‘Florentia.’ So seeing they were pieces of Christian money, he sent for the Pisan merchants, who were free of his port, and much before the King (and also th9 Florentines traded in Tunis through Pisan agents), — [see these hot little Pisans, how they are first every where,] — and asked of them what city it was among the Christians which made the said florins. And the Pisans answered in spite and envy, ‘ They are our land Arabs.’ The King answered wisely, “ It does not appear to me Arab’s money ; you Pisans, what golden money have you got ? ” Then they were confused, PAX VOBISCUM. 293 and knew not what to answer. So he asked if there was any Florentine among them. And there was found a merchant from the other-side-Arno, by name Peter Balducci, discreet and wise. The King asked him of the state and being of Florence, of which the Pisans made their Arabs, — who an- swered him wisely, showing the power and magnificence of Florence; and how Pisa, in comparison, was not, either in land or people, the half of Florence ; and that they had no golden money ; and that the gold of which those florins had been made was gained by the Florentines above and beyond them, by many victories. Wherefore the said Pisans were put to shame, and the King, both by reason of the florin, and for the words of our wise citizen, made the Florentines free, and appointed for them their own Fondaco, and church, in Tunis, and gave them privileges like the Pisans. And this we know for a truth from the same Peter, having been in company with him at the office of the Priors.” 119. I cannot tell you what the value of the piece was at this time : the sentence with which Sismondi concludes his account of it 'being only useful as an example of the total ignorance of the laws of currency in which many even of the best educated persons at the present day remain. “Its value,” he says always the same, “answers to eleven francs forty centimes of France.” But all that can be scientifically said of any piece of money is that it contains a given weight of a given metal. Its value in other coins, other metals, or other general produce, varies not only from day to day, but from instant to instant. 120. With this coin of Florence ought in justice to be ranked the Venetian zecchin ; * but of it I can only thus give you account in another place, — for I must at once go on now to tell you the first use I find recorded, as being made by the Florentines of their new money. They pursued in the years 1253 and 1254 their energetic promulgation of peace. They ravaged the lands of Pistoja so * In connection with the Pisans’ insulting intention by their term of Arabs, remember that the Venetian 4 zecca,’ (mint) came from the Arabic ‘sehk,’ the steel die used in coinage. 294 VAL I)' Amo. often, that the Pistojese submitted themselves, on condition of receiving back their Guelph exiles, and admitting a Flor- entine garrison into Pistoja. Next they attacked Monte Reggione, the March-fortress of the Sienese ; and pressed it so vigorously that Siena was fain to make peace too, on con- dition of ceasing her alliance with the Ghibellines. Next they ravaged the territory of Volterra : the townspeople, con- fident in the strength of their rock fortress, came out to give battle ; the Florentines beat them up the hill, and entered the town gates with the fugitives. 121. And, for note to this sentence, in my long-since-read volume of Sismondi, I find a cross-fleury at the bottom of the page, with the date 1254 underneath it ; meaning that I was to remember that year as the beginning of Christian warfare. For little as you may think it, and grotesquely opposed as this ravaging of their neighbours’ territories may seem to their pacific mission, this Florentine army is fighting in absolute good faith. Partly self-deceived, indeed, by their own am- bition, and by their fiery natures, rejoicing in the excitement of battle, they have nevertheless, in this their “ year of vic- tories,” — so they ever afterwards called it, — no occult or malignant purpose. At least, whatever is occult or malignant is also unconscious ; not now in cruel, but in kindly jealousy of their neighbours, and in a true desire to communicate and extend to them the privileges of their own new artizan gov- ernment, the Trades of Florence have taken arms. They are justly proud of themselves ; rightly assured of the wisdom of the change they have made ; true to each other for the time, and confident in the future. No army ever fought in better cause, or with more united heart. And accordingly they meet with no check, and commit no error ; from tower to tower of the field fortresses, — from gate to gate of the great cities, — they march in one continuous and daily more splendid tri- umph, yet in gentle and perfect discipline ; and now, when they have entered Volterra with her fugitives, after stress of battle, not a drop of blood is shed, nor a single house pillaged, nor is any other condition of peace required than the exile of the Ghibelline nobles. You may remember, as a symbol of PAX V0B1SCUM. 295 the influence of Christianity in this result, that the Bishop of Volterra, with his clergy, came out in procession to meet them as they began to run * the streets, and obtained this mercy ; else the old habits of pillage would have prevailed. 122. And from Yolterra, the Florentine army entered on the territory of Pisa ; and now with so high prestige, that the Pisans at once sent ambassadors to them with keys in their hands, in token of submission. And the Florentines made peace with them, on condition that the Pisans should let the Florentine merchandize pass in and out without tax ; — should use the same weights as Florence, — the same cloth measure, — and the same alloy of money. 123. You see that Mr. Adam Smith was not altogether the originator of the idea of free trade ; and six hundred years have passed without bringing Europe generally to the degree of mercantile intelligence, as to weights and currency, which Florence had in her year of victories. The Pisans broke this peace two years afterwards, to help the Emperor Manfred ; whereupon the Florentines attacked them instantly again ; defeated them on the Serchio, near Lucca ; entered the Pisan territory by the Yal di Serchio ; and there, cutting down a great pine tree, struck their florins on the stump of it, putting, for memory, under the feet of the St. John, a trefoil “ in guise of a little tree.” And note here the difference between artistic and mechanical coinage. The Florentines, using pure gold, and thin, can strike their coin anywhere, with only a wooden anvil, and their engraver is ready on the instant to make such change in the stamp as may record any new triumph. Consider the vigour, popu- larity, pleasantness of an art of coinage thus ductile to events, and easy in manipulution. 124. It is to be observed also that a thin gold coinage like that of the English angel, and these Italian zecchins, is both more convenient and prettier than the massive gold of the Greeks, often so small that it drops through the fingers, and, if of any size, inconveniently large in value. 125. It was in the following year, 1255, that the Florentines * Corsona la citta senza contesto niuno. ” — ViUani. 296 VAL D'ARNO. made the noblest use of their newly struck florins, so far as I know, ever recorded in any history ; and a Florentine citizen made as noble refusal of them. You will find the two stories in Giovanni Villani, Book 6th, chapters 61, 62. One or two important facts are added by Sismondi, but without references. I take his statement as on the whole trustworthy, using Yil- lani’s authority wherever it reaches ; one or two points I have farther to explain to you myself as I go on. 126. The first tale shows very curiously the mercenary and independent character of warfare, as it now was carried on by the great chiefs, whether Guelph or Ghibelline. The Floren- tines wanted to send a troop of five hundred horse to assist Orvieto, a Guelph town, isolated on its rock, and at present harrassed upon it. They gave command of this troop to the Knight Guido Guerra de’ Conti Guidi, and he and his riders set out for Orvieto by the Umbrian road, through Arezzo, which was at peace with Florence, though a Ghibelline town. The Guelph party within the town asked help from the pass- ing Florentine battalion ; and Guido Guerra, without any authority for such action, used the troop of which he was in command in their favour, and drove out the GhibeUines. Sis- mondi does not notice what is quite one of the main points in the matter, that this troop of horse must have been mainly composed of Count Guido’s own retainers, and not of Floren- tine citizens, who would not have cared to leave their business on such a far-off quest as this help to Orvieto. However, Arezzo is thus brought over to the Florentine interest ; and any other Italian state would have been sure, while it dis- claimed the Count’s independent action, to keep the advantage of it. Not so Florence. She is entirely resolved, in these years of victory, to do justice to all men so far she understands it ; and in this case it will give her some trouble to do it, and worse, — cost her some of her fine new florins. For her counter- mandate is quite powerless with Guido Guerra. He has taken Arezzo mainly with his own men, and means to stay there, thinking that the Florentines, if even they do not abet him, will take no practical steps against him. But he does not know this newly risen clan of military merchants, who quite clearly PAX VO BISCUM. 297 understand what honesty means, and will put themselves out of their way to keep their faith. Florence calls out her trades instantly, and with gules, a dragon vert, and or, a bull sable, they march, themselves, angrily up the Yal d’Arno, replace the adverse Ghibellines in Arezzo, and send Master Guido de’ Conti Guido about his business. But the prettiest and most curious part of the whole story is their equity even to him, after he had given them all this trouble. They entirely recognize the need he is under of getting meat, somehow, for the mouths of these five hundred riders of his ; also they hold him still their friend, though an unmanageable one ; and admit with praise what of more or less patriotic and Guelpliic principle may be at the root of his disobedience. So when he claims twelve thousand lire, — roughly, some two thousand pounds of money at present value, — from the Guelphs of Arezzo for his service, and the Guelphs, having got no good of it, owing to this Flor- entine interference, object to paying him, the Florentines themselves lend them the money, — and are never paid a far- thing of it back. 127. There is a beautiful “investment of capital ” for your modern merchant to study ! No interest thought of, and little hope of ever getting back the principal. And yet you will find that there were no mercantile “panics,” in Florence in those days, nor failing bankers,* nor “ clearings out of this establishment — any reasonable offer accepted.” 128. But the second story, of a private Florentine citizen, is better still. In that campaign against Pisa in which the florins were struck on the root of pine, the conditions of peace had been ratified by the surrender to Florence of the Pisan fortress of Mutrona, which commanded a tract of seaboard below Pisa, of great importance for the Tuscan trade. The Florentines had stipulated for the right not only of holding, but of de- stroying it, if they chose ; and in their Council of Ancients, after long debate, it was determined to raze it, the cost of its * Some account of the state of modern British business in this kind will be given, I hope, in some number of “Fors Clavigera ’’ for this year, 1874. 298 VAL D 'ARNO. garrison being troublesome, and the freedom of seaboard all that the city wanted. But the Pisans feeling the power that the fortress had against them in case of future war, and doubt- ful of the issue of council at Florence, sent a private negotia- tor to the member of the Council of Ancients who was known to have most influence, though one of the poorest of them, Aldobrandino Ottobuoni ; and offered him four thousand golden florins if he would get the vote passed to raze Mutrona. The vote had passed the evening before. Aldobrandino dis- missed the Pisan ambassador in silence, returned instantly into the council, and without saying anything of the offer that had been made to him, got them to reconsider their vote, and showed them such reason for keeping Mutrona in its strength, that the vote for its destruction w r as rescinded. “And note thou, oh reader,” says Villani, “the virtue of such a citizen, who, not being rich in substance, had yet such continence and loyalty for his state.” 129. You might, perhaps, once, have thought me det ainin g you needlessly with these historical details, little bearing, it is commonly supposed, on the subject of art. But you are, I trust, now in some degree persuaded that no art, Florentine or any other, can be understood without knowing these sculptures and mouldings of the national soul. You remem- ber I first begun this large digression when it became a ques- tion writh us why some of Giovanni Pisano’s sepulchral work had been destroyed at Perugia. And now we shall get our first gleam of light on the matter, finding similar operations car- ried on in Florence. For a little while after this speech in the Council of Ancients, Aldobrandino died, and the people, at public cost, built him a tomb of marble, “ higher than any other ” in the church of Santa Beparata, engraving on it these verses, which I leave you to construe, for I cannot : — Fons est supremus Aldobrandino amoenus. Ottoboni natus, a bono civita datus. Only I suppose the pretty word ‘ amoenus ’ may be taken as marking the delightfulness and sweetness of character which had won all men’s love, more, even, than their gratitude. PAX VOBISGUM. 299 130. It failed of its effect, however, on the Tuscan aristo- cratic mind. For, when, after the battle of the Arbia, the Ghibellines had again their own way in Florence, though Ottobuoni had been then dead three years, they beat down his tomb, pulled the dead body out of it, dragged it — by such tenure as it might still possess — through the city, and threw the fragments of it into ditches. It is a memorable parallel to the treatment of the body of Cromwell by our own Cava- liers ; and indeed it seems to me one of the highest forms of laudatory epitaph upon a man, that his body should be thus torn from its rest. For he can hardly have spent his life better than in drawing on himself the kind of enmity which can so be gratified ; and for the most loving of lawgivers, as of princes, the most enviable and honourable epitaph has always been 44 oiSe TroXirai avrov i/xtcrovv avrov.” 131. Not but that pacific Florence, in her pride of victory, was beginning to show unamiableness of temper also, on her so equitable side. It is perhaps worth noticing, for the sake of the name of Correggio, that in 1257, when Matthew Cor- reggio, of Parma, was the Podesta of Florence, the Floren- tines determined to destroy the castle and walls of Poggi- bonzi, suspected of Ghibelline tendency, though the Poggi- bonzi people came with “ coregge in collo,” leathern straps round their necks, to ask that their cattle might be spared. And the heartburnings between the two parties went on, smouldering hotter and hotter, till July, 1258, when the people having discovered secret dealings between the Uberti and the Emperor Manfred, and the Uberti refusing to obey citation to the popular tribunals, the trades ran to arms, at- tacked the Uberti palace, killed a number of their people, took prisoner, Uberto of the Uberti, Hubert of the Huberts, or Bright-mind of the Bright-minds, with 4 Mangia degl’ Infan- gati, ( 4 Gobbler * of the dirty ones * this knight’s name * At least, the compound 4 Mangia-pane,’ 4 munch-bread,’ stands still for a good-for-nothing fellow. 300 VAL B'ARNO. sounds like,) — and after they had confessed their guilt, be- headed them in St. Michael’s corn-market ; and all the rest of the Uberti and Ghibelline families were driven out of Florence, and their palaces pulled down, and the walls towards Siena built with the stones of them ; and two months afterwards, the people suspecting the Abbot of Yallombrosa of treating with the Ghibellines, took him, and tortured him ; and he confessing under torture, “ at the cry of the people, they be- headed him in the square of St. Apollinare.” For which un- expected piece of clangorous impiety the Florentines were ex- communicated, besides drawing upon themselves the steady enmity of Pavia, the Abbot’s native town; “and indeed people say the Abbot was innocent, though he belonged to a great Ghibelline house. And for this sin, and for many others done by the wicked people, many wise persons say that God, for Divine judgment, permitted upon the said people the revenge and slaughter of Monteaperti.” 132. The sentence which I have last read introduces, as you must at once have felt, a new condition of things. Generally, I have spoken of the Ghibellines as infidel, or impious ; and for the most part they represent, indeed, the resistance of kingly to priestly power. But, in this action of Florence, we have the rise of another force against the Church, in the end to be much more fatal to it, that of popular intelligence and popular passion. I must for the present, however, return to our immediate business ; and ask you to take note of the effect, on actually existing Florentine architecture, of the political movements of the ten years we have been studying. 133. In the revolution of Candlemas, 1248, the successful Ghibellines throw down thirty-six of the Guelph palaces. And in the revolution of July, 1258, the successful Guelphs throw down all the Ghibelline palaces. Meantime the trades, as against the Knights Castellans, have thrown down the tops of all the towers above seventy-five feet high. And we shall presently have a proposal, after the battle of the Arbia, to throw down Florence altogether. 134 You think at first that this is remarkably like the course PAX V0B1SGUM. 301 of republican reformations in the present clay ? But there is a wide difference. In the first place, the palaces and towers are not thrown down in mere spite or desire of ruin, but after quite definite experience of their danger to the State, and positive dejection of boiling lead and wooden logs from their machicolations upon the heads below. In the second place, nothing is thrown down without complete certainty on the part of the overthrowers that they are able, and willing, to build as good or better things instead ; which, if any like con- viction exist in the minds of modern republicans, is a wofully ill-founded one : and lastly, these abolitions of private wealth were coincident with a widely spreading disposition to under- take, as I have above noticed, works of public utility, from which no dividends were to be received by any of the sharehold- ers ; and for the execution of which the builders received no commission on the cost, but payment at the rate of so much a day, carefully adjusted to the exertion of real power and in- telligence. 135. We must not, therefore, without qualification blame, though we may profoundly regret, the destructive passions of the thirteenth century. The architecture of the palaces thus destroyed in Florence contained examples of the most beauti- ful round-arched work that had been developed by the Norman schools ; and was in some cases adorned with a barbaric splen- dour, and fitted into a majesty of strength which, so far as I can conjecture the effect of it from the few now existing traces, must have presented some of the most impressive aspects of street edifice ever existent among civil societies. 136. It may be a temporary relief for you from the confu- sion of following the giddy successions of Florentine temper, if I interrupt, in this place, my history of the city by some in- quiry into technical points relating to the architecture of these destroyed palaces. Their style is familiar to us, indeed, in a building of which it is difficult to believe the early date, — the leaning tower of Pisa. The lower stories of it are of the twelfth century, and the open arcades of the cathedrals of Pisa and Lucca, as well as the lighter construction of the spire of St. Niccol, at Pisa, (though this was built in continuation of 302 VAL D'ARNO. the older style by Niccola himself,) all represent to you, though in enriched condition, the general manner of building in pal- aces of the Norman period in Val d’Amo. That of the Tosin- ghi, above the old market in Florence, is especially mentioned by Villani, as more than a hundred feet in height, entirely built with little pillars, (colonnelli,) of marble. On their splendid masonry was founded the exquisiteness of that which immediately succeeded them, of which the date is fixed by definite examples both in Verona and Florence, and which still exists in noble masses in the retired streets and courts of either city ; too soon superseded, in the great thoroughfares, by the effeminate and monotonous luxury of Venetian renais- sance, or by the heaps of quarried stone which rise into the ruggedness of their native cliffs, in the Pitti and Strozzi pal- aces. LECTURE VL TVTATTBT.F, COUCHANT. 137. I told you in my last lecture that the exquisiteness of Florentine thirteenth century masonry was founded on the strength and splendour of that which preceded it. I use the word ‘ founded ’ in a literal as well as figurative sense. While the merchants, in their year of victories, threw down the walls of the war-towers, they as eagerly and diligently set their best craftsmen to lift higher the walls of their churches. For the most part, the Early Norman or Basilican forms were too low to please them in their present enthusi- asm. Their pride, as well as their piety, desired that these stones of their temples might be goodly ; and all kinds of junctions, insertions, refittings, and elevations were under- taken ; which, the genius of the people being always for mo- saic, are so perfectly executed, and mix up twelfth and thir- teenth century work in such intricate harlequinade, that it is enough to drive a poor antiquary wild. 138. I have here in my hand, however, a photograph of a MARBLE COUCH ANT. 303 small church, which shows you the change at a glance, and at- tests it in a notable manner. You know Hubert of Lucca was the first captain of the Florentine people, and the march in which they struck their florin on the pine trunk was through Lucca, on Pisa. Now here is a little church in Lucca, of which the lower half of the fa 9 ade is of the twelfth century, and the top, built by the Florentines, in the thirteenth, and sealed for their own by two fleur-de-lys, let into its masonry. The most important difference, marking the date, is in the sculpture of the heads which carry the archivolts. But the most palpable difference is in the Cyclopean simplicity of irregular bedding in the lower story ; and the delicate bands of alternate serpentine and marble, which follow the horizontal or couchant placing of the stones above. 139. Those of you who, interested in English Gothic, have visited Tuscany, are, I think, always offended at first, if not in permanence, by these horizontal stripes of her marble walls. Twenty-two years ago I quoted, in vol. i. of the “Stones of Venice,” Professor Willis’s statement that “a practice more destructive of architectural grandeur could hardly be conceived ; ” and I defended my favourite buildings against that judgement, first by actual comparison in the plate opposite the page, of a piece of them with an example of our modern grandeur; secondly, (vol. i., chap, v.,) by a compari- son of their aspect with that of the building of the grandest piece of wall in the Alps, — that Matterhorn in which you all have now learned to take some gymnastic interest ; and thirdly, (vol. i., chap, xxvi.,) by reference to the use of barred colours, with delight, by Giotto and all subsequent colourists. 140. But it did not then occur to me to ask, much as I always disliked the English Perpendicular, what would have been the effect on the spectator’s mind, had the buildings been striped vertically instead of horizontally ; nor did I then know, or in the least imagine, how much practical need there was for reference from the structure of the edifice to that of the cliff ; and how much the permanence, as well as propriety, of structure depended on the stones being couchant in the 304 VAL D'ARNO. wall, as they had been in the quarry : to which subject I wish to-day to direct your attention. 141. You will find stated with as much clearness as I am able, in the first and fifth lectures in “ Aratra Pentelici,” the principles of architectural design to which, in all my future teaching, I shall have constantly to appeal; namely, that archi- tecture consists distinctively in the adaptation of form to resist force ; — that, practically, it may be always thought of as doing this by the ingenious adjustment of various pieces of solid material ; that the perception of this ingenious adjustment, or structure, is to be always joined with our admiration of the superadded ornament ; and that all delightful ornament is the honouring of such useful structures ; but that the beauty of the ornament itself is independent of the structure, and arrived at by powers of mind of a very different class from those which are necessary to give skill in architecture proper. 142. During the course of this last summer I have been myself very directly interested in some of the quite element- ary processes of true architecture. I have been building a little pier into Coniston Lake, and various walls and terraces in a steeply sloping garden, all which had to be constructed of such rough stones as lay nearest. Under the dextrous hands of a neighbour farmer’s son, the pier projected, and the walls rose, as if enchanted ; every stone taking its proper place, and the loose dyke holding itself as firmly upright as if the grip- ping cement of the Florentine towers had fastened it. My own better acquaintance with the laws of gravity and of statics did not enable me, myself, to build six inches of dyke that would stand ; and all the decoration possible under the circum- stances consisted in turning the lichened sides of the stones outwards. And yet the noblest conditions of building in the world are nothing more than the gradual adornment, by play of the imagination, of materials first arranged by this natural instinct of adjustment. You must not lose sight of the instinct of building, but you must not think the play of the imagination depends upon it. Intelligent laying of stones is always delightful ; but the fancy must not be limited to its contemplation. Plate V. — Door op the Baptistery. Pisa. MARBLE COUCH ANT. 305 143. In the more elaborate architecture of my neighbour- hood, I have taken pleasure these many years ; one of the first papers I ever wrote on architecture was a study of the West- moreland cottage ; — properly, observe, the cottage of West- mere-land, of the land of western lakes. Its principal feature is the projecting porch at its door, formed by two rough slabs of Coniston slate, set in a blunt gable ; supported, if far pro- jecting, by two larger masses for uprights. A disciple of Mr. Pugin would delightedly observe that the porch of St. Zeno at Yerona was nothing more than the decoration of this con- struction ; but you do not suppose that the first idea of put- ting two stones together to keep off rain was all on which the sculptor of St. Zeno wished to depend for your entertainment. 144. Perhaps you may most clearly understand the real connection between structure and decoration by considering all architecture as a kind of book, which must be properly bound indeed, and in which the illumination of the pages has distinct reference in all its forms to the breadth of the margins and length of the sentences ; but is itself free to follow its own quite separate and higher objects of design. 145. Thus, for instance, in the architecture which Niccola was occupied upon, when a boy, under his Byzantine master. Here is the door of the Baptistery at Pisa, again by Mr. Sev- ern delightfully enlarged for us from a photograph.* The general idea of it is a square-headed opening in a solid wall, faced by an arch carried on shafts. And the ornament does indeed follow this construction so that the eye catches it with ease, — but under what arbitrary conditions ! In the square door, certainly the side-posts of it are as important members as the lintel they carry ; but the lintel is carved elaborately, and the side-posts left blank. Of the facing arch and shaft, it would be similarly difficult to say whether the sustaining vertical, or sustained curve, were the more important member of the con- struction ; but the decorator now reverses the distribution of his care, adorns the vertical member with passionate elabora- * Plate 5 is from the photograph itself ; the enlarged drawing showed the arrangement of parts more clearly, hut necessarily omitted detail which it is better here to retain. 306 VAL D 'ARNO. tion, and runs a narrow band, of comparatively uninteresting work, round the arch. Between this outer shaft and inner door is a square pilaster, of which the architect carves one side, and lets the other alone. It is followed by a smaller shaft and arch, in which he reverses his treatment of the outer order by cutting the shaft delicately and the arch deeply. Again, whereas in what is called the decorated construction of English Gothic, the pillars would have been left plain and the spandrils deep cut, — here, are we to call it decoration of the construction, when the pillars are carved and the spandrils left plain ? Or when, finally, either these spandril spaces on each side of the arch, or the corresponding slopes of the gable, are loaded with recumbent figures by the sculptors of the re- naissance, are we to call, for instance, Michael Angelo’s Dawn and Twilight, only the decorations of the sloping plinths of a tomb, or trace to a geometrical propriety the subsequent rule in Italy that no window could be properly complete for living people to look out of, without having two stone people sitting on the corners of it above ? I have heard of charming young ladies occasionally, at very crowded balls, sitting on the stairs, — would you call them, in that case, only decorations of the construction of the staircase ? 146. You will find, on consideration, the ultimate fact to be that to which I have just referred you ; — my statement in “ Aratra,” that the idea of a construction originally useful is retained in good architecture, through all the amusement of its ornamentation ; as the idea of the proper function of any piece of dress ought to be retained through its changes in form or embroidery. A good spire or porch retains the first idea of a roof usefully covering a space, as a Norman high cap or elongated Quaker’s bonnet retains the original idea of a sim- ple covering for the head ; and any extravagance of subsequent fancy may be permitted, so long as the notion of use is not altogether lost. A girl begins by wearing a plain round hat to shade her from the sun ; she ties it down over her ears on a windy day ; presently she decorates the edge of it, so bent, with flowers in front, or the riband that ties it with a bouquet at the side, and it becomes a bonnet. This decorated con- MARBLE COU CHANT 307 struction may be discreetly changed, by endless fashion, so long as it does not become a clearly useless riband round the middle of the head, or a clearly useless saucer on the top of it. 147. Again, a Norman peasant may throw up the top of her cap into a peak, or a Bernese one put gauze wings at the side of it, and still be dressed with propriety, so long as her hair is modestly confined, and her ears healthily protected, by the matronly safeguard of the real construction. She ceases to be decorously dressed only when the material becomes too flimsy to answer such essential purpose, and the flaunting pendants or ribands can only answer the ends of coquetry or ostentation. Similarly, an architect may deepen or enlarge, in fantastic exaggeration, his original Westmoreland gable into Rouen porch, and his original square roof into Coventry spire ; but he must not put within his splendid porch, a little door where two persons cannot together get in, nor cut his spire away into hollow filigree, and mere ornamental per- viousness to wind and rain. 148. Returning to our door at Pisa, we shall find these general questions as to the distribution of ornament much confused with others as to its time and style. We are at once, for instance, brought to a pause as to the degree in which the ornamentation was once carried out in the doors themselves. Their surfaces were, however, I doubt not, once recipients of the most elaborate ornament, as in the Baptistery of Florence ; and in later bronze, by John of Bologna, in the door of the Pisan cathedral opposite this one. And when we examine the sculpture and placing of the lintel, which at first appeared the most completely Greek piece of construction of the whole, we find it so far advanced in many Gothic char- acters, that I once thought it a later interpolation cutting the inner pilasters underneath their capitals, while the three statues set on it are certainly, by several tens of years, later still. 