Riverside College Classics

SELECTIONS

FROM THE WORKS OF

JOHN RUSKIN

EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY

CHAUNCEY B. TINKER, Ph. D. _Professor of English in Yale College_

BOSTON--NEW YORK--CHICAGO--SAN FRANCISCOHOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANYThe Riverside Press Cambridge

1908

BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Riverside PressCAMBRIDGE--MASSACHUSETTSPRINTED IN THE U. S. A. 

PREFACE

In making the following selections, I have tried to avoid theappearance of such a volume as used to be entitled _Elegant Extracts_. Wherever practicable, entire chapters or lectures are given, or atleast passages of sufficient length to insure a correct notion of thegeneral complexion of Ruskin's work. The text is in all cases that ofthe first editions, unless these were later revised by Ruskin himself. The original spelling and punctuation are preserved, but a few minorchanges have been made for the sake of uniformity among the variousextracts. For similar reasons, Ruskin's numbering of paragraphs isdispensed with. 

I have aimed not to multiply notes. Practically all Ruskin's ownannotation is given, with the exception of one or two very long andsomewhat irrelevant notes from _Stones of Venice_. It has not beendeemed necessary to give the dates of every painter or to explainevery geographical reference. On the other hand, the sources of mostof the quotations are indicated. In the preparation of these notes, the magnificent library edition of Messrs. Cook and Wedderburn hasinevitably been of considerable assistance; but all their referenceshave been verified, many errors have been corrected, and much has ofcourse been added. 

In closing I wish to express my obligation to my former colleague, Dr. Lucius H. Holt, without whose assistance this volume would never haveappeared. He wrote a number of the notes, including the short prefacesto the various selections, and prepared the manuscript for theprinter. 

C. B. T. 

_September, 1908_. 

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION The Life of Ruskin The Unity of Ruskin's Writings Ruskin's Style

SELECTIONS FROM MODERN PAINTERS The Earth-Veil The Mountain Glory Sunrise on the Alps The Grand Style Of Realization Of the Novelty of Landscape Of the Pathetic Fallacy Of Classical Landscape Of Modern Landscape The Two Boyhoods

SELECTIONS FROM THE STONES OF VENICE The Throne St. Mark's Characteristics of Gothic Architecture

SELECTIONS FROM THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE The Lamp of Memory The Lamp of Obedience

SELECTIONS FROM LECTURES ON ART Inaugural The Relation of Art to Morals The Relation of Art to Use

 ART AND HISTORY

 TRAFFIC

 LIFE AND ITS ARTS

 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

ILLUSTRATIONS

JOHN RUSKIN IN 1857TURNER'S FIGHTING TÉMÉRAIRECHURCH OF ST. MARK, VENICEST. MARK'S: CENTRAL ARCH OF FAÇADE

INTRODUCTION

[Sidenote: Two conflicting tendencies in Ruskin. ]

It is distinctive of the nineteenth century that in its passion forcriticising everything in heaven and earth it by no means spared tocriticise itself. Alike in Carlyle's fulminations against itsinsincerity, in Arnold's nice ridicule of Philistinism, and inRuskin's repudiation of everything modern, we detect that finedissatisfaction with the age which is perhaps only proof of itsidealistic trend. For the various ills of society, each of these menhad his panacea. What Carlyle had found in hero-worship and Arnold inHellenic culture, Ruskin sought in the study of art; and it is of thelast importance to remember that throughout his work he regardedhimself not merely as a writer on painting or buildings or myths orlandscape, but as the appointed critic of the age. For there existedin him, side by side with his consuming love of the beautiful, arigorous Puritanism which was constantly correcting any tendencytoward a mere cult of the aesthetic. It is with the interaction ofthese two forces that any study of the life and writings of Ruskinshould be primarily concerned. 

I

THE LIFE OF RUSKIN

[Sidenote: Ancestry. ]

It is easy to trace in the life of Ruskin these two forces tendingrespectively toward the love of beauty and toward the contempt of merebeauty. They are, indeed, present from the beginning. He inheritedfrom his Scotch parents that upright fearlessness which has alwayscharacterized the race. His stern mother "devoted him to God before hewas born, "[1] and she guarded her gift with unremitting but perhapsmisguided caution. The child was early taught to find most of hisentertainment within himself, and when he did not, he was whipped. Hehad no playmates and few toys. His chief story-book was the Bible, which he read many times from cover to cover at his mother's knee. His father, the "perfectly honest wine-merchant, " seems to have beenthe one to foster the boy's aesthetic sense; he was in the habit ofreading aloud to his little family, and his son's apparently genuineappreciation of Scott, Pope, and Homer dates from the incredibly earlyage of five. It was his father, also, to whom he owed his earlyacquaintance with the finest landscape, for the boy was his companionin yearly business trips about Britain, and later visited, in hisparents' company, Belgium, western Germany, and the Alps. 

[Sidenote: Early education. ]

All this of course developed the child's precocity. He was earlysuffered and even encouraged to compose verses;[2] by ten he hadwritten a play, which has unfortunately been preserved. The hot-houserearing which his parents believed in, and his facility in teachinghimself, tended to make a regular course of schooling a mereannoyance; such schooling as he had did not begin till he was fifteen, and lasted less than two years, and was broken by illness. But thechief effect of the sheltered life and advanced education to which hewas subjected was to endow him with depth at the expense of breadth, and to deprive him of a possibly vulgar, but certainly healthy, contact with his kind, which, one must believe, would have checked acertain disposition in him to egotism, sentimentality, and dogmaticvehemence. "The bridle and blinkers were never taken off me, " hewrites. [3]

[Sidenote: Student at Oxford. ]

[Sidenote: Traveling in Europe. ]

At Oxford--whither his cautious mother pursued him--Ruskin seems tohave been impressed in no very essential manner by curriculum orcollege mates. With learning _per se_ he was always dissatisfied andnever had much to do; his course was distinguished not so much byerudition as by culture. He easily won the Newdigate prize in poetry;his rooms in Christ Church were hung with excellent examples ofTurner's landscapes, --the gift of his art-loving father, --of which hehad been an intimate student ever since the age of thirteen. But hiscourse was interrupted by an illness, apparently of a tuberculousnature, which necessitated total relaxation and various trips in Italyand Switzerland, where he seems to have been healed by walking amonghis beloved Alps. For many years thereafter he passed months of histime in these two countries, accompanied sometimes by his parents andsometimes rather luxuriously, it seems, by valet and guide. 

[Sidenote: Career as an author begins. ]

Meanwhile he had commenced his career as author with the first volumeof _Modern Painters_, begun, the world knows, as a short defense ofTurner, originally intended for nothing more than a magazine article. But the role of art-critic and law-giver pleased the youth, --he wasonly twenty-four when the volume appeared, --and having no desire torealize the ambition of his parents and become a bishop, and even lessto duplicate his father's career as vintner, he gladly seized theopportunity thus offered him to develop his aesthetic vein and toredeem the public mind from its vulgar apathy thereby. He continuedhis work on _Modern Painters_, with some intermissions, for eighteenyears, and supplemented it with the equally famous _Seven Lamps ofArchitecture_ in 1849, and _The Stones of Venice_ in 1853. 

[Sidenote: Domestic troubles. ]

This life of zealous work and brilliant recognition was interrupted in1848 by Ruskin's amazing marriage to Miss Euphemia Gray, a union intowhich he entered at the desire of his parents with a docility asstupid as it was stupendous. Five years later the couple were quietlydivorced, that Mrs. Ruskin might marry Millais. All the author'sbiographers maintain an indiscreet reserve in discussing the affair, but there can be no concealment of the fact that its effect uponRuskin was profound in its depression. Experiences like this and hislater sad passion for Miss La Touche at once presage and indicate hismental disorder, and no doubt had their share--a large one--incausing Ruskin's dissatisfaction with everything, and above all withhis own life and work. Be this as it may, it is at this time in thelife of Ruskin that we must begin to reckon with the decline of hisaesthetic and the rise of his ethical impulse; his interest passesfrom art to conduct. It is also the period in which he began hiscareer as lecturer, his chief interest being the social life of hisage. 

[Sidenote: Ruskin's increasing interest in social questions. ]

By 1860, he was publishing the papers on political economy, latercalled _Unto this Last_, which roused so great a storm of protestwhen they appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_ that their publicationhad to be suspended. The attitude of the public toward such worksas these, --its alternate excitement and apathy, --the death of hisparents, combined with the distressing events mentioned above, darkened Ruskin's life and spoiled his interest in everything thatdid not tend to make the national life more thoughtfully solemn. 

 "It seems to me that now ... The thoughts of the true nature of our life, and of its powers and responsibilities should present themselves with absolute sadness and sternness. "[4]

His lectures as Slade Professor of Art at Oxford, a post which heheld at various times from 1870 to 1883, failed to re-establish hisundistracted interest in things beautiful. 

[Sidenote: Triumph of the reformer over the art-critic. ]

The complete triumph of the reformer over the art-critic is marked by_Fors Clavigera_, a series of letters to workingmen, begun New Year'sDay, 1871, in which it was proposed to establish a model colony ofpeasants, whose lives should be made simple, honest, happy, and evencultured, by a return to more primitive methods of tilling the soiland of making useful and beautiful objects. The Guild of St. George, established to "slay the dragon of industrialism, " to dispose ofmachinery, slums, and discontent, consumed a large part of Ruskin'stime and money. He had inherited a fortune of approximately a milliondollars, and he now began to dispose of it in various charitableschemes, --establishing tea-shops, supporting young painters, planningmodel tenements, but, above all, in elaborating his ideas for theGuild. The result of it all--whatever particular reforms were effectedor manual industries established--was, to Ruskin's view, failure, andhis mind, weakening under the strain of its profound disappointments, at last crashed in ruin. 

[Sidenote: Death in 1900. ]

It is needless to follow the broken author through the desolationof his closing years to his death in 1900. Save for his charmingreminiscences, _Præterita_, his work was done; the long struggle wasover, the struggle of one man to reduce the complexities of a nationallife to an apostolic simplicity, to make it beautiful and good, Till the high God behold it from beyond, And enter it. 

 [1] _Præterita_. He was born February 8, 1819. 

 [2] Ruskin himself quotes a not very brilliant specimen in _Modern Painters_, III, in "Moral of Landscape. "

 [3] _Præterita_, § 53. 

 [4] _The Mystery of Life. _

II

THE UNITY OF RUSKIN'S WRITINGS

[Sidenote: Diversity of his writings. ]

Ruskin is often described as an author of bewildering variety, whosemind drifted waywardly from topic to topic--from painting to politicaleconomy, from architecture to agriculture--with a license asillogical as it was indiscriminating. To this impression, Ruskinhimself sometimes gave currency. He was, for illustration, onceannounced to lecture on crystallography, but, as we are informed byone present, [5] he opened by asserting that he was really about tolecture on Cistercian architecture; nor did it greatly matter what thetitle was; "for, " said he, "if I had begun to speak about Cistercianabbeys, I should have been sure to get on crystals presently; and ifI had begun upon crystals, I should soon have drifted intoarchitecture. " Those who conceive of Ruskin as being thus a kind ofliterary Proteus like to point to the year 1860, that of thepublication of his tracts on economics, as witnessing the greatestand suddenest of his changes, that from reforming art to reformingsociety; and it is true that this year affords a simple dividing-linebetween Ruskin's earlier work, which is sufficiently described by thethree titles, _Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps of Architecture_, and_The Stones of Venice_, and his later work, chiefly on social subjectssuch as are discussed in _Unto This Last, The Crown of Wild Olive_, and _Fors Clavigera_. And yet we cannot insist too often on theessential unity of this work, for, viewed in the large, it betrays onecontinuous development. The seeds of _Fors_ are in _The Stones ofVenice_. 

[Sidenote: Underlying idea in all his works. ]

The governing idea of Ruskin's first published work, _Modern Painters, Volume I_, was a moral idea. The book was dedicated to the principlethat that art is greatest which deals with the greatest number ofgreatest ideas, --those, we learn presently, which reveal divinetruth; the office of the painter, we are told, [6] is the same as thatof the preacher, for "the duty of both is to take for each discourseone essential truth. " As if recalling this argument that the painteris a preacher, Carlyle described _The Stones of Venice_ as a "sermonin stones. " In the idea that all art, when we have taken due accountof technique and training, springs from a moral character, we find theunifying principle of Ruskin's strangely diversified work. The verytitle _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_, with its chapters headed"Sacrifice, " "Obedience, " etc. , is a sufficient illustration ofRuskin's identification of moral principles with aesthetic principles. A glance at the following pages of this book will show how Ruskin isfor ever halting himself to demand the moral significance of some fairlandscape, gorgeous painting, heaven-aspiring cathedral. In "MountainGlory, " for example, he refers to the mountains as "kindly in simplelessons to the workman, " and inquires later at what times mankind hasoffered worship in these mountain churches; of the English cathedralhe says, "Weigh the influence of those dark towers on all who havepassed through the lonely square at their feet for centuries";[7] ofSt. Mark's, "And what effect has this splendour on those who passbeneath it?"--and it will be noticed on referring to "The TwoBoyhoods, " that, in seeking to define the difference between Giorgioneand Turner, the author instinctively has recourse to distinguishingthe _religious_ influences exerted on the two in youth. 

[Sidenote: Underlying idea a moral one. ]

Now it is clear that a student of the relation of art to life, of workto the character of the workman and of his nation, may, and in factinevitably must, be led in time to attend to the producer rather thanto the product, to the cause rather than to the effect; and if wegrant, with Ruskin, that the sources of art, namely, the nationallife, are denied, it will obviously be the part, not only of humanitybut of common sense, for such a student to set about purifying thesocial life of the nation. Whether the reformation proposed by Ruskinbe the proper method of attack is not the question we are hereconcerned with; our only object at present being to call attention tothe fact that such a lecture as that on "Traffic" in _The Crown ofWild Olive_ is the logical outgrowth of such a chapter as "Ideas ofBeauty" in the first volume of _Modern Painters_. Between the authorwho wrote in 1842, of the necessity of revealing new truths inpainting, "This, if it be an honest work of art, it must have done, for no man ever yet worked honestly without giving some such help tohis race. God appoints to every one of his creatures a separatemission, and if they discharge it honourably ... There will assuredlycome of it such burning as, in its appointed mode and measure, shallshine before men, and be of service constant and holy, "[8] and theauthor who wrote, "That country is the richest which nourishes thegreatest number of noble and happy human beings, "[9] or, "Thebeginning of art is in getting our country clean, and our peoplebeautiful, "[10]--between these two, I say, there is no essentialdifference. They are not contradictory but consistent. 

[Sidenote: Art dependent upon personal and national greatness. ]

Amidst the maze of subjects, then, which Ruskin, with kaleidoscopicsuddenness and variety, brings before the astonished gaze of hisreaders, let them confidently hold this guiding clue. They will findthat Ruskin's "facts" are often not facts at all; they will discoverthat many of Ruskin's choicest theories have been dismissed to thelimbo of exploded hypotheses; but they will seek long before they finda more eloquent and convincing plea for the proposition that all greatart reposes upon a foundation of personal and national greatness. Critics of Ruskin will show you that he began _Modern Painters_ whilehe was yet ignorant of the classic Italians; that he wrote _The Stonesof Venice_ without realizing the full indebtedness of the Venetian tothe Byzantine architecture; that he proposed to unify the variousreligious sects although he had no knowledge of theology; that heattempted a reconstruction of society though he had had no scientifictraining in political economy; but in all this neglect of mere factthe sympathetic reader will discover that contempt for the letterof the law which was characteristic of the nineteenth-centuryprophet, --of Carlyle, of Arnold, and of Emerson, --and which, if itbe blindness, is that produced by an excess of light. 

 [5] See Harrison's _Life_, p. 111. Cf. The opening of _The Mystery of Life_. 

 [6] Part 2, sec. 1, chap. 4. 

 [7] See p. 159. 

 [8] _Modern Painters_, vol. 1, part 2, sec. 1, chap. 7. 

 [9] _Unto This Last_. 

 [10] See p. 262. 

III

RUSKIN'S STYLE

[Sidenote: Sensuousness of his style. ]

Many people regard the style of Ruskin as his chief claim togreatness. If the time ever come when men no longer study him forsermons in stones, they will nevertheless turn to his pages to enjoyone of the most gorgeous prose styles of the nineteenth century. For aparallel to the sensuous beauties of Ruskin's essays on art, one turnsinstinctively to poetry; and of all the poets Ruskin is perhaps likestKeats. His sentences, like the poet's, are thick-set with jeweledphrases; they are full of subtle harmonies that respond, like aStradivarius, to the player's every mood. In its ornateness Ruskin'sstyle is like his favorite cathedral of Amiens, in the large stately, in detail exquisite, profuse, and not without a touch of thegrotesque. It is the style of an artist. 

[Sidenote: Ruskin's method of construction in description. ]

A critical fancy may even discover in the construction of his finestdescriptions a method not unlike that of a painter at work upon hiscanvas. He blocks them out in large masses, then sketches and colorsrapidly for general effects, treating detail at first more or lessvaguely and collectively, but passing in the end to the elaboration ofdetail in the concrete, touching the whole with an imaginative gleamthat lends a momentary semblance of life to the thing described, afterthe manner of the "pathetic fallacy. " Thus it is in the famousdescription of St. Mark's:[11] we are given first the largest generalimpression, the "long, low pyramid of coloured light, " which theartist proceeds to "hollow beneath into five great vaulted porches, "whence he leads the eye slowly upwards amidst a mass of bewilderingdetail--"a confusion of delight"--from which there slowly emerge thoseconcrete details with which the author particularly wishes to impressus, "the breasts of the Greek horses blazing in their breadth ofgolden strength and St. Mark's lion lifted on a blue field coveredwith stars. " In lesser compass we are shown the environs of Venice, [12]the general impression of the "long, low, sad-coloured line, " beingpresently broken by the enumeration of unanalyzed detail, "tuftedirregularly with brushwood and willows, " and passing to concretedetail in the hills of Arqua, "a dark cluster of purple pyramids. " Inthe still more miniature description of the original site of Venice[13]we have the same method:

 "The black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools and the sea-birds flit from their margins with a questioning cry. "

[Sidenote: His love of color. ]

Equally characteristic of the painter is the ever-present use ofcolor. It is interesting merely to count the number and variety ofcolors used in the descriptions. It will serve at least to call thereader's attention to the felicitous choice of words used indescribing the opalescence of St. Mark's or the skillful combinationof the colors characteristic of the great Venetians in such a sentenceas, "the low bronzed gleaming of sea-rusted armor shot angrily undertheir blood-red mantle-folds"[14]--a glimpse of a Giorgione. 

[Sidenote: His love of prose rhythm. ]

He is even more attentive to the ear than to the eye. He loves thesentence of stately rhythms and long-drawn harmonies, and he omits nopoetic device that can heighten the charm of sound, --alliteration, asin the famous description of the streets of Venice, "Far as the eye could reach, still the soft moving of stainless waters proudly pure; as not the flower, so neither the thorn nor the thistle could grow in those glancing fields";[15]

the balanced close for some long period, "to write her history on the white scrolls of the sea-surges and to word it in their thunder, and to gather and give forth, in the world-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the East, from the burning heart of her Fortitude and splendour";[16]

and the tendency, almost a mannerism, to add to the music of his ownrhythm, the deep organ-notes of Biblical text and paraphrase. But ifwe wish to see how aptly Ruskin's style responds to the tone of hissubject, we need but remark the rich liquid sentence descriptive ofGiorgione's home, "brightness out of the north and balm from the south, and the stars of evening and morning clear in the limitless light of arched heaven and circling sea, "[17]

which he has set over against the harsh explosiveness of

 "Near the south-west corner of Covent Garden, a square brick pit or wall is formed by a close-set block of house to the back windows of which it admits a few rays of light--"

the birthplace of Turner. 

[Sidenote: His beauty of style often distracts from the thought. ]

But none knew better than Ruskin that a style so stiff with ornamentwas likely to produce all manner of faults. In overloading hissentences with jewelry he frequently obscures the sense; his beautiesoften degenerate into mere prettiness; his sweetness cloys. His freeindulgence of the emotions, often at the expense of the intellect, leads to a riotous extravagance of superlative. But, above all, hisrichness distracts attention from matter to manner. In the case of anauthor so profoundly in earnest, this could not but be unfortunate;nothing enraged him more than to have people look upon the beauties ofhis style rather than ponder the substance of his book. In a passageof complacent self-scourging he says:

 "For I have had what, in many respects, I boldly call the misfortune, to set my words sometimes prettily together; not without a foolish vanity in the poor knack that I had of doing so, until I was heavily punished for this pride by finding that many people thought of the words only, and cared nothing for their meaning. Happily, therefore, the power of using such language--if indeed it ever were mine--is passing away from me; and whatever I am now able to say at all I find myself forced to say with great plainness. "[18]

[Sidenote: His picturesque extravagance of style. ]

But Ruskin's decision to speak with "great plainness" by no means madethe people of England attend to what he said rather than the way hesaid it. He could be, and in his later work he usually was, strongand clear; but the old picturesqueness and exuberance of passion werewith him still. The public discovered that it enjoyed Ruskin'sdenunciations of machinery much as it had enjoyed his descriptions ofmountains, and, without obviously mending its ways, called loudly formore. Lecture-rooms were crowded and editions exhausted by the ladiesand gentlemen of England, whose nerves were pleasantly thrilled with agentle surprise on being told that they had despised literature, art, science, nature, and compassion, and that what they thought upon anysubject was "a matter of no serious importance"; that they could notbe said to have any thoughts at all--indeed, no right to think. [19]The fiercer his anathemas, the greater the applause; the louder heshouted, the better he pleased. Let him split the ears of thegroundlings, let him out-Herod Herod, --the judicious might grieve, butall would be excitedly attentive. Their Jeremiah seemed at times liketo become a jester, --there was a suggestion of the ludicrous in thesudden passage from birds to Greek coins, to mills, to Walter Scott, to millionaire malefactors, --a suggestion of acrobatic tumbling andsomersault; but he always got a hearing. In lecturing to the studentsof a military academy he had the pleasing audacity to begin:

 "Young soldiers, I do not doubt but that many of you came unwillingly to-night, and many of you in merely contemptuous curiosity, to hear what a writer on painting could possibly say, or would venture to say, respecting your great art of war";[20]

after which stinging challenge, one has no doubt, any feeling ofoffense was swallowed up in admiration of the speaker's physicalcourage. 

[Sidenote: Influence of Carlyle upon Ruskin. ]

[Sidenote: The unity of Ruskin's style. ]

There can be little doubt that this later manner in which Ruskinallowed his Puritan instincts to defeat his aestheticism, and indulgedto an alarming degree his gift of vituperation, was profoundlyinfluenced by his "master, " Carlyle, who had long since passed intohis later and raucous manner. Carlyle's delight in the disciple'sdiatribes probably encouraged the younger man in a vehemence ofinvective to which his love of dogmatic assertion already renderedhim too prone. At his best, Ruskin, like Carlyle, reminds us of amajor prophet; at his worst he shrieks and heats the air. His highindignations lead him into all manner of absurdity and self-contradiction. An amusing instance of this may be given from _Sesame and Lilies_. Inthe first lecture, which, it will be recalled, was given in aid of alibrary fund, we find[21] the remark, "We are filthy and foolish enoughto thumb one another's books out of circulating libraries. " His friendsand his enemies, the clergy (who "teach a false gospel for hire") andthe scientists, the merchants and the universities, Darwin and Dante, all had their share in the indignant lecturer's indiscriminate abuse. And yet in all the tropical luxuriance of his inconsistency, one cannever doubt the man's sincerity. He never wrote for effect. He maydazzle us, but his fire is never pyrotechnical; it always springs fromthe deep volcanic heart of him. His was a fervor too easily stirred andoften ill-directed, but its wild brilliance cannot long be mistaken forthe sky-rocket's; it flares madly in all directions, now beautifying, now appalling, the night, the fine ardor of the painter passing intothe fierce invective of the prophet. But in the end it is seen thatRuskin's style, like his subject-matter, is a unity, --an emanation froma divine enthusiasm making for "whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are of good report. "

 [11] See p. 162. 

 [12] See p. 139. 

 [13] See p. 147. 

 [14] See p. 121. 

 [15] See p. 122. 

 [16] See p. 149. 

 [17] See p. 122. 

 [18] _The Mystery of Life_. 

 [19] _Sesame and Lilies_, "Kings' Treasuries, " §§ 25, 31. 

 [20] _The Crown of Wild Olive_, "War. "

 [21] "Kings' Treasuries, " § 32. 

SELECTIONS FROM MODERN PAINTERS

The five volumes of _Modern Painters_ appeared at various intervalsbetween 1843 and 1860, from the time Ruskin was twenty-four until hewas forty. The first volume was published in May, 1843; the second, inApril, 1846; the third, January 15, 1856; the fourth, April 14, 1856;the last, in June, 1860. As his knowledge of his subject broadened anddeepened, we find the later volumes differing greatly in viewpointand style from the earlier; but, as stated in the preface to the lastvolume, "in the main aim and principle of the book there is novariation, from its first syllable to its last. " Ruskin himselfmaintained that the most important influence upon his thought inpreparation for his work in _Modern Painters_ was not from his "loveof art, but of mountains and seas"; and all the power of judgment hehad obtained in art, he ascribed to his "steady habit of alwayslooking for the subject principally, and for the art only as the meansof expressing it. " The first volume was published as the work of "agraduate of Oxford, " Ruskin "fearing that I might not obtain fairhearing if the reader knew my youth. " The author's proud father didnot allow the secret to be kept long. The title Ruskin originallychose for the volume was _Turner and the Ancients_. To this Smith, Elder & Co. , his publishers, objected, and the substitution of _ModernPainters_ was their suggestion The following is the title-page of thefirst volume in the original edition:

 MODERN PAINTERS: _Their Superiority_ _In the Art of Landscape Painting_ _To_ all _The Ancient Masters_ proved by examples of The True, the Beautiful, and the Intellectual, From the Works of Modern Artists, especially From those of J. M. W. Turner, Esq. , R. A. By a Graduate of Oxford (Quotation from Wordsworth) London: Smith, Elder & Co. , 65 Cornhill. 1843. 

THE EARTH-VEIL

VOLUME V, CHAPTER I

"To dress it and to keep it. "[22]

That, then, was to be our work. Alas! what work have we set ourselvesupon instead! How have we ravaged the garden instead of keptit--feeding our war-horses with its flowers, and splintering its treesinto spear-shafts!

"And at the East a flaming sword. "[22]

Is its flame quenchless? and are those gates that keep the way indeedpassable no more? or is it not rather that we no more desire to enter?For what can we conceive of that first Eden which we might not yet winback, if we chose? It was a place full of flowers, we say. Well: theflowers are always striving to grow wherever we suffer them; and thefairer, the closer. There may, indeed, have been a Fall of Flowers, asa Fall of Man; but assuredly creatures such as we are can now fancynothing lovelier than roses and lilies, which would grow for us sideby side, leaf overlapping leaf, till the Earth was white and red withthem, if we cared to have it so. And Paradise was full of pleasantshades and fruitful avenues. Well: what hinders us from covering asmuch of the world as we like with pleasant shade, and pure blossom, and goodly fruit? Who forbids its valleys to be covered over with corntill they laugh and sing? Who prevents its dark forests, ghostly anduninhabitable, from being changed into infinite orchards, wreathingthe hills with frail-floreted snow, far away to the half-lightedhorizon of April, and flushing the face of all the autumnal earth withglow of clustered food? But Paradise was a place of peace, we say, andall the animals were gentle servants to us. Well: the world would yetbe a place of peace if we were all peacemakers, and gentle serviceshould we have of its creatures if we gave them gentle mastery. But solong as we make sport of slaying bird and beast, so long as we chooseto contend rather with our fellows than with our faults, and makebattlefield of our meadows instead of pasture--so long, truly, theFlaming Sword will still turn every way, and the gates of Eden remainbarred close enough, till we have sheathed the sharper flame of ourown passions, and broken down the closer gates of our own hearts. 

I have been led to see and feel this more and more, as I consider theservice which the flowers and trees, which man was at first appointedto keep, were intended to render to him in return for his care; andthe services they still render to him, as far as he allows theirinfluence, or fulfils his own task towards them. For what infinitewonderfulness there is in this vegetation, considered, as indeed itis, as the means by which the earth becomes the companion of man--hisfriend and his teacher! In the conditions which we have traced in itsrocks, there could only be seen preparation for his existence;--thecharacters which enable him to live on it safely, and to work with iteasily--in all these it has been inanimate and passive; but vegetationis to it as an imperfect soul, given to meet the soul of man. Theearth in its depths must remain dead and cold, incapable except ofslow crystalline change; but at its surface, which human beings lookupon and deal with, it ministers to them through a veil of strangeintermediate being: which breathes, but has no voice; moves, butcannot leave its appointed place; passes through life withoutconsciousness, to death without bitterness; wears the beauty of youth, without its passion; and declines to the weakness of age, without itsregret. 

And in this mystery of intermediate being, entirely subordinate to us, with which we can deal as we choose, having just the greater power aswe have the less responsibility for our treatment of the unsufferingcreature, most of the pleasures which we need from the external worldare gathered, and most of the lessons we need are written, all kindsof precious grace and teaching being united in this link between theEarth and Man; wonderful in universal adaptation to his need, desire, and discipline; God's daily preparation of the earth for him, withbeautiful means of life. First, a carpet to make it soft for him;then, a coloured fantasy of embroidery thereon; then, tall spreadingof foliage to shade him from sun heat, and shade also the fallen rain;that it may not dry quickly back into the clouds, but stay to nourishthe springs among the moss. Stout wood to bear this leafage: easily tobe cut, yet tough and light, to make houses for him, or instruments(lance-shaft, or plough-handle, according to his temper); useless, ithad been, if harder; useless, if less fibrous; useless, if lesselastic. Winter comes, and the shade of leafage falls away, to let thesun warm the earth; the strong boughs remain, breaking the strength ofwinter winds. The seeds which are to prolong the race, innumerableaccording to the need, are made beautiful and palatable, varied intoinfinitude of appeal to the fancy of man, or provision for hisservice: cold juice, or glowing spice, or balm, or incense, softeningoil, preserving resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge, or lullingcharm: and all these presented in forms of endless change. Fragilityor force, softness and strength, in all degrees and aspects; unerringuprightness, as of temple pillars, or unguided wandering of feebletendrils on the ground; mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb tothe storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with faintest pulse ofsummer streamlet. Roots cleaving the strength of rock, or binding thetransience of the sand; crests basking in sunshine of the desert, orhiding by dripping spring and lightless cave; foliage far tossing inentangled fields beneath every wave of ocean--clothing, withvariegated, everlasting films, the peaks of the trackless mountains, or ministering at cottage doors to every gentlest passion and simplestjoy of humanity. 

Being thus prepared for us in all ways, and made beautiful, and goodfor food, and for building, and for instruments in our hands, thisrace of plants, deserving boundless affection and admiration from us, becomes, in proportion to their obtaining it, a nearly perfect test ofour being in right temper of mind and way of life; so that no one canbe far wrong in either who loves the trees enough, and every one isassuredly wrong in both who does not love them, if his life hasbrought them in his way. It is clearly possible to do without them, for the great companionship of the sea and sky are all that sailorsneed; and many a noble heart has been taught the best it had to learnbetween dark stone walls. Still if human life be cast among trees atall, the love borne to them is a sure test of its purity. And it is asorrowful proof of the mistaken ways of the world that the "country, "in the simple sense of a place of fields and trees, has hitherto beenthe source of reproach to its inhabitants, and that the words"countryman, rustic, clown, paysan, villager, " still signify a rudeand untaught person, as opposed to the words "townsman" and "citizen". We accept this usage of words, or the evil which it signifies, somewhat too quietly; as if it were quite necessary and natural thatcountry-people should be rude, and townspeople gentle. Whereas Ibelieve that the result of each mode of life may, in some stages ofthe world's progress, be the exact reverse; and that another use ofwords may be forced upon us by a new aspect of facts, so that we mayfind ourselves saying: "Such and such a person is very gentle andkind--he is quite rustic; and such and such another person is veryrude and ill-taught--he is quite urbane. "

At all events, cities have hitherto gained the better part of theirgood report through our evil ways of going on in the world generally;chiefly and eminently through our bad habit of fighting with eachother. No field, in the Middle Ages, being safe from devastation, andevery country lane yielding easier passage to the marauders, peacefully-minded men necessarily congregated in cities, and walledthemselves in, making as few cross-country roads as possible: whilethe men who sowed and reaped the harvests of Europe were only theservants or slaves of the barons. The disdain of all agriculturalpursuits by the nobility, and of all plain facts by the monks, kepteducated Europe in a state of mind over which natural phenomena couldhave no power; body and intellect being lost in the practice of warwithout purpose, and the meditation of words without meaning. Menlearned the dexterity with sword and syllogism, which they mistook foreducation, within cloister and tilt-yard; and looked on all the broadspace of the world of God mainly as a place for exercise of horses, orfor growth of food. 

There is a beautiful type of this neglect of the perfectness of theEarth's beauty, by reason of the passions of men, in that picture ofPaul Uccello's of the battle of Sant' Egidio, [23] in which the armiesmeet on a country road beside a hedge of wild roses; the tender redflowers tossing above the helmets, and glowing beneath the loweredlances. For in like manner the whole of Nature only shone hitherto forman between the tossing of helmet-crests; and sometimes I cannot butthink of the trees of the earth as capable of a kind of sorrow, inthat imperfect life of theirs, as they opened their innocent leaves inthe warm springtime, in vain for men; and all along the dells ofEngland her beeches cast their dappled shade only where the outlawdrew his bow, and the king rode his careless chase; and by the sweetFrench rivers their long ranks of poplar waved in the twilight, onlyto show the flames of burning cities on the horizon, through thetracery of their stems; amidst the fair defiles of the Apennines, thetwisted olive-trunks hid the ambushes of treachery; and on theirvalley meadows, day by day, the lilies which were white at the dawnwere washed with crimson at sunset. 

And indeed I had once purposed, in this work, to show what kind ofevidence existed respecting the possible influence of country life onmen; it seeming to me, then, likely that here and there a reader wouldperceive this to be a grave question, more than most which we contendabout, political or social, and might care to follow it out with meearnestly. 

The day will assuredly come when men will see that it _is_ agrave question; at which period, also, I doubt not, there will arisepersons able to investigate it. For the present, the movements of theworld seem little likely to be influenced by botanical law; or by anyother considerations respecting trees, than the probable price oftimber. I shall limit myself, therefore, to my own simple woodman'swork, and try to hew this book into its final shape, with the limitedand humble aim that I had in beginning it, namely, to prove how farthe idle and peaceable persons, who have hitherto cared about leavesand clouds, have rightly seen, or faithfully reported of them. 

 [22] _Genesis_ ii, 15; iii 24. 

 [23] "In our own National Gallery. It is quaint and imperfect, but of great interest. " [Ruskin. ] Paolo Uccello (c. 1397-1475), a Florentine painter of the Renaissance, the first of the naturalists. His real name was Paolo di Dono, but he was called Uccello from his fondness for birds. 

THE MOUNTAIN GLORY

VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 20

I have dwelt, in the foregoing chapter, on the sadness of the hillswith the greater insistence that I feared my own excessive love forthem might lead me into too favourable interpretation of theirinfluences over the human heart; or, at least, that the reader mightaccuse me of fond prejudice, in the conclusions to which, finally, Idesire to lead him concerning them. For, to myself, mountains are thebeginning and the end of all natural scenery; in them, and in theforms of inferior landscape that lead to them, my affections arewholly bound up; and though I can look with happy admiration at thelowland flowers, and woods, and open skies, the happiness is tranquiland cold, like that of examining detached flowers in a conservatory, or reading a pleasant book; and if the scenery be resolutely level, insisting upon the declaration of its own flatness in all the detailof it, as in Holland, or Lincolnshire, or Central Lombardy, it appearsto me like a prison, and I cannot long endure it. But the slightestrise and fall in the road, --a mossy bank at the side of a crag ofchalk, with brambles at its brow, overhanging it, --a ripple over threeor four stones in the stream by the bridge, --above all, a wild bit offerny ground under a fir or two, looking as if, possibly, one mightsee a hill if one got to the other side of the trees, will instantlygive me intense delight, because the shadow, or the hope, of the hillsis in them. 

And thus, although there are few districts of Northern Europe, howeverapparently dull or tame, in which I cannot find pleasure, though thewhole of Northern France (except Champagne), dull as it seems to mosttravellers, is to me a perpetual Paradise; and, putting Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, and one or two such other perfectly flat districtsaside, there is not an English county which I should not findentertainment in exploring the cross-roads of, foot by foot; yet allmy best enjoyment would be owing to the imagination of the hills, colouring, with their far-away memories, every lowland stone and herb. The pleasant French coteau, green in the sunshine, delights me, eitherby what real mountain character it has in itself (for in extent andsuccession of promontory the flanks of the French valleys have quitethe sublimity of true mountain distances), or by its broken groundand rugged steps among the vines, and rise of the leafage above, against the blue sky, as it might rise at Vevay or Como. There is nota wave of the Seine but is associated in my mind with the first riseof the sandstones and forest pines of Fontaine-bleau; and with thehope of the Alps, as one leaves Paris with the horses' heads to thesouth-west, the morning sun flashing on the bright waves at Charenton. If there be _no_ hope or association of this kind, and if I cannotdeceive myself into fancying that perhaps at the next rise of the roadthere may be seen the film of a blue hill in the gleam of sky at thehorizon, the landscape, however beautiful, produces in me even a kindof sickness and pain; and the whole view from Richmond Hill or WindsorTerrace, --nay, the gardens of Alcinous, with their perpetualsummer, --or of the Hesperides (if they were flat, and not close toAtlas), golden apples and all, --I would give away in an instant, forone mossy granite stone a foot broad, and two leaves of lady-fern. [24]

I know that this is in great part idiosyncrasy; and that I must nottrust to my own feelings, in this respect, as representative of themodern landscape instinct: yet I know it is not idiosyncrasy, in sofar as there may be proved to be indeed an increase of the absolutebeauty of all scenery in exact proportion to its mountainouscharacter, providing that character be _healthily_ mountainous. I donot mean to take the Col de Bonhomme as representative of hills, anymore than I would take Romney Marsh as representative of plains; butputting Leicestershire or Staffordshire fairly beside Westmoreland, and Lombardy or Champagne fairly beside the Pays de Vaud or the CantonBerne, I find the increase in the calculable sum of elements of beautyto be steadily in proportion to the increase of mountainous character;and that the best image which the world can give of Paradise is in theslope of the meadows, orchards, and corn-fields on the sides of agreat Alp, with its purple rocks and eternal snows above; thisexcellence not being in any wise a matter referable to feeling, orindividual preferences, but demonstrable by calm enumeration of thenumber of lovely colours on the rocks, the varied grouping of thetrees, and quantity of noble incidents in stream, crag, or cloud, presented to the eye at any given moment. 

For consider, first, the difference produced in the whole tone oflandscape colour by the introductions of purple, violet, and deepultramarine blue, which we owe to mountains. In an ordinary lowlandlandscape we have the blue of the sky; the green of grass, which Iwill suppose (and this is an unnecessary concession to the lowlands)entirely fresh and bright; the green of trees; and certain elements ofpurple, far more rich and beautiful than we generally should think, intheir bark and shadows (bare hedges and thickets, or tops of trees, insubdued afternoon sunshine, are nearly perfect purple, and of anexquisite tone), as well as in ploughed fields, and dark ground ingeneral. But among mountains, in _addition_ to all this, largeunbroken spaces of pure violet and purple are introduced in theirdistances; and even near, by films of cloud passing over the darknessof ravines or forests, blues are produced of the most subtletenderness; these azures and purples[25] passing into rose-colour ofotherwise wholly unattainable delicacy among the upper summits, theblue of the sky being at the same time purer and deeper than in theplains. Nay, in some sense, a person who has never seen therose-colour of the rays of dawn crossing a blue mountain twelve orfifteen miles away, can hardly be said to know what _tenderness_ incolour means at all; _bright_ tenderness he may, indeed, see in thesky or in a flower, but this grave tenderness of the far-awayhill-purples he cannot conceive. 

Together with this great source of pre-eminence in _mass_ of colour, we have to estimate the influence of the finished inlaying andenamel-work of the colour-jewellery on every stone; and that of thecontinual variety in species of flower; most of the mountain flowersbeing, besides, separately lovelier than the lowland ones. The woodhyacinth and wild rose are, indeed, the only _supreme_ flowers thatthe lowlands can generally show; and the wild rose is also amountaineer, and more fragrant in the hills, while the wood hyacinth, or grape hyacinth, at its best cannot match even the darkbell-gentian, leaving the light-blue star-gentian in its uncontestedqueenliness, and the Alpine rose and Highland heather wholly withoutsimilitude. The violet, lily of the valley, crocus, and wood anemoneare, I suppose, claimable partly by the plains as well as the hills;but the large orange lily and narcissus I have never seen but on hillpastures, and the exquisite oxalisis pre-eminently a mountaineer. [26]

To this supremacy in mosses and flowers we have next to add aninestimable gain in the continual presence and power of water. Neitherin its clearness, its colour, its fantasy of motion, its calmness ofspace, depth, and reflection, or its wrath, can water be conceived bya lowlander, out of sight of sea. A sea wave is far grander than anytorrent--but of the sea and its influences we are not now speaking;and the sea itself, though it _can_ be clear, is never calm, among ourshores, in the sense that a mountain lake can be calm. The sea seemsonly to pause; the mountain lake to sleep, and to dream. Out of sightof the ocean a lowlander cannot be considered ever to have seen waterat all. The mantling of the pools in the rock shadows, with the goldenflakes of light sinking down through them like falling leaves, theringing of the thin currents among the shallows, the flash and thecloud of the cascade, the earthquake and foam-fire of the cataract, the long lines of alternate mirror and mist that lull the imagery ofthe hills reversed in the blue of morning, --all these things belong tothose hills as their undivided inheritance. 

To this supremacy in wave and stream is joined a no less manifestpre-eminence in the character of trees. It is possible among plains, in the species of trees which properly belong to them, the poplars ofAmiens, for instance, to obtain a serene simplicity of grace, which, as I said, is a better help to the study of gracefulness, as such, than any of the wilder groupings of the hills; so, also, there arecertain conditions of symmetrical luxuriance developed in the park andavenue, rarely rivalled in their way among mountains; and yet themountain superiority in foliage is, on the whole, nearly as completeas it is in water: for exactly as there are some expressions in thebroad reaches of a navigable lowland river, such as the Loire orThames, not, in their way, to be matched among the rock rivers, andyet for all that a lowlander cannot be said to have truly seen theelement of water at all; so even in the richest parks and avenues hecannot be said to have truly seen trees. For the resources of treesare not developed until they have difficulty to contend with; neithertheir tenderness of brotherly love and harmony, till they are forcedto choose their ways of various life where there is contracted roomfor them, talking to each other with their restrained branches. Thevarious action of trees rooting themselves in inhospitable rocks, stooping to look into ravines, hiding from the search of glacierwinds, reaching forth to the rays of rare sunshine, crowding downtogether to drink at sweetest streams, climbing hand in hand among thedifficult slopes, opening in sudden dances round the mossy knolls, gathering into companies at rest among the fragrant fields, gliding ingrave procession over the heavenward ridges--nothing of this can beconceived among the unvexed and unvaried felicities of the lowlandforest: while to all these direct sources of greater beauty are added, first the power of redundance, --the mere quantity of foliage visiblein the folds and on the promontories of a single Alp being greaterthan that of an entire lowland landscape (unless a view from somecathedral tower); and to this charm of redundance, that of clearer_visibility_, --tree after tree being constantly shown in successiveheight, one behind another, instead of the mere tops and flanks ofmasses, as in the plains; and the forms of multitudes of themcontinually defined against the clear sky, near and above, or againstwhite clouds entangled among their branches, instead of being confusedin dimness of distance. 

Finally, to this supremacy in foliage we have to add the still lessquestionable supremacy in clouds. There is no effect of sky possiblein the lowlands which may not in equal perfection be seen among thehills; but there are effects by tens of thousands, for ever invisibleand inconceivable to the inhabitant of the plains, manifested amongthe hills in the course of one day. The mere power of familiarity withthe clouds, of walking with them and above them, alters and rendersclear our whole conception of the baseless architecture of the sky;and for the beauty of it, there is more in a single wreath of earlycloud, pacing its way up an avenue of pines, or pausing among thepoints of their fringes, than in all the white heaps that fill thearched sky of the plains from one horizon to the other. And of thenobler cloud manifestations, --the breaking of their troublous seasagainst the crags, their black spray sparkling with lightning; or thegoing forth of the morning[27] along their pavements of moving marble, level-laid between dome and dome of snow;--of these things there canbe as little imagination or understanding in an inhabitant of theplains as of the scenery of another planet than his own. 

And, observe, all these superiorities are matters plainly measurableand calculable, not in any wise to be referred to estimate of_sensation_. Of the grandeur or expression of the hills I have notspoken; how far they are great, or strong, or terrible, I do not forthe moment consider, because vastness, and strength, and terror, arenot to all minds subjects of desired contemplation. It may make nodifference to some men whether a natural object be large or small, whether it be strong or feeble. But loveliness of colour, perfectnessof form, endlessness of change, wonderfulness of structure, areprecious to all undiseased human minds; and the superiority of themountains in all these things to the lowland is, I repeat, asmeasurable as the richness of a painted window matched with a whiteone, or the wealth of a museum compared with that of a simplyfurnished chamber. They seem to have been built for the human race, asat once their schools and cathedrals; full of treasures of illuminatedmanuscript for the scholar, kindly in simple lessons to the worker, quiet in pale cloisters for the thinker, glorious in holiness for theworshipper. And of these great cathedrals of the earth, with theirgates of rock, pavements of cloud, choirs of stream and stone, altarsof snow, and vaults of purple traversed by the continual stars, --ofthese, as we have seen, [28] it was written, nor long ago, by one of thebest of the poor human race for whom they were built, wondering inhimself for whom their Creator _could_ have made them, and thinking tohave entirely discerned the Divine intent in them--"They are inhabitedby the Beasts. "[29]

Was it then indeed thus with us, and so lately? Had mankind offered noworship in their mountain churches? Was all that granite sculpture andfloral painting done by the angels in vain?

Not so. It will need no prolonged thought to convince us that in thehills the purposes of their Maker have indeed been accomplished insuch measure as, through the sin or folly of men, He ever permits themto be accomplished. It may not seem, from the general language heldconcerning them, or from any directly traceable results, thatmountains have had serious influence on human intellect; but it willnot, I think, be difficult to show that their occult influence hasbeen both constant and essential to the progress of the race. 

 [24] In tracing the _whole_ of the deep enjoyment to mountain association, I of course except whatever feelings are connected with the observance of rural life, or with that of architecture. None of these feelings arise out of the landscape properly so called: the pleasure with which we see a peasant's garden fairly kept, or a ploughman doing his work well, or a group of children playing at a cottage door, being wholly separate from that which we find in the fields or commons around them; and the beauty of architecture, or the associations connected with it, in like manner often ennobling the most tame scenery;--yet not so but that we may always distinguish between the abstract character of the unassisted landscape, and the charm which it derives from the architecture. Much of the majesty of French landscape consists in its grand and grey village churches and turreted farmhouses, not to speak of its cathedrals, castles, and beautifully placed cities. [Ruskin. ]

 [25] One of the principal reasons for the false supposition that Switzerland is not picturesque, is the error of most sketchers and painters in representing pine forest in middle distance as dark green, or grey green, whereas its true colour is always purple, at distances of even two or three miles. Let any traveller coming down the Montanvert look for an aperture, three or four inches wide, between the near pine branches, through which, standing eight or ten feet from it, he can see the opposite forests on the Breven or Flegère. Those forests are not above two or two and a half miles from him; but he will find the aperture is filled by a tint of nearly pure azure or purple, not by green. [Ruskin. ]

 [26] The Savoyard's name for its flower, "Pain du Bon Dieu, " is very beautiful; from, I believe, the supposed resemblance of its white and scattered blossom to the fallen manna, [Ruskin. ]

 [27] _Ezekiel_ vii, 10; _Hosea_ vi, 3. 

 [28] In "The Mountain Gloom, " the chapter immediately preceding. 

 [29] Ruskin refers to _The Fulfilling of the Scripture_, a book by Robert Fleming [1630-94]. 

SUNRISE ON THE ALPS[30]

VOLUME I, SECTION 3, PART 2, CHAPTER 4

Stand upon the peak of some isolated mountain at daybreak, when thenight mists first rise from off the plains, and watch their white andlake-like fields, as they float in level bays and winding gulfs aboutthe islanded summits of the lower hills, untouched yet by more thandawn, colder and more quiet than a windless sea under the moon ofmidnight; watch when the first sunbeam is sent upon the silverchannels, how the foam of their undulating surface parts and passesaway, and down under their depths the glittering city and greenpasture lie like Atlantis, [31] between the white paths of windingrivers; the flakes of light falling every moment faster and broaderamong the starry spires, as the wreathed surges break and vanish abovethem, and the confused crests and ridges of the dark hills shortentheir grey shadows upon the plain.... Wait a little longer, and youshall see those scattered mists rallying in the ravines, and floatingup towards you, along the winding valleys, till they crouch in quietmasses, iridescent with the morning light, [32] upon the broad breastsof the higher hills, whose leagues of massy undulation will melt backand back into that robe of material light, until they fade away, lostin its lustre, to appear again above, in the serene heaven, like awild, bright, impossible dream, foundationless and inaccessible, theirvery bases vanishing in the unsubstantial and mocking blue of the deeplake below. [33]... Wait yet a little longer, and you shall see thosemists gather themselves into white towers, and stand like fortressesalong the promontories, massy and motionless, only piled with everyinstant higher and higher into the sky, and casting longer shadowsathwart the rocks; and out of the pale blue of the horizon you willsee forming and advancing a troop of narrow, dark, pointed vapours, which will cover the sky, inch by inch, with their grey network, andtake the light off the landscape with an eclipse which will stop thesinging of the birds and the motion of the leaves, together; and thenyou will see horizontal bars of black shadow forming under them, andlurid wreaths create themselves, you know not how, along the shouldersof the hills; you never see them form, but when you look back to aplace which was clear an instant ago, there is a cloud on it, hangingby the precipices, as a hawk pauses over his prey.... And then youwill hear the sudden rush of the awakened wind, and you will see thosewatch-towers of vapour swept away from their foundations, and wavingcurtains of opaque rain let down to the valleys, swinging from theburdened clouds in black bending fringes, or pacing in pale columnsalong the lake level, grazing its surface into foam as they go. Andthen, as the sun sinks, you shall see the storm drift for an instant, from off the hills, leaving their broad sides smoking, and loaded yetwith snow-white, torn, steam-like rags of capricious vapour, now gone, now gathered again; while the smouldering sun, seeming not far away, but burning like a red-hot ball beside you, and as if you could reachit, plunges through the rushing wind and rolling cloud with headlongfall, as if it meant to rise no more, dyeing all the air about it withblood.... And then you shall hear the fainting tempest die in thehollow of the night, and you shall see a green halo kindling on thesummit of the eastern hills, brighter--brighter yet, till the largewhite circle of the slow moon is lifted up among the barred clouds, step by step, line by line; star after star she quenches with herkindling light, setting in their stead an army of pale, penetrable, fleecy wreaths in the heaven, to give light upon the earth, which movetogether, hand in hand, company by company, troop by troop, someasured in their unity of motion, that the whole heaven seems to rollwith them, and the earth to reel under them.... And then wait yet forone hour, until the east again becomes purple, and the heavingmountains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves of a wild sea, are drowned one by one in the glory of its burning: watch the whiteglaciers blaze in their winding paths about the mountains, like mightyserpents with scales of fire: watch the columnar peaks of solitarysnow, kindling downwards, chasm by chasm, each in itself a newmorning; their long avalanches cast down in keen streams brighter thanthe lightning, sending each his tribute of driven snow, likealtar-smoke, up to the heaven; the rose-light of their silent domesflushing that heaven about them and above them, piercing with purerlight through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new glory onevery wreath as it passes by, until the whole heaven, one scarletcanopy, is interwoven with a roof of waving flame, and tossing, vaultbeyond vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of angels:and then, when you can look no more for gladness, and when you arebowed down with fear and love of the Maker and Doer of this, tell mewho has best delivered this His message unto men![34]

 [30] Some sentences of an argumentative nature have been omitted from this selection. 