149. How much ten years did at this time, one is apt to forget ; and how irregularly the slower minds of the older men would surrender themselves, sadly, or awkwardly, to the 308 VAL D ’ARNO. vivacities of their pupils. The only wonder is that it should be usually so easy to assign conjectural dates within twenty or thirty years ; but, at Pisa, the currents of tradition and in- vention run with such cross eddies, that I often find myself utterly at fault. In this lintel, for instance, there are two pieces separated by a narrower one, on which there has been an inscription, of which in my enlarged plate you may trace, though, I fear, not decipher, the few letters that remain. The uppermost of these stones is nearly pure in its Byzantine style ; the lower, already semi-Gothic. Both are exquisite of their kind, and we will examine them closely ; but first note these points about the stones of them. We are discussing work at latest of the thirteenth century. Our loss of the in- scription is evidently owing to the action of the iron rivets which have been causelessly used at the two horizontal joints. There was nothing whatever in the construction to make these essential, and, but for this error, the entire piece of work, as delicate as an ivory tablet, would be as intelligible to-day as when it was laid in its place.* 150. Laid. I pause upon this word, for it is an important one. And I must devote the rest of this lecture to considera- tion merely of what follows from the difference between lay- ing a stone and setting it up, whether we regard sculpture or construction. The subject is so wide, I scarcely know how to approach it. Perhaps it will be the pleasantest way to begin if I read you a letter from one of yourselves to me. A very favourite pupil, who travels third class always, for sake of better company, wrote to me the other day : “ One of my fel- low-travellers, who was a builder, or else a master mason, told me that the way in which red sandstone buildings last depends entirely on the way in which the stone is laid. It must lie as it does in the quarry ; but he said that very few workmen could always tell the difference between the joints of planes of cleavage and the — something else which I couldn’t catch, — by which he meant, I suppose planes of stratification. He said too that some people, though they were very particu- * Plates 6 and 7 give, in greater clearness, the sculpture of this lintel, for notes on which see Appendix. Plate VI. — The Story of St. John. Advent. Plate VII. — The Story of St. John. Departure. MARBLE COU CHANT. 309 lar about having the stone laid well, allowed blocks to stand in the rain the wrong way up, and that they never recovered one wetting. The stone of the same quarry varies much, and he said that moss will grow immediately on good stone, but not on bad. How curious, — nature helping the best work- man ! ” Thus far my favourite pupil. 151. ‘Moss will grow on the best stone.’ The first thing your modern restorer would do is to scrape it off ; and with it, whatever knitted surface, half moss root, protects the in- terior stone. Have you ever considered the infinite functions of protection to mountain form exercised by the mosses and lichens ? It will perhaps be refreshing to you after our work among the Pisan marbles and legends, if we have a lecture or two on moss. Meantime I need not tell you that it would not be a satisfactory natural arrangement if moss grew on marble, and that all fine workmanship in marble implies equal exqui- siteness of surface and edge. 152. You will observe also that the importance of laying the stone in the building as it lay in its bed was from the first recognised by all good northern architects, to such ex- tent that to lay stones ‘ en delit,’ or in a position out of their bedding, is a recognized architectural term in France, where all structural building takes its rise ; and in that form of ‘ delit ’ the word gets most curiously involved with the Latin delictum and deliquium. It would occupy the time of a whole lecture if I entered into the confused relations of the words derived from lectus, liquidus, delinquo, diliquo, and deliquesco ; and of the still more confused, but beautifully confused, (and enriched by confusion,) forms of idea, whether respecting morality or marble, arising out of the meanings of these words : the notions of a bed gathered or strewn for the rest, whether of rocks or men ; of the various states of solidity and liquidity connected with strength, or with repose ; and of the duty of staying quiet in a place, or under a law, and the mischief of leaving it, being all fastened in the minds of early builders, and of the generations of men for whom they built, by the unescapable bearing of geological laws on their life ; by the ease or difficulty of splitting rocks, by the variable 310 VAL D 11 ARNO. consistency of the fragments split, by the innumerable ques- tions occurring practically as to bedding and cleavage in every kind of stone, from tufo to granite, and by the unseemly, or beautiful, destructive, or protective, effects of decomposition.* The same processes of time which cause your Oxford oolite to flake away like the leaves of a mouldering book, only warm with a glow of perpetually deepening gold the marbles of Athens and Verona ; and the same laws of chemical change which reduce the granites of Dartmoor to porcelain clay, bind the sands of Coventry into stones which can be built up half- way to the sky. 153. But now, as to the matter immediately before us, ob- serve what a double question arises about laying stones as they lie in the quarry. First, how do they lie in the quarry ? Secondly, how can we lay them so in every part of our building ? A. How do they lie in the quarry? Level, perhaps, at Stones- field and Coventry ; but at an angle of 45° at Carrara ; and for aught I know, of 90° in Paros or Pentelicus. Also, the bedding is of prime importance at Coventry, but the cleav- age at Coniston.f B. And then, even if we know what the quarry bedding is, how are we to keep it always in our building? You may lay the stones of a wall carefully level, but how will you lay those of an arch? You think these, perhaps, trivial, or merely curi- ous questions. So far from it, the fact that while the bedding in Normandy is level, that at Carrara is steep, and that the * This passage cannot hut seem to the reader loose and fantastic. I have elaborate notes, and many an unwritten thought, on these mat- ters, but no time or strength to develop them. The passage is not fan- tastic, hut the rapid index of what I know to be true in all the named particulars. But compare, for mere rough illustration of what I mean, the moral ideas relating to the stone of Jacob’s pillow, or the tradition of it, with those to which French Flamboyant Gothic owes its character. f There are at least four definite cleavages at Coniston, besides joints. One of these cleavages furnishes the Coniston slate of commerce ; another forms the ranges of Wetherlam and Yewdale crag ; a third cuts these ranges to pieces, striking from north-west to south-east ; and a fourth into other pieces, from north-east to south-west. MARBLE CO V CHANT. 311 forces which raised the beds of Carrara crystallized them also, so that the cleavage which is all-important in the stones of my garden wall is of none in the duomo of Pisa, — simply deter- mined the possibility of the existence of Pisan sculpture at all, and regulated the whole life and genius of Nicholas the Pisan and of Christian art. And, again, the fact that you can put stones in true bedding in a wall, but cannot in an arch, determines the structural transition from classical to Gothic architecture. 154. The structural transition, observe ; only a part, and that not altogether a coincident part, of the moral transition. Bead carefully, if you have time, the articles ‘ Pierre * and ‘ Meneau ’ in M. Violet le Due’s Dictionary of Architecture, and you will know everything that is of importance in the changes dependent on the mere qualities of matter. I must, however, try to set in your view also the relative acting quali- ties of mind. You will find that M. Violet le Due traces all the forms of Gothic tracery to the geometrical and practically serviceable development of the stone * chassis,’ chasing, or frame, for the glass. For instance, he attributes the use of the cusp or ‘ redent ’ in its more complex forms, to the necessity, or convenience, of diminishing the space of glass which the tra- cery grasps ; and he attributes the reductions of the mouldings in the tracery bar under portions of one section, to the greater facility thus obtained by the architect in directing his work- men. The plan of a window once given, and the moulding- section, all is said, thinks M. Violet le Due. Very conven- ient indeed, for modern architects who have commission on the cost. But certainly not necessary, and perhaps even in- convenient, to Niccola Pisano, who is himself his workman, and cuts his own traceries, with his apron loaded with dust. 155. Again, the redent— the ‘tooth within tooth’ of a French tracery— may be necessary, to bite its glass. But the cusp, cuspis, spiny or spearlike point of a thirteenth century illumination, is not in the least necessary to transfix the parch- ment. Yet do you suppose that the structural convenience of the redent entirely effaces from the mind of the designer the 312 VAL D 'ARNO. aesthetic characters which he seeks in the cusp ? If you could for an instant imagine this, you would be undeceived by a glance either at the early re dents of Amiens, fringing hollow vaults, or the late redents of Rouen, acting as crockets on the outer edges of pediments. 156. Again : if you think of the tracery in its bars , you call the cusp a redent ; but if you think of it in the openings , you call the apertures of it foils. Do you suppose that the thir- teenth century builder thought only of the strength of the bars of his enclosure, and never of the beauty of the form he enclosed ? You will find in my chapter on the Aperture, in the “Stones of Venice, ” full development of the aesthetic law r s relating to both these forms, while you may see, in Professor Willis’s ‘ Architecture of the Middle Ages,’ a beautiful analysis of the development of tracery from the juxtaposition of aper- ture ; and in the article ‘ Meneau,’ just quoted of M. Violet le Due, an equally beautiful analysis of its development from the masonry of the chassis. You may at first think that Profes- sor Willis’s analysis is inconsistent with M. Violet le Due’s. But they are no more inconsistent than the accounts of the growth of a human being would be, if given by two anato- mists, of whom one had examined only the skeleton, and the other only the respiratory system ; and who, therefore, sup- posed — the first, that the animal had been made only to leap, and the other only to sing. I don’t mean that either of the writers I name are absolutely thus narrow in their own views, but that, so far as inconsistency appears to exist between them, it is of that partial kind only. 157. And for the understanding of our Pisan traceries we must introduce a third element of similarly distinctive nature. We must, to press our simile a little farther, examine the growth of the animal as if it had been made neither to leap, nor to sing, but only to think. We must observe the tran- sitional states of its nerve power ; that is to say, in our win- dow tracery we must consider not merely how its ribs are built, (or how it stands,) nor merely how its openings are shaped, or how it breathes ; but also what its openings are made to light, or its shafts to receive, of picture or image. MARBLE GOUGHANT 313 As tlie limbs of the building, it may be much ; as the lungs of the building, more. As the eyes * of the building, what ? 158. Thus you probably have a distinct idea— those of you at least who are interested in architecture— of the shape of the windows in Westminster Abbey, in the Cathedral of Chartres, or in the Duomo of Milan. Can any of you, I should like to know, make a guess at the shape of the win- dows in the Sistine Chapel, the Stanze of the Vatican, the Scuola di San Rocco, or the lower church of Assisi? The soul or anima of the first three buildings is in their windows ; but of the last three, in their walls. All these points I may for the present leave you to think over for yourselves, except one, to which I must ask 3 r et for a few moments your further attention. 159. The trefoils to which I have called your attention in Niccola’s pulpit are as absolutely without structural office in the circles as in the panels of the font beside it. But the circles are drawn with evident delight in the lovely circular line, while the trefoil is struck out by Niccola so roughly that there is not a true compass curve or section in any part of it. Roughly, I say. Do you suppose I ought to have said care- lessly ? So far from it, that if one sharper line or more geometric curve had been given, it would have caught the eye too strongly, and drawn away the attention from the sculpture. But imagine the feeling with which a French master workman would first see these clumsy intersections of curves. It would be exactly the sensation with which a prac- tical botanical draughtsman would look at a foliage back- ground of Sir Joshua Reynolds. But Sir Joshua’s sketched leaves would indeed imply some unworkmanlike haste. We must not yet assume the Pisan master to have allowed himself in any such. His mouldings may be hastily cut, for they are, as I have just said, unneces- sary to his structure, and disadvantageous to his decoration ; * I am ashamed to italicize so many words ; but these passages, written for oral delivery, can only be understood if read with oral emphasis. This is the first series of lectures which I have printed as they were to be spoken ; and it is a great mistake. 314 VAL D 'ARNO. but he is not likely to be careless about arrangements neces- sary for strength. His mouldings may be cut hastily, but do you think his joints will be ? 160. What subject of extended inquiry have we in this word, ranging from the cementless clefts between the couch- ant stones of the walls of the kings of Rome, whose iron rivets you had but the other day placed in your hands by their discoverer, through the grip of the stones of the Tower of the Death-watch, to the subtle joints in the marble armour of the Florentine Baptistery ! Our own work must certainly be left with a rough surface at this place, and we will fit the edges of it to our next piece of study as closely as we may. LECTURE YH. MARBLE RAMPANT. 161. I closed my last lecture at the question respecting Nicholas’s masonry. His mouldings may be careless, but do you think his joints will be ? I must remind you now of the expression as to the building of the communal palace — “of dressed stones”* — as opposed to the Tower of the Death-watch, in which the grip of cement had been so good. Virtually, you will find that the schools of structural architecture are those which use cement to bind * “Pietre conce.” The portion of the bas-reliefs of Orvieto, given in the opposite plate, will show the importance of the jointing. Observe the way in which the piece of stone with the three principal figures is dovetailed above the extended band, and again in the rise above the joint of the next stone on the right, the sculpture of the wings being carried across the junction. I have chosen this piece on purpose, be- cause the loss of the broken fragment, probably broken by violence, and the only serious injury which the sculptures have received, serves to show the perfection of the uninjured surface, as compared with northern sculpture of the same date. I have thought it well to show at the same time the modern German engraving of the subject, respect- ing which see Appendix. Adam.” Giovanni Pisano. MARBLE RAMPANT. 315 their materials together, and in which, therefore, balance of weight becomes a continual and inevitable question. But the schools of sculptural architecture are those in which stones are fitted without cement, — in which, therefore, the question of fitting or adjustment is continual and inevitable, but the sustainable weight practically unlimited. 162. You may consider the Tower of the Death-watch as having been knit together like the mass of a Roman brick wall. But the dressed stone work of the thirteenth century is the hereditary completion of such block-laying, as the Parthenon in marble ; or, in tufo, as that which was shown you so lately in the walls of Romulus ; and the decoration of that system of couchant stone is by the finished grace of mosaic or sculpt- ure. 163. It was also pointed out to you by Mr. Parker that there were two forms of Cyclopean architecture ; one of level blocks, the other of polygonal, — contemporary, but in locali- ties affording different material of stone. I have placed in this frame examples of the Cyclopean hori- zontal, and the Cyclopean polygonal, architecture of the thir- teenth century. And as Hubert of Lucca was the master of the new buildings at Florence, I have chosen the Cyclopean horizontal from his native city of Lucca ; and as our Nicholas and John brought their new Gothic style into practice at Orvieto, I have chosen the Cyclopean polygonal from their adopted city of Orvieto. Both these examples of architecture are early thirteenth century work, the beginnings of its new and Christian style, but beginnings with which Nicholas and John had nothing to do ; they were part of the national work going on round them. 164. And this example from Lucca is of a very important class indeed. It is from above the east entrance gate of Lucca, which bears the cross above it, as the doors of a Christian city should. Such a city is, or ought to be, a place of peace, as much as any monastery. This custom of placing the cross above the gate is Byzan- 316 VAL D'ARNO. tine-Christian ; and here are parallel instances of its treatment from Assisi. The lamb with the cross is given in the more elaborate arch of Verona. 165. But farther. The mosaic of this cross is so exquisitely fitted that no injury has been received by it to this day from wind or weather. And the horizontal dressed stones are laid so daintily that not an edge of them has stirred ; and, both to draw your attention to their beautiful fitting, and as a sub- stitute for cement, the architect cuts his uppermost block so as to dovetail into the course below. Dovetail, I say deliberately. This is stone carpentry, in which the carpenter despises glue. I don’t say he won’t use glue, and glue of the best, but he feels it to be a nasty thing, and that it spoils his wood or marble. None, at least, he determines shall be seen outside, and his laying of stones shall be so solid and so adjusted that, take all the cement away, his wall shall yet stand. Stonehenge, the Parthenon, the walls of the Kings, this gate of Lucca, this window of Orvieto, and this tomb at Verona, are all built on the Cyclopean principle. They will stand without cement, and no cement shall be seen outside. Mr. Burgess and I actually tried the experiment on this tomb. Mr. Burgess modelled every stone of it in clay, put them to- gether, and it stood. 166. Now there are two most notable characteristics about this Cyclopean architecture to which I beg your close atten- tion. The first : that as the laying of stones is so beautiful, their joints become a subject of admiration, and great part of the architectural ornamentation is in the beauty of lines of sepa- ration, drawn as finely as possible. Thus the separating lines of the bricks at Siena, of this gate at Lucca, of the vault at Verona, of this window at Orvieto, and of the contemporary refectory at Furness Abbey, are a main source of the pleasure you have in the building. Nay, they are not merely engrav- ers’ lines, but, in finest practice, they are mathematical lines — length without breadth. Here in my hand is a little shaft of Florentine mosaic executed at the present day The sepa- MARBLE RAMPANT. 317 rations between the stones are, in dimension, mathematical lines. And the two sides of the thirteenth century porch of St. Anastasia at Yerona are built in this manner, — so exqui- sitely, that for some time, my mind not having been set at it, I passed them by as painted ! 167. That is the first character of the Florentine Cyclopeam But secondly ; as the joints are so firm, and as the building must never stir or settle after it is built, the sculptor may trust his work to two stones set side by side, or one above an- other, and carve continuously over the whole surface, disre- garding the joints, if he so chooses. Of the degree of precision with which Nicholas of Pisa and his son adjusted their stones, you may judge by this rough sketch of a piece of St. Mary’s of the Thorn, in which the de- sign is of panels enclosing very delicately sculptured heads ; and one would naturally suppose that the enclosing panels would be made of jointed pieces, and the heads carved sepa- rately and inserted. But the Pisans would have considered that unsafe masonry, — liable to the accident of the heads being dropped out, or taken away. John of Pisa did indeed use such masonry, of necessity, in his fountain ; and the bas-reliefs have been taken away. But here one great block of marble forms part of two panels, and the mouldings and head are both carved in the solid, the joint running just behind the neck. 168. Such masonry is, indeed, supposing there were no fear of thieves, gratuitously precise in a case of this kind, in which the ornamentation is in separate masses, and might be sepa- rately carved. But when the ornamentation is current, and flows or climbs along the stone in the manner of waves or plants, the concealment of the joints of the pieces of marble becomes altogether essential. And here we enter upon a most curious group of associated characters in Gothic as op- posed to Greek architecture. 169. If you have been able to read the article to which I referred you, ‘Meneau,’ in M. Violet le Due’s dictionary, you know that one great condition of the perfect Gothic structure is that the stones shall be c en de-lit,’ set up on end. The or- nament then, which on the reposing or couchant stone was 318 VAL D ARNO. current only, on the erected stone begins to climb also, and becomes, in the most heraldic sense of the term, rampant. In the heraldic sense, I say, as distinguished from the still wider original sense of advancing with a stealthy, creeping, or clinging motion, as a serpent on the ground, and a cat, or a vine, up a tree-stem. And there is one of these reptile, creep- ing, or rampant things, which is the first whose action was translated into marble, and otherwise is of boundless impor- tance in the arts and labours of man. 170. You recollect Kingsley’s expression, — now hackneyed, because admired for its precision, — the ‘crawling foam,’ of waves advancing on sand. Tennyson has somewhere also used, with equal truth, the epithet ‘ climbing ’ of the spray of break- ers 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 a lustrous precision, like that of a polished shell, the grasping force of a giant, you have the most vivid sight and embodiment of literally rampant energy ; which the Greeks expressed in their symbolic Poseidon, Scylla, and sea-horse, by the head and crest of the man, dog, or horse, with the body of the serpent ; and of which you will find the slower image, in vegetation, rendered both by the spiral tendrils of grasping or climbing plants, and the perennial gaining of the foam or the lichen upon barren shores of stone. 171. If you will look to the thirtieth chapter of vol. L in the new edition of the “ Stones of Venice,” which, by the gift of its publishers, I am enabled to lay on your table to be placed in your library, you will find one of my first and most eager statements of the necessity of inequality or change in form, made against the common misunderstanding of Greek sym- metry, and illustrated by a woodcut of the spiral ornament on the treasury of Atreus at Mycenae. All that is said in that chapter respecting nature and the ideal, I now beg most ear- * Perhaps I am thinking of Lowell, not Tennyson ; I have not time to look. MARBLE RAMPANT. 319 nestly to recommend and ratify to you ; but although, even at that time, I knew more of Greek art than my antagonists, my broken reading has given me no conception of the range of its symbolic power, nor of the function of that more or less formal spiral line, as expressive, not only of the waves of the sea, but of the zones of the whirlpool, the return of the tem- pest, and the involution of the labyrinth. And although my readers say that I wrote then better than I write now, I cannot refer you to the passage without asking you to pardon in it what I now hold to be the petulance and vulgarity of expres- sion, disgracing the importance of the truth it contains. A little while ago, without displeasure, you permitted me to de- lay you by the account of a dispute on a matter of taste be- tween my father and me, in which he was quietly and unavail- ingly right. It seems to me scarcely a day, since, with boyish conceit, I resisted his wise entreaties that I would re-word this clause ; and especially take out of it the description of a sea- wave as “ laying a great white tablecloth of foam ” all the way to the shore. Now, after an interval of twenty years, I refer you to the passage, repentant and humble as far as regards its style, which people sometimes praised, but with absolue re- assertion of the truth and value of its contents, which people always denied. As natural form is varied, so must beautiful ornament be varied. You are not an artist by reproving nat- ure into deathful sameness, but by animating your copy of her into vital variation. But I thought at that time that only Goths were rightly changeful. I never thought Greeks were. Their reserved variation escaped me, or I thought it accidental. Here, however, is a coin of the finest Greek workmanship, which shows you their mind in this matter unmistakably. Here are the waves of the Adriatic round a knight of Tarentum, and there is no doubt of their variableness. 172. This pattern of sea-wave, or river whirlpool, entirely sacred in the Greek mind, and the poa-rpvxo^ or similarly curling wave in flowing hair, are the two main sources of the spiral form in lambent or rampant decoration. Of such lam- bent ornament, the most important piece is the crocket, of which I rapidly set before you the origin. 320 VAL D 'ARNO. 173. Here is a drawing of the gable of the bishop’s throne in the upper church at Assisi, of the exact period when the mosaic workers of the thirteenth century at Borne adopted rudely the masonry of the north. Briefly, this is a Greek temple pediment, in which, doubtful of their power to carve figures beautiful enough, they cut a trefoiled hold for orna- ment, and bordered the edges with harlequinade of mosaic. They then call to their help the Greek sea-waves, and let the surf of the iEgean climb along the slopes, and toss itself at the top into a fleur-de-lys. Every wave is varied in outline and proportionate distance, though cut with a precision of curve like that of the sea itself. From this root we are able — but it must be in a lecture on crockets only — to trace the succeeding changes through the curl of Bichard H.’s hair, and the crisp leaves of the forests of Picardy, to the knobbed extravagances of expiring Gothic. But I must to-day let you compare one piece of perfect Gothic work with the perfect Greek. 174. There is no question in my own mind, and, I believe, none in that of any other long-practised student of mediaeval art, that in pure structural Gothic the church of St. Urbain at Troyes is without rival in Europe. Here is a rude sketch of its use of the crocket in the spandrils of its external tracery, and here are the waves of the Greek sea round the son of Poseidon. Seventeen hundred years are between them, but the same mind is in both. I wonder how many times seventeen hundred years Mr. Darwin will ask, to retrace the Greek designer of this into his primitive ape ; or how many times six hundred years of such improvements as we have made on the church of St Urbain, will be needed in order to enable our descendants to regard the designers of that, as only primitive apes. 175. I return for a moment to my gable at Assisi. You see that the crest of the waves at the top form a rude likeness of a fleur-de-lys. There is, however, in this form no real inten- tion of imitating a flower, any more than in the meeting of the tails of these two Etruscan giiffins. The notable circum- stance in this piece of Gothic is its advanced form of crocket, MARBLE RAMPANT. 321 and its prominent foliation, with nothing in the least ap- proaching to floral ornament. 176. And now, observe this very curious fact in the per- sonal character of two contemporary artists. See the use of my manually graspable flag. Here is John of Pisa, — here Giotto. They are contemporary for twenty years ; — but these are the prime of Giotto’s life, and the last of John’s life : vir- tually, Giotto is the later workman by full twenty years. But Giotto always uses severe geometrical mouldings, and disdains all luxuriance of leafage to set off interior sculpture. John of Pisa not only adopts Gothic tracery, but first allows himself enthusiastic use of rampant vegetation ; — and here in the fa§ade of Orvieto, you have not only perfect Gothic in the sentiment of Scripture history, but such luxurious ivy ornamentation as you cannot afterwards match for two hun- dred years. Nay, you can scarcely match it then — for grace of line, only in the richest flamboyant of France. 177. Now this fact would set you, if you looked at art from its sesthetic side only, at once to find out what German artists had taught Giovanni Pisano. There were Germans teaching him, — some teaching him many things ; and the intense con- ceit of the modern German artist imagines them to have taught him all things. But he learnt his luxuriance, and Giotto his severity, in an- other school. The quality in both is Greek ; and altogether moral. The grace and the redundance of Giovanni are the first strong manifestation of those characters in the Italian mind which culminate in the Madonnas of Luini and the ara- besques of Raphael. The severity of Giotto belongs to him, on the contrary, not only as one of the strongest practical men who ever lived on this solid earth, but as the purest and firmest reformer of the discipline of the Christian Church, of whose writings any remains exist. 178. Of whose writings, I say ; and you look up, as doubt- ful that he has left any. Hieroglyphics, then, let me say in- stead ; or, more accurately still, hierographics. St. Francis, in what he wrote and said, taught much that was false. But Giotto, his true disciple, nothing but what was true. And 322 VAL D'ARNO. where he uses an arabesque of foliage, depend upon it it will be to purpose — not redundant. I return for the time to our soft and luxuriant John of Pisa. 179. Soft, but with no unmanly softness ; luxuriant, but with no unmannered luxury. To him you owe as to their first sire in art, the grace of Ghiberti, the tenderness of Raphael, the awe of Michael Angelo. Second-rate qualities in all the three, but precious in their kind, and learned, as you shall see, essentially from this man. Second-rate he also, but with most notable gifts of this inferior kind. He is the Canova of the thirteenth century ; but the Canova of the thirteenth, remember, was necessarily a very different person from the Canova of the eighteenth. The Canova of the eighteenth century mimicked Greek grace for the delight of modern revolutionary sensualists. The Canova of the thirteenth century brought living Gothic truth into the living faith of his own time. Greek truth, and Gothic ‘liberty,’ — in that noble sense of the word, derived from the Latin ‘liber,’ of which I have al- ready spoken, and which in my next lecture I will endeavour completely to develope. Meanwhile let me show you, as far as I can, the architecture itself about which these subtle ques- tions arise. 180. Here are five frames, containing the best representa- tions I can get for you of the fa9ade of the cathedral of Or- vieto. I must remind you, before I let you look at them, of the reason why that cathedral was built ; for I have at last got to the end of the parenthesis which began in my second lect- ure, on the occasion of our hearing that John of Pisa was sent for to Perugia, to carve the tomb of Pope Urban IV. ; and we must now know who this Pope was. 181. He was a Frenchman, born at that Troyes, in Cham* pagne, which I gave you as the centre of French architect- ural skill, and Royalist character. He was born in the low- est class of the people, rose like Wolsey ; became Bishop of Verdun ; then, Patriarch of Jerusalem ; returned in the year 1261, from his Patriarchate, to solicit the aid of the then Pope, Alexander IV., against the Saracen. I do not know on MARBLE RAMPANT. 323 what day he arrived in Rome ; but on the 25th of May, Alex- ander died, and the Cardinals, after three months’ disputing, elected the suppliant Patriarch to be Pope himself. 182. A man with all the fire of France in him, all the faith, and all the insolence ; incapable of doubting a single article of his creed, or relaxing one tittle of his authority ; destitute alike of reason and of pity ; and absolutely merciless either to an infidel, or an enemy. The young Prince Manfred, bas- tard son of Frederick II., now representing the main power of the German empire, was both ; and against him the Pope brought into Italy a religious French knight, of character ab- solutely like his own, Charles of Anjou. 