 [31] A mythical island in the Atlantic. 

 [32] I have often seen the white, thin, morning cloud, edged with the seven colours of the prism. I am not aware of the cause of this phenomenon, for it takes place not when we stand with our backs to the sun, but in clouds near the sun itself, irregularly and over indefinite spaces, sometimes taking place in the body of the cloud. The colours are distinct and vivid, but have a kind of metallic lustre upon them. [Ruskin. ]

 [33] Lake Lucerne. [Ruskin. ]

 [34] The implication is that Turner has best delivered it. 

THE GRAND STYLE[35]

VOLUME III, CHAPTER I

In taking up the clue of an inquiry, now intermitted for nearly tenyears, it may be well to do as a traveller would, who had torecommence an interrupted journey in a guideless country; and, ascending, as it were, some little hill beside our road, note how farwe have already advanced, and what pleasantest ways we may choose forfarther progress. 

I endeavoured, in the beginning of the first volume, to divide thesources of pleasure open to us in Art into certain groups, which mightconveniently be studied in succession. After some preliminarydiscussion, it was concluded that these groups were, in the main, three; consisting, first, of the pleasures taken in perceiving simpleresemblance to Nature (Ideas of Truth); secondly, of the pleasurestaken in the beauty of the things chosen to be painted (Ideas ofBeauty); and, lastly, of pleasures taken in the meanings and relationsof these things (Ideas of Relation). 

The first volume, treating of the ideas of Truth, was chiefly occupiedwith an inquiry into the various success with which different artistshad represented the facts of Nature, --an inquiry necessarily conductedvery imperfectly, owing to the want of pictorial illustration. 

The second volume merely opened the inquiry into the nature of ideasof Beauty and Relation, by analysing (as far as I was able to do so)the two faculties of the human mind which mainly seized such ideas;namely, the contemplative and imaginative faculties. 

It remains for us to examine the various success of artists, especially of the great landscape-painter whose works have beenthroughout our principal subject, in addressing these faculties of thehuman mind, and to consider who among them has conveyed the noblestideas of beauty, and touched the deepest sources of thought. 

I do not intend, however, now to pursue the inquiry in a method solaboriously systematic; for the subject may, it seems to me, be moreusefully treated by pursuing the different questions which rise out ofit just as they occur to us, without too great scrupulousness inmarking connections, or insisting on sequences. Much time is wasted byhuman beings, in general, on establishment of systems; and it oftentakes more labour to master the intricacies of an artificialconnection, than to remember the separate facts which are so carefullyconnected. I suspect that system-makers, in general, are not of muchmore use, each in his own domain, than, in that of Pomona, the oldwomen who tie cherries upon sticks, for the more convenientportableness of the same. To cultivate well, and choose well, yourcherries, is of some importance; but if they can be had in their ownwild way of clustering about their crabbed stalk, it is a betterconnection for them than any other; and, if they cannot, then, so thatthey be not bruised, it makes to a boy of a practical disposition notmuch difference whether he gets them by handfuls, or in beadedsymmetry on the exalting stick. I purpose, therefore, henceforward totrouble myself little with sticks or twine, but to arrange my chapterswith a view to convenient reference, rather than to any carefuldivision of subjects, and to follow out, in any by-ways that may open, on right hand or left, whatever question it seems useful at any momentto settle. 

And, in the outset, I find myself met by one which I ought to havetouched upon before--one of especial interest in the present state ofthe Arts. I have said that the art is greatest which includes thegreatest ideas; but I have not endeavoured to define the nature ofthis greatness in the ideas themselves. We speak of great truths, ofgreat beauties, great thoughts. What is it which makes one truthgreater than another, one thought greater than another? This questionis, I repeat, of peculiar importance at the present time; for, duringa period now of some hundred and fifty years, all writers on Art whohave pretended to eminence, have insisted much on a supposeddistinction between what they call the Great and the Low Schools;using the terms "High Art, " "Great or Ideal Style, " and other such, asdescriptive of a certain noble manner of painting, which it wasdesirable that all students of Art should be early led to reverenceand adopt; and characterizing as "vulgar, " or "low, " or "realist, "another manner of painting and conceiving, which it was equallynecessary that all students should be taught to avoid. 

But lately this established teaching, never very intelligible, hasbeen gravely called in question. The advocates and self-supposedpractisers of "High Art" are beginning to be looked upon with doubt, and their peculiar phraseology to be treated with even a certaindegree of ridicule. And other forms of Art are partly developed amongus, which do not pretend to be high, but rather to be strong, healthy, and humble. This matter of "highness" in Art, therefore, deserves ourmost careful consideration. Has it been, or is it, a true highness, atrue princeliness, or only a show of it, consisting in courtly mannersand robes of state? Is it rocky height or cloudy height, adamant orvapour, on which the sun of praise so long has risen and set? It willbe well at once to consider this. 

And first, let us get, as quickly as may be, at the exact meaning withwhich the advocates of "High Art" use that somewhat obscure andfigurative term. 

I do not know that the principles in question are anywhere moredistinctly expressed than in two papers in the _Idler_, written by SirJoshua Reynolds, of course under the immediate sanction of Johnson;and which may thus be considered as the utterance of the views thenheld upon the subject by the artists of chief skill, and critics ofmost sense, arranged in a form so brief and clear as to admit of theirbeing brought before the public for a morning's entertainment. Icannot, therefore, it seems to me, do better than quote these twoletters, or at least the important parts of them, examining the exactmeaning of each passage as it occurs. There are, in all, in the_Idler_ three letters on painting, Nos. 76, 79, and 82; of these, the first is directed only against the impertinences of pretendedconnoisseurs, and is as notable for its faithfulness as for its wit inthe description of the several modes of criticism in an artificial andignorant state of society: it is only, therefore, in the two lastpapers that we find the expression of the doctrines which it is ourbusiness to examine. 

No. 79 (Saturday, October 20, 1759) begins, after a short preamble, with the following passage:--

"Amongst the Painters, and the writers on Painting, there is one maximuniversally admitted and continually inculcated. _Imitate nature_is the invariable rule; but I know none who have explained in whatmanner this rule is to be understood; the consequence of which is, that everyone takes it in the most obvious sense--that objects arerepresented naturally, when they have such relief that they seem real. It may appear strange, perhaps, to hear this sense of the ruledisputed; but it must be considered, that, if the excellency of aPainter consisted only in this kind of imitation, Painting must loseits rank, and be no longer considered as a liberal art, and sister toPoetry: this imitation being merely mechanical, in which the slowestintellect is always sure to succeed best; for the Painter of geniuscannot stoop to drudgery, in which the understanding has no part; andwhat pretence has the Art to claim kindred with Poetry but by itspower over the imagination? To this power the Painter of geniusdirects him; in this sense he studies Nature, and often arrives at hisend, even by being unnatural in the confined sense of the word. 

"The grand style of Painting requires this minute attention to becarefully avoided, and must be kept as separate from it as the styleof Poetry from that of History. (Poetical ornaments destroy that airof truth and plainness which ought to characterize History; but thevery being of Poetry consists in departing from this plain narrative, and adopting every ornament that will warm the imagination. )[36] Todesire to see the excellences of each style united--to mingle theDutch with the Italian school, is to join contrarieties which cannotsubsist together, and which destroy the efficacy of each other. "

We find, first, from this interesting passage, that the writerconsiders the Dutch and Italian masters as severally representative ofthe low and high schools; next, that he considers the Dutch paintersas excelling in a mechanical imitation, "in which the slowestintellect is always sure to succeed best"; and, thirdly, that heconsiders the Italian painters as excelling in a style whichcorresponds to that of imaginative poetry in literature, and which hasan exclusive right to be called the grand style. 

I wish that it were in my power entirely to concur with the writer, and to enforce this opinion thus distinctly stated. I have never beena zealous partisan of the Dutch School, and should rejoice in claimingReynolds's authority for the assertion, that their manner was one "inwhich the slowest intellect is always sure to succeed best. " Butbefore his authority can be so claimed, we must observe exactly themeaning of the assertion itself, and separate it from the company ofsome others not perhaps so admissible. First, I say, we must observeReynolds's exact meaning, for (though the assertion may at firstappear singular) a man who uses accurate language is always moreliable to misinterpretation than one who is careless in hisexpressions. We may assume that the latter means very nearly what weat first suppose him to mean, for words which have been utteredwithout thought may be received without examination. But when a writeror speaker may be fairly supposed to have considered his expressionscarefully, and, after having revolved a number of terms in his mind, to have chosen the one which _exactly_ means the thing he intendsto say, we may be assured that what costs him time to select, willrequire from us time to understand, and that we shall do him wrong, unless we pause to reflect how the word which he has actually employeddiffers from other words which it seems he _might_ have employed. It thus constantly happens that persons themselves unaccustomed tothink clearly, or speak correctly, misunderstand a logical and carefulwriter, and are actually in more danger of being misled by languagewhich is measured and precise, than by that which is loose andinaccurate. 

Now, in the instance before us, a person not accustomed to goodwriting might very rashly conclude that when Reynolds spoke of theDutch School as one "in which the slowest intellect was sure tosucceed best, " he meant to say that every successful Dutch painter wasa fool. We have no right to take his assertion in that sense. He says, the _slowest_ intellect. We have no right to assume that he meantthe _weakest_. For it is true, that in order to succeed in theDutch style, a man has need of qualities of mind eminently deliberateand sustained. He must be possessed of patience rather than of power;and must feel no weariness in contemplating the expression of a singlethought for several months together. As opposed to the changefulenergies of the imagination, these mental characters may be properlyspoken of as under the general term--slowness of intellect. But it byno means follows that they are necessarily those of weak or foolishmen. 

We observe, however, farther, that the imitation which Reynoldssupposes to be characteristic of the Dutch School is that which givesto objects such relief that they seem real, and that he then speaks ofthis art of realistic imitation as corresponding to _history_ inliterature. 

Reynolds, therefore, seems to class these dull works of the DutchSchool under a general head, to which they are not commonlyreferred--that of _historical_ painting; while he speaks of the worksof the Italian School not as historical, but as _poetical_ painting. His next sentence will farther manifest his meaning. 

"The Italian attends only to the invariable, the great and generalideas which are fixed and inherent in universal Nature; the Dutch, onthe contrary, to literal truth and a minute exactness in the detail, as I may say, of Nature modified by accident. The attention to thesepetty peculiarities is the very cause of this naturalness so muchadmired in the Dutch pictures, which, if we suppose it to be a beauty, is certainly of a lower order, which ought to give place to a beautyof a superior kind, since one cannot be obtained but by departing fromthe other. 

"If my opinion was asked concerning the works of Michael Angelo, whether they would receive any advantage from possessing thismechanical merit, I should not scruple to say, they would not onlyreceive no advantage, but would lose, in a great measure, the effectwhich they now have on every mind susceptible of great and nobleideas. His works may be said to be all genius and soul; and why shouldthey be loaded with heavy matter, which can only counteract hispurpose by retarding the progress of the imagination?"

Examining carefully this and the preceding passage, we find theauthor's unmistakable meaning to be, that Dutch painting is _history_;attending to literal truth and "minute exactness in the details ofnature modified by accident. " That Italian painting is _poetry_, attending only to the invariable; and that works which attend only tothe invariable are full of genius and soul; but that literal truth andexact detail are "heavy matter which retards the progress of theimagination. "

This being then indisputably what Reynolds means to tell us, let usthink a little whether he is in all respects right. And first, as hecompares his two kinds of painting to history and poetry, let us seehow poetry and history themselves differ, in their use of _variable_and _invariable_ details. I am writing at a window which commands aview of the head of the Lake of Geneva; and as I look up from mypaper, to consider this point, I see, beyond it, a blue breadth ofsoftly moving water, and the outline of the mountains above Chillon, bathed in morning mist. The first verses which naturally come into mymind are--

 A thousand feet in depth below The massy waters meet and flow; So far the fathom line was sent From Chillon's snow-white battlement. [37]

Let us see in what manner this poetical statement is distinguishedfrom a historical one. 

It is distinguished from a truly historical statement, first, in beingsimply false. The water under the Castle of Chillon is not a thousandfeet deep, nor anything like it. [38] Herein, certainly, these linesfulfil Reynolds's first requirement in poetry, "that it should beinattentive to literal truth and minute exactness in detail. " Inorder, however, to make our comparison more closely in other points, let us assume that what is stated is indeed a fact, and that it was tobe recorded, first historically, and then poetically. 

Historically stating it, then, we should say: "The lake was soundedfrom the walls of the Castle of Chillon, and found to be a thousandfeet deep. "

Now, if Reynolds be right in his idea of the difference betweenhistory and poetry, we shall find that Byron leaves out of thisstatement certain _un_necessary details, and retains only theinvariable, --that is to say, the points which the Lake of Geneva andCastle of Chillon have in common with all other lakes and castles. 

Let us hear, therefore. 

 A thousand feet in depth below. 

"Below"? Here is, at all events, a word added (instead of anythingbeing taken away); invariable, certainly in the case of lakes, but notabsolutely necessary. 

 The massy waters meet and flow. 

"Massy"! why massy? Because deep water is heavy. The word is a goodword, but it is assuredly an added detail, and expresses a character, not which the Lake of Geneva has in common with all other lakes, butwhich it has in distinction from those which are narrow, or shallow. 

"Meet and flow. " Why meet and flow? Partly to make up a rhyme; partlyto tell us that the waters are forceful as well as massy, andchangeful as well as deep. Observe, a farther addition of details, andof details more or less peculiar to the spot, or, according toReynolds's definition, of "heavy matter, retarding the progress of theimagination. "

 So far the fathom line was sent. 

Why fathom line? All lines for sounding are not fathom lines. If thelake was ever sounded from Chillon, it was probably sounded in mètres, not fathoms. This is an addition of another particular detail, inwhich the only compliance with Reynolds's requirement is, that thereis some chance of its being an inaccurate one. 

 From Chillon's snow-white battlement. 

Why snow-white? Because castle battlements are not usually snow-white. This is another added detail, and a detail quite peculiar to Chillon, and therefore exactly the most striking word in the whole passage. 

"Battlement"! Why battlement? Because all walls have not battlements, and the addition of the term marks the castle to be not merely aprison, but a fortress. 

This is a curious result. Instead of finding, as we expected, thepoetry distinguished from the history by the omission of details, wefind it consist entirely in the _addition_ of details; and instead ofbeing characterized by regard only of the invariable, we find itswhole power to consist in the clear expression of what is singular andparticular!

The reader may pursue the investigation for himself in otherinstances. He will find in every case that a poetical is distinguishedfrom a merely historical statement, not by being more vague, but morespecific; and it might, therefore, at first appear that our author'scomparison should be simply reversed, and that the Dutch School shouldbe called poetical, and the Italian historical. But the term poeticaldoes not appear very applicable to the generality of Dutch painting;and a little reflection will show us, that if the Italians representonly the invariable, they cannot be properly compared even tohistorians. For that which is incapable of change has no history, andrecords which state only the invariable need not be written, and couldnot be read. 

It is evident, therefore, that our author has entangled himself insome grave fallacy, by introducing this idea of invariableness asforming a distinction between poetical and historical art. What thefallacy is, we shall discover as we proceed; but as an invading armyshould not leave an untaken fortress in its rear, we must not go onwith our inquiry into the views of Reynolds until we have settledsatisfactorily the question already suggested to us, in what theessence of poetical treatment really consists. For though, as we haveseen, it certainly involves the addition of specific details, itcannot be simply that addition which turns the history into poetry. For it is perfectly possible to add any number of details to ahistorical statement, and to make it more prosaic with every addedword. As, for instance, "The lake was sounded out of a flat-bottomedboat, near the crab-tree at the corner of the kitchen-garden, and wasfound to be a thousand feet nine inches deep, with a muddy bottom. " Itthus appears that it is not the multiplication of details whichconstitutes poetry; nor their subtraction which constitutes history, but that there must be something either in the nature of the detailsthemselves, or the method of using them, which invests them withpoetical power or historical propriety. 

It seems to me, and may seem to the reader, strange that we shouldneed to ask the question, "What is poetry?" Here is a word we havebeen using all our lives, and, I suppose, with a very distinct ideaattached to it; and when I am now called upon to give a definition ofthis idea, I find myself at a pause. What is more singular, I do notat present recollect hearing the question often asked, though surelyit is a very natural one; and I never recollect hearing it answered, or even attempted to be answered. In general, people shelterthemselves under metaphors, and while we hear poetry described as anutterance of the soul, an effusion of Divinity, or voice of nature, orin other terms equally elevated and obscure, we never attain anythinglike a definite explanation of the character which actuallydistinguishes it from prose. 

I come, after some embarrassment, to the conclusion, that poetry is"the suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the nobleemotions. "[39] I mean, by the noble emotions, those four principalsacred passions--Love, Veneration, Admiration, and Joy (this latterespecially, if unselfish); and their opposites--Hatred, Indignation(or Scorn), Horror, and Grief, --this last, when unselfish, becomingCompassion. These passions in their various combinations constitutewhat is called "poetical feeling, " when they are felt on noblegrounds, that is, on great and true grounds. Indignation, forinstance, is a poetical feeling, if excited by serious injury; but itis not a poetical feeling if entertained on being cheated out of asmall sum of money. It is very possible the manner of the cheat mayhave been such as to justify considerable indignation; but the feelingis nevertheless not poetical unless the grounds of it be large as wellas just. In like manner, energetic admiration may be excited incertain minds by a display of fireworks, or a street of handsomeshops; but the feeling is not poetical, because the grounds of it arefalse, and therefore ignoble. There is in reality nothing to deserveadmiration either in the firing of packets of gunpowder, or in thedisplay of the stocks of warehouses. But admiration excited by thebudding of a flower is a poetical feeling, because it is impossiblethat this manifestation of spiritual power and vital beauty can everbe enough admired. 

Farther, it is necessary to the existence of poetry that the groundsof these feelings should be _furnished by the imagination_. Poeticalfeeling, that is to say, mere noble emotion, is not poetry. It ishappily inherent in all human nature deserving the name, and is foundoften to be purest in the least sophisticated. But the power ofassembling, by _the help of the imagination_, such images as willexcite these feelings, is the power of the poet or literally of the"Maker. "[40]

Now this power of exciting the emotions depends of course on therichness of the imagination, and on its choice of those images which, in combination, will be most effective, or, for the particular work tobe done, most fit. And it is altogether impossible for a writer notendowed with invention to conceive what tools a true poet will makeuse of, or in what way he will apply them, or what unexpected resultshe will bring out by them; so that it is vain to say that the detailsof poetry ought to possess, or ever do possess, any _definite_character. Generally speaking, poetry runs into finer and moredelicate details than prose; but the details are not poetical becausethey are more delicate, but because they are employed so as to bringout an affecting result. For instance, no one but a true poet wouldhave thought of exciting our pity for a bereaved father by describinghis way of locking the door of his house:

 Perhaps to himself at that moment he said, The key I must take, for my Ellen is dead; But of this in my ears not a word did he speak; And he went to the chase with a tear on his cheek. [41]

In like manner, in painting, it is altogether impossible to saybeforehand what details a great painter may make poetical by his useof them to excite noble emotions: and we shall, therefore, findpresently that a painting is to be classed in the great or inferiorschools, not according to the kind of details which it represents, butaccording to the uses for which it employs them. 

It is only farther to be noticed, that infinite confusion has beenintroduced into this subject by the careless and illogical custom ofopposing painting to poetry, instead of regarding poetry as consistingin a noble use, whether of colours or words. Painting is properly tobe opposed to _speaking_ or _writing_, but not to _poetry_. Bothpainting and speaking are methods of expression. Poetry is theemployment of either for the noblest purposes. 

This question being thus far determined, we may proceed with our paperin the _Idler_. 

"It is very difficult to determine the exact degree of enthusiasm thatthe arts of Painting and Poetry may admit. There may, perhaps, be toogreat indulgence as well as too great a restraint of imagination; ifthe one produces incoherent monsters, the other produces what is fullas bad, lifeless insipidity. An intimate knowledge of the passions, and good sense, but not common sense, must at last determine itslimits. It has been thought, and I believe with reason, that MichaelAngelo sometimes transgressed those limits; and, I think, I have seenfigures of him of which it was very difficult to determine whetherthey were in the highest degree sublime or extremely ridiculous. Suchfaults may be said to be the ebullitions of genius; but at least hehad this merit, that he never was insipid; and whatever passion hisworks may excite, they will always escape contempt. 

"What I have had under consideration is the sublimest style, particularly that of Michael Angelo, the Homer of painting. Otherkinds may admit of this naturalness, which of the lowest kind is thechief merit; but in painting, as in poetry, the highest style has theleast of common nature. "

From this passage we gather three important indications of thesupposed nature of the Great Style. That it is the work of men in astate of enthusiasm. That it is like the writing of Homer; and that ithas as little as possible of "common nature" in it. 

First, it is produced by men in a state of enthusiasm. That is, by menwho feel _strongly_ and _nobly_; for we do not call a strong feelingof envy, jealousy, or ambition, enthusiasm. That is, therefore, by menwho feel poetically. This much we may admit, I think, with perfectsafety. Great art is produced by men who feel acutely and nobly; andit is in some sort an expression of this personal feeling. We caneasily conceive that there may be a sufficiently marked distinctionbetween such art, and that which is produced by men who do not feel atall, but who reproduce, though ever so accurately, yet coldly, likehuman mirrors, the scenes which pass before their eyes. 

Secondly, Great Art is like the writing of Homer, and this chieflybecause it has little of "common nature" in it. We are not clearlyinformed what is meant by common nature in this passage. Homer seemsto describe a great deal of what is common:--cookery, for instance, very carefully in all its processes. [42] I suppose the passage in the_Iliad_ which, on the whole, has excited most admiration, is thatwhich describes a wife's sorrow at parting from her husband, and achild's fright at its father's helmet;[43] and I hope, at least, theformer feeling may be considered "common nature. " But the truegreatness of Homer's style is, doubtless, held by our author toconsist in his imaginations of things not only uncommon but impossible(such as spirits in brazen armour, or monsters with heads of men andbodies of beasts), and in his occasional delineations of the humancharacter and form in their utmost, or heroic, strength and beauty. Wegather then on the whole, that a painter in the Great Style must beenthusiastic, or full of emotion, and must paint the human form in itsutmost strength and beauty, and perhaps certain impossible formsbesides, liable by persons not in an equally enthusiastic state ofmind to be looked upon as in some degree absurd. This I presume to beReynolds's meaning, and to be all that he intends us to gather fromhis comparison of the Great Style with the writings of Homer. But ifthat comparison be a just one in all respects, surely two othercorollaries ought to be drawn from it, namely, --first, that theseHeroic or Impossible images are to be mingled with others veryunheroic and very possible; and, secondly, that in the representationof the Heroic or Impossible forms, the greatest care must be taken in_finishing the details_, so that a painter must not be satisfied withpainting well the countenance and the body of his hero, but ought tospend the greatest part of his time (as Homer the greatest number ofverses) in elaborating the sculptured pattern on his shield. 

Let us, however, proceed with our paper. 

"One may very safely recommend a little more enthusiasm to the modernPainters; too much is certainly not the vice of the present age. TheItalians seem to have been continually declining in this respect, fromthe time of Michael Angelo to that of Carlo Maratti, [44] and fromthence to the very bathos of insipidity to which they are now sunk; sothat there is no need of remarking, that where I mentioned the Italianpainters in opposition to the Dutch, I mean not the moderns, but theheads of the old Roman and Bolognian schools; nor did I mean toinclude, in my idea of an Italian painter, the Venetian school, _whichmay be said to be the Dutch part of the Italian genius_. I have onlyto add a word of advice to the Painters, --that, however excellent theymay be in painting naturally, they would not flatter themselves verymuch upon it; and to the Connoisseurs, that when they see a cat or afiddle painted so finely, that, as the phrase is, it looks as if youcould take it up, they would not for that reason immediately comparethe Painter to Raffaelle and Michael Angelo. "

In this passage there are four points chiefly to be remarked. Thefirst, that in the year 1759 the Italian painters were, in ourauthor's opinion, sunk in the very bathos of insipidity. The second, that the Venetian painters, _i. E. _ Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese, are, in our author's opinion, to be classed with the Dutch; that is tosay, are painters in a style "in which the slowest intellect is alwayssure to succeed best. " Thirdly, that painting naturally is not adifficult thing, nor one on which a painter should pride himself. And, finally, that connoisseurs, seeing a cat or a fiddle successfullypainted, ought not therefore immediately to compare the painter toRaphael or Michael Angelo. 

Yet Raphael painted fiddles very carefully in the foreground of hisSt. Cecilia, --so carefully, that they quite look as if they might betaken up. So carefully, that I never yet looked at the picture withoutwishing that somebody _would_ take them up, and out of the way. And Iam under a very strong persuasion that Raphael did not think painting"naturally" an easy thing. It will be well to examine into this pointa little; and for the present, with the reader's permission, we willpass over the first two statements in this passage (touching thecharacter of Italian art in 1759, and of Venetian art in general), andimmediately examine some of the evidence existing as to the realdignity of "natural" painting--that is to say, of painting carried tothe point at which it reaches a deceptive appearance of reality. 

 [35] The full title of this chapter is "Of the Received Opinions touching the 'Grand Style. '"

 [36] I have put this sentence in a parenthesis, because it is inconsistent with the rest of the statement, and with the general teaching of the paper; since that which "attends only to the invariable" cannot certainly adopt "every ornament that will warm the imagination. " [Ruskin. ]

 [37] Stanza 6 of Byron's _Prisoner of Chillon_, quoted with a slight inaccuracy. 

 [38] "Messrs. Mallet and Pictet, being on the lake, in front of the Castle of Chillon, on August 6, 1774, sunk a thermometer to the depth of 312 feet. " ... --SAUSSURE, _Voyages dans les Alpes_, chap. Ii, § 33. It appears from the next paragraph, that the thermometer was at the bottom of the lake. [Ruskin, altered. ]

 [39] Ruskin later wrote: "It leaves out rhythm, which I now consider a defect in said definition; otherwise good. "

 [40] Take, for instance, the beautiful stanza in the _Affliction of Margaret_:

 I look for ghosts, but none will force Their way to me. 'T is falsely said That ever there was intercourse Between the living and the dead; For, surely, then, I should have sight Of him I wait for, day and night. With love and longing infinite. 

 This we call Poetry, because it is invented or _made_ by the writer, entering into the mind of a supposed person. Next, take an instance of the actual feeling truly experienced and simply expressed by a real person. 

 "Nothing surprised me more than a woman of Argentière, whose cottage I went into to ask for milk, as I came down from the glacier of Argentière, in the month of March, 1764. An epidemic dysentery had prevailed in the village, and, a few months before, had taken away from her, her father, her husband, and her brothers, so that she was left alone, with three children in the cradle. Her face had something noble in it, and its expression bore the seal of a calm and profound sorrow. After having given me milk, she asked me whence I came, and what I came there to do, so early in the year. When she knew that I was of Geneva, she said to me, 'she could not believe that all Protestants were lost souls; that there were many honest people among us, and that God was too good and too great to condemn all without distinction. ' Then, after a moment of reflection, she added, in shaking her head, 'But that which is very strange is that of so many who have gone away, none have ever returned. I, ' she added, with an expression of grief, 'who have so mourned my husband and my brothers, who have never ceased to think of them, who every night conjure them with beseechings to tell me where they are, and in what state they are! Ah, surely, if they lived anywhere, they would not leave me thus! But, perhaps, ' she added, 'I am not worthy of this kindness, perhaps the pure and innocent spirits of these children, ' and she looked at the cradle, 'may have their presence, and the joy which is denied to _me_. '"--SAUSSURE, _Voyages dans les Alpes_, chap. Xxiv. 

 This we do not call Poetry, merely because it is not invented, but the true utterance of a real person. [Ruskin. ]

 [41] The closing lines of Wordsworth's _Childless Father_. 

 [42] _Iliad_, 1. 463 ff. , 2. 425 ff. ; _Odyssey_, 3. 455 ff. , etc. 

 [43] _Iliad_, 6. 468 ff. 

 [44] 1625-1713. Known also as Carlo delle Madonne. 

OF REALIZATION

VOLUME III, CHAPTER 2

In the outset of this inquiry, the reader must thoroughly understandthat we are not now considering _what_ is to be painted, but _how far_it is to be painted. Not whether Raphael does right in representingangels playing upon violins, or whether Veronese does right inallowing cats and monkeys to join the company of kings: but whether, supposing the subjects rightly chosen, they ought on the canvas tolook like real angels with real violins, and substantial cats lookingat veritable kings; or only like imaginary angels with soundlessviolins, ideal cats, and unsubstantial kings. 

Now, from the first moment when painting began to be a subject ofliterary inquiry and general criticism, I cannot remember any writer, not professedly artistical, who has not, more or less, in one part ofhis book or another, countenanced the idea that the great end of artis to produce a deceptive resemblance of reality. It may be, indeed, that we shall find the writers, through many pages, explainingprinciples of ideal beauty, and professing great delight in theevidences of imagination. But whenever a picture is to be definitelydescribed, --whenever the writer desires to convey to others someimpression of an extraordinary excellence, all praise is wound up withsome such statements as these: "It was so exquisitely painted that youexpected the figures to move and speak; you approached the flowers toenjoy their smell, and stretched your hand towards the fruit which hadfallen from the branches. You shrunk back lest the sword of thewarrior should indeed descend, and turned away your head that youmight not witness the agonies of the expiring martyr. "

In a large number of instances, language such as this will be found tobe merely a clumsy effort to convey to others a sense of theadmiration, of which the writer does not understand the real cause inhimself. A person is attracted to a picture by the beauty of itscolour, interested by the liveliness of its story, and touched bycertain countenances or details which remind him of friends whom heloved, or scenes in which he delighted. He naturally supposes thatwhat gives him so much pleasure must be a notable example of thepainter's skill; but he is ashamed to confess, or perhaps does notknow, that he is so much a child as to be fond of bright colours andamusing incidents; and he is quite unconscious of the associationswhich have so secret and inevitable a power over his heart. He castsabout for the cause of his delight, and can discover no other thanthat he thought the picture like reality. 

In another, perhaps, a still larger number of cases, such languagewill be found to be that of simple ignorance--the ignorance of personswhose position in life compels them to speak of art, without havingany real enjoyment of it. It is inexcusably required from people ofthe world, that they should see merit in Claudes[45] and Titians; andthe only merit which many persons can either see or conceive in themis, that they must be "like nature. "

In other cases, the deceptive power of the art is really felt to be asource of interest and amusement. This is the case with a large numberof the collectors of Dutch pictures. They enjoy seeing what is flatmade to look round, exactly as a child enjoys a trick of legerdemain:they rejoice in flies which the spectator vainly attempts to brushaway, [46] and in dew which he endeavours to dry by putting the picturein the sun. They take it for the greatest compliment to theirtreasures that they should be mistaken for windows; and think theparting of Abraham and Hagar adequately represented if Hagar seems tobe really crying. [47]

It is against critics and connoisseurs of this latter stamp (of whom, in the year 1759, the juries of art were for the most part composed)that the essay of Reynolds, which we have been examining, was justlydirected. But Reynolds had not sufficiently considered that neitherthe men of this class, nor of the two other classes above described, constitute the entire body of those who praise Art for itsrealization; and that the holding of this apparently shallow andvulgar opinion cannot, in all cases, be attributed to the want eitherof penetration, sincerity, or sense. The collectors of Gerard Dows andHobbimas may be passed by with a smile; and the affectations ofWalpole and simplicities of Vasari[48] dismissed with contempt or withcompassion. But very different men from these have held precisely thesame language; and, one amongst the rest, whose authority isabsolutely, and in all points, overwhelming. 

There was probably never a period in which the influence of art overthe minds of men seemed to depend less on its merely _imitative_power, than the close of the thirteenth century. No painting orsculpture at that time reached more than a rude resemblance ofreality. Its despised perspective, imperfect chiaroscuro, andunrestrained flights of fantastic imagination, separated the artist'swork from nature by an interval which there was no attempt todisguise, and little to diminish. And yet, at this very period, thegreatest poet of that, or perhaps of any other age, and the attachedfriend of its greatest painter, [49] who must over and over again haveheld full and free conversation with him respecting the objects of hisart, speaks in the following terms of painting, supposed to be carriedto its highest perfection:

 Qual di pennel fu maestro, e di stile Che ritraesse l'ombre, e i tratti, chi' ivi Mirar farieno uno ingegno sottile? Morti li morti, e i vivi parean vivi: Non vide me' di me, chi vide il vero, Quant' io calcai, fin che chinato givi. 

 DANTE, _Purgatorio_, canto xii. 1. 64. 

 What master of the pencil, or the style, Had traced the shades and lines that might have made The subtlest workman wonder? _Dead, the dead, _ _The living seemed alive; with clearer view_ _His eye beheld not, who beheld the truth_, Than mine what I did tread on, while I went Low bending. 

 --CARY. 

Dante has here clearly no other idea of the highest art than that itshould bring back, as in a mirror or vision, the aspect of things passedor absent. The scenes of which he speaks are, on the pavement, for everrepresented by angelic power, so that the souls which traverse thiscircle of the rock may see them, as if the years of the world had beenrolled back, and they again stood beside the actors in the moment ofaction. Nor do I think that Dante's authority is absolutely necessaryto compel us to admit that such art as this _might_, indeed, be thehighest possible. Whatever delight we may have been in the habit oftaking in pictures, if it were but truly offered to us, to remove atour will the canvas from the frame, and in lieu of it to behold, fixedfor ever, the image of some of those mighty scenes which it has beenour way to make mere themes for the artist's fancy; if, for instance, we could again behold the Magdalene receiving her pardon at Christ'sfeet, or the disciples sitting with Him at the table of Emmaus; andthis not feebly nor fancifully, but as if some silver mirror that hadleaned against the wall of the chamber, had been miraculously commandedto retain for ever the colours that had flashed upon it for aninstant, --would we not part with our picture--Titian's or Veronese'sthough it might be?

Yes, the reader answers, in the instance of such scenes as these, butnot if the scene represented were uninteresting. Not, indeed, if itwere utterly vulgar or painful; but we are not yet certain that theart which represents what is vulgar or painful is itself of muchvalue; and with respect to the art whose aim is beauty, even of aninferior order, it seems that Dante's idea of its perfection has stillmuch evidence in its favour. For among persons of native good sense, and courage enough to speak their minds, we shall often find aconsiderable degree of doubt as to the use of art, in consequence oftheir habitual comparison of it with reality. "What is the use, to me, of the painted landscape?" they will ask: "I see more beautiful andperfect landscapes every day of my life in my forenoon walk. " "What isthe use, to me, of the painted effigy of hero or beauty? I can see astamp of higher heroism, and light of purer beauty, on the faces roundme, utterly inexpressible by the highest human skill. " Now, it isevident that to persons of this temper the only valuable picturewould, indeed, be _mirrors_, reflecting permanently the images of thethings in which they took delight, and of the faces that they loved. "Nay, " but the reader interrupts (if he is of the Idealist school), "Ideny that more beautiful things are to be seen in nature than in art;on the contrary, everything in nature is faulty, and art representsnature as perfected. " Be it so. Must, therefore, this perfected naturebe imperfectly represented? Is it absolutely required of the painter, who has conceived perfection, that he should so paint it as to lookonly like a picture? Or is not Dante's view of the matter right evenhere, and would it not be well that the perfect conception of Pallasshould be so given as to look like Pallas herself, rather than merelylike the picture of Pallas?[50]

It is not easy for us to answer this question rightly, owing to thedifficulty of imagining any art which should reach the perfectionsupposed. Our actual powers of imitation are so feeble that whereverdeception is attempted, a subject of a comparatively low or confinedorder must be chosen. I do not enter at present into the inquiry howfar the powers of imitation extend; but assuredly up to the presentperiod they have been so limited that it is hardly possible for us toconceive a deceptive art embracing a high range of subject. But letthe reader make the effort, and consider seriously what he would giveat any moment to have the power of arresting the fairest scenes, thosewhich so often rise before him only to vanish; to stay the cloud inits fading, the leaf in its trembling, and the shadows in theirchanging; to bid the fitful foam be fixed upon the river, and theripples be everlasting upon the lake; and then to bear away with himno darkened or feeble sun-stain (though even that is beautiful), but acounterfeit which should seem no counterfeit-the true and perfectimage of life indeed. Or rather (for the full majesty of such a poweris not thus sufficiently expressed) let him consider that it would bein effect nothing else than a capacity of transporting himself at anymoment into any scene--a gift as great as can be possessed by adisembodied spirit: and suppose, also, this necromancy embracing notonly the present but the past, and enabling us seemingly to enter intothe very bodily presence of men long since gathered to the dust; tobehold them in act as they lived, but--with greater privilege thanever was granted to the companions of those transient acts of life--tosee them fastened at our will in the gesture and expression of aninstant, and stayed, on the eve of some great deed, in immortality ofburning purpose. Conceive, so far as it is possible, such power asthis, and then say whether the art which conferred it is to be spokenlightly of, or whether we should not rather reverence, as half divine, a gift which would go so far as to raise us into the rank, and investus with the felicities, of angels?

Yet such would imitative art be in its perfection. Not by any means aneasy thing, as Reynolds supposes it. Far from being easy, it is soutterly beyond all human power that we have difficulty even inconceiving its nature or results--the best art we as yet possess comesso far short of it. 

But we must not rashly come to the conclusion that such art would, indeed, be the highest possible. There is much to be consideredhereafter on the other side; the only conclusion we are as yetwarranted in forming is, that Reynolds had no right to speak lightlyor contemptuously of imitative art; that in fact, when he did so, hehad not conceived its entire nature, but was thinking of some vulgarconditions of it, which were the only ones known to him, and that, therefore, his whole endeavour to explain the difference between greatand mean art has been disappointed; that he has involved himself in acrowd of theories, whose issue he had not foreseen, and committedhimself to conclusions which, he never intended. There is aninstinctive consciousness in his own mind of the difference betweenhigh and low art; but he is utterly incapable of explaining it, andevery effort which he makes to do so involves him in unexpectedfallacy and absurdity. It is _not_ true that Poetry does not concernherself with minute details. It is _not_ true that high art seeks onlythe Invariable. It is _not_ true that imitative art is an easy thing. It is _not_ true that the faithful rendering of nature is anemployment in which "the slowest intellect is likely to succeed best. "All these successive assertions are utterly false and untenable, whilethe plain truth, a truth lying at the very door, has all the whileescaped him, --that which was incidentally stated in the precedingchapter, --namely, that the difference between great and mean art lies, not in definable methods of handling, or styles of representation, orchoices of subjects, but wholly in the nobleness of the end to whichthe effort of the painter is addressed. We cannot say that a painteris great because he paints boldly, or paints delicately; because hegeneralizes or particularizes; because he loves detail, or because hedisdains it. He is great if, by any of these means, he has laid opennoble truths, or aroused noble emotions. It does not matter whether hepaint the petal of a rose, or the chasms of a precipice, so that Loveand Admiration attend him as he labours, and wait for ever upon hiswork. It does not matter whether he toil for months upon a few inchesof his canvas, or cover a palace front with colour in a day, so onlythat it be with a solemn purpose that he has filled his heart withpatience, or urged his hand to haste. And it does not matter whetherhe seek for his subjects among peasants or nobles, among the heroic orthe simple, in courts or in fields, so only that he behold all thingswith a thirst for beauty, and a hatred of meanness and vice. Thereare, indeed, certain methods of representation which are usuallyadopted by the most active minds, and certain characters of subjectusually delighted in by the noblest hearts; but it is quite possible, quite easy, to adopt the manner of painting without sharing theactivity of mind, and to imitate the choice of subject withoutpossessing the nobility of spirit; while, on the other hand, it isaltogether impossible to foretell on what strange objects the strengthof a great man will sometimes be concentrated, or by what strangemeans he will sometimes express himself. So that true criticism of artnever can consist in the mere application of rules; it can be justonly when it is founded on quick sympathy with the innumerableinstincts and changeful efforts of human nature, chastened and guidedby unchanging love of all things that God has created to be beautiful, and pronounced to be good. 

 [45] Claude Gelée [1600-82], usually called Claude Lorrain, a French landscape painter and etcher. 

 [46] Vasari, in his _Lives of the Painters_, tells how Giotto, when a student under Cimabue, once painted a fly on the nose of a figure on which the master was working, the fly being so realistic that Cimabue on returning to the painting attempted to brush it away. 

 [47] Guercino's Hagar in the Brera gallery in Milan. 

 [48] Gerard Dow [1613-75], a Dutch genre painter; Hobbima [1638-1709], a Dutch landscape painter; Walpole [1717-97], a famous English litterateur; Vasari [1511-74], an Italian painter, now considered full of mannerisms and without originality, mainly famous as author of _The Lives of the Painters_. 

 [49] Giotto. 

 [50] _Purgatorio_, 12. 31. 

OF THE NOVELTY OF LANDSCAPE

VOLUME III, CHAPTER II

Having now obtained, I trust, clear ideas, up to a certain point, ofwhat is generally right and wrong in all art, both in conception andin workmanship, we have to apply these laws of right to the particularbranch of art which is the subject of our present inquiry, namely, landscape-painting. Respecting which, after the various meditationsinto which we have been led on the high duties and ideals of art, itmay not improbably occur to us first to ask, --whether it be worthinquiring about at all. 

That question, perhaps the reader thinks, should have been asked andanswered before I had written, or he read, two volumes and a halfabout it. So I _had_ answered it, in my own mind; but it seems timenow to give the grounds for this answer. If, indeed, the reader hasnever suspected that landscape-painting was anything but good, right, and healthy work, I should be sorry to put any doubt of its being sointo his mind; but if, as seems to me more likely, he, living in thisbusy and perhaps somewhat calamitous age, has some suspicion thatlandscape-painting is but an idle and empty business, not worth allour long talk about it, then, perhaps, he will be pleased to have suchsuspicion done away, before troubling himself farther with thesedisquisitions. 

I should rather be glad, than otherwise, that he _had_ formed somesuspicion on this matter. If he has at all admitted the truth ofanything hitherto said respecting great art, and its choices ofsubject, it seems to me he ought, by this time, to be questioning withhimself whether road-side weeds, old cottages, broken stones, and suchother materials, be worthy matters for grave men to busy themselves inthe imitation of. And I should like him to probe this doubt to thedeep of it, and bring all his misgivings out to the broad light, thatwe may see how we are to deal with them, or ascertain if indeed theyare too well founded to be dealt with. 

And to this end I would ask him now to imagine himself entering, forthe first time in his life, the room of the Old Water-ColourSociety:[51] and to suppose that he has entered it, not for the sake ofa quiet examination of the paintings one by one, but in order to seizesuch ideas as it may generally suggest respecting the state andmeaning of modern, as compared with elder, art. I suppose him, ofcourse, that he may be capable of such a comparison, to be in somedegree familiar with the different forms in which art has developeditself within the periods historically known to us; but never, tillthat moment, to have seen any completely modern work. So prepared, andso unprepared, he would, as his ideas began to arrange themselves, befirst struck by the number of paintings representing blue mountains, clear lakes, and ruined castles or cathedrals, and he would say tohimself: "There is something strange in the mind of these modernpeople! Nobody ever cared about blue mountains before, or tried topaint the broken stones of old walls. " And the more he considered thesubject, the more he would feel the peculiarity; and, as he thoughtover the art of Greeks and Romans, he would still repeat, withincreasing certainty of conviction: "Mountains! I remember none. TheGreeks did not seem, as artists, to know that such things were in theworld. They carved, or variously represented, men, and horses, andbeasts, and birds, and all kinds of living creatures, --yes, even downto cuttle-fish; and trees, in a sort of way; but not so much as theoutline of a mountain; and as for lakes, they merely showed they knewthe difference between salt and fresh water by the fish they put intoeach. " Then he would pass on to mediæval art; and still he would beobliged to repeat: "Mountains! I remember none. Some careless andjagged arrangements of blue spires or spikes on the horizon, and, hereand there, an attempt at representing an overhanging rock with a holethrough it; but merely in order to divide the light behind some humanfigure. Lakes! No, nothing of the kind, --only blue bays of sea put into fill up the background when the painter could not think of anythingelse. Broken-down buildings! No; for the most part very complete andwell-appointed buildings, if any; and never buildings at all, but togive place or explanation to some circumstance of human conduct. " Andthen he would look up again to the modern pictures, observing, with anincreasing astonishment, that here the human interest had, in manycases, altogether disappeared. That mountains, instead of being usedonly as a blue ground for the relief of the heads of saints, werethemselves the exclusive subjects of reverent contemplation; thattheir ravines, and peaks, and forests, were all painted with anappearance of as much enthusiasm as had formerly been devoted to thedimple of beauty, or the frowns of asceticism; and that all the livinginterest which was still supposed necessary to the scene, might besupplied by a traveller in a slouched hat, a beggar in a scarletcloak, or, in default of these, even by a heron or a wild duck. 

And if he could entirely divest himself of his own modern habits ofthought, and regard the subjects in question with the feelings of aknight or monk of the Middle Ages, it might be a question whetherthose feelings would not rapidly verge towards contempt. "What!" hemight perhaps mutter to himself, "here are human beings spending thewhole of their lives in making pictures of bits of stone and runletsof water, withered sticks and flying fogs, and actually not a pictureof the gods or the heroes! none of the saints or the martyrs! none ofthe angels and demons! none of councils or battles, or any othersingle thing worth the thought of a man! Trees and clouds indeed! asif I should not see as many trees as I cared to see, and more, in thefirst half of my day's journey to-morrow, or as if it mattered to anyman whether the sky were clear or cloudy, so long as his armour didnot get too hot in the sun!"

There can be no question that this would have been somewhat the toneof thought with which either a Lacedæmonian, a soldier of Rome in herstrength, or a knight of the thirteenth century, would have been aptto regard these particular forms of our present art. Nor can there beany question that, in many respects, their judgment would have beenjust. It is true that the indignation of the Spartan or Roman wouldhave been equally excited against any appearance of luxuriousindustry; but the mediæval knight would, to the full, have admittedthe nobleness of art; only he would have had it employed in decoratinghis church or his prayer-book, not in imitating moors and clouds. Andthe feelings of all the three would have agreed in this, --that theirmain ground of offence must have been the want of _seriousness_ and_purpose_ in what they saw. They would all have admitted the noblenessof whatever conduced to the honour of the gods, or the power of thenation; but they would not have understood how the skill of human lifecould be wisely spent in that which did no honour either to Jupiter orto the Virgin; and which in no wise tended, apparently, either to theaccumulation of wealth, the excitement of patriotism, or theadvancement of morality. 

And exactly so far forth their judgment would be just, as thelandscape-painting could indeed be shown, for others as well as forthem, to be art of this nugatory kind; and so far forth unjust, asthat painting could be shown to depend upon, or cultivate, certainsensibilities which neither the Greek nor mediæval knight possessed, and which have resulted from some extraordinary change in human naturesince their time. We have no right to assume, without very accurateexamination of it, that this change has been an ennobling one. Thesimple fact, that we are, in some strange way, different from all thegreat races that have existed before us, cannot at once be received asthe proof of our own greatness; nor can it be granted, without anyquestion, that we have a legitimate subject of complacency in beingunder the influence of feelings, with which neither Miltiades nor theBlack Prince, neither Homer nor Dante, neither Socrates nor St. Francis, could for an instant have sympathized. 

Whether, however, this fact be one to excite our pride or not, it isassuredly one to excite our deepest interest. The fact itself iscertain. For nearly six thousand years the energies of man havepursued certain beaten paths, manifesting some constancy of feelingthroughout all that period, and involving some fellowship at heart, among the various nations who by turns succeeded or surpassed eachother in the several aims of art or policy. So that, for thesethousands of years, the whole human race might be to some extentdescribed in general terms. Man was a creature separated from allothers by his instinctive sense of an Existence superior to his own, invariably manifesting this sense of the being of a God more stronglyin proportion to his own perfectness of mind and body; and makingenormous and self-denying efforts, in order to obtain some persuasionof the immediate presence or approval of the Divinity. So that, on thewhole, the best things he did were done as in the presence, or for thehonour, of his gods; and, whether in statues, to help him to imaginethem, or temples raised to their honour, or acts of self-sacrificedone in the hope of their love, he brought whatever was best andskilfullest in him into their service, and lived in a perpetualsubjection to their unseen power. Also, he was always anxious to knowsomething definite about them; and his chief books, songs, andpictures were filled with legends about them, or specially devoted toillustration of their lives and nature. 

Next to these gods, he was always anxious to know something about hishuman ancestors; fond of exalting the memory, and telling or paintingthe history of old rulers and benefactors; yet full of an enthusiasticconfidence in himself, as having in many ways advanced beyond the bestefforts of past time; and eager to record his own doings for futurefame. He was a creature eminently warlike, placing his principal pridein dominion; eminently beautiful, and having great delight in his ownbeauty; setting forth this beauty by every species of invention indress, and rendering his arms and accoutrements superbly decorative ofhis form. He took, however, very little interest in anything but whatbelonged to humanity; caring in no wise for the external world, exceptas it influenced his own destiny; honouring the lightning because itcould strike him, the sea because it could drown him, the fountainsbecause they gave him drink, and the grass because it yielded himseed; but utterly incapable of feeling any special happiness in thelove of such things, or any earnest emotion about them, considered asseparate from man; therefore giving no time to the study ofthem;--knowing little of herbs, except only which were hurtful andwhich healing; of stones, only which would glitter brightest in acrown, or last the longest in a wall: of the wild beasts, which werebest for food, and which the stoutest quarry for the hunter;--thusspending only on the lower creatures and inanimate things his wasteenergy, his dullest thoughts, his most languid emotions, and reservingall his acuter intellect for researches into his own nature and thatof the gods; all his strength of will for the acquirement of politicalor moral power; all his sense of beauty for things immediatelyconnected with his own person and life; and all his deep affectionsfor domestic or divine companionship. 

Such, in broad light and brief terms, was man for five thousand years. Such he is no longer. Let us consider what he is now, comparing thedescriptions clause by clause. 

I. He _was_ invariably sensible of the existence of gods, and went aboutall his speculations or works holding this as an acknowledged fact, makinghis best efforts in their service. _Now_ he is capable of going throughlife with hardly any positive idea on this subject, --doubting, fearing, suspecting, analyzing, --doing everything, in fact, _but_ believing;hardly ever getting quite up to that point which hitherto was wont to bethe starting-point for all generations. And human work has accordinglyhardly any reference to spiritual beings, but is done either from apatriotic or personal interest, --either to benefit mankind, or reachsome selfish end, not (I speak of human work in the broad sense) toplease the gods. 

II. He _was_ a beautiful creature, setting forth this beauty by allmeans in his power, and depending upon it for much of his authorityover his fellows. So that the ruddy cheek of David, and the ivory skinof Atrides, and the towering presence of Saul, and the blue eyes ofCoeur de Lion, were among chief reasons why they should be kings; andit was one of the aims of all education, and of all dress, to make thepresence of the human form stately and lovely. _Now_ it has become thetask of grave philosophy partly to depreciate or conceal this bodilybeauty; and even by those who esteem it in their hearts, it is notmade one of the great ends of education; man has become, upon thewhole, an ugly animal, and is not ashamed of his ugliness. 

III. He _was_ eminently warlike. He is _now_ gradually becoming moreand more ashamed of all the arts and aims of battle. So that thedesire of dominion, which was once frankly confessed or boasted of asa heroic passion, is now sternly reprobated or cunningly disclaimed. 

IV. He _used_ to take no interest in anything but what immediatelyconcerned himself. _Now_, he has deep interest in the abstract natureof things, inquires as eagerly into the laws which regulate theeconomy of the material world, as into those of his own being, andmanifests a passionate admiration of inanimate objects, closelyresembling, in its elevation and tenderness, the affection which hebears to those living souls with which he is brought into the nearestfellowship. 

It is this last change only which is to be the subject of our presentinquiry; but it cannot be doubted that it is closely connected withall the others, and that we can only thoroughly understand its natureby considering il in this connection. For, regarded by itself, wemight perhaps, too rashly assume it to be a natural consequence of theprogress of the race. There appears to be a diminution of selfishnessin it, and a more extended and heartfelt desire of understanding themanner of God's working; and this the more, because one of thepermanent characters of this change is a greater accuracy in thestatement of external facts. When the eyes of men were fixed firstupon themselves, and upon nature solely and secondarily as bearingupon their interests, it was of less consequence to them what theultimate laws of nature were, than what their immediate effects wereupon human beings. Hence they could rest satisfied with phenomenainstead of principles, and accepted without scrutiny every fable whichseemed sufficiently or gracefully to account for those phenomena. Butso far as the eyes of men are now withdrawn from themselves, andturned upon the inanimate things about them, the results cease to beof importance, and the laws become essential. 

In these respects, it might easily appear to us that this change wasassuredly one of steady and natural advance. But when we contemplatethe others above noted, of which it is clearly one of the branches orconsequences, we may suspect ourselves of over-rashness in ourself-congratulation, and admit the necessity of a scrupulous analysisboth of the feeling itself and of its tendencies. 

Of course a complete analysis, or anything like it, would involve atreatise on the whole history of the world. I shall merely endeavourto note some of the leading and more interesting circumstances bearingon the subject, and to show sufficient practical ground for theconclusion, that landscape-painting is indeed a noble and useful art, though one not long known by man. I shall therefore examine, as best Ican, the effect of landscape, 1st, on the Classical mind; 2dly, on theMediæval mind; and lastly, on the Modern mind. But there is one pointof some interest respecting the effect of it on _any mind_, which mustbe settled first; and this I will endeavour to do in the next chapter. 

 [51] The Society of Painters in Water-Colours, often referred to as the Old Water-Colour Society. Ruskin was elected an honorary member in 1873. 

OF THE PATHETIC FALLACY

VOLUME III, CHAPTER 12

Now, therefore, putting these tiresome and absurd words[52] quiteout of our way, we may go on at our ease to examine the point inquestion, --namely, the difference between the ordinary, proper, andtrue appearances of things to us; and the extraordinary, or falseappearances, when we are under the influence of emotion, orcontemplative fancy; false appearances, I say, as being entirelyunconnected with any real power or character in the object, and onlyimputed to it by us. 

For instance--

 The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould Naked and shivering, with his cup of gold. [53]

This is very beautiful, and yet very untrue. The crocus is not aspendthrift, but a hardy plant; its yellow is not gold, but saffron. How is it that we enjoy so much the having it put into our heads thatit is anything else than a plain crocus?

It is an important question. For, throughout our past reasonings aboutart, we have always found that nothing could be good or useful, orultimately pleasurable, which was untrue. But here is somethingpleasurable in written poetry which is nevertheless _un_true. And whatis more, if we think over our favourite poetry, we shall find it fullof this kind of fallacy, and that we like it all the more for beingso. 

It will appear also, on consideration of the matter, that this fallacyis of two principal kinds. Either, as in this case of the crocus, itis the fallacy of wilful fancy, which involves no real expectationthat it will be believed; or else it is a fallacy caused by an excitedstate of the feelings, making us, for the time, more or lessirrational. Of the cheating of the fancy we shall have to speakpresently; but, in this chapter, I want to examine the nature of theother error, that which the mind admits when affected strongly byemotion. Thus, for instance, in _Alton Locke_, --

 They rowed her in across the rolling foam-- The cruel, crawling foam. [54]

The foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl. The state of mind whichattributes to it these characters of a living creature is one in whichthe reason is unhinged by grief. All violent feelings have the sameeffect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions ofexternal things, which I would generally characterize as the "patheticfallacy. "

Now we are in the habit of considering this fallacy as eminently acharacter of poetical description, and the temper of mind in which weallow it, as one eminently poetical, because passionate. But Ibelieve, if we look well into the matter, that we shall find thegreatest poets do not often admit this kind of falseness, --that it isonly the second order of poets who much delight in it. [55]

Thus, when Dante describes the spirits falling from the bank ofAcheron "as dead leaves flutter from a bough, "[56] he gives the mostperfect image possible of their utter lightness, feebleness, passiveness, and scattering agony of despair, without, however, for aninstant losing his own clear perception that _these_ are souls, and_those_ are leaves; he makes no confusion of one with the other. Butwhen Coleridge speaks of

 The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, [57]

he has a morbid, that is to say, a so far false, idea about the leaf;he fancies a life in it, and will, which there are not; confuses itspowerlessness with choice, its fading death with merriment, and thewind that shakes it with music. Here, however, there is some beauty, even in the morbid passage; but take an instance in Homer and Pope. Without the knowledge of Ulysses, Elpenor, his youngest follower, hasfallen from an upper chamber in the Circean palace, and has been leftdead, unmissed by his leader or companions, in the haste of theirdeparture. They cross the sea to the Cimmerian land; and Ulyssessummons the shades from Tartarus. The first which appears is that ofthe lost Elpenor. Ulysses, amazed, and in exactly the spirit of bitterand terrified lightness which is seen in Hamlet, [58] addresses thespirit with the simple, startled words:--

"Elpenor! How camest thou under the shadowy darkness? Hast thou comefaster on foot than I in my black ship?"[59]

Which Pope renders thus:--

 O, say, what angry power Elpenor led To glide in shades, and wander with the dead? How could thy soul, by realms and seas disjoined, Outfly the nimble sail, and leave the lagging wind?

I sincerely hope the reader finds no pleasure here, either in thenimbleness of the sail, or the laziness of the wind! And yet how is itthat these conceits are so painful now, when they have been pleasantto us in the other instances?

For a very simple reason. They are not a _pathetic_ fallacy at all, for they are put into the mouth of the wrong passion--a passion whichnever could possibly have spoken them--agonized curiosity. Ulysseswants to know the facts of the matter; and the very last thing hismind could do at the moment would be to pause, or suggest in anywisewhat was _not_ a fact. The delay in the first three lines, and conceitin the last, jar upon us instantly like the most frightful discord inmusic. No poet of true imaginative power could possibly have writtenthe passage. [60]

Therefore we see that the spirit of truth must guide us in some sort, even in our enjoyment of fallacy. Coleridge's fallacy has no discordin it, but Pope's has set our teeth on edge. Without fartherquestioning, I will endeavour to state the main bearings of thismatter. 

The temperament which admits the pathetic fallacy, is, as I saidabove, that of a mind and body in some sort too weak to deal fullywith what is before them or upon them; borne away, or over-clouded, or over-dazzled by emotion; and it is a more or less noble state, according to the force of the emotion which has induced it. For itis no credit to a man that he is not morbid or inaccurate in hisperceptions, when he has no strength of feeling to warp them; and itis in general a sign of higher capacity and stand in the ranks ofbeing, that the emotions should be strong enough to vanquish, partly, the intellect, and make it believe what they choose. But it is still agrander condition when the intellect also rises, till it is strongenough to assert its rule against, or together with, the utmostefforts of the passions; and the whole man stands in an iron glow, white hot, perhaps, but still strong, and in no wise evaporating; evenif he melts, losing none of his weight. 

So, then, we have the three ranks: the man who perceives rightly, because he does not feel, and to whom the primrose is very accuratelythe primrose, [61] because he does not love it. Then, secondly, the manwho perceives wrongly, because he feels, and to whom the primrose isanything else than a primrose: a star, or a sun, or a fairy's shield, or a forsaken maiden. And then, lastly, there is the man who perceivesrightly in spite of his feelings, and to whom the primrose is for evernothing else than itself--a little flower apprehended in the veryplain and leafy fact of it, whatever and how many soever theassociations and passions may be that crowd around it. And, ingeneral, these three classes may be rated in comparative order, as themen who are not poets at all, and the poets of the second order, andthe poets of the first; only however great a man may be, there arealways some subjects which _ought_ to throw him off his balance; some, by which his poor human capacity of thought should be conquered, andbrought into the inaccurate and vague state of perception, so that thelanguage of the highest inspiration becomes broken, obscure, and wildin metaphor, resembling that of the weaker man, overborne by weakerthings. 

And thus, in full, there are four classes: the men who feel nothing, and therefore see truly; the men who feel strongly, think weakly, andsee untruly (second order of poets); the men who feel strongly, thinkstrongly, and see truly (first order of poets); and the men who, strong as human creatures can be, are yet submitted to influencesstronger than they, and see in a sort untruly, because what they seeis inconceivably above them. This last is the usual condition ofprophetic inspiration. 

I separate these classes, in order that their character may be clearlyunderstood; but of course they are united each to the other byimperceptible transitions, and the same mind, according to theinfluences to which it is subjected, passes at different times intothe various states. Still, the difference between the great and lessman is, on the whole, chiefly in this point of _alterability_. That isto say, the one knows too much, and perceives and feels too much ofthe past and future, and of all things beside and around that whichimmediately affects him, to be in any wise shaken by it. His mind ismade up; his thoughts have an accustomed current; his ways arestedfast; it is not this or that new sight which will at onceunbalance him. He is tender to impression at the surface, like a rockwith deep moss upon it; but there is too much mass of him to be moved. The smaller man, with the same degree of sensibility, is at oncecarried off his feet; he wants to do something he did not want to dobefore; he views all the universe in a new light through his tears; heis gay or enthusiastic, melancholy or passionate, as things come andgo to him. Therefore the high creative poet might even be thought, toa great extent, impassive (as shallow people think Dante stern), receiving indeed all feelings to the full, but having a great centreof reflection and knowledge in which he stands serene, and watches thefeeling, as it were, from far off. 

Dante, in his most intense moods, has entire command of himself, andcan look around calmly, at all moments, for the image or the word thatwill best tell what he sees to the upper or lower world. But Keats andTennyson, and the poets of the second order, are generally themselvessubdued by the feelings under which they write, or, at least, write aschoosing to be so; and therefore admit certain expressions and modesof thought which are in some sort diseased or false. 

Now so long as we see that the _feeling_ is true, we pardon, or areeven pleased by, the confessed fallacy of sight which it induces: weare pleased, for instance, with those lines of Kingsley's above quoted, not because they fallaciously describe foam, but because they faithfullydescribe sorrow. But the moment the mind of the speaker becomes cold, that moment every such expression becomes untrue, as being for everuntrue in the external facts. And there is no greater baseness inliterature than the habit of using these metaphorical expressions incool blood. An inspired writer, in full impetuosity of passion, mayspeak wisely and truly of "raging waves of the sea foaming out theirown shame";[62] but it is only the basest writer who cannot speak ofthe sea without talking of "raging waves, " "remorseless floods, ""ravenous billows, " etc. ; and it is one of the signs of the highestpower in a writer to check all such habits of thought, and to keep hiseyes fixed firmly on the _pure fact_, out of which if any feelingconies to him or his reader, he knows it must be a true one. 

To keep to the waves, I forget who it is who represents a man indespair desiring that his body may be cast into the sea, _Whose changing mound, and foam that passed away_, Might mock the eye that questioned where I lay. 

Observe, there is not a single false, or even overcharged, expression. "Mound" of the sea wave is perfectly simple and true; "changing" is asfamiliar as may be; "foam that passed away, " strictly literal; and thewhole line descriptive of the reality with a degree of accuracy whichI know not any other verse, in the range of poetry, that altogetherequals. For most people have not a distinct idea of the clumsiness andmassiveness of a large wave. The word "wave" is used too generally ofripples and breakers, and bendings in light drapery or grass: it doesnot by itself convey a perfect image. But the word "mound" is heavy, large, dark, definite; there is no mistaking the kind of wave meant, nor missing the sight of it. Then the term "changing" has a peculiarforce also. Most people think of waves as rising and falling. But ifthey look at the sea carefully, they will perceive that the waves donot rise and fall. They change. Change both place and form, but theydo not fall; one wave goes on, and on, and still on; now lower, nowhigher, now tossing its mane like a horse, now building itselftogether like a wall, now shaking, now steady, but still the samewave, till at last it seems struck by something, and changes, oneknows not how, --becomes another wave. 

The close of the line insists on this image, and paints it still moreperfectly, --"foam that passed away. " Not merely melting, disappearing, but passing on, out of sight, on the career of the wave. Then, havingput the absolute ocean fact as far as he may before our eyes, the poetleaves us to feel about it as we may, and to trace for ourselves theopposite fact, --the image of the green mounds that do not change, andthe white and written stones that do not pass away; and thence tofollow out also the associated images of the calm life with the quietgrave, and the despairing life with the fading foam--

 Let no man move his bones. 

As for Samaria, her king is cut off like the foam upon the water. [63]

But nothing of this is actually told or pointed out, and theexpressions, as they stand, are perfectly severe and accurate, utterlyuninfluenced by the firmly governed emotion of the writer. Even theword "mock" is hardly an exception, as it may stand merely for"deceive" or "defeat, " without implying any impersonation of thewaves. 

It may be well, perhaps, to give one or two more instances to show thepeculiar dignity possessed by all passages, which thus limit theirexpression to the pure fact, and leave the hearer to gather what hecan from it. Here is a notable one from the _Iliad_. Helen, lookingfrom the Scæan gate of Troy over the Grecian host, and telling Priamthe names of its captains, says at last:--

 "I see all the other dark-eyed Greeks; but two I cannot see, --Castor and Pollux, --whom one mother bore with me. Have they not followed from fair Lacedæmon, or have they indeed come in their sea-wandering ships, but now will not enter into the battle of men, fearing the shame and the scorn that is in Me?"

Then Homer:--

 "So she spoke. But them, already, the life-giving earth possessed, there in Lacedæmon, in the dear fatherland. "[64]

Note, here, the high poetical truth carried to the extreme. The poethas to speak of the earth in sadness, but he will not let that sadnessaffect or change his thoughts of it. No; though Castor and Pollux bedead, yet the earth is our mother still, fruitful, life-giving. Theseare the facts of the thing. I see nothing else than these. Make whatyou will of them. 

Take another very notable instance from Casimir de la Vigne's terribleballad, "La Toilette de Constance. " I must quote a few lines out of ithere and there, to enable the reader who has not the book by him, tounderstand its close. 

 "Vite, Anna! vite; au miroir! Plus vite, Anna. L'heure s'avance, Et je vais au bal ce soir Chez l'ambassadeur de France. 

 "Y pensez-vous? ils sont fanés, ces noeuds; Ils sont d'hier; mon Dieu, comme tout passe! Que du réseau qui retient mes cheveux Les glands d'azur retombent avec grâce. Plus haut! Plus bas! Vous ne comprenez rien! Que sur mon front ce saphir étincelle: Vous me piquez, maladroite. Ah, c'est bien, Bien, --chère Anna! Je t'aime, je suis belle. "

 "Celui qu'en vain je voudrais oublier ... (Anna, ma robe) il y sera, j'espère. (Ah, fi! profane, est-ce là mon collier? Quoi! ces grains d'or bénits par le Saint-Père!) II y sera; Dieu, s'il pressait ma main, En y pensant à peine je respire: Frère Anselmo doit m'entendre demain, Comment ferai-je, Anna, pour tout lui dire?... 

 "Vite! un coup d'oeil au miroir, Le dernier. --J'ai l'assurance Qu'on va m'adorer ce soir Chez l'ambassadeur de France. "

 Pres du foyer, Constance s'admirait. Dieu! sur sa robe il vole une étincelle! Au feu! Courez! Quand l'espoir l'enivrait, Tout perdre ainsi! Quoi! Mourir, --et si belle! L'horrible feu ronge avec volupté Ses bras, son sein, et l'entoure, et s'élève, Et sans pitié dévore sa beauté, Ses dix-huit ans, hélas, et son doux rêve!

 Adieu, bal, plaisir, amour! On disait, Pauvre Constance! Et l'on dansa, jusqu'au jour, Chez l'ambassadeur de France. [65]

Yes, that is the fact of it. Right or wrong, the poet does not say. What you may think about it, he does not know. He has nothing to dowith that. There lie the ashes of the dead girl in her chamber. Therethey danced, till the morning, at the Ambassador's of France. Makewhat you will of it. 

If the reader will look through the ballad, of which I have quotedonly about the third part, he will find that there is not, frombeginning to end of it, a single poetical (so called) expression, except in one stanza. The girl speaks as simple prose as may be; thereis not a word she would not have actually used as she was dressing. The poet stands by, impassive as a statue, recording her words just asthey come. At last the doom seizes her, and in the very presence ofdeath, for an instant, his own emotions conquer him. He records nolonger the facts only, but the facts as they seem to him. The firegnaws with _voluptuousness_--_without pity_. It is soon past. The fateis fixed for ever; and he retires into his pale and crystallineatmosphere of truth. He closes all with the calm veracity, They said, "Poor Constance!"

Now in this there is the exact type of the consummate poeticaltemperament. For, be it clearly and constantly remembered, that thegreatness of a poet depends upon the two faculties, acuteness offeeling, and command of it. A poet is great, first in proportion tothe strength of his passion, and then, that strength being granted, inproportion to his government of it; there being, however, always apoint beyond which it would be inhuman and monstrous if he pushed thisgovernment, and, therefore, a point at which all feverish and wildfancy becomes just and true. Thus the destruction of the kingdom ofAssyria cannot be contemplated firmly by a prophet of Israel. The factis too great, too wonderful. It overthrows him, dashes him into aconfused element of dreams. All the world is, to his stunned thought, full of strange voices. "Yea, the fir-trees rejoice at thee, and thecedars of Lebanon, saying. 'Since thou art gone down to the grave, nofeller is come up against us. '"[66] So, still more, the thought of thepresence of Deity cannot be borne without this great astonishment. "The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you intosinging, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. "[67]

But by how much this feeling is noble when it is justified by thestrength of its cause, by so much it is ignoble when there is notcause enough for it; and beyond all other ignobleness is the mereaffectation of it, in hardness of heart. Simply bad writing may almostalways, as above noticed, be known by its adoption of these fancifulmetaphorical expressions as a sort of current coin; yet there is evena worse, at least a more harmful condition of writing than this, inwhich such expressions are not ignorantly and feelinglessly caught up, but, by some master, skilful in handling, yet insincere, deliberatelywrought out with chill and studied fancy; as if we should try to makean old lava-stream look red-hot again, by covering it with deadleaves, or white-hot, with hoar-frost. 

When Young is lost in veneration, as he dwells on the character of atruly good and holy man, he permits himself for a moment to beoverborne by the feeling so far as to exclaim--

 Where shall I find him? angels, tell me where. You know him; he is near you; point him out. Shall I see glories beaming from his brow, Or trace his footsteps by the rising flowers?[68]

This emotion has a worthy cause, and is thus true and right. But nowhear the cold-hearted Pope say to a shepherd girl--

 Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade; Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade; Your praise the birds shall chant in every grove, And winds shall waft it to the powers above. But would you sing, and rival Orpheus' strain, The wondering forests soon should dance again; The moving mountains hear the powerful call, And headlong streams hang, listening, in their fall. [69]

This is not, nor could it for a moment be mistaken for, the languageof passion. It is simple falsehood, uttered by hypocrisy; definiteabsurdity, rooted in affectation, and coldly asserted in the teeth ofnature and fact. Passion will indeed go far in deceiving itself; butit must be a strong passion, not the simple wish of a lover to tempthis mistress to sing. Compare a very closely parallel passage inWordsworth, in which the lover has lost his mistress:--

 Three years had Barbara in her grave been laid, When thus his moan he made:--

 "Oh, move, thou cottage, from behind yon oak, Or let the ancient tree uprooted lie, That in some other way yon smoke May mount into the sky. If still behind yon pine-tree's ragged bough, Headlong, the waterfall must come, Oh, let it, then, be dumb-- Be anything, sweet stream, but that which thou art now. "[70]

Here is a cottage to be moved, if not a mountain, and a water-fall tobe silent, if it is not to hang listening: but with what differentrelation to the mind that contemplates them! Here, in the extremity ofits agony, the soul cries out wildly for relief, which at the samemoment it partly knows to be impossible, but partly believes possible, in a vague impression that a miracle _might_ be wrought to give reliefeven to a less sore distress, --that nature is kind, and God is kind, and that grief is strong; it knows not well what _is_ possible to suchgrief. To silence a stream, to move a cottage wall, --one might thinkit could do as much as that!

I believe these instances are enough to illustrate the main point Iinsist upon respecting the pathetic fallacy, --that so far as it is afallacy, it is always the sign of a morbid state of mind, andcomparatively of a weak one. Even in the most inspired prophet it is asign of the incapacity of his human sight or thought to bear what hasbeen revealed to it. In ordinary poetry, if it is found in thethoughts of the poet himself, it is at once a sign of his belonging tothe inferior school; if in the thoughts of the characters imagined byhim, it is right or wrong according to the genuineness of the emotionfrom which it springs; always, however, implying necessarily _some_degree of weakness in the character. 

Take two most exquisite instances from master hands. The Jessy ofShenstone, and the Ellen of Wordsworth, have both been betrayed anddeserted. Jessy, in the course of her most touching complaint says:--

 If through the garden's flowery tribes I stray, Where bloom the jasmines that could once allure, "Hope not to find delight in us, " they say, "For we are spotless, Jessy; we are pure. "[71]

Compare with this some of the words of Ellen:--

 "Ah, why, " said Ellen, sighing to herself, "Why do not words, and kiss, and solemn pledge, And nature, that is kind in woman's breast, And reason, that in man is wise and good, And fear of Him who is a righteous Judge, -- Why do not these prevail for human life, To keep two hearts together, that began Their springtime with one love, and that have need Of mutual pity and forgiveness sweet To grant, or be received; while that poor bird-- O, come and hear him! Thou who hast to me Been faithless, hear him;--though a lowly creature, One of God's simple children that yet know not The Universal Parent, _how_ he sings! As if he wished the firmament of heaven Should listen, and give back to him the voice Of his triumphant constancy and love; The proclamation that he makes, how far His darkness doth transcend our fickle light. "[72]

The perfection of both these passages, as far as regards truth andtenderness of imagination in the two poets, is quite insuperable. Butof the two characters imagined, Jessy is weaker than Ellen, exactly inso far as something appears to her to be in nature which is not. Theflowers do not really reproach her. God meant them to comfort her, notto taunt her; they would do so if she saw them rightly. 

Ellen, on the other hand, is quite above the slightest erring emotion. There is not the barest film of fallacy in all her thoughts. Shereasons as calmly as if she did not feel. And, although the singing ofthe bird suggests to her the idea of its desiring to be heard inheaven, she does not for an instant admit any veracity in the thought. "As if, " she says, --"I know he means nothing of the kind; but it doesverily seem as if. " The reader will find, by examining the rest of thepoem, that Ellen's character is throughout consistent in this clearthough passionate strength. [73]

It then being, I hope, now made clear to the reader in all respectsthat the pathetic fallacy is powerful only so far as it is pathetic, feeble so far as it is fallacious, and, therefore, that the dominionof Truth is entire, over this, as over every other natural and juststate of the human mind, we may go on to the subject for the dealingwith which this prefatory inquiry became necessary; and why necessary, we shall see forthwith. 

 [52] Three short sections discussing the use of the terms "Objective" and "Subjective" have been omitted from the beginning of this chapter. 

 [53] Holmes (Oliver Wendell), quoted by Miss Mitford in her _Recollections of a Literary Life_. [Ruskin. ] From _Astræa, a Poem delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale College_. The passage in which these lines are found was later published as _Spring_. 

 [54] Kingsley's _Alton Locke_, chap. 26. 

 [55] I admit two orders of poets, but no third; and by these two orders I mean the creative (Shakspere, Homer, Dante), and Reflective or Perceptive (Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson). But both of these must be _first_-rate in their range, though their range is different; and with poetry second-rate in _quality_ no one ought to be allowed to trouble mankind. There is quite enough of the best, --much more than we can ever read or enjoy in the length of a life; and it is a literal wrong or sin in any person to encumber us with inferior work. I have no patience with apologies made by young pseudo-poets, "that they believe there is _some_ good in what they have written: that they hope to do better in time, " etc. _Some_ good! If there is not _all_ good, there is no good. If they ever hope to do better, why do they trouble us now? Let them rather courageously burn all they have done, and wait for the better days. There are few men, ordinarily educated, who in moments of strong feeling could not strike out a poetical thought, and afterwards polish it so as to be presentable. But men of sense know better than so to waste their time; and those who sincerely love poetry, know the touch of the master's hand on the chords too well to fumble among them after him. Nay, more than this, all inferior poetry is an injury to the good, inasmuch as it takes away the freshness of rhymes, blunders upon and gives a wretched commonalty to good thoughts; and, in general, adds to the weight of human weariness in a most woful and culpable manner. There are few thoughts likely to come across ordinary men, which have not already been expressed by greater men in the best possible way; and it is a wiser, more generous, more noble thing to remember and point out the perfect words, than to invent poorer ones, wherewith to encumber temporarily the world. [Ruskin. ]

 [56] _Inferno_, 3. 112. 

 [57] _Christabel_, 1. 49-50. 

 [58] "Well said, old mole! can'st work i' the ground so fast?"--[Ruskin. ]

 [59] _Odyssey_, 11. 57-58. 

 [60] It is worth while comparing the way a similar question is put by the exquisite sincerity of Keats:--

 He wept, and his bright tears Went trickling down the golden bow he held. Thus, with half-shut, suffused eyes, he stood; While from beneath some cumbrous boughs hard by With solemn step an awful goddess came, And there was purport in her looks for him, Which he with eager guess began to read Perplex'd, the while melodiously he said, _"How cam'st thou over the unfooted sea?"_

 _Hyperion_, 3. 42. --[Ruskin. ]

 [61] See Wordsworth's _Peter Bell_, Part I:--

 A primrose by a river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more. 

 [62] _Jude_ 13. 

 [63] _Kings_ xxiii, 18, and _Hosea_ x, 7. 

 [64] _Iliad_, 3. 243. In the MS. Ruskin notes, "The insurpassably tender irony in the epithet--'life-giving earth'--of the grave"; and then adds another illustration:--"Compare the hammer-stroke at the close of the [32d] chapter of _Vanity Fair_--'The darkness came down on the field and city, and Amelia was praying for George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart. A great deal might have been said about it. The writer is very sorry for Amelia, neither does he want faith in prayer. He knows as well as any of us that prayer must be answered in some sort; but those are the facts. The man and woman sixteen miles apart---one on her knees on the floor, the other on his face in the clay. So much love in her heart, so much lead in his. Make what you can of it. " [Cook and Wedderburn. ]

 [65] The poem may be crudely paraphrased as follows:--

 "Quick, Anna, quick! to the mirror! It is late, And I'm to dance at the ambassador's ... I'm going to the ball ... 

 "They're faded, see, These ribbons--they belong to yesterday. Heavens, how all things pass! Now gracefully hang The blue tassels from the net that holds my hair. 

 "Higher!--no, lower!--you get nothing right!... Now let this sapphire sparkle on my brow. You're pricking me, you careless thing! That's good! I love you, Anna dear. How fair I am.... 

 "I hope he'll be there, too--the one I've tried To forget! no use! (Anna, my gown!) he too ... (O fie, you wicked girl! my necklace, _this?_ These golden beads the Holy Father blessed?)

 "He'll be there--Heavens! suppose he takes my hand --I scarce can draw my breath for thinking of it! And I confess to Father Anselmo To-morrow--how can I ever tell him _all_?... One last glance at the mirror. O, I'm sure That they'll adore me at the ball to-night. "

 Before the fire she stands admiringly. O God! a spark has leapt into her gown. Fire, fire!--O run!--Lost thus when mad with hope? What, die? and she so fair? The hideous flames Rage greedily about her arms and breast, Envelop her, and leaping ever higher, Swallow up all her beauty, pitiless-- Her eighteen years, alas! and her sweet dream. 

 Adieu to ball, to pleasure, and to love! "Poor Constance!" said the dancers at the ball, "Poor Constance!"--and they danced till break of day. 

 [66] _Isaiah_ xiv, 8. 

 [67] _Isaiah_ lv, 12. 

 [68] _Night Thoughts_, 2. 345. 

 [69] Pastorals: _Summer, or Alexis_, 73 ff. , with the omission of two couplets after the first. 

 [70] From the poem beginning _'T is said that some have died for love_, Ruskin evidently quoted from memory, for there are several verbal slips in the passage quoted. 

 [71] Stanza 16, of Shenstone's twenty-sixth Elegy. 

 [72] _The Excursion_, 6. 869 ff. 

 [73] I cannot quit this subject without giving two more instances, both exquisite, of the pathetic fallacy, which I have just come upon, in Maud:--

 For a great speculation had fail'd; And ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever wann'd with despair; And out he walk'd, when the wind like a broken worldling wail'd, And the _flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands drove thro' the air. _

 There has fallen a splendid tear From the passion-flower at the gate. _The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near!" And the white rose weeps, "She is late. " The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear!" And the lily whispers, "I wait. "_ [Ruskin. ]

OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE

VOLUME III, CHAPTER 13

My reason for asking the reader to give so much of his time to theexamination of the pathetic fallacy was, that, whether in literatureor in art, he will find it eminently characteristic of the modernmind; and in the landscape, whether of literature or art, he will alsofind the modern painter endeavouring to express something which he, asa living creature imagines in the lifeless object, while the classicaland mediæval painters were content with expressing the unimaginary andactual qualities of the object itself. It will be observed that, according to the principle stated long ago, I use the words painterand poet quite indifferently, including in our inquiry the landscapeof literature, as well as that of painting; and this the more becausethe spirit of classical landscape has hardly been expressed in anyother way than by words. 

Taking, therefore, this wide field, it is surely a very notablecircumstance, to begin with, that this pathetic fallacy is eminentlycharacteristic of modern painting. For instance, Keats, describing awave breaking out at sea, says of it:--

 Down whose green back the short-lived foam, all hoar, Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence. [74]

That is quite perfect, as an example of the modern manner. The ideaof the peculiar action with which foam rolls down a long, large wavecould not have been given by any other words so well as by this"wayward indolence. " But Homer would never have written, never thoughtof, such words. He could not by any possibility have lost sight ofthe great fact that the wave, from the beginning to the end of it, dowhat it might, was still nothing else than salt water; and that saltwater could not be either wayward or indolent. He will call thewaves "over-roofed, " "full-charged, " "monstrous, " "compact-black, ""dark-clear, " "violet-coloured, " "wine-coloured, " and so on. Butevery one of these epithets is descriptive of pure physical nature. "Over-roofed" is the term he invariably uses of anything--rock, house, or wave--that nods over at the brow; the other terms need noexplanation; they are as accurate and intense in truth as words canbe, but they never show the slightest feeling of anything animated inthe ocean. Black or clear, monstrous or violet-coloured, cold saltwater it is always, and nothing but that. 

"Well, but the modern writer, by his admission of the tinge offallacy, has given an idea of something in the action of the wavewhich Homer could not, and surely, therefore, has made a step inadvance? Also there appears to be a degree of sympathy and feeling inthe one writer, which there is not in the other; and as it has beenreceived for a first principle that writers are great in, proportionto the intensity of their feelings, and Homer seems to have nofeelings about the sea but that it is black and deep, surely in thisrespect also the modern writer is the greater?"

Stay a moment. Homer _had_ some feeling about the sea; a faith in theanimation of it much stronger than Keats's. But all this sense ofsomething living in it, he separates in his mind into a great abstractimage of a Sea Power. He never says the waves rage, or the waves areidle. But he says there is somewhat in, and greater than, the waves, which rages, and is idle, and _that_ he calls a god. 

I do not think we ever enough endeavour to enter into what a Greek'sreal notion of a god was. We are so accustomed to the modern mockeriesof the classical religion, so accustomed to hear and see the Greekgods introduced as living personages, or invoked for help, by men whobelieve neither in them nor in any other gods, that we seem to haveinfected the Greek ages themselves with the breath, and dimmed themwith the shade, of our hypocrisy; and are apt to think that Homer, aswe know that Pope, was merely an ingenious fabulist; nay, more thanthis, that all the nations of past time were ingenious fabulists also, to whom the universe was a lyrical drama, and by whom whatsoever wassaid about it was merely a witty allegory, or a graceful lie, of whichthe entire upshot and consummation was a pretty statue in the middleof the court, or at the end of the garden. 

This, at least, is one of our forms of opinion about Greek faith; not, indeed, possible altogether to any man of honesty or ordinary powersof thought; but still so venomously inherent in the modern philosophythat all the pure lightning of Carlyle cannot as yet quite burn it outof any of us. And then, side by side with this mere infidel folly, stands the bitter short-sightedness of Puritanism, holding theclassical god to be either simply an idol, --a block of stoneignorantly, though sincerely, worshipped--or else an actual diabolicor betraying power, usurping the place of God. 

Both these Puritanical estimates of Greek deity are of course to someextent true. The corruption of classical worship is barren idolatry;and that corruption was deepened, and variously directed to their ownpurposes, by the evil angels. But this was neither the whole, nor theprincipal part, of Pagan worship. Pallas was not, in the pure Greekmind, merely a powerful piece of ivory in a temple at Athens; neitherwas the choice of Leonidas between the alternatives granted him by theoracle, of personal death, or ruin to his country, altogether a workof the Devil's prompting. 

What, then, was actually the Greek god? In what way were these twoideas of human form, and divine power, credibly associated in theancient heart, so as to become a subject of true faith irrespectiveequally of fable, allegory, superstitious trust in stone, anddemoniacal influence?

It seems to me that the Greek had exactly the same instinctive feelingabout the elements that we have ourselves; that to Homer, as much asto Casimir de la Vigne, [75] fire seemed ravenous and pitiless; toHomer, as much as to Keats, the sea-wave appeared wayward or idle, orwhatever else it may be to the poetical passion. But then the Greekreasoned upon this sensation, saying to himself: "I can light thefire, and put it out; I can dry this water up, or drink it. It cannotbe the fire or the water that rages, or that is wayward. But it mustbe something _in_ this fire and _in_ the water, which I cannot destroyby extinguishing the one, or evaporating the other, any more than Idestroy myself by cutting off my finger; _I_ was _in_ myfinger, --something of me at least was; I had a power over it and feltpain in it, though I am still as much myself when it is gone. So theremay be a power in the water which is not water, but to which the wateris as a body;--which can strike with it, move in it, suffer in it, yetnot be destroyed with it. This something, this Great Water Spirit, Imust not confuse with the waves, which are only its body. _They_ mayflow hither and thither, increase or diminish. _That_ must beinvisible--imperishable--a god. So of fire also; those rays which Ican stop, and in the midst of which I cast a shadow, cannot be divine, nor greater than I. They cannot feel, but there may be something inthem that feels, --a glorious intelligence, as much nobler and moreswift than mine, as these rays, which are its body, are nobler andswifter than my flesh;--the spirit of all light, and truth, andmelody, and revolving hours. "

It was easy to conceive, farther, that such spirits should be able toassume at will a human form, in order to hold intercourse with men, orto perform any act for which their proper body, whether of fire, earth, or air, was unfitted. And it would have been to place thembeneath, instead of above, humanity, if, assuming the form of man, they could not also have tasted his pleasures. Hence the easy step tothe more or less material ideas of deities, which are apt at first toshock us, but which are indeed only dishonourable so far as theyrepresent the gods as false and unholy. It is not the materialism, butthe vice, which degrades the conception; for the materialism itself isnever positive or complete. There is always some sense of exaltationin the spiritual and immortal body; and of a power proceeding from thevisible form through all the infinity of the element ruled by theparticular god. The precise nature of the idea is well seen in thepassage of the _Iliad_ which describes the river Scamander defendingthe Trojans against Achilles. [76] In order to remonstrate with thehero, the god assumes a human form, which nevertheless is in some wayor other instantly recognized by Achilles as that of the river-god: itis addressed at once as a river, not as a man; and its voice is thevoice of a river "out of the deep whirlpools. "[77] Achilles refuses toobey its commands; and from the human form it returns instantly intoits natural or divine one, and endeavours to overwhelm him with waves. Vulcan defends Achilles, and sends fire against the river, whichsuffers in its water-body, till it is able to bear no more. At lasteven the "nerve of the river, " or "strength of the river" (note theexpression), feels the fire, and this "strength of the river"addresses Vulcan in supplications for respite. There is in thisprecisely the idea of a vital part of the river-body, which acted andfelt, and which, if the fire reached, it was death, just as would bethe case if it touched a vital part of the human body. Throughout thepassage the manner of conception is perfectly clear and consistent;and if, in other places, the exact connection between the rulingspirit and the thing ruled is not so manifest, it is only because itis almost impossible for the human mind to dwell long upon suchsubjects without falling into inconsistencies, and graduallyslackening its effort to grasp the entire truth; until the morespiritual part of it slips from its hold, and only the human form ofthe god is left, to be conceived and described as subject to all theerrors of humanity. But I do not believe that the idea ever weakensitself down to mere allegory. When Pallas is said to attack and strikedown Mars, it does not mean merely that Wisdom at that momentprevailed against Wrath. It means that there are, indeed, two greatspirits, one entrusted to guide the human soul to wisdom and chastity, the other to kindle wrath and prompt to battle. It means that thesetwo spirits, on the spot where, and at the moment when, a greatcontest was to be decided between all that they each governed in man, then and there (assumed) human form, and human weapons, and did verilyand materially strike at each other, until the Spirit of Wrath wascrushed. And when Diana is said to hunt with her nymphs in the woods, it does not mean merely, as Wordsworth puts it, [78] that the poet orshepherd saw the moon and stars glancing between the branches of thetrees, and wished to say so figuratively. It means that there is aliving spirit, to which the light of the moon is a body; which takesdelight in glancing between the clouds and following the wild beastsas they wander through the night; and that this spirit sometimesassumes a perfect human form, and in this form, with real arrows, pursues and slays the wild beasts, which with its mere arrows ofmoonlight it could not slay; retaining, nevertheless, all the while, its power and being in the moonlight, and in all else that itrules. 

There is not the smallest inconsistency or unspirituality in thisconception. If there were, it would attach equally to the appearanceof the angels to Jacob, Abraham, Joshua, or Manoah. [79] In all thoseinstances the highest authority which governs our own faith requiresus to conceive divine power clothed with a human form (a form so realthat it is recognized for superhuman only by its "doing wondrously"), and retaining, nevertheless, sovereignty and omnipresence in all theworld. This is precisely, as I understand it, the heathen idea of aGod; and it is impossible to comprehend any single part of the Greekmind until we grasp this faithfully, not endeavouring to explain itaway in any wise, but accepting, with frank decision and definition, the tangible existence of its deities;--blue-eyed--white-fleshed--human-hearted, --capable at their choice of meeting man absolutely inhis own nature--feasting with him--talking with him--fighting withhim, eye to eye, or breast to breast, as Mars with Diomed;[80] or else, dealing with him in a more retired spirituality, as Apollo sending theplague upon the Greeks, [81] when his quiver rattles at his shoulders ashe moves, and yet the darts sent forth of it strike not as arrows, butas plague; or, finally, retiring completely into the material universewhich they properly inhabit, and dealing with man through that, asScamander with Achilles, through his waves. 

Nor is there anything whatever in the various actions recorded of thegods, however apparently ignoble, to indicate weakness of belief inthem. Very frequently things which appear to us ignoble are merely thesimplicities of a pure and truthful age. When Juno beats Diana aboutthe ears with her own quiver, [82] for instance, we start at first, asif Homer could not have believed that they were both real goddesses. But what should Juno have done? Killed Diana with a look? Nay, sheneither wished to do so, nor could she have done so, by the very faithof Diana's goddess-ship. Diana is as immortal as herself. FrownedDiana into submission? But Diana has come expressly to try conclusionswith her, and will by no means be frowned into submission. Wounded herwith a celestial lance? That sounds more poetical, but it is inreality partly more savage and partly more absurd, than Homer. Moresavage, for it makes Juno more cruel, therefore less divine; and moreabsurd, for it only seems elevated in tone, because we use the word"celestial, " which means nothing. What sort of a thing is a "celestial"lance? Not a wooden one. Of what then? Of moonbeams, or clouds, ormist. Well, therefore, Diana's arrows were of mist too; and herquiver, and herself, and Juno, with her lance, and all, vanish intomist. Why not have said at once, if that is all you mean, that twomists met, and one drove the other back? That would have been rationaland intelligible, but not to talk of celestial lances. Homer had nosuch misty fancy; he believed the two goddesses were there in truebodies, with true weapons, on the true earth; and still I ask, whatshould Juno have done? Not beaten Diana? No; for it is unlady-like. Un-English-lady-like, yes; but by no means un-Greek-lady-like, noreven un-natural-lady-like. If a modern lady does _not_ beat herservant or her rival about the ears, it is oftener because she is tooweak, or too proud, than because she is of purer mind than Homer'sJuno. She will not strike them; but she will overwork the one orslander the other without pity; and Homer would not have thought thatone whit more goddess-like than striking them with her open hand. 

If, however, the reader likes to suppose that while the two goddessesin personal presence thus fought with arrow and quiver, there was alsoa broader and vaster contest supposed by Homer between the elementsthey ruled; and that the goddess of the heavens, as she struck thegoddess of the moon on the flushing cheek, was at the same instantexercising omnipresent power in the heavens themselves, and gatheringclouds, with which, filled with the moon's own arrows or beams, shewas encumbering and concealing the moon; he is welcome to this outcarrying of the idea, provided that he does not pretend to make it aninterpretation instead of a mere extension, nor think to explain awaymy real, running, beautiful beaten Diana, into a moon behindclouds. [83]

It is only farther to be noted, that the Greek conception of Godhead, as it was much more real than we usually suppose, so it was much morebold and familiar than to a modern mind would be possible. I shallhave something more to observe, in a little while, of the danger ofour modern habit of endeavouring to raise ourselves to something likecomprehension of the truth of divinity, instead of simply believingthe words in which the Deity reveals Himself to us. The Greek erredrather on the other side, making hardly any effort to conceive divinemind as above the human; and no more shrinking from frank intercoursewith a divine being, or dreading its immediate presence, than that ofthe simplest of mortals. Thus Atrides, enraged at his sword's breakingin his hand upon the helmet of Paris, after he had expressly invokedthe assistance of Jupiter, exclaims aloud, as he would to a king whohad betrayed him, "Jove, Father, there is not another god moreevil-minded than thou!"[84] and Helen, provoked at Paris's defeat, andoppressed with pouting shame both for him and for herself, when Venusappears at her side, and would lead her back to the delivered Paris, impatiently tells the goddess to "go and take care of Parisherself. "[85]

The modern mind is naturally, but vulgarly and unjustly, shocked bythis kind of familiarity. Rightly understood, it is not so much a signof misunderstanding of the divine nature as of good understanding ofthe human. The Greek lived, in all things, a healthy, and, in acertain degree, a perfect life. He had no morbid or sickly feeling ofany kind. He was accustomed to face death without the slightestshrinking, to undergo all kinds of bodily hardship without complaint, and to do what he supposed right and honourable, in most cases, as amatter of course. Confident of his own immortality, and of the powerof abstract justice, he expected to be dealt with in the next world aswas right, and left the matter much in his god's hands; but being thusimmortal, and finding in his own soul something which it seemed quiteas difficult to master, as to rule the elements, he did not feel thatit was an appalling superiority in those gods to have bodies of water, or fire, instead of flesh, and to have various work to do among theclouds and waves, out of his human way; or sometimes, even in a sortof service to himself. Was not the nourishment of herbs and flowers akind of ministering to his wants; were not the gods in some sort hishusbandmen, and spirit-servants? Their mere strength or omnipresencedid not seem to him a distinction absolutely terrific. It might be thenature of one being to be in two places at once, and of another to beonly in one; but that did not seem of itself to infer any absolutelordliness of one nature above the other, any more than an insect mustbe a nobler creature than a man, because it can see on four sides ofits head, and the man only in front. They could kill him or torturehim, it was true; but even that not unjustly, or not for ever. Therewas a fate, and a Divine Justice, greater than they; so that if theydid wrong, and he right, he might fight it out with them, and have thebetter of them at last. In a general way, they were wiser, stronger, and better than he; and to ask counsel of them, to obey them, tosacrifice to them, to thank them for all good, this was well: but tobe utterly downcast before them, or not to tell them his mind in plainGreek if they seemed to him to be conducting themselves in an ungodlymanner--this would not be well. 

Such being their general idea of the gods, we can now easilyunderstand the habitual tone of their feelings towards what wasbeautiful in nature. With us, observe, the idea of the Divinity is aptto get separated from the life of nature; and imagining our God upon acloudy throne, far above the earth, and not in the flowers or waters, we approach those visible things with a theory that they are dead;governed by physical laws, and so forth. But coming to them, we findthe theory fail; that they are not dead; that, say what we chooseabout them, the instinctive sense of their being alive is too strongfor us; and in scorn of all physical law, the wilful fountain sings, and the kindly flowers rejoice. And then, puzzled, and yet happy;pleased, and yet ashamed of being so; accepting sympathy from naturewhich we do not believe it gives, and giving sympathy to nature, whichwe do not believe it receives, --mixing, besides, all manner ofpurposeful play and conceit with these involuntary fellowships, --wefall necessarily into the curious web of hesitating sentiment, pathetic fallacy, and wandering fancy, which form a great part of ourmodern view of nature. But the Greek never removed his god out ofnature at all; never attempted for a moment to contradict hisinstinctive sense that God was everywhere. "The tree _is_ glad, " saidhe, "I know it is; I can cut it down: no matter, there was a nymph init. The water _does_ sing, " said he; "I can dry it up; but no matter, there was a naiad in it. " But in thus clearly defining his belief, observe, he threw it entirely into a human form, and gave his faith tonothing but the image of his own humanity. What sympathy andfellowship he had, were always for the spirit _in_ the stream, not forthe stream; always for the dryad _in_ the wood, not for the wood. Content with this human sympathy, he approached the actual waves andwoody fibres with no sympathy at all. The spirit that ruled them, hereceived as a plain fact. Them, also, ruled and material, he receivedas plain facts; they, without their spirit, were dead enough. A rosewas good for scent, and a stream for sound and coolness; for the rest, one was no more than leaves, the other no more than water; he couldnot make anything else of them; and the divine power, which wasinvolved in their existence, having been all distilled away by himinto an independent Flora or Thetis, the poor leaves or waves wereleft, in mere cold corporealness, to make the most of their beingdiscernibly red and soft, clear and wet, and unacknowledged in anyother power whatsoever. 

Then, observe farther, the Greeks lived in the midst of the mostbeautiful nature, and were as familiar with blue sea, clear air, andsweet outlines of mountain, as we are with brick walls, black smoke, and level fields. This perfect familiarity rendered all such scenes ofnatural beauty unexciting, if not indifferent to them, by lulling andoverwearying the imagination as far as it was concerned with suchthings; but there was another kind of beauty which they found itrequired effort to obtain, and which, when thoroughly obtained, seemedmore glorious than any of this wild loveliness--the beauty of thehuman countenance and form. This, they perceived, could only bereached by continual exercise of virtue; and it was in Heaven's sight, and theirs, all the more beautiful because it needed this self-denialto obtain it. So they set themselves to reach this, and having gainedit, gave it their principal thoughts, and set it off with beautifuldress as best they might. But making this their object, they wereobliged to pass their lives in simple exercise and disciplinedemployments. Living wholesomely, giving themselves no fever fits, either by fasting or over-eating, constantly in the open air, and fullof animal spirit and physical power, they became incapable of everymorbid condition of mental emotion. Unhappy love, disappointedambition, spiritual despondency, or any other disturbing sensation, had little power over the well-braced nerves, and healthy flow of theblood; and what bitterness might yet fasten on them was soon boxed orraced out of a boy, and spun or woven out of a girl, or danced out ofboth. They had indeed their sorrows, true and deep, but still, morelike children's sorrows than ours, whether bursting into open cry ofpain, or hid with shuddering under the veil, still passing over thesoul as clouds do over heaven, not sullying it, not mingling withit;--darkening it perhaps long or utterly, but still not becoming onewith it, and for the most part passing away in dashing rain of tears, and leaving the man unchanged; in no wise affecting, as our sorrowdoes, the whole tone of his thought and imagination thenceforward. 

How far our melancholy may be deeper and wider than theirs in itsroots and view, and therefore nobler, we shall consider presently; butat all events, they had the advantage of us in being entirely freefrom all those dim and feverish sensations which result from unhealthystate of the body. I believe that a large amount of the dreamy andsentimental sadness, tendency to reverie, and general patheticalnessof modern life results merely from derangement of stomach; holding tothe Greek life the same relation that the feverish night of an adultdoes to a child's sleep. 

Farther. The human beauty, which, whether in its bodily being or inimagined divinity, had become, for the reasons we have seen, theprincipal object of culture and sympathy to these Greeks, was, in itsperfection, eminently orderly, symmetrical, and tender. Hence, contemplating it constantly in this state, they could not but feel aproportionate fear of all that was disorderly, unbalanced, and rugged. Having trained their stoutest soldiers into a strength so delicate andlovely, that their white flesh, with their blood upon it, should looklike ivory stained with purple;[86] and having always around them, inthe motion and majesty of this beauty, enough for the full employmentof their imagination, they shrank with dread or hatred from all theruggedness of lower nature, --from the wrinkled forest bark, the jaggedhill-crest, and irregular, inorganic storm of sky; looking to thesefor the most part as adverse powers, and taking pleasure only in suchportions of the lower world as were at once conducive to the rest andhealth of the human frame, and in harmony with the laws of its gentlerbeauty. 

Thus, as far as I recollect, without a single exception, every Homericlandscape, intended to be beautiful, is composed of a fountain, ameadow, and a shady grove. This ideal is very interestingly marked, asintended for a perfect one, in the fifth book of the _Odyssey_; whenMercury himself stops for a moment, though on a message, to look at alandscape "which even an immortal might be gladdened to behold. "[87]This landscape consists of a cave covered with a running vine, allblooming into grapes, and surrounded by a grove of alder, poplar, andsweet-smelling cypress. Four fountains of white (foaming) water, springing _in succession_ (mark the orderliness), and close to oneanother, flow away in different directions, through a meadow full ofviolets and parsley (parsley, to mark its moisture, being elsewherecalled "marsh-nourished, " and associated with the lotus[88]); the airis perfumed not only by these violets, and by the sweet cypress, butby Calypso's fire of finely chopped cedar-wood, which sends a smoke, as of incense, through the island; Calypso herself is singing; andfinally, upon the trees are resting, or roosting, owls, hawks, and"long-tongued sea-crows. " Whether these last are considered as a partof the ideal landscape, as marine singing birds, I know not; but theapproval of Mercury appears to be elicited chiefly by the fountainsand violet meadow. 

Now the notable things in this description are, first, the evidentsubservience of the whole landscape to human comfort, to the foot, thetaste, or the smell; and, secondly, that throughout the passage thereis not a single figurative word expressive of the things being in anywise other than plain grass, fruit, or flower. I have used the term"spring" of the fountains, because, without doubt, Homer means thatthey sprang forth brightly, having their source at the foot of therocks (as copious fountains nearly always have); but Homer does notsay "spring, " he says simply flow, and uses only one word for "growingsoftly, " or "richly, " of the tall trees, the vine, and the violets. There is, however, some expression of sympathy with the sea-birds; hespeaks of them in precisely the same terms, as in other places ofnaval nations, saying they "have care of the works of the sea. "

If we glance through the references to pleasant landscape which occurin other parts of the _Odyssey_, we shall always be struck by thisquiet subjection of their every feature to human service, and by theexcessive similarity in the scenes. Perhaps the spot intended, afterthis, to be most perfect, may be the garden of Alcinous, where theprincipal ideas are, still more definitely, order, symmetry andfruitfulness;[89] the beds being duly ranged between rows of vines, which, as well as the pear, apple, and fig trees, bear fruitcontinually, some grapes being yet sour, while others are gettingblack; there are plenty of "_orderly_ square beds of herbs, " chieflyleeks, and two fountains, one running through the garden, and oneunder the pavement of the palace to a reservoir for the citizens. Ulysses, pausing to contemplate this scene, is described nearly in thesame terms as Mercury pausing to contemplate the wilder meadow; and itis interesting to observe, that, in spite of all Homer's love ofsymmetry, the god's admiration is excited by the free fountains, wildviolets, and wandering vine; but the mortal's, by the vines in rows, the leeks in beds, and the fountains in pipes. 