183. The young Manfred, now about twenty years old, was as good a soldier as he was a bad Christian ; and there was no safety for Urban at Rome. The Pope seated himself on a worthy throne for a thirteenth-century St. Peter. Fancy the rock of Edinburgh Castle, as steep on all sides as it is to the west ; and as long as the Old Town ; and you have the rock of Orvieto. 184. Here, enthroned against the gates of hell, in unassail- able fortitude, and unfaltering faith, sat Urban ; the righteous- ness of his cause presently to be avouched by miracle, no- tablest among those of the Roman Church. Twelve miles east of his rock, beyond the range of low Apennine, shone the quiet lake, the Loch Leven of Italy, from whose island the daughter of Theodoric needed not to escape — Fate seeking her there ; and in a little chapel on its shore a Bohemian priest, infected with Northern infidelity, was brought back to his allegiance by seeing the blood drop from the wafer in his hand. And the Catholic Church recorded this heavenly testi- mony to her chief mystery, in the Festa of the Corpus Domini, and the Fabric of Orvieto. 185. And sending was made for John, and for all good la- bourers in marble ; but Urban never saw a stone of the great cathedral laid. His citation of Manfred to appear in his pres- ence to answer for his heresy, was fixed against the posts of the doors of the old Duomo. But Urban had dug the foun- dation of the pile to purpose, and when he died at Perugia, 324 VAL D'ARNO. still breathed, from his grave, calamity to Manfred, and made from it glory to the Church. He had secured the election of a French successor ; from the rock of Orvieto the spirit of Urban led the French chivalry, when Charles of Anjou saw the day of battle come, so long desired. Manfred’s Saracens, with their arrows, broke his first line ; the Pope’s legate blessed the second, and gave them absolution of all their sins, for their service to the Church. They charged for Orvieto with their old cry of ‘ Mont-Joie, Chevaliers!’ and before night, while Urban lay sleeping in his carved tomb at Perugia, the body of Manfred lay only recognizable by those who loved him, naked among the slain. 186. Time wore on and on. The Suabian power ceased in Italy ; between white and red there was now no more con- test ; — the matron of the Church, scarlet-robed, reigned, ruthless, on her seven hills. Time wore on ; and, a hundred years later, now no more the power of the kings, but the power of the people, — rose against her. St. Michael, from the corn market, — Or San Michele, — the commercial strength of Florence, on a question of free trade in com. And note, for a little bye piece of botany, that in Val d’Arno lilies grow among the com instead of poppies. The purple gladiolus glows through all its green fields in early spring. 187. A question of free trade in corn, then, arose between Florence and Pome. The Pope’s legate in Bologna stopped the supply of polenta, the Florentines depending on that to eat with their own oil. Very wicked, you think, of the Pope’s legate, acting thus against quasi-Protestant Florence ? Yes ; just as wicked as the — not quasi-Protestants — but intensely positive Protestants, of Zurich, who tried to convert the Catholic forest-cantons by refusing them salt. Christendom has been greatly troubled about bread and salt : the then Protestant Pope, Zuinglius, was killed at the battle of Keppel, and the Catholic cantons therefore remain Catholic to this day ; while the consequences of this piece of protectionist economy at Bologna are equally interesting and direct 188. The legate of Bologna, not content with stopping the supplies of maize to Florence, sent our own John Hawkwood, MARBLE RAMPANT. 325 on the 24th June, 1375, to burn all the maize the Florentines had got growing ; and the abbot of Montemaggiore sent a troop of Perugian religious gentlemen-riders to ravage simi- larly the territory of Siena. Whereupon, at Florence, the Gonfalonier of Justice, Aloesio Aldobrandini, rose in the Council of Ancients and proposed, as an enterprise worthy of Florentine generosity, the freedom of all the peoples who groaned under the tyranny of the Church. And Florence, Siena, Pisa, Lucca, and Arezzo, — all the great cities of Etruria, the root of religion in Italy, — joined against the tyranny of religion. Strangely, this Etrurian league is not now to restore Tarquin to Rome, but to drive the Roman Tarquin into exile. The story of Lucretia had been repeated in Perugia ; but the Umbrian Lucretia had died, not by suicide, but by falling on the pavement from the window through which she tried to escape. And the Umbrian Sextus was the Abbot of Monte- maggiore’s nephew. 189. Florence raised her fleur-de-lys standard : and, in ten days, eighty cities of Romagna were free, out of the number of whose names I will read you only these — Urbino, Foligno, Spoleto, Narni, Camerino, Toscanella, Perugia, Orvieto. Amd while the wind and the rain still beat the body of Manfred, by the shores of the Rio Yerde, the body of Pope Urban was torn from its tomb, and not one stone of the carved work thereof left upon another. 190. I will only ask you to-day to notice farther that the Captain of Florence, in this war, was a 4 Conrad of Suabia,’ and that she gave him, beside her own flag, one with only the word ‘ Libertas ’ inscribed on it. I told you that the first stroke of the bell on the Tower of the Lion began the carillon for European civil and religious liberty. But perhaps, even in the fourteenth century, Flor- ence did not understand, by that word, altogether the same policy which is now preached in France, Italy, and England. What she did understand by it, we will try to ascertain in the course of next lecture. 326 VAL D'ARNO. LECTURE m FRANCHISE. 191. In my first lecture of this course, you remember that I showed you the Lion of St. Mark’s with Niccola Pisano’s, calling the one an evangelical-preacher lion, and the other a real, and naturally affectionate, lioness. And the one I showed you as Byzantine, the other as Gothic. So that I thus called the Greek art pious, and the Gothic profane. Whereas in nearly all our ordinary modes of thought, and in all my own general references to either art, we assume Greek or classic work to be profane, and Gothic, pious, or religious. 192. Very short reflection, if steady and clear, will both show you how confused our ideas are usually on this subject, and how definite they may within certain limits become. First of all, don’t confuse piety with Christianity. There are pious Greeks and impious Greeks ; pious Turks and im- pious Turks ; pious Christians and impious Christians ; pious modem infidels and impious modem infidels. In case you do not quite know what piety really means, we will try to know better in next lecture ; for the present, understand that I mean distinctly to call Greek art, in the true sense of the word, pious, and Gothic, as opposed to it, profane. 193. But when I oppose these two words, Gothic and Greek, don’t run away with the notion that I necessarily mean to op- pose Christian and Greek. You must not confuse Gothic blood in a man’s veins, with Christian feeling in a man’s breast. There are unconverted and converted Goths ; unconverted and converted Greeks. The Greek and Gothic temper is equally opposed, where the name of Christ has never been uttered by either, or when every other name is equally detested by both. I want you to-day to examine with me that essential differ. FRANCHISE. 327 ence between Greek and Gothic temper, irrespective of creed, to which I have referred in my preface to the last edition of the “Stones of Venice, ” saying that the Byzantines gave law to Norman license. And I must therefore ask your patience while I clear your minds from some too prevalent errors as to the meaning of those two words, law and license. 194. There is perhaps no more curious proof of the disor- der which impatient and impertinent science is introducing into classical thought and language, than the title chosen by the Duke of Argyll for his interesting study of Natural His- tory — * The Reign of Law.’ Law cannot reign. If a natural law, it admits no disobedience, and has nothing to put right. If a human one, it can compel no obedience, and has no power to prevent wrong. A king only can reign ; — a person, that is to say, who, conscious of natural law, enforces human law so far as it is just. 195. Kinghood is equally necessary in Greek dynasty, and in Gothic. Theseus is every inch a king, as well as Edward HI. But the laws which they have to enforce on them own and their companions’ humanity are opposed to each other as much as their dispositions are. The function of a Greek king was to enforce labour. That of a Gothic king, to restrain rage. The laws of Greece determine the wise methods of labour ; and the laws of France determine the wise restraints of passion. For the sins of Greece are in Indolence, and its pleasures ; and the sins of France are in fury, and its pleasures. 196. You are now again surprised, probably, at hearing me oppose France typically to Greece. More strictly, I might op- pose only a part of France, — Normandy. But it is better to say, France,* as embracing the seat of the established Norman power in the Island of our Lady ; and the province in which it was crowned, — Champagne. France is everlastingly, by birth, name, and nature, the country of the Franks, or free persons ; and the first source of “Normandie, la tranche,” — “ France, la solue ; ” (chanson de Ro- land). One of my good pupils referred me to this ancient and glorious French song. 328 VAL D'ARNO. European frankness, or franchise. The Latin for franchise ia libertas. But the modern or Cockney-English word liberty, — Mr. John Stuart Mill’s, — is not the equivalent of libertas ; and the modern or Cockney-French word liberte. — M. Victor Hugo’s, — is not the equivalent of franchise. 197. The Latin for franchise, I have said, is libertas ; the Greek is eXevOepLa. In the thoughts of all three nations, the idea is precisely the same, and the word used for the idea by each nation therefore accurately translates the word of the other : ZXevOepia — libertas — franchise — reciprocally translate each other. Leonidas is characteristically iXcvOepos among Greeks ; Publicola, characteristically liber, among Bomans ; Edward HI. and the Black Prince, characteristically frank among French. And that common idea, which the words ex- press, as all the careful scholars among you will know, is, with all the three nations, mainly of deliverance from the slavery of passion. To be ikevOepos, liber, or franc, is first to have learned how to rule our own passions ; and then, certain that our own conduct is right, to persist in that conduct against all resistance, whether of counter-opinion, counter-pain, or counter-pleasure. To be defiant alike of the mob’s thought, of the adversary’s threat, and the harlot’s temptation, — this is in the meaning of every great nation to be free ; and the one condition upon which that freedom can be obtained is pro- nounced to you in a single verse of the 119th Psalm, “ I will walk at liberty, for I seek Thy precepts.” 198. Thy precepts : — Law, observe, being dominant over the Gothic as over the Greek king, but a quite different law. Edward HL feeling no anger against the Sieur de Ribaumont, and crowning him with his own pearl chaplet, is obeying the law of love, restraining anger ; but Theseus, slaying the Minotaur, is obeying the law of justice, and enforcing anger. The one is acting under the law of the charity, or grace of God ; the other under the law of His judgment. The two together fulfil His /cpto-is and ayairq. 199. Therefore the Greek dynasties are finally expressed in the kinghoods of Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus, who FRANCHISE. 329 judge infallibly, and divide arithmetically. But the dynasty of the Gothic king is in equity and compassion, and his arith- metic is in largesse, “ Whose moste joy was, I wis, When that she gave, and said, Have this.” So that, to put it in shortest terms of all, Greek law is of Stasy, and Gothic of Ec-stasy ; there is no limit to the freedom of the Gothic hand or heart, and the children are most in the delight and the glory of liberty when they most seek their Father’s precepts. 200. The two lines I have just quoted are, as you probably remember, from Chaucer’s translation of the French Romance of the Bose, out of which I before quoted to you the descrip- tion of the virtue of Debonnairete. Now that Debonnairete of the Painted Chamber of Westminster is the typical figure used by the French sculptors and painters for ‘franchise/ frankness, or Frenchness ; but in the Painted Chamber, Debonnairete, high breeding, ‘out of goodnestedness,’ or gentleness, is used, as an English king’s English, of the Norman franchise. Here, then, is our own royalty, — let us call it Englishness, the grace of our proper kinghood ; — and here is French royalty, the grace of French kinghood — Frenchness, rudely but sufficiently drawn by M. Didron from the porch of Chartres. She has the crown of fleur-de-lys, and William the Norman’s shield. 201. Now this grace of high birth, the grace of his or her Most Gracious Majesty, has her name at Chartres written beside her, in Latin. Had it been in Greek, it would have been eXevOepc a. Being in Latin, what do you think it must be necessarily ? — Of course, Libertas. Now M. Didron is quite the best writer on art that I know, — full of sense and intel- ligence ; but of course, as a modern Frenchman, — one of a nation for whom the Latin and Gothic ideas of libertas have entirely vanished, — he is not on his guard against the trap here laid for him. He looks at the word libertas through his spectacles ; — can’t understand, being a thoroughly good anti- 330 VAL D'ARNO. quary,* how such a virtue, or privilege, could honestly be carved with approval in the twelfth century ; — rubs his spec- tacles ; rubs the inscription, to make sure of its every letter ; stamps it, to make surer still ; — and at last, though in a greatly bewildered state of mind, remains convinced that here is a sculpture of ‘ La Liberte * in the twelfth century. “C’est bien la liberte ! ” “On lit parfaitement libertas.” 202. Not so, my good M. Didron! — a very different per- sonage, this ; of whom more, presently, though the letters of her name are indeed so plainly, ‘ Libertas, at non liberalitas,’ liberalitas being the Latin for largesse, not for franchise. This, then, is the opposition between the Greek and Gothic dynasties, in their passionate or vital nature ; in the animal and inbred part of them ; — Classic and romantic, Static and ex- static. But now, what opposition is there between their divine natures ? Between Theseus and Edward U[., as war- riors, we now know the difference ; but between Theseus and Edward m., as theologians ; as dreaming and discerning creatures, as didactic kings, — engraving letters with the point of the sword, instead of thrusting men through with it, — changing the club into the ferula, and becoming schoolmasters as well as kings ; what is, thus, the difference between them ? Theologians I called them. Philologians would be a better word, — lovers of the Aoyos, or Word, by which the heavens and earth were made. What logos, about this Logos, have they learned, or can they teach ? 203. I showed you, in my first lecture, the Byzantine Greek lion, as descended by true unblemished line from the Nemean Greek ; but with this difference : Heracles kills the beast, and makes a helmet and cloak of his skin ; the Greek St. Mark converts the beast, and makes an evangelist of him. Is not that a greater difference, think you, than one of mere decadence ? This ‘ maniera goffa e sproporzionata ’ of Vasari is not, then, merely the wasting away of former leonine strength into thin * Historical antiquary, not art-antiquary I must limitedly say, how- ever. He has made a grotesque mess of his account of the Ducal Palace of Venice, through his ignorance of the technical characters of sculpture. FRANCHISE. 331 rigidities of death ? There is another change going on at the same time, — body perhaps subjecting itself to spirit. I will not teaze you with farther questions. The facts are simple enough. Theseus and Heracles have their religion, sincere and sufficient, — a religion of lion-killers, minotaur- killers, very curious and rude ; Eleusinian mystery mingled in it, inscrutable to us now, — partly always so, even to them. 204. Well ; the Greek nation, in process of time, loses its manliness, — becomes Graeculus instead of Greek. But though effeminate and feeble, it inherits all the subtlety of its art, all the cunning of its mystery ; and it is converted to a more spiritual religion. Nor is it altogether degraded, even by the diminution of its animal energy. Certain spiritual phenomena are possible to the weak, which are hidden from the strong ; — nay, the monk may, in his order of being, pos- sess strength denied to the warrior. Is it altogether, think you, by blundering, or by disproportion in intellect or in body, that Theseus becomes St. Athanase ? For that is the kind of change which takes place, from the days of the great King of Athens, to those of the great Bishop of Alexandria, in the thought and theology, or, summarily, in the spirit of the Greek. Now we have learned indeed the difference between the Gothic knight and the Greek knight ; but what will be the difference between the Gothic saint and Greek saint ? Franchise of body against constancy of body. Franchise of thought, then, against constancy of thought. Edward HI. against Theseus. And the Frank of Assisi against St. Athanase. 205, Utter franchise, utter gentleness in theological thought. Instead of, ‘ This is the faith, which except a man believe faith- fully, he cannot be saved,’ ‘ This is the love, which if a bird or an insect keep faithfully, it shall be saved.’ Gentlemen, you have at present arrived at a phase of nat- ural science in which, rejecting alike the theology of the Byzan- tine, and the affection of the Frank, you can only contemplate a bird as flying under the reign of law, and a cricket as sing- ing under the compulsion of caloric. 332 VAL D'ABNO. I do not know whether you yet feel that the position of your boat on the river also depends entirely on the reign of law, or whether, as your churches and concert-rooms are privileged in the possession of organs blown by steam, you are learning yourselves to sing by gas, and expect the Dies Irae to be announced by a steam-trumpet. But I can very positively assure you that, in my poor domain of imitative art, not all the mechanical or gaseous forces of the world, nor all the laws of the universe, will enable you either to see a colour, or draw a line, without that singular force anciently called the soul, which it was the function of the Greek to discipline in the duty of the servants of God, and of the Goth to lead into the liberty of His children. 206. But in one respect I wish you were more conscious of the existence of law than you appear to be. The difference which I have pointed out to you as existing between these great nations, exists also between two orders of intelligence among men, of which the one is usually called Classic, the other Romantic. Without entering into any of the fine dis- tinctions between these two sects, this broad one is to be ob- served as constant : that the writers and painters of the Clas- sic school set down nothing but what is known to be true, and set it down in the perfectest manner possible in their way, and are thenceforward authorities from whom there is no appeal. Romantic writers and painters, on the contrary, express themselves under the impulse of passions which may indeed lead them to the discovery of new truths, or to the more delightful arrangement or presentment of things already known : but their work, however brilliant or lovely, remains imperfect, and without authority. It is not possible, of course, to separate these two orders of men trenchantly : a classic writer may sometimes, whatever his care, admit an error, and a romantic one may reach perfection through enthusiasm. But, practically, you may separate the two for your study and your education ; and, during your youth, the business of us your masters is to enforce on you the reading, for school work, only of classical books : and to see that your minds are both informed of the indisputable facts they contain, and ac- FRANCHISE. 333 customed to act with the infallible accuracy of which they set the example. 207. I have not time to make the calculation, but I suppose that the daily literature by which we now are principally nourished, is so large in issue that though St. John’s “ even the world itself could not contain the books which should be written ” may be still hyperbole, it is nevertheless literally true that the world might be wrapped in the books which are written ; and that the sheets of paper covered with type on any given subject, interesting to the modern mind, (say the prospects of the Claimant,) issued in the form of English morning papers during a single year, would be enough liter- ally to pack the world in. 208. Now I will read you fifty-two lines of a classical author, which, once well read and understood, contain more truth than has been told you all this year by this whole globe’s compass of print. Fifty-two lines, of which you will recognize some as hack- neyed, and see little to admire in others. But it is not pos- sible to put the statements they contain into better English, nor to invalidate one syllable of the statements they contain.* 209. Even those, and there may be many here, who would dispute the truth of the passage, will admit its exquisite dis- tinctness and construction. If it be untrue, that is merely because I have not been taught by my modern education to recognize a classical author ; but whatever my mistakes, or yours, may be, there are certain truths long known to all rational men, and indisputable. You may add to them, but you cannot diminish them. And it is the business of a Uni- versity to determine what books of this kind exist, and to en- force the understanding of them. 210. The classical and romantic arts which we have now under examination therefore consist, — the first, in that which represented, under whatever symbols, truths respecting the history of men, which it is proper that all should know ; while the second owes its interest to passionate impulse or * ‘ The Deserted Village,’ line 251 to 302. 334 VAL D ARNO . incident. This distinction holds in all ages, but the distino. tion between the franchise of Northern, and the constancy of Byzantine, art, depends partly on the unsystematic play of emotion in the one, and the appointed sequence of known fact or determined judgment in the other. You will find in the beginning of M. Didron’s book, already quoted, an admirable analysis of what may be called the classic sequence of Christian theology, as written in the sculpture of the Cathedral of Chartres. You will find in the treatment of the fa§ade of Orvieto the beginning of the de- velopment of passionate romance, — the one being grave ser- mon writing ; the other, cheerful romance or novel writing : so that the one requires you to think, the other only to feel or perceive ; the one is always a parable with a meaning, the other only a story with an impression. 211. And here I get at a result concerning Greek art, which is very sweeping and wide indeed. That it is all par- able, but Gothic, as distinct from it, literal. So absolutely does this hold, that it reaches down to our modem school of landscape. You know I have always told you Turner be- longed to the Greek school Precisely as the stream of blood coming from under the throne of judgment in the Byzantine mosaic of Torcello is a sign of condemnation, his scarlet clouds are used by Turner as a sign of death ; and just as on an Egyptian tomb the genius of death lays the sun down behind the horizon, so in his Cephalus and Procris, the last rays of the sun withdraw from the forest as the nymph expires. And yet, observe, both the classic and romantic teaching may be equally earnest, only different in manner. But from classic art, unless you understand it, you may get nothing ; from romantic art, even if you don’t understand it, you get at least delight. 212. I cannot show the difference more completely or fort- unately than by comparing Sir Walter Scott’s type of libertas, with the franchise of Chartres Cathedral, or Debonnairete of the Painted Chamber. At Chartres, and Westminster, the high birth is shown by the crown ; the strong bright life by the flowing hair ; the FRANCHISE 335 fortitude by the conqueror’s shield ; and the truth by the bright openness of the face : “ She was not brown, nor dull of hue, But white as snowc, fallen newe.” All these are symbols, which, if you cannot read, the image is to you only an uninteresting stiff figure. But Sir Walter’s Franchise, Diana Vernon, interests you at once in personal aspect and character. She is no symbol to you ; but if you acquaint yourself with her perfectly, you find her utter frank- ness, governed by a superb self-command ; her spotless truth, refined by tenderness ; her fiery enthusiasm, subdued by dig- nity ; and her fearless liberty, incapable of doing wrong, join- ing to fulfil to you, in sight and presence, what the Greek could only teach by signs. 213. I have before noticed — though I am not sure that you have yet believed my statement of it — the significance of Sir Walter’s as of Shakspeare’s names ; Diana c Vernon, semper viret,’ gives you the conditions of purity and youthful strength or spring which imply the highest state of libertas. By cor- ruption of the idea of purity, you get the modern heroines of London Journal — or perhaps we may more fitly call it 4 Cock- ney-daily ’ — literature. You have one of them in perfection, for instance, in Mr. Charles Beade’s ‘ Griffith Gaunt’ — “Lithe, and vigorous, and one with her great white gelding ; ” and liable to be entirely changed in her mind about the destinies of her life by a quarter of an hour’s conversation with a gen- tleman unexpectedly handsome ; the hero also being a person who looks at people whom he dislikes, with eyes “ like a dog’s in the dark ; ” and both hero and heroine having souls and intellects also precisely corresponding to those of a dog’s in the dark, which is indeed the essential picture of the practical English national mind at this moment, — happy if it remains doggish, — Circe not usually being content with changing people into dogs only. For the Diana Vernon of the Greek is Artemis Laphria, who is friendly to the dog ; not to the swine. Do you see, by the way, how perfectly the image is carried out by Sir Walter in putting his Diana on the border 336 VAL D'ARNO. country ? “ Yonder blue hill is in Scotland,” she says to her cousin, — not in the least thinking less of him for having been concerned, it may be, in one of Hob Roy’s forays. And so gradually you get the idea of Norman franchise carried out in the free-rider or free-booter ; not safe from degradation on that side also ; but by no means of swinish temper, or forag- ing, as at present the British speculative public, only with the snout. 214. Finally, in the most soft and domestic form of virtue, you have Wordsworth’s ideal : ‘ ‘ Her household motions light and free, And steps of virgin liberty.” The distinction between these northern types of feminine virtue, and the figures of Alcestis, Antigone, or Iphigenia, lies deep in the spirit of the art of either country, and is carried out into its most unimportant details. "We shall find in the central art of Florence at once the thoughtfulness of Greece and the gladness of England, associated under images of monastic severity peculiar to herself. And what Diana Vernon is to a French ballerine dancing the Cancan, the ‘ libertas ’ of Chartres and Westminster is to the ‘ liberty’ of M. Victor Hugo and Mr. John Stuart Mill. LECTURE IX. THE TYRRHENE SEA. 215. We may now return to the points of necessary history, having our ideas fixed within accurate limits as to the mean- ing of the word Liberty ; and as to the relation of the pas- sions which separated the Guelph and Ghibelline to those of our own days. The Lombard or Guelph league consisted, after the acces- sion of Florence, essentially of the three great cities — Milan, Bologna, and Florence ; the Imperial or Ghibelline league, of Verona, Pisa, and Siena. Venice and Genoa, both nominally Guelph, are in furious contention always for sea empire THE TYRRHENE REA. 337 while Pisa and Genoa are in contention, not so ranch for empire, as honour. Whether the trade of the East was to go up the Adriatic, or round by the Gulf of Genoa, was essen- tially a mercantile question ; but whether, of the two ports in sight of each other, Pisa or Genoa was to be the Queen of the Tyrrhene Sea, was no less distinctly a personal one than which of two rival beauties shall preside at a tournament. 216. This personal rivalry, so far as it was separated from their commercial interests, was indeed mortal, but not malig- nant. The quarrel was to be decided to the death, but decided with honour ; and each city had four observers permittedly resident in the other, to give account of all that was done there in naval invention and armament. 217. Observe, also, in the year 1251, when we quitted our history, we left Florence not only Guelph, as against the Im* perial power, (that is to say, the body of her knights who favoured the Pope and Italians, in dominion over those who favoured Manfred and the Germans), but we left her also definitely with her apron thrown over her shield ; and the tradesmen and craftsmen in authority over the knight, whether German or Italian, Papal or Imperial. That is in 1251. Now in these last two lectures I must try to mark the gist of the history of the next thirty years. The Thirty Years’ War, this, of the middle ages, infinitely im- portant to all ages ; first observe, between Guelph and Ghibelline, ending in the humiliation of the Ghibelline ; and, secondly, between Shield and Apron, or, if you like better, between Spear and Hammer, ending in the breaking of the Spear. 218. The first decision of battle, I say, is that between Guelph and Ghibelline, headed by two men of precisely opposite characters, Charles of Anjou and Manfred of Suabia. That I may be able to define the opposition of their characters intelligibly, I must first ask your attention to some points of general scholarship. I said in my last lecture that, in this one, it would be need- ful for us to consider what piety was, if we happened not to know ; or worse than that, it may be, not instinctively to feeL 338 VAL D 'ARNO. Sucli want of feeling is indeed not likely in you, being Eng- lish-bred ; yet as it is the modern cant to consider all such sentiment as useless, or even shameful, we shall be in several ways advantaged by some examination of its nature. Of all classical writers, Horace is the one with whom English gen- tlemen have on the average most sympathy ; and I believe, therefore, we shall most simply and easily get at our point by examining the piety of Horace. 219. You are perhaps, for the moment, surprised, whatever might have been admitted of iEneas, to hear Horace spoken of as a pious person. But of course when your attention is turned to the matter you will recollect many lines in which the word c pietas ’ occurs, of which you have only hitherto failed to allow the force because you supposed Horace did not mean what he said. 220. But Horace always and altogether means what he says. It is just because — whatever his faults may have been — he was not a hypocrite, that English gentlemen are so fond of him. “ Here is a frank fellow, anyhow,” they say, “ and a witty one.” Wise men know that he is also wise. True men know that he is also true. But pious men, for want of atten- tion, do not always know that he is pious. One great obstacle to your understanding of him is your having been forced to construct Latin verses, with introduction of the word ‘ Jupiter * always, at need, when you were at a loss for a dactyl. You always feel as if Horace only used it also when he wanted a dactyl. 221. Get quit of that notion wholly. All immortal writers speak out of their hearts. Horace spoke out of the abun- dance of his heart, and tells you precisely what he is, as frankly as Montaigne. Note then, first, how modest he is : “ Ne parva Tyrrhenum per aequor, vela darem ; — Operosa parvus, carmina fiugo.” Trust him in such words ; he absolutely means them ; knows thoroughly that he cannot sail the Tyrrhene Sea, — knows that he cannot float on the winds of Matinum, — can only murmur in the sunny hollows of it among the heath. But note, secondly, his pride : “ Exegi monumentum sere per- ennius.” He is not the least afraid to say that. He did it ; TUE~ TYRRHENE SEA . 339 knew he had done it ; said he had done it ; and feared no charge of arrogance. 