Ulysses has, however, one touching reason for loving vines in rows. His father had given him fifty rows for himself, when he was a boy, with corn between them (just as it now grows in Italy). Proving hisidentity afterwards to his father, whom he finds at work in hisgarden, "with thick gloves on, to keep his hands from the thorns, " hereminds him of these fifty rows of vines, and of the "thirteenpear-trees and ten apple-trees" which he had given him: and Laertesfaints upon his neck. [90]

If Ulysses had not been so much of a gardener, it might have beenreceived as a sign of considerable feeling for landscape beauty, that, intending to pay the very highest possible compliment to the PrincessNausicaa (and having, indeed, the moment before gravely asked herwhether she was a goddess or not), he says that he feels, at seeingher, exactly as he did when he saw the young palm tree growing atApollo's shrine at Delos. [91] But I think the taste for trim hedgesand upright trunks has its usual influence over him here also, andthat he merely means to tell the princess that she is delightfullytall and straight. 

The princess is, however, pleased by his address, and tells him towait outside the town, till she can speak to her father about him. Thespot to which she directs him is another ideal piece of landscape, composed of a "beautiful grove of aspen poplars, a fountain, and ameadow, "[92] near the road-side: in fact, as nearly as possible such ascene as meets the eye of the traveller every instant on themuch-despised lines of road through lowland France; for instance, onthe railway between Arras and Amiens;--scenes, to my mind, quiteexquisite in the various grouping and grace of their innumerablepoplar avenues, casting sweet, tremulous shadows over their levelmeadows and labyrinthine streams. We know that the princess meansaspen poplars, because soon afterwards we find her fifty maid-servantsat the palace, all spinning and in perpetual motion, compared to the"leaves of the tall poplar"; and it is with exquisite feeling that itis made afterwards[93] the chief tree in the groves of Proserpine; itslight and quivering leafage having exactly the melancholy expressionof fragility, faintness, and inconstancy which the ancients attributedto the disembodied spirit. [94] The likeness to the poplars by thestreams of Amiens is more marked still in the _Iliad_, where the youngSimois, struck by Ajax, falls to the earth "like an aspen that hasgrown in an irrigated meadow, smooth-trunked, the soft shootsspringing from its top, which some coach-making man has cut down withhis keen iron, that he may fit a wheel of it to a fair chariot, and itlies parching by the side of the stream. "[95] It is sufficientlynotable that Homer, living in mountainous and rocky countries, dwellsthus delightedly on all the _flat_ bits; and so I think invariably theinhabitants of mountain countries do, but the inhabitants of theplains do not, in any similar way, dwell delightedly on mountains. TheDutch painters are perfectly contented with their flat fields andpollards;[96] Rubens, though he had seen the Alps, usually composeshis landscapes of a hayfield or two, plenty of pollards and willows, adistant spire, a Dutch house with a moat about it, a windmill, and aditch. The Flemish sacred painters are the only ones who introducemountains in the distance, as we shall see presently; but rather in aformal way than with any appearance of enjoyment. So Shakspere neverspeaks of mountains with the slightest joy, but only of lowlandflowers, flat fields, and Warwickshire streams. And if we talk to themountaineer, he will usually characterize his own country to us as a"pays affreux, " or in some equivalent, perhaps even more violent, German term: but the lowland peasant does not think his countryfrightful; he either will have no ideas beyond it, or about it; orwill think it a very perfect country, and be apt to regard anydeviation from its general principle of flatness with extremedisfavour; as the Lincolnshire farmer in _Alton Locke_: "I'll shaw 'eesome'at like a field o' beans, I wool--none o' this here darned upsand downs o' hills, to shake a body's victuals out of his inwards--allso vlat as a barn's vloor, for vorty mile on end--there's the countryto live in!"[97]

I do not say whether this be altogether right (though certainly notwholly wrong), but it seems to me that there must be in the simplefreshness and fruitfulness of level land, in its pale upright trees, and gentle lapse of silent streams, enough for the satisfaction of thehuman mind in general; and I so far agree with Homer, that, if I hadto educate an artist to the full perception of the meaning of the word"gracefulness" in landscape, I should send him neither to Italy nor toGreece, but simply to those poplar groves between Arras and Amiens. 

But to return more definitely to our Homeric landscape. When it isperfect, we have, as in the above instances, the foliage and meadowstogether; when imperfect, it is always either the foliage or themeadow; pre-eminently the meadow, or arable field. Thus, meadows ofasphodel are prepared for the happier dead; and even Orion, a hunteramong the mountains in his lifetime, pursues the ghosts of beasts inthese asphodel meadows after death. [98] So the sirens sing in ameadow; [99] and throughout the _Odyssey_ there is a general tendencyto the depreciation of poor Ithaca, because it is rocky, and only fitfor goats, and has "no meadows";[100] for which reason Telemachusrefuses Atrides's present of horses, congratulating the Spartan kingat the same time on ruling over a plain which has "plenty of lotus init, and rushes, " with corn and barley. Note this constant dwelling onthe marsh plants, or, at least, those which grow in flat andwell-irrigated land, or beside streams: when Scamander, for instance, is restrained by Vulcan, Homer says, very sorrowfully, that "all hislotus, and reeds, and rushes were burnt";[101] and thus Ulysses, afterbeing shipwrecked and nearly drowned, and beaten about the sea formany days and nights, on raft and mast, at last getting ashore at themouth of a large river, casts himself down first upon its _rushes_, and then, in thankfulness, kisses the "corn-giving land, " as mostopposed, in his heart, to the fruitless and devouring sea. [102]

In this same passage, also, we find some peculiar expressions of thedelight which the Greeks had in trees; for, when Ulysses first comesin sight of land, which gladdens him "as the reviving of a father fromhis sickness gladdens his children, " it is not merely the sight of theland itself which gives him such pleasure, but of the "land and_wood_. " Homer never throws away any words, at least in such a placeas this; and what in another poet would have been merely the fillingup of the deficient line with an otherwise useless word, is in him theexpression of the general Greek sense, that land of any kind was in nowise grateful or acceptable till there was _wood_ upon it (or corn;but the corn, in the flats, could not be seen so far as the blackmasses of forest on the hill sides), and that, as in being rushy andcorn-giving, the low land, so in being woody, the high land was mostgrateful to the mind of the man who for days and nights had beenwearied on the engulphing sea. And this general idea of wood and corn, as the types of the fatness of the whole earth, is beautifully markedin another place of the _Odyssey_, [103] where the sailors in a desertisland, having no flour of corn to offer as a meat offering with theirsacrifices, take the leaves of the trees, and scatter them over theburnt offering instead. 

But still, every expression of the pleasure which Ulysses has in thislanding and resting, contains uninterruptedly the reference to theutility and sensible pleasantness of all things, not to their beauty. After his first grateful kiss given to the corn-growing land, heconsiders immediately how he is to pass the night; for some minuteshesitating whether it will be best to expose himself to the mistychill from the river, or run the risk of wild beasts in the wood. Hedecides for the wood, and finds in it a bower formed by a sweet and awild olive tree, interlacing their branches, or--perhaps moreaccurately translating Homer's intensely graphic expression--"changingtheir branches with each other" (it is very curious how often, in anentanglement of wood, one supposes the branches to belong to the wrongtrees) and forming a roof penetrated by neither rain, sun, nor wind. Under this bower Ulysses collects the "_vain_ (or _frustrate_)outpouring of the dead leaves"--another exquisite expression, usedelsewhere of useless grief or shedding of tears;--and, having gotenough together, makes his bed of them, and goes to sleep, havingcovered himself up with them, "as embers are covered up withashes. "[104]

Nothing can possibly be more intensely possessive of the _facts_ thanthis whole passage: the sense of utter deadness and emptiness, andfrustrate fall in the leaves; of dormant life in the human body, --thefire, and heroism, and strength of it, lulled under the dead brownheap, as embers under ashes, and the knitting of interchanged andclose strength of living boughs above. But there is not the smallestapparent sense of there being _beauty_ elsewhere than in the humanbeing. The wreathed wood is admired simply as being a perfect roof forit; the fallen leaves only as being a perfect bed for it; and there isliterally no more excitement of emotion in Homer, as he describesthem, nor does he expect us to be more excited or touched by hearingabout them, than if he had been telling us how the chambermaid at theBull aired the four-poster, and put on two extra blankets. 

Now, exactly this same contemplation of subservience to human usemakes the Greek take some pleasure in _rocks_, when they assume oneparticular form, but one only--that of a _cave_. They are evidentlyquite frightful things to him under any other condition, and most ofall if they are rough and jagged; but if smooth, looking "sculptured, "like the sides of a ship, and forming a cave or shelter for him, hebegins to think them endurable. Hence, associating the ideas of richand sheltering wood, sea, becalmed and made useful as a port byprotecting promontories of rock, and smoothed caves or grottoes in therocks themselves, we get the pleasantest idea which the Greek couldform of a landscape, next to a marsh with poplars in it; not, indeed, if possible, ever to be without these last; thus, in commending theCyclops' country as one possessed of every perfection, Homer erstsays: "They have soft _marshy_ meadows near the sea, and good, rich, crumbling, ploughing-land, giving fine deep crops, and vines alwaysgiving fruit"; then, "a port so quiet, that they have no need ofcables in it; and at the head of the port, a beautiful clear springjust _under a cave_, and _aspen poplars all round it_. "[105]

This, it will be seen, is very nearly Homer's usual "ideal"; but, going into the middle of the island, Ulysses comes on a rougher andless agreeable bit, though still fulfilling certain requiredconditions of endurableness; a "cave shaded with laurels, "[106] which, having no poplars about it, is, however, meant to be somewhatfrightful, and only fit to be inhabited by a Cyclops. So in thecountry of the Læstrygons, Homer, preparing his reader gradually forsomething very disagreeable, represents the rocks as bare and "exposedto the sun";[107] only with some smooth and slippery roads over them, by which the trucks bring down wood from the higher hills. Any onefamiliar with Swiss slopes of hills must remember how often he hasdescended, sometimes faster than was altogether intentional, by thesesame slippery woodman's truck roads. 

And thus, in general, whenever the landscape is intended to be lovely, it verges towards the ploughed lands and poplars; or, at worst, to_woody_ rocks; but, if intended to be painful, the rocks are bare and"sharp. " This last epithet, constantly used by Homer for mountains, does not altogether correspond, in Greek, to the English term, nor isit intended merely to characterize the sharp mountain summits; for itnever would be applied simply to the edge or point of a sword, butsignifies rather "harsh, " "bitter, " or "painful, " being appliedhabitually to fate, death, and in _Odyssey_ xi. 333, to a halter; and, as expressive of general objectionableness and unpleasantness, to allhigh, dangerous, or peaked mountains, as the Maleian promontory (amuch-dreaded one), the crest of Parnassus, the Tereian mountain, and agrim or untoward, though, by keeping off the force of the sea, protective, rock at the mouth of the Jardanus; as well as habituallyto inaccessible or impregnable fortresses built on heights. 

In all this I cannot too strongly mark the utter absence of anytrace of the feeling for what we call the picturesque, and theconstant dwelling of the writer's mind on what was available, pleasant, or useful: his ideas respecting all landscape being notuncharacteristially summed, finally, by Pallas herself; when, meetingUlysses, who after his long wandering does not recognize his owncountry, and meaning to describe it as politely and soothingly aspossible, she says:[108]--"This Ithaca of ours is, indeed, a roughcountry enough, and not good for driving in; but, still, things mightbe worse: it has plenty of corn, and good wine, and _always rain_, and soft nourishing dew; and it has good feeding for goats and oxen, and all manner of wood, and springs fit to drink at all the yearround. "

We shall see presently how the blundering, pseudo-picturesque, pseudo-classical minds of Claude and the Renaissance landscape-painters, wholly missing Homer's practical common sense, and equally incapableof feeling the quiet natural grace and sweetness of his asphodelmeadows, tender aspen poplars, or running vines, --fastened on his_ports_ and _caves_, as the only available features of his scenery;and appointed the type of "classical landscape" thenceforward toconsist in a bay of insipid sea, and a rock with a hole throughit. [109]

It may indeed be thought that I am assuming too hastily that this wasthe general view of the Greeks respecting landscape, because it wasHomer's. But I believe the true mind of a nation, at any period, isalways best ascertainable by examining that of its greatest men; andthat simpler and truer results will be attainable for us by simplycomparing Homer, Dante, and Walter Scott, than by attempting (what mylimits must have rendered absurdly inadequate, and in which, also, both my time and knowledge must have failed me) an analysis of thelandscape in the range of contemporary literature. All that I can do, is to state the general impression, which has been made upon me by mydesultory reading, and to mark accurately the grounds for thisimpression in the works of the greatest men. Now it is quite true thatin others of the Greeks, especially in Æschylus and Aristophanes, there is infinitely more of modern feeling, of pathetic fallacy, loveof picturesque or beautiful form, and other such elements, than thereis in Homer; but then these appear to me just the parts of them whichwere not Greek, the elements of their minds by which (as one divisionof the human race always must be with subsequent ones) they areconnected with the mediævals and moderns. And without doubt, in hisinfluence over future mankind, Homer is eminently the Greek of Greeks:if I were to associate any one with him it would be Herodotus, and Ibelieve all I have said of the Homeric landscape will be found equallytrue of the Herodotean, as assuredly it will be of the Platonic;--thecontempt, which Plato sometimes expresses by the mouth of Socrates, for the country in general, except so far as it is shady, and hascicadas and running streams to make pleasant noises in it, beingalmost ludicrous. But Homer is the great type, and the more notableone because of his influence on Virgil, and, through him, on Dante, and all the after ages: and, in like manner, if we can get theabstract of mediæval landscape out of Dante, it will serve us as wellas if we had read all the songs of the troubadours, and help us to thefarther changes in derivative temper, down to all modern time. 

I think, therefore, the reader may safely accept the conclusions aboutGreek landscape which I have got for him out of Homer; and in these hewill certainly perceive something very different from the usualimaginations we form of Greek feelings. We think of the Greeks aspoetical, ideal, imaginative, in the way that a modern poet ornovelist is; supposing that their thoughts about their mythology andworld were as visionary and artificial as ours are: but I think thepassages I have quoted show that it was not so, although it may bedifficult for us to apprehend the strange minglings in them of theelements of faith, which, in our days, have been blended with otherparts of human nature in a totally different guise. Perhaps the Greekmind may be best imagined by taking, as its groundwork, that of agood, conscientious, but illiterate Scotch Presbyterian Border farmerof a century or two back, having perfect faith in the bodilyappearances of Satan and his imps; and in all kelpies, brownies, andfairies. Substitute for the indignant terrors in this man's mind, ageneral persuasion of the _Divinity_, more or less beneficent, yetfaultful, of all these beings; that is to say, take away his belief inthe demoniacal malignity of the fallen spiritual world, and lower, inthe same degree, his conceptions of the angelical, retaining for himthe same firm faith in both; keep his ideas about flowers andbeautiful scenery much as they are, --his delight in regular ploughedland and meadows, and a neat garden (only with rows of gooseberrybushes instead of vines), being, in all probability, about accuratelyrepresentative of the feelings of Ulysses; then, let the militaryspirit that is in him, glowing against the Border forager, or the foeof old Flodden and Chevy-Chase, [110] be made more principal, with ahigher sense of nobleness in soldiership, not as a carelessexcitement, but a knightly duty; and increased by high cultivation ofevery personal quality, not of mere shaggy strength, but gracefulstrength, aided by a softer climate, and educated in all properharmony of sight and sound: finally, instead of an informed Christian, suppose him to have only the patriarchal Jewish knowledge of theDeity, and even this obscured by tradition, but still thoroughlysolemn and faithful, requiring his continual service as a priest ofburnt sacrifice and meat offering; and I think we shall get a prettyclose approximation to the vital being of a true old Greek; someslight difference still existing in a feeling which the Scotch farmerwould have of a pleasantness in blue hills and running streams, whollywanting in the Greek mind; and perhaps also some difference of viewson the subjects of truth and honesty. But the main points, the easy, athletic, strongly logical and argumentative, yet fanciful andcredulous, characters of mind, would be very similar in both; and themost serious change in the substance of the stuff among themodifications above suggested as necessary to turn the Scot into theGreek, is that effect of softer climate and surrounding luxury, inducing the practice of various forms of polished art, --the morepolished, because the practical and realistic tendency of the Hellenicmind (if my interpretation of it be right) would quite prevent it fromtaking pleasure in any irregularities of form, or imitations of theweeds and wildnesses of that mountain nature with which it thoughtitself born to contend. In its utmost refinement of work, it soughteminently for orderliness; carried the principle of the leeks insquares, and fountains in pipes, perfectly out in its streets andtemples; formalized whatever decoration it put into its minorarchitectural mouldings, and reserved its whole heart and power torepresent the action of living men, or gods, though not unconscious, meanwhile, of

 The simple, the sincere delight; The habitual scene of hill and dale; The rural herds, the vernal gale; The tangled vetches' purple bloom; The fragrance of the bean's perfume, -- Theirs, theirs alone, who cultivate the soil, And drink the cup of thirst, and eat the bread of toil. [111]

 [74] _Endymion_, 2. 349-350. 

 [75] See p. 68. 

 [76] _Iliad_, 21. 212-360. 

 [77] Compare _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, canto i. Stanza 15, and canto v. Stanza 2. In the first instance, the river-spirit is accurately the Homeric god, only Homer would have believed in it, --Scott did not, at least not altogether. [Ruskin. ]

 [78] _The Excursion_, 4. 861-871. 

 [79] _Genesis_ xxviii, 12; xxxii, 1; xxii, 11; _Joshua_ v, 13 ff. ; _Judges_ xiii, 3 ff. 

 [80] _Iliad_, 5. 846. 

 [81] _Iliad_, 1. 43. 

 [82] _Iliad_, 21. 489 ff. 

 [83] Compare the exquisite lines of Longfellow on the sunset in _The Golden Legend_:--

 The day is done; and slowly from the scene The stooping sun up-gathers his spent shafts. And puts them back into his golden quiver. [Ruskin. ]

 [84] _Iliad_, 3. 365. 

 [85] _Iliad_, 3. 406 ff. 

 [86] _Iliad_, 4. 141. [Ruskin. ]

 [87] _Odyssey_, 5. 63-74. 

 [88] _Iliad_, 2. 776. [Ruskin. ]

 [89] _Odyssey_ 7. 112-132. 

 [90] _Odyssey_, 24. 334 ff. 

 [91] _Odyssey_, 6. 162. 

 [92] _Odyssey_, 6. 291-292. 

 [93] _Odyssey_, 10. 510. [Ruskin. ]

 [94] Compare the passage in Dante referred to above, p. 60. [Ruskin. ]

 [95] _Iliad_, 4. 482-487. 

 [96] Pollards, trees polled or cut back at some height above the ground, producing a thick growth of young branches in a rounded mass. 

 [97] Quoted, with some omission, from chapter 12. 

 [98] _Odyssey_, 11. 572; 24. 13. The couch of Ceres, with Homer's usual faithfulness, is made of a _ploughed_ field, 5. 127. [Ruskin. ]

 [99] _Odyssey_, 12. 45. 

 [100] _Odyssey_, 4. 605. 

 [101] _Iliad_, 21. 351. 

 [102] _Odyssey_, 5. 398, 463. [Ruskin. ]

 [103] _Odyssey_, 12. 357. [Ruskin. ]

 [104] _Odyssey_, 5. 481-493. 

 [105] _Odyssey_, 9. 132, etc. Hence Milton's

 From haunted spring, and dale, Edged with poplar pale. [Ruskin. ]

 _Hymn on The Morning of Christ's Nativity_, 184-185. 

 [106] _Odyssey_, 9. 182. 

 [107] _Odyssey_, 10. 87-88. 

 [108] _Odyssey_, 13. 236, etc. [Ruskin. ]

 [109] Educated, as we shall see hereafter, first in this school. Turner gave the hackneyed composition a strange power and freshness, in his Glaucus and Scylla. [Ruskin. ]

 [110] Flodden, Flodden Field, a plain in Northumberland, famous as the battlefield where James IV of Scotland was defeated by an English army under the Earl of Surrey, Sept. 9, 1513. The sixth canto of Scott's _Marmion_ gives a fairly accurate description of the action. 

 _Chevy-Chase_, a famous old English ballad recounting the incidents of the battle of Otterburn [Aug. 19, 1388] in which the Scots under the Earl of Douglas defeated the English under the Percies. 

 [111] Shenstone's _Rural Elegance_, 201 ff. , quoted with some slight inaccuracies. 

OF MODERN LANDSCAPE

VOLUME III, CHAPTER 16

We turn our eyes, therefore, as boldly and as quickly as may be, fromthese serene fields and skies of mediæval art, to the mostcharacteristic examples of modern landscape. And, I believe, the firstthing that will strike us, or that ought to strike us, is _theircloudiness_. 

Out of perfect light and motionless air, we find ourselves on a suddenbrought under sombre skies, and into drifting wind; and, with ficklesunbeams flashing in our face, or utterly drenched with sweep of rain, we are reduced to track the changes of the shadows on the grass, orwatch the rents of twilight through angry cloud. And we find thatwhereas all the pleasure of the mediæval was in _stability, definiteness_, and _luminousness_, we are expected to rejoice indarkness, and triumph in mutability; to lay the foundation ofhappiness in things which momentarily change or fade; and to expectthe utmost satisfaction and instruction from what it is impossible toarrest, and difficult to comprehend. 

We find, however, together with this general delight in breeze anddarkness, much attention to the real form of clouds, and carefuldrawing of effects of mist; so that the appearance of objects, as seenthrough it, becomes a subject of science with us; and the faithfulrepresentation of that appearance is made of primal importance, underthe name of aërial perspective. The aspects of sunset and sunrise, with all their attendant phenomena of cloud and mist, are watchfullydelineated; and in ordinary daylight landscape, the sky is consideredof so much importance, that a principal mass of foliage, or a wholeforeground, is unhesitatingly thrown into shade merely to bring outthe form of a white cloud. So that, if a general and characteristicname were needed for modern landscape art, none better could beinvented than "the service of clouds. "

And this name would, unfortunately, be characteristic of our art inmore ways than one. In the last chapter, I said that all the Greeksspoke kindly about the clouds, except Aristophanes; and he, I am sorryto say (since his report is so unfavourable), is the only Greek whohad studied them attentively. He tells us, first, that they are "greatgoddesses to idle men"; then, that they are "mistresses of disputings, and logic, and monstrosities, and noisy chattering"; declares thatwhoso believes in their divinity must first disbelieve in Jupiter, andplace supreme power in the hands of an unknown god "Whirlwind"; and, finally, he displays their influence over the mind of one of theirdisciples, in his sudden desire "to speak ingeniously concerningsmoke. "[112]

There is, I fear, an infinite truth in this Aristophanic judgmentapplied to our modern cloud-worship. Assuredly, much of the love ofmystery in our romances, our poetry, our art, and, above all, in ourmetaphysics, must come under that definition so long ago given by thegreat Greek, "speaking ingeniously concerning smoke. " And much of theinstinct, which, partially developed in painting, may be now seenthroughout every mode of exertion of mind, --the easily encourageddoubt, easily excited curiosity, habitual agitation, and delight inthe changing and the marvellous, as opposed to the old quiet serenityof social custom and religious faith, --is again deeply defined inthose few words, the "dethroning of Jupiter, " the "coronation of thewhirlwind. "

Nor of whirlwind merely, but also of darkness or ignorance respectingall stable facts. That darkening of the foreground to bring out thewhite cloud, is, in one aspect of it, a type of the subjection of allplain and positive fact, to what is uncertain and unintelligible. And, as we examine farther into the matter, we shall be struck by anothergreat difference between the old and modern landscape, namely, that inthe old no one ever thought of drawing anything but as well _as hecould_. That might not be _well_, as we have seen in the case ofrocks; but it was as well as he _could_, and always distinctly. Leaf, or stone, or animal, or man, it was equally drawn with care andclearness, and its essential characters shown. If it was an oak tree, the acorns were drawn; if a flint pebble, its veins were drawn; if anarm of the sea, its fish were drawn; if a group of figures, theirfaces and dresses were drawn--to the very last subtlety of expressionand end of thread that could be got into the space, far off or near. But now our ingenuity is all "concerning smoke. " Nothing is trulydrawn but that; all else is vague, slight, imperfect; got with aslittle pains as possible. You examine your closest foreground, andfind no leaves; your largest oak, and find no acorns; your humanfigure, and find a spot of red paint instead of a face; and in allthis, again and again, the Aristophanic words come true, and theclouds seem to be "great goddesses to idle men. "

The next thing that will strike us, after this love of clouds, is thelove of liberty. Whereas the mediæval was always shutting himself intocastles, and behind fosses, and drawing brickwork neatly, and beds offlowers primly, our painters delight in getting to the open fields andmoors; abhor all hedges and moats; never paint anything but free-growingtrees, and rivers gliding "at their own sweet will"; eschew formalitydown to the smallest detail; break and displace the brickwork whichthe mediæval would have carefully cemented; leave unpruned thethickets he would have delicately trimmed; and, carrying the love ofliberty even to license, and the love of wildness even to ruin, takepleasure at last in every aspect of age and desolation which emancipatesthe objects of nature from the government of men;--on the castle walldisplacing its tapestry with ivy, and spreading, through the garden, the bramble for the rose. 

Connected with this love of liberty we find a singular manifestationof love of mountains, and see our painters traversing the wildestplaces of the globe in order to obtain subjects with craggy foregroundsand purple distances. Some few of them remain content with pollardsand flat land; but these are always men of third-rate order; and theleading masters, while they do not reject the beauty of the lowgrounds, reserve their highest powers to paint Alpine peaks or Italianpromontories. And it is eminently noticeable, also, that this pleasurein the mountains is never mingled with fear, or tempered by a spiritof meditation, as with the mediæval; but it is always free andfearless, brightly exhilarating, and wholly unreflective; so that thepainter feels that his mountain foreground may be more consistentlyanimated by a sportsman than a hermit; and our modern society ingeneral goes to the mountains, not to fast, but to feast, and leavestheir glaciers covered with chicken-bones and egg-shells. 

Connected with this want of any sense of solemnity in mountainscenery, is a general profanity of temper in regarding all the rest ofnature; that is to say, a total absence of faith in the presence ofany deity therein. Whereas the mediæval never painted a cloud, butwith the purpose of placing an angel in it; and a Greek never entereda wood without expecting to meet a god in it; we should think theappearance of an angel in the cloud wholly unnatural, and should beseriously surprised by meeting a god anywhere. Our chief ideas aboutthe wood are connected with poaching. We have no belief that theclouds contain more than so many inches of rain or hail, and from ourponds and ditches expect nothing more divine than ducks andwatercresses. 

Finally: connected with this profanity of temper is a strong tendencyto deny the sacred element of colour, and make our boast in blackness. For though occasionally glaring or violent, modern colour is on thewhole eminently sombre, tending continually to grey or brown, and bymany of our best painters consistently falsified, with a confessedpride in what they call chaste or subdued tints; so that, whereas amediæval paints his sky bright blue and his foreground bright green, gilds the towers of his castles, and clothes his figures with purpleand white, we paint our sky grey, our foreground black, and ourfoliage brown, and think that enough is sacrificed to the sun inadmitting the dangerous brightness of a scarlet cloak or a bluejacket. 

These, I believe, are the principal points which would strike usinstantly, if we were to be brought suddenly into an exhibition ofmodern landscapes out of a room filled with mediæval work. It isevident that there are both evil and good in this change; but how muchevil, or how much good, we can only estimate by considering, as in theformer divisions of our inquiry, what are the real roots of the habitsof mind which have caused them. 

And first, it is evident that the title "Dark Ages, " given to themediæval centuries, is, respecting art, wholly inapplicable. Theywere, on the contrary, the bright ages; ours are the dark ones. I donot mean metaphysically, but literally. They were the ages of gold;ours are the ages of umber. 

This is partly mere mistake in us; we build brown brick walls, andwear brown coats, because we have been blunderingly taught to do so, and go on doing so mechanically. There is, however, also some causefor the change in our own tempers. On the whole, these are much_sadder_ ages than the early ones; not sadder in a noble and deep way, but in a dim wearied way, --the way of ennui, and jaded intellect, anduncomfortableness of soul and body. The Middle Ages had their wars andagonies, but also intense delights. Their gold was dashed with blood;but ours is sprinkled with dust. Their life was inwoven with white andpurple: ours is one seamless stuff of brown. Not that we are withoutapparent festivity, but festivity more or less forced, mistaken, embittered, incomplete--not of the heart. How wonderfully, sinceShakspere's time, have we lost the power of laughing at bad jests! Thevery finish of our wit belies our gaiety. 

The profoundest reason of this darkness of heart is, I believe, ourwant of faith. There never yet was a generation of men (savage orcivilized) who, taken as a body, so wofully fulfilled the words"having no hope, and without God in the world, "[113] as the presentcivilized European race. A Red Indian or Otaheitan savage has moresense of a Divine existence round him, or government over him, thanthe plurality of refined Londoners and Parisians: and those among uswho may in some sense be said to believe, are divided almost withoutexception into two broad classes, Romanist and Puritan; who, but forthe interference of the unbelieving portions of society, would, eitherof them, reduce the other sect as speedily as possible to ashes; theRomanist having always done so whenever he could, from the beginningof their separation, and the Puritan at this time holding himself incomplacent expectation of the destruction of Rome by volcanic fire. Such division as this between persons nominally of one religion, thatis to say, believing in the same God, and the same Revelation, cannotbut become a stumbling-block of the gravest kind to all thoughtful andfar-sighted men, --a stumbling-block which they can only surmount underthe most favourable circumstances of early education. Hence, nearlyall our powerful men in this age of the world are unbelievers; thebest of them in doubt and misery; the worst in reckless defiance; theplurality, in plodding hesitation, doing, as well as they can, whatpractical work lies ready to their hands. Most of our scientific menare in this last class; our popular authors either set themselvesdefinitely against all religious form, pleading for simple truth andbenevolence (Thackeray, Dickens), or give themselves up to bitter andfruitless statement of facts (De Balzac), or surface-painting (Scott), or careless blasphemy, sad or smiling (Byron, Béranger). Our earnestpoets and deepest thinkers are doubtful and indignant (Tennyson, Carlyle); one or two, anchored, indeed, but anxious or weeping(Wordsworth, Mrs. Browning); and of these two, the first is not sosure of his anchor, but that now and then it drags with him, even tomake him cry out, --

 Great God, I had rather be A Pagan suckled in some creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn. [114]

In politics, religion is now a name; in art, a hypocrisy or affectation. Over German religious pictures the inscription, "See how Pious I am, "can be read at a glance by any clear-sighted person. Over French andEnglish religious pictures the inscription, "See how Impious I am, " isequally legible. All sincere and modest art is, among us, profane. [115]

This faithlessness operates among us according to our tempers, producing either sadness or levity, and being the ultimate root alikeof our discontents and of our wantonnesses. It is marvellous how fullof contradiction it makes us: we are first dull, and seek for wild andlonely places because we have no heart for the garden; presently werecover our spirits, and build an assembly room among the mountains, because we have no reverence for the desert. I do not know if there begame on Sinai, but I am always expecting to hear of some one's shootingover it. 

There is, however, another, and a more innocent root of our delight inwild scenery. 

All the Renaissance principles of art tended, as I have before oftenexplained, to the setting Beauty above Truth, and seeking for italways at the expense of truth. And the proper punishment of suchpursuit--the punishment which all the laws of the universe renderedinevitable--was, that those who thus pursued beauty should wholly losesight of beauty. All the thinkers of the age, as we saw previously, declared that it did not exist. The age seconded their efforts, andbanished beauty, so far as human effort could succeed in doing so, from the face of the earth, and the form of man. To powder the hair, to patch the cheek, to hoop the body, to buckle the foot, were allpart and parcel of the same system which reduced streets to brickwalls, and pictures to brown stains. One desert of Ugliness was extendedbefore the eyes of mankind; and their pursuit of the beautiful, sorecklessly continued, received unexpected consummation in high-heeledshoes and periwigs, --Gower Street, and Gaspar Poussin. [116]

Reaction from this state was inevitable, if any true life was left inthe races of mankind; and, accordingly, though still forced, by ruleand fashion, to the producing and wearing all that is ugly, men stealout, half-ashamed of themselves for doing so, to the fields andmountains; and, finding among these the colour, and liberty, andvariety, and power, which are for ever grateful to them, delight inthese to an extent never before known; rejoice in all the wildestshattering of the mountain side, as an opposition to Gower Street, gaze in a rapt manner at sunsets and sunrises, to see there the blue, and gold, and purple, which glow for them no longer on knight's armouror temple porch; and gather with care out of the fields, into theirblotted herbaria, the flowers which the five orders of architecturehave banished from their doors and casements. 

The absence of care for personal beauty, which is another greatcharacteristic of the age, adds to this feeling in a twofold way:first, by turning all reverent thoughts away from human nature; andmaking us think of men as ridiculous or ugly creatures, gettingthrough the world as well as they can, and spoiling it in doing so;not ruling it in a kingly way and crowning all its loveliness. In theMiddle Ages hardly anything but vice could be caricatured, becausevirtue was always visibly and personally noble: now virtue itself isapt to inhabit such poor human bodies, that no aspect of it isinvulnerable to jest; and for all fairness we have to seek to theflowers, for all sublimity, to the hills. 

The same want of care operates, in another way, by lowering thestandard of health, increasing the susceptibility to nervous orsentimental impressions, and thus adding to the other powers of natureover us whatever charm may be felt in her fostering the melancholyfancies of brooding idleness. 

It is not, however, only to existing inanimate nature that our want ofbeauty in person and dress has driven us. The imagination of it, as itwas seen in our ancestors, haunts us continually; and while we yieldto the present fashions, or act in accordance with the dullest modernprinciples of economy and utility, we look fondly back to the mannersof the ages of chivalry, and delight in painting, to the fancy, thefashions we pretend to despise, and the splendours we think it wise toabandon. The furniture and personages of our romance are sought, whenthe writer desires to please most easily, in the centuries which weprofess to have surpassed in everything; the art which takes us intothe present times is considered as both daring and degraded; and whilethe weakest words please us, and are regarded as poetry, which recallthe manners of our forefathers, or of strangers, it is only asfamiliar and vulgar that we accept the description of our own. 

In this we are wholly different from all the races that preceded us. All other nations have regarded their ancestors with reverence assaints or heroes; but have nevertheless thought their own deeds andways of life the fitting subjects for their arts of painting or ofverse. We, on the contrary, regard our ancestors as foolish andwicked, but yet find our chief artistic pleasures in descriptions oftheir ways of life. 

The Greeks and mediævals honoured, but did not imitate theirforefathers; we imitate, but do not honour. 

With this romantic love of beauty, forced to seek in history, and inexternal nature, the satisfaction it cannot find in ordinary life, wemingle a more rational passion, the due and just result of newlyawakened powers of attention. Whatever may first lead us to thescrutiny of natural objects, that scrutiny never fails of its reward. Unquestionably they are intended to be regarded by us with bothreverence and delight; and every hour we give to them renders theirbeauty more apparent, and their interest more engrossing. Naturalscience--which can hardly be considered to have existed before moderntimes--rendering our knowledge fruitful in accumulation, and exquisitein accuracy, has acted for good or evil, according to the temper ofthe mind which received it; and though it has hardened thefaithlessness of the dull and proud, has shown new grounds forreverence to hearts which were thoughtful and humble. The neglect ofthe art of war, while it has somewhat weakened and deformed thebody, [117] has given us leisure and opportunity for studies to which, before, time and space were equally wanting; lives which once wereearly wasted on the battle-field are now passed usefully in the study;nations which exhausted themselves in annual warfare now dispute witheach other the discovery of new planets; and the serene philosopherdissects the plants, and analyzes the dust, of lands which were of oldonly traversed by the knight in hasty march, or by the borderer inheedless rapine. 

The elements of progress and decline being thus strangely mingled inthe modern mind, we might beforehand anticipate that one of thenotable characters of our art would be its inconsistency; that effortswould be made in every direction, and arrested by every conceivablecause and manner of failure; that in all we did, it would become nextto impossible to distinguish accurately the grounds for praise or forregret; that all previous canons of practice and methods of thoughtwould be gradually overthrown, and criticism continually defied bysuccesses which no one had expected, and sentiments which no one coulddefine. 

Accordingly, while, in our inquiries into Greek and mediæval art, Iwas able to describe, in general terms, what all men did or felt, Ifind now many characters in many men; some, it seems to me, founded onthe inferior and evanescent principles of modernism, on itsrecklessness, impatience, or faithlessness; others founded on itsscience, its new affection for nature, its love of openness andliberty. And among all these characters, good or evil, I see thatsome, remaining to us from old or transitional periods, do notproperly belong to us, and will soon fade away, and others, though notyet distinctly developed, are yet properly our own, and likely to growforward into greater strength. 

For instance: our reprobation of bright colour is, I think, for themost part, mere affectation, and must soon be done away with. Vulgarity, dulness, or impiety, will indeed always express themselvesthrough art in brown and grey, as in Rembrandt, Caravaggio, andSalvator; but we are not wholly vulgar, dull, or impious; nor, asmoderns, are we necessarily obliged to continue so in any wise. Ourgreatest men, whether sad or gay, still delight, like the great men ofall ages, in brilliant hues. The colouring of Scott and Byron is fulland pure; that of Keats and Tennyson rich even to excess. Ourpractical failures in colouring are merely the necessary consequencesof our prolonged want of practice during the periods of Renaissanceaffectation and ignorance; and the only durable difference between oldand modern colouring, is the acceptance of certain hues, by themodern, which please him by expressing that melancholy peculiar to hismore reflective or sentimental character, and the greater variety ofthem necessary to express his greater science. 

Again: if we ever become wise enough to dress consistently andgracefully, to make health a principal object in education, and torender our streets beautiful with art, the external charm of pasthistory will in great measure disappear. There is no essential reason, because we live after the fatal seventeenth century, that we shouldnever again be able to confess interest in sculpture, or seebrightness in embroidery; nor, because now we choose to make the nightdeadly with our pleasures, and the day with our labours, prolongingthe dance till dawn, and the toil to twilight, that we should neveragain learn how rightly to employ the sacred trusts of strength, beauty, and time. Whatever external charm attaches itself to the past, would then be seen in proper subordination to the brightness ofpresent life; and the elements of romance would exist, in the earlierages, only in the attraction which must generally belong to whateveris unfamiliar; in the reverence which a noble nation always pays toits ancestors; and in the enchanted light which races, likeindividuals, must perceive in looking back to the days of theirchildhood. 

Again: the peculiar levity with which natural scenery Is regarded by alarge number of modern minds cannot be considered as entirelycharacteristic of the age, inasmuch as it never can belong to itsgreatest intellects. Men of any high mental power must be serious, whether in ancient or modern days: a certain degree of reverence forfair scenery is found in all our great writers without exception, --eventhe one who has made us laugh oftenest, taking us to the valley ofChamouni, and to the sea beach, there to give peace after suffering, and change revenge into pity. [118] It is only the dull, the uneducated, or the worldly, whom it is painful to meet on the hillsides; andlevity, as a ruling character, cannot be ascribed to the whole nation, but only to its holiday-making apprentices, and its House of Commons. 

We need not, therefore, expect to find any single poet or painterrepresenting the entire group of powers, weaknesses, and inconsistentinstincts which govern or confuse our modern life. But we may expectthat in the man who seems to be given by Providence as the type of theage (as Homer and Dante were given, as the types of classical andmediæval mind), we shall find whatever is fruitful and substantial tobe completely present, together with those of our weaknesses, whichare indeed nationally characteristic, and compatible with generalgreatness of mind, just as the weak love of fences, and dislike ofmountains, were found compatible with Dante's greatness in otherrespects. 

Farther: as the admiration of mankind is found, in our times, to havein great part passed from men to mountains, and from human emotion tonatural phenomena, we may anticipate that the great strength of artwill also be warped in this direction; with this notable result forus, that whereas the greatest painters or painter of classical andmediæval periods, being wholly devoted to the representation ofhumanity, furnished us with but little to examine in landscape, thegreatest painters or painter of modern times will in all probabilitybe devoted to landscape principally: and farther, because inrepresenting human emotion words surpass painting, but in representingnatural scenery painting surpasses words, we may anticipate also thatthe painter and poet (for convenience' sake I here use the words inopposition) will somewhat change their relations of rank inillustrating the mind of the age; that the painter will become of moreimportance, the poet of less; and that the relations between the menwho are the types and firstfruits of the age in word and work, --namely, Scott and Turner, --will be, in many curious respects, different fromthose between Homer and Phidias, or Dante and Giotto. [119]

 [112] _Clouds_, 316-318; 380 ff. ; 320-321. 

 [113] _Ephesians_ ii, 12. 

 [114] Wordsworth's "The world is too much with us. "

 [115] Pre-Raphaelitism, of course, excepted, which is a new phase of art, in no wise considered in this chapter. Blake was sincere, but full of wild creeds, and somewhat diseased in brain. [Ruskin. ]

 [116] Gower Street, a London street selected as typical of modern ugliness. 

 Gaspar Poussin [1613-75], a French landscape painter, of the pseudo-classical school. 

 [117] Of course this is meant only of the modern citizen or country-gentleman, as compared with a citizen of Sparta or old Florence. I leave it to others to say whether the "neglect of the art of war" may or may not, in a yet more fatal sense, be predicated of the English nation. War, _without_ art, we seem, with God's help, able still to wage nobly. [Ruskin. ]

 [118] See _David Copperfield_, chap. 55 and 58. [Ruskin. ]

 [119] Ruskin proceeds to discuss Scott as he has discussed Homer. The chapter on Turner that follows here is an almost equally good illustration of Ruskin's ideas. 

THE TWO BOYHOODS

VOLUME V, PART 9, CHAPTER 9

Born half-way between the mountains and the sea--that young George ofCastelfranco--of the Brave Castle:--Stout George they called him, George of Georges, so goodly a boy he was--Giorgione. [120]

Have you ever thought what a world his eyes opened on--fair, searchingeyes of youth? What a world of mighty life, from those mountain rootsto the shore;--of loveliest life, when he went down, yet so young, tothe marble city--and became himself as a fiery heart to it?

A city of marble, did I say? nay, rather a golden city, paved withemerald. For truly, every pinnacle and turret glanced or glowed, overlaid with gold, or bossed with jasper. Beneath, the unsullied seadrew in deep breathing, to and fro, its eddies of green wave. Deep-hearted, majestic, terrible as the sea, --the men of Venice movedin sway of power and war; pure as her pillars of alabaster, stood hermothers and maidens; from foot to brow, all noble, walked her knights;the low bronzed gleaming of sea-rusted armour shot angrily under theirblood-red mantle-folds. Fearless, faithful, patient, impenetrable, implacable, --every word a fate--sate her senate. In hope and honour, lulled by flowing of wave around their isles of sacred sand, each withhis name written and the cross graved at his side, lay her dead. Awonderful piece of world. Rather, itself a world. It lay along the faceof the waters, no larger, as its captains saw it from their masts atevening, than a bar of sunset that could not pass away; but for itspower, it must have seemed to them as if they were sailing in theexpanse of heaven, and this a great planet, whose orient edge widenedthrough ether. A world from which all ignoble care and petty thoughtswere banished, with all the common and poor elements of life. Nofoulness, nor tumult, in those tremulous streets, that filled, or fell, beneath the moon; but rippled music of majestic change, or thrillingsilence. No weak walls could rise above them; no low-roofed cottage, nor straw-built shed. Only the strength as of rock, and the finishedsetting of stones most precious. And around them, far as the eye couldreach, still the soft moving of stainless waters, proudly pure; as notthe flower, so neither the thorn nor the thistle, could grow in theglancing fields. Ethereal strength of Alps, dreamlike, vanishing inhigh procession beyond the Torcellan shore; blue islands of Paduanhills, poised in the golden west. Above, free winds and fiery cloudsranging at their will;--brightness out of the north, and balm from thesouth, and the stars of the evening and morning clear in the limitlesslight of arched heaven and circling sea. 

Such was Giorgione's school--such Titian's home. 

Near the south-west corner of Covent Garden, a square brick pit or wellis formed by a close-set block of houses, to the back windows of whichit admits a few rays of light. Access to the bottom of it is obtainedout of Maiden Lane, through a low archway and an iron gate; and if youstand long enough under the archway to accustom your eyes to thedarkness you may see on the left hand a narrow door, which formerlygave quiet access to a respectable barber's shop, of which the frontwindow, looking into Maiden Lane, is still extant, filled, in this year(1860), with a row of bottles, connected, in some defunct manner, witha brewer's business. A more fashionable neighbourhood, it is said, eighty years ago than now--never certainly a cheerful one--wherein aboy being born on St. George's day, 1775, began soon after to takeinterest in the world of Covent Garden, and put to service suchspectacles of life as it afforded. 

No knights to be seen there, nor, I imagine, many beautiful ladies;their costume at least disadvantageous, depending much on incumbency ofhat and feather, and short waists; the majesty of men founded similarlyon shoebuckles and wigs;--impressive enough when Reynolds will do hisbest for it; but not suggestive of much ideal delight to a boy. 

"Bello ovile dov' io dormii agnello";[121] of things beautiful, besidesmen and women, dusty sunbeams up or down the street on summer mornings;deep furrowed cabbage-leaves at the greengrocer's; magnificence oforanges in wheelbarrows round the corner; and Thames' shore withinthree minutes' race. 

None of these things very glorious; the best, however, that England, itseems, was then able to provide for a boy of gift: who, such as theyare, loves them--never, indeed, forgets them. The short waists modifyto the last his visions of Greek ideal. His foregrounds had always asucculent cluster or two of greengrocery at the corners. Enchantedoranges gleam in Covent Gardens of the Hesperides; and great ships goto pieces in order to scatter chests of them on the waves. [122] That mistof early sunbeams in the London dawn crosses, many and many a time, theclearness of Italian air; and by Thames' shore, with its strandedbarges and glidings of red sail, dearer to us than Lucerne lake orVenetian lagoon, --by Thames' shore we will die. 

With such circumstance round him in youth, let us note what necessaryeffects followed upon the boy. I assume him to have had Giorgione'ssensibility (and more than Giorgione's, if that be possible) to colourand form. I tell you farther, and this fact you may receive trustfully, that his sensibility to human affection and distress was no less keenthan even his sense for natural beauty--heart-sight deep as eyesight. 

Consequently, he attaches himself with the faithfullest child-love toeverything that bears an image of the place he was born in. No matterhow ugly it is, --has it anything about it like Maiden Lane, or likeThames' shore? If so, it shall be painted for their sake. Hence, to thevery close of life, Turner could endure ugliness which no one else, ofthe same sensibility, would have borne with for an instant. Dead brickwalls, blank square windows, old clothes, market-womanly types ofhumanity--anything fishy and muddy, like Billingsgate or HungerfordMarket, had great attraction for him; black barges, patched sails, andevery possible condition of fog. 

You will find these tolerations and affections guiding or sustaininghim to the last hour of his life; the notablest of all such endurancesbeing that of dirt. No Venetian ever draws anything foul; but Turnerdevoted picture after picture to the illustration of effects ofdinginess, smoke, soot, dust, and dusty texture; old sides of boats, weedy roadside vegetation, dunghills, straw-yards, and all the soilingsand stains of every common labour. 

And more than this, he not only could endure, but enjoyed and lookedfor _litter_, like Covent Garden wreck after the market. His picturesare often full of it, from side to side; their foregrounds differ fromall others in the natural way that things have of lying about in them. Even his richest vegetation, in ideal work, is confused; and hedelights in shingle, debris, and heaps of fallen stones. The last wordshe ever spoke to me about a picture were in gentle exultation about hisSt. Gothard: "that _litter_ of stones which I endeavoured torepresent. "

The second great result of this Covent Garden training was understandingof and regard for the poor, whom the Venetians, we saw, despised; whom, contrarily, Turner loved, and more than loved--understood. He got noromantic sight of them, but an infallible one, as he prowled about theend of his lane, watching night effects in the wintry streets; norsight of the poor alone, but of the poor in direct relations with therich. He knew, in good and evil, what both classes thought of, and howthey dwelt with, each other. 

Reynolds and Gainsborough, bred in country villages, learned there thecountry boy's reverential theory of "the squire, " and kept it. Theypainted the squire and the squire's lady as centres of the movements ofthe universe, to the end of their lives. But Turner perceived theyounger squire in other aspects about his lane, occurring prominentlyin its night scenery, as a dark figure, or one of two, against themoonlight. He saw also the working of city commerce, from endlesswarehouse, towering over Thames, to the back shop in the lane, with itsstale herrings--highly interesting these last; one of his father's bestfriends, whom he often afterwards visited affectionately at Bristol, being a fishmonger and glue-boiler; which gives us a friendly turn ofmind towards herring-fishing, whaling, Calais poissardes, and manyother of our choicest subjects in after life; all this being connectedwith that mysterious forest below London Bridge on one side;--and, onthe other, with these masses of human power and national wealth whichweigh upon us, at Covent Garden here, with strange compression, andcrush us into narrow Hand Court. 

"That mysterious forest below London Bridge"--better for the boy thanwood of pine, or grove of myrtle. How he must have tormented thewatermen, beseeching them to let him crouch anywhere in the bows, quiet as a log, so only that he might get floated down there among theships, and round and round the ships, and with the ships, and by theships, and under the ships, staring, and clambering;--these the onlyquite beautiful things he can see in all the world, except the sky;but these, when the sun is on their sails, filling or falling, endlessly disordered by sway of tide and stress of anchorage, beautiful unspeakably; which ships also are inhabited by gloriouscreatures--red-faced sailors, with pipes, appearing over the gunwales, true knights, over their castle parapets--the most angelic beings inthe whole compass of London world. And Trafalgar happening long beforewe can draw ships, we, nevertheless, coax all current stories out ofthe wounded sailors, do our best at present to show Nelson's funeralstreaming up the Thames; and vow that Trafalgar shall have its tributeof memory some day. Which, accordingly, is accomplished--once, withall our might, for its death; twice, with all our might, for itsvictory; thrice, in pensive farewell to the old Téméraire, and, withit, to that order of things. [123]

Now this fond companying with sailors must have divided his time, itappears to me, pretty equally between Covent Garden and Wapping(allowing for incidental excursions to Chelsea on one side, andGreenwich on the other), which time he would spend pleasantly, but notmagnificently, being limited in pocket-money, and leading a kind of"Poor-Jack" life on the river. 

In some respects, no life could be better for a lad. But it was notcalculated to make his ear fine to the niceties of language, nor formhis moralities on an entirely regular standard. Picking up his firstscraps of vigorous English chiefly at Deptford and in the markets, andhis first ideas of female tenderness and beauty among nymphs of thebarge and the barrow, --another boy might, perhaps, have become whatpeople usually term "vulgar. " But the original make and frame ofTurner's mind being not vulgar, but as nearly as possible a combinationof the minds of Keats and Dante, joining capricious waywardness, andintense openness to every fine pleasure of sense, and hot defiance offormal precedent, with a quite infinite tenderness, generosity, anddesire of justice and truth--this kind of mind did not become vulgar, but very tolerant of vulgarity, even fond of it in some forms; and onthe outside, visibly infected by it, deeply enough; the curious result, in its combination of elements, being to most people whollyincomprehensible. It was as if a cable had been woven of blood-crimsonsilk, and then tarred on the outside. People handled it, and the tarcame off on their hands; red gleams were seen through the black, underneath, at the places where it had been strained. Was itochre?--said the world--or red lead?

Schooled thus in manners, literature, and general moral principles atChelsea and Wapping, we have finally to inquire concerning the mostimportant point of all. We have seen the principal differences betweenthis boy and Giorgione, as respects sight of the beautiful, understanding of poverty, of commerce, and of order of battle; thenfollows another cause of difference in our training--not slight, --theaspect of religion, namely, in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden. Isay the aspect; for that was all the lad could judge by. Disposed, forthe most part, to learn chiefly by his eyes, in this special matter hefinds there is really no other way of learning. His father had taughthim "to lay one penny upon another. " Of mother's teaching, we hear ofnone; of parish pastoral teaching, the reader may guess how much. 

I chose Giorgione rather than Veronese to help me in carrying out thisparallel; because I do not find in Giorgione's work any of the earlyVenetian monarchist element. He seems to me to have belonged more to anabstract contemplative school. I may be wrong in this; it is nomatter;--suppose it were so, and that he came down to Venice somewhatrecusant, or insentient, concerning the usual priestly doctrines of hisday, --how would the Venetian religion, from an outer intellectualstanding-point, have _looked_ to him?

He would have seen it to be a religion indisputably powerful in humanaffairs; often very harmfully so; sometimes devouring widows'houses, [124] and consuming the strongest and fairest from among theyoung; freezing into merciless bigotry the policy of the old: also, onthe other hand, animating national courage, and raising souls, otherwise sordid, into heroism: on the whole, always a real and greatpower; served with daily sacrifice of gold, time, and thought; puttingforth its claims, if hypocritically, at least in bold hypocrisy, notwaiving any atom of them in doubt or fear; and, assuredly, in largemeasure, sincere, believing in itself, and believed: a goodly system, moreover, in aspect; gorgeous, harmonious, mysterious;--a thing whichhad either to be obeyed or combated, but could not be scorned. Areligion towering over all the city--many-buttressed--luminous inmarble stateliness, as the dome of our Lady of Safety[125] shines overthe sea; many-voiced also, giving, over all the eastern seas, to thesentinel his watchword, to the soldier his war-cry; and, on the lips ofall who died for Venice, shaping the whisper of death. 

I suppose the boy Turner to have regarded the religion of his city alsofrom an external intellectual standing-point. 

What did he see in Maiden Lane?

Let not the reader be offended with me; I am willing to let himdescribe, at his own pleasure, what Turner saw there; but to me, itseems to have been this. A religion maintained occasionally, even thewhole length of the lane, at point of constable's staff; but, at othertimes, placed under the custody of the beadle, within certain black andunstately iron railings of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. Among thewheelbarrows and over the vegetables, no perceptible dominance ofreligion; in the narrow, disquieted streets, none; in the tongues, deeds, daily ways of Maiden Lane, little. Some honesty, indeed, andEnglish industry, and kindness of heart, and general idea of justice;but faith, of any national kind, shut up from one Sunday to the next, not artistically beautiful even in those Sabbatical exhibitions; itsparaphernalia being chiefly of high pews, heavy elocution, and coldgrimness of behaviour. 

What chiaroscuro belongs to it--(dependent mostly on candlelight), --wewill, however, draw considerately; no goodliness of escutcheon, norother respectability being omitted, and the best of their resultsconfessed, a meek old woman and a child being let into a pew, for whomthe reading by candlelight will be beneficial. [126]

For the rest, this religion seems to himdiscreditable--discredited--not believing in itself; putting forth itsauthority in a cowardly way, watching how far it might be tolerated, continually shrinking, disclaiming, fencing, finessing; divided againstitself, not by stormy rents, but by thin fissures, and splittings ofplaster from the walls. Not to be either obeyed, or combated, by anignorant, yet clear-sighted youth: only to be scorned. And scorned notone whit the less, though also the dome dedicated to it looms high overdistant winding of the Thames; as St. Mark's campanile rose, for goodlylandmark, over mirage of lagoon. For St. Mark ruled over life; theSaint of London over death; St. Mark over St. Mark's Place, but St. Paul over St. Paul's Churchyard. 

Under these influences pass away the first reflective hours of life, with such conclusion as they can reach. In consequence of a fit ofillness, he was taken--I cannot ascertain in what year[127]--to live withan aunt, at Brentford; and here, I believe, received some schooling, which he seems to have snatched vigorously; getting knowledge, at leastby translation, of the more picturesque classical authors, which heturned presently to use, as we shall see. Hence also, walks aboutPutney and Twickenham in the summer time acquainted him with the lookof English meadow-ground in its restricted states of paddock and park;and with some round-headed appearances of trees, and stately entrancesto houses of mark: the avenue at Bushy, and the iron gates and carvedpillars of Hampton, [128] impressing him apparently with great awe andadmiration; so that in after life his little country house is, --of allplaces in the world, --at Twickenham! Of swans and reedy shores he nowlearns the soft motion and the green mystery, in a way not to beforgotten. 

And at last fortune wills that the lad's true life shall begin; and onesummer's evening, after various wonderful stage-coach experiences onthe north road, which gave him a love of stage-coaches ever after, hefinds himself sitting alone among the Yorkshire hills. [129] For thefirst time, the silence of Nature round him, her freedom sealed to him, her glory opened to him. Peace at last; no roll of cart-wheel, normutter of sullen voices in the back shop; but curlew-cry in space ofheaven, and welling of bell-toned streamlet by its shadowy rock. Freedom at last. Dead-wall, dark railing, fenced field, gated garden, all passed away like the dream, of a prisoner; and behold, far as footor eye can race or range, the moor, and cloud. Loveliness at last. Itis here, then, among these deserted vales! Not among men. Those pale, poverty-struck, or cruel faces;--that multitudinous, marredhumanity--are not the only things that God has made. Here is somethingHe has made which no one has marred. Pride of purple rocks, and riverpools of blue, and tender wilderness of glittering trees, and mistylights of evening on immeasurable hills. 

Beauty, and freedom, and peace; and yet another teacher, graver thanthese. Sound preaching at last here, in Kirkstall crypt, concerningfate and life. Here, where the dark pool reflects the chancel pillars, and the cattle lie in unhindered rest, the soft sunshine on theirdappled bodies, instead of priests' vestments; their white furry hairruffled a little, fitfully, by the evening wind deep-scented from themeadow thyme. 

Consider deeply the import to him of this, his first sight of ruin, andcompare it with the effect of the architecture that was aroundGiorgione. There were indeed aged buildings, at Venice, in his time, but none in decay. All ruin was removed, and its place filled asquickly as in our London; but filled always by architecture loftier andmore wonderful than that whose place it took, the boy himself happy towork upon the walls of it; so that the idea of the passing away of thestrength of men and beauty of their works never could occur to himsternly. Brighter and brighter the cities of Italy had been rising andbroadening on hill and plain, for three hundred years. He saw onlystrength and immortality, could not but paint both; conceived the formof man as deathless, calm with power, and fiery with life. 

Turner saw the exact reverse of this. In the present work of men, meanness, aimlessness, unsightliness: thin-walled, lath-divided, narrow-garreted houses of clay; booths of a darksome Vanity Fair, busily base. 

But on Whitby Hill, and by Bolton Brook, [130] remained traces of otherhandiwork. Men who could build had been there; and who also hadwrought, not merely for their own days. But to what purpose? Strongfaith, and steady hands, and patient souls--can this, then, be all youhave left! this the sum of your doing on the earth!--a nest whence thenight-owl may whimper to the brook, and a ribbed skeleton of consumedarches, looming above the bleak banks of mist, from its cliff to thesea?

As the strength of men to Giorgione, to Turner their weakness andvileness, were alone visible. They themselves, unworthy or ephemeral;their work, despicable, or decayed. In the Venetian's eyes, all beautydepended on man's presence and pride; in Turner's, on the solitude hehad left, and the humiliation he had suffered. 

And thus the fate and issue of all his work were determined at once. Hemust be a painter of the strength of nature, there was no beautyelsewhere than in that; he must paint also the labour and sorrow andpassing away of men: this was the great human truth visible to him. 

Their labour, their sorrow, and their death. Mark the three. Labour; bysea and land, in field and city, at forge and furnace, helm and plough. No pastoral indolence nor classic pride shall stand between him and thetroubling of the world; still less between him and the toil of hiscountry, --blind, tormented, unwearied, marvellous England. 

Also their Sorrow; Ruin of all their glorious work, passing away oftheir thoughts and their honour, mirage of pleasure, FALLACY OF HOPE;gathering of weed on temple step; gaining of wave on deserted strand;weeping of the mother for the children, desolate by her breathlessfirst-born in the streets of the city, [131] desolate by her last sonsslain, among the beasts of the field. [132]

And their Death. That old Greek question again;--yet unanswered. Theunconquerable spectre still flitting among the forest trees attwilight; rising ribbed out of the sea-sand;--white, a strangeAphrodite, --out of the sea-foam; stretching its grey, cloven wingsamong the clouds; turning the light of their sunsets into blood. Thishas to be looked upon, and in a more terrible shape than ever Salvatoror Dürer saw it. [133] The wreck of one guilty country does not infer theruin of all countries, and need not cause general terror respecting thelaws of the universe. Neither did the orderly and narrow succession ofdomestic joy and sorrow in a small German community bring the questionin its breadth, or in any unresolvable shape, before the mind of Dürer. But the English death--the European death of the nineteenthcentury--was of another range and power; more terrible a thousandfoldin its merely physical grasp and grief; more terrible, incalculably, inits mystery and shame. What were the robber's casual pang, or the rangeof the flying skirmish, compared to the work of the axe, and the sword, and the famine, which was done during this man's youth on all the hillsand plains of the Christian earth, from Moscow to Gibraltar? He waseighteen years old when Napoleon came down on Arcola. Look on the mapof Europe and count the blood-stains on it, between Arcola andWaterloo. [134]

Not alone those blood-stains on the Alpine snow, and the blue of theLombard plain. The English death was before his eyes also. No decent, calculable, consoled dying; no passing to rest like that of the agedburghers of Nuremberg town. No gentle processions to churchyards amongthe fields, the bronze crests bossed deep on the memorial tablets, andthe skylark singing above them from among the corn. But the lifetrampled out in the slime of the street, crushed to dust amidst theroaring of the wheel, tossed countlessly away into howling winter windalong five hundred leagues of rock-fanged shore. Or, worst of all, rotted down to forgotten graves through years of ignorant patience, andvain seeking for help from man, for hope in God--infirm, imperfectyearning, as of motherless infants starving at the dawn; oppressedroyalties of captive thought, vague ague-fits of bleak, amazed despair. 

A goodly landscape this, for the lad to paint, and under a goodlylight. Wide enough the light was, and clear; no more Salvator's luridchasm on jagged horizon, nor Dürer's spotted rest of sunny gleam onhedgerow and field; but light over all the world. Full shone now itsawful globe, one pallid charnel-house, --a ball strewn bright with humanashes, glaring in poised sway beneath the sun, all blinding-white withdeath from pole to pole, --death, not of myriads of poor bodies only, but of will, and mercy, and conscience; death, not once inflicted onthe flesh, but daily, fastening on the spirit; death, not silent orpatient, waiting his appointed hour, but voiceful, venomous; death withthe taunting word, and burning grasp, and infixed sting. 

"Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. "[135] The word is spokenin our ears continually to other reapers than the angels, --to the busyskeletons that never tire for stooping. When the measure of iniquity isfull, and it seems that another day might bring repentance andredemption, --"Put ye in the sickle. " When the young life has beenwasted all away, and the eyes are just opening upon the tracks of ruin, and faint resolution rising in the heart for nobler things, --"Put ye inthe sickle. " When the roughest blows of fortune have been borne longand bravely, and the hand is just stretched to grasp its goal, --"Put yein the sickle. " And when there are but a few in the midst of a nation, to save it, or to teach, or to cherish; and all its life is bound up inthose few golden ears, --"Put ye in the sickle, pale reapers, and pourhemlock for your feast of harvest home. "

This was the sight which opened on the young eyes, this the watchwordsounding within the heart of Turner in his youth. 

So taught, and prepared for his life's labour, sate the boy at lastalone among his fair English hills; and began to paint, with cautioustoil, the rocks, and fields, and trickling brooks, and soft whiteclouds of heaven. 

 [120] c. 1478-1511. 

 [121] Dante, alluding to Florence, _Paradiso_, 25. 5. "From the fair sheepfold, where a lamb I slumbered. " Longfellow's tr. 

 [122] Allusions to pictures by Turner, The Garden of the Hesperides, and The Meuse: Orange-Merchantman going to pieces on the Bar. 

 [123] The pictures referred to are: The Death of Nelson, The Battle of Trafalgar, and The Fighting Téméraire being towed to its Last Berth (see cut). The first and third are in the National Gallery, London. 

 [124] _Matthew_ xxiii, 14. 

 [125] Santa Maria della Salute, a church conspicuously situated at the junction of the Grand Canal and the Giudecca. 

 [126] _Liber Studiorum_. "Interior of a church. " It is worthy of remark that Giorgione and Titian are always delighted to have an opportunity of drawing priests. The English Church may, perhaps, accept it as matter of congratulation that this is the only instance in which Turner drew a clergyman. [Ruskin. ]

 [127] 1785. 

 [128] Wolsey's famous palace, twelve miles from London. 

 [129] I do not mean that this is his first acquaintance with the country, but the first impressive and touching one, after his mind was formed. The earliest sketches I found in the National Collection are at Clifton and Bristol; the next, at Oxford. [Ruskin. ]

 [130] The reference is to the two famous ruined abbeys of Yorkshire--Whitby and Bolton. 

 [131] The Tenth Plague of Egypt. [Ruskin. ]

 [132] Rizpah, the Daughter of Aiah. [Ruskin. ]

 [133] Dürer [1471-1528], German painter, engraver, and designer. Salvator [1615-73], Italian painter, etcher, satirical poet, and musical composer. 

 [134] _I. E. _, between November 17, 1796, and June 18, 1815. 

 [135] _Joel_ iii, 13. 

SELECTIONS FROM

THE STONES OF VENICE

The first volume of _The Stones of Venice_ appeared in March, 1851; thefirst day of May of the same year we find the following entry inRuskin's diary: "About to enter on the true beginning of the secondpart of my Venetian work. May God help me to finish it--to His glory, and man's good. " The main part of the volume was composed at Venice inthe winter of 1851-52, though it did not appear until the end of July, 1853. His work on architecture, including _The Seven Lamps_, it will benoted, intervenes between the composition of the second and thirdvolumes of _Modern Painters_; and Ruskin himself always looked uponthe work as an interlude, almost as an interruption. But he also cameto believe that this digression had really led back to the heart ofthe truth for all art. Its main theme, as in _The Seven Lamps ofArchitecture_, is its illustration of the principle that architectureexpresses certain states in the moral temper of the people by and forwhom it is produced. It may surprise us to-day to know that when Ruskinwrote of the glories of Venetian architecture, the common "professionalopinion was that St. Mark's and the Ducal Palace were as ugly andrepulsive as they were contrary to rule and order. " In a private letterGibbon writes of the Square of St. Mark's as "a large square decoratedwith the worst architecture I ever saw. " The architects of his own timeregarded Ruskin's opinions as dictated by wild caprice, and almostevincing an unbalanced mind. Probably the core of all thisarchitectural work is to be found in his chapter "On the Nature ofGothic, " in the main reproduced in this volume. And we find here againa point of fundamental significance--that his artistic analysis led himinevitably on to social inquiries. He proved to himself that the mainvirtue of Gothic lay in the unrestricted play of the individualimagination; that the best results were produced when every artist wasa workman and every workman an artist. Twenty years after thepublication of this book, he wrote in a private letter that his mainpurpose "was to show the dependence of (architectural) beauty on thehappiness and fancy of the workman, and to show also that no architectcould claim the title to authority of _Magister_ unless he himselfwrought at the head of his men, captain of manual skill, as the bestknight is captain of armies. " He himself called the chapter "preciselyand accurately the most important in the whole book. " Mr. FredericHarrison says that in it is "the creed, if it be not the origin, of anew industrial school of thought. "

THE THRONE

VOLUME II, CHAPTER I

In the olden days of travelling, now to return no more, in whichdistance could not be vanquished without toil, but in which that toilwas rewarded, partly by the power of deliberate survey of the countriesthrough which the journey lay, and partly by the happiness of theevening hours, when from the top of the last hill he had surmounted, the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to rest, scatteredamong the meadows beside its valley stream; or, from the long hoped forturn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw, for the first time, the towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of sunset--hours ofpeaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of the arrival inthe railway station is perhaps not always, or to all men, anequivalent, --in those days, I say, when there was something more to beanticipated and remembered in the first aspect of each successivehalting-place, than a new arrangement of glass roofing and iron girder, there were few moments of which the recollection was more fondlycherished by the traveller, than that which, as I endeavoured todescribe in the close of the last chapter, brought him within sight ofVenice, as his gondola shot into the open lagoon from the canal ofMestre. Not but that the aspect of the city itself was generally thesource of some slight disappointment, for, seen in this direction, itsbuildings are far less characteristic than those of the other greattowns of Italy; but this inferiority was partly disguised by distance, and more than atoned for by the strange rising of its walls and towersout of the midst, as it seemed, of the deep sea, for it was impossiblethat the mind or the eye could at once comprehend the shallowness ofthe vast sheet of water which stretched away in leagues of ripplinglustre to the north and south, or trace the narrow line of isletsbounding it to the east. The salt breeze, the white moaning sea-birds, the masses of black weed separating and disappearing gradually, inknots of heaving shoal, under the advance of the steady tide, allproclaimed it to be indeed the ocean on whose bosom the great cityrested so calmly; not such blue, soft, lake-like ocean as bathes theNeapolitan promontories, or sleeps beneath the marble rocks of Genoa, but a sea with the bleak power of our own northern waves, yet subduedinto a strange spacious rest, and changed from its angry pallor into afield of burnished gold, as the sun declined behind the belfry tower ofthe lonely island church, fitly named "St. George of the Seaweed. " Asthe boat drew nearer to the city, the coast which the traveller hadjust left sank behind him into one long, low, sad-coloured line, tuftedirregularly with brushwood and willows: but, at what seemed itsnorthern extremity, the hills of Arqua rose in a dark cluster of purplepyramids, balanced on the bright mirage of the lagoon; two or threesmooth surges of inferior hill extended themselves about their roots, and beyond these, beginning with the craggy peaks above Vicenza, thechain of the Alps girded the whole horizon to the north--a wall ofjagged blue, here and there showing through its clefts a wilderness ofmisty precipices, fading far back into the recesses of Cadore, anditself rising and breaking away eastward, where the sun struck oppositeupon its snow, into mighty fragments of peaked light, standing upbehind the barred clouds of evening, one after another, countless, thecrown of the Adrian Sea, until the eye turned back from pursuing them, to rest upon the nearer burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on thegreat city, where it magnified itself along the waves, as the quicksilent pacing of the gondola drew nearer and nearer. And at last, whenits walls were reached, and the outmost of its untrodden streets wasentered, not through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deepinlet between two rocks of coral in the Indian sea; when first upon thetraveller's sight opened the long ranges of columned palaces, --eachwith its black boat moored at the portal, --each with its image castdown, beneath its feet, upon that green pavement which every breezebroke into new fantasies of rich tessellation; when first, at theextremity of the bright vista, the shadowy Rialto threw its colossalcurve slowly forth from behind the palace of the Camerlenghi;[136] thatstrange curve, so delicate, so adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent; when first, before its moonlikecircumference was all risen, the gondolier's cry, "Ah! Stalì, "[137]struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mightycornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the splash of thewater followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the boat'sside; and when at last that boat darted forth upon the breadth ofsilver sea, across which the front of the Ducal Palace, flushed withits sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady ofSalvation, [138] it was no marvel that the mind should be so deeplyentranced by the visionary charm of a scene so beautiful and sostrange, as to forget the darker truths of its history and its being. Well might it seem that such a city had owed her existence rather tothe rod of the enchanter, than the fear of the fugitive; that thewaters which encircled her had been chosen for the mirror of her state, rather than the shelter of her nakedness; and that all which in naturewas wild or merciless, --Time and Decay, as well as the waves andtempests, --had been won to adorn her instead of to destroy, and mightstill spare, for ages to come, that beauty which seemed to have fixedfor its throne the sands of the hour-glass as well as of the sea. 

And although the last few eventful years, fraught with change to theface of the whole earth, have been more fatal in their influence onVenice than the five hundred that preceded them; though the noblelandscape of approach to her can now be seen no more, or seen only by aglance, as the engine slackens its rushing on the iron line; and thoughmany of her palaces are for ever defaced, and many in desecrated ruins, there is still so much of magic in her aspect, that the hurriedtraveller, who must leave her before the wonder of that first aspecthas been worn away, may still be led to forget the humility of herorigin, and to shut his eyes to the depth of her desolation. They, atleast, are little to be envied, in whose hearts the great charities ofthe imagination lie dead, and for whom the fancy has no power torepress the importunity of painful impressions, or to raise what isignoble, and disguise what is discordant, in a scene so rich in itsremembrances, so surpassing in its beauty. But for this work of theimagination there must be no permission during the task which is beforeus. The impotent feelings of romance, so singularly characteristic ofthis century, may indeed gild, but never save, the remains of thosemightier ages to which they are attached like climbing flowers; andthey must be torn away from the magnificent fragments, if we would seethem as they stood in their own strength. Those feelings, always asfruitless as they are fond, are in Venice not only incapable ofprotecting, but even of discerning, the objects to which they ought tohave been attached. The Venice of modern fiction and drama is a thingof yesterday, a mere efflorescence of decay, a stage dream which thefirst ray of daylight must dissipate into dust. No prisoner, whose nameis worth remembering, or whose sorrow deserved sympathy, ever crossedthat "Bridge of Sighs, " which is the centre of the Byronic ideal ofVenice;[139] no great merchant of Venice ever saw that Rialto under whichthe traveller now passes with breathless interest: the statue whichByron makes Faliero address as of one of his great ancestors waserected to a soldier of fortune a hundred and fifty years afterFaliero's death;[140] and the most conspicuous parts of the city havebeen so entirely altered in the course of the last three centuries, that if Henry Dandolo or Francis Foscari[141] could be summoned fromtheir tombs, and stood each on the deck of his galley at the entranceof the Grand Canal, that renowned entrance, the painter's favouritesubject, the novelist's favourite scene, where the water first narrowsby the steps of the Church of La Salute, --the mighty Doges would notknow in what part of the world they stood, would literally notrecognize one stone of the great city, for whose sake, and by whoseingratitude, their grey hairs had been brought down with bitterness tothe grave. The remains of _their_ Venice lie hidden behind the cumbrousmasses which were the delight of the nation in its dotage; hidden inmany a grass-grown court, and silent pathway, and lightless canal, where the slow waves have sapped their foundations for five hundredyears, and must soon prevail over them for ever. It must be our task toglean and gather them forth, and restore out of them some faint imageof the lost city; more gorgeous a thousandfold than that which nowexists, yet not created in the day-dream of the prince, nor by theostentation of the noble, but built by iron hands and patient hearts, contending against the adversity of nature and the fury of man, so thatits wonderfulness cannot be grasped by the indolence of imagination, but only after frank inquiry into the true nature of that wild andsolitary scene, whose restless tides and trembling sands did indeedshelter the birth of the city, but long denied her dominion. 

When the eye falls casually on a map of Europe, there is no feature bywhich it is more likely to be arrested than the strange sweeping loopformed by the junction of the Alps and Apennines, and enclosing thegreat basin of Lombardy. This return of the mountain chain upon itselfcauses a vast difference in the character of the distribution of itsdebris on its opposite sides. The rock fragments and sediment which thetorrents on the other side of the Alps bear into the plains aredistributed over a vast extent of country, and, though here and therelodged in beds of enormous thickness, soon permit the firm substrata toappear from underneath them; but all the torrents which descend fromthe southern side of the High Alps, and from the northern slope of theApennines, meet concentrically in the recess or mountain bay which thetwo ridges enclose; every fragment which thunder breaks out of theirbattlements, and every grain of dust which the summer rain washes fromtheir pastures, is at last laid at rest in the blue sweep of theLombardic plain; and that plain must have risen within its rockybarriers as a cup fills with wine, but for two contrary influenceswhich continually depress, or disperse from its surface, theaccumulation of the ruins of ages. 

I will not tax the reader's faith in modern science by insisting on thesingular depression of the surface of Lombardy, which appears for manycenturies to have taken place steadily and continually; the main factwith which we have to do is the gradual transport, by the Po and itsgreat collateral rivers, of vast masses of the finer sediment to thesea. The character of the Lombardic plains is most strikingly expressedby the ancient walls of its cities, composed for the most part of largerounded Alpine pebbles alternating with narrow courses of brick; andwas curiously illustrated in 1848, by the ramparts of these samepebbles thrown up four or five feet high round every field, to checkthe Austrian cavalry in the battle under the walls of Verona. [142] Thefiner dust among which these pebbles are dispersed is taken up by therivers, fed into continual strength by the Alpine snow, so that, however pure their waters may be when they issue from the lakes at thefoot of the great chain, they become of the colour and opacity of claybefore they reach the Adriatic; the sediment which they bear is at oncethrown down as they enter the sea, forming a vast belt of low landalong the eastern coast of Italy. The powerful stream of the Po ofcourse builds forward the fastest; on each side of it, north and south, there is a tract of marsh, fed by more feeble streams, and less liableto rapid change than the delta of the central river. In one of thesetracts is built RAVENNA, and in the other VENICE. 

What circumstances directed the peculiar arrangement of this great beltof sediment in the earliest times, it is not here the place to inquire. It is enough for us to know that from the mouths of the Adige to thoseof the Piave there stretches, at a variable distance of from three tofive miles from the actual shore, a bank of sand, divided into longislands by narrow channels of sea. The space between this bank and thetrue shore consists of the sedimentary deposits from these and otherrivers, a great plain of calcareous mud, covered, in the neighbourhoodof Venice, by the sea at high water, to the depth in most places of afoot or a foot and a half, and nearly everywhere exposed at low tide, but divided by an intricate network of narrow and winding channels, from which the sea never retires. In some places, according to the runof the currents, the land has risen into marshy islets, consolidated, some by art, and some by time, into ground firm enough to be builtupon, or fruitful enough to be cultivated: in others, on the contrary, it has not reached the sea level; so that, at the average low water, shallow lakelets glitter among its irregularly exposed fields ofseaweed. In the midst of the largest of these, increased in importanceby the confluence of several large river channels towards one of theopenings in the sea bank, the city of Venice itself is built, on acrowded cluster of islands; the various plots of higher ground whichappear to the north and south of this central cluster, have atdifferent periods been also thickly inhabited, and now bear, accordingto their size, the remains of cities, villages, or isolated conventsand churches, scattered among spaces of open ground, partly waste andencumbered by ruins, partly under cultivation for the supply of themetropolis. 

The average rise and fall of the tide is about three feet (varyingconsiderably with the seasons); but this fall, on so flat a shore, isenough to cause continual movement in the waters, and in the maincanals to produce a reflux which frequently runs like a mill stream. Athigh water no land is visible for many miles to the north or south ofVenice, except in the form of small islands crowned with towers orgleaming with villages: there is a channel, some three miles wide, between the city and the mainland, and some mile and a half widebetween it and the sandy breakwater called the Lido, which divides thelagoon from the Adriatic, but which is so low as hardly to disturb theimpression of the city's having been built in the midst of the ocean, although the secret of its true position is partly, yet not painfully, betrayed by the clusters of piles set to mark the deepwater channels, which undulate far away in spotty chains like the studded backs of hugesea-snakes, and by the quick glittering of the crisped and crowdedwaves that flicker and dance before the strong winds upon the upliftedlevel of the shallow sea. But the scene is widely different at lowtide. A fall of eighteen or twenty inches is enough to show ground overthe greater part of the lagoon; and at the complete ebb the city isseen standing in the midst of a dark plain of sea-weed, of gloomygreen, except only where the larger branches of the Brenta and itsassociated streams converge towards the port of the Lido. Through thissalt and sombre plain the gondola and the fishing-boat advance bytortuous channels, seldom more than four or five feet deep, and oftenso choked with slime that the heavier keels furrow the bottom tilltheir crossing tracks are seen through the clear sea water like theruts upon a wintry road, and the oar leaves blue gashes upon the groundat every stroke, or is entangled among the thick weed that fringes thebanks with the weight of its sullen waves, leaning to and fro upon theuncertain sway of the exhausted tide. The scene is often profoundlyoppressive, even at this day, when every plot of higher ground bearssome fragment of fair building: but, in order to know what it was once, let the traveller follow in his boat at evening the windings of someunfrequented channel far into the midst of the melancholy plain; lethim remove, in his imagination, the brightness of the great city thatstill extends itself in the distance, and the walls and towers from theislands that are near; and so wait, until the bright investiture andsweet warmth of the sunset are withdrawn from the waters, and the blackdesert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearfulsilence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools, or the sea-birds flit from their margins with a questioning cry; and hewill be enabled to enter in some sort into the horror of heart withwhich this solitude was anciently chosen by man for his habitation. They little thought, who first drove the stakes into the sand, andstrewed the ocean reeds for their rest, that their children were to bethe princes of that ocean, and their palaces its pride; and yet, in thegreat natural laws that rule that sorrowful wilderness, let it beremembered what strange preparation had been made for the things whichno human imagination could have foretold, and how the whole existenceand fortune of the Venetian nation were anticipated or compelled, bythe setting of those bars and doors to the rivers and the sea. Haddeeper currents divided their islands, hostile navies would again andagain have reduced the rising city into servitude; had stronger surgesbeaten their shores, all the richness and refinement of the Venetianarchitecture must have been exchanged for the walls and bulwarks of anordinary sea-port. Had there been no tide, as in other parts of theMediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have become noisome, and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the tide been onlya foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the water-access to thedoors of the palaces would have been impossible: even as it is, thereis sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in landing withoutsetting foot upon the lower and slippery steps; and the highest tidessometimes enter the courtyards, and overflow the entrance halls. Eighteen inches more of difference between the level of the flood andebb would have rendered the doorsteps of every palace, at low water, atreacherous mass of weeds and limpets, and the entire system ofwater-carriage for the higher classes, in their easy and dailyintercourse, must have been done away with. The streets of the citywould have been widened, its network of canals filled up, and all thepeculiar character of the place and the people destroyed. 

The reader may perhaps have felt some pain in the contrast between thisfaithful view of the site of the Venetian Throne, and the romanticconception of it which we ordinarily form; but this pain, if he havefelt it, ought to be more than counterbalanced by the value of theinstance thus afforded to us at once of the inscrutableness and thewisdom of the ways of God. If, two thousand years ago, we had beenpermitted to watch the slow settling of the slime of those turbidrivers into the polluted sea, and the gaining upon its deep and freshwaters of the lifeless, impassable, unvoyageable plain, how littlecould we have understood the purpose with which those islands wereshaped out of the void, and the torpid waters enclosed with theirdesolate walls of sand! How little could we have known, any more thanof what now seems to us most distressful, dark, and objectless, theglorious aim which was then in the mind of Him in whose hand are allthe corners of the earth! how little imagined that in the laws whichwere stretching forth the gloomy margins of those fruitless banks, andfeeding the bitter grass among their shallows, there was indeed apreparation, and _the only preparation possible_, for the founding of acity which was to be set like a golden clasp on the girdle of theearth, to write her history on the white scrolls of the sea-surges, andto word it in their thunder, and to gather and give forth, inworld-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the East, from theburning heart of her Fortitude and Splendour. 

 [136] The palace of the Camerlenghi, beside the Rialto, is a graceful work of the early Renaissance (1525) passing into Roman Renaissance. [Adapted from Ruskin. ]

 [137] Signifying approximately "Keep to the right. "

 [138] See note 1, p. 129. 

 [139] _Childe Harold_, 4. 1. 

 [140] _Marino Faliero_, 3. 1. 22 ff. 

 [141] Dandolo [c. 1108-1205] and Foscari [1372-1457] were among the most famous of Venetian Doges. 

 [142] In the battle of Custozza, 1848, the Austrians defeated the Piedmontese. 

ST. MARK'S

VOLUME II, CHAPTER 4

"And so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto Cyprus. " If as the shoresof Asia lessened upon his sight, the spirit of prophecy had enteredinto the heart of the weak disciple who had turned back when his handwas on the plough, and who had been judged, by the chiefest of Christ'scaptains, unworthy thenceforward to go forth with him to the work, [143]how wonderful would he have thought it, that by the lion symbol infuture ages he was to be represented among men! how woful, that thewar-cry of his name should so often reanimate the rage of the soldier, on those very plains where he himself had failed in the courage of theChristian, and so often dye with fruitless blood that very Cypriot Sea, over whose waves, in repentance and shame, he was following the Son ofConsolation!

That the Venetians possessed themselves of his body in the ninthcentury, there appears no sufficient reason to doubt, nor that it wasprincipally in consequence of their having done so, that they chose himfor their patron saint. There exists, however, a tradition that beforehe went into Egypt he had founded the church at Aquileia, and was thusin some sort the first bishop of the Venetian isles and people. Ibelieve that this tradition stands on nearly as good grounds as that ofSt. Peter having been the first bishop of Rome[144]; but, as usual, it isenriched by various later additions and embellishments, much resemblingthe stories told respecting the church of Murano. Thus we find itrecorded by the Santo Padre who compiled the _Vife de' Santi spettantialle Chiese di Venezia_, [145] that "St. Mark having seen the people ofAquileia well grounded in religion, and being called to Rome by St. Peter, before setting off took with him the holy bishop Hermagoras, andwent in a small boat to the marshes of Venice. There were at thatperiod some houses built upon a certain high bank called Rialto, andthe boat being driven by the wind was anchored in a marshy place, whenSt. Mark, snatched into ecstasy, heard the voice of an angel saying tohim: 'Peace be to thee, Mark; here shall thy body rest. '" The angelgoes on to foretell the building of "una stupenda, ne più vedutaCittà"[146]; but the fable is hardly ingenious enough to deserve fartherrelation. 

But whether St. Mark was first bishop of Aquileia or not, St. Theodorewas the first patron of the city; nor can he yet be considered ashaving entirely abdicated his early right, as his statue, standing on acrocodile, still companions the winged lion on the opposing pillar ofthe piazzetta. A church erected to this Saint is said to have occupied, before the ninth century, the site of St. Mark's; and the traveller, dazzled by the brilliancy of the great square, ought not to leave itwithout endeavouring to imagine its aspect in that early time, when itwas a green field cloister-like and quiet, [147] divided by a small canal, with a line of trees on each side; and extending between the twochurches of St. Theodore and St. Gemanium, as the little piazza ofTorcello lies between its "palazzo" and cathedral. 

But in the year 813, when the seat of government was finally removed tothe Rialto, a Ducal Palace, built on the spot where the present onestands, with a Ducal Chapel beside it, [148] gave a very differentcharacter to the Square of St. Mark; and fifteen years later, theacquisition of the body of the Saint, and its deposition in the DucalChapel, perhaps not yet completed, occasioned the investiture of thatchapel with all possible splendour. St. Theodore was deposed from hispatronship, and his church destroyed, to make room for theaggrandizement of the one attached to the Ducal Palace, andthenceforward known as "St. Mark's. "[149]

This first church was however destroyed by fire, when the Ducal Palacewas burned in the revolt against Candiano, in 976. It was partlyrebuilt by his successor, Pietro Orseolo, on a larger scale; and, withthe assistance of Byzantine architects, the fabric was carried on undersuccessive Doges for nearly a hundred years; the main building beingcompleted in 1071, but its incrustation with marble not tillconsiderably later. It was consecrated on the 8th of October, 1085, [150]according to Sansovino and the author of the _Chiesa Ducale di S. Marco_, in 1094 according to Lazari, but certainly between 1084 and1096, those years being the limits of the reign of Vital Falier; Iincline to the supposition that it was soon after his accession to thethrone in 1085, though Sansovino writes, by mistake, Ordelafo insteadof Vital Falier. But, at all events, before the close of the eleventhcentury the great consecration of the church took place. It was againinjured by fire in 1106, but repaired; and from that time to the fallof Venice there was probably no Doge who did not in some slight degreeembellish or alter the fabric, so that few parts of it can bepronounced boldly to be of any given date. Two periods of interferenceare, however, notable above the rest: the first, that in which theGothic school had superseded the Byzantine towards the close of thefourteenth century, when the pinnacles, upper archivolts, and windowtraceries were added to the exterior, and the great screen with variouschapels and tabernacle-work, to the interior; the second, when theRenaissance school superseded the Gothic, and the pupils of Titianand Tintoret substituted, over one half of the church, their owncompositions for the Greek mosaics with which it was originallydecorated;[151] happily, though with no good will, having left enoughto enable us to imagine and lament what they destroyed. Of thisirreparable loss we shall have more to say hereafter; meantime, I wishonly to fix in the reader's mind the succession of periods ofalterations as firmly and simply as possible. 

We have seen that the main body of the church may be broadly stated tobe of the eleventh century, the Gothic additions of the fourteenth, andthe restored mosaics of the seventeenth. There is no difficulty indistinguishing at a glance the Gothic portions from the Byzantine; butthere is considerable difficulty in ascertaining how long, during thecourse of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, additions were made tothe Byzantine church, which cannot be easily distinguished from thework of the eleventh century, being purposely executed in the samemanner. Two of the most important pieces of evidence on this point are, a mosaic in the south transept, and another over the northern door ofthe façade; the first representing the interior, the second theexterior, of the ancient church. 

It has just been stated that the existing building was consecrated bythe Doge Vital Falier. A peculiar solemnity was given to that act ofconsecration, in the minds of the Venetian people, by what appears tohave been one of the best arranged and most successful impostures everattempted by the clergy of the Romish church. The body of St. Mark had, without doubt, perished in the conflagration of 976; but the revenuesof the church depended too much upon the devotion excited by theserelics to permit the confession of their loss. The following is theaccount given by Corner, and believed to this day by the Venetians, ofthe pretended miracle by which it was concealed. 

"After the repairs undertaken by the Doge Orseolo, the place in whichthe body of the holy Evangelist rested had been altogether forgotten;so that the Doge Vital Falier was entirely ignorant of the place of thevenerable deposit. This was no light affliction, not only to the piousDoge, but to all the citizens and people; so that at last, moved byconfidence in the Divine mercy, they determined to implore, with prayerand fasting, the manifestation of so great a treasure, which did notnow depend upon any human effort. A general fast being thereforeproclaimed, and a solemn procession appointed for the 25th day of June, while the people assembled in the church interceded with God in ferventprayers for the desired boon, they beheld, with as much amazement asjoy, a slight shaking in the marbles of a pillar (near the place wherethe altar of the Cross is now), which, presently falling to the earth, exposed to the view of the rejoicing people the chest of bronze inwhich the body of the Evangelist was laid. "

Of the main facts of this tale there is no doubt. They were embellishedafterwards, as usual, by many fanciful traditions; as, for instance, that, when the sarcophagus was discovered, St. Mark extended his handout of it, with a gold ring on one of the fingers, which he permitted anoble of the Dolfin family to remove; and a quaint and delightful storywas further invented of this ring, which I shall not repeat here, as itis now as well known as any tale of the Arabian Nights. But the fastand the discovery of the coffin, by whatever means effected, are facts;and they are recorded in one of the best-preserved mosaics of thenorth[152] transept, executed very certainly not long after the eventhad taken place, closely resembling in its treatment that of the Bayeuxtapestry, and showing, in a conventional manner, the interior of thechurch, as it then was, filled by the people, first in prayer, then inthanksgiving, the pillar standing open before them, and the Doge, inthe midst of them, distinguished by his crimson bonnet embroidered withgold, but more unmistakably by the inscription "Dux" over his head, asuniformly is the case in the Bayeux tapestry, and most other pictorialworks of the period. The church is, of course, rudely represented, andthe two upper stories of it reduced to a small scale in order to form abackground to the figures; one of those bold pieces of picture historywhich we in our pride of perspective, and a thousand things besides, never dare attempt. We should have put in a column or two, of the realor perspective size, and subdued it into a vague background: the oldworkman crushed the church together that he might get it all in, up tothe cupolas; and has, therefore, left us some useful notes of itsancient form, though any one who is familiar with the method of drawingemployed at the period will not push the evidence too far. The twopulpits are there, however, as they are at this day, and the fringe ofmosaic flowerwork which then encompassed the whole church, but whichmodern restorers have destroyed, all but one fragment still left in thesouth aisle. There is no attempt to represent the other mosaics on theroof, the scale being too small to admit of their being representedwith any success; but some at least of those mosaics had been executedat that period, and their absence in the representation of the entirechurch is especially to be observed, in order to show that we must nottrust to any negative evidence in such works. M. Lazari has rashlyconcluded that the central archivolt of St. Mark's _must_ be posteriorto the year 1205, because it does not appear in the representation ofthe exterior of the church over the northern door;[153] but he justlyobserves that this mosaic (which is the other piece of evidence wepossess respecting the ancient form of the building) cannot itself beearlier than 1205, since it represents the bronze horses which werebrought from Constantinople in that year. And this one fact renders itvery difficult to speak with confidence respecting the date of any partof the exterior of St. Mark's; for we have above seen that it wasconsecrated in the eleventh century, and yet here is one of its mostimportant exterior decorations assuredly retouched, if not entirelyadded, in the thirteenth, although its style would have led us tosuppose it had been an original part of the fabric. However, for allour purposes, it will be enough for the reader to remember that theearliest parts of the building belong to the eleventh, twelfth, andfirst part of the thirteenth century; the Gothic portions to thefourteenth; some of the altars and embellishments to the fifteenth andsixteenth; and the modern portion of the mosaics to the seventeenth. 

This, however, I only wish him to recollect in order that I may speakgenerally of the Byzantine architecture of St. Mark's, without leadinghim to suppose the whole church to have been built and decorated byGreek artists. Its later portions, with the single exception of theseventeenth-century mosaics, have been so dexterously accommodated tothe original fabric that the general effect is still that of aByzantine building; and I shall not, except when it is absolutelynecessary, direct attention to the discordant points, or weary thereader with anatomical criticism. Whatever in St. Mark's arrests theeye, or affects the feelings, is either Byzantine, or has been modifiedby Byzantine influence; and our inquiry into its architectural meritsneed not therefore be disturbed by the anxieties of antiquarianism, orarrested by the obscurities of chronology. 

And now I wish that the reader, before I bring him into St. Mark'sPlace, would imagine himself for a little time in a quiet Englishcathedral town, and walk with me to the west front of its cathedral. Let us go together up the more retired street, at the end of which wecan see the pinnacles of one of the towers, and then through the lowgrey gateway, with its battlemented top and small latticed window inthe centre, into the inner private-looking road or close, where nothinggoes in but the carts of the tradesmen who supply the bishop and thechapter, and where there are little shaven grass-plots, fenced in byneat rails, before old-fashioned groups of somewhat diminutive andexcessively trim houses, with little oriel and bay windows jutting outhere and there, and deep wooden cornices and eaves painted cream colourand white, and small porches to their doors in the shape ofcockle-shells, or little, crooked, thick, indescribable wooden gableswarped a little on one side; and so forward till we come to largerhouses, also old-fashioned, but of red brick, and with gardens behindthem, and fruit walls, which show here and there, among the nectarines, the vestiges of an old cloister arch or shaft, and looking in front onthe cathedral square itself, laid out in rigid divisions of smoothgrass and gravel walk, yet not uncheerful, especially on the sunnyside, where the canons' children are walking with their nursery-maids. And so, taking care not to tread on the grass, we will go along thestraight walk to the west front, and there stand for a time, looking upat its deep-pointed porches and the dark places between their pillarswhere there were statues once, and where the fragments, here and there, of a stately figure are still left, which has in it the likeness of aking, perhaps indeed a king on earth, perhaps a saintly king long agoin heaven; and so higher and higher up to the great mouldering wall ofrugged sculpture and confused arcades, shattered, and grey, and grislywith heads of dragons and mocking fiends, worn by the rain and swirlingwinds into yet unseemlier shape, and coloured on their stony scales bythe deep russet-orange lichen, melancholy gold; and so, higher still, to the bleak towers, so far above that the eye loses itself among thebosses of their traceries, though they are rude and strong, and onlysees like a drift of eddying black points, now closing, now scattering, and now settling suddenly into invisible places among the bosses andflowers, the crowd of restless birds that fill the whole square withthat strange clangour of theirs, so harsh and yet so soothing, like thecries of birds on a solitary coast between the cliffs and sea. 

Think for a little while of that scene, and the meaning of all itssmall formalisms, mixed with its serene sublimity. Estimate itssecluded, continuous, drowsy felicities, and its evidence of the senseand steady performance of such kind of duties as can be regulated bythe cathedral clock; and weigh the influence of those dark towers onall who have passed through the lonely square at their feet forcenturies, and on all who have seen them rising far away over thewooded plain, or catching on their square masses the last rays of thesunset, when the city at their feet was indicated only by the mist atthe bend of the river. And then let us quickly recollect that we are inVenice, and land at the extremity of the Calla Lunga San Moisè, whichmay be considered as there answering to the secluded street that led usto our English cathedral gateway. 

We find ourselves in a paved alley, some seven feet wide where it iswidest, full of people, and resonant with cries of itinerantsalesmen, --a shriek in their beginning, and dying away into a kind ofbrazen ringing, all the worse for its confinement between the highhouses of the passage along which we have to make our way. Over-head, an inextricable confusion of rugged shutters, and iron balconies andchimney flues, pushed out on brackets to save room, and arched windowswith projecting sills of Istrian stone, and gleams of green leaves hereand there where a fig-tree branch escapes over a lower wall from someinner cortile, leading the eye up to the narrow stream of blue sky highover all. On each side, a row of shops, as densely set as may be, occupying, in fact, intervals between the square stone shafts, abouteight feet high, which carry the first floors: intervals of which oneis narrow and serves as a door; the other is, in the more respectableshops, wainscotted to the height of the counter and glazed above, butin those of the poorer tradesmen left open to the ground, and the wareslaid on benches and tables in the open air, the light in all casesentering at the front only, and fading away in a few feet from thethreshold into a gloom which the eye from without cannot penetrate, butwhich is generally broken by a ray or two from a feeble lamp at theback of the shop, suspended before a print of the Virgin. The lesspious shopkeeper sometimes leaves his lamp unlighted, and is contentedwith a penny print; the more religious one has his print coloured andset in a little shrine with a gilded or figured fringe, with perhaps afaded flower or two on each side, and his lamp burning brilliantly. Here, at the fruiterer's, where the dark-green water-melons are heapedupon the counter like cannon balls, the Madonna has a tabernacle offresh laurel leaves; but the pewterer next door has let his lamp out, and there is nothing to be seen in his shop but the dull gleam of thestudded patterns on the copper pans, hanging from his roof in thedarkness. Next comes a "Vendita Frittole e Liquori, "[154] where theVirgin, enthroned in a very humble manner beside a tallow candle on aback shelf, presides over certain ambrosial morsels of a nature tooambiguous to be defined or enumerated. But a few steps farther on, atthe regular wine-shop of the calle, where we are offered "VinoNostrani a Soldi 28-32, " the Madonna is in great glory, enthroned aboveten or a dozen large red casks of three-year-old vintage, and flankedby goodly ranks of bottles of Maraschino, and two crimson lamps; andfor the evening, when the gondoliers will come to drink out, under herauspices, the money they have gained during the day, she will have awhole chandelier. 

A yard or two farther, we pass the hostelry of the Black Eagle, and, glancing as we pass through the square door of marble, deeply moulded, in the outer wall, we see the shadows of its pergola of vines restingon an ancient well, with a pointed shield carved on its side; and sopresently emerge on the bridge and Campo San Moisè, whence to theentrance into St. Mark's Place, called the Bocca di Piazza (mouth ofthe square), the Venetian character is nearly destroyed, first by thefrightful facade of San Moisè, which we will pause at another time toexamine, and then by the modernizing of the shops as they near thepiazza, and the mingling with the lower Venetian populace of lounginggroups of English and Austrians. We will push fast through them intothe shadow of the pillars at the end of the "Bocca di Piazza, " and thenwe forget them all; for between those pillars there opens a greatlight, and, in the midst of it, as we advance slowly, the vast tower ofSt. Mark seems to lift itself visibly forth from the level field ofchequered stones; and, on each side, the countless arches prolongthemselves into ranged symmetry, as if the rugged and irregular housesthat pressed together above us in the dark alley had been struck backinto sudden obedience and lovely order, and all their rude casementsand broken walls had been transformed into arches charged with goodlysculpture, and fluted shafts of delicate stone. 

And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of ordered archesthere rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great square seemsto have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it faraway;--a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a longlow pyramid of coloured light; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly ofgold, and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath intofive great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset withsculpture of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory, --sculpturefantastic and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes andpomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, alltwined together into an endless network of buds and plumes; and, in themidst of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to thefeet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their figuresindistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground through the leavesbeside them, interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it fadedback among the branches of Eden, when first its gates wereangel-guarded long ago. And round the walls of the porches there areset pillars of variegated stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-greenserpentine spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuseand half yield to the sunshine, Cleopatra-like, "their bluest veins tokiss"[155]--the shadow, as it steals back from them, revealing lineafter line of azure undulation, as a receding tide leaves the wavedsand; their capitals rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots ofherbage, and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and ending in the Cross; and above them, in the broadarchivolts, a continuous chain of language and of life--angels, and thesigns of heaven, and the labours of men, each in its appointed seasonupon the earth; and above these, another range of glittering pinnacles, mixed with white arches edged with scarlet flowers, --a confusion ofdelight, amidst which the breasts of the Greek horses are seen blazingin their breadth of golden strength, and the St. Mark's Lion, lifted ona blue field covered with stars, until at last, as if in ecstasy, thecrests of the arches break into a marble foam, and toss themselves farinto the blue sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if thebreakers on the Lido shore had been frost-bound before they fell, andthe sea-nymphs had inlaid them with coral and amethyst. 

Between that grim cathedral of England and this, what an interval!There is a type of it in the very birds that haunt them; for, insteadof the restless crowd, hoarse-voiced and sable-winged, drifting on thebleak upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that nestleamong the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of theirliving plumes, changing at every motion, with the tints, hardly lesslovely, that have stood unchanged for seven hundred years. 

And what effect has this splendour on those who pass beneath it? Youmay walk from sunrise to sunset, to and fro, before the gateway of St. Mark's, and you will not see an eye lifted to it, nor a countenancebrightened by it. Priest and layman, soldier and civilian, rich andpoor, pass by it alike regardlessly. Up to the very recesses of theporches, the meanest tradesmen of the city push their counters; nay, the foundations of its pillars are themselves the seats--not "of themthat sell doves"[156] for sacrifice, but of the vendors of toys andcaricatures. Round the whole square in front of the church there isalmost a continuous line of cafés, where the idle Venetians of themiddle classes lounge, and read empty journals; in its centre theAustrian bands play during the time of vespers, their martial musicjarring with the organ notes, --the march drowning the miserere, and thesullen crowd thickening round them, --a crowd, which, if it had itswill, would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in therecesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowestclasses, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards;and unregarded children, --every heavy glance of their young eyes fullof desperation and stony depravity, and their throats hoarse withcursing, --gamble, and fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after hour, clashing their bruised centesimi upon the marble ledges of the churchporch. And the images of Christ and His angels look down upon itcontinually. 

 [143] _Acts_ xiii, 13 and xv, 38, 39. [Ruskin. ]

 [144] The reader who desires to investigate it may consult Galliciolli, _Delle Memorie Venete_ (Venice, 1795), tom. 2, p. 332, and the authorities quoted by him. [Ruskin. ]

 [145] _Venice_, 1761 tom. 1, p. 126. [Ruskin. ]

 [146] A wonderful City, such as was never seen before. 