222. Note thirdly, then, his piety, and accept his assured speech of it: “Dis pietas mea, et Musa, cordi est.” He is perfectly certain of that also ; serenely tells you so ; and you had better believe him. Well for you, if you can believe him ; for to believe him, you must understand him first ; and I can tell you, you won’t arrive at that understanding by looking out the word * pietas ’ in your White-and-Riddle. If you do, you will find those tiresome contractions, Etym. Dub., stop your inquiry very briefly, as you go back ; if you go forward, through the Italian pieta, you will arrive presently in another group of ideas, and end in misericordia, mercy, and pity. You must not depend on the form of the word ; you must find out what it stands for in Horace’s mind, and in Virgil’s. More than race to the Roman ; more than power to the states- man ; yet helpless beside the grave, — “ Non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te, Restitvet pietas.” Nay, also what it stands for as an attribute, not only of men, but of gods ; nor of those only as merciful, but also as avenging. Against iEneas himself, Dido invokes the waves of the Tyrrhene Sea, “si quid pia numina possunt.” Be as- sured there is no getting at the matter by dictionary or con- text. To know what love means, you must love ; to know what piety means, you must be pious. 223. Perhaps you dislike the word, now, from its vulgar use. You may have another if you choose, a metaphorical one, — close enough it seems to Christianity, and yet still ab- solutely distinct from it, — xpioros. Suppose, as you watch the white bloom of the olives of Val d’Arno and Val di Nie- vole, which modern piety and economy suppose were grown by God only to supply you with fine Lucca oil, you were to consider, instead, what answer you could make to the Socratic question, ttoOcv av ns r ovto to xpta-fxa \a/3oL* 224. I spoke to you first of Horace’s modesty. All piety begins in modesty. You must feel that you are a very little creature, and that you had better do as you are bid. You * Xen. Conviv., ii. 340 VAL D 'ARNO. will then begin to think what you are bid to do, and who bids it. And you will find, unless you are very unhappy indeed, that there is always a quite clear notion of right and wrong in your minds, which you can either obey or disobey, at your pleasure. Obey it simply and resolutely ; it will become clearer to you every day : and in obedience to it, you will find a sense of being in harmony with nature, and at peace with God, and all His creatures. You will not understand how the peace comes, nor even in what it consists. It is the peace that passes understanding ; — it is just as visionary and imaginative as love is, and just as real, and just as necessary to the life of man. It is the only source of true cheerfulness, and of true common sense ; and whether you believe the Bible, or don’t, — or believe the Koran, or don’t — or believe the Yedas, or don’t — it will enable you to believe in God, and please Him, and be such a part of the eiSoKta of the universe as your nature fits you to be, in His sight, faithful in awe to the powers that are above you, and gracious in regard to the creatures that are around. 225. I will take leave on this head to read one more piece of Carlyle, bearing much on present matters. “I hope also they will attack earnestly, and at length extinguish and eradi- cate, this idle habit of ‘ accounting for the moral sense,’ as they phrase it. A most singular problem ; — instead of bend- ing every thought to have more, and ever more, of ‘ moral sense,’ and therewith to irradiate your own poor soul, and all its work, into something of divineness, as the one thing needful to you in this world ! A very futile problem that other, my friends ; futile, idle, and far worse ; leading to what moral ruin, you little dream of! The moral sense, thank God, is a thing you never will ‘ account for ; ’ that, if you could think of it, is the perennial miracle of man ; in all times, visibly connecting poor transitory man, here on this bewildered earth, with his Maker who is eternal in the heav- ens. By no greatest happiness principle, greatest nobleness principle, or any principle whatever, will you make that in the least clearer than it already is ; — forbear, I say, or you may darken it away from you altogether ! ‘Two things,’ says THE TYRRHENE SEA. 341 the memorable Kant, deepest and most logical of metaphys- ical thinkers, ‘ two things strike me dumb : the infinite starry heavens ; and the sense of right and wrong in man.’ Visible infinites, both ; say nothing of them ; don’t try to * account for them for you can say nothing wise.” 226. Very briefly, I must touch one or two further relative conditions in this natural history of the soul. I have asked you to take the metaphorical, but distinct, word ‘ ypty/xa, ’ rather than the direct but obscure one ‘ piety ’ ; mainly because the Master of your religion chose the metaphorical epithet for the perpetual one of His own life and person. But if you will spend a thoughtful hour or two in reading the scripture, which pious Greeks read, not indeed on dain- tily printed paper, but on daintily painted clay, — if you will examine, that is to say, the scriptures of the Athenian relig- ion, on their Pan-Athenaic vases, in their faithful days, you will find that the gift of the literal xp«rjua, or anointing oil, to the victor in the kingly and visible contest of life, is signed al- ways with the image of that spirit or goddess of the air who was the source of their invisible life. And let me, before quitting this part of my subject, give you one piece of what you will find useful counsel. If ever from the right apothe- cary, or fxvpoTTuXrjs, you get any of that — don’t be careful, when you set it by, of looking for dead dragons or dead dogs in it. But look out for the dead flies. 227. Again ; remember, I only quote St. Paul as I quote Xenophon to you ; but I expect you to get some good from both. As I want you to think what Xenophon means by ‘ /xavTcta,’ so I want you to consider also what St. Paul means by ‘ 7rpoc£?7Teta.’ He tells you to prove all things, — to hold fast what is good, and not to despise ‘ prophesyings.’ 228. Now it is quite literally probable, that this world, having now for some five hundred years absolutely refused to do as it is plainly bid by every prophet that ever spoke in any nation, and having reduced itself therefore to Saul’s con- dition, when he was answered neither by Urim nor by proph- ets, may be now, while you sit there, receiving necromantic answers from the witch of Endor. But with that possibility 342 VAL D 'ARNO. yon have no concern. There is a prophetic power in youi own hearts, known to the Greeks, known to the Jews, known to the Apostles, and knowable by you. If it is now silent to you, do not despise it by tranquillity under that privation ; if it speaks to you, do not despise it by disobedience. 229. Now in this broad definition of Pietas, as reverence to sentimental law, you will find I am supported by all clas- sical authority and use of this word. For the particular meaning of which I am next about to use the word Religion, there is no such general authority, nor can there be, for any limited or accurate meaning of it. The best authors use the word in various senses ; and you must interpret each writer by his own context. I have myself continually used the term vaguely. I shall endeavour, henceforward, to use it under limitations which, willing always to accept, I shall only trans- gress by carelessness, or compliance with some particular use of the word by others. The power in the word, then, which I wish you now to notice, is in its employment with respect to doctrinal divisions. You do not say that one man is of one piety, and another of another ; but you do, that one man is of one religion, and another of another. 230. The religion of any man is thus properly to be inter- preted, as the feeling which binds him, irrationally, to the ful- filment of duties, or acceptance of beliefs, peculiar to a cer- tain company of which he forms a member, as distinct from the rest of the world. * Which binds him irrationally * I say ; — by a feeling, at all events, apart from reason, and often superior to it ; such as that which brings back the bee to its hive, and the bird to her nest A man’s religion is the form of mental rest, or dwelling- place, which, partly, his fathers have gained or built for him, and partly, by due reverence to former custom, he has built for himself ; consisting of whatever imperfect knowledge may have been granted, up to that time, in the land of his birth, of the Divine character, presence, and dealings ; modified by the circumstances of surrounding life. It may be, that sudden accession of new knowledge may compel him to cast his former idols to the moles and to the THE TYRRHENE SEA. 343 bats. But it must be some very miraculous interposition in- deed which can justify him in quitting the religion of his forefathers ; and, assuredly, it must be an unwise interposition which provokes him to insult it. 231. On the other hand, the value of religious ceremonial, and the virtue of religious truth, consist in the meek fulfil- ment of the one as the fond habit of a family ; and the meek acceptance of the other, as the narrow knowledge of a child. And both are destroyed at once, and the ceremonial or doc- trinal prejudice becomes only an occasion of sin, if they make us either wise in our own conceit, or violent in our methods of proselytism. Of those who will compass sea and land to make one proselyte, it is too generally true that they are them- selves the children of hell, and make their proselytes twofold more so. 232. And now I am able to state to you, in terms so accu- rately defined that you cannot misunderstand them, that we are about to study the results in Italy of the victory of an impious Christian over a pious Infidel, in a contest which, if indeed principalities of evil spirit are ever permitted to rule over the darkness of this world, was assuredly by them wholly provoked, and by them finally decided. The war was not actually ended until the battle of Tagliacozzo, fought in August, 1268 ; but you need not recollect that irregular date, or remember it only as three years after the great battle of Welcome, Benevento, which was the decisive one. Recollect, therefore, securely : 1250. The First Trades Revolt in Florence. 1260. Battle of the Arbia. 1265. Battle of Welcome. Then between the battle of Welcome and of Tagliacozzo, (which you might almost English in the real meaning of it as the battle of Hart’s Death : 4 cozzo ’ is a butt or thrust with the horn, and you may well think of the young Conradin as a wild hart or stag of the hills) — between those two battles, in 1266, comes the second and central revolt of the trades in Florence, of which I have to speak in next lecture. 233. The two German princes who perished in these two 344 VAL D ARNO. battles — Manfred of Tarentum, and bis nephew and ward Con- radin— are the natural son, and the legitimate grandson of Frederick II. : they are also the last assertors of the infidel German power in south Italy against the Church ; and in alli- ance with the Saracens ; such alliance having been maintained faithfully ever since Frederick IL’s triumphal entry into Jeru- salem, and comation as its king. Not only a great number of Manfred’s forts were commanded by Saracen governors, but he had them also appointed over civil tribunals. My own impression is that he found the Saracens more just and trust- worthy than the Christians ; but it is proper to remember the allegations of the Church against the whole Suabian family ; namely, that Manfred had smothered his father Frederick under cushions at Ferentino ; and that, of Frederick’s Sons, Conrad had poisoned Henry, and Manfred had poisoned Con- rad. You will, however, I believe, find the Prince Manfred one of the purest representatives of northern chivalry. Against his nephew, educated in all knightly accomplishment by his mother, Elizabeth of Bavaria, nothing could be alleged by his enemies, even when resolved on his death, but the splendour of his spirit and the brightness of his youth. 234. Of the character of their enemy, Charles of Anjou, there will remain on your minds, after careful examination of his conduct, only the doubt whether I am justified in speak- ing of him as Christian against Infidel. But you will cease to doubt this when you have entirely entered into the conditions of this nascent Christianity of the thirteenth century. You will find that while men who desire to be virtuous receive it as the mother of virtues, men who desire to be criminal receive it as the forgiver of crimes ; and that therefore, between Gliib- elline or Infidel cruelty, and Guelph or Christian cruelty, there is always this difference, — that the Infidel cruelty is done in hot blood, and the Christian’s in cold. I hope (in future lectures on the architecture of Pisa) to illustrate to you the opposition between the Ghibelline Conti, counts, and the Guelphic Visconti, viscounts or “against counts,” which is- sues, for one thing, in that, by all men blamed as too deliber- ate, death of the Count Ugolino della Gherardesca. The THE TYRRHENE SEA. 345 Count Ugolino was a traitor, who entirely deserved death ; but another Count of Pisa, entirely faithful to the Ghibelline cause, was put to death by Charles of Anjou, not only in cold blood, but with resolute infliction of Ugolino’s utmost grief ; — not in the dungeon, but in the full light of day — his son be- ing first put to death before his eyes. And among the pieces of heraldry most significant in the middle ages, the asp on the shield of the Guelphic viscounts is to be much remem- bered by you as a sign of this merciless cruelty of mistaken religion ; mistaken, but not in the least hypocritical. It has perfect confidence in itself, and can answer with serenity for all its deeds. The serenity of heart never appears in the guilty Infidels ; they die in despair or gloom, greatly satis- factory to adverse religious minds. 235. The French Pope, then, Urban of Troyes, had sent for Charles of Anjou ; who would not have answered his call, even with all the strength of Anjou and Provence, had not Scylla of the Tyrrhene Sea been on his side. Pisa, with eighty galleys (the Sicilian fleet added to her own), watched and defended the coasts of Rome. An irresistible storm drove her fleet to shelter ; and Charles, in a single ship, reached the mouth of the Tiber, and found lodgings at Rome in the con- vent of St. Paul. His wife meanwhile spent her dowry in in- creasing his land army, and led it across the Alps. How he had got his wife, and her dowry, we must hear in Villani’s words, as nearly as I can give their force in English, only, in- stead of the English word pilgrim, I shall use the Italian ‘ romeo,’ for the sake both of all English Juliets, and that you may better understand the close of the sixth canto of the Paradise. 236. “Now the Count Raymond Berenger had for his in- heritance all Provence on this side Rhone ; and he was a wise and courteous signor, and of noble state, and virtuous ; and in his time they did honourable things ; and to his court came by custom all the gentlemen of Provence, and France, and Catalonia, for his courtesy and noble state ; and there they made many cobbled verses, and Proven 9 al songs of great sen- tences.’' 346 VAL D 'ARNO. 237. I must stop to tell you that ‘cobbled ’or ‘coupled’ verses mean rhymes, as opposed to the dull method of Latin verse ; for we have now got an ear for jingle, and know that dove rhymes to love. Also, “songs of great sentences” mean didactic songs, containing much in little, (like the new didactic Christian painting,) of which an example (though of a later time) will give you a better idea than any description. “ Vraye foy de necessity, Non tant settlement d’equite, Nous fait de Dieu sept clioses croire : CPest sa doulce nativite, Son baptesme d'bumilite, Et sa mort. digne de memoire : Son descens en la chartre noire, Et sa resurrection, voire ; S’ascencion d’auctorite, La venue judicatoire, Ou ly bons seront mis en gloire, Et ly mals en adversity.” 238. “ And while they were making these cobbled verses and harmonious creeds, there came a romeo to court, return- ing from the shrine of St. James.” I must stop again just to say that he ought to have been called a pellegrino, not a romeo, for the three kinds of wanderers are, — Palmer, one who goes to the Holy Land ; Pilgrim, one who goes to Spain ; and Romeo, one who goes to Rome. Probably this romeo had been to both. “ He stopped at Count Raymond’s court, and was so wise and worthy (valoroso), and so won the Count's grace, that he made him his master and guide in all things. Who also, maintaining himself in honest and religious cus- toms of life, in a little time, by his industry and good sense, doubled the Count’s revenues three times over, maintaining always a great and honoured court. Now the Count had four daughters, and no son ; and by the sense and provision of the good romeo — (I can do no better than translate ‘ procaccio * provision, but it is only a makeshift for the word derived from procax, meaning the general talent of prudent impudence, in THE TYRRHENE SEA. 347 getting forward ; ‘forwardness/ has a good deal of the true sense, only diluted ;) — well, by the sense and — progressive faculty, shall we say ? — of the good pilgrim, he first married the eldest daughter, by means of money, to the good King Louis of France, saying to the Count, ‘ Let me alone, — Lascia- mi-fare — and never mind the expense, for if you marry the first one well, I’ll marry you all the others cheaper, for her relationship.’ 239. “And so it fell out, sure enough ; for incontinently the King of England (Henry HI.) because he was the King of France’s relation, took the next daughter, Eleanor, for very little money indeed ; next, his natural brother, elect King of the Romans, took the third ; and, the youngest still remaining unmarried, — says the good romeo, ‘ Now for this one, I will you to have a strong man for son-in-law, who shall be thy heir ; * — and so he brought it to pass. For finding Charles, Count of Anjou, brother of the King Louis, he said to Ray- mond, * Give her now to him, for his fate is to be the best man in the w^orld/ — prophesying of him. And so it was done. And after all this it came to pass, by envy which ruins all good, that the barons of Provence became jealous of the good romeo, and accused him to the Count of having ill-guided his goods, and made Raymond demand account of them. Then the good romeo said, ‘ Count, I have served thee long, and have put thee from little state into mighty, and for this, by false counsel of thy people, thou art little grateful. I came into thy court a poor romeo ; I have lived honestly on thy means ; now, make to be given to me my little mule and my staff and my wallet, as I came, and I will make thee quit of all my service.’ The Count would not he should go ; but for nothing would he stay ; and so he came, and so he departed, that no one ever knew whence he had come, nor whither he went. It was the thought of many that he was indeed a sacred spirit.” 240. This pilgrim, you are to notice, is put by Dante in the orb of justice, as a just servant ; the Emperor Justinian being the image of a just ruler. Justinian’s law-making turned out well for England ; but the good romeo’s match-making ended 348 VAL D' ARNO. ill for it ; and for Home, and Naples also. For Beatrice of Provence resolved to be a queen like her three sisters, and was the prompting spirit of Charles’s expedition to Italy. She was crowned with him, Queen of Apulia and Sicily, on the day of the Epiphany, 1265 ; she and her husband bring- ing gifts that day of magical power enough ; and Charles, as soon as the feast of coronation was over, set out to give battle to Manfred and his Saracens. “ And this Charles,” says Vil- lani, “ was wise, and of sane counsel ; and of prowess in arms, and fierce, and much feared and redoubted by all the kings in the world rmagnanimous and of high purposes ; fearless in the carrying forth of every great enterprise ; firm in every adversity ; a verifier of his every word ; speaking little, — doing much ; and scarcely ever laughed, and then but a little ; sincere, and without flaw, as a religious and catholic person ; stern in justice, and fierce in look ; tall and nervous in person, olive coloured, and with a large nose, and well he appeared a royal majesty more than other men. Much he watched, and little he slept ; and used to say that so much time as one slept, one lost ; generous to his men-at-arms, but covetous to acquire land, signory, and coin, come how it would, to furnish his enterprises and wars : in courtiers, ser- vants of pleasure, or jocular persons, he delighted never.” 241. To this newly crowned and resolute king, riding south from Borne, Manfred, from his vale of Nocera under Mount St. Angelo, sends to offer conditions of peace. Jehu the son of Nimshi is not swifter of answer to Ahaziah’s messenger than the fiery Christian king, in his * What hast thou to do wdth peace ? ’ Charles answers the messengers with his own lips : “ Tell the Sultan of Nocera, this day I will put him in hell, or he shall put me in paradise.” 242. Do not think it the speech of a hypocrite. Charles was as fully prepared for death that day as ever Scotch Cove- nanter fighting for his Holy League ; and as sure that death would find him, if it found, only to glorify and bless. Bal- four of Burley against Claverhouse is not more convinced in heart that he draws the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. But all the knightly pride of Claverhouse himself is knit to- THE TYRRHENE SEA. 349 gether, in Charles, with fearless faith, and religious wrath. ‘‘This Saracen scum, led by a bastard German, — traitor to his creed, usurper among his race, — dares it look me, a Chris- tian knight, a prince of the house of France, in the eyes ? Tell the Sultan of Nocera, to-day I put him in hell, or he puts me in paradise.” They are not passionate words neither ; any more than hyp- ocritical ones. They are measured, resolute, and the fewest possible. He never wasted words, nor showed his mind, but when he meant it should be known. 243. The messenger returned, thus answered ; and the French king rode on with his host. Manfred met him in the plain of Grandella, before Benevento. I have translated the name of the fortress ‘Welcome.’ It was altered, as you may remember, from Maleventum, for better omen ; perhaps, originally, only /xaXocts — a rock full of wild goats ? — associat- ing it thus with the meaning of Tagliacozzo. 244. Charles divided his army into four companies. The captain of his own was our English Guy de Montfort, on whom rested the power and the fate of his grandfather, the pursuer of the Waldensian shepherds among the rocks of the wild goats. The last, and it is said the goodliest, troop was of the exiled Guelphs of Florence, under Guido Guerra, whose name you already know. “These,” said Manfred, as he watched them ride into their ranks, “cannot lose to-day.” He meant that if he himself was the victor, he would restore these exiles to their city. The event of the battle was decided by the treachery of the Count of Caserta, Manfred’s brother- in-law. At the end of the day only a few knights remained with him, whom he led in the last charge. As he helmed himself, the crest fell from his helmet. “ Hoc est signum Dei,” he said, — so accepting what he saw to be the purpose of the Ruler of all things ; not claiming God as his friend, not asking anything of Him, as if His purpose could be changed ; not fearing Him as an enemy ; but accepting simply His sign that the appointed day of death was come. He rode into the battle armed like a nameless soldier, and lay un- known among the dead. 350 VAL D'ARNO. 245. And in him died all southern Italy. Never, after that day’s treachery, did her nobles rise, or her people prosper. Of the finding of the body of Manfred, and its casting forth, accursed, you may read, if you will, the story in Dante. I trace for you to-day rapidly only the acts of Charles after this victory, and its consummation, three years later, by the defeat of Conradin. The town of Benevento had offered no resistance to Charles, but he gave it up to pillage, and massacred its inhabitants. The slaughter, indiscriminate, continued for eight days ; the women and children were slain with the men, being of Sara- cen blood. Manfred’s wife, Sybil of Epirus, his children, and all his barons, died, or were put to death, in the prisons of Provence. With the young Conrad, all the faithful Ghibel- line knights of Pisa were put to death. The son of Freder- ick of Antioch, who drove the Guelphs from Florence, had his eyes torn out, and was hanged, he being the last child of the house of Suabia. Twenty-four of the barons of Calabria were executed at Gallipoli, and at Kome. Charles cut off the feet of those who had fought for Conrad ; then — fearful lest they should be pitied — shut them into a house of wood, and burned them. His lieutenant in Sicily, William of the Standard, besieged the town of Augusta, which defended it- self with some fortitude, but was betrayed, and all its inhab- itants, (who must have been more than three thousand, for there were a thousand able to bear arms,) massacred in cold blood ; the last of them searched for in their hiding-places, when the streets were empty, dragged to the sea-shore, then beheaded, and their bodies thrown into the sea. Throughout Calabria the Christian judges of Charles thus forgave his enemies. And the Mohammedan power and heresy ended in Italy, and she became secure in her Catholic creed. 246. Not altogether secure -under French dominion. After fourteen years of misery, Sicily sang her angry vespers, and a Calabrian admiral burnt the fleet of Charles before his eyes, where Scylla rules her barking Salamis. But the French king died in prayerful peace, receiving the sacrament with these words of perfectly honest faith, as he reviewed his past THE TYRRHENE SEA. 351 life : “Lord God, as I truly believe that you are my Saviour, so I pray you to have mercy on my soul ; and as I truly made the conquest of Sicily more to serve the Holy Church than for my own covetousness, so I pray you to pardon my sins.” 247. You are to note the two clauses of this prayer. He prays absolute mercy, on account of his faith in Christ ; but remission of purgatory, in proportion to the quantity of good work he has done, or meant to do, as against evil. You are so much wiser in these days, you think, not believing in pur- gatory ; and so much more benevolent, — not massacring women and children. But we must not be too proud of not believing in purgatory, unless we are quite sure of our real desire to be purified : and as to our not massacring children, it is true that an English gentleman will not now himself willingly put a knife into the throat either of a child or a lamb ; but he will kill any quantity of children by disease in order to increase his rents, as unconcernedly as he will eat any quantity of mutton. And as to absolute massacre, I do not suppose a child feels so much pain in being killed as a full-grown man, and its life is of less value to it. No pain either of body or thought through which you could put an infant, would be comparable to that of a good son, or a faith- ful lover, dying slowly of a painful wound at a distance from a family dependent upon him, or a mistress devoted to him. But the victories of Charles, and the massacres, taken in sum, would not give a muster-roll of more than twenty thousand dead ; men, women, and children counted all together. On the plains of France, since I first began to speak to you on the subject of the arts of peace, at least five hundred thousand men, in the prime of life, have been massacred by the folly of one Christian emperor, the insolence of another, and the mingling of mean rapacity with meaner vanity, which Chris- tian nations now call ‘patriotism.’ 248. But that the Crusaders, (whether led by St. Louis or by his brother,) who habitually lived by robbery, and might be swiftly enraged to murder, were still too savage to con- ceive the spirit or the character of this Christ whose cross they wear, I have again and again alleged to you ; not, I im- 352 VAL B 'ARNO. agine, without question from many who have been accustomed to look to these earlier ages as authoritative in doctrine, if not in example. We alike err in supposing them more spirit- ual or more dark, than our own. They had not yet attained to the knowledge which we have despised, nor dispersed from their faith the shadows with which we have again over- clouded ours. Their passions, tumultuous and merciless as the Tyrrhene Sea, raged indeed with the danger, but also with the uses, of naturally appointed storm ; while ours, pacific in corruption, languish in vague maremma of misguided pools ; and are pestilential most surely as they retire. LECTURE X. FLEUR DE LYS. 249. Through all the tempestuous winter which during the period of history we have been reviewing, weakened, in their war with the opposed rocks of religious or knightly pride, the waves of the Tuscan Sea, there has been slow increase of the Eavonian power which is to bring fruitfulness to the rock, peace to the wave. The new element which is introduced in the thirteenth century, and perfects for a little time the work of Christianity, at least in some few chosen souls, is the law of Order and Charity, of intellectual and moral virtue, which it now became the function of every great artist to teach, and of every true citizen to maintain. 250. I have placed on your table one of the earliest existing engravings by a Florentine hand, representing the conception which the national mind formed of this spirit of order and tranquillity, “ Cosmico,” or the Equity of Kosmos, not by senseless attraction, but by spiritual thought and law. He stands pointing with his left hand to the earth, set only with tufts of grass ; in his right hand he holds the ordered system of the universe — heaven and earth in one orb ; — the heaven made cosmic by the courses of its stars ; the earth cosmic by Plate IX.— The Charge to Adam. Modern Italian. FLEUR DE LYS. 353 tlie seats of authority and fellowship, — castles on the hills and cities in the plain. 251. The tufts of grass under the feet of this figure will ap- pear to you, at first, grotesquely formal. But they are only the simplest expression, in such herbage, of the subjection of all vegetative force to this law of order, equity, or symmetry, which, made by the Greek the principal method of his current vegetative sculpture, subdues it, in the hand of Cora or Trip- tolemus, into the merely triple sceptre, or animates it, in Flor- ence, to the likeness of the Fleur-de-lys. 252. I have already stated to you that if any definite flower is meant by these triple groups of leaves, which take their authoritatively typical form in the crowns of the Cretan and Lacinian Hera, it is not the violet, but the purple iris ; or sometimes, as in Pindar’s description of the birth of Iamus, the yellow water-flag, which you know so well in spring, by the banks of your Oxford streams.* But, in general, it means simply the springing of beautiful and orderly vegetation in fields upon which the dew falls pure. It is the expression, therefore, of peace on the redeemed and cultivated earth, and of the pleasure of heaven in the uncareful happiness of men clothed without labour, and fed without fear. 253. In the passage, so often read by us, which announces the advent of Christianity as the dawn of peace on earth, we habitually neglect great part of the promise, owing to the false translation of the second clause of the sentence. I can- not understand how it should be still needful to point out to you here in Oxford that neither the Greek words “iv avOpurn-ois cvSoKta,” nor those of the vulgate, “ in terra pax hominibus * In the catalogues of the collection of drawings in this room, and in my “ Queen of the Air ” you will find all that I would ask you to notice about the various names and kinds of the flower, and their symbolic use. — Note only, with respect to our present purpose, that while the true white lily is placed in the hands of the Angel of the Annunciation even by Florentine artists, in their general design, the fleur-de-lys is given to him by Giovanni Pisano on the f agade of Orvieto; and that the flower in the crown-circlets of European kings answers, as I stated to you in my lecture on the Corona, to the Narcissus fillet of early Greece ; the crown of abundance and rejoicing. 354 VAX D 'ARNO. bonse voluntatis,” in the slightest degree justify our English words, “ goodwill to men.” Of God s goodwill to men, and to all creatures, for ever, there needed no proclamation by angels. But that men should be able to please Him , — that their wills should be made holy, and they should not only possess peace in themselves, but be able to give joy to their God, in the sense in which He after- wards is pleased with His own baptized Son ; — this was a new thing for Angels to declare, and for shepherds to believe. _ 254. And the error was made yet more fatal by its repeti- tion in a passage of parallel importance, — the thanksgiving, namely, offered by Christ, that His Father, while He had hid- den what it was best to know, not from the wise and prudent, but from some among the wise and prudent, and had revealed it unto babes ; not ‘ for so it seemed good * in His sight, but ‘ that there might be well pleasing in His sight, ’—namely ,’ that the wise and simple might equally live in the necessary knowl- edge, and enjoyed presence, of God. And if, having accurate- ly read these vital passages, you then as carefully consider the tenour of the two songs of human joy in the birth of Christ, the Magnificat, and the Nunc dimittis, you will find the theme of both to be, not the newness of blessing, but the equity which disappoints the cruelty and humbles the strength of men ; which scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts ; which fills the hungry with good things ; and is not only the glory of Israel, but the light of the Gentiles. 