 [147] St. Mark's Place, "partly covered by turf, and planted with a few trees; and on account of its pleasant aspect called Brollo or Broglio, that is to say, Garden. " The canal passed through it, over which is built the bridge of the Malpassi. Galliciolli, lib. I, cap. Viii. [Ruskin. ]

 [148] My authorities for this statement are given below, in the chapter on the Ducal Palace. [Ruskin. ]

 [149] In the Chronicles, _Sancti Marci Ducalis Cappdla_. [Ruskin. ]

 [150] "To God the Lord, the glorious Virgin Annunciate, and the Protector St. Mark. "--Corner, p. 14. It is needless to trouble the reader with the various authorities for the above statements: I have consulted the best. The previous inscription once existing on the church itself:

 Anno milleno transacto bisque trigeno Desuper undecimo fuit facta primo, is no longer to be seen, and is conjectured by Corner, with much probability, to have perished "in qualche ristauro. " [Ruskin. ]

 [151] Signed Bartolomeus Bozza, 1634, 1647, 1656, etc. [Ruskin. ]

 [152] An obvious slip. The mosaic is on the west wall of the south transept. [Cook and Wedderburn. ]

 [153] _Guida di Venezia_, p. 6. [Ruskin. ]

 [154] Fritters and liquors for sale. 

 [155] _Antony and Cleopatra_, 2. 5. 29. 

 [156] Matthew xxi, 12 and _John_ ii, 16. 

CHARACTERISTICS OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE

VOLUME II, CHAPTER 6

I believe, then, that the characteristic or moral elements of Gothicare the following, placed in the order of their importance:

 1. Savageness. 2. Changefulness. 3. Naturalism. 4. Grotesqueness. 5. Rigidity. 6. Redundance. 

These characters are here expressed as belonging to the building; asbelonging to the builder, they would be expressed thus:--1. Savageness, or Rudeness. 2. Love of Change. 3. Love of Nature. 4. DisturbedImagination. 5. Obstinacy. 6. Generosity. And I repeat, that thewithdrawal of any one, or any two, will not at once destroy the Gothiccharacter of a building, but the removal of a majority of them will. Ishall proceed to examine them in their order. 

1. SAVAGENESS. I am not sure when the word "Gothic" was firstgenerically applied to the architecture of the North; but I presumethat, whatever the date of its original usage, it was intended to implyreproach, and express the barbaric character of the nations among whomthat architecture arose. It never implied that they were literally ofGothic lineage, far less that their architecture had been originallyinvented by the Goths themselves; but it did imply that they and theirbuildings together exhibited a degree of sternness and rudeness, which, in contradistinction to the character of Southern and Eastern nations, appeared like a perpetual reflection of the contrast between the Gothand the Roman in their first encounter. And when that fallen Roman, inthe utmost impotence of his luxury, and insolence of his guilt, becamethe model for the imitation of civilized Europe, at the close of theso-called Dark Ages, the word Gothic became a term of unmitigatedcontempt, not unmixed with aversion. From that contempt, by theexertion of the antiquaries and architects of this century, Gothicarchitecture has been sufficiently vindicated; and perhaps some amongus, in our admiration of the magnificent science of its structure, andsacredness of its expression, might desire that the term of ancientreproach should be withdrawn, and some other, of more apparenthonourableness, adopted in its place. There is no chance, as there isno need, of such a substitution. As far as the epithet was usedscornfully, it was used falsely; but there is no reproach in the word, rightly understood; on the contrary, there is a profound truth, whichthe instinct of mankind almost unconsciously recognizes. It is true, greatly and deeply true, that the architecture of the North is rude andwild; but it is not true, that, for this reason, we are to condemn it, or despise. Far otherwise: I believe it is in this very character thatit deserves our profoundest reverence. 

The charts of the world which have been drawn up by modern science havethrown into a narrow space the expression of a vast amount ofknowledge, but I have never yet seen any one pictorial enough to enablethe spectator to imagine the kind of contrast in physical characterwhich exists between Northern and Southern countries. We know thedifferences in detail, but we have not that broad glance and graspwhich would enable us to feel them in their fulness. We know thatgentians grow on the Alps, and olives on the Apennines; but we do notenough conceive for ourselves that variegated mosaic of the world'ssurface which a bird sees in its migration, that difference between thedistrict of the gentian and of the olive which the stork and theswallow see far off, as they lean upon the sirocco wind. Let us, for amoment, try to raise ourselves even above the level of their flight, and imagine the Mediterranean lying beneath us like an irregular lake, and all its ancient promontories sleeping in the sun: here and there anangry spot of thunder, a grey stain of storm, moving upon the burningfield; and here and there a fixed wreath of white volcano smoke, surrounded by its circle of ashes; but for the most part a greatpeacefulness of light, Syria and Greece, Italy and Spain, laid likepieces of a golden pavement into the sea-blue, chased, as we stoopnearer to them, with bossy beaten work of mountain chains, and glowingsoftly with terraced gardens, and flowers heavy with frankincense, mixed among masses of laurel, and orange, and plumy palm, that abatewith their grey-green shadows the burning of the marble rocks, and ofthe ledges of porphyry sloping under lucent sand. Then let us passfarther towards the north, until we see the orient colours changegradually into a vast belt of rainy green, where the pastures ofSwitzerland, and poplar valleys of France, and dark forests of theDanube and Carpathians stretch from the mouths of the Loire to those ofthe Volga, seen through clefts in grey swirls of rain-cloud and flakyveils of the mist of the brooks, spreading low along the pasture lands:and then, farther north still, to see the earth heave into mightymasses of leaden rock and heathy moor, bordering with a broad waste ofgloomy purple that belt of field and wood, and splintering intoirregular and grisly islands amidst the northern seas, beaten by storm, and chilled by ice-drift, and tormented by furious pulses of contendingtide, until the roots of the last forests fail from among the hillravines, and the hunger of the north wind bites their peaks intobarrenness; and, at last, the wall of ice, durable like iron, sets, deathlike, its white teeth against us out of the polar twilight. And, having once traversed in thought this gradation of the zoned iris ofthe earth in all its material vastness, let us go down nearer to it, and watch the parallel change in the belt of animal life; themultitudes of swift and brilliant creatures that glance in the air andsea, or tread the sands of the southern zone; striped zebras andspotted leopards, glistening serpents, and birds arrayed in purple andscarlet. Let us contrast their delicacy and brilliancy of colour, andswiftness of motion, with the frost-cramped strength, and shaggycovering, and dusky plumage of the northern tribes; contrast theArabian horse with the Shetland, the tiger and leopard with the wolfand bear, the antelope with the elk, the bird of paradise with theosprey: and then, submissively acknowledging the great laws by whichthe earth and all that it bears are ruled throughout their being. Letus not condemn, but rejoice in the expression by man of his own rest inthe statutes of the lands that gave him birth. Let us watch him withreverence as he sets side by side the burning gems, and smooths withsoft sculpture the jasper pillars, that are to reflect a ceaselesssunshine, and rise into a cloudless sky: but not with less reverencelet us stand by him, when, with rough strength and hurried stroke, hesmites an uncouth animation out of the rocks which he has torn fromamong the moss of the moorland, and heaves into the darkened air thepile of iron buttress and rugged wall, instinct with work of animagination as wild and wayward as the northern sea; creations ofungainly shape and rigid limb, but full of wolfish life; fierce as thewinds that beat, and changeful as the clouds that shade them. 

There is, I repeat, no degradation, no reproach in this, but alldignity and honourableness: and we should err grievously in refusingeither to recognize as an essential character of the existingarchitecture of the North, or to admit as a desirable character in thatwhich it yet may be, this wildness of thought, and roughness of work;this look of mountain brotherhood between the cathedral and the Alp;this magnificence of sturdy power, put forth only the moreenergetically because the fine finger-touch was chilled away by thefrosty wind, and the eye dimmed by the moor-mist, or blinded by thehail; this outspeaking of the strong spirit of men who may not gatherredundant fruitage from the earth, nor bask in dreamy benignity ofsunshine, but must break the rock for bread, and cleave the forest forfire, and show, even in what they did for their delight, some of thehard habits of the arm and heart that grew on them as they swung theaxe or pressed the plough. 

If, however, the savageness of Gothic architecture, merely as anexpression of its origin among Northern nations, may be considered, insome sort, a noble character, it possesses a higher nobility still, when considered as an index, not of climate, but of religiousprinciple. 

In the 13th and 14th paragraphs of Chapter XXL of the first volume ofthis work, it was noticed that the systems of architectural ornament, properly so called, might be divided into three:--1. Servile ornament, in which the execution or power of the inferior workman is entirelysubjected to the intellect of the higher;--2. Constitutional ornament, in which the executive inferior power is, to a certain point, emancipated and independent, having a will of its own, yet confessingits inferiority and rendering obedience to higher powers;--and 3. Revolutionary ornament, in which no executive inferiority is admittedat all. I must here explain the nature of these divisions at somewhatgreater length. 

Of Servile ornament, the principal schools are the Greek, Ninevite, andEgyptian; but their servility is of different kinds. The Greekmaster-workman was far advanced in knowledge and power above theAssyrian or Egyptian. Neither he nor those for whom he worked couldendure the appearance of imperfection in anything; and, therefore, whatornament he appointed to be done by those beneath him was composed ofmere geometrical forms, --balls, ridges, and perfectly symmetricalfoliage, --which could be executed with absolute precision by line andrule, and were as perfect in their way, when completed, as his ownfigure sculpture. The Assyrian and Egyptian, on the contrary, lesscognizant of accurate form in anything, were content to allow theirfigure sculpture to be executed by inferior workmen, but lowered themethod of its treatment to a standard which every workman could reach, and then trained him by discipline so rigid, that there was no chanceof his falling beneath the standard appointed. The Greek gave to thelower workman no subject which he could not perfectly execute. TheAssyrian gave him subjects which he could only execute imperfectly, butfixed a legal standard for his imperfection. The workman was, in bothsystems, a slave. [157]

But in the mediæval, or especially Christian, system of ornament, thisslavery is done away with altogether; Christianity having recognized, in small things as well as great, the individual value of every soul. But it not only recognizes its value; it confesses its imperfection, inonly bestowing dignity upon the acknowledgment of unworthiness. Thatadmission of lost power and fallen nature, which the Greek or Ninevitefelt to be intensely painful, and, as far as might be, altogetherrefused, the Christian makes daily and hourly contemplating the fact ofit without fear, as tending, in the end, to God's greater glory. Therefore, to every spirit which Christianity summons to her service, her exhortation is: Do what you can, and confess frankly what you areunable to do; neither let your effort be shortened for fear of failure, nor your confession silenced for fear of shame. And it is, perhaps, theprincipal admirableness of the Gothic schools of architecture, thatthey thus receive the results of the labour of inferior minds; and outof fragments full of imperfection, and betraying that imperfection inevery touch, indulgently raise up a stately and unaccusable whole. 

But the modern English mind has this much in common with that of theGreek, that it intensely desires, in all things, the utmost completionor perfection compatible with their nature. This is a noble characterin the abstract, but becomes ignoble when it causes us to forget therelative dignities of that nature itself, and to prefer the perfectnessof the lower nature to the imperfection of the higher; not consideringthat as, judged by such a rule, all the brute animals would bepreferable to man, because more perfect in their functions and kind, and yet are always held inferior to him, so also in the works of man, those which are more perfect in their kind are always inferior to thosewhich are, in their nature, liable to more faults and shortcomings. Forthe finer the nature, the more flaws it will show through the clearnessof it; and it is a law of this universe, that the best things shall beseldomest seen in their best form. The wild grass grows well andstrongly, one year with another; but the wheat is, according to thegreater nobleness of its nature, liable to the bitterer blight. Andtherefore, while in all things that we see or do, we are to desireperfection, and strive for it, we are nevertheless not to set themeaner thing, in its narrow accomplishment, above the nobler thing, inits mighty progress; not to esteem smooth minuteness above shatteredmajesty; not to prefer mean victory to honourable defeat; not to lowerthe level of our aim, that we may the more surely enjoy the complacencyof success. But, above all, in our dealings with the souls of othermen, we are to take care how we check, by severe requirement or narrowcaution, efforts which might otherwise lead to a noble issue; and, still more, how we withhold our admiration from great excellencies, because they are mingled with rough faults. Now, in the make and natureof every man, however rude or simple, whom we employ in manual labour, there are some powers for better things: some tardy imagination, torpidcapacity of emotion, tottering steps of thought, there are, even at theworst; and in most cases it is all our own fault that they are tardy ortorpid. But they cannot be strengthened, unless we are content to takethem in their feebleness, and unless we prize and honour them in theirimperfection above the best and most perfect manual skill. And this iswhat we have to do with all our labourers; to look for the _thoughtful_part of them, and get that out of them, whatever we lose for it, whatever faults and errors we are obliged to take with it. For the bestthat is in them cannot manifest itself, but in company with much error. Understand this clearly; You can teach a man to draw a straight line, and to cut one; to strike a curved line, and to carve it; and to copyand carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed andperfect precision; and you find his work perfect of its kind: but ifyou ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannotfind any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomeshesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one hemakes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinkingbeing. But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only amachine before, an animated tool. 

And observe, you are put to stern choice in this matter. You musteither make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot makeboth. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to beprecise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have thatprecision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees likecog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you mustunhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to makecogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and strength mustgo to the accomplishment of the mean act. The eye of the soul must bebent upon the finger-point, and the soul's force must fill all theinvisible nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that it may not errfrom its steely precision, and so soul and sight be worn away, and thewhole human being be lost at last--a heap of sawdust, so far as itsintellectual work in this world is concerned; saved only by its Heart, which cannot go into the form of cogs and compasses, but expands, afterthe ten hours are over, into fireside humanity. On the other hand, ifyou will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worthdoing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come allhis roughness, all his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the wholemajesty of him also; and we know the height of it only when we see theclouds settling upon him. And, whether the clouds be bright or dark, there will be transfiguration behind and within them. 

And now, reader, look round this English room of yours, about which youhave been proud so often, because the work of it was so good andstrong, and the ornaments of it so finished. Examine again all thoseaccurate mouldings, and perfect polishings, and unerring adjustments ofthe seasoned wood and tempered steel. Many a time you have exulted overthem, and thought how great England was, because her slightest work wasdone so thoroughly. Alas! if read rightly, these perfectnesses aresigns of a slavery in our England a thousand times more bitter and moredegrading than that of the scourged African, or helot Greek. Men may bebeaten, chained, tormented, yoked like cattle, slaughtered like summerflies, and yet remain in one sense, and the best sense, free. But tosmother their souls within them, to blight and hew into rottingpollards the suckling branches of their human intelligence, to make theflesh and skin which, after the worm's work on it, is to see God, [158]into leathern thongs to yoke machinery with, --this it is to beslave-masters indeed; and there might be more freedom in England, though her feudal lords' lightest words were worth men's lives, andthough the blood of the vexed husbandman dropped in the furrows of herfields, than there is while the animation of her multitudes is sentlike fuel to feed the factory smoke, and the strength of them is givendaily to be wasted into the fineness of a web, or racked into theexactness of a line. 

And, on the other hand, go forth again to gaze upon the old cathedralfront, where you have smiled so often at the fantastic ignorance of theold sculptors: examine once more those ugly goblins, and formlessmonsters, and stern statues, anatomiless and rigid; but do not mock atthem, for they are signs of the life and liberty of every workman whostruck the stone; a freedom of thought, and rank in scale of being, such as no laws, no charters, no charities can secure; but which itmust be the first aim of all Europe at this day to regain for herchildren. 

Let me not be thought to speak wildly or extravagantly. It is verilythis degradation of the operative into a machine, which, more than anyother evil of the times, is leading the mass of the nations everywhereinto vain, incoherent, destructive struggling for a freedom of whichthey cannot explain the nature to themselves. Their universal outcryagainst wealth, and against nobility, is not forced from them either bythe pressure of famine, or the sting of mortified pride. These do much, and have done much in all ages; but the foundations of society werenever yet shaken as they are at this day. It is not that men are illfed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they maketheir bread, and therefore look to wealth as the only means ofpleasure. It is not that men are pained by the scorn of the upperclasses, but they cannot endure their own; for they feel that the kindof labour to which they are condemned is verily a degrading one, andmakes them less than men. Never had the upper classes so much sympathywith the lower, or charity for them, as they have at this day, and yetnever were they so much hated by them: for, of old, the separationbetween the noble and the poor was merely a wall built by law; now itis a veritable difference in level of standing, a precipice betweenupper and lower grounds in the field of humanity, and there ispestilential air at the bottom of it. I know not if a day is ever tocome when the nature of right freedom will be understood, and when menwill see that to obey another man, to labour for him, yield reverenceto him or to his place, is not slavery. It is often the best kind ofliberty, --liberty from care. The man who says to one, Go, and he goeth, and to another, Come, and he cometh, [159] has, in most cases, more senseof restraint and difficulty than the man who obeys him. The movementsof the one are hindered by the burden on his shoulder; of the other, bythe bridle on his lips: there is no way by which the burden may belightened; but we need not suffer from the bridle if we do not champ atit. To yield reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives athis disposal, is not slavery; often it is the noblest state in which aman can live in this world. There is, indeed, a reverence which isservile, that is to say irrational or selfish: but there is also noblereverence, that is to say, reasonable and loving; and a man is never sonoble as when he is reverent in this kind; nay, even if the feelingpass the bounds of mere reason, so that it be loving, a man is raisedby it. Which had, in reality, most of the serf nature in him, --theIrish peasant who was lying in wait yesterday for his landlord, withhis musket muzzle thrust through the ragged hedge; or that old mountainservant, who 200 years ago, at Inverkeithing, gave up his own life andthe lives of his seven sons for his chief?--as each fell, calling forthhis brother to the death, "Another for Hector!"[160] And therefore, inall ages and all countries, reverence has been paid and sacrifice madeby men to each other, not only without complaint, but rejoicingly; andfamine, and peril, and sword, and all evil, and all shame, have beenborne willingly in the causes of masters and kings; for all these giftsof the heart ennobled the men who gave not less than the men whoreceived them, and nature prompted, and God rewarded the sacrifice. Butto feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find theirwhole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into aheap of mechanism, numbered with its wheels, and weighed with itshammer strokes;--this nature bade not, --this God blesses not, --thishumanity for no long time is able to endure. 

We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilizedinvention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. Itis not, truly speaking; the labour that is divided; but themen:--Divided into mere segments of men--broken into small fragmentsand crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence thatis left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhaustsitself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now it is agood and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if wecould only see with what crystal sand their points were polished, --sandof human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for whatit is, --we should think there might be some loss in it also. And thegreat cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder thantheir furnace blast, is all in very deed for this, --that we manufactureeverything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, torefine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into ourestimate of advantages. And all the evil to which that cry is urgingour myriads can be met only in one way: not by teaching nor preaching, for to teach them is but to show them their misery, and to preach tothem, if we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can bemet only by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of whatkinds of labour are good for men, raising them, and making them happy;by a determined sacrifice of such convenience, or beauty, or cheapnessas is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equallydetermined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennoblinglabour. 

And how, it will be asked, are these products to be recognized, andthis demand to be regulated? Easily: by the observance of three broadand simple rules:

 1. Never encourage the manufacture of any article not absolutely necessary, in the production of which _Invention_ has no share. 

 2. Never demand an exact finish for its own sake, but only for some practical or noble end. 

 3. Never encourage imitation or copying of any kind, except for the sake of preserving record of great works. 

The second of these principles is the only one which directly rises outof the consideration of our immediate subject; but I shall brieflyexplain the meaning and extent of the first also, reserving theenforcement of the third for another place. 

 1. Never encourage the manufacture of anything not necessary, in the production of which invention has no share. 

For instance. Glass beads are utterly unnecessary, and there is nodesign or thought employed in their manufacture. They are formed byfirst drawing out the glass into rods; these rods are chopped up intofragments of the size of beads by the human hand, and the fragments arethen rounded in the furnace. The men who chop up the rods sit at theirwork all day, their hands vibrating with a perpetual and exquisitelytimed palsy, and the beads dropping beneath their vibration like hail. Neither they, nor the men who draw out the rods or fuse the fragments, have the smallest occasion for the use of any single human faculty; andevery young lady, therefore, who buys glass beads is engaged in theslave-trade, and in a much more cruel one than that which we have solong been endeavouring to put down. 

But glass cups and vessels may become the subjects of exquisiteinvention; and if in buying these we pay for the invention, that is tosay for the beautiful form, or colour, or engraving, and not for merefinish of execution, we are doing good to humanity. 

So, again, the cutting of precious stones, in all ordinary cases, requires little exertion of any mental faculty; some tact and judgmentin avoiding flaws, and so on, but nothing to bring out the whole mind. Every person who wears cut jewels merely for the sake of their valueis, therefore, a slave-driver. 

But the working of the goldsmith, and the various designing of groupedjewellery and enamel-work, may become the subject of the most noblehuman intelligence. Therefore, money spent in the purchase ofwell-designed plate, of precious engraved vases, cameos, or enamels, does good to humanity; and, in work of this kind, jewels may beemployed to heighten its splendour; and their cutting is then a pricepaid for the attainment of a noble end, and thus perfectly allowable. 

I shall perhaps press this law farther elsewhere, but our immediateconcern is chiefly with the second, namely, never to demand an exactfinish, when it does not lead to a noble end. For observe, I have onlydwelt upon the rudeness of Gothic, or any other kind of imperfectness, as admirable, where it was impossible to get design or thought withoutit. If you are to have the thought of a rough and untaught man, youmust have it in a rough and untaught way; but from an educated man, whocan without effort express his thoughts in an educated way, take thegraceful expression, and be thankful. Only _get_ the thought, and donot silence the peasant because he cannot speak good grammar, or untilyou have taught him his grammar. Grammar and refinement are goodthings, both, only be sure of the better thing first. And thus in art, delicate finish is desirable from the greatest masters, and is alwaysgiven by them. In some places Michael Angelo, Leonardo, Phidias, Perugino, Turner, all finished with the most exquisite care; and thefinish they give always leads to the fuller accomplishment of theirnoble purpose. But lower men than these cannot finish, for it requiresconsummate knowledge to finish consummately, and then we must taketheir thoughts as they are able to give them. So the rule is simple:Always look for invention first, and after that, for such execution aswill help the invention, and as the inventor is capable of withoutpainful effort, and _no more_. Above all, demand no refinement ofexecution where there is no thought, for that is slaves' work, unredeemed. Rather choose rough work than smooth work, so only that thepractical purpose be answered, and never imagine there is reason to beproud of anything that may be accomplished by patience and sand-paper. 

I shall only give one example, which however will show the reader whatI mean, from the manufacture already alluded to, that of glass. Ourmodern glass is exquisitely clear in its substance, true in its form, accurate in its cutting. We are proud of this. We ought to be ashamedof it. The old Venice glass was muddy, inaccurate in all its forms, andclumsily cut, if at all. And the old Venetian was justly proud of it. For there is this difference between the English and Venetian workman, that the former thinks only of accurately matching his patterns, andgetting his curves perfectly true and his edges perfectly sharp, andbecomes a mere machine for rounding curves and sharpening edges; whilethe old Venetian cared not a whit whether his edges were sharp or not, but he invented a new design for every glass that he made, and nevermoulded a handle or a lip without a new fancy in it. And therefore, though some Venetian glass is ugly and clumsy enough when made byclumsy and uninventive workmen, other Venetian glass is so lovely inits forms that no price is too great for it; and we never see the sameform in it twice. Now you cannot have the finish and the varied formtoo. If the workman is thinking about his edges, he cannot be thinkingof his design; if of his design, he cannot think of his edges. Choosewhether you will pay for the lovely form or the perfect finish, andchoose at the same moment whether you will make the worker a man or agrindstone. 

Nay, but the reader interrupts me, --"If the workman can designbeautifully, I would not have him kept at the furnace. Let him be takenaway and made a gentleman, and have a studio, and design his glassthere, and I will have it blown and cut for him by common workmen, andso I will have my design and my finish too. "

All ideas of this kind are founded upon two mistaken suppositions: thefirst, that one man's thoughts can be, or ought to be, executed byanother man's hands; the second, that manual labour is a degradation, when it is governed by intellect. 

On a large scale, and in work determinable by line and rule, it isindeed both possible and necessary that the thoughts of one man shouldbe carried out by the labour of others; in this sense I have alreadydefined the best architecture to be the expression of the mind ofmanhood by the hands of childhood. But on a smaller scale, and in adesign which cannot be mathematically defined, one man's thoughts cannever be expressed by another: and the difference between the spirit oftouch of the man who is inventing, and of the man who is obeyingdirections, is often all the difference between a great and a commonwork of art. How wide the separation is between original andsecond-hand execution, I shall endeavour to show elsewhere; it is notso much to our purpose here as to mark the other and more fatal errorof despising manual labour when governed by intellect; for it is noless fatal an error to despise it when thus regulated by intellect, than to value it for its own sake. We are always in these daysendeavouring to separate the two; we want one man to be alwaysthinking, and another to be always working, and we call one agentleman, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought oftento be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should begentlemen, in the best sense. As it is, we make both ungentle, the oneenvying, the other despising, his brother; and the mass of society ismade up of morbid thinkers, and miserable workers. Now it is only bylabour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought thatlabour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated withimpunity. It would be well if all of us were good handicraftsmen insome kind, and the dishonour of manual labour done away withaltogether; so that though there should still be a trenchantdistinction of race between nobles and commoners, there should not, among the latter, be a trenchant distinction of employment, as betweenidle and working men, or between men of liberal and illiberalprofessions. All professions should be liberal, and there should beless pride felt in peculiarity of employment, and more in excellence ofachievement. And yet more, in each several profession, no master shouldbe too proud to do its hardest work. The painter should grind his owncolours; the architect work in the mason's yard with his men; themaster-manufacturer be himself a more skilful operative than any man inhis mills; and the distinction between one man and another be only inexperience and skill, and the authority and wealth which these mustnaturally and justly obtain. 

I should be led far from the matter in hand, if I were to pursue thisinteresting subject. Enough, I trust, has been said to show the readerthat the rudeness or imperfection which at first rendered the term"Gothic" one of reproach is indeed, when rightly understood, one of themost noble characters of Christian architecture, and not only a noblebut an _essential_ one. It seems a fantastic paradox, but it isnevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be trulynoble which is not imperfect. And this is easily demonstrable. Forsince the architect, whom we will suppose capable of doing all inperfection, cannot execute the whole with his own hands, he must eithermake slaves of his workmen in the old Greek, and present Englishfashion, and level his work to a slave's capacities, which is todegrade it; or else he must take his workmen as he finds them, and letthem show their weaknesses together with their strength, which willinvolve the Gothic imperfection, but render the whole work as noble asthe intellect of the age can make it. 

But the principle may be stated more broadly still. I have confined theillustration of it to architecture, but I must not leave it as if trueof architecture only. Hitherto I have used the words imperfect andperfect merely to distinguish between work grossly unskilful, and workexecuted with average precision and science; and I have been pleadingthat any degree of unskilfulness should be admitted, so only that thelabourer's mind had room for expression. But, accurately speaking, nogood work whatever can be perfect, and _the demand for perfection isalways a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art_. 

This for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws. The first, thatno great man ever stops working till he has reached his point offailure: that is to say, his mind is always far in advance of hispowers of execution, and the latter will now and then give way intrying to follow it; besides that he will always give to the inferiorportions of his work only such inferior attention as they require; andaccording to his greatness he becomes so accustomed to the feeling ofdissatisfaction with the best he can do, that in moments of lassitudeor anger with himself he will not care though the beholder bedissatisfied also. I believe there has only been one man who would notacknowledge this necessity, and strove always to reach perfection, Leonardo; the end of his vain effort being merely that he would taketen years to a picture and leave it unfinished. And therefore, if weare to have great men working at all, or less men doing their best, thework will be imperfect, however beautiful. Of human work none but whatis bad can be perfect, in its own bad way. [161]

The second reason is, that imperfection is in some sort essential toall that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, thatis to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, orcan be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. Thefoxglove blossom, --a third part bud, a third part past, a third part infull bloom, --is a type of the life of this world. And in all thingsthat live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which arenot only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactlythe same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, nobranch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change;and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, andmore beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of humanjudgment, Mercy. 

Accept this then for a universal law, that neither architecture nor anyother noble work of man can be good unless it be imperfect; and let usbe prepared for the otherwise strange fact, which we shall discernclearly as we approach the period of the Renaissance, that the firstcause of the fall of the arts of Europe was a relentless requirement ofperfection, incapable alike either of being silenced by veneration forgreatness, or softened into forgiveness of simplicity. 

Thus far then of the Rudeness or Savageness, which is the first mentalelement of Gothic architecture. It is an element in many other healthyarchitectures also, as in Byzantine and Romanesque; but true Gothiccannot exist without it. 

The second mental element above named was CHANGEFULNESS, or Variety. 

I have already enforced the allowing independent operation to theinferior workman, simply as a duty _to him_, and as ennobling thearchitecture by rendering it more Christian. We have now to considerwhat reward we obtain for the performance of this duty, namely, theperpetual variety of every feature of the building. 

Wherever the workman is utterly enslaved, the parts of the buildingmust of course be absolutely like each other; for the perfection of hisexecution can only be reached by exercising him in doing one thing, andgiving him nothing else to do. The degree in which the workman isdegraded may be thus known at a glance, by observing whether theseveral parts of the building are similar or not; and if, as in Greekwork, all the capitals are alike, and all the mouldings unvaried, thenthe degradation is complete; if, as in Egyptian or Ninevite work, though the manner of executing certain figures is always the same, theorder of design is perpetually varied, the degradation is less total;if, as in Gothic work, there is perpetual change both in design andexecution, the workman must have been altogether set free. 

How much the beholder gains from the liberty of the labourer mayperhaps be questioned in England, where one of the strongest instinctsin nearly every mind is that Love of Order which makes us desire thatour house windows should pair like our carriage horses, and allows usto yield our faith unhesitatingly to architectural theories which fix aform for everything, and forbid variation from it. I would not impeachlove of order: it is one of the most useful elements of the Englishmind; it helps us in our commerce and in all purely practical matters;and it is in many cases one of the foundation stones of morality. Onlydo not let us suppose that love of order is love of art. It is truethat order, in its highest sense, is one of the necessities of art, just as time is a necessity of music; but love of order has no more todo with our right enjoyment of architecture or painting, than love ofpunctuality with the appreciation of an opera. Experience, I fear, teaches us that accurate and methodical habits in daily life are seldomcharacteristic of those who either quickly perceive, or richly possess, the creative powers of art; there is, however, nothing inconsistentbetween the two instincts, and nothing to hinder us from retaining ourbusiness habits, and yet fully allowing and enjoying the noblest giftsof Invention. We already do so, in every other branch of art exceptarchitecture, and we only do _not_ so there because we have been taughtthat it would be wrong. Our architects gravely inform us that, as thereare four rules of arithmetic, there are five orders of architecture;we, in our simplicity, think that this sounds consistent, and believethem. They inform us also that there is one proper form for Corinthiancapitals, another for Doric, and another for Ionic. We, consideringthat there is also a proper form for the letters A, B, and C, thinkthat this also sounds consistent, and accept the proposition. Understanding, therefore, that one form of the said capitals is proper, and no other, and having a conscientious horror of all impropriety, weallow the architect to provide us with the said capitals, of the properform, in such and such a quantity, and in all other points to take carethat the legal forms are observed; which having done, we rest in forcedconfidence that we are well housed. 

But our higher instincts are not deceived. We take no pleasure in thebuilding provided for us, resembling that which we take in a new bookor a new picture. We may be proud of its size, complacent in itscorrectness, and happy in its convenience. We may take the samepleasure in its symmetry and workmanship as in a well-ordered room, ora skilful piece of manufacture. And this we suppose to be all thepleasure that architecture was ever intended to give us. The idea ofreading a building as we would read Milton or Dante, and getting thesame kind of delight out of the stones as out of the stanzas, neverenters our minds for a moment. And for good reason;--There is indeedrhythm in the verses, quite as strict as the symmetries or rhythm ofthe architecture, and a thousand times more beautiful, but there issomething else than rhythm. The verses were neither made to order, norto match, as the capitals were; and we have therefore a kind ofpleasure in them other than a sense of propriety. But it requires astrong effort of common sense to shake ourselves quit of all that wehave been taught for the last two centuries, and wake to the perceptionof a truth just as simple and certain as it is new: that great art, whether expressing itself in words, colours, or stones, does _not_ saythe same thing over and over again; that the merit of architectural, asof every other art, consists in its saying new and different things;that to repeat itself is no more a characteristic of genius in marblethan it is of genius in print; and that we may, without offending anylaws of good taste, require of an architect, as we do of a novelist, that he should be not only correct, but entertaining. 

Yet all this is true, and self-evident; only hidden from us, as manyother self-evident things are, by false teaching. Nothing is a greatwork of art, for the production of which either rules or models can begiven. Exactly so far as architecture works on known rules, and fromgiven models, it is not an art, but a manufacture; and it is, of thetwo procedures, rather less rational (because more easy) to copycapitals or mouldings from Phidias, and call ourselves architects, thanto copy heads and hands from Titian, and call ourselves painters. 

Let us then understand at once that change or variety is as much anecessity to the human heart and brain in buildings as in books; thatthere is no merit, though there is some occasional use, in monotony;and that we must no more expect to derive either pleasure or profitfrom an architecture whose ornaments are of one pattern, and whosepillars are of one proportion, than we should out of a universe inwhich the clouds were all of one shape, and the trees all of one size. 

And this we confess in deeds, though not in words. All the pleasurewhich the people of the nineteenth century take in art, is in pictures, sculpture, minor objects of virtù, or mediæval architecture, which weenjoy under the term picturesque: no pleasure is taken anywhere inmodern buildings, and we find all men of true feeling delighting toescape out of modern cities into natural scenery: hence, as I shallhereafter show, that peculiar love of landscape, which ischaracteristic of the age. It would be well, if, in all other matters, we were as ready to put up with what we dislike, for the sake ofcompliance with established law, as we are in architecture. 

How so debased a law ever came to be established, we shall see when wecome to describe the Renaissance schools; here we have only to note, asthe second most essential element of the Gothic spirit, that it brokethrough that law wherever it found it in existence; it not only dared, but delighted in, the infringement of every servile principle; andinvented a series of forms of which the merit was, not merely that theywere new, but that they were _capable of perpetual novelty_. Thepointed arch was not merely a bold variation from the round, but itadmitted of millions of variations in itself; for the proportions of apointed arch are changeable to infinity, while a circular arch isalways the same. The grouped shaft was not merely a bold variation fromthe single one, but it admitted of millions of variations in itsgrouping, and in the proportions resultant from its grouping. Theintroduction of tracery was not only a startling change in thetreatment of window lights, but admitted endless changes in theinterlacement of the tracery bars themselves. So that, while in allliving Christian architecture the love of variety exists, the Gothicschools exhibited that love in culminating energy; and their influence, wherever it extended itself, may be sooner and farther traced by thischaracter than by any other; the tendency to the adoption of Gothictypes being always first shown by greater irregularity, and richervariation in the forms of the architecture it is about to supersede, long before the appearance of the pointed arch or of any otherrecognizable _outward_ sign of the Gothic mind. 

We must, however, herein note carefully what distinction there isbetween a healthy and a diseased love of change; for as it was inhealthy love of change that the Gothic architecture rose, it was partlyin consequence of diseased love of change that it was destroyed. Inorder to understand this clearly, it will be necessary to consider thedifferent ways in which change and monotony are presented to us innature; both having their use, like darkness and light, and the oneincapable of being enjoyed without the other: change being mostdelightful after some prolongation of monotony, as light appears mostbrilliant after the eyes have been for some time closed. 

I believe that the true relations of monotony and change may be mostsimply understood by observing them in music. We may therein noticefirst, that there is a sublimity and majesty in monotony, which thereis not in rapid or frequent variation. This is true throughout allnature. The greater part of the sublimity of the sea depends on itsmonotony; so also that of desolate moor and mountain scenery; andespecially the sublimity of motion, as in the quiet, unchanged fall andrise of an engine beam. So also there is sublimity in darkness whichthere is not in light. 

Again, monotony after a certain time, or beyond a certain degree, becomes either uninteresting or intolerable, and the musician isobliged to break it in one or two ways: either while the air or passageis perpetually repeated, its notes are variously enriched andharmonized; or else, after a certain number of repeated passages, anentirely new passage is introduced, which is more or less delightfulaccording to the length of the previous monotony. Nature, of course, uses both these kinds of variation perpetually. The sea-waves, resembling each other in general mass, but none like its brother inminor divisions and curves, are a monotony of the first kind; the greatplain, broken by an emergent rock or clump of trees, is a monotony ofthe second. 

Farther: in order to the enjoyment of the change in either case, acertain degree of patience is required from the hearer or observer. Inthe first case, he must be satisfied to endure with patience therecurrence of the great masses of sound or form, and to seek forentertainment in a careful watchfulness of the minor details. In thesecond case, he must bear patiently the infliction of the monotony forsome moments, in order to feel the full refreshment of the change. Thisis true even of the shortest musical passage in which the element ofmonotony is employed. In cases of more majestic monotony, the patiencerequired is so considerable that it becomes a kind of pain, --a pricepaid for the future pleasure. 

Again: the talent of the composer is not in the monotony, but in thechanges: he may show feeling and taste by his use of monotony incertain places or degrees; that is to say, by his _various_ employmentof it; but it is always in the new arrangement or invention that hisintellect is shown, and not in the monotony which relieves it. 

Lastly: if the pleasure of change be too often repeated, it ceases tobe delightful, for then change itself becomes monotonous, and we aredriven to seek delight in extreme and fantastic degrees of it. This isthe diseased love of change of which we have above spoken. 

From these facts we may gather generally that monotony is, and ought tobe, in itself painful to us, just as darkness is; that an architecturewhich is altogether monotonous is a dark or dead architecture; and ofthose who love it, it may be truly said, "they love darkness ratherthan light. " But monotony in certain measure, used in order to givevalue to change, and above all, that _transparent_ monotony, which, like the shadows of a great painter, suffers all manner of dimlysuggested form to be seen through the body of it, is an essential inarchitectural as in all other composition; and the endurance ofmonotony has about the same place in a healthy mind that the enduranceof darkness has: that is to say, as a strong intellect will havepleasure in the solemnities of storm and twilight, and in the brokenand mysterious lights that gleam among them, rather than in merebrilliancy and glare, while a frivolous mind will dread the shadow andthe storm; and as a great man will be ready to endure much darkness offortune in order to reach greater eminence of power or felicity, whilean inferior man will not pay the price; exactly in like manner a greatmind will accept, or even delight in, monotony which would be wearisometo an inferior intellect, because it has more patience and power ofexpectation, and is ready to pay the full price for the great futurepleasure of change. But in all cases it is not that the noble natureloves monotony, anymore than it loves darkness or pain. But it can bearwith it, and receives a high pleasure in the endurance or patience, apleasure necessary to the well-being of this world; while those whowill not submit to the temporary sameness, but rush from one change toanother, gradually dull the edge of change itself, and bring a shadowand weariness over the whole world from which there is no more escape. 

From these general uses of variety in the economy of the world, we mayat once understand its use and abuse in architecture. The variety ofthe Gothic schools is the more healthy and beautiful, because in manycases it is entirely unstudied, and results, not from the mere love ofchange, but from practical necessities. For in one point of view Gothicis not only the best, but the _only rational_ architecture, as beingthat which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble. Undefined in its slope of roof, height of shaft, breadth of arch, ordisposition of ground plan, it can shrink into a turret, expand into ahall, coil into a staircase, or spring into a spire, with undegradedgrace and unexhausted energy; and whenever it finds occasion for changein its form or purpose, it submits to it without the slightest sense ofloss either to its unity or majesty, --subtle and flexible like a fieryserpent, but ever attentive to the voice of the charmer. And it is oneof the chief virtues of the Gothic builders, that they never sufferedideas of outside symmetries and consistencies to interfere with thereal use and value of what they did. If they wanted a window, theyopened one; a room, they added one; a buttress, they built one; utterlyregardless of any established conventionalities of external appearance, knowing (as indeed it always happened) that such daring interruptionsof the formal plan would rather give additional interest to itssymmetry than injure it. So that, in the best times of Gothic, auseless window would rather have been opened in an unexpected place forthe sake of the surprise, than a useful one forbidden for the sake ofsymmetry. Every successive architect, employed upon a great work, builtthe pieces he added in his own way, utterly regardless of the styleadopted by his predecessors; and if two towers were raised in nominalcorrespondence at the sides of a cathedral front, one was nearly sureto be different from the other, and in each the style at the top to bedifferent from the style at the bottom. 

These marked variations were, however, only permitted as part of thegreat system of perpetual change which ran through every member ofGothic design, and rendered it as endless a field for the beholder'sinquiry as for the builder's imagination: change, which in the bestschools is subtle and delicate, and rendered more delightful byintermingling of a noble monotony; in the more barbaric schools issomewhat fantastic and redundant; but, in all, a necessary and constantcondition of the life of the school. Sometimes the variety is in onefeature, sometimes in another; it may be in the capitals or crockets, in the niches or the traceries, or in all together, but in some one orother of the features it will be found always. If the mouldings areconstant, the surface sculpture will change; if the capitals are of afixed design, the traceries will change; if the traceries aremonotonous, the capitals will change; and if even, as in some fineschools, the early English for example, there is the slightestapproximation to an unvarying type of mouldings, capitals, and floraldecoration, the variety is found in the disposition of the masses, andin the figure sculpture. 

I must now refer for a moment, before we quit the consideration ofthis, the second mental element of Gothic, to the opening of the thirdchapter of the _Seven Lamps of Architecture_, in which the distinctionwas drawn (§ 2) between man gathering and man governing; between hisacceptance of the sources of delight from nature, and his developmentof authoritative or imaginative power in their arrangement: for the twomental elements, not only of Gothic, but of all good architecture, which we have just been examining, belong to it, and are admirable init, chiefly as it is, more than any other subject of art, the work ofman, and the expression of the average power of man. A picture or poemis often little more than a feeble utterance of man's admiration ofsomething out of himself; but architecture approaches more to acreation of his own, born of his necessities, and expressive of hisnature. It is also, in some sort, the work of the whole race, while thepicture or statue are the work of one only, in most cases more highlygifted than his fellows. And therefore we may expect that the first twoelements of good architecture should be expressive of some great truthscommonly belonging to the whole race, and necessary to be understood orfelt by them in all their work that they do under the sun. And observewhat they are: the confession of Imperfection, and the confession ofDesire of Change. The building of the bird and the bee needs notexpress anything like this. It is perfect and unchanging. But justbecause we are something better than birds or bees, our building mustconfess that we have not reached the perfection we can imagine, andcannot rest in the condition we have attained. If we pretend to havereached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselvesand our work. God's work only may express that; but ours may never havethat sentence written upon it, --"And behold, it was very good. " And, observe again, it is not merely as it renders the edifice a book ofvarious knowledge, or a mine of precious thought, that variety isessential to its nobleness. The vital principle is not the love of_Knowledge_, but the love of _Change_. It is that strange _disquietude_of the Gothic spirit that is its greatness; that restlessness of thedreaming mind, that wanders hither and thither among the niches, andflickers feverishly around the pinnacles, and frets and fades inlabyrinthine knots and shadows along wall and roof, and yet is notsatisfied, nor shall be satisfied. The Greek could stay in his triglyphfurrow, and be at peace; but the work of the Gothic heart is fretworkstill, and it can neither rest in, nor from, its labour, but must passon, sleeplessly, until its love of change shall be pacified for ever inthe change that must come alike on them that wake and them thatsleep.... 

Last, because the least essential, of the constituent elements of thisnoble school, was placed that of REDUNDANCE, --the uncalculatingbestowal of the wealth of its labour. There is, indeed, much Gothic, and that of the best period, in which this element is hardly traceable, and which depends for its effect almost exclusively on loveliness ofsimple design and grace of uninvolved proportion; still, in the mostcharacteristic buildings, a certain portion of their effect dependsupon accumulation of ornament; and many of those which have mostinfluence on the minds of men, have attained it by means of thisattribute alone. And although, by careful study of the school, it ispossible to arrive at a condition of taste which shall be bettercontented by a few perfect lines than by a whole façade covered withfretwork, the building which only satisfies such a taste is not to beconsidered the best. For the very first requirement of Gothicarchitecture being, as we saw above, that it shall both admit the aid, and appeal to the admiration, of the rudest as well as the most refinedminds, the richness of the work is, paradoxical as the statement mayappear, a part of its humility. No architecture is so haughty as thatwhich is simple; which refuses to address the eye, except in a fewclear and forceful lines; which implies, in offering so little to ourregards, that all it has offered is perfect; and disdains, either bythe complexity of the attractiveness of its features, to embarrass ourinvestigation, or betray us into delight. That humility, which is thevery life of the Gothic school, is shown not only in the imperfection, but in the accumulation, of ornament. The inferior rank of the workmanis often shown as much in the richness, as the roughness, of his work;and if the co-operation of every hand, and the sympathy of every heart, are to be received, we must be content to allow the redundance whichdisguises the failure of the feeble, and wins the regard of theinattentive. There are, however, far nobler interests mingling, in theGothic heart, with the rude love of decorative accumulation: amagnificent enthusiasm, which feels as if it never could do enough toreach the fulness of its ideal; an unselfishness of sacrifice, whichwould rather cast fruitless labour before the altar than stand idle inthe market; and, finally, a profound sympathy with the fulness andwealth of the material universe, rising out of that Naturalism whoseoperation we have already endeavoured to define. The sculptor whosought for his models among the forest leaves, could not but quicklyand deeply feel that complexity need not involve the loss of grace, norrichness that of repose; and every hour which he spent in the study ofthe minute and various work of Nature, made him feel more forcibly thebarrenness of what was best in that of man: nor is it to be wonderedat, that, seeing her perfect and exquisite creations poured forth in aprofusion which conception could not grasp nor calculation sum, heshould think that it ill became him to be niggardly of his own rudecraftsmanship; and where he saw throughout the universe a faultlessbeauty lavished on measureless spaces of broidered field and bloomingmountain, to grudge his poor and imperfect labour to the few stonesthat he had raised one upon another, for habitation or memorial. Theyears of his life passed away before his task was accomplished; butgeneration succeeded generation with unwearied enthusiasm, and thecathedral front was at last lost in the tapestry of its traceries, likea rock among the thickets and herbage of spring. 

 [157] The third kind of ornament, the Renaissance, is that in which the inferior detail becomes principal, the executor of every minor portion being required to exhibit skill and possess knowledge as great as that which is possessed by the master of the design; and in the endeavour to endow him with this skill and knowledge, his own original power is overwhelmed, and the whole building becomes a wearisome exhibition of well-educated imbecility. We must fully inquire into the nature of this form of error, when we arrive at the examination of the Renaissance schools. [Ruskin. ]

 [158] Job xix, 26. 

 [159] _Matthew_ viii, 9. 

 [160] Vide Preface to _Fair Maid of Perth_. [Ruskin. ]

 [161] The Elgin marbles are supposed by many persons to be "perfect". In the most important portions they indeed approach perfection, but only there. The draperies are unfinished, the hair and wool of the animals are unfinished, and the entire bas-reliefs of the frieze are roughly cut. [Ruskin. ]

SELECTIONS FROM THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE

 This book began to assume shape in Ruskin's mind as early as 1846; he actually wrote it in the six months between November, 1848, and April, 1849. It is the first of five illustrated volumes embodying the results of seven years devoted to the study of the principles and ideals of Gothic Architecture, the other volumes being _The Stones of Venice_ and _Examples of the Architecture of Venice_ (1851). In the first edition of _The Seven Lamps_ the plates were not only all drawn but also etched by his own hand. Ruskin at a later time wrote that the purpose of _The Seven Lamps_ was "to show that certain right states of temper and moral feeling were the magic powers by which all good architecture had been produced. " He is really applying here the same tests of truth and sincerity that he employed in _Modern Painters_. Chronologically, this volume and the others treating of architecture come between the composition of Volumes II and III of _Modern Painters_. Professor Charles Eliot Norton writes that the _Seven Lamps_ is "the first treatise in English to teach the real significance of architecture as the most trustworthy record of the life and faith of nations. " The following selections form the closing chapters of the volume, and have a peculiar interest as anticipating the social and political ideas which came to colour all his later work. 

THE LAMP OF MEMORY

Among the hours of his life to which the writer looks back withpeculiar gratitude, as having been marked by more than ordinary fulnessof joy or clearness of teaching, is one passed, now some years ago, near time of sunset, among the broken masses of pine forest which skirtthe course of the Ain, above the village of Champagnole, in the Jura. It is a spot which has all the solemnity, with none of the savageness, of the Alps; where there is a sense of a great power beginning to bemanifested in the earth, and of a deep and majestic concord in the riseof the long low lines of piny hills; the first utterance of thosemighty mountain symphonies, soon to be more loudly lifted and wildlybroken along the battlements of the Alps. But their strength is as yetrestrained; and the far reaching ridges of pastoral mountain succeedeach other, like the long and sighing swell which moves over quietwaters from some far off stormy sea. And there is a deep tendernesspervading that vast monotony. The destructive forces and the sternexpression of the central ranges are alike withdrawn. Nofrost-ploughed, dust-encumbered paths of ancient glacier fret the softJura pastures; no splintered heaps of ruin break the fair ranks of herforest; no pale, defiled, or furious rivers rend their rude andchangeful ways among her rocks. Patiently, eddy by eddy, the cleargreen streams wind along their well-known beds; and under the darkquietness of the undisturbed pines, there spring up, year by year, suchcompany of joyful flowers as I know not the like of among all theblessings of the earth. It was spring time, too; and all were comingforth in clusters crowded for very love; there was room enough for all, but they crushed their leaves into all manner of strange shapes only tobe nearer each other. There was the wood anemone, star after star, closing every now and then into nebulae; and there was the oxalis, troop by troop, like virginal processions of the Mois de Marie, [162] thedark vertical clefts in the limestone choked up with them as with heavysnow, and touched with ivy on the edges--ivy as light and lovely as thevine; and, ever and anon, a blue gush of violets, and cowslip bells insunny places; and in the more open ground, the vetch, and comfrey, andmezereon, and the small sapphire buds of the Polygala Alpina, and thewild strawberry, just a blossom or two all showered amidst the goldensoftness of deep, warm, amber-coloured moss. I came out presently onthe edge of the ravine: the solemn murmur of its waters rose suddenlyfrom beneath, mixed with the singing of the thrushes among the pineboughs; and, on the opposite side of the valley, walled all along as itwas by grey cliffs of limestone, there was a hawk sailing slowly offtheir brow, touching them nearly with his wings, and with the shadowsof the pines flickering upon his plumage from above; but with the fallof a hundred fathoms under his breast, and the curling pools of thegreen river gliding and glittering dizzily beneath him, their foamglobes moving with him as he flew. It would be difficult to conceive ascene less dependent upon any other interest than that of its ownsecluded and serious beauty; but the writer well remembers the suddenblankness and chill which were cast upon it when he endeavoured, inorder more strictly to arrive at the sources of its impressiveness, toimagine it, for a moment, a scene in some aboriginal forest of the NewContinent. The flowers in an instant lost their light, the river itsmusic; the hills became oppressively desolate; a heaviness in theboughs of the darkened forest showed how much of their former power hadbeen dependent upon a life which was not theirs, how much of the gloryof the imperishable, or continually renewed, creation is reflected fromthings more precious in their memories than it, in its renewing. Thoseever springing flowers and ever flowing streams had been dyed by thedeep colours of human endurance, valour, and virtue; and the crests ofthe sable hills that rose against the evening sky received a deeperworship, because their far shadows fell eastward over the iron wall ofJoux, and the four-square keep of Granson. 

It is as the centralization and protectress of this sacred influence, that Architecture is to be regarded by us with the most seriousthought. We may live without her, and worship without her, but wecannot remember without her. How cold is all history, how lifeless allimagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and theuncorrupted marble bears!--how many pages of doubtful record might wenot often spare, for a few stones left one upon another! The ambitionof the old Babel builders was well directed for this world:[163] thereare but two strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of men, Poetry andArchitecture; and the latter in some sort includes the former, and ismightier in its reality: it is well to have, not only what men havethought and felt, but what their hands have handled, and their strengthwrought, and their eyes beheld, all the days of their life. The age ofHomer is surrounded with darkness, his very personality with doubt. Notso that of Pericles: and the day is coming when we shall confess, thatwe have learned more of Greece out of the crumbled fragments of hersculpture than even from her sweet singers or soldier historians. Andif indeed there be any profit in our knowledge of the past, or any joyin the thought of being remembered hereafter, which can give strengthto present exertion, or patience to present endurance, there are twoduties respecting national architecture whose importance it isimpossible to overrate: the first, to render the architecture of theday, historical; and, the second, to preserve, as the most precious ofinheritances, that of past ages. 

It is in the first of these two directions that Memory may truly besaid to be the Sixth Lamp of Architecture; for it is in becomingmemorial or monumental that a true perfection is attained by civil anddomestic buildings; and this partly as they are, with such a view, built in a more stable manner, and partly as their decorations areconsequently animated by a metaphorical or historical meaning. 

As regards domestic buildings, there must always be a certainlimitation to views of this kind in the power, as well as in thehearts, of men; still I cannot but think it an evil sign of a peoplewhen their houses are built to last for one generation only. There is asanctity in a good man's house which cannot be renewed in everytenement that rises on its ruins: and I believe that good men wouldgenerally feel this; and that having spent their lives happily andhonourably, they would be grieved, at the close of them, to think thatthe place of their earthly abode, which had seen, and seemed almost tosympathize in, all their honour, their gladness, or theirsuffering, --that this, with all the record it bare of them, and of allmaterial things that they had loved and ruled over, and set the stampof themselves upon--was to be swept away, as soon as there was roommade for them in the grave; that no respect was to be shown to it, noaffection felt for it, no good to be drawn from it by their children;that though there was a monument in the church, there was no warmmonument in the hearth and house to them; that all that they evertreasured was despised, and the places that had sheltered and comfortedthem were dragged down to the dust. I say that a good man would fearthis; and that, far more, a good son, a noble descendant, would feardoing it to his father's house. I say that if men lived like menindeed, their houses would be temples--temples which we should hardlydare to injure, and in which it would make us holy to be permitted tolive; and there must be a strange dissolution of natural affection, astrange unthankfulness for all that homes have given and parentstaught, a strange consciousness that we have been unfaithful to ourfathers' honour, or that our own lives are not such as would make ourdwellings sacred to our children, when each man would fain build tohimself, and build for the little revolution of his own life only. And I look upon those pitiful concretions of lime and clay which springup, in mildewed forwardness, out of the kneaded fields about ourcapital--upon those thin, tottering, foundationless shells of splinteredwood and imitated stone--upon those gloomy rows of formalizedminuteness, alike without difference and without fellowship, assolitary as similar--not merely with the careless disgust of anoffended eye, not merely with sorrow for a desecrated landscape, butwith a painful foreboding that the roots of our national greatness mustbe deeply cankered when they are thus loosely struck in their nativeground; that those comfortless and unhonoured dwellings are the signsof a great and spreading spirit of popular discontent; that they markthe time when every man's aim is to be in some more elevated spherethan his natural one, and every man's past life is his habitual scorn;when men build in the hope of leaving the places they have built, andlive in the hope of forgetting the years that they have lived; when thecomfort, the peace, the religion of home have ceased to be felt; andthe crowded tenements of a struggling and restless population differonly from the tents of the Arab or the Gipsy by their less healthyopenness to the air of heaven, and less happy choice of their spot ofearth; by their sacrifice of liberty without the gain of rest, and ofstability without the luxury of change. 

This is no slight, no consequenceless evil; it is ominous, infectious, and fecund of other fault and misfortune. When men do not love theirhearths, nor reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they havedishonoured both, and that they have never acknowledged the trueuniversality of that Christian worship which was indeed to supersedethe idolatry, but not the piety, of the pagan. Our God is a householdGod, as well as a heavenly one; He has an altar in every man'sdwelling; let men look to it when they rend it lightly and pour out itsashes. It is not a question of mere ocular delight, it is no questionof intellectual pride, or of cultivated and critical fancy, how, andwith what aspect of durability and of completeness, the domesticbuildings of a nation shall be raised. It is one of those moral duties, not with more impunity to be neglected because the perception of themdepends on a finely toned and balanced conscientiousness, to build ourdwellings with care, and patience, and fondness, and diligentcompletion, and with a view to their duration at least for such aperiod as, in the ordinary course of national revolutions, might besupposed likely to extend to the entire alteration of the direction oflocal interests. This at the least; but it would be better if, in everypossible instance, men built their own houses on a scale commensuraterather with their condition at the commencement, than their attainmentsat the termination, of their worldly career; and built them to stand aslong as human work at its strongest can be hoped to stand; recording totheir children what they had been, and from what, if so it had beenpermitted them, they had risen. And when houses are thus built, we mayhave that true domestic architecture, the beginning of all other, whichdoes not disdain to treat with respect and thoughtfulness the smallhabitation as well as the large, and which invests with the dignity ofcontented manhood the narrowness of worldly circumstance. 

I look to this spirit of honourable, proud, peaceful self-possession, this abiding wisdom of contented life, as probably one of the chiefsources of great intellectual power in all ages, and beyond dispute asthe very primal source of the great architecture of old Italy andFrance. To this day, the interest of their fairest cities depends, noton the isolated richness of palaces, but on the cherished and exquisitedecoration of even the smallest tenements of their proud periods. Themost elaborate piece of architecture in Venice is a small house at thehead of the Grand Canal, consisting of a ground floor with two storeysabove, three windows in the first, and two in the second. Many of themost exquisite buildings are on the narrower canals, and of no largerdimensions. One of the most interesting pieces of fifteenth-centuryarchitecture in North Italy, is a small house in a back street, behindthe market-place of Vicenza; it bears date 1481, and the motto, _Il. N'est. Rose. Sans. épine_; it has also only a ground floor and twostoreys, with three windows in each, separated by rich flower-work, andwith balconies, supported, the central one by an eagle with open wings, the lateral ones by winged griffins standing on cornucopiæ. The ideathat a house must be large in order to be well built, is altogether ofmodern growth, and is parallel with the idea, that no picture can behistorical, except of a size admitting figures larger than life. 

I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses built to last, andbuilt to be lovely; as rich and full of pleasantness as may be, withinand without; with what degree of likeness to each other in style andmanner, I will say presently, under another head;[164] but, at allevents, with such differences as might suit and express each man'scharacter and occupation, and partly his history. This right over thehouse, I conceive, belongs to its first builder, and is to be respectedby his children; and it would be well that blank stones should be leftin places, to be inscribed with a summary of his life and of itsexperience, raising thus the habitation into a kind of monument, anddeveloping, into more systematic instructiveness, that good customwhich was of old universal, and which still remains among some of theSwiss and Germans, of acknowledging the grace of God's permission tobuild and possess a quiet resting-place, in such sweet words as maywell close our speaking of these things. I have taken them from thefront of a cottage lately built among the green pastures which descendfrom the village of Grindelwald to the lower glacier:--

 Mit herzlichem Vertrauen Hat Johannes Mooter und Maria Rubi Dieses Haus bauen lassen. Der liebe Gott woll uns bewahren Vor allem Unglück und Gefahren, Und es in Segen lassen stehn Auf der Reise durch diese Jammerzeit Nach dem himmlischen Paradiese, Wo alle Frommen wohnen, Da wird Gott sie belohnen Mil der Friedenskrone Zu alle Ewigkeit. [165]

In public buildings the historical purpose should be still moredefinite. It is one of the advantages of Gothic architecture, --I usethe word Gothic in the most extended sense as broadly opposed toclassical, --that it admits of a richness of record altogetherunlimited. Its minute and multitudinous sculptural decorations affordmeans of expressing, either symbolically or literally, all that need beknown of national feeling or achievement. More decoration will, indeed, be usually required than can take so elevated a character; and much, even in the most thoughtful periods, has been left to the freedom offancy, or suffered to consist of mere repetitions of some nationalbearing or symbol. It is, however, generally unwise, even in meresurface ornament, to surrender the power and privilege of variety whichthe spirit of Gothic architecture admits; much more in importantfeatures--capitals of columns or bosses, and string-courses, as ofcourse in all confessed has-reliefs. Better the rudest work that tellsa story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning. Thereshould not be a single ornament put upon great civic buildings, withoutsome intellectual intention. Actual representation of history has inmodern times been checked by a difficulty, mean indeed, but steadfast;that of unmanageable costume: nevertheless, by a sufficiently boldimaginative treatment, and frank use of symbols, all such obstacles maybe vanquished; not perhaps in the degree necessary to produce sculpturein itself satisfactory, but at all events so as to enable it to becomea grand and expressive element of architectural composition. Take, forexample, the management of the capitals of the ducal palace at Venice. History, as such, was indeed entrusted to the painters of its interior, but every capital of its arcades was filled with meaning. The largeone, the corner stone of the whole, next the entrance, was devoted tothe symbolization of Abstract Justice; above it is a sculpture of theJudgment of Solomon, remarkable for a beautiful subjection in itstreatment to its decorative purpose. The figures, if the subject hadbeen entirely composed of them, would have awkwardly interrupted theline of the angle, and diminished its apparent strength; and thereforein the midst of them, entirely without relation to them, and indeedactually between the executioner and interceding mother, there risesthe ribbed trunk of a massy tree, which supports and continues theshaft of the angle, and whose leaves above overshadow and enrich thewhole. The capital below bears among its leafage a throned figure ofJustice, Trajan doing justice to the widow, Aristotle "che die legge, "and one or two other subjects now unintelligible from decay. Thecapitals next in order represent the virtues and vices in succession, as preservative or destructive of national peace and power, concludingwith Faith, with the inscription "Fides optima in Deo est. " A figure isseen on the opposite side of the capital, worshipping the sun. Afterthese, one or two capitals are fancifully decorated with birds, andthen come a series representing, first the various fruits, then thenational costumes, and then the animals of the various countriessubject to Venetian rule. 

Now, not to speak of any more important public building, let us imagineour own India House adorned in this way, by historical or symbolicalsculpture: massively built in the first place; then chased withhas-reliefs of our Indian battles, and fretted with carvings ofOriental foliage, or inlaid with Oriental stones; and the moreimportant members of its decoration composed of groups of Indian lifeand landscape, and prominently expressing the phantasms of Hindooworship in their subjection to the Cross. Would not one such work bebetter than a thousand histories? If, however, we have not theinvention necessary for such efforts, or if, which is probably one ofthe most noble excuses we can offer for our deficiency in such matters, we have less pleasure in talking about ourselves, even in marble, thanthe Continental nations, at least we have no excuse for any want ofcare in the points which insure the building's endurance. And as thisquestion is one of great interest in its relations to the choice ofvarious modes of decoration, it will be necessary to enter into it atsome length. 

The benevolent regards and purposes of men in masses seldom can besupposed to extend beyond their own generation. They may look toposterity as an audience, may hope for its attention, and labour forits praise: they may trust to its recognition of unacknowledged merit, and demand its justice for contemporary wrong. But all this is mereselfishness, and does not involve the slightest regard to, orconsideration of, the interest of those by whose numbers we would fainswell the circle of our flatterers, and by whose authority we wouldgladly support our presently disputed claims. The idea of self-denialfor the sake of posterity, of practising present economy for the sakeof debtors yet unborn, of planting forests that our descendants maylive under their shade, or of raising cities for future nations toinhabit, never, I suppose, efficiently takes place among publiclyrecognized motives of exertion. Yet these are not the less our duties;nor is our part fitly sustained upon the earth, unless the range of ourintended and deliberate usefulness include, not only the companions butthe successors, of our pilgrimage. God has lent us the earth for ourlife; it is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to comeafter us, and whose names are already written in the book of creation, as to us; and we have no right, by anything that we do or neglect, toinvolve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefitswhich it was in our power to bequeath. And this the more, because it isone of the appointed conditions of the labour of men that, inproportion to the time between the seed-sowing and the harvest, is thefulness of the fruit; and that generally, therefore, the farther off weplace our aim, and the less we desire to be ourselves the witnesses ofwhat we have laboured for, the more wide and rich will be the measureof our success. Men cannot benefit those that are with them as they canbenefit those who come after them; and of all the pulpits from whichhuman voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches sofar as from the grave. 

Nor is there, indeed, any present loss, in such respect for futurity. Every human action gains in honour, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, thequiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and there is noaction nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test. Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build for ever. Let itnot be for present delight, nor for present use alone; let it be suchwork as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we laystone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be heldsacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say asthey look upon the labour and wrought substance of them, "See! this ourfathers did for us. " For, indeed, the greatest glory of a building isnot in its stones, nor in its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and inthat deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterioussympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in wallsthat have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity. It is intheir lasting witness against men, in their quiet contrast with thetransitional character of all things, in the strength which, throughthe lapse of seasons and times, and the decline and birth of dynasties, and the changing of the face of the earth, and of the limits of thesea, maintains its sculptured shapeliness for a time insuperable, connects forgotten and following ages with each other, and halfconstitutes the identity, as it concentrates the sympathy, of nations:it is in that golden stain of time, that we are to look for the reallight, and colour, and preciousness of architecture; and it is notuntil a building has assumed this character, till it has been entrustedwith the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its walls havebeen witnesses of suffering, and its pillars rise out of the shadows ofdeath, that its existence, more lasting as it is than that of thenatural objects of the world around it, can be gifted with even so muchas these possess, of language and of life. 

For that period, then, we must build; not, indeed, refusing toourselves the delight of present completion, nor hesitating to followsuch portions of character as may depend upon delicacy of execution tothe highest perfection of which they are capable, even although we mayknow that in the course of years such details must perish; but takingcare that for work of this kind we sacrifice no enduring quality, andthat the building shall not depend for its impressiveness upon anythingthat is perishable. This would, indeed, be the law of good compositionunder any circumstances, the arrangement of the larger masses beingalways a matter of greater importance than the treatment of thesmaller; but in architecture there is much in that very treatment whichis skilful or otherwise in proportion to its just regard to theprobable effects of time: and (which is still more to be considered)there is a beauty in those effects themselves, which nothing else canreplace, and which it is our wisdom to consult and to desire. Forthough, hitherto, we have been speaking of the sentiment of age only, there is an actual beauty in the marks of it, such and so great as tohave become not unfrequently the subject of especial choice amongcertain schools of art, and to have impressed upon those schools thecharacter usually and loosely expressed by the term "picturesque. ".... 

Now, to return to our immediate subject, it so happens that, inarchitecture, the superinduced and accidental beauty is most commonlyinconsistent with the preservation of original character, and thepicturesque is therefore sought in ruin, and supposed to consist indecay. Whereas, even when so sought, it consists in the mere sublimityof the rents, or fractures, or stains, or vegetation, which assimilatethe architecture with the work of Nature, and bestow upon it thosecircumstances of colour and form which are universally beloved by theeye of man. So far as this is done, to the extinction of the truecharacters of the architecture, it is picturesque, and the artist wholooks to the stem of the ivy instead of the shaft of the pillar, iscarrying out in more daring freedom the debased sculptor's choice ofthe hair instead of the countenance. But so far as it can be renderedconsistent with the inherent character, the picturesque or extraneoussublimity of architecture has just this of nobler function in it thanthat of any other object whatsoever, that it is an exponent of age, ofthat in which, as has been said, the greatest glory of the buildingconsists; and, therefore, the external signs of this glory, havingpower and purpose greater than any belonging to their mere sensiblebeauty, may be considered as taking rank among pure and essentialcharacters; so essential to my mind, that I think a building cannot beconsidered as in its prime until four or five centuries have passedover it; and that the entire choice and arrangement of its detailsshould have reference to their appearance after that period, so thatnone should be admitted which would suffer material injury either bythe weather-staining, or the mechanical degradation which the lapse ofsuch a period would necessitate. 

It is not my purpose to enter into any of the questions which theapplication of this principle involves. They are of too great interestand complexity to be even touched upon within my present limits, butthis is broadly to be noticed, that those styles of architecture whichare picturesque in the sense above explained with respect to sculpture, that is to say, whose decoration depends on the arrangement of pointsof shade rather than on purity of outline, do not suffer, but commonlygain in richness of effect when their details are partly worn away;hence such styles, pre-eminently that of French Gothic, should alwaysbe adopted when the materials to be employed are liable to degradation, as brick, sandstone, or soft limestone; and styles in any degreedependent on purity of line, as the Italian Gothic, must be practisedaltogether in hard and undecomposing materials, granite, serpentine, orcrystalline marbles. There can be no doubt that the nature of theaccessible materials influenced the formation of both styles; and itshould still more authoritatively determine our choice of either. 

It does not belong to my present plan to consider at length the secondhead of duty of which I have above spoken; the preservation of thearchitecture we possess: but a few words may be forgiven, as especiallynecessary in modern times. Neither by the public, nor by those who havethe care of public monuments, is the true meaning of the word_restoration_ understood. It means the most total destruction which abuilding can suffer: a destruction out of which no remnants can begathered: a destruction accompanied with false description of the thingdestroyed. Do not let us deceive ourselves in this important matter; itis _impossible_, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restoreanything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. Thatwhich I have above insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spiritwhich is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, never can berecalled. Another spirit may be given by another time, and it is then anew building; but the spirit of the dead workman cannot be summoned up, and commanded to direct other hands, and other thoughts. And as fordirect and simple copying, it is palpably impossible. What copying canthere be of surfaces that have been worn half an inch down? The wholefinish of the work was in the half inch that is gone; if you attempt torestore that finish, you do it conjecturally; if you copy what is left, granting fidelity to be possible (and what care, or watchfulness, orcost can secure it, ) how is the new work better than the old? There wasyet in the old _some_ life, some mysterious suggestion of what it hadbeen, and of what it had lost; some sweetness in the gentle lines whichrain and sun had wrought. There can be none in the brute hardness ofthe new carving. Look at the animals which I have given in Plate XIV. , as an instance of living work, and suppose the markings of the scalesand hair once worn away, or the wrinkles of the brows, and who shallever restore them? The first step to restoration, (I have seen it, andthat again and again--seen it on the Baptistery of Pisa, seen it onthe Casa d'Oro at Venice, seen it on the Cathedral of Lisieux, ) is todash the old work to pieces; the second is usually to put up thecheapest and basest imitation which can escape detection, but in allcases, however careful, and however laboured, an imitation still, acold model of such parts as _can_ be modelled, with conjecturalsupplements; and my experience has as yet furnished me with only oneinstance, that of the Palais de Justice at Rouen, in which even this, the utmost degree of fidelity which is possible, has been attained, oreven attempted. [166]

Do not let us talk then of restoration. The thing is a Lie frombeginning to end. You may make a model of a building as you may of acorpse, and your model may have the shell of the old walls within it asyour cast might have the skeleton, with what advantage I neither seenor care: but the old building is destroyed, and that more totally andmercilessly than if it had sunk into a heap of dust, or melted into amass of clay: more has been gleaned out of desolated Nineveh than everwill be out of re-built Milan. But, it is said, there may come anecessity for restoration! Granted. Look the necessity full in theface, and understand it on its own terms. It is a necessity fordestruction. Accept it as such, pull the building down, throw itsstones into neglected corners, make ballast of them, or mortar, if youwill; but do it honestly, and do not set up a Lie in their place. Andlook that necessity in the face before it comes, and you may preventit. The principle of modern times, (a principle which, I believe, atleast in France, to be _systematically acted on by the masons_, inorder to find themselves work, as the abbey of St. Ouen was pulled downby the magistrates of the town by way of giving work to some vagrants, )is to neglect buildings first, and restore them afterwards. Take propercare of your monuments, and you will not need to restore them. A fewsheets of lead put in time upon the roof, a few dead leaves and sticksswept in time out of a water-course, will save both roof and walls fromruin. Watch an old building with an anxious care; guard it as best youmay, and at _any_ cost, from every influence of dilapidation. Count itsstones as you would jewels of a crown; set watches about it as if atthe gates of a besieged city; bind it together with iron where itloosens; stay it with timber where it declines; do not care about theunsightliness of the aid: better a crutch than a lost limb; and do thistenderly, and reverently, and continually, and many a generation willstill be born and pass away beneath its shadow. Its evil day must comeat last; but let it come declaredly and openly, and let no dishonouringand false substitute deprive it of the funeral offices of memory. 

Of more wanton or ignorant ravage it is vain to speak; my words willnot reach those who commit them, and yet, be it heard or not, I mustnot leave the truth unstated, that it is again no question ofexpediency or feeling whether we shall preserve the buildings of pasttimes or not. _We have no right whatever to touch them_. They are notours. They belong partly to those who built them, and partly to all thegenerations of mankind who are to follow us. The dead have still theirright in them: that which they laboured for, the praise of achievementor the expression of religious feeling, or whatsoever else it might bewhich in those buildings they intended to be permanent, we have noright to obliterate. What we have ourselves built, we are at liberty tothrow down; but what other men gave their strength and wealth and lifeto accomplish, their right over does not pass away with their death;still less is the right to the use of what they have left vested in usonly. It belongs to all their successors. It may hereafter be a subjectof sorrow, or a cause of injury, to millions, that we have consultedour present convenience by casting down such buildings as we choose todispense with. That sorrow, that loss, we have no right to inflict. Didthe cathedral of Avranches[167] belong to the mob who destroyed it, anymore than it did to us, who walk in sorrow to and fro over itsfoundation? Neither does any building whatever belong to those mobs whodo violence to it. For a mob it is, and must be always; it matters notwhether enraged, or in deliberate folly; whether countless, or sittingin committees; the people who destroy anything causelessly are a mob, and Architecture is always destroyed causelessly. A fair building isnecessarily worth the ground it stands upon, and will be so untilCentral Africa and America shall have become as populous as Middlesex:nor is any cause whatever valid as a ground for its destruction. Ifever valid, certainly not now, when the place both of the past andfuture is too much usurped in our minds by the restless anddiscontented present. The very quietness of nature is graduallywithdrawn from us; thousands who once in their necessarily prolongedtravel were subjected to an influence, from the silent sky andslumbering fields, more effectual than known or confessed, now bearwith them even there the ceaseless fever of their life; and along theiron veins that traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow thefiery pulses of its exertion, hotter and faster every hour. Allvitality is concentrated through those throbbing arteries into thecentral cities; the country is passed over like a green sea by narrowbridges, and we are thrown back in continually closer crowds upon thecity gates. The only influence which can in any wise _there_ take theplace of that of the woods and fields, is the power of ancientArchitecture. Do not part with it for the sake of the formal square, orof the fenced and planted walk, nor of the goodly street nor openedquay. The pride of a city is not in these. Leave them to the crowd; butremember that there will surely be some within the circuit of thedisquieted walls who would ask for some other spots than these whereinto walk; for some other forms to meet their sight familiarly: likehim[168] who sat so often where the sun struck from the west to watch thelines of the dome of Florence drawn on the deep sky, or like those, hisHosts, who could bear daily to behold, from their palace chambers, theplaces where their fathers lay at rest, at the meeting of the darkstreets of Verona. 

 [162] May-day processions in honour of the Virgin. 

 [163] _Genesis_ xi, 4. 

 [164] See pp. 225 ff. 

 [165] In heartfelt trust Johannes Mooter and Maria Rubi had this house erected. May dear God shield us from all perils and misfortune; and let His blessing rest upon it during the journey through this wretched life up to heavenly Paradise where the pious dwell. There will God reward them with the Crown of Peace to all eternity. 

 [166] Baptistery of Pisa, circular, of marble, with dome two hundred feet high, embellished with numerous columns, is a notable work of the twelfth century. The pulpit is a masterpiece of Nicola Pisano. Casa d'Oro at Venice is noted for its elegance. It was built in the fourteenth century. The Cathedral of Lisieux dates chiefly from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and contains many works of art. The Palais de Justice is of the fifteenth century. It was built for the Parliament of the Province. 

 [167] This cathedral, destroyed in 1799, was one of the most beautiful in all Normandy. 

 [168] Dante. 

THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE

It has been my endeavour to show in the preceding pages how every formof noble architecture is in some sort the embodiment of the Polity, Life, History, and Religious Faith of nations. Once or twice in doingthis, I have named a principle to which I would now assign a definiteplace among those which direct that embodiment; the last place, notonly as that to which its own humility would incline, but rather asbelonging to it in the aspect of the crowning grace of all the rest;that principle, I mean, to which Polity owes its stability, Life itshappiness, Faith its acceptance, Creation its continuance, --Obedience. 

Nor is it the least among the sources of more serious satisfactionwhich I have found in the pursuit of a subject that at first appearedto bear but slightly on the grave interests of mankind, that theconditions of material perfection which it leads me in conclusion toconsider, furnish a strange proof how false is the conception, howfrantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men callLiberty: most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblestray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, butits being, was impossible. There is no such thing in the universe. There can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; thesea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it onlyfor our heaviest punishment. 

In one of the noblest poems[169] for its imagery and its music belongingto the recent school of our literature, the writer has sought in theaspect of inanimate nature the expression of that Liberty which, havingonce loved, he had seen among men in its true dyes of darkness. Butwith what strange fallacy of interpretation! since in one noble line ofhis invocation he has contradicted the assumptions of the rest, andacknowledged the presence of a subjection, surely not less severebecause eternal. How could he otherwise? since if there be any oneprinciple more widely than another confessed by every utterance, ormore sternly than another imprinted on every atom, of the visiblecreation, that principle is not Liberty, but Law. 

The enthusiast would reply that by Liberty he meant the Law of Liberty. Then why use the single and misunderstood word? If by liberty you meanchastisement of the passions, discipline of the intellect, subjectionof the will; if you mean the fear of inflicting, the shame ofcommitting, a wrong; if you mean respect for all who are in authority, and consideration for all who are in dependence; veneration for thegood, mercy to the evil, sympathy with the weak; if you meanwatchfulness over all thoughts, temperance in all pleasures, andperseverance in all toils; if you mean, in a word, that Service whichis defined in the liturgy of the English church to be perfect Freedom, why do you name this by the same word by which the luxurious meanlicense, and the reckless mean change; by which the rogue means rapine, and the fool, equality; by which the proud mean anarchy, and themalignant mean violence? Call it by any name rather than this, but itsbest and truest, is Obedience. Obedience is, indeed, founded on a kindof freedom, else it would become mere subjugation, but that freedom isonly granted that obedience may be more perfect; and thus, while ameasure of license is necessary to exhibit the individual energies ofthings, the fairness and pleasantness and perfection of them allconsist in their Restraint. Compare a river that has burst its bankswith one that is bound by them, and the clouds that are scattered overthe face of the whole heaven with those that are marshalled into ranksand orders by its winds. So that though restraint, utter andunrelaxing, can never be comely, this is not because it is in itself anevil, but only because, when too great, it overpowers the nature of thething restrained, and so counteracts the other laws of which thatnature is itself composed. And the balance wherein consists thefairness of creation is between the laws of life and being in thethings governed, and the laws of general sway to which they aresubjected; and the suspension or infringement of either, kind of law, or, literally, disorder, is equivalent to, and synonymous with, disease; while the increase of both honour and beauty is habitually onthe side of restraint (or the action of superior law) rather than ofcharacter (or the action of inherent law). The noblest word in thecatalogue of social virtue is "Loyalty, " and the sweetest which menhave learned in the pastures of the wilderness is "Fold. "

Nor is this all; but we may observe, that exactly in proportion to themajesty of things in the scale of being, is the completeness of theirobedience to the laws that are set over them. Gravitation is lessquietly, less instantly obeyed by a grain of dust than it is by the sunand moon; and the ocean falls and flows under influences which the lakeand river do not recognize. So also in estimating the dignity of anyaction or occupation of men, there is perhaps no better test than thequestion "are its laws strait?" For their severity will probably becommensurate with the greatness of the numbers whose labour itconcentrates or whose interest it concerns. 

This severity must be singular, therefore, in the case of that art, above all others, whose productions are the most vast and the mostcommon; which requires for its practice the co-operation of bodies ofmen, and for its perfection the perseverance of successive generations. And, taking into account also what we have before so often observed ofArchitecture, her continual influence over the emotions of daily life, and her realism, as opposed to the two sister arts which are incomparison but the picturing of stories and of dreams, we mightbeforehand expect that we should find her healthy state and actiondependent on far more severe laws than theirs: that the license whichthey extend to the workings of individual mind would be withdrawn byher; and that, in assertion of the relations which she holds with allthat is universally important to man, she would set forth, by her ownmajestic subjection, some likeness of that on which man's socialhappiness and power depend. We might, therefore, without the light ofexperience, conclude, that Architecture never could flourish exceptwhen it was subjected to a national law as strict and as minutelyauthoritative as the laws which regulate religion, policy, and socialrelations; nay, even more authoritative than these, because bothcapable of more enforcement, as over more passive matter; and needingmore enforcement, as the purest type not of one law nor of another, butof the common authority of all. But in this matter experience speaksmore loudly than reason. If there be any one condition which, inwatching the progress of architecture, we see distinct and general; if, amidst the counter-evidence of success attending opposite accidents ofcharacter and circumstance, any one conclusion may be constantly andindisputably drawn, it is this; that the architecture of a nation isgreat only when it is as universal and as established as its language;and when provincial differences of style are nothing more than so manydialects. Other necessities are matters of doubt: nations have beenalike successful in their architecture in times of poverty and ofwealth; in times of war and of peace; in times of barbarism and ofrefinement; under governments the most liberal or the most arbitrary;but this one condition has been constant, this one requirement clear inall places and at all times, that the work shall be that of a _school_, that no individual caprice shall dispense with, or materially vary, accepted types and customary decorations; and that from the cottage tothe palace, and from the chapel to the basilica, and from the gardenfence to the fortress wall, every member and feature of thearchitecture of the nation shall be as commonly current, as franklyaccepted, as its language or its coin. 

A day never passes without our hearing our English architects calledupon to be original, and to invent a new style: about as sensible andnecessary an exhortation as to ask of a man who has never had ragsenough on his back to keep out cold, to invent a new mode of cutting acoat. Give him a whole coat first, and let him concern himself aboutthe fashion of it afterwards. We want no new style of architecture. Whowants a new style of painting or sculpture? But we want some style. Itis of marvellously little importance, if we have a code of laws andthey be good laws, whether they be new or old, foreign or native, Romanor Saxon, or Norman, or English laws. But it is of considerableimportance that we should have a code of laws of one kind or another, and that code accepted and enforced from one side of the island toanother, and not one law made ground of judgment at York and another inExeter. And in like manner it does not matter one marble splinterwhether we have an old or new architecture, but it matters everythingwhether we have an architecture truly so called or not; that is, whether an architecture whose laws might be taught at our schools fromCornwall to Northumberland, as we teach English spelling and Englishgrammar, or an architecture which is to be invented fresh every time webuild a workhouse or a parish school. There seems to me to be awonderful misunderstanding among the majority of architects at thepresent day as to the very nature and meaning of Originality, and ofall wherein it consists. Originality in expression does not depend oninvention of new words; nor originality in poetry on invention of newmeasures; nor, in painting, on invention of new colours, or new modesof using them. The chords of music, the harmonies of colour, thegeneral principles of the arrangement of sculptural masses, have beendetermined long ago, and, in all probability, cannot be added to anymore than they can be altered. Granting that they may be, suchadditions or alterations are much more the work of time and ofmultitudes than of individual inventors. We may have one Van Eyck, [170]who will be known as the introducer of a new style once in tencenturies, but he himself will trace his invention to some accidentalby-play or pursuit; and the use of that invention will dependaltogether on the popular necessities or instincts of the period. Originality depends on nothing of the kind. A man who has the gift, will take up any style that is going, the style of his day, and willwork in that, and be great in that, and make everything that he does init look as fresh as if every thought of it had just come down fromheaven. I do not say that he will not take liberties with hismaterials, or with his rules: I do not say that strange changes willnot sometimes be wrought by his efforts, or his fancies, in both. Butthose changes will be instructive, natural, facile, though sometimesmarvellous; they will never be sought after as things necessary to hisdignity or to his independence; and those liberties will be like theliberties that a great speaker takes with the language, not a defianceof its rules for the sake of singularity; but inevitable, uncalculated, and brilliant consequences of an effort to express what the language, without such infraction, could not. There may be times when, as I haveabove described, the life of an art is manifested in its changes, andin its refusal of ancient limitations: so there are in the life of aninsect; and there is great interest in the state of both the art andthe insect at those periods when, by their natural progress andconstitutional power, such changes are about to be wrought. But as thatwould be both an Uncomfortable and foolish caterpillar which, insteadof being contented with a caterpillar's life and feeding oncaterpillar's food, was always striving to turn itself into achrysalis; and as that would be an unhappy chrysalis which should lieawake at night and roll restlessly in its cocoon, in efforts to turnitself prematurely into a moth; so will that art be unhappy andunprosperous which, instead of supporting itself on the food, andcontenting itself with the customs, which have been enough for thesupport and guidance of other arts before it and like it, is strugglingand fretting under the natural limitations of its existence, andstriving to become something other than it is. And though it is thenobility of the highest creatures to look forward to, and partly tounderstand the changes which are appointed for them, preparing for thembeforehand; and if, as is usual with _appointed_ changes, they be intoa higher state, even desiring them, and rejoicing in the hope of them, yet it is the strength of every creature, be it changeful or not, torest for the time being, contented with the conditions of itsexistence, and striving only to bring about the changes which itdesires, by fulfilling to the uttermost the duties for which itspresent state is appointed and continued. 

Neither originality, therefore, nor change, good though both may be, and this is commonly a most merciful and enthusiastic supposition withrespect to either, is ever to be sought in itself, or can ever behealthily obtained by any struggle or rebellion against common laws. Wewant neither the one nor the other. The forms of architecture alreadyknown are good enough for us, and for far better than any of us: and itwill be time enough to think of changing them for better when we canuse them as they are. But there are some things which we not only want, but cannot do without; and which all the struggling and raving in theworld, nay more, which all the real talent and resolution in England, will never enable us to do without: and these are Obedience, Unity, Fellowship, and Order. And all our schools of design, and committees oftaste; all our academies and lectures, and journalisms, and essays; allthe sacrifices which we are beginning to make, all the truth whichthere is in our English nature, all the power of our English will, andthe life of our English intellect, will in this matter be as useless asefforts and emotions in a dream, unless we are contented to submitarchitecture and all art, like other things, to English law. 

I say architecture and all art; for I believe architecture must be thebeginning of arts, and that the others must follow her in their timeand order; and I think the prosperity of our schools of painting andsculpture, in which no one will deny the life, though many the health, depends upon that of our architecture. I think that all will languishuntil that takes the lead, and (this I do not _think_, but I proclaim, as confidently as I would assert the necessity, for the safety ofsociety, of an understood and strongly administered legal government)our architecture _will_ languish, and that in the very dust, until thefirst principle of common sense be manfully obeyed, and an universalsystem of form and workmanship be everywhere adopted and enforced. Itmay be said that this is impossible. It may be so--I fear it is so: Ihave nothing to do with the possibility or impossibility of it; Isimply know and assert the necessity of it. If it be impossible, English art is impossible. Give it up at once. You are wasting time, and money, and energy upon it, and though you exhaust centuries andtreasures, and break hearts for it, you will never raise it above themerest dilettanteism. Think not of it. It is a dangerous vanity, a meregulph in which genius after genius will be swallowed up, and it willnot close. And so it will continue to be, unless the one bold and broadstep be taken at the beginning. We shall not manufacture art out ofpottery and printed stuffs; we shall not reason out art by ourphilosophy; we shall not stumble upon art by our experiments, norcreate it by our fancies: I do not say that we can even build it out ofbrick and stone; but there is a chance for us in these, and there isnone else; and that chance rests on the bare possibility of obtainingthe consent, both of architects and of the public, to choose a style, and to use it universally. 

How surely its principles ought at first to be limited, we may easilydetermine by the consideration of the necessary modes of teaching anyother branch of general knowledge. When we begin to teach childrenwriting, we force them to absolute copyism, and require absoluteaccuracy in the formation of the letters; as they obtain command of thereceived modes of literal expression, we cannot prevent their fallinginto such variations as are consistent with their feeling, theircircumstances, or their characters. So, when a boy is first taught towrite Latin, an authority is required of him for every expression heuses; as he becomes master of the language he may take a license, andfeel his right to do so without any authority, and yet write betterLatin than when he borrowed every separate expression. In the same wayour architects would have to be taught to write the accepted style. Wemust first determine what buildings are to be considered Augustan intheir authority; their modes of construction and laws of proportion areto be studied with the most penetrating care; then the different formsand uses of their decorations are to be classed and catalogued, as aGerman grammarian classes the powers of prepositions; and under thisabsolute, irrefragable authority, we are to begin to work; admittingnot so much as an alteration in the depth of a cavetto, [171] or thebreadth of a fillet. Then, when our sight is once accustomed to thegrammatical forms and arrangements, and our thoughts familiar with theexpression of them all; when we can speak this dead language naturally, and apply it to whatever ideas we have to render, that is to say, toevery practical purpose of life; then, and not till then, a licensemight be permitted, and individual authority allowed to change or toadd to the received forms, always within certain limits; thedecorations, especially, might be made subjects of variable fancy, andenriched with ideas either original or taken from other schools. Andthus, in process of time and by a great national movement, it mightcome to pass that a new style should arise, as language itself changes;we might perhaps come to speak Italian instead of Latin, or to speakmodern instead of old English; but this would be a matter of entireindifference, and a matter, besides, which no determination or desirecould either hasten or prevent. That alone which it is in our power toobtain, and which it is our duty to desire, is an unanimous style ofsome kind, and such comprehension and practice of it as would enable usto adapt its features to the peculiar character of every severalbuilding, large or small, domestic, civil or ecclesiastical. 

 [169] Coleridge's _Ode to France_. 

 [170] Hubert Van Eyck [1366-1440]. The great Flemish master. 

 [171] A hollowed moulding. [New Eng. Dict. ]

SELECTIONS FROM LECTURES ON ART

 Ruskin was first elected to the Slade Professorship of Fine Art in Oxford in 1869, and held the chair continuously until 1878, when he resigned because of ill-health, and again from 1883 to 1885. The _Lectures on Art_ were announced in the _Oxford University Gazette_ of January 28, 1870, the general subject of the course being "The Limits and Elementary Practice of Art, " with Leonardo's _Trattato della Pittura_ as the text-book. The lectures were delivered between February 8 and March 23, 1870. They appeared in book form in July of the same year. These lectures contain much of his best and most mature thought, of his most painstaking research and keenest analysis. Talking with a friend in later years, he said: "I have taken more pains with the Oxford Lectures than with anything else I have ever done": and in the preface to the edition of 1887 he began: "The following lectures were the most important piece of my literary work, done with unabated power, best motive, and happiest concurrence of circumstance. " Ruskin took his professorship very seriously. He spent almost infinite labour in composing his more formal lectures, and during the eight years in which he held the chair he published six volumes of them, not to mention three Italian guide-books, which came under his interpretation of his professional duties;--"the real duty involved in my Oxford Professorship cannot be completely done by giving lectures in Oxford only, but ... I ought also to give what guidance I may to travellers in Italy. " Not only by lecturing and writing did he fill the chair, but he taught individuals, founded and endowed a Drawing mastership, and presented elaborately catalogued collections to illustrate his subject. His lecture classes were always large, and his work had a marked influence in the University. 

INAUGURAL

We see lately a most powerful impulse given to the production ofcostly works of art by the various causes which promote the suddenaccumulation of wealth in the hands of private persons. We have thus avast and new patronage, which, in its present agency, is injurious toour schools; but which is nevertheless in a great degree earnest andconscientious, and far from being influenced chiefly by motives ofostentation. Most of our rich men would be glad to promote the trueinterests of art in this country; and even those who buy for vanity, found their vanity on the possession of what they suppose to be best. 

It is therefore in a great measure the fault of artists themselves ifthey suffer from this partly unintelligent, but thoroughlywell-intended patronage. If they seek to attract it by eccentricity, to deceive it by superficial qualities, or take advantage of it bythoughtless and facile production, they necessarily degrade themselvesand it together, and have no right to complain afterwards that it willnot acknowledge better-grounded claims. But if every painter of realpower would do only what he knew to be worthy of himself, and refuseto be involved in the contention for undeserved or accidental success, there is indeed, whatever may have been thought or said to thecontrary, true instinct enough in the public mind to follow such firmguidance. It is one of the facts which the experience of thirty yearsenables me to assert without qualification, that a really good pictureis ultimately always approved and bought, unless it is wilfullyrendered offensive to the public by faults which the artist has beeneither too proud to abandon or too weak to correct. 

The development of whatever is healthful and serviceable in the twomodes of impulse which we have been considering, depends however, ultimately, on the direction taken by the true interest in art whichhas lately been aroused by the great and active genius of many of ourliving, or but lately lost, painters, sculptors, and architects. Itmay perhaps surprise, but I think it will please you to hear me, or(if you will forgive me, in my own Oxford, the presumption of fancyingthat some may recognize me by an old name) to hear the author of_Modern Painters_ say, that his chief error in earlier days was not inover-estimating, but in too slightly acknowledging the merit of livingmen. The great painter whose power, while he was yet among us, I wasable to perceive, [172] was the first to reprove me for my disregard ofthe skill of his fellow-artists; and, with this inauguration of thestudy of the art of all time, --a study which can only by true modestyend in wise admiration, --it is surely well that I connect the recordof these words of his, spoken then too truly to myself, and truealways more or less for all who are untrained in that toil, --"Youdon't know how difficult it is. "

You will not expect me, within the compass of this lecture, to giveyou any analysis of the many kinds of excellent art (in all the threegreat divisions) which the complex demands of modern life, and yetmore varied instincts of modern genius, have developed for pleasure orservice. It must be my endeavour, in conjunction with my colleagues inother Universities, hereafter to enable you to appreciate theseworthily; in the hope that also the members of the Royal Academy, andthose of the Institute of British Architects, may be induced toassist, and guide, the efforts of the Universities, by organizing sucha system of art education for their own students, as shall in futureprevent the waste of genius in any mistaken endeavours; especiallyremoving doubt as to the proper substance and use of materials; andrequiring compliance with certain elementary principles of right, inevery picture and design exhibited with their sanction. It is notindeed possible for talent so varied as that of English artists to becompelled into the formalities of a determined school; but it mustcertainly be the function of every academical body to see that theiryounger students are guarded from what must in every school be error;and that they are practised in the best methods of work hithertoknown, before their ingenuity is directed to the invention of others. 

I need scarcely refer, except for the sake of completeness in mystatement, to one form of demand for art which is whollyunenlightened, and powerful only for evil;--namely, the demand of theclasses occupied solely in the pursuit of pleasure, for objects andmodes of art that can amuse indolence or excite passion. There is noneed for any discussion of these requirements, or of their forms ofinfluence, though they are very deadly at present in their operationon sculpture, and on jewellers' work. They cannot be checked by blame, nor guided by instruction; they are merely the necessary results ofwhatever defects exist in the temper and principles of a luxurioussociety; and it is only by moral changes, not by art-criticism, thattheir action can be modified. 

Lastly, there is a continually increasing demand for popular art, multipliable by the printing-press, illustrative of daily events, ofgeneral literature, and of natural science. Admirable skill, and someof the best talent of modern times, are occupied in supplying thiswant; and there is no limit to the good which may be effected byrightly taking advantage of the powers we now possess of placing goodand lovely art within the reach of the poorest classes. Much has beenalready accomplished; but great harm has been done also, --first, byforms of art definitely addressed to depraved tastes; and, secondly, in a more subtle way, by really beautiful and useful engravings whichare yet not good enough to retain their influence on the publicmind;--which weary it by redundant quantity of monotonous averageexcellence, and diminish or destroy its power of accurate attention towork of a higher order. 

Especially this is to be regretted in the effect produced on theschools of line engraving, which had reached in England an executiveskill of a kind before unexampled, and which of late have lost much oftheir more sterling and legitimate methods. Still, I have seen platesproduced quite recently, more beautiful, I think, in some qualitiesthan anything ever before attained by the burin:[173] and I have not theslightest fear that photography, or any other adverse or competitiveoperation, will in the least ultimately diminish, --I believe they will, on the contrary, stimulate and exalt--the grand old powers of the woodand the steel. 

Such are, I think, briefly the present conditions of art with whichwe have to deal; and I conceive it to be the function of thisProfessorship, with respect to them, to establish both a practical andcritical school of fine art for English gentlemen: practical, so that, if they draw at all, they may draw rightly; and critical, so that, being first directed to such works of existing art as will best rewardtheir study, they may afterwards make their patronage of livingartists delightful to themselves in their consciousness of itsjustice, and, to the utmost, beneficial to their country, by beinggiven only to the men who deserve it; in the early period of theirlives, when they both need it most and can be influenced by it to thebest advantage. 

And especially with reference to this function of patronage, I believemyself justified in taking into account future probabilities as to thecharacter and range of art in England; and I shall endeavour at once toorganize with you a system of study calculated to develope chiefly theknowledge of those branches in which the English schools have shown, and are likely to show, peculiar excellence. 

Now, in asking your sanction both for the nature of the general plans Iwish to adopt, and for what I conceive to be necessary limitations ofthem, I wish you to be fully aware of my reasons for both: and I willtherefore risk the burdening of your patience while I state thedirections of effort in which I think English artists are liable tofailure, and those also in which past experience has shown they aresecure of success. 

I referred, but now, to the effort we are making to improve the designsof our manufactures. Within certain limits I believe this improvementmay indeed take effect: so that we may no more humour momentaryfashions by ugly results of chance instead of design; and may produceboth good tissues, of harmonious colours, and good forms and substanceof pottery and glass. But we shall never excel in decorative design. Such design is usually produced by people of great natural powers ofmind, who have no variety of subjects to employ themselves on, nooppressive anxieties, and are in circumstances either of naturalscenery or of daily life, which cause pleasurable excitement. _We_cannot design because we have too much to think of, and we think of ittoo anxiously. It has long been observed how little real anxiety existsin the minds of the partly savage races which excel in decorative art;and we must not suppose that the temper of the middle ages was atroubled one, because every day brought its dangers or its changes. Thevery eventfulness of the life rendered it careless, as generally isstill the case with soldiers and sailors. Now, when there are greatpowers of thought, and little to think of, all the waste energy andfancy are thrown into the manual work, and you have as much intellectas would direct the affairs of a large mercantile concern for a day, spent all at once, quite unconsciously, in drawing an ingenious spiral. 

Also, powers of doing fine ornamental work are only to be reached by aperpetual discipline of the hand as well as of the fancy; discipline asattentive and painful as that which a juggler has to put himselfthrough, to overcome the more palpable difficulties of his profession. The execution of the best artists is always a splendid tour-de-force, and much that in painting is supposed to be dependent on material isindeed only a lovely and quite inimitable legerdemain. Now, when powersof fancy, stimulated by this triumphant precision of manual dexterity, descend uninterruptedly from generation to generation, you have atlast, what is not so much a trained artist as a new species of animal, with whose instinctive gifts you have no chance of contending. And thusall our imitations of other peoples' work are futile. We must learnfirst to make honest English wares, and afterward to decorate them asmay please the then approving Graces. 

Secondly--and this is an incapacity of a graver kind, yet having itsown good in it also--we shall never be successful in the highest fieldsof ideal or theological art. 

For there is one strange, but quite essential, character in us--eversince the Conquest, if not earlier:--a delight in the forms of burlesquewhich are connected in some degree with the foulness in evil. I thinkthe most perfect type of a true English mind in its best possibletemper, is that of Chaucer; and you will find that, while it is forthe most part full of thoughts of beauty, pure and wild like that ofan April morning, there are, even in the midst of this, sometimesmomentarily jesting passages which stoop to play with evil--while thepower of listening to and enjoying the jesting of entirely grosspersons, whatever the feeling may be which permits it, afterwardsdegenerates into forms of humour which render some of quite thegreatest, wisest, and most moral of English writers now almost uselessfor our youth. And yet you will find that whenever Englishmen arewholly without this instinct, their genius is comparatively weak andrestricted. 

Now, the first necessity for the doing of any great work in ideal art, is the looking upon all foulness with horror, as a contemptible thoughdreadful enemy. You may easily understand what I mean, by comparingthe feelings with which Dante regards any form of obscenity or of basejest, with the temper in which the same things are regarded byShakspere. And this strange earthly instinct of ours, coupled as itis, in our good men, with great simplicity and common sense, rendersthem shrewd and perfect observers and delineators of actual nature, low or high; but precludes them from that speciality of art which isproperly called sublime. If ever we try anything in the manner ofMichael Angelo or of Dante, we catch a fall, even in literature, asMilton in the battle of the angels, spoiled from Hesiod:[174] while inart, every attempt in this style has hitherto been the sign either ofthe presumptuous egotism of persons who had never really learned to beworkmen, or it has been connected with very tragic forms of thecontemplation of death, --it has always been partly insane, and neveronce wholly successful. 

But we need not feel any discomfort in these limitations of ourcapacity. We can do much that others cannot, and more than we haveever yet ourselves completely done. Our first great gift is in theportraiture of living people--a power already so accomplished in bothReynolds and Gainsborough, that nothing is left for future masters butto add the calm of perfect workmanship to their vigour and felicity ofperception. And of what value a true school of portraiture may becomein the future, when worthy men will desire only to be known, andothers will not fear to know them, for what they truly were, we cannotfrom any past records of art influence yet conceive. But in my nextaddress it will be partly my endeavour to show you how much moreuseful, because more humble, the labour of great masters might havebeen, had they been content to bear record of the souls that weredwelling with them on earth, instead of striving to give a deceptiveglory to those they dreamed of in heaven. 

Secondly, we have an intense power of invention and expression indomestic drama; (King Lear and Hamlet being essentially domestic intheir strongest motives of interest). There is a tendency at thismoment towards a noble development of our art in this direction, checked by many adverse conditions, which may be summed in one, --theinsufficiency of generous civic or patriotic passion in the heart ofthe English people; a fault which makes its domestic affectionsselfish, contracted, and, therefore, frivolous. 

Thirdly, in connection with our simplicity and good-humour, and partlywith that very love of the grotesque which debases our ideal, we have asympathy with the lower animals which is peculiarly our own; and which, though it has already found some exquisite expression in the works ofBewick and Landseer, is yet quite undeveloped. This sympathy, with theaid of our now authoritative science of physiology, and in associationwith our British love of adventure, will, I hope, enable us to give tothe future inhabitants of the globe an almost perfect record of thepresent forms of animal life upon it, of which many are on the point ofbeing extinguished.... 

While I myself hold this professorship, I shall direct you in theseexercises very definitely to natural history, and to landscape; notonly because in these two branches I am probably able to show youtruths which might be despised by my successors; but because I thinkthe vital and joyful study of natural history quite the principalelement requiring introduction, not only into University, but intonational, education, from highest to lowest; and I even will riskincurring your ridicule by confessing one of my fondest dreams, that Imay succeed in making some of you English youths like better to look ata bird than to shoot it; and even desire to make wild creatures tame, instead of tame creatures wild. And for the study of landscape, it is, I think, now calculated to be of use in deeper, if not more importantmodes, than that of natural science, for reasons which I will ask youto let me state at some length. 

Observe first;--no race of men which is entirety bred in wild country, far from cities, ever enjoys landscape. They may enjoy the beauty ofanimals, but scarcely even that: a true peasant cannot see the beautyof cattle; but only the qualities expressive of their serviceableness. I waive discussion of this to-day; permit my assertion of it, under myconfident guarantee of future proof. Landscape can only be enjoyed bycultivated persons; and it is only by music, literature, and painting, that cultivation can be given. Also, the faculties which are thusreceived are hereditary; so that the child of an educated race has aninnate instinct for beauty, derived from arts practised hundreds ofyears before its birth. Now farther note this, one of the loveliestthings in human nature. In the children of noble races, trained bysurrounding art, and at the same time in the practice of great deeds, there is an intense delight in the landscape of their country as_memorial_; a sense not taught to them, nor teachable to any others;but, in them, innate; and the seal and reward of persistence in greatnational life;--the obedience and the peace of ages having extendedgradually the glory of the revered ancestors also to the ancestralland; until the Motherhood of the dust, the mystery of the Demeter fromwhose bosom we came, and to whose bosom we return, surrounds andinspires, everywhere, the local awe of field and fountain; thesacredness of landmark that none may remove, and of wave that none maypollute; while records of proud days, and of dear persons, make everyrock monumental with ghostly inscription, and every path lovely withnoble desolateness. 