255. As I have been writing these paragraphs, I have been checking myself almost at every word, — wondering, Will they be restless on their seats at this, and thinking all the while that they did not come here to be lectured on Divinity ? You may have been a little impatient, — how could it well be other- wise ? Had I been explaining points of anatomy, and showing you how you bent your necks and straightened your legs, you would have thought me quite in my proper function ; because then, when you went with a party of connoisseurs through the Vatican, you could point out to them the insertion of the clav- icle in the Apollo Belvidere ; and in the Sistine Chapel the perfectly accurate delineation of the tibia in the legs of Christ FLEUR BE LYS. 355 Doubtless ; but you know I am lecturing at present on the goffi, and not on Michael Angelo ; and the goffi are very care- less about clavicles and shin-bones ; so that if, after being lectured on anatomy, you went into the Campo Santo of Pisa, you would simply find nothing to look at, except three tol- erably well-drawn skeletons. But if after being lectured on theology, you go into the Campo Santo of Pisa, you will find not a little to look at, and to remember. 256. For a single instance, you know Michael Angelo is ad- mitted to have been so far indebted to these goffi as to borrow from the one to whose study of mortality I have just referred, Orcagna, the gesture of his Christ in the Judgment. He bor- rowed, however, accurately speaking, the position only, not the gesture ; nor the meaning of it.* You all remember the action of Michael Angelo’s Christ, — the right hand raised as if in violence of reprobation ; and the left closed across His breast, as refusing all mercy. The action is one which appeals to persons of very ordinary sensations, and is very naturally adopted by the Renaissance painter, both for its popular effect, and its capabilities for the exhibition of his surgical science. But the old painter-theologian, though indeed he showed the right hand of Christ lifted, and the left hand laid across His breast, had another meaning in the actions. The fingers of the left hand are folded, in both the figures ; but in Michael Angelo’s as if putting aside an appeal ; in Orcagna’s, the fin- gers are bent to draw back the drapery from the right side. The right hand is raised by Michael Angelo as in anger ; by Orcagna, only to show the wounded palm. And as, to the believing disciples, He showed them His hands and His side, so that they were glad, — so, to the unbelievers, at their judg- ment, He shows the wounds in hand and side. They shall look on Him whom they pierced. 257. And thus, as we follow our proposed examination of the arts of the Christian centuries, our understanding of their work will be absolutely limited by the degree of our sympathy with the religion which our fathers have bequeathed to us. * I found all tliis in M. Didron’s Iconographie, above quoted ; I had never noticed the difference between the two figures myself. 356 VAL D'ARNO. You cannot interpret classic marbles without knowing and loving your Pindar and iEschylus, neither can you interpret Christian pictures without knowing and loving your Isaiah and Matthew. And I shall have continually to examine texts of the one as I would verses of the other ; nor must you retract yourselves from the labour in suspicion that I desire to betray your scepticism, or undermine your positivism, because I rec- ommend to you the accurate study of books which have hitherto been the light of the world. 258. The change, then, in the minds of their readers at this date, which rendered it possible for them to comprehend the full purport of Christianity, was in the rise of the new desire for equity and rest, amidst what had hitherto been mere lust for spoil, and joy in battle. The necessity for justice was felt in the now extending commerce ; the desire of rest in the now pleasant and fitly furnished habitation ; and the energy which formerly could only be satisfied in strife, now found enough both of provocation and antagonism in the invention of art, and the forces of nature. I have in this course of lectures endeavoured to fasten your attention on the Florentine Revo- lution of 1250, because its date is so easily memorable, and it involves the principles of every subsequent one, so as to lay at once the foundations of whatever greatness Florence after- wards achieved by her mercantile and civic power. But I must not close even this slight sketch of the central history of Yal d’Arno without requesting you, as you find time, to asso- ciate in your minds, with this first revolution, the effects of two which followed it, being indeed necessary parts of it, in the latter half of the century. 259. Remember then that the first, in 1250, is embryonic ; and the significance of it is simply the establishment of order, and justice against violence and iniquity. It is equally against the power of knights and priests, so far as either are unjust, — not otherwise. When Manfred fell at Benevento, his lieutenant, the Count Guido Novello, was in command of Florence. He was just, but weak ; and endeavoured to temporize with the Guelphs. His effort ought to be notable to you, because it was one of FLEUR BE LYS. 357 the wisest and most far-sighted ever made in Italy ; but it failed for want of resolution, as the gentlest and best men are too apt to fail. He brought from Bologna two knights of the order — then recently established — of joyful brethren ; after- wards too fatally corrupted, but at this time pure in purpose. They constituted an order of chivalry which was to maintain peace, obey the Church, and succour widows and orphans ; but to be bound by no monastic vows. Of these two knights, he chose one Guelph, the other Ghibelline ; and under their balanced power Guido hoped to rank the forces of the civil, manufacturing, and trading classes, divided into twelve cor- porations of higher and lower arts.* But the moment this beautiful arrangement was made, all parties — Guelph, Ghibel- line, and popular, — turned unanimously against Count Guido Novello. The benevolent but irresolute captain indeed gath- ered his men into the square of the Trinity ; but the people barricaded the streets issuing from it ; and Guido, heartless, and unwilling for civil warfare, left the city with his Germans in good order. And so ended the incursion of the infidel Tedeschi for this time. The Florentines then dismissed the merry brothers whom the Tedeschi had set over them, and besought help from Orvieto and Charles of Anjou ; who sent them Guy de Montfort and eight hundred French riders ; the blessing of whose presence thus, at their own request, was granted them on Easter Bay, 1267. On Candlemas, if you recollect, 1251, they open their gates to the Germans ; and on Easter, 1267, to the French. 260. Remember, then, this revolution, as coming between the battles of Welcome and Tagliacozzo ; and that it expresses the lower revolutionary temper of the trades, with English and French assistance. Its immediate result was the appoint- ment of five hundred and sixty lawyers, woolcombers, and butchers, to deliberate upon all State questions, — under which happy ordinances you will do well, in your own reading, to * The seven higher arts were, Lawyers, Physicians, Bankers, Mer- chants of Foreign Goods, Wool Manufacturers, Silk Manufacturers, Furriers. The five lower arts were, Retail Sellers of Cloth, Butchers, Shoemakers, Masons and Carpenters, Smiths. 358 VAL D 'ARNO. leave Florence, that you may watch, for a while, darling little Pisa, all on fire for the young Conradin. She sent ten vessels across the Gulf of Genoa to fetch him ; received his cavalry in her plain of Sarzana ; and putting five thousand of her own best sailors into thirty ships, sent them to do what they could, all down the coast of Italy. Down they went ; startling Gaeta with an attack as they passed ; found Charles of Anjou’s French and Sicilian fleet at Messina, fought it, beat it, and burned twenty-seven of its ships. 261. Meantime, the Florentines prospered as they might with their religious-democratic constitution, — until the death, in the odour of sanctity, of Charles of Anjou, and of that Pope Martin IY. whose tomb was destroyed with Urban’s at Perugia. Martin died, as you may remember, of eating Bolsena eels, — that being his share in the miracles of the lake ; and you will do well to remember at the same time, that the price of the lake eels was three soldi a pound ; and that Nic- cola of Pisa worked at Siena for six soldi a day, and his son Giovanni for four. 262. And as I must in this place bid farewell, for a time, to Niccola and to his son, let me remind you of the large com- mission which the former received on the occasion of the bat- tle of Tagliacozzo, and its subsequent massacres, when the victor, Charles, having to his own satisfaction exterminated the seed of infidelity, resolves, both in thanksgiving, and for the sake of the souls of the slain knights for whom some hope might yet be religiously entertained, to found an abbey on the battle-field. In which purpose he sent for Niccola to Naples, and made him build on the field of Tagliacozzo, a church and abbey of the richest ; and caused to be buried therein the infinite number of the bodies of those who died in that battle day ; ordering farther, that, by many monks, prayer should be made for their souls, night and day. In which fabric the king was so pleased with Niccola’s work that he rewarded and honoured him highly. 263. Do you not begin to wonder a little more what manner of man this Nicholas was, who so obediently throws down the towers which offend the Ghibellines, and so skilfully puts up FLEUR BE LYS. 359 the pinnacles which please the Guelphs ? A passive power, seemingly, he ; — plastic in the hands of any one who will employ him to build, or to throw down. On what exists of evidence, demonstrably in these years here is the strongest brain of Italy, thus for six shilling a day doing what it is bid. 264. I take farewell of him then, for a little time, ratifying to you, as far as my knowledge permits, the words of my first master in Italian art, Lord Lindsay. “ In comparing the advent of Niccola Pisano to that of the sun at his rising, I am conscious of no exaggeration ; on the contrary, it is the only simile by which I can hope to give you an adequate impression of his brilliancy and power relatively to the age in which he flourished. Those sons of Erebus, the American Indians, fresh from their traditional subterranean world, and gazing for the first time on the gradual dawning of the day in the East, could not have been more dazzled, more astounded, when the sun actually appeared, than the popes and podestas, friars and freemasons must have been in the thirteenth century, when from among the Biduinos, Bonannos, and Antealmis of the twelfth, Niccola emerged in his glory, sovereign and supreme, a fount of light, diffusing warmth and radiance over Christendom. It might be too much to parallel him in actual genius with Dante and Shakspeare ; they stand alone and unapproachable, each on his distinct pinnacle of the temple of Christian song ; and yet neither of them can boast such extent and durability of influence, for whatever of highest excellence has been achieved in sculpture and paint- ing, not in Italy only, but throughout Europe, has been in obedience to the impulse he primarily gave, and in following up the principle which he first struck out. “His latter days were spent in repose at Pisa, but the precise year of his death is uncertain ; Vasari fixes it in 1275 ; it could not have been much later. He was buried in the Campo Santo. Of his personal character we, alas ! know nothing ; even Shakspeare is less a stranger to us. But that it was noble, simple, and consistent, and free from the petty foibles that too frequently beset genius, may be fairly pre- 360 VAL D 'ARNO. sumed from the works he has left behind him, and from th6 eloquent silence of tradition.” 265. Of the circumstances of Niccola Pisano’s death, or the ceremonials practised at it, we are thus left in ignorance. The more exemplary death of Charles of Anjou took place on the 7th of January, then, 1285 ; leaving the throne of Naples to a boy of twelve ; and that of Sicily, to a Prince of Spain. Various discord, between French, Spanish, and Calabrese vices, thenceforward paralyzes South Italy, and Florence becomes the leading power of the Guelph faction. She had been inflamed and pacified through continual par- oxysms of civil quarrel during the decline of Charles’s power ; but, throughout, the influence of the nobles declines, by reason of their own folly and insolence ; while the people, though with no small degree of folly and insolence on their own side, keep hold of their main idea of justice. In the meantime, similar assertions of law against violence, and the nobility of useful occupation, as compared with that of idle rapine, take place in Bologna, Siena, and even at Home, where Bologna sends her senator, Branca Leone, (short for Branca- di-Leone, Lion’s Grip,) whose inflexible and rightly guarded reign of terror to all evil and thievish persons, noble or other, is one of the few passages of history during the middle ages, in which the real power of civic virtue may be seen exercised without warping by party spirit, or weakness of vanity or fear. 266. And at last, led by a noble, Giano della Bella, the people of Florence write and establish their final condem- nation of noblesse living by rapine, those ‘ Ordinamenti della Giustizia,’ which practically excluded all idle persons from government, and determined that the priors, or leaders of the State, should be priors, or leaders of its arts and productive labour ; that its head * podesta ’ or 4 power ’ should be the standard-bearer of justice ; and its council or parliament com- posed of charitable men, or good men: “boni viri,” in the sense from which the French formed their noun ‘bonte.’ The entire governing body was thus composed, first, of the Podestas, standard-bearer of justice ; then of his military cap- tain ; then of his lictor, or executor ; then of the twelve priora FLEUR RE LYS. 3G1 of arts and liberties — properly, deliberators on the daily oc- cupations, interests, and pleasures of the body politic ; — and, finally, of the parliament of “ kind men,” whose business was to determine what kindness could be shown to other states, by way of foreign policy. 267. So perfect a type of national government has only once been reached in the history of the human race. And in spite of the seeds of evil in its own impatience, and in the gradually increasing worldliness of the mercantile body ; in spite of the hostility of the angry soldier, and the malignity of the sensual priest, this government gave to Europe the entire cycle of Christian art, properly so called, and every highest Master of labour, architectural, scriptural, or pictori- al, practised in true understanding of the faith of Christ ; — Orcagna, Giotto, Brunelleschi, Lionardo, Luini as his pupil, Lippi, Luca, Angelico, Botticelli, and Michael Angelo. 268. I have named two men, in this group, whose names are more familiar to your ears than any others, Angelico and Michael Angelo ; — who yet are absent from my list of those whose works I wish you to study, being both extravagant in their enthusiasm, — the one for the nobleness of the spirit, and the other for that of the flesh. I name them now, be- cause the gifts each had were exclusively Florentine ; in whatever they have become to the mind of Europe since, they are utterly children of the Yal d’Arno. 269. You are accustomed, too carelessly, to think of An- gelico as a child of the Church, rather than of Florence. He was born in 1387, — just eleven years, that is to say, after the revolt of Florence against the Church, and ten after the en- deavour of the Church to recover her power by the massa- cres of Faenza and Cesena. A French and English army of pillaging riders were on the other side of the Alps, — six thousand strong ; the Pope sent for it ; Bobert Cardinal of Geneva brought it into Italy. The Florentines fortified their Apennines against it ; but it took winter quarters at Cesena, where the Cardinal of Geneva massacred five thousand per- sons in a day, and the children and sucklings were literally dashed against the stones. 362 VAL D 'ARNO. 270. That was the school which the Christian Church had prepared for their brother Angelico. But Fesole, secluding him in the shade of her mount of Olives, and Florence re- vealing to him the true voice of his Master, in the temple of St. Mary of the Flower, taught him his lesson of peace on earth, and permitted him his visions of rapture in heaven. And when the massacre of Cesena was found to have been in vain, and the Church was compelled to treat with the re- volted cities who had united to mourn for her victories, Florence sent her a living saint, Catherine of Siena, for her political Ambassador. 271. Of Michael Angelo I need not tell you : of the others, we will read the lives, and think over them one by one ; the great fact which I have written this course of lectures to en- force upon your minds is the dependence of all the arts on the virtue of the State, and its kindly order. The absolute mind and state of Florence, for the seventy years of her glory, from 1280 to 1350, you find quite simply and literally described in the 112th Psalm, of which I read you the descriptive verses, in the words in which they sang it, from this typically perfect manuscript of the time : — Gloria et divitie in domo ejus, justitia ejus manet in secnlum secnlL Exortum est in tenebris lumen rectis, misericors, et miserator, et justus. Jocundus bomo, qui miseretur, et commodat : disponet sermones suos in judicio. Dispersit, dedit pauperibus ; justitia ejus manet in secnlum seculi ; cornu ejus exaltabitur in gloria. I translate simply, praying you to note as the true one, the literal meaning of every word : — Glory and ricbes are in bis bouse. His justice remains for ever. Light is risen in darkness for tbe straightforward people. He is merciful in heart, merciful in deed, and just. A jocund man ; who is merciful, and lends. He will dispose bis words in judgment. He bath dispersed. He bath given to the poor. His justice remains for ever His born shall be exalted in glory. FLEUR BE LTS. 363 272. With vacillating, but steadily prevailing effort, the Florentines maintained this life and character for full half a century. You will please now look at my staff of the year 1300,* adding the names of Dante and Orcagna, having each their separate masterful or prophetic function. That is Florence’s contribution to the intellectual work of the world during these years of justice. Now, the promise of Christianity is given with lesson from the fleur-de-lys : Seek ye first the royalty of God, and His justice, “ and all these things,” material wealth, “ shall be added unto you.” It is a perfectly clear, perfectly literal, — never failing and never un- fulfilled promise. There is no instance in the whole cycle of history of its not being accomplished, — fulfilled to the utter- most, with full measure, pressed down, and running over. 273. Now hear what Florence was, and what wealth she had got by her justice. In the year 1330, before she fell, she had within her walls a hundred and fifty thousand inhabi- tants, of whom all the men — (laity) — between the ages of fif- teen and seventy, were ready at an instant to go out to war, under their banners, in number twenty-four thousand. The army of her entire territory was eighty thousand ; and within it she counted fifteen hundred noble families, every one absolutely submissive to her gonfalier of justice. She had within her walls a hundred and ten churches, seven priories, and thirty hospitals for the sick and poor ; of foreign guests, on the average, fifteen hundred, constantly. From eight to ten thousand children were taught to read in her schools. The town was surrounded by some fifty square miles of un- interrupted garden, of olive, corn, vine, lily, and rose. And the monetary existence of England and France de- pended upon her wealth. Two of her bankers alone had lent Edward HI. of England five millions of money (in sterling value of this present hour). 274. On the 10th of March, 1337, she was first accused, with truth, of selfish breach of treaties. On the 10th of April, all her merchants in France were imprisoned by Philip of * Page 38 in my second lecture on Engraving, 364 VAL D'ARNO. Valois ; and presently afterwards Edward of England failed, quite in your modern style, for his five millions. These money losses would have been nothing to her ; but on the 7th of August, the captain of her army, Pietro de’ Rossi of Parma, the unquestioned best knight in Italy, received a chance spear-stroke before Monselice, and died next day. He was the Bayard of Italy ; and greater than Bayard, because living in a nobler time. He never had failed in any military enterprise, nor ever stained success with cruelty or shame. Even the German troops under him loved him without bounds. To his companions he gave gifts with such largesse, that his horse and armour were all that at any time he called his own. Beautiful and pure as Sir Galahad, all that was brightest in womanhood watched and honoured him. And thus, 8th August, 1337, he went to his own place. — To-day I trace the fall of Florence no more. I will review the points I wish you to remember ; and briefly meet, so far as I can, the questions which I think should occur to you. 275. I have named Edward HI. as our heroic type of Fran- chise. And yet I have but a minute ago spoken of him as * failing * in quite your modern manner. I must correct my expression : — he had no intent of failing when he borrowed ; and did not spend his money on himself. Nevertheless, I gave him as an example of frankness ; but by no means of honesty. He is simply the boldest and royalest of Free Riders ; the campaign of Crecy is, throughout, a mere pil- laging foray. And the first point I wish you to notice is the difference in the pecuniary results of living by rob- bery, like Edward HI., or by agriculture and just commerce, like the town of Florence. That Florence can lend five mill- ions to the King of England, and loose them with little care, is the result of her olive gardens and her honesty. Now hear the financial phenomena attending military exploits, and a life of pillage. 276. I give you them in this precise year, 1338, in which the King of England failed to the Florentines. “ He obtained from the prelates, barons, and knights of the Plate X.— The Nativity. Giovanni Pisano. FLEUR BE LY8. 365 shires, one half of their wool for this year — a very valuable and extraordinary grant. He seized all the tin ” (above-ground, you mean Mr. Henry !) “in Cornwall and Devonshire, took possession of the lands of all priories alien, and of the money, jewels, and valuable effects of the Lombard merchants. He demanded certain quantities of bread, com, oats, and bacon, from each county ; borrowed their silver plate from many abbeys, as well as great sums of money both abroad and at home ; and pawned his crown for fifty thousand florins.” * He pawns his queen’s jewels next year ; and finally sum- mons all the gentlemen of England who had forty pounds a year, to come and receive the honour of knighthood, or pay to be excused ! 277. H. The failures of Edward, or of twenty Edwards, would have done Florence no harm, had she remained true to herself, and to her neighbouring states. Her merchants only fall by their own increasing avarice ; and above all by the mercantile form of pillage, usury. The idea that money could beget money, though more absurd than alchemy, had yet an apparently practical and irresistibly tempting confirmation in the wealth of villains, and the success of fools. Alchemy, in its day, led to pure chemistry ; and calmly yielded to the science it had fostered. But all wholesome indignation against usurers was prevented, in the Christian mind, by wicked and cruel religious hatred of the race of Christ. In the end, Shakspeare himself, in his fierce effort against the madness, suffered himself to miss his mark by making his usurer a Jew : the Franciscan institution of the Mount of Pity failed before the lust of Lombardy, and the logic of Augsburg ; and, to this day, the worship of the Immaculate Virginity of Money, mother of the Omnipotence of Money, is the Protestant form of Madonna worship. 278. IH. The usurer’s fang, and the debtor’s shame, might both have been trodden down under the feet of Italy, had her knights and her workmen remained true to each other. But the brotherhoods of Italy were not of Cain to Abel — but of Cain to Cain. Every man’s sword was against his fellow. * Henry’s “History of England/’ book iv., chap. i. 366 VAL D 'ARNO. Pisa sank before Genoa at Meloria, the Italian JEgos-Potamos ; Genoa before Venice in the war of Chiozza, the Italian siege of Syracuse. Florence sent her Brunelleschi to divert the waves of Serchio against the walls of Lucca ; Lucca her Cas- truccio, to hold mock tournaments before the gates of van- quished Florence. The weak modern Italian reviles or bewails the acts of foreign races, as if his destiny had depended upon these ; let him at least assume the pride, and bear the grief, of remembering that, among all the virgin cities of his coun- try, there has not been one which would not ally herself with a stranger, to effect a sister’s ruin. 279. Lastly. The impartiality with which I have stated the acts, so far as known to me, and impulses, so far as discerni- ble by me, of the contending Church and Empire, cannot but give offence, or provoke suspicion, in the minds of those among you who are accustomed to hear the cause of Religion supported by eager disciples, or attacked by confessed ene- mies. My confession of hostility would be open, if I were an enemy indeed ; but I have never possessed the knowledge, and have long ago been cured of the pride, which makes men fervent in witness for the Church’s virtue, or insolent in decla- mation against her errors. The will of Heaven, which grants the grace and ordains the diversities of Religion, needs no defence, and sustains no defeat, by the humours of men ; and our first business in relation to it is to silence our wishes, and to calm our fears. If, in such modest and disciplined temper, you arrange your increasing knowledge of the history of man- kind, you will have no final difficulty in distinguishing the operation of the Master’s law from the consequences of the disobedience to it which He permits ; nor will you respect the law less, because, accepting only the obedience of love, it neither hastily punishes, nor pompously rewards, with what men think reward or chastisement Not always under the feet of Korah the earth is rent ; not always at the call of Elijah the clouds gather ; but the guarding mountains for ever stand round about Jerusalem ; and the rain, miraculous evermore, makes green the fields for the evil and the good. 280. And if you will fix your minds only on the conditions FLEUR DE LY8. 367 of human life which the Giver of it demands, “ He hath shown thee, oh man, what is good, and what doth thy Lord require of thee, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God,” you will find that such obedience is always acknowledged by temporal blessing. If, turning from the manifest miseries of cruel ambition, and manifest wander- ings of insolent belief, you summon to your thoughts rather the state of unrecorded multitudes, who laboured in silence, and adored in humility, widely as the snows of Christendom brought memory of the Birth of Christ, or her spring sun- shine, of His Resurrection, you may know that the promise of the Bethlehem angels has been literally fulfilled ; and will pray that your English fields, joyfully as the banks of Arno, may still dedicate their pure lilies to St. Mary of the Flower. APPENDIX. (NOTES ON THE PLATES ILLUSTRATING THIS VOLUME.) In the delivery of the preceding Lectures, some account was given of the theologic design of the sculptures by Gio- vanni Pisano at Orvieto, which I intended to have printed separately, and in more complete form, in this Appendix. But my strength does not now admit of my fulfilling the half of my intentions, and I find myself, at present, tired, and so dead in feeling, that I have no quickness in interpretation, or skill in description of emotional work. I must content my- self, therefore, for the time, with a short statement of the points which I wish the reader to observe in the Plates, and which were left unnoticed in the text. The frontispiece is the best copy I can get, in permanent materials, of a photograph of the course of the Arno, through Pisa, before the old banks were destroyed. Two arches of the Ponte-a-Mare which was carried away in the inundation of 1870, are seen in the distance ; the church of La Spina, in its original position overhanging the river ; and the buttressed and rugged walls of the mediaeval shore. Never more, any of these, to be seen in reality, by living eyes. Plate I. — A small portion of a photograph of Nicolo Pisano’s Adoration of the Magi, on the pulpit of the Pisan Baptistery. The intensely Greek character of the heads, and the severely impetuous chiselling (learned from Late Roman rapid work), which drives the lines of the drapery nearly straight, may be seen better in a fragment of this limited measure than in the crowded massing of the entire subject. But it may be observed also that there is both a thoughtful- 370 VAL D 'ARNO. ness and a tenderness in the features, whether of the "Virgin or the attendant angel, which already indicate an aim beyond that of Greek art. Plate H — The Pulpit of the Baptistery (of which the pre- ceding plate represents a portion). I have only given this general view for convenience of reference. Beautiful photo- graphs of the subject on a large scale are easily attainablo. Plate ITT. — The Fountain of Perugia. Executed from a sketch by Mr. Arthur Severn. The perspective of the steps is not quite true ; we both tried to get it right, but found that it would be a day or two’s work, to little purpose, — and so let them go at hazard. The inlaid pattern behind is part of the older wall of the cathedral ; the late door is of course inserted. Plate IV., Lettek E. — From Norman Bible in the British Museum ; showing the moral temper which regulated common ornamentation in the twelfth century. Plate V. — Door of the Baptistery at Pisa. The reader must note that, although these plates are necessarily, in fine- ness of detail, inferior to the photographs from which they are taken, they have the inestimable advantage of permanence, and will not fade away into spectres when the book is old. I am greatly puzzled by the richness of the current ornamenta- tion on the main pillars, as opposed to the general severity of design. I never can understand how the men who indulged in this flowing luxury of foliage were so stem in their masonry and figure-draperies. Plate VI — Part of the lintel of the door represented on Plate V., enlarged. I intended, in the Lecture on Marble Couchant, to have insisted, at some length, on the decoration of the lintel and side-posts, as one of the most important phases of mystic ecclesiastical sculpture. But I find the ma- terials furnished by Lucca, Pisa, and Florence, for such an essay are far too rich to be examined cursorily ; the treatment even of this single lintel could scarcely be enough explained in the close of the Lecture. I must dwell on some points of it now. Look back to Section 175 in “Aratra Pentelici,” giving APPENDIX. 371 statement of the four kinds of relief in sculpture. The up- permost of these plinths is of the kind I have called ‘round relief ’ ; you might strike it out on a coin. The lower is ‘ foliate relief ’ ; it looks almost as if the figures had been cut out Ox one layer of marble, and laid against another be- hind it. The uppermost, at the distance of my diagram, or in nature itself, would scarcely be distinguished at a careless glance from an egg-and-arrow moulding. You could not have a more simple or forcible illustration of my statement in the first chapter of “Aratra,” that the essential business of sculpt- ure is to produce a series of agreeable bosses or rounded surfaces ; to which, if possible, some meaning may afterwards be attached. In the present instance, every egg becomes an angel, or evangelist, and every arrow a lily, or a wing.* The whole is in the most exquisitely finished Byzantine style. I am not sure of being right in my interpretation of the meaning of these figures ; but I think there can be little ques- tion about it. There are eleven altogether ; the three cen- tral, Christ with His mother and St. Joseph ; then, two evan- gelists, with two alternate angels, on each side. Each of these angels carries a rod, with a fleur-de-lys termination ; their wings decorate the intermediate ridges (formed, in a pure Greek moulding, by the arrows) ; and, behind the heads of all the figures, there is now a circular recess ; once filled, I doubt not, by a plate of gold. The Christ, and the Evange- lists, all carry books, of which each has a mosaic, or intaglio ornament, in the shape of a cross. I could not show you a more severe or perfectly representative piece of architectural sculpture. The heads of the eleven figures are as simply decorative as the ball flowers are in our English Gothic tracery ; the slight irregularity produced by different gesture and character giv- ing precisely the sort of change which a good designer wishes to see in the parts of a consecutive ornament. * In the contemporary south door of the Duomo of Genoa, the Greek moulding is used without any such transformation. 372 VAL D'ARNO. The moulding closes at each extremity with a palm-tree, correspondent in execution with those on coins of Syracuse ; for the rest, the interest of it consists only in these slight variations of attitude by which the figures express wonder or concern at some event going on in their presence. They are looking down ; and I do not doubt, are intended to be the heavenly witnesses of the story engraved on the stone below, — The Life and Death of the Baptist. The lower stone on which this is related, is a model of skill in Fiction, properly so called. In Fictile art, in Fictile his- tory, it is equally exemplary. * Feigning ’ or * affecting ’ in the most exquisite way by fastening intensely on the princi- pal points. Ask yourselves what are the principal points to be insisted on, in the story of the Baptist. He came, “ preaching the Baptism of Bepentance for the remission of sins.” That is his Advice, or Order-preaching. And he came, “ to bear witness of the Light.” “ Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world.” That is his declaration, or revelation-preaching. And the end of his own life is in the practice of this preach- ing — if you will think of it — under curious difficulties in both kinds. Difficulties in putting away sin — difficulties in obtain- ing sight. The first half of the stone begins with the apoca- lyptic preaching. Christ, represented as in youth, is set under two trees, in the wilderness. St. John is scarcely at first seen ; he is only the guide, scarcely the teacher, of the crowd of peoples, nations, and languages, whom he leads, pointing them to the Christ. Without doubt, all these figures have separate meaning. I am too ignorant to interpret it ; but observe generally, they are the thoughtful and wise of the earth, not its ruffians or rogues. This is not, by any means, a general amnesty to blackguards, and an apocalypse to brutes, which St. John is preaching. These are quite the best people he can find to call, or advise. You see many of them carry rolls of paper in their hands, as he does himself. In comparison with the books of the upper cornice, these have special meaning, as throughout Byzantine design. APPENDIX. 373 “ Adverte quod patriarchse et prophetse pinguntur cum ro- tulis in manibus ; quidam vero apostoli cum libris, et quidam cum rotulis. Nempe quia ante Christi adventum fides figura- tive ostendebatur, et quoad multa, in se implicita erat. Ad quod ostendendum patriarchse et prophetse pinguntur cum ro- tulis, per quos quasi qusedam imperfecta cognitio designatur ; quia vero apostoli a Christo perfecte edocti sunt, ideo libris, per quos designatur perfecta cognitio, uti possunt.” William Durandus, quoted by Didron, p. 305. Plate YU. — Next to this subject of the preaching comes the Baptism : and then, the circumstances of St. John’s death. First, his declaration to Herod, “ It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife : ” on which he is seized and carried to prison : — next, Herod’s feast, — the consultation between daughter and mother, “ What shall I ask ? ’’—the martyrdom, and burial by the disciples. The notable point in the treat- ment of all these subjects is the quiet and mystic Byzantine dwelling on thought rather than action. In a northern sculpt- ure of this subject, the daughter of Herodias would have been assuredly dancing ; and most probably, casting a somer- sault. With the Byzantine, the debate in her mind is the only subject of interest, and he carves above, the evil angels, laying their hands on the heads, first of Herod and Herodias, and then of Herodias and her daughter. Plate VIH. — The issuing of commandment not to eat of the tree of knowledge. (Orvieto Cathedral.) This, with Plates X. and XH., will give a sufficiently clear conception to any reader who has a knowledge of sculpture, of the principles of Giovanni Pisano’s design. I have thought it well worth while to publish opposite two of them, facsimiles of the engravings which profess to represent them in Gruner’s monograph * of the Orvieto sculptures ; for these outlines will, once for all, and better than any words, show my pupils what is the real virue of mediaeval work, — the power which we medievalists rejoice in it for. Precisely the qualities which The drawings are hy some Italian draughtsman, whose name it is no business of mine to notice. 374 VAL D'ARNO. are not in the modem drawings, are the essential virtues of the early sculpture. If you like the Gruner outlines best, you need not trouble yourself to go to Orvieto, or anywhere else in Italy. Sculpture, such as those outlines represent, can be supplied to you by the acre, to order, in any modern academician’s atelier. But if you like the strange, rude, quaint, Gothic realities (for these photographs are, up to a certain point, a vision of the reality) best ; then, don’t study mediaeval art under the direction of modem illustrators. Look at it — for however short a time, where you can find it — veri- table and untouched, however mouldered or shattered. And abhor, as you would the mimicry of your best friend’s man- ners by a fool, all restorations and improving copies. For remember, none but fools think they can restore — none, but worse fools, that they can improve. Examine these outlines, then, with extreme care, and point by point. The things which they have refused or lost, are the things you have to love, in Giovanni Pisano. I will merely begin the task of examination, to show you how to set about it. Take the head of the commanding Christ Although inclined forward from the shoulders in the advanc- ing motion of the whole body, the head itself is not stooped ; but held entirely upright, the line of forehead sloping back- wards. The command is given in calm authority ; not in mean anxiety. But this was not expressive enough for the copyist, — “ How much better I can show what is meant ! ” thinks he. So he puts the line of forehead and nose upright ; projects the brow out of its straight line ; and the expression then becomes , — “ Now, be very careful, and mind what I say.” Perhaps you like this 1 improved ’ action better ? Be it so ; only, it is not Giovanni Pisano’s design ; but the modem Italian’s. Next, take the head of Eve. It is much missed in the pho- tograph — nearly all the finest lines lost — but enough is got to show Giovanni’s mind. It appears, he liked long-headed people, with sharp chins and straight noses. It might be very wrong of him ; but that was his taste. So much so, indeed, that Adam and Eve have, Plate XI. — Tile Nativity. Modern Italian. APPENDIX. 375 both of them, heads not much shorter than one-sixth of their entire height. Your modern Academy pupil, of course, cannot tolerate this monstrosity. He indulgently corrects Giovanni, and Adam and Eve have entirely orthodox one-eighth heads, by rule of schools. But how of Eve’s sharp-cut nose and pointed chin, thin lips, and look of quiet but rather surprised attention — not specially reverent, but looking keenly out from under her eyelids, like a careful servant receiving an order ? Well — those are all Giovanni’s own notions ; — not the least classical, nor scientific, nor even like a pretty, sentimental modern woman. Like a Florentine woman — in Giovanni’s time — it may be ; at all events, very certainly, what Giovanni thought proper to carve. Now examine your modern edition. An entirely proper Greco-Roman academy plaster bust, with a proper nose, and proper mouth, and a round chin, and an expression of the most solemn reverence ; always, of course, of a classical de- scription. Very fine, perhaps. But not Giovanni. After Eve’s head, let us look at her feet. Giovanni has his own positive notions about those also. Thin and bony, to ex- cess, the right, undercut all along, so that the profile looks as thin as the mere elongated line on an Etruscan vase ; and the right showing the five toes all well separate, nearly straight, and the larger ones almost as long as fingers ! the shin bone above carried up in as severe and sharp a curve as the edge of a sword. Now examine the modern copy. Beautiful little fleshy, Venus-de’-Medici feet and toes — no undercutting to the right foot, — the left having the great-toe properly laid over the sec- ond, according to the ordinances of schools and shoes, and a well-developed academic and operatic calf and leg. Again charming, of course. But only according to Mr. Gibson or Mr. Power — not according to Giovanni. Farther, and finally, note the delight with which Giovanni has dwelt, though without exaggeration, on the muscles of the breast and ribs in the Adam ; while he has subdued all away 376 VAL D'ARNO. into virginal severity in Eve. And then note, and with conclu. sive admiration, how in the exact and only place where the poor modern fool’s anatomical knowledge should have been shown, the wretch loses his hold of it ! How he has entire- ly missed and effaced the grand Greek pectoral muscles of Giovanni’s Adam, but has studiously added what mean flesh- liness he could to the Eve ; and marked with black spots the nipple and navel, where Giovanni left only the severe marble in pure light. These instances are enough to enable you to detect the in- solent changes in the design of Giovanni made by the modern Academy-student in so far as they relate to form absolute. I must farther, for a few moments, request your attention to the alterations made in the light and shade. You may perhaps remember some of the passages. They occur frequently, both in my inaugural lectures, and in “ Aratra Pentelici,” in which I have pointed out the essential connection between the schools of sculpture and those of chi- aroscuro. I have always spoken of the Greek, or essential- ly sculpture-loving schools, as chiaroscurist ; always of the Gothic, or colour-loving schools, as non-chiaroscurist. And in one place, (I have not my books here, and cannot refer to it,) I have even defined sculpture as light-and-shade drawing with the chisel. Therefore, the next point you have to look to, after the absolute characters of form, is the mode in which the sculptor has placed his shadows, both to express these, and to force the eye to the points of his composition which he wants looked at You cannot possibly see a more instructive piece of work, in these respects, than Giovanni’s design of the Nativity, Plate X. So far as I yet know Christian art, this is the central type of the treatment of the subject ; it has all the intensity and passion of the earliest schools, together with a grace of repose which even in Ghiberti’s beautiful Nativity, founded upon it, has scarcely been increased, but rather lost in languor. The motive of the design is the frequent one among all the early masters ; the Madonna lifts the covering from the cradle to show the Child to one of the servants, who starts forward adoring. All the light and shade is disposed Plate XII. — The Annunciation and Visitation. APPENDIX. 377 to fix the eye on these main actions. First, one intense deeply-cut mass of shadow, under the pointed arch, to throw out the head and lifted hand of the Virgin. A vulgar sculptor would have cut all black behind the head ; Giovanni begins with full shadow ; then subdues it with drapery absolutely quiet in fall ; then lays his fullest possible light on the head, the hand, and the edge of the lifted veil. He has undercut his Madonna’s profile, being his main aim, too delicately for time to spare ; happily the deep-cut brow is left, and the exquisitely refined line above, of the veil and hair. The rest of the work is uninjured, and the sharpest edges of light are still secure. You may note how the pas- sionate action of the servant is given by the deep shadows under and above her arm, relieving its curves in all their length, and by the recess of shade under the cheek and chin, which lifts the face. Now take your modern student’s copy, and look how he has placed his lights and shades. You see, they go as nearly as possible exactly where Giovanni’s don't. First, pure white under this Gothic arch, where Giovanni has put his fullest dark. Secondly, just where Giovanni has used his whole art of chiselling, to soften his stone away, and show the wreaths of the Madonna’s hair lifting her veil behind, the accursed mod- ern blockhead carves his shadow straight down, because he thinks that will be more in the style of Michael Angelo. Then he takes the shadows away from behind the profile, and from under the chin, and from under the arm, and puts in two grand square blocks of dark at the ends of the cradle, that you may be safe to look at that, instead of the Child. Next, he takes it all away from under the servant’s arms, and lays it all be- hind above the calf of her leg. Then, not having wit enough to notice Giovanni’s undulating surface beneath the drapery of the bed on the left, he limits it with a hard parallel-sided bar of shade, and insists on the vertical fold under the Ma- donna’s arm, which Giovanni has purposely cut flat that it may not interfere with the arm above ; finally, the modern animal has missed the only pieces of womanly form which Giovanni admitted, the rounded right arm and softly revealed 378 VAL D'ARNO. breast ; and absolutely removed, as if it were no part of the composition, the horizontal incision at the base of all — out of which the first folds of the drapery rise. I cannot give you any better example, than this modem Academy-work, of the total ignorance of the very first mean- ing of the word ‘ Sculpture ’ into which the popular schools of existing art are plunged. I will not insist, now, on the useless- ness, or worse, of their endeavours to represent the older art, and of the necessary futility of their judgment of it. The con- clusions to which I wish to lead you on these points will be the subject of future lectures, being of too great importance for examination here. But you cannot spend your time in more profitable study than by examining and comparing, touch for touch, the treatment of light and shadow in the figures of the Christ and sequent angels, in Plates VJLLL. and IX., as we have partly examined those of the subject before us ; and in thus assuring yourself of the uselessness of trust- ing to any ordinary modem copyists, for anything more than the rudest chart or map — and even that inaccurately surveyed — of ancient design. The last plate given in this volume contains the two love- ly subjects of the Annunciation and Visitation, which, being higher from the ground, are better preserved than the groups represented in the other plates. They will be found to justify, in subtlety of chiselling, the title I gave to Giovanni, of the Canova of the thirteenth century. I am obliged to leave without notice, at present, the branch of ivy, given in illustration of the term 4 marble rampant,’ at the base of Plate VlLL. The foliage of Orvieto can only be rightly described in connection with the great scheme of leaf- ornamentation which ascended from the ivy of the Homeric period in the sculptures of Cyprus, to the roses of Botticelli, and laurels of Bellini and Titian. THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND LECTURES GIVEN IN OXFORD THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND LECTUEE I THE PLEASURES OF LEARNING. Bertha to Osburga. In the short review of the present state of English Art, given you last year, I left necessarily many points untouched, and others unexplained. The seventh lecture, which I did not think it necessary to read aloud, furnished you with some of the corrective statements of which, whether spoken or not, it was extremely desirable that you should estimate the balanc- ing weight. These I propose in the present course farther to illustrate, and to arrive with you at, I hope, a just — you would not wish it to be a flattering — estimate of the conditions of our English artistic life, past and present, in order that with due allowance for them we may determine, with some security, what those of us who have faculty ought to do, and those who have sensibility, to admire. 2. In thus rightly doing and feeling, you will find summed a wider duty, and granted a greater power, than the moral philosophy at this moment current with you has ever con- ceived ; and a prospect opened to you besides, of such a Fut- ure for England as you may both hopefully and proudly labour for with your hands, and those of you who are spared to the ordinary term of human life, even see with your eyes, when all this tumult of vain avarice and idle pleasure, into which you have been plunged at birth, shall have passed into its appointed perdition. 382 THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND. 3. I wish that you would read for introduction to the lect- ures I have this year arranged for you, that on the Future of England, which I gave to the cadets at Woolwich in the first year of my Professorship here, 1869 ; and which is now placed as the main conclusion of the “ Crown of Wild Olive ” : and with it, very attentively, the close of my inaugural lecture given here ; for the matter, no less than the tenor of which, I was reproved by all my friends, as irrelevant and ill-judged ; — which, nevertheless, is of all the pieces of teaching I have ever given from this chair, the most pregnant and essential to whatever studies, whether of Art or Science, you may pursue, in this place or elsewhere, during your lives. The opening words of that passage I will take leave to read to you again, — for they must still be the ground of whatever help I can give you, worth your acceptance. “ There is a destiny now possible to us — the highest ever set before a nation to be accepted or refused. We are still undegenerate in race : a race mingled of the best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute in temper, but still have the firmness to govern, and the grace to obey. We have been taught a religion of pure mercy, which we must either now finally betray, or learn to defend by fulfilling. And we are rich in an inheritance of honour, bequeathed to us through a thousand yeai-s of noble history, which it should be our daily thirst to increase with splendid avarice ; so that Englishmen, if it be a sin to covet honour, should be the most offending souls alive. Within the last few years we have had the laws of natural science opened to us with a rapidity which has been blinding by its brightness ; and means of transit and communication given to us, which have made but one king- dom of the habitable globe. “ One kingdom ; — but who is to be its king ? Is there to be no king in it, think you, and every man to do that which is right in his own eyes ? Or only kings of terror, and the obscene empires of Mammon and Belial ? Or will you, youths of England, make your country again a royal throne of kings ; a sceptred isle ; for all the world a source of light, a centre of peace ; mistress of Learning and of the Arts ; — faithful guar- THE PLEASURES OF LEARNING. 383 dian of great memories in the midst of irreverent and ephem- eral visions — faithful servant of time-tried principles, under temptation from fond experiments and licentious desires ; and amidst the cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, worshipped in her strange valour, of goodwill towards men ? ” The fifteen years that have passed since I spoke these words must, I think, have convinced some of my immediate hearers that the need for such an appeal was more pressing than they then imagined ; — while they have also more and more con- vinced me myself that the ground I took for it was secure, and that the youths and girls now entering on the duties of active life are able to accept and fulfil the hope I then held out to them. In which assurance I ask them to-day to begin the examina- tion with me, very earnestly, of the question laid before you in that seventh of my last year’s lectures, whether London, as it is now, be indeed the natural, and therefore the heaven- appointed outgrowth of the inhabitation, these 1800 years, of the valley of the Thames by a progressively instructed and disciplined people ; or if not, in what measure and ' manner the aspect and spirit of the great city may be possibly altered by your acts and thoughts. In my introduction to the Economist of Xenophon I said that every fairly educated European boy or girl ought to learn the history of five cities, — Athens, Eome, Venice, Florence, and London ; that of London including, or at least compelling in parallel study, some knowledge also of the history of Paris , A few words are enough to explain the reasons for this choice. The history of Athens, rightly told, includes all that need be known of Greek religion and arts ; that of Eome, the victory of Christianity over Paganism ; those of Venice and Florence sum the essential facts respecting the Christian arts of Painting, Sculpture, and Music ; and that of London, in her sisterhood with Paris, the development of Christian Chiv- alry and Philosophy, with their exponent art of Gothic archi- tecture. Without the presumption of forming a distinct design, I yet hoped at the time when this division of study was suggested, 384 THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND. with the help of my pupils, to give the outlines of their sev- eral histories during my work in Oxford. Variously disap- pointed and arrested, alike by difficulties of investigation and failure of strength, I may yet hope to lay down for you, begin- ning with your own metropolis, some of the lines of thought in following out which such a task might be most effectively accomplished. You observe that I speak of architecture as the chief expo- nent of the feelings both of the French and English races. Together with it, however, most important evidence of char- acter is given by the illumination of manuscripts, and by some forms of jewellery and metallurgy : and my purpose in this course of lectures is to illustrate by all these arts the phases of national character which it is impossible that histo- rians should estimate, or even observe, with accuracy, unless they are cognizant of excellence in the aforesaid modes of structural and ornamental craftsmanship. In one respect, as indicated by the title chosen for this course, I have varied the treatment of their subject from that adopted in all my former books. Hitherto, I have always en- deavoured to illustrate the personal temper and skill of the artist ; holding the wishes or taste of his spectators at small account, and saying of Turner you ought to like him, and of Salvator, you ought not, etc., etc., without in the least consid- ering what the genius or instinct of the spectator might other- wise demand, or approve. But in the now attempted sketch of Christian history, I have approached every question from the people’s side, and examined the nature, not of the special faculties by which the work was produced, but of the general instinct by which it was asked for, and enjoyed. Therefore I thought the proper heading for these papers should represent them as descriptive of the Pleasures of England, gather than of its Arts. And of these pleasures, necessarily, the leading one was that of Learning, in the sense of receiving instruction ; — a pleasure totally separate from that of finding out things for yourself, — and an extremely sweet and sacred pleasure, when you know how to seek it, and receive. THE PLEASURES OF LEARNING. 385 On which I am the more disposed, and even compelled, here to insist, because your modern ideas of Development imply that you must all turn out what you are to be, and find out what you are to know, for yourselves, by the inevitable operation of your anterior affinities and inner consciences : — whereas the old idea of education was that the baby material of you, however accidentally or inevitably born, was at least to be by external force, and ancestral knowledge, bred ; and treated by its Fathers and Tutors as a plastic vase, to be shaped or mannered as they chose, not as it chose, and filled, when its form was well finished and baked, with sweetness of sound doctrine, as with Hybla honey, or Arabian spikenard. Without debating how far these two modes of acquiring knowledge — finding out, and being told — may severally be good, and in perfect instruction combined, I have to point out to you that, broadly, Athens, Rome, and Florence are self- taught, and internally developed ; while all the Gothic races, without any exception, but especially those of London and Paris, are afterwards taught by these ; and had, therefore, when they chose to accept it, the delight of being instructed, without trouble or doubt, as fast as they could read or imi- tate ; and brought forward to the point where their own northern instincts might wholesomely superimpose or graft some national ideas upon these sound instructions. Read over what I said on this subject in the third of my lectures last year, and simplify that already brief statement further, by fastening in your mind Carlyle’s general symbol of the best attainments of northern religious sculpture, — “three w r hale-cubs combined by boiling,” and reflecting that the men- tal history of all northern European art is the modification of that graceful type, under the orders of the Athena of Homer and Phidias. And this being quite indisputably the broad fact of the mat- ter, I greatly marvel that your historians never, so far as I have read, think of proposing to you the question — what you might have made of yourselves without the help of Homer and Phid- ias : what sort of beings the Saxon and the Celt, the Frank and the Dane, might have been by this time, untouched by the 386 THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND. spear of Pallas, unruled by the rod of Agricola, and sincerely the native growth, pure of root, and ungrafted in fruit of the clay of Isis, rock of Dovrefeldt, and sands of Elbe ? Think of it, and think chiefly what form the ideas, and images, of your natural religion might probably have taken, if no Roman mis- sionary had ever passed the Alps in charity, and no English king in pilgrimage. I have been of late indebted more than I can express to the friend who has honoured me by the dedication of his recently published lectures on ‘ Older England ; * and whose eager en- thusiasm and far collected learning have enabled me for the first time to assign their just meaning and value to the ritual and imagery of Saxon devotion. But while every page of Mr. Hodgett’s book, and, I may gratefully say also, every sentence of his teaching, has increased and justified the respect in which I have always been by my own feeling disposed to hold the mythologies founded on the love and knowledge of the natural world, I have also been led by them to conceive, far more forcibly than hitherto, the power which the story of Christian- ity possessed, first heard through the wreaths of that cloudy superstition, in the substitution, for its vaporescent allegory, of a positive and literal account of a real Creation, and an in- stantly present, omnipresent, and compassionate God. Observe, there is no question whatever in examining this influence, how far Christianity itself is true, or the transcen- dental doctrines of it intelligible. Those who brought you the story of it believed it with all their souls to be true, — and the effect of it on the hearts of your ancestors was that of an unques- tionable, infinitely lucid message straight from God, doing away with all difficulties, grief, and fears for those who will- ingly received it, nor by any, except wilfully and obstinately vile persons, to be, by any possibility, denied or refused. And it was precisely, observe, the vivacity and joy with which the main fact of Christ’s life was accepted which gave the force and wrath to the controversies instantly arising about its nature. Those controversies vexed and shook, but never under- mined, the faith they strove to purify, and the miraculous THE PLEASURES OF LEARNING. 387 presence, errorless precept, and loving promises of tbeir Lord were alike undoubted, alike rejoiced in, by every nation that beard the word of Apostles. The Pelagian’s assertion that immortality could be won by man’s will, and the Arian’s that Christ possessed no more than man’s nature, never for an in- stant — or in any country — hindered the advance of the moral law and intellectual hope of Christianity. Far the contrary ; the British heresy concerning Free Will, though it brought bishop after bishop into England to extinguish it, remained an extremely healthy and active element in the British mind down to the days of John Bunyan and the guide Great Heart, and the calmly Christian justice and simple human virtue of Theodoric were the very roots and first burgeons of the re- generation of Italy.* But of the degrees in which it was pos- sible for any barbarous nation to receive during the first five centuries, either the spiritual power of Christianity itself, or the instruction in classic art and science which accompanied it, you cannot rightly judge, without taking the pains, and they will not, I think, be irksome, of noticing carefully, and fixing permanently in your minds, the separating characteristics of the greater races, both in those who learned and those who taught. Of the Huns and Vandals we need not speak. They are merely forms of Punishment and Destruction. Put them out of your minds altogether, and remember only the names of the immortal nations, which abide on their native rocks, and plough their unconquered plains, at this hour. Briefly, in the north, — Briton, Norman, Frank, Saxon, Ostro- goth, Lombard ; briefly, in the south, — Tuscan, Roman, Greek, Syrian, Egyptian, Arabian. Now of these races, the British (I avoid the word Celtic, * Gibbon, in bis 37th chapter, makes Ulphilas also an Arian, but might have forborne, with grace, his own definition of orthodoxy: — and you are to observe generally that at this time the teachers who ad- mitted the inferiority of Christ to the Father as touching his Manhood, were often counted among Arians, but quite falsely. Christ’s own words, “My Father is greater than I,” end that controversy at once. Arianism consists not in asserting the subjection of the Son to the Father, but in denying the subjected Divinity. 388 THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND. because you would expect me to say Keltic ; and I don t mean to, lest you should be wanting me next to call the pa- troness of music St. Kekilia), the British, including Breton, Cornish, Welsh, Irish, Scot, and Piet, are, I believe, of all the northern races, the one which has deepest love of external nature ; — and the richest inherent gift of pure music and song, as such ; separated from the intellectual gift which raises song into poetry. They are naturally also religious, and for some centuries after their own conversion are one of the chief evangelizing powers in Christendom. But they are neither apprehensive nor receptive ; — they cannot under- stand the classic races, and learn scarcely anything from them ; perhaps better so, if the classic races had been more careful to understand them. Next, the Norman is scarcely more apprehensive than the Celt, but he is more constructive, and uses to good advan- tage what he learns from the Frank. His main characteristic is an energy, which never exhausts itself in vain anger, de- sire, or sorrow, but abides and rules, like a living rock : — where he winders, he flows like lava, and congeals like gran- ite. Next, I take in this first sketch the Saxon and Frank to- gether, both pre-eminently apprehensive, both docile exceed- ingly, imaginative in the highest, but in life active more than pensive, eager in desire, swift of invention, keenly sensitive to animal beauty, but with difficulty rational, and rarely, for the future, wise. Under the conclusive name of Ostrogoth, you may class whatever tribes are native to Central Germany, and develope themselves, as time goes on, into that power of the German Caesars which still asserts itself as an empire against the license and insolence of modern republicanism, — • of which races, though this general name, no description can be given in rapid terms. And lastly, the Lombards, who, at the time we have to deal with, were sternly indocile, gloomily imaginative, — of almost Norman energy, and differing from all the other western na- tions chiefly in this notable particular, that while the Celt is capable of bright wit and happy play, and the Norman, Saxon, THE PLEASURES OF LEARNING. 389 and Frank all alike delight in caricature, the Lombards, like the Arabians, never jest. These, briefly, are the six barbaric nations who are to be taught : and of whose native arts and faculties, before they receive any tutorship from the south, I find no well-sifted ac- count in any history : — but thus much of them, collecting your own thoughts and knowledge, you may easily discern — they were all, with the exception of the Scots, practical work- ers and builders in wood ; and those of them who had coasts, first rate sea-boat builders, with fine mathematical instincts and practice in that kind far developed, necessarily good sail- weaving, and sound fur-stitcliing, with stout iron-work of nail and rivet ; rich copper and some silver work in decoration — the Celts developing peculiar gifts in linear design, but wholly incapable of drawing animals or figures ; — the Saxons and Franks having enough capacity in that kind, but no thought of attempting it ; the Normans and Lombards still farther remote from any such skill. More and more, it seems to me wonderful that under your British block-temple, grimly ex- tant on its pastoral plain, or beside the first crosses engraved on the rock at Whithorn — you English and Scots do not oftener consider what you might or could have come to, left to yourselves. Next, let us form the list of your tutor nations, in whom it generally pleases you to look at nothing but the corruptions. If we could get into the habit of thinking more of our own corruptions and more of their virtues, we should have a better chance of learning the true laws alike of art and destiny. But, the safest way of all, is to assure ourselves that true knowledge of any thing or any creature is only of the good of it ; that its nature and life are in that, and that what is dis- eased, — that is to say, unnatural and mortal, — you must cut away from it in contemplation, as you would in surgery. Of the six tutor nations, two, the Tuscan and Arab, have no effect on early Christian England. But the Homan, Greek, Syrian, and Egyptian act together from the earliest times ; you are to study the influence of Rome upon England in Agric- ola, Constantius, St. Benedict, and St. Gregory ; of Greece 390 THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND. upon England in the artists of Byzantium and Ravenna ; of Syria and Egypt upon England in St. Jerome, St Augustine, St. Chrysostom, and St Athanase. St Jerome, in central Bethlehem ; St. Augustine, Cartha- ginian by birth, in truth a converted Tyrian ; Athanase, Egyp- tian, symmetric and fixed as an Egyptian aisle ; Chrysostom, golden mouth of all ; these are, indeed, every one teachers of all the western world, but St Augustine especially of lay, as distinguished from monastic, Christianity to the Franks, and finally to us. His rule, expanded into the treatise of the City of God, is taken for guide of life and policy by Charlemagne, and becomes certainly the fountain of Evangelical Christianity, distinctively so called, (and broadly the lay Christianity of Europe, since, in the purest form of it, that is to say, the most merciful, charitable, variously applicable, kindly wise.) The greatest type of it, as far as I know, St. Martin of Tours, whose character is sketched, I think in the main rightly, in the Bible of Amiens ; and you may bind together your thoughts of its course by remembering that Alcuin, bom at York, dies in the Abbey of St. Martin, at Tours ; that as St. Augustine was in his writings Charlemagne’s Evangelist in faith, Alcuin was, in living presence, his master in rhetoric, logic, and astronomy, with the other physical sciences. A hundred years later than St. Augustine, comes the rule of St. Benedict — the Monastic rule, virtually, of European Christianity, ever since— and theologically the Law of Works, as distinguished from the Law of Faith. St Augustine and all the disciples of St. Augustine tell Christians what they should feel and think : St Benedict and all the disciples of St Benedict tell Christians what they should say and do. In the briefest, but also the perfectest distinction, the dis- ciples of St Augustine are those who open the door to Christ — “If any man hear my voice but the Benedictines those to whom Christ opens the door — “ To him that knocketh it shall be opened.” Now, note broadly the course and action of this rule, as it combines with the older one. St. Augustine’s, accepted heartily by Clovis, and, with various degrees of understand- TEE PLEASURES OF LEARNING . 391 ing, by the kings and queens of the Merovingian dynasty, makes seemingly little difference in their conduct, so that their profession of it remains a scandal to Christianity to this day ; and yet it lives, in the true hearts among them, down from St. Clotilde to her great grand-daugliter Bertha, who in becoming Queen of Kent, builds under its chalk downs her own little chapel to St. Martin, and is the first effectively and permanently useful missionary to the Saxons, the beginner of English Erudition, — the first laid corner stone of beautiful English character. I think henceforward you will find the memorandum of dates which I have here set down for my own guidance more simply useful than those confused by record of unimportant persons and inconsequent events, which form the indices of common history. From the year of the Saxon invasion 449, there are exactly 400 years to the birth of Alfred, 849. You have no difficulty in remembering those cardinal years. Then, you have Four great men and great events to remember, at the close of the fifth century. Clovis, and the founding of the Frank King- dom ; Theodoric and the founding of the Gothic Kingdom ; Justinian and the founding of Civil law ; St. Benedict and the founding of Religious law. Of Justinian, and his work, I am not able myself to form any opinion — and it is, I think, unnecessary for students of history to form any, until they are able to estimate clearly the benefits, and mischief, of the civil law of Europe in its present state. But to Clovis, Theodoric, and St. Benedict, without any question, we owe more than any English historian has yet ascribed, — and they are easily held in mind together, for Clovis ascended the Frank throne in the year of St. Benedict’s birth, 481. Theodoric fought the battle of Verona, and founded the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy twelve years later, in 493, and thereupon married the sister of Clovis. That marriage is always passed in a casual sentence, as if a merely political one, and while page after page is spent in following the alternations of furious crime and fatal chance, in the con- tests between Fredegonde and Brunehaut, no historian ever 392 TEE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND. considers whether the great Ostrogoth who wore in the battle of Yerona the dress which his mother had woven for him, was likely to have chosen a wife without love ! — or how far the perfectness, justice, and temperate wisdom of every ordinance of his reign was owing to the sympathy and counsel of his Frankish queen. You have to recollect, then, thus far, only three cardinal dates : — 449. Saxon invasion. 481. Clovis reigns and St. Benedict is born. 493. Theodoric conquers at Yerona. Then, roughly, a hundred years later, in 590, Ethelbert, the fifth from Hengist, and Bertha, the third from Clotilde, are king and queen of Kent. I cannot find the date of their mar- riage, but the date, 590, which you must recollect for cardinal, is that of Gregory’s accession to the pontificate, and I believe Bertha was then in middle life, having persevered in her relig- ion firmly, but inoffensively, and made herself beloved by her husband and people. She, in England, Theodolinda in Lom- bardy, and St. Gregory in Borne : — in their hands, virtually lay the destiny of Europe. Then the period from Bertha to Osburga, 590 to 849 — say 250 years — is passed by the Saxon people in the daily more reverent learning of the Christian faith, and daily more peace- ful and skilful practice of the humane arts and duties which it invented and inculcated. The statement given by Sir Edward Creasy of the result of these 250 years of lesson is, with one correction, the most simple and just that I can find. “ A few years before the close of the sixth century, the country was little more than a wide battle-field, where gallant but rude warriors fought with each other, or against the neighbouring Welsh or Scots ; unheeding and unheeded by the rest of Europe, or, if they attracted casual attention, re- garded with dread and disgust as the fiercest of barbarians and the most untameable of pagans. In the eighth century, England was looked up to with admiration and gratitude, as superior to all the other countries of Western Europe in piety TEE PLEASURES OF LEARNING. 393 and learning, and as the land whence the most zealous and successful saints and teachers came forth to convert and en- lighten the still barbarous regions of the continent.” This statement is broadly true ; yet the correction it needs is a very important one. England, — under her first Alfred of Northumberland, and under Ina of Wessex, is indeed during these centuries the most learned, thoughtful, and progressive of European states. But she is not a missionary power. The missionaries are always to her, not from her : — for the very reason that she is learning so eagerly, she does not take to preaching. Ina founds his Saxon school at Home not to teach Rome, nor convert the Pope, but to drink at the source of knowledge, and to receive laws from direct and unques- tioned authority. The missionary power was wholly Scotch and Irish, and that power was wholly one of zeal and faith, not of learning. I will ask you, in the course of my next lecture, to regard it attentively ; to-day, I must rapidly draw to the conclusions I would leave with you. It is more and more wonderful to me as I think of it, that no effect whatever was produced on the Saxon, nor on any other healthy race of the North, either by the luxury of Rome, or by her art, whether constructive or imitative. The Saxon builds no aqueducts — designs no roads, rounds no theatres in imitation of her, — envies none of her vile pleasures, — ad- mires, so far as I can judge, none of her far-carried realistic art. I suppose that it needs intelligence of a more advanced kind to see the qualities of complete sculpture : and that we may think of the Northern intellect as still like that of a child, who cares to picture its own thoughts in its own way, but does not care for the thoughts of older people, or attempt to copy what it feels too difficult. This much at least is cer- tain, that for one cause or another, everything that now at Paris or London our painters most care for and try to realize, of ancient Rome, was utterly innocuous and unattractive to the Saxon : while his mind was frankly open to the direct teaching of Greece and to the methods of bright decoration employed in the Byzantine Empire : for these alone seemed to his fancy suggestive of the glories of the brighter world 394: TEE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND . promised by Christianity. Jewellery, vessels of gold and silver, beautifully 'written books, and music, are the gifts of St. Gregory alike to the Saxon and Lombard ; all these beauti- ful things being used, not for the pleasure of the present life, but as the symbols of another ; while the drawings in Saxon manuscripts, in which, better than in any other remains of their life, we can read the people’s character, are rapid en- deavours to express for themselves, and convey to others, some likeness of the realities of sacred event in which they had been instructed. They differ from every archaic school of former design in this evident correspondence with an imagined reality. All previous archaic art whatsoever is sym- bolic and decorative — not realistic. The contest of Herakles with the Hydra on a Greek vase is a mere sign that such a contest took place, not a picture of it, and in drawing that sign the potter is always thinking of the effect of the engraved lines on the curves of his pot, and taking care to keep out of the way of the handle ; — but a Saxon monk would scratch his idea of the Fall of the angels or the Temptation of Christ over a whole page of his manuscript in variously explanatory scenes, evidently full of inexpressible vision, and eager to explain and illustrate all that he felt or believed. Of the progress and arrest of these gifts, I shall have to speak in my next address ; but I must regretfully conclude to-day with some brief warning against the complacency which might lead you to regard them as either at that time entirely original in the Saxon race, or at the present day as signally characteristic of it. That form of complacency is ex- hibited in its most amiable, but, therefore, most deceptive guise, in the passage with which the late Dean of Westminster concluded his lecture at Canterbury in April, 1854, on the subject of the landing of Augustine. I will not spoil the em- phasis of the passage by comment as I read, but must take leave afterwards to intimate some grounds for abatement in the fervour of its self-gratulatory ecstasy. “ Let any one sit on the hill of the little church of St. Mar- tin, and look on the view which is there spread before his eyes. Immediately below are the towers of the great abbey THE PLEASURES OF LEARNING. 395 of St. Augustine, where Christian learning and civilization first struck root in the Anglo-Saxon race ; and within which now, after a lapse of many centuries, a new institution has arisen, intended to carry far and wide, to countries of which Gregory and Augustine never heard, the blessings which they gave to us. Carry your view on — and there rises high above all the magnificent pile of our cathedral, equal in splendour and state to any, the noblest temple or church that Augustine could have seen in ancient Rome, rising on the very ground which derives its consecration from him. And still more than the grandeur of the outward buildings that rose from the little church of Augustine and the little palace of Ethelbert have been the institutions of all kinds of which these were the earliest cradle. From Canterbury, the first English Christian city, — from Kent, the first English Christian king- dom— has by degrees arisen the whole constitution of Church and State in England which now binds together the whole British Empire. And from the Christianity here established in England has flowed, by direct consequence, first the Chris- tianity of Germany ; then, after a long interval, of North America ; and lastly, we may trust, in time, of all India and all Australasia. The view from St. Martin’s Church is indeed one of the most inspiriting that can be found in the world ; there is none to which I would more willingly take any one who doubted whether a small beginning could lead to a great and lasting good ; — none which carries us more vividly back into the past, or more hopefully forward into the future.” To this Gregorian canticle in praise of the British constitu- tion, I grieve, but am compelled, to take these following his- torical objections. The first missionary to Germany was U1- philas, and what she owes to these islands she owes to Iona, not to Thanet. Our missionary offices to America as to Africa, consist I believe principally in the stealing of land, and the extermination of its proprietors by intoxication. Our rule in India has introduced there, Paisley instead of Cashmere shawls : in Australasia our Christian aid supplies, I suppose, the pious farmer with convict labour. And although, when the Dean wrote the above passage, St. Augustine’s and the cathedra^ 396 TEE PLEASURES OF ENGLAN1/. were — I take it on trust from his description — the principal objects in the prospect from St Martin’s Hill, I believe even the cheerfullest of my audience would not now think the scene one of the most inspiriting in the world. For recent prog- ress has entirely accommodated the architecture of the scene to the convenience of the missionary workers above enumer- ated ; to the peculiar necessities of the civilization they have achieved. For the sake of which the cathedral, the monastery, the temple, and the tomb, of Bertha, contract themselves in distant or despised subservience under the colossal walls of the county gaoL LECTURE H. THE PLEASURES OF FAITH. Alfred to the Confessor . I was forced in my last lecture to pass by altogether, and to-day can only with momentary definition notice, the part taken by Scottish missionaries in the Christianizing of England and Burgundy. I would pray you therefore, in order to fill the gap which I think it better to leave distinctly, than close confusedly, to read the histories of St. Patrick, St. Co- lumba, and St Columban, as they are given you by Montalem- bert in his ‘ Moines d’Occident.’ You will find in his pages all the essential facts that are known, encircled with a nimbus of enthusiastic sympathy which I hope you will like better to see them through, than distorted by blackening fog of contempt- uous rationalism. But although I ask you thus to make your- selves aware of the greatness of my omission, I must also cer- tify you that it does not break the unity of our own immediate subject The influence of Celtic passion and art both on Northumbria and the Continent, beneficent in all respects while it lasted, expired without any permanent share in the work or emotion of the Saxon and Frank. The book of Kells, and the bell of St. Patrick, represent sufficiently the peculiar character of Celtic design ; and long since, in the first lecture of the ‘ Two Paths,’ I explained both the modes of skill, and THE PLEASURES OF FAITH. 397 points of weakness, which rendered such design unprogressive. Perfect in its peculiar manner, and exulting in the faultless practice of a narrow skill, it remained century after century incapable alike of inner growth, or foreign instruction ; inim- itable, yet incorrigible ; marvellous, yet despicable, to its death. Despicable, I mean, only in the limitation of its capacity, not in its quality or nature. If you make a Christian of a lamb or a squirrel — what can you expect of the lamb but jumping — what of the squirrel, but pretty spirals, traced with his tail ? He won’t steal your nuts any more, and he’ll say his prayers like this — * ; but you cannot make a Beatrice’s griffin, and emblem of all the Catholic Church, out of him. You will have observed, also, that the plan of these lectures does not include any reference to the Homan Period in Eng- land ; of which you will find all I think necessary to say, in the part called Valle Crucis of ‘Our Fathers have told us.’ But I must here warn you, with reference to it, of one gravely false prejudice of Montale mbert. He is entirely blind to the con- ditions of Roman virtue, which existed in the midst of the corruptions of the Empire, forming the characters of such Emperors as Pertinax, Carus, Probus, the second Claudius, Aurelian, and our own Constantius ; and he denies, with abu- sive violence, the power for good, of Roman Law, over the Gauls and Britons. Respecting Roman national character, I will simply beg you to remember, that both St. Benedict and St. Gregory are Ro- man patricians, before they are either monk or pope ; respect- ing its influence on Britain, I think you may rest content with Shakespeare’s estimate of it. Both Lear and Cymbeline be- long to this time, so difficult to our apprehension, when the Briton accepted both Roman laws and Roman gods. There is indeed the born Kentish gentleman’s protest against them in Kent’s — “Now, by Apollo, king, Thou swear’st thy gods in vain ” ; but both Cordelia and Imogen are just as thoroughly Roman ladies, as Virgilia or Calphurnia. * Making a sign. 398 THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND. Of British Christianity and the Arthurian Legends, I shall have a word or two to say in my lecture on “Fancy,” in connection with the similar romance which surrounds Theod- oric and Charlemagne : only the worst of it is, that while both Dietrich and Karl are themselves more wonderful than the legends of them, Arthur fades into intangible vision : — this much, however, remains to this day, of Arthurian blood in us, that the richest fighting element in the British army and navy is British native, — that is to say, Highlander, Irish, Welsh, and Cornish. Content, therefore, (means being now given you for filling gaps,) with the estimates given you in the preceding lecture of the sources of instruction possessed by the Saxon capital, I pursue to-day our question originally proposed, what London might have been by this time, if the nature of the flowers, trees, and children, born at the Thames-side, had been rightly understood and cultivated. Many of my hearers can imagine far better than I, the look that London must have had in Alfred’s and Canute’s days.* I have not, indeed, the least idea myself what its buildings were like, but certainly the groups of its shipping must have been superb ; small, but entirely seaworthy vessels, manned by the best seamen in the then world. Of course, now, at Chatham and Portsmouth we have our ironclads, — extremely beautiful and beautifully manageable things, no doubt — to set against this Saxon and Danish shipping ; but the Saxon war-ships lay * Here Alfred’s Silver Penny was shown and commented on, thus : — Of what London was like in the days of faith, I can show you one piece of artistic evidence. It is Alfred’s silver penny struck in London mint The character of a coinage is quite conclusive evidence in national his- tory, and there is no great empire in progress, but tells its story in beau- tiful coins. Here in Alfred’s penny, a round coin with L. 0. N. D. I. N. I. A. struck on it, you have just the same beauty of design, the same enig- matical arrangement of letters, as in the early inscription, which it is “ the pride of my life ” to have discovered at Venice. This inscription (“the first words that Venice ever speaks aloud ”) is, it will be remem- bered, on the Church of St. Giacomo di Rialto, and runs, being inter preted — “Around this temple, let the merchant’s law be just, his weight! true, and his covenants faithful.” THE PLEASURES OF FAITH. 309 here at London shore — bright with banner and shield and dragon prow, — instead of these you may be happier, but are not handsomer, in having, now, the coal-barge, the penny steamer, and the wherry full of shop boys and girls. I dwell how- ever for a moment only on the naval aspect of the tidal waters in the days of Alfred, because I can refer you for all detail on this part of our subject to the w r onderful opening chapter of Dean Stanley’s History of Westminster Abbey, where you will find the origin of the name of London given as “ The City of Ships.” He does not, however, tell you, that there were built, then and there, the biggest war-ships in the world. I have often said to friends who praised my own books that I would rather have written that chapter than any one of them ; yet if I had been able to write the historical part of it, the conclu- sions drawn would have been extremely different. The Dean indeed describes with a poet’s joy the River of wells, which rose from those “ once consecrated springs which now lie choked in Holywell and Clerkenwell, and the rivulet of IJle- brig which crossed the Strand under the Ivy bridge ” ; but it is only in the spirit of a modern citizen of Belgravia that he exults in the fact that “ the great arteries of our crowded streets, the vast sewers which cleanse our habitations, are fed by the life-blood of those old and living streams ; that under- neath our tread the Tyburn, and the Holborn, and the Fleet, and the Wall Brook, are still pursuing their ceaseless course, still ministering to the good of man, though in a far different fashion than w r hen Druids drank of their sacred springs, and Saxons were baptized in their rushing waters, ages ago.” Whatever sympathy you may feel with these eloquent ex- pressions of that entire complacency in the present, past, and future, which peculiarly animates Dean Stanley’s writings, 1 must, in this case, pray you to observe that the transmuta- tion of holy wells into sewers has, at least, destroyed the charm and utility of the Thames as a salmon stream, and I must ask you to read with attention the succeeding portions of the chapter which record the legends of the river fisheries in their relation to the first Abbey of Westminster; dedicated by its builders to St. Peter, not merely in his office of corner- 400 THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND. stone of the Church, nor even figuratively as a fisher of men* but directly as a fisher of fish : — and which maintained them- selves, you will see, in actual ceremony down to 1382, when a fisherman still annually took his place beside the Prior, after having brought in a salmon for St. Peter, which was carried in state down the middle of the refectory. But as I refer to this page for the exact word, my eye is caught by one of the sentences of Londonian* thought which constantly pervert the well-meant books of pious England. “We see also,” says the Dean, “the union of innocent fiction with worldly craft, which marks so many of the legends both of Pagan and Christian times.” I might simply reply to this insinuation that times which have no legends differ from the legendary ones merely by uniting guilty, instead of innocent, fiction, with worldly craft ; but I must farther advise you that the legends of these passionate times are in no wise, and in no sense, fiction at all ; but the true record of impressions made on the minds of persons in a state of eager spiritual ex- citement, brought into bright focus by acting steadily and frankly under its impulses. I could tell you a great deal more about such things than you would believe, and therefore, a great deal more than it would do you the least good to hear ; — but this much any who care to use their common sense mod- estly, cannot but admit, that unless they choose to try the rough life of the Christian ages, they cannot understand its practical consequences. You have all been taught by Lord Macaulay and his school that because you have Carpets in- stead of rushes for your feet ; and Feather-beds instead of fern for your backs ; and Kickshaws instead of beef for your eating ; and Drains instead of Holy Wells for your drinking ; — that, therefore, you are the Cream of Creation, and every one of you a seven-headed Solomon. Stay in those pleasant circumstances and convictions if you please ; but don’t accuse your roughly bred and fed fathers of telling lies about the aspect the earth and sky bore to them, — till you have trodden the earth as they, barefoot, and seen the heavens as they, face to face. If you care to see and to know for yourselves, you may * Not Londinian. THE PLEASURES OF FAITH. 401 do it with little pains ; you need not do any great thing, you needn’t keep one eye open and the other shut for ten years over a microscope, nor fight your way through icebergs and darkness to knowledge of the celestial pole. Simply, do as much as king after king of the Saxons did, — put rough shoes on your feet and a rough cloak on your shoulders, and walk to Rome and back. Sleep by the roadside, when it is fine, — in the first outhouse you can find, when it is wet ; and live on bread and water, with an onion or two, all the way ; and if the experiences which you will have to relate on your return do not, as may well be, deserve the name of spiritual ; at all events you will not be disposed to let other people regard them either as Poetry or Fiction. With this warning, presently to be at greater length insisted on, I trace for you, in Dean Stanley’s words, which cannot be bettered except in the collection of their more earnest pas- sages from among his interludes of graceful but dangerous qualification, — I trace, with only such omission, the story he has told us of the foundation of that Abbey, which, he tells you, was the Mother of London, and has ever been the shrine and the throne of English faith and truth. 44 The gradual formation of a monastic body, indicated in the charters of Ofxa and Edgar, marks the spread of the Bene- dictine order throughout England, under the influence of Dunstan. The 4 terror ’ of the spot, which had still been its chief characteristic in the charter of the wild Offa, had, in the days of the more peaceful Edgar, given way to a dubious 4 renown.’ Twelve monks is the number traditionally said to have been established by Dunstan. A few acres farther up the river formed their chief property, and their monastic char- acter was sufficiently recognized to have given to the old lo- cality of the 4 terrible place ’ the name of the 4 Western Mon- astery,’ or 4 Minster of the West.’ ” The Benedictines then — twelve Benedictine monks — thus began the building of existent Christian London. You know I told you the Benedictines are the Doing people, as the dis- ciples of St. Augustine the Sentimental people. The Benedic- tines find no terror in their own thoughts — face the terror of 402 TEE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND. places — change it into beauty of places, — make this terrible place, a Motherly Place — Mother of London. This first Westminster, however, the Dean goes on to say, “ seems to have been overrun by the Danes, and it would have had no further history but for the combination of circum- stances which directed hither the notice of Edward the Con- fessor. I haven’t time to read you all the combination of circum- stances. The last clinching circumstance was this — “ There was in the neighbourhood of Worcester, ‘ far from men in the wilderness, on the slope of a wood, in a cave deep down in the grey rock,’ a holy hermit ‘ of great age, living on fruits and roots.’ One night when, after reading in the Script- ures c how hard are the pains of hell, and how the enduring life of Heaven is sweet and to be desired,’ he could neither sleep nor repose, St. Peter appeared to him, ‘ bright and beautiful, like to a clerk,’ and warned him to tell the King that he was released from his vow ; that on that very day his messengers would return from Pome ; ” (that is the combination of cir- cumstances — bringing Pope’s order to build a church to release the King from his vow of pilgrimage) ; “ that ‘ at Thomey, two leagues from the city,’ was the spot marked out where, in an ancient church, ‘ situated low,’ he was to estab- lish a perfect Benedictine monastery, which should be ‘the gate of heaven, the ladder of prayer, whence those who serve St. Peter there, shall by him be admitted into Paradise.’ The hermit writes the account of the vision on parchment, seals it with wax, and brings it to the King, who compares it with the answer of the messengers, just arrived from Rome, and deter- mines on carrying out the design as the Apostle had ordered. “ The ancient church, ‘ situated low,’ indicated in this vision the one whose attached monastery had been destroyed by the Danes, but its little church remained, and was already dear to the Confessor, not only from the lovely tradition of its dedication by the spirit of St. Peter ; ” (you must read that for yourselves ;) “ but also because of two miracles happening there to the King himself. “ The first was the cure of a cripple, who sat in the road bo THE PLEASURES OF FAITH. 403 tween the Palace and * the Chapel of St. Peter/ which was < near/ and who explained to the Chamberlain Hugolin that, after six pilgrimages to Rome in vain, St. Peter had promised his cure if the King would, on his own royal neck, carry him to the Monastery. The King immediately consented ; and, amidst the scoffs of the court, bore the poor man to the steps of the High Altar. There the cripple was received by Godric the sacristan, and walked away on his own restored feet, hanging his stool on the wall for a trophy. “ Before that same High Altar was also believed to have been seen one of the Eucharistical portents, so frequent in the Middle Ages. A child, 4 pure and bright like a spirit,’ ap- peared to the King in the sacramental elements. Leofric, Earl of Mercia, who, with his famous countess, Godiva, was present, saw it also. “ Such as these were the motives of Edward. Under their influence was fixed what has ever since been the local centre of the English monarchy.” “ Such as these were the motives of Edward,” says the Dean. Yes, certainly ; but such as these also, first, were the acts and visions of Edward. Take care that you don’t slip away, by the help of the glycerine of the word 44 motives,” into fancying that all these tales are only the after colours and pictorial metaphors of sentimental piety. They are either plain truth or black lies ; take your choice, — but don’t tickle and treat yourselves with the prettiness or the grotesqueness of them, as if they were Anderssen’s fairy tales. Either the King did carry the beggar on his back, or he didn’t ; either Godiva rode through Coventry, or she didn’t ; either the Earl Leofric saw the vision of the bright child at the altar — or he lied like a knave. Judge, as you will ; but do not Doubt. 44 The Abbey was fifteen years in building. The King spent upon it one-tenth of the property of the kingdom. It was to be a marvel of its kind. As in its origin it bore the traces of the fantastic and childish ” (I must pause, to ask you to sub- stitute for these blameful terms, 4 fantastic and childish,’ the better ones of 4 imaginative and pure’) 44 character of the King 404 THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND. and of the age ; in its architecture it bore the stamp of the peculiar position which Edward occupied in English history between Saxon and Norman. By birth he was a Saxon, but in all else he was a foreigner. Accordingly the Church at Westminster was a wide-sweeping innovation on all that had been seen before. ‘ Destroying the old building,’ he says in his charter, ‘ 1 have built up a new one from the very foun- dation.’ Its fame as a ‘ new style of composition’ lingered in the minds of men for generations. It was the first cruciform church in England, from which all the rest of like shape were copied — an expression of the increasing hold which, in the tenth century, the idea of the Crucifixion had laid on the imagination of Europe. The massive roof and pillars formed a contrast with the rude wooden rafters and beams of the common Saxon churches. Its very size — occupying, as it did, almost the whole area of the present building — was in itself portentous. The deep foundations, of large square blocks of grey stone, were duly laid ; the east end was rounded into an apse ; a tower rose in the centre, crowned by a cupola of wood. At the western end were erected two smaller towers, with five large bells. The hard strong stones were richly sculptured ; the windows were filled with stained glass ; the roof was covered with lead. The cloisters, chapter-house, refectory, dormitory, the infirmary, with its spacious chapel, if not completed by Edward, were all begun, and finished in the next generation on the same plan. This structure, vener- able as it would be if it had lasted to our time, has almost entirely vanished. Possibly one vast dark arch in the south- ern transept, certainly the substructures of the dormitory, with their huge pillars, ‘grand and regal at the bases and capitals,’ the massive, low-browed passage leading from the great cloister to Little Dean’s Yard, and some portions of the refectory and of the infirmary chapel, remain as specimens of the work which astonished the last age of the Anglo-Saxon and the first age of the Norman monarchy.” Hitherto I have read to you with only supplemental com- ment. But in the next following passage, with which I close piy series of extracts, sentence after sentence occurs, at which THE PLEASURES OF FAITH. 405 as I read, I must raise my hand, to mark it for following dep- recation, or denial. “ In the centre of Westminster Abbey thus lies its Founder, and such is the story of its foundation. Even apart from the- legendary elements in which it is involved, it is impossible not to be struck by the fantastic character of all its circum- stances. We seem to be in a world of poetry.” (I protest, No.) “Edward is four centuries later than Etlielbert and Augustine ; but the origin of Canterbury is commonplace and prosaic compared with the origin of Westminster.” (Yes, that’s true.) “ We can hardly imagine a figure more incoiv gruous to the soberness of later times than the quaint, irreso- lute, wayward prince whose chief characteristics have just been described. His titles of Confessor and Saint belong not to the general instincts of Christendom ; but to the most transitory feelings of the age.” (I protest, No.) “ His opin- ions, his prevailing motives, were such as in no part of mod- ern Europe would now be shared by any educated teacher or ruler.” (That’s true enough.) “But in spite of these irrec- oncilable differences, there was a solid ground for the charm which he exercised over his contemporaries. His childish and eccentric fancies have passed away ; ” (I protest, No ;) “ but his innocent faith and his sympathy with his people are qualities which, even in our altered times, may still retain their place in the economy of the world. Westminster Abbey, so we hear it said, sometimes with a cynical sneer, sometimes with a timorous scruple, has admitted within its walls many who have been great without being good, noble with a noble- ness of the earth earthy, worldly with the wisdom of this world. But it is a counterbalancing reflection, that the cen- tral tomb, round which all those famous names have clustered, contains the ashes of one who, weak and erring as he was, rests his claims of interment here, not on any act of power or fame, but only on his artless piety and simple goodness. He, towards whose dust was attracted the fierce Norman, and the proud Plantagenet, and the grasping Tudor, and the fickle Stuart, even the Independent Oliver, the Dutch William, and the Hanoverian George, was one whose humble graces are 406 TEE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND. within the reach of every man, woman, and child of even time, if we rightly part the immortal substance from the per- ishable form.” Now I have read you these passages from Dean Stanley as the most accurately investigatory, the most generously sym- pathetic, the most reverently acceptant account of these days, and their people, w T hich you can yet find in any English his- tory. But consider now, point by point, where it leaves you. You are told, first, that you are living in an age of poetry. But the days of poetry are those of Shakespeare and Milton, not of Bede : nay, for their especial wealth in melodious the- ology and beautifully rhythmic and pathetic meditation, per- haps the days which have given us ‘Hiawatha,’ ‘In Memori- am,’ ‘The Christian Year,’ and the ‘Soul’s Diary’ of George Macdonald, may be not with disgrace compared with those of Caedmon. And. nothing can be farther different from the temper, nothing less conscious of the effort, of a poet, than any finally authentic document to which you can be referred for the relation of a Saxon miracle. I will read you, for a perfectly typical example, an account of one from Bede’s ‘Life of St. Cuthbert.’ The passage is a favourite one of my own, but I do not in the least anticipate its producing upon you the solemnizing effect which I think I could command from reading, instead, a piece of ‘Marmion,’ ‘Manfred,’ or ‘Childe Harold.’ • • * “ He had one day left his cell to give advice to some visitors ; and when he had finished, he said to them, ‘ I must now go in again, but do you, as you are inclined to depart, first take food ; and when you have cooked and eaten that goose which is hanging on the wall, go on board your vessel in God’s name and return home.’ He then uttered a prayer, and, having blessed them, went in. But they, as he had bid- den them, took some food ; but having enough provisions of their own, which they had brought with them, they did not touch the goose. “But when they had refreshed themselves they tried to go on board their vessel, but a sudden storm utterly prevented THE PLEASURES OF FAITH. 407 them from putting to sea. They were thus detained seven days in the island by the roughness of the waves, and yet they could not call to mind what fault they had committed. They therefore returned to have an interview with the holy father, and to lament to him their detention. He exhorted them to be patient, and on the seventh day came out to console their sorrow, and to give them pious exhortations. When, however, he had entered the house in which they were stopping, and saw that the goose was not eaten, he reproved their disobedi- ence with mild countenance and in gentle language : * Have you not left the goose still hanging in its place ? What won- der is it that the storm has prevented your departure ? Put it immediately into the caldron, and boil and eat it, that the sea may become tranquil, and you may return home/ “ They immediately did as he commanded ; and it happened most wonderfully that the moment the kettle began to boil the wind began to cease, and the waves to be still. Having finished their repast, and seeing that the sea was calm, they went on board, and to their great delight, though with shame for tlieir neglect, reached home with a fair wind. Now this, as I have related, I did not pick up from any chance authority, but I had it from one of those who were present, a most rev- erend monk and priest of the same monastery, Cynemund, who still lives, known to many in the neighbourhood for his years and the purity of his life.” I hope that the memory of this story, which, thinking it myself an extremely pretty one, I have given you, not only for a type of sincerity and simplicity, but for an illustration of obedience, may at all events quit you, for good and all, of the notion that the believers and witnesses of miracle were poeti cal persons. Saying no more on the head of that allegation, I proceed to the Dean’s second one, which I cannot but inter- pret as also intended to be injurious, — that they were artless and childish ones ; and that because of this rudeness and puerility, their motives and opinions would not be shared by any statesman of the present day. It is perfectly true that Edward the Confessor was himself 403 TEE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND. in many respects of really childish temperament ; not there- fore, perhaps, as I before suggested to you, less venerable. But the age of which we are examining the progress, was by no means represented or governed by men of similar disposi- tion. It was eminently productive of — it was altogether governed, guided, and instructed by — men of the widest and most brilliant faculties, whether constructive or speculative, that the world till then had seen ; men whose acts became the romance, whose thoughts the wisdom, and whose arts the treasure, of a thousand years of futurity. I warned you at the close of last lecture against the too agreeable vanity of supposing that the Evangelization of the world began at St. Martin’s, Canterbury. Again and again you will indeed find the stream of the Gospel contracting it- self into narrow channels, and appearing, after long-concealed filtration, through veins of unmeasured rock, with the bright resilience of a mountain spring. But you will find it the only candid, and therefore the only wise, way of research, to look in each era of Christendom for the minds of culminating power in all its brotherhood of nations ; and, careless of local impulse, momentary zeal, picturesqe incident, or vaunted mir- acle, to fasten your attention upon the force of character in the men, whom, over each newly-converted race, Heaven visi- bly sets for its shepherds and kings, to bring forth judgment unto victory. Of these I will name to you, as messengers of God and masters of men, five monks and five kings ; in whose arms during the range of swiftly gainful centuries which we are following, the life of the world lay as a nursling babe. Bemember, in their successive order, — of monks, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Martin, St. Benedict, and St. Gregory ; of kings, — and your national vanity may be surely enough ap- peased in recognizing two of them for Saxon, — Theodoric, Charlemagne, Alfred, Canute, and the Confessor. I will read three passages to you, out of the literal words of three of these ten men, without saying whose they are, that you may compare them with the best and most exalted you have read expressing the philosophy, the religion, and the policy of to- day, — from which I admit, with Dean Stanley, but with a far THE PLEASURES OF FAITH. 409 different meaning from his, that they are indeed separate foi evermore. I give you first, for an example of Philosophy, a single sen- tence, containing all — so far as I can myself discern — that it is possible for us to know, or well for us to believe, respect- ing the world and its laws. “ Of God’s Universal Providence, ruling all, and compris- ing ALL. “ Wherefore the great and mighty God ; He that made man a reasonable creature of soul and body, and He that did neither let him pass unpunished for his sin, nor yet excluded him from mercy ; He that gave, both unto good and bad, es- sence with the stones, power of production with the trees, senses with the beasts of the field, and understanding with the angels ; He from whom is all being, beauty, form, and order, number, weight, and measure ; He from whom all nature, mean and excellent, all seeds of form, all forms of seed, all motion, both of forms and seeds, derive and have being ; He that gave flesh the original beauty, strength, propagation, form and shape, health and symmetry ; He that gave the un- reasonable soul, sense, memory, and appetite ; the reasonable, besides these, fantasy, understanding, and will ; He, I say, having left neither heaven, nor earth, nor angel, nor man, no, nor the most base and contemptible creature, neither the bird’s feather, nor the herb’s flower, nor the tree’s leaf, with- out the true harmony of their parts, and peaceful concord of composition : — It is in no way credible that He would leave the kingdoms of men and their bondages and freedom loose and uncomprised in the laws of His eternal providence.”* This for the philosophy. f Next, I take for example of the Religion of our ancestors, a prayer, personally and passion- ately offered to the Deity conceived as you have this moment heard. * From St. Augustine’s ‘Citie of God,’ BookV., ch. xi. (English trans., printed by George Eld, 1610.) fHere one of the “Stones of Westminster” was shown and com- mented on. 410 THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND. “ O Thou who art the Father of that Son which has awak- ened us, and yet urgeth us out of the sleep of our sins, and exhorteth us that we become Thine ; ” (note you that, for ap- prehension of what Redemption means, against your base and cowardly modem notion of ’scaping whipping. Not to take away the Punishment of Sin, but by His Resurrection to raise us out of the sleep of sin itself ! Compare the legend at the feet of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah in the golden Gospel of Charles le Chauve * : — “Hie Leo Surgendo port as confregit Ayerni Qui NUNQUAM DORMIT, NUSQUAM DORMITAT IN 2EVUM J ”) “ to Thee, Lord, I pray, who art the supreme truth ; for all the truth that is, is truth from Thee. Thee I implore, 0 Lord, who art the highest wisdom. Through Thee are wise all those that are so. Thou art the true life, and through Thee are living all those that are so. Thou art the supreme felicity, and from Thee all have become happy that are so. Thou art the highest good, and from thee all beauty springs. Thou art the intellectual light, and from Thee man derives his un- derstanding. “To Thee, O God, I call and speak. Hear, O hear me, Lord ! for Thou art my God and my Lord ; my Father and my Creator ; my ruler and my hope ; my wealth and my hon- our ; my house, my country, my salvation, and my life ! Hear, hear me, O Lord ! Few of Thy servants comprehend Thee. But Thee alone I love,-\ indeed, above all other things. Thee I seek : Thee I will follow : Thee I am ready to serve. Un- der Thy power I desire to abide, for Thou alone art the Sov- ereign of all. I pray Thee to command me as Thou wilt.” You see this prayer is simply the expansion of that clause of the Lord’s Prayer which most men eagerly omit from it,— * At Munich : the leaf has been exquisitely drawn and legend com - municated to me by Prof. Westwood. It is written in gold on purple. f Meaning — not that he is of those few, but that, without comprehend ing, at least, as a dog, he can love. THE PLEASURES OF FAITH. 411 Fiat voluntas tua. In being so, it sums the Christian prayer of all ages. See now, in the third place, how far this king’s letter I am going to read to you sums also Christian Policy. “ Wherefore I render high thanks to Almighty God, for the happy accomplishment of all the desires which I have set be- fore me, and for the satisfying of my every wish. “ Now therefore, be it known to you all, that to Almighty God Himself I have, on my knees, devoted my life, to the end that in all things I may do justice, and with justice and right- ness rule the kingdoms and peoples under me ; throughout everything preserving an impartial judgment. If, heretofore, I have, through being, as young men are, impulsive or care- less, done anything unjust, I mean, with God’s help, to lose no time in remedying my fault. To which end I call to witness my counsellors, to whom I have entrusted the counsels of the kingdom, and I charge them that by no means, be it through fear of me, or the favour of any other powerful personage, to consent to any injustice, or to suffer any to shoot out in any part of my kingdom. I charge all my viscounts and those set over my whole kingdom, as they wish to keep my friendship or their own safety, to use no unjust force to any man, rich or poor ; let all men, noble and not noble, rich and poor alike, be able to obtain their rights under the law’s justice ; and from that law let there be no deviation, either to favour the king or any powerful person, nor to raise money for me. I have no need of money raised by what is unfair. I also would have you know that I go now to make peace and firm treaty by the counsels of all my subjects, with those nations and people who wished, had it been possible for them to do so, which it was not, to deprive us alike of kingdom and of life. God brought down their strength to nought : and may He of His benign love preserve us on our throne and in honour. Lastly, when I have made peace with the neighbouring nations, and settled and pacified all my dominions in the East, so that we may no- where have any war or enmity to fear, I mean to come to Eng- land this summer, as soon as I can fit out vessels to sail. My reason, however, in sending this letter first is to let all the 412 THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND. people of my kingdom share in the joy of my welfare : for aa you yourselves know, I have never spared myself or my labour; nor will I ever do so, where my people are really in want of some good that I can do them.” What think you now, in candour and honour, you youth of the latter days, — what think you of these types of the thought, devotion, and government, which not in words, but pregnant and perpetual fact, animated these which you have been ac- customed to call the Dark Ages ? The Philosophy is Augustine’s ; the Prayer Alfred’s ; and the Letter Canute’s. And, whatever you may feel respecting the beauty or wis- dom of these sayings, be assured of one thing above all, that they are sincere ; and of another, less often observed, that they are joyful. Be assured, in the first place, that they are sincere. The ideas of diplomacy and priestcraft are of recent times. No false knight or lying priest ever prospered, I believe, in any age, but certainly not in the dark ones. Men prospered then, only in following openly-declared purposes, and preaching candidly beloved and trusted creeds. And that they did so prosper, in the degree in which they accepted and proclaimed the Christian Gospel, may be seen by any of you in your historical reading, however partial, if only you will admit the idea that it could be so, and was likely to be so. You are all of you in the habit of supposing that temporal prosperity is owing either to worldly chance or to worldly prudence ; and is never granted in any visible re- lation to states of religious temper. Put that treacherous doubt away from you, with disdain ; take for basis of reason- ing the noble postulate, that the elements of Christian faith are sound, — instead of the base one, that they are deceptive ; reread the great story of the world in that light, and see what a vividly real, yet miraculous tenor, it will then bear to you. Their faith then, I tell you first, was sincere ; I tell you secondly that it was, in a degree few of us can now conceive, joyfuL We continually hear of the trials, sometimes of the THE PLEASURES OF FAITH. 413 victories, of Faith, — but scarcely ever of its pleasures. Where- as, at this time, you -will find that the chief delight of all good men was in the recognition of the goodness and wisdom of the Master, who had come to dwell with them upon earth. It is almost impossible for you to conceive the vividness of this sense in them ; it is totally impossible for you to conceive the comfort, peace, and force of it. In everything that you now do or seek, you expose yourselves to countless miseries of shame and disappointment, because in your doing you depend on nothing but your own powers, and in seeking choose only your own gratification. You cannot for the most part con- ceive of any work but for your own interests, or the interests of others about whom you are anxious in the same faithless way ; everything about which passion is excited in you or skill exerted is some object of material life, and the idea of doing anything except for your own praise or profit has nar- rowed itself into little more than the precentor’s invitation to the company with little voice and less practice to “ sing to the praise and glory of God.” I have said that you cannot imagine the feeling of the energy of daily life applied in the real meaning of those words. You cannot imagine it, but you can prove it. Are any of you willing, simply as a philosophical experiment in the greatest of sciences, to adopt the principles and feelings of these men of a thousand years ago for a given time, say for a year ? It cannot possibly do you any harm to try, and you cannot possibly learn what is true in these things, without trying. If after a year’s experience of such method you find yourself no happier than before, at least you will be able to support your present opinions at once with more grace and more modesty ; having conceded the trial it asked for, to the opposite side. Nor in acting temporarily on a faith you do not see to be reasonable, do you compromise your own in- tegrity more, than in conducting, under a chemist’s directions, an experiment of which he foretells inexplicable consequences. And you need not doubt the power you possess over your own minds to do this. Were faith not voluntary, it could not be praised, and would not be rewarded. 414 THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND . If you are minded thus to try, begin each day with Alfred’s prayer, — fiat voluntas tua ; resolving that you will stand to it, and that nothing that happens in the course of the day shall displease you. Then set to any work you have in hand with the sifted and purified resolution that ambition shall not mix with it, nor love of gain, nor desire of pleasure more than is appointed for you ; and that no anxiety shall touch you as to its issue, nor any impatience nor regret if it faiL Imagine that the thing is being done through you, not by you : that the good of it may never be known, but that at least, unless by your rebellion or foolishness, there can come no evil into it, nor wrong chance to it. Resolve also with steady industry to do what you can for the help of your country and its honour, and the honour of its God ; and that you will not join hands in its iniquity, nor turn aside from its misery ; and that in all you do and feel you will look frankly for the immediate help and direction, and to your own consciences, expressed approval, of God. Live thus, and believe, and with swiftness of answer proportioned to the frankness of the trust, most surely the God of hope will fill you with all joy and peace in believing. But, if you will not do this, if you have not courage nor heart enough to break away the fetters of earth, and take up the sensual bed of it, and walk ; if you say that you are bound to win this thing, and become the other thing, and that the wishes of your friends, — and the interests of your family, — and the bias of your genius, — and the expectations of your college, — and all the rest of the bow-wow-wow of the wild dog-world, must be attended to, whether you like it or no, — then, at least, for shame give up talk about being free or in- dependent creatures ; recognize yourselves for slaves in whom the thoughts are put in ward with their bodies, and their hearts manacled with their hands : and then at least also, for shame, if you refuse to believe that ever there were men who gave their souls to God, — know and confess how surely there are those who sell them to His adversary. THE PLEASURES OF DEED. 415 LECTUBE HI. THE PLEASURES OF DEED. Alfred, to Goeur de Lion. It was my endeavour, in the preceding lecture, to vindicate the thoughts and arts of our Saxon ancestors from whatever scorn might lie couched under the terms applied to them by Dean Stanley , — 4 fantastic,’ and ‘ childish.’ To-day my task must be carried forward, first, in asserting the grace in fan- tasy, and the force in infancy, of the English mind, before the Conquest, against the allegations contained in the final passage of Dean Stanley’s description of the first founded Westminster ; a passage which accepts and asserts, more dis- tinctly than any other equally brief statement I have met with, the to my mind extremely disputable theory, that the Norman invasion was in every respect a sanitary, moral, and intellectual blessing to England, and that the arrow which slew her Harold was indeed the Arrow of the Lord’s deliver- ance. “The Abbey itself,” says Dean Stanley, — “the chief work of the Confessor’s life, — was the portent of the mighty future. When Harold stood beside his sister Edith, on the day of the dedication, and signed his name with hers as witness to the Charter of the Abbey, he might have seen that he was sealing his own doom, and preparing for his own destruction. The solid pillars, the ponderous arches, the huge edifice, with triple tower and sculptured stones and storied windows, that arose in the place and in the midst of the humble wooden churches and wattled tenements of the Saxon period, might have warned the nobles who were present that the days of their rule were num- bered, and that the avenging , civilizing , stimulating hand of an- other and a mightier race was at work, which would change the whole face of their language, their manners, their Church, and their commonwealth. The Abbey, so far exceeding the demands of the dull and stagnant minds of our Anglo-Saxon an- 416 TEE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND. cestors, was founded not only in faith, but in hope : in the hope that England had yet a glorious career to run ; that the line of her sovereigns would not be broken, even when the race of Alfr ed had ceased to reign.” There must surely be some among my hearers who are startled, if not offended, at being told in the terms which 1 emphasized in this sentence, that the minds of our Saxon fathers were, although fantastic, dull, and, although childish, stagnant ; that farther, in their fantastic stagnation, they were savage, — and in their innocent dullness, criminal ; so that the future character and fortune of the race depended on the critical advent of the didactic and disciplinarian Norman baron, at once to polish them, stimulate, and chastise. Before I venture to say a word in distinct arrest of this judgment, I will give you a chart, as clear as the facts ob- served in the two previous lectures allow, of the state and prospects of the Saxons, when this violent benediction of con- quest happened to them : and especially I would rescue, in the measure that justice bids, the memory even of their Pagan religion from the general scorn in which I used Car- lyle’s description of the idol of ancient Prussia as universally exponent of the temper of Northern devotion. That Triglaph, or Triglyph Idol, (derivation of Triglaph wholly unknown to me — I use Triglyph only for my own handiest epithet), last set up, on what is now St. Mary’s hill in Brandenburg, in 1023, belonged indeed to a people wonderfully like the Sax- ons, — geographically their close neighbours, — in habits of life, and aspect of native land, scarcely distinguishable from them, — in Carlyle’s words, a “strong-boned, iracund, herds- man and fisher people, highly averse to be interfered with, in their religion especially, and inhabiting a moory flat country, full of lakes and woods, but with plenty also of alluvial mud, grassy, frugiferous, apt for the plough ” — in all things like the Saxons, except, as I read the matter, in that 4 aversion to be interfered with ’ which you modem English think an espe- cially Saxon character in you — but which is, on the contrary, you will find on examination, by no means Saxon ; but only Wendisch, Czech, Serbic, Sclavic, — other hard names I could THE PLEASURES OF DEED. 417 easily find for it among the tribes of that vehemently heathen old Preussen— “ resolutely worshipful of places of oak trees, of wooden or stone idols, of Bangputtis, Patkullos, and I know not what diabolic dumb blocks.” Your English “ dislike to be interfered with ” is in absolute fellowship with these, but only gathers itself in its places of Stalks, or chimneys, in- stead of oak trees, round its idols of iron, instead of wood, diabolically vocal now ; strident, and sibilant, instead of dumb. Far other than these, their neighbour Saxons, Jutes and Angles ! — tribes between whom the distinctions are of no mo- ment whatsoever, except that an English boy or girl may with grace remember that f Old England,’ exactly and strictly so called, was the small district in the extreme south of Den- mark, totally with its islands estimable at sixty miles square of dead flat land. Directly south of it, the definitely so-called Saxons held the western shore of Holstein, with the estuary of the Elbe, and the sea-mark isle, Heligoland. But since the principal temple of Saxon worship was close to Leipsic,* we may include under our general term, Saxons, the inhabi- tants of the whole level district of North Germany, from the Gulf of Flensburg to the Hartz ; and, eastward, all the coun- try watered by the Elbe as far as Saxon Switzerland. Of the character of this race I will not here speak at any length : only note of it this essential point, that their religion was at once more practical and more imaginative than that of the Norwegian peninsula ; the Norse religion being the con- ception rather of natural than moral powers, but the Saxon, primarily of moral, as the lords of natural — their central di- vine image, Irminsul,*)- holding the standard of peace in her right hand, a balance in her left. Such a religion may de- generate into mere slaughter and rapine ; but it has the making in it of the noblest men. More practical at all events, whether for good or evil, in this trust in a future reward for courage and purity, than the mere Scandinavian awe of existing Earth and Cloud, the Saxon religion was also more imaginative, in its nearer con- * Turner, vol. i. p. 228. f Properly plural ‘ Images ’ — Irminsul and Irminsula. 418 THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND. ception of human feeling in divine creatures. And when this wide hope and high reverence had distinct objects of worship and prayer, offered to them by Christianity, the Saxons easily became pure, passionate, and thoughtful Christians; while the Normans, to the last, had the greatest difficulty in appre- hending the Christian teaching of the Franks, and still deny the power of Christianity, even when they have become in- veterate in its form. Quite the deepest-thoughted creatures of the then animate world, it seems to me, these Saxon ploughmen of the sand or the sea, with their worshipped deity of Beauty and Justice, a red rose on her banner, for best of gifts, and in her right hand, instead of a sword, a balance, for due doom, without wrath, — of retribution in her left. Far other than the Wends, though stubborn enough, they too, in battle rank, — seven times rising from defeat against Charlemagne, and unsubdued but by death — yet, by no means in that John Bull’s manner of yours, ‘ averse to be interfered with,’ in their opinions, or their religion. Eagerly docile on the contrary — joyfully rev- erent — instantly and gratefully acceptant of whatever better insight or oversight a stranger could bring them, of the things of God or man. And let me here ask you especially to take account of that origin of the true bearing of the Flag of England, the Bed Bose. Her own madness defiled afterwards alike the white and red, into images of the paleness, or the crimson, of death ; but the Saxon Bose was the symbol of heavenly beauty and peace. I told you in my first lecture that one swift requirement in our school would be to produce a beautiful map of England, including old Northumberland, giving the whole country, in its real geography, between the Frith of Forth and Straits of Dover, and with only six sites of habitation given, besides those of Edinburgh and London, — namely, those of Canter- bury and "Winchester, York and Lancaster, Holy Island and Melrose ; the latter instead of Iona, because, as we have seen, the influence of St. Columba expires with the advance of Christianity, w r hile that of Cuthbert of Melrose connects itself TEE PLEASURES OF DEED. 419 with the most sacred feelings of the entire Northumbrian kingdom, and Scottish border, down to the days of Scott — wreathing also into its circle many of the legends of Arthur. Will you forgive my connecting the personal memory of having once had a wild rose gathered for me, in the glen of Thomas the Rhymer, by the daughter of one of the few re- maining Catholic houses of Scotland, with the pleasure I have in reading to you this following true account of the origin of the name of St. Cuthbert’s birthplace ; — the rather because I owe it to friendship of the same date, with Mr. Cockburn Muir, of Melrose. “ To those W'ho have eyes to read it,” says Mr. Muir, “ the name ‘ Melrose ’ is written full and fair, on the fair face of all this reach of the valley. The name is anciently spelt Mailros, and later, Malros, never Mulros ; (‘ Mul ’ being the Celtic word taken to mean ‘ bare ’). Eos is Rose ; the forms Meal or Mol imply great quantity or number. Thus Malros means the place of many roses. “ This is precisely the notable characteristic of the neigh- bourhood. The wild rose is indigenous. There is no nook nor cranny, no bank nor brae, which is not, in the time of roses, ablaze with their exuberant loveliness. In gardens, the cultured rose is so prolific that it spreads literally like a weed. But it is worth suggestion that the word may be of the same stock as the Hebrew rosh (translated ros by the Septuagint), meaning chief ’ principal while it is also the name of some flower ; but of which flower is now unknown. Affinities of rosh are not far to seek ; Sanskrit, Raj( a), 12