Now, however checked by lightness of temperament, the instinctive loveof landscape in us has this deep root, which, in your minds, I willpray you to disencumber from whatever may oppress or mortify it, and tostrive to feel with all the strength of your youth that a nation isonly worthy of the soil and the scenes that it has inherited, when, by all its acts and arts, it is making them more lovely for itschildren.... 

But if either our work, or our inquiries, are to be indeed successfulin their own field, they must be connected with others of a sternercharacter. Now listen to me, if I have in these past details lost orburdened your attention; for this is what I have chiefly to say to you. The art of any country _is the exponent of its social and politicalvirtues_. I will show you that it is so in some detail, in the secondof my subsequent course of lectures; meantime accept this as one of thethings, and the most important of all things, I can positively declareto you. The art, or general productive and formative energy, of anycountry, is an exact exponent of its ethical life. You can have nobleart only from noble persons, associated under laws fitted to their timeand circumstances. And the best skill that any teacher of art couldspend here in your help, would not end in enabling you even so much asrightly to draw the water-lilies in the Cherwell (and though it did, the work when done would not be worth the lilies themselves) unlessboth he and you were seeking, as I trust we shall together seek, in thelaws which regulate the finest industries, the clue to the laws whichregulate all industries, and in better obedience to which we shallactually have henceforward to live: not merely in compliance with ourown sense of what is right, but under the weight of quite literalnecessity. For the trades by which the British people has believed itto be the highest of destinies to maintain itself, cannot now longremain undisputed in its hands; its unemployed poor are daily becomingmore violently criminal; and a certain distress in the middle classes, arising, _partly from their vanity in living always up to theirincomes, and partly from, their folly in imagining that they cansubsist in idleness upon usury_, will at last compel the sons anddaughters of English families to acquaint themselves with theprinciples of providential economy; and to learn that food can only begot out of the ground, and competence only secured by frugality; andthat although it is not possible for all to be occupied in the highestarts, nor for any, guiltlessly, to pass their days in a succession ofpleasures, the most perfect mental culture possible to men is foundedon their useful energies, and their best arts and brightest happinessare consistent, and consistent only, with their virtue. 

This, I repeat, gentlemen, will soon become manifest to those among us, and there are yet many, who are honest-hearted. And the future fate ofEngland depends upon the position they then take, and on their couragein maintaining it. 

There is a destiny now possible to us--the highest ever set before anation to be accepted or refused. We are still undegenerate in race; arace mingled of the best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute intemper, 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 nowbetray, or learn to defend by fulfilling. And we are rich in aninheritance of honour, bequeathed to us through a thousand years ofnoble history, which it should be our daily thirst to increase withsplendid avarice, so that Englishmen, if it be a sin to covet honour, should be the most offending souls alive. [175] Within the last few yearswe have had the laws of natural science opened to us with a rapiditywhich has been blinding by its brightness; and means of transit andcommunication given to us, which have made but one kingdom of thehabitable globe. One kingdom;--but who is to be its king? Is there tobe no king in it, think you, and every man to do that which is right inhis own eyes? Or only kings of terror, and the obscene empires ofMammon and Belial? Or will you, youths of England, make your countryagain a royal throne of kings; a sceptred isle, for all the world asource of light, a centre of peace; mistress of Learning and of theArts;--faithful guardian of great memories in the midst of irreverentand ephemeral visions;--faithful servant of time-tried principles, under temptation from fond experiments and licentious desires; andamidst the cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, worshipped inher strange valour of goodwill toward men?[176]

"Vexilla regis prodeunt. "[177] Yes, but of which king? There are thetwo oriflammes; which shall we plant on the farthest islands--the onethat floats in heavenly fire, or that hangs heavy with foul tissue ofterrestrial gold? There is indeed a course of beneficent glory open tous, such as never was yet offered to any poor group of mortal souls. But it must be--it _is_ with us, now. "Reign or Die. " And if it shallbe said of this country, "Fece per viltate, il gran rifiuto, "[178]that refusal of the crown will be, of all yet recorded in history, the shamefullest and most untimely. 

And this is what she must either do, or perish: she must foundcolonies as fast and as far as she is able, formed of her mostenergetic and worthiest men;--seizing every piece of fruitful wasteground she can set her foot on, and there teaching these hercolonists that their chief virtue is to be fidelity to their country, and that their first aim is to be to advance the power of England byland and sea: and that, though they live on a distant plot of ground, they are no more to consider themselves therefore disfranchised fromtheir native land, than the sailors of her fleets do, because theyfloat on distant waves. So that literally, these colonies must befastened fleets; and every man of them must be under authority ofcaptains and officers, whose better command is to be over fields andstreets instead of ships of the line; and England, in these hermotionless navies (or, in the true and mightiest sense, motionless_churches_, ruled by pilots on the Galilean lake[179] of all theworld), is to "expect every man to do his duty";[180] recognizingthat duty is indeed possible no less in peace than war; and that if wecan get men, for little pay, to cast themselves against cannon-mouthsfor love of England, we may find men also who will plough and sow forher, who will behave kindly and righteously for her, who will bring uptheir children to love her, and who will gladden themselves in thebrightness of her glory, more than in all the light of tropic skies. 

But that they may be able to do this, she must make her own majestystainless; she must give them thoughts of their home of which they canbe proud. The England who is to be mistress of half the earth, cannotremain herself a heap of cinders, trampled by contending and miserablecrowds; she must yet again become the England she was once, and in allbeautiful ways, --more: so happy, so secluded, and so pure, that in hersky--polluted by no unholy clouds--she may be able to spell rightly ofevery star that heaven doth show; and in her fields, ordered and wideand fair, of every herb that sips the dew;[181] and under the greenavenues of her enchanted garden, a sacred Circe, true Daughter of theSun, she must guide the human arts, and gather the divine knowledge, ofdistant nations, transformed from savageness to manhood, and redeemedfrom despairing into Peace. 

You think that an impossible ideal. Be it so; refuse to accept it ifyou will; but see that you form your own in its stead. All that I askof you is to have a fixed purpose of some kind for your country andyourselves; no matter how restricted, so that it be fixed andunselfish. I know what stout hearts are in you, to answer acknowledgedneed; but it is the fatallest form of error in English youth to hidetheir hardihood till it fades for lack of sunshine, and to act indisdain of purpose, till all purpose is vain. It is not by deliberate, but by careless selfishness; not by compromise with evil, but by dullfollowing of good, that the weight of national evil increases upon usdaily. Break through at least this pretence of existence; determinewhat you will be, and what you would win. You will not decide wronglyif you resolve to decide at all. Were even the choice between lawlesspleasure and loyal suffering, you would not, I believe, choose basely. But your trial is not so sharp. It is between drifting in confusedwreck among the castaways of Fortune, who condemns to assured ruinthose who know not either how to resist her, or obey; between this, Isay, and the taking of your appointed part in the heroism of Rest; theresolving to share in the victory which is to the weak rather than thestrong; and the binding yourselves by that law, which, thought onthrough lingering night and labouring day, makes a man's life to be asa tree planted by the water-side, that bringeth forth his fruit in hisseason;--

 "ET FOLIUM EJUS NON DEFLUET, ET OMNIA, QUÆCUNQUE FACIET, PROSPERABUNTUR. "[182]

 [172] Turner. 

 [173] The tool of the engraver on copper. 

 [174] See _Paradise Lost_, 6. 207 ff. , and Hesiod's _Theogony_, 676 ff. 

 [175] _Henry V_, 4. 3. 29. 

 [176] _Luke_ ii, 14. 

 [177] "Forward go the banners of the King, " or more commonly, "The royal banners forward go. " One of the seven great hymns of the Church. See the Episcopal Hymnal, 94. 

 [178] Dante, _Inferno_, 3. 60. "Who made through cowardice the great refusal. " Longfellow's tr. 

 [179] _Lyridas_, 109. 

 [180] Nelson's famous signal at Trafalgar. 

 [181] Milton's _Il Penseroso_, 170 ff. 

 [182] _Psalms_ i, 3. 

THE RELATION OF ART TO MORALS

And now I pass to the arts with which I have special concern, inwhich, though the facts are exactly the same, I shall have moredifficulty in proving my assertion, because very few of us are ascognizant of the merit of painting as we are of that of language; andI can only show you whence that merit springs, after having thoroughlyshown you in what it consists. But, in the meantime, I have simply totell you, that the manual arts are as accurate exponents of ethicalstate, as other modes of expression; first, with absolute precision, of that of the workman; and then with precision, disguised by manydistorting influences, of that of the nation to which it belongs. 

And, first, they are a perfect exponent of the mind of the workman:but, being so, remember, if the mind be great or complex, the art isnot an easy book to read; for we must ourselves possess all the mentalcharacters of which we are to read the signs. No man can read theevidence of labour who is not himself laborious, for he does not knowwhat the work cost: nor can he read the evidence of true passion if heis not passionate; nor of gentleness if he is not gentle: and the mostsubtle signs of fault and weakness of character he can only judge byhaving had the same faults to fight with. I myself, for instance, knowimpatient work, and tired work, better than most critics, because I ammyself always impatient, and often tired:--so also, the patient andindefatigable touch of a mighty master becomes more wonderful to methan to others. Yet, wonderful in no mean measure it will be to youall, when I make it manifest;--and as soon as we begin our real work, and you have learned what it is to draw a true line, I shall be ableto make manifest to you, --and undisputably so, --that the day's work ofa man like Mantegna or Paul Veronese consists of an unfaltering, uninterrupted, succession of movements of the hand more precise thanthose of the finest fencer: the pencil leaving one point and arrivingat another, not only with unerring precision at the extremity of theline, but with an unerring and yet varied course--sometimes overspaces a foot or more in extent--yet a course so determined everywherethat either of these men could, and Veronese often does, draw afinished profile, or any other portion of the contour of the face, with one line, not afterwards changed. Try, first, to realize toyourselves the muscular precision of that action, and the intellectualstrain of it; for the movement of a fencer is perfect in practisedmonotony; but the movement of the hand of a great painter is at everyinstant governed by direct and new intention. Then imagine thatmuscular firmness and subtlety, and the instantaneously selective andordinant energy of the brain, sustained all day long, not only withoutfatigue, but with a visible joy in the exertion, like that which aneagle seems to take in the wave of his wings; and this all life long, and through long life, not only without failure of power, but withvisible increase of it, until the actually organic changes of old age. And then consider, so far as you know anything of physiology, whatsort of an ethical state of body and mind that means!--ethic throughages past! what fineness of race there must be to get it, whatexquisite balance and symmetry of the vital powers! And then, finally, determine for yourselves whether a manhood like that is consistentwith any viciousness of soul, with any mean anxiety, any gnawing lust, any wretchedness of spite or remorse, any consciousness of rebellionagainst law of God or man, or any actual, though unconscious violationof even the least law to which obedience is essential for the glory oflife, and the pleasing of its Giver. 

It is, of course, true that many of the strong masters had deep faultsof character, but their faults always show in their work. It is truethat some could not govern their passions; if so, they died young, orthey painted ill when old. But the greater part of our misapprehensionin the whole matter is from our not having well known who the greatpainters were, and taking delight in the petty skill that was bred inthe fumes of the taverns of the North, instead of theirs who breathedempyreal air, sons of the morning, under the woods of Assisi and thecrags of Cadore. 

It is true however also, as I have pointed out long ago, that thestrong masters fall into two great divisions, one leading simple andnatural lives, the other restrained in a Puritanism of the worship ofbeauty; and these two manners of life you may recognize in a momentby their work. Generally the naturalists are the strongest; but thereare two of the Puritans, whose work if I can succeed in makingclearly understandable to you during my three years[183] here, it isall I need care to do. But of these two Puritans one I cannot nameto you, and the other I at present will not. One I cannot, for no oneknows his name, except the baptismal one, Bernard, or "dear littleBernard"--Bernardino, called from his birthplace, (Luino, on the LagoMaggiore, ) Bernard of Luino. The other is a Venetian, of whom many ofyou probably have never heard, and of whom, through me, you shall nothear, until I have tried to get some picture by him over to England. 

Observe then, this Puritanism in the worship of beauty, thoughsometimes weak, is always honourable and amiable, and the exactreverse of the false Puritanism, which consists in the dread ordisdain of beauty. And in order to treat my subject rightly, I oughtto proceed from the skill of art to the choice of its subject, andshow you how the moral temper of the workman is shown by his seekinglovely forms and thoughts to express, as well as by the force of hishand in expression. But I need not now urge this part of the proof onyou, because you are already, I believe, sufficiently conscious of thetruth in this matter, and also I have already said enough of it in mywritings; whereas I have not at all said enough of the infalliblenessof fine technical work as a proof of every other good power. Andindeed it was long before I myself understood the true meaning of thepride of the greatest men in their mere execution, shown for apermanent lesson to us, in the stories which, whether true or not, indicate with absolute accuracy the general conviction of greatartists;--the stories of the contest of Apelles and Protogenes[184] ina line only, (of which I can promise you, you shall know the meaningto some purpose in a little while), --the story of the circle ofGiotto, [185] and especially, which you may perhaps not have observed, the expression of Dürer in his inscription on the drawings sent him byRaphael. These figures, he says, "Raphael drew and sent to AlbertDürer in Nurnberg, to show him"--What? Not his invention, nor hisbeauty of expression, but "sein Hand zu weisen, " "to show him his_hand_. " And you will find, as you examine farther, that all inferiorartists are continually trying to escape from the necessity of soundwork, and either indulging themselves in their delights in subject, orpluming themselves on their noble motives for attempting what theycannot perform; (and observe, by the way, that a great deal of what ismistaken for conscientious motive is nothing but a very pestilent, because very subtle, condition of vanity); whereas the great menalways understand at once that the first morality of a painter, as ofeverybody else, is to know his business; and so earnest are they inthis, that many, whose lives you would think, by the results of theirwork, had been passed in strong emotion, have in reality subduedthemselves, though capable of the very strongest passions, into a calmas absolute as that of a deeply sheltered mountain lake, whichreflects every agitation of the clouds in the sky, and every change ofthe shadows on the hills, but AS itself motionless. 

Finally, you must remember that great obscurity has been brought uponthe truth in this matter by the want of integrity and simplicity inour modern life. I mean integrity in the Latin sense, wholeness. Everything is broken up, and mingled in confusion, both in our habitsand thoughts; besides being in great part imitative: so that you notonly cannot tell what a man is, but sometimes you cannot tell whetherhe _is_, at all!--whether you have indeed to do with a spirit, oronly with an echo. And thus the same inconsistencies appear now, between the work of artists of merit and their personal characters, asthose which you find continually disappointing expectation in thelives of men of modern literary power;--the same conditions of societyhaving obscured or misdirected the best qualities of the imagination, both in our literature and art. Thus there is no serious question withany of us as to the personal character of Dante and Giotto, ofShakespeare and Holbein; but we pause timidly in the attempt toanalyze the moral laws of the art skill in recent poets, novelists, and painters. 

Let me assure you once for all, that as you grow older, if you enableyourselves to distinguish by the truth of your own lives, what is truein those of other men, you will gradually perceive that all good hasits origin in good, never in evil; that the fact of either literatureor painting being truly fine of their kind, whatever their mistakenaim, or partial error, is proof of their noble origin: and that, ifthere is indeed sterling value in the thing done, it has come of asterling worth in the soul that did it, however alloyed or defiled byconditions of sin which are sometimes more appalling or more strangethan those which all may detect in their own hearts, because they arepart of a personality altogether larger than ours, and as far beyondour judgment in its darkness as beyond our following in its light. Andit is sufficient warning against what some might dread as the probableeffect of such a conviction on your own minds, namely, that you mightpermit yourselves in the weaknesses which you imagined to be allied togenius, when they took the form of personal temptations;--it issurely, I say, sufficient warning against so mean a folly, to discern, as you may with little pains, that, of all human existences, the livesof men of that distorted and tainted nobility of intellect areprobably the most miserable. 

I pass to the second, and for us the more practically importantquestion, What is the effect of noble art upon other men; what has itdone for national morality in time past: and what effect is theextended knowledge or possession of it likely to have upon us now?And here we are at once met by the facts, which are as gloomy asindisputable, that, while many peasant populations, among whomscarcely the rudest practice of art has ever been attempted, havelived in comparative innocence, honour, and happiness, the worstfoulness and cruelty of savage tribes have been frequently associatedwith fine ingenuities of decorative design; also, that no people hasever attained the higher stages of art skill, except at a period ofits civilization which was sullied by frequent, violent, and evenmonstrous crime; and, lastly, that the attaining of perfection in artpower, has been hitherto, in every nation, the accurate signal of thebeginning of its ruin. 

Respecting which phenomena, observe first, that although good neversprings out of evil, it is developed to its highest by contention withevil. There are some groups of peasantry, in far-away nooks ofChristian countries, who are nearly as innocent as lambs; but themorality which gives power to art is the morality of men, not ofcattle. 

Secondly, the virtues of the inhabitants of many country districts areapparent, not real; their lives are indeed artless, but not innocent;and it is only the monotony of circumstances, and the absence oftemptation, which prevent the exhibition of evil passions not lessreal because often dormant, nor less foul because shown only in pettyfaults, or inactive malignities. 

But you will observe also that _absolute_ artlessness, to men in anykind of moral health, is impossible; they have always, at least, theart by which they live--agriculture or seamanship; and in theseindustries, skilfully practised, you will find the law of their moraltraining; while, whatever the adversity of circumstances, everyrightly-minded peasantry, such as that of Sweden, Denmark, Bavaria, orSwitzerland, has associated with its needful industry a quite studiedschool of pleasurable art in dress; and generally also in song, andsimple domestic architecture. 

Again, I need not repeat to you here what I endeavoured to explain inthe first lecture in the book I called _The Two Paths_, respecting thearts of savage races: but I may now note briefly that such arts arethe result of an intellectual activity which has found no room toexpand, and which the tyranny of nature or of man has condemned todisease through arrested growth. And where neither Christianity, norany other religion conveying some moral help, has reached, the animalenergy of such races necessarily flames into ghastly conditions ofevil, and the grotesque or frightful forms assumed by their art areprecisely indicative of their distorted moral nature. 

But the truly great nations nearly always begin from a race possessingthis imaginative power; and for some time their progress is very slow, and their state not one of innocence, but of feverish and faultfulanimal energy. This is gradually subdued and exalted into bright humanlife; the art instinct purifying itself with the rest of the nature, until social perfectness is nearly reached; and then comes the periodwhen conscience and intellect are so highly developed, that new formsof error begin in the inability to fulfil the demands of the one, orto answer the doubts of the other. Then the wholeness of the people islost; all kinds of hypocrisies and oppositions of science developethemselves; their faith is questioned on one side, and compromisedwith on the other; wealth commonly increases at the same period to adestructive extent; luxury follows; and the ruin of the nation is thencertain: while the arts, all this time, are simply, as I said at first, the exponents of each phase of its moral state, and no more control itin its political career than the gleam of the firefly guides itsoscillation. It is true that their most splendid results are usuallyobtained in the swiftness of the power which is hurrying to theprecipice; but to lay the charge of the catastrophe to the art bywhich it is illumined, is to find a cause for the cataract in the huesof its iris. It is true that the colossal vices belonging to periodsof great national wealth (for wealth, you will find, is the real rootof all evil)[186] can turn every good gift and skill of nature or ofman to evil purpose. If, in such times, fair pictures have beenmisused, how much more fair realities? And if Miranda is immoral toCaliban is that Miranda's fault?

 [183] As Slade Professor, Ruskin held a three years' appointment at Oxford. 

 [184] This story comes from Pliny, _Natural History_, 35. 36; the two rival painters alternately showing their skill by the drawing of lines of increasing fineness. 

 [185] This story comes from Vasari's _Lives of the Painters_. See Blashfield and Hopkins's ed. Vol. 1, p. 61. Giotto was asked by a messenger of the Pope for a specimen of his work, and sent a perfect circle, drawn free hand. 

 [186] _Timothy_ vi, 10. 

THE RELATION OF ART TO USE

Our subject of inquiry to-day, you will remember, is the mode inwhich fine art is founded upon, or may contribute to, the practicalrequirements of human life. 

Its offices in this respect are mainly twofold: it gives Form toknowledge, and Grace to utility; that is to say, it makes permanentlyvisible to us things which otherwise could neither be described byour science, nor retained by our memory; and it gives delightfulnessand worth to the implements of daily use, and materials of dress, furniture and lodging. In the first of these offices it givesprecision and charm to truth; in the second it gives precision andcharm to service. For, the moment we make anything useful thoroughly, it is a law of nature that we shall be pleased with ourselves, andwith the thing we have made; and become desirous therefore to adornor complete it, in some dainty way, with finer art expressive of ourpleasure. 

And the point I wish chiefly to bring before you today is this closeand healthy connection of the fine arts with material use; but I mustfirst try briefly to put in clear light the function of art in givingForm to truth. 

Much that I have hitherto tried to teach has been disputed on theground that I have attached too much importance to art as representingnatural facts, and too little to it as a source of pleasure. And Iwish, in the close of these four prefatory lectures, strongly toassert to you, and, so far as I can in the time, convince you, thatthe entire vitality of art depends upon its being either full oftruth, or full of use; and that, however pleasant, wonderful, orimpressive it may be in itself, it must yet be of inferior kind, andtend to deeper inferiority, unless it has clearly one of these mainobjects, --either to _state a true thing_, or to _adorn a serviceableone_. It must never exist alone, --never for itself; it exists rightlyonly when it is the means of knowledge, or the grace of agency forlife. 

Now, I pray you to observe--for though I have said this often before, I have never yet said it clearly enough--every good piece of art, towhichever of these ends it may be directed, involves first essentiallythe evidence of human skill, and the formation of an actuallybeautiful thing by it. 

Skill and beauty, always, then; and, beyond these, the formative artshave always one or other of the two objects which I have just definedto you--truth, or serviceableness; and without these aims neitherthe skill nor their beauty will avail; only by these can eitherlegitimately reign. All the graphic arts begin in keeping the outlineof shadow that we have loved, and they end in giving to it the aspectof life; and all the architectural arts begin in the shaping of thecup and the platter, and they end in a glorified roof. 

Therefore, you see, in the graphic arts you have Skill, Beauty, andLikeness; and in the architectural arts Skill, Beauty, and Use: andyou _must_ have the three in each group, balanced and co-ordinate; andall the chief errors of art consist in losing or exaggerating one ofthese elements. 

For instance, almost the whole system and hope of modern life arefounded on the notion that you may substitute mechanism for skill, photograph for picture, cast-iron for sculpture. That is your mainnineteenth-century faith, or infidelity. You think you can geteverything by grinding--music, literature, and painting. You will findit grievously not so; you can get nothing but dust by mere grinding. Even to have the barley-meal out of it, you must have the barleyfirst; and that comes by growth, not grinding. But essentially, wehave lost our delight in Skill; in that majesty of it which I wastrying to make clear to you in my last address, and which longago[187] I tried to express, under the head of ideas of power. Theentire sense of that, we have lost, because we ourselves do not takepains enough to do right, and have no conception of what the rightcosts; so that all the joy and reverence we ought to feel in lookingat a strong man's work have ceased in us. We keep them yet a little inlooking at a honeycomb or a bird's-nest; we understand that thesediffer, by divinity of skill, from a lump of wax or a cluster ofsticks. But a picture, which is a much more wonderful thing than ahoneycomb or a bird's-nest, --have we not known people, and sensiblepeople too, who expected to be taught to produce that, in six lessons?

Well, you must have the skill, you must have the beauty, which is thehighest moral element; and then, lastly, you must have the verity orutility, which is not the moral, but the vital element; and thisdesire for verity and use is the one aim of the three that alwaysleads in great schools, and in the minds of great masters, without anyexception. They will permit themselves in awkwardness, they willpermit themselves in ugliness;--but they will never permit themselvesin uselessness or in unveracity. 

And farther, as their skill increases, and as their grace, so muchmore their desire for truth. It is impossible to find the threemotives in fairer balance and harmony than in our own Reynolds. Herejoices in showing you his skill; and those of you who succeed inlearning what painters' work really is, will one day rejoice also, even to laughter--that highest laughter which springs of pure delight, in watching the fortitude and the fire of a hand which strikes forthits will upon the canvas as easily as the wind strikes it on the sea. He rejoices in all abstract beauty and rhythm and melody of design; hewill never give you a colour that is not lovely, nor a shade that isunnecessary, nor a line that is ungraceful. But all his power and allhis invention are held by him subordinate, --and the more obedientlybecause of their nobleness, -to his true leading purpose of settingbefore you such likeness of the living presence of an Englishgentleman or an English lady, as shall be worthy of being looked uponfor ever. 

But farther, you remember, I hope--for I said it in a way that Ithought would shock you a little, that you might remember it--mystatement, that art had never done more than this, never more thangiven the likeness of a noble human being. Not only so, but it veryseldom does so much as this, and the best pictures that exist of thegreat schools are all portraits, or groups of portraits, often of verysimple and nowise noble persons. You may have much more brilliant andimpressive qualities in imaginative pictures; you may have figuresscattered like clouds, or garlanded like flowers; you may have lightand shade as of a tempest, and colour, as of the rainbow; but all thatis child's play to the great men, though it is astonishment to us. Their real strength is tried to the utmost, and as far as I know, itis never elsewhere brought out so thoroughly, as in painting one manor woman, and the soul that was in them; nor that always the highestsoul, but often only a thwarted one that was capable of height; orperhaps not even that, but faultful and poor, yet seen through, to thepoor best of it, by the masterful sight. So that in order to putbefore you in your Standard series the best art possible, I amobliged, even from the very strongest men, to take the portraits, before I take the idealism. Nay, whatever is best in the greatcompositions themselves has depended on portraiture; and the studynecessary to enable you to understand invention will also convince youthat the mind of man never invented a greater thing than the form ofman, animated by faithful life. Every attempt to refine or exalt suchhealthy humanity has weakened or caricatured it; or else consists onlyin giving it, to please our fancy, the wings of birds, or the eyes ofantelopes. Whatever is truly great in either Greek or Christian art, is also restrictedly human; and even the raptures of the redeemedsouls who enter "celestemente ballando, "[188] the gate of Angelico'sParadise, were seen first in the terrestrial, yet most pure, mirth ofFlorentine maidens. 

I am aware that this cannot but at present appear gravely questionableto those of my audience who are strictly cognizant of the phases ofGreek art; for they know that the moment of its decline is accuratelymarked, by its turning from abstract form to portraiture. But thereason of this is simple. The progressive course of Greek art was insubduing monstrous conceptions to natural ones; it did this by generallaws; it reached absolute truth of generic human form, and if itsethical force had remained, would have advanced into healthyportraiture. But at the moment of change the national life ended inGreece; and portraiture, there, meant insult to her religion, andflattery to her tyrants. And her skill perished, not because shebecame true in sight, but because she became vile in heart.... 

But I have told you enough, it seems to me, at least to-day, of thisfunction of art in recording fact; let me now finally, and with alldistinctness possible to me, state to you its main business ofall;--its service in the actual uses of daily life. 

You are surprised, perhaps, to hear me call this its main business. That is indeed so, however. The giving brightness to picture is much, but the giving brightness to life more. And remember, were it aspatterns only, you cannot, without the realities, have the pictures. _You cannot have a landscape by Turner without a country for him topaint; you cannot have a portrait by Titian, without a man to bepourtrayed_. I need not prove that to you, I suppose, in these shortterms; but in the outcome I can get no soul to believe that thebeginning of art _is in getting our country clean, and our peoplebeautiful_. I have been ten years trying to get this very plaincertainty--I do not say believed--but even thought of, as anything buta monstrous proposition. To get your country clean, and your peoplelovely;--I assure you that is a necessary work of art to begin with!There has indeed been art in countries where people lived in dirt toserve God, but never in countries where they lived in dirt to servethe devil. There has indeed been art where the people were not alllovely, --where even their lips were thick--and their skins black, because the sun had looked upon them;[189] but never in a countrywhere the people were pale with miserable toil and deadly shade, andwhere the lips of youth, instead of being full with blood, werepinched by famine, or warped with poison. And now, therefore, notethis well, the gist of all these long prefatory talks. I said that thetwo great moral instincts were those of Order and Kindness. Now, allthe arts are founded on agriculture by the hand, and on the graces andkindness of feeding, and dressing, and lodging your people. Greek artbegins in the gardens of Alcinous--perfect order, leeks in beds, andfountains in pipes. [190] And Christian art, as it arose out ofchivalry, was only possible so far as chivalry compelled both kingsand knights to care for the right personal training of their people;it perished utterly when those kings and knights became [Greek:daemoboroi], devourers of the people. And it will become possibleagain only, when, literally, the sword is beaten into theploughshare, [191] when your St. George of England shall justify hisname, [192] and Christian art shall be known as its Master was, inbreaking of bread. [193]

Now look at the working out of this broad principle in minor detail;observe how, from highest to lowest, health of art has first dependedon reference to industrial use. There is first the need of cup andplatter, especially of cup; for you can put your meat on theHarpies', [194] or any other, tables; but you must have your cup todrink from. And to hold it conveniently, you must put a handle to it;and to fill it when it is empty you must have a large pitcher of somesort; and to carry the pitcher you may most advisably have twohandles. Modify the forms of these needful possessions according tothe various requirements of drinking largely and drinking delicately;of pouring easily out, or of keeping for years the perfume in; ofstoring in cellars, or bearing from fountains; of sacrificiallibation, of Pan-athenaic treasure of oil, and sepulchral treasure ofashes, --and you have a resultant series of beautiful form anddecoration, from the rude amphora of red earth up to Cellini's vasesof gems and crystal, in which series, but especially in the moresimple conditions of it, are developed the most beautiful lines andmost perfect types of severe composition which have yet been attainedby art. 

But again, that you may fill your cup with pure water, you must go tothe well or spring; you need a fence round the well; you need sometube or trough, or other means of confining the stream at the spring. For the conveyance of the current to any distance you must buildeither enclosed or open aqueduct; and in the hot square of the citywhere you set it free, you find it good for health and pleasantness tolet it leap into a fountain. On these several needs you have a schoolof sculpture founded; in the decoration of the walls of wells in levelcountries, and of the sources of springs in mountainous ones, andchiefly of all, where the women of household or market meet at thecity fountain. 

There is, however, a farther reason for the use of art here than inany other material service, so far as we may, by art, express ourreverence or thankfulness. Whenever a nation is in its right mind, italways has a deep sense of divinity in the gift of rain from heaven, filling its heart with food and gladness;[195] and all the more whenthat gift becomes gentle and perennial in the flowing of springs. Itliterally is not possible that any fruitful power of the Muses shouldbe put forth upon a people which disdains their Helicon; still less isit possible that any Christian nation should grow up "tanquam lignumquod plantatum est secus decursus aquarum, "[196] which cannot recognizethe lesson meant in their being told of the places where Rebekah wasmet;--where Rachel, --where Zipporah, --and she who was asked for waterunder Mount Gerizim by a Stranger, weary, who had nothing to drawwith. [197]

And truly, when our mountain springs are set apart in vale or craggyglen, or glade of wood green through the drought of summer, far fromcities, then, it is best let them stay in their own happy peace; butif near towns, and liable therefore to be defiled by common usage, wecould not use the loveliest art more worthily than by sheltering thespring and its first pools with precious marbles: nor ought anythingto be esteemed more important, as a means of healthy education, thanthe care to keep the streams of it afterwards, to as great a distanceas possible, pure, full of fish, and easily accessible to children. There used to be, thirty years ago, a little rivulet of the Wandel, about an inch deep, which ran over the carriage-road and under afootbridge just under the last chalk hill near Croydon. Alas! men cameand went; and it--did _not_ go on for ever. It has long since beenbricked over by the parish authorities; but there was more educationin that stream with its minnows than you could get out of a thousandpounds spent yearly in the parish schools, even though you were tospend every farthing of it in teaching the nature of oxygen andhydrogen, and the names, and rate per minute, of all the rivers inAsia and America. 

Well, the gist of this matter lies here then. Suppose we want a schoolof pottery again in England, all we poor artists are ready to do thebest we can, to show you how pretty a line may be that is twisted firstto one side, and then to the other; and how a plain household-blue willmake a pattern on white; and how ideal art may be got out of thespaniel's colours of black and tan. But I tell you beforehand, all thatwe can do will be utterly useless, unless you teach your peasant to saygrace, not only before meat, but before drink; and having provided himwith Greek cups and platters, provide him also with something that isnot poisoned to put into them. 

There cannot be any need that I should trace for you the conditions ofart that are directly founded on serviceableness of dress, and ofarmour; but it is my duty to affirm to you, in the most positivemanner, that after recovering, for the poor, wholesomeness of food, your next step toward founding schools of art in England must be inrecovering, for the poor, decency and wholesomeness of dress;thoroughly good in substance, fitted for their daily work, becoming totheir rank in life, and worn with order and dignity. And this orderand dignity must be taught them by the women of the upper and middleclasses, whose minds can be in nothing right, as long as they are sowrong in this matter us to endure the squalor of the poor, while theythemselves dress gaily. And on the proper pride and comfort of bothpoor and rich in dress, must be founded the true arts of dress;carried on by masters of manufacture no less careful of theperfectness and beauty of their tissues, and of all that in substanceand in design can be bestowed upon them, than ever the armourers ofMilan and Damascus were careful of their steel. 

Then, in the third place, having recovered some wholesome habits oflife as to food and dress, we must recover them as to lodging. I saidjust now that the best architecture was but a glorified roof. Think ofit. The dome of the Vatican, the porches of Rheims or Chartres, thevaults and arches of their aisles, the canopy of the tomb, and thespire of the belfry, are all forms resulting from the mere requirementthat a certain space shall be strongly covered from heat and rain. More than that--as I have tried all through _The Stones of Venice_ toshow--the lovely forms of these were every one of them developed incivil and domestic building, and only after their invention employedecclesiastically on the grandest scale. I think you cannot but havenoticed here in Oxford, as elsewhere, that our modern architects neverseem to know what to do with their roofs. Be assured, until the roofsare right, nothing else will be; and there are just two ways ofkeeping them right. Never build them of iron, but only of wood orstone; and secondly, take care that in every town the little roofs arebuilt before the large ones, and that everybody who wants one has gotone. And we must try also to make everybody want one. That is to say, at some not very advanced period of life, men should desire to have ahome, which they do not wish to quit any more, suited to their habitsof life, and likely to be more and more suitable to them until theirdeath. And men must desire to have these their dwelling-places builtas strongly as possible, and furnished and decorated daintily, and setin pleasant places, in bright light, and good air, being able tochoose for themselves that at least as well as swallows. And when thehouses are grouped together in cities, men must have so much civicfellowship as to subject their architecture to a common law, and somuch civic pride as to desire that the whole gathered group of humandwellings should be a lovely thing, not a frightful one, on the faceof the earth. Not many weeks ago an English clergyman, [198] a master ofthis University, a man not given to sentiment, but of middle age, andgreat practical sense, told me, by accident, and wholly withoutreference to the subject now before us, that he never could enterLondon from his country parsonage but with closed eyes, lest the sightof the blocks of houses which the railroad intersected in the suburbsshould unfit him, by the horror of it, for his day's work. 

Now, it is not possible--and I repeat to you, only in more deliberateassertion, what I wrote just twenty-two years ago in the last chapterof the _Seven Lamps of Architecture_--it is not possible to have anyright morality, happiness, or art, in any country where the cities arethus built, or thus, let me rather say, clotted and coagulated; spotsof a dreadful mildew, spreading by patches and blotches over thecountry they consume. You must have lovely cities, crystallized, notcoagulated, into form; limited in size, and not casting out the scumand scurf of them into an encircling eruption of shame, but girdedeach with its sacred pomoerium, and with garlands of gardens full ofblossoming trees and softly guided streams. 

 [187] In _Modern Painters_, vol. 1. 

 [188] The quotation is from Vasari's account of Angelico's Last Judgment (now in the Accademia at Florence). [Cook and Wedderbum. ]

 [189] _Song of Solomon_ i, 6. 

 [190] Cf. _Classical Landscape_, pp. 92-93. 

 [191] _Isaiah_, ii, 4; _Micah_ iv, 3; _Joel_ iii, 10. 

 [192] The name of St. George, the "Earthworker, " or "Husbandman. " [Ruskin. ]

 [193] _Luke_ xxiv, 35. 

 [194] Virgil, _Æneid_, 3, 209. _seqq_. [Ruskin. ]

 [195] _Acts_ xiv, 17. 

 [196] _Psalms_ i, 3. 

 [197] _Genesis_ xxiv, 15, 16 and xxix, 10; _Exodus_ ii, 16; _John_ iv, 11. 

 [198] Osborne Gordon. [Ruskin. ]

ART AND HISTORY

ATHENA ERGANE

 This short selection is taken from the volume entitled _The Queen of the Air_, in which Ruskin, fascinated by the deep significance of the Greek myths and realizing the religious sincerity underlying them, attempts to interpret those that cluster about Athena. The book was published June 22, 1869. It is divided into three "Lectures, " parts of which actually were delivered as lectures on different occasions, entitled respectively "Athena Chalinitis" (Athena in the Heavens), "Athena Keramitis" (Athena in the Earth), "Athena Ergane" (Athena in the Heart). The first lecture is the only one which keeps to the title of the book; in the others the legend is used merely as a starting-point for the expression of various pregnant ideas on social and historical problems. The book as a whole abounds in flashes of inspiration and insight, and is a favourite with many readers of Ruskin. Carlyle, in a letter to Froude, wrote: "Passages of that last book, _Queen of the Air_, went into my heart like arrows. "

In different places of my writings, and through many years ofendeavour to define the laws of art, I have insisted on this Tightnessin work, and on its connection with virtue of character, in so manypartial ways, that the impression left on the reader's mind--if, indeed, it was ever impressed at all--has been confused and uncertain. In beginning the series of my corrected works, I wish this principle(in my own mind the foundation of every other) to be made plain, ifnothing else is: and will try, therefore, to make it so, so far as, byany effort, I can put it into unmistakable words. And, first, here isa very simple statement of it, given lately in a lecture on theArchitecture of the Valley of the Somme, [199] which will be better readin this place than in its incidental connection with my account of theporches of Abbeville. 

I had used, in a preceding part of the lecture, the expression, "bywhat faults" this Gothic architecture fell. We continually speak thusof works of art. We talk of their faults and merits, as of virtues andvices. What do we mean by talking of the faults of a picture, or themerits of a piece of stone?

The faults of a work of art are the faults of its workman, and itsvirtues his virtues. 

Great art is the expression of the mind of a great man, and mean art, that of the want of mind of a weak man. A foolish person buildsfoolishly, and a wise one, sensibly; a virtuous one, beautifully; anda vicious one, basely. If stone work is well put together, it meansthat a thoughtful man planned it, and a careful man cut it, and anhonest man cemented it. If it has too much ornament, it means that itscarver was too greedy of pleasure; if too little, that he was rude, orinsensitive, or stupid, and the like. So that when once you havelearned how to spell these most precious of all legends, --picturesand buildings, --you may read the characters of men, and of nations, intheir art, as in a mirror;--nay, as in a microscope, and magnified ahundredfold; for the character becomes passionate in the art, andintensifies itself in all its noblest or meanest delights. Nay, notonly as in a microscope, but as under a scalpel, and in dissection;for a man may hide himself from you, or misrepresent himself to you, every other way; but he cannot in his work: there, be sure, you havehim to the inmost. All that he likes, all that he sees, --all that hecan do, --his imagination, his affections, his perseverance, hisimpatience, his clumsiness, cleverness, everything is there. If thework is a cobweb, you know it was made by a spider; if a honeycomb, bya bee; a worm-cast is thrown up by a worm, and a nest wreathed by abird; and a house built by a man, worthily, if he is worthy, andignobly, if he is ignoble. 

And always, from the least to the greatest, as the made thing is goodor bad, so is the maker of it. 

You all use this faculty of judgment more or less, whether youtheoretically admit the principle or not. Take that floral gable;[200]you don't suppose the man who built Stonehenge could have built that, or that the man who built that, _would_ have built Stonehenge? Do youthink an old Roman would have liked such a piece of filigree work? orthat Michael Angelo would have spent his time in twisting these stemsof roses in and out? Or, of modern handicraftsmen, do you think aburglar, or a brute, or a pickpocket could have carved it? Could BillSykes have done it? or the Dodger, dexterous with finger and tool? Youwill find in the end, that _no man could have done it but exactly theman who did it_; and by looking close at it, you may, if you know yourletters, read precisely the manner of man he was. 

Now I must insist on this matter, for a grave reason. Of all factsconcerning art, this is the one most necessary to be known, that, while manufacture is the work of hands only, art is the work of thewhole spirit of man; and as that spirit is, so is the deed of it: andby whatever power of vice or virtue any art is produced, the same viceor virtue it reproduces and teaches. That which is born of evil begetsevil; and that which is born of valour and honour, teaches valour andhonour. Al art is either infection or education. It _must_ be one orother of these. 

This, I repeat, of all truths respecting art, is the one of whichunderstanding is the most precious, and denial the most deadly. And Iassert it the more, because it has of late been repeatedly, expressly, and with contumely denied; and that by high authority: and I hold itone of the most sorrowful facts connected with the decline of the artsamong us, that English gentlemen, of high standing as scholars andartists, should have been blinded into the acceptance, and betrayedinto the assertion of a fallacy which only authority such as theirscould have rendered for an instant credible. For the contrary of it iswritten in the history of all great nations; it is the one sentencealways inscribed on the steps of their thrones; the one concordantvoice in which they speak to us out of their dust. 

All such nations first manifest themselves as a pure and beautifulanimal race, with intense energy and imagination. They live lives ofhardship by choice, and by grand instinct of manly discipline: theybecome fierce and irresistible soldiers; the nation is always its ownarmy, and their king, or chief head of government, is always theirfirst soldier. Pharaoh, or David, or Leonidas, or Valerius, orBarbarossa, or Coeur de Lion, or St. Louis, or Dandolo, or Frederickthe Great:--Egyptian, Jew, Greek, Roman, German, English, French, Venetian, --that is inviolable law for them all; their king must betheir first soldier, or they cannot be in progressive power. Then, after their great military period, comes the domestic period; inwhich, without betraying the discipline of war, they add to theirgreat soldiership the delights and possessions of a delicate andtender home-life: and then, for all nations, is the time of theirperfect art, which is the fruit, the evidence, the reward of theirnational ideal of character, developed by the finished care of theoccupations of peace. That is the history of all true art that everwas, or can be: palpably the history of it, --unmistakably, --written onthe forehead of it in letters of light, --in tongues of fire, by whichthe seal of virtue is branded as deep as ever iron burnt into aconvict's flesh the seal of crime. But always, hitherto, after thegreat period, has followed the day of luxury, and pursuit of the artsfor pleasure only. And all has so ended. 

Thus far of Abbeville building. Now I have here asserted twothings, --first, the foundation of art in moral character; next, thefoundation of moral character in war. I must make both theseassertions clearer, and prove them. 

First, of the foundation of art in moral character. Of course art-giftand amiability of disposition are two different things. A good man isnot necessarily a painter, nor does an eye for colour necessarilyimply an honest mind. But great art implies the union of both powers:it is the expression, by an art-gift, of a pure soul. If the gift isnot there, we can have no art at all; and if the soul--and a rightsoul too--is not there, the art is bad, however dexterous. 

But also, remember, that the art-gift itself is only the result of themoral character of generations. A bad woman may have a sweet voice;but that sweetness of voice comes of the past morality of her race. That she can sing with it at all, she owes to the determination oflaws of music by the morality of the past. Every act, every impulse, of virtue and vice, affects in any creature, face, voice, nervouspower, and vigour and harmony of invention, at once. Perseverance inrightness of human conduct, renders, after a certain number ofgenerations, human art possible; every sin clouds it, be it ever solittle a one; and persistent vicious living and following of pleasurerender, after a certain number of generations, all art impossible. Menare deceived by the long-suffering of the laws of nature; and mistake, in a nation, the reward of the virtue of its sires for the issue ofits own sins. The time of their visitation will come, and thatinevitably; for, it is always true, that if the fathers have eaten sourgrapes, the children's teeth are set on edge. [201] And for theindividual, as soon as you have learned to read, you may, as I havesaid, know him to the heart's core, through his art. Let his art-giftbe never so great, and cultivated to the height by the schools of agreat race of men; and it is still but a tapestry thrown over his ownbeing and inner soul; and the bearing of it will show, infallibly, whether it hangs on a man, or on a skeleton. If you are dim-eyed, youmay not see the difference in the fall of the folds at first, butlearn how to look, and the folds themselves will become transparent, and you shall see through them the death's shape, or the divine one, making the tissue above it as a cloud of light, or as a winding-sheet. 

Then farther, observe, I have said (and you will find it true, andthat to the uttermost) that, as all lovely art is rooted in virtue, soit bears fruit of virtue, and is didactic in its own nature. It isoften didactic also in actually expressed thought, as Giotto's, Michael Angelo's, Dürer's, and hundreds more; but that is not itsspecial function, --it is didactic chiefly by being beautiful; butbeautiful with haunting thought, no less than with form, and full ofmyths that can be read only with the heart. 

For instance, at this moment there is open beside me as I write, apage of Persian manuscript, wrought with wreathed azure and geld, andsoft green, and violet, and ruby and scarlet, into one field of pureresplendence. It is wrought to delight the eyes only; and does delightthem; and the man who did it assuredly had eyes in his head; but notmuch more. It is not didactic art, but its author was happy: and itwill do the good, and the harm, that mere pleasure can do. But, opposite me, is an early Turner drawing of the lake of Geneva, takenabout two miles from Geneva, on the Lausanne road, with Mont Blanc inthe distance. The old city is seen lying beyond the waveless waters, veiled with a sweet misty veil of Athena's weaving: a faint light ofmorning, peaceful exceedingly, and almost colourless, shed from behindthe Voirons, increases into soft amber along the slope of the Salève, and is just seen, and no more, on the fair warm fields of its summit, between the folds of a white cloud that rests upon the grass, butrises, high and towerlike, into the zenith of dawn above. 

There is not as much colour in that low amber light upon the hill-sideas there is in the palest dead leaf. The lake is not blue, but grey inmist, passing into deep shadow beneath the Voirons' pines; a few darkclusters of leaves, a single white flower--scarcely seen--are all thegladness given to the rocks of the shore. One of the ruby spots of theeastern manuscript would give colour enough for all the red that is inTurner's entire drawing. For the mere pleasure of the eye, there isnot so much in all those lines of his, throughout the entirelandscape, as in half an inch square of the Persian's page. What madehim take pleasure in the low colour that is only like the brown of adead leaf? in the cold grey of dawn--in the one white flower among therocks--in these--and no more than these?

He took pleasure in them because he had been bred among English fieldsand hills; because the gentleness of a great race was in his heart, and its power of thought in his brain; because he knew the stories ofthe Alps, and of the cities at their feet; because he had read theHomeric legends of the clouds, and beheld the gods of dawn, and thegivers of dew to the fields; because he knew the faces of the crags, and the imagery of the passionate mountains, as a man knows the faceof his friend; because he had in him the wonder and sorrow concerninglife and death, which are the inheritance of the Gothic soul from thedays of its first sea kings; and also the compassion and the joy thatare woven into the innermost fabric of every great imaginative spirit, born now in countries that have lived by the Christian faith with anycourage or truth. And the picture contains also, for us, just thiswhich its maker had in him to give; and can convey it to us, just sofar as we are of the temper in which it must be received. It isdidactic if we are worthy to be taught, no otherwise. The pure heart, it will make more pure; the thoughtful, more thoughtful. It has in itno words for the reckless or the base. 

 [199] _The Flamboyant Architecture of the Valley of the Somme_, a lecture delivered at the Royal Institution, January 29, 1869. 

 [200] The elaborate pediment above the central porch at the west end of Rouen Cathedral, pierced into a transparent web of tracery, and enriched with a border of "twisted eglantine. " [Ruskin. ]

 [201] _Jeremiah_ xxxi, 29. 

TRAFFIC

 "Traffic" is the second of the three lectures published May, 1866, in the volume entitled _The Crown of Wild Olive_. All these lectures were delivered in the years 1864 and 1865, but the one here printed was earliest. The occasion on which Ruskin addressed the people of Bradford is made sufficiently clear from the opening sentences. The lecture is important as emphasizing in a popular way some of his most characteristic economic theories. 

TRAFFIC[202]

My good Yorkshire friends, you asked me down here among your hillsthat I might talk to you about this Exchange you are going to build:but, earnestly and seriously asking you to pardon me, I am going to donothing of the kind. I cannot talk, or at least can say very little, about this same Exchange. I must talk of quite other things, thoughnot willingly;--I could not deserve your pardon, if, when you invitedme to speak on one subject, I _wilfully_ spoke on another. But Icannot speak, to purpose, of anything about which I do not care; andmost simply and sorrowfully I have to tell you, in the outset, that Ido _not_ care about this Exchange of yours. 

If, however, when you sent me your invitation, I had answered, "Iwon't come, I don't care about the Exchange of Bradford, " you wouldhave been justly offended with me, not knowing the reasons of so blunta carelessness. So I have come down, hoping that you will patientlylet me tell you why, on this, and many other such occasions, I nowremain silent, when formerly I should have caught at the opportunityof speaking to a gracious audience. 

In a word, then, I do not care about this Exchange--because _you_don't; and because you know perfectly well I cannot make you. Look atthe essential conditions of the case, which you, as business men, knowperfectly well, though perhaps you think I forget them. You are goingto spend £30, 000, which to you, collectively, is nothing; the buying anew coat is, as to the cost of it, a much more important matter ofconsideration to me, than building a new Exchange is to you. But youthink you may as well have the right thing for your money. You knowthere are a great many odd styles of architecture about; you don'twant to do anything ridiculous; you hear of me, among others, as arespectable architectural man-milliner; and you send for me, that Imay tell you the leading fashion; and what is, in our shops, for themoment, the newest and sweetest thing in pinnacles. 

Now, pardon me for telling you frankly, you cannot have goodarchitecture merely by asking people's advice on occasion. All goodarchitecture is the expression of national life and character, and itis produced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire forbeauty. And I want you to think a little of the deep significance ofthis word "taste"; for no statement of mine has been more earnestly oroftener controverted than that good taste is essentially a moralquality. "No, " say many of my antagonists, "taste is one thing, morality is another. Tell us what is pretty: we shall be glad to knowthat; but we need no sermons--even were you able to preach them, whichmay be doubted. "

Permit me, therefore, to fortify this old dogma of mine somewhat. Taste is not only a part and an index of morality;--it is the ONLYmorality. The first, and last, and closest trial question to anyliving creature is, "What do you like?" Tell me what you like, andI'll tell you what you are. Go out into the street, and ask the firstman or woman you meet, what their "taste" is; and if they answercandidly, you know them, body and soul. "You, my friend in the rags, with the unsteady gait, what do _you_ like?" "A pipe and a quartern ofgin. " I know you. "You, good woman, with the quick step and tidybonnet, what do you like?" "A swept hearth, and a clean tea-table; andmy husband opposite me, and a baby at my breast. " Good, I know youalso. "You, little girl with the golden hair and the soft eyes, whatdo you like?" "My canary, and a run among the wood hyacinths. " "You, little boy with the dirty hands, and the low forehead, what do youlike?" "A shy at the sparrows, and a game at pitch farthing. " Good; weknow them all now. What more need we ask?

"Nay, " perhaps you answer; "we need rather to ask what these peopleand children do, than what they like. If they do right, it is nomatter that they like what is wrong; and if they _do_ wrong, it is nomatter that they like what is right. Doing is the great thing; and itdoes not matter that the man likes drinking, so that he does notdrink; nor that the little girl likes to be kind to her canary, if shewill not learn her lessons; nor that the little boy likes throwingstones at the sparrows, if he goes to the Sunday school. " Indeed, fora short time, and in a provisional sense, this is true. For if, resolutely, people do what is right, in time they come to like doingit. But they only are in a right moral state when they _have_ come tolike doing it; and as long as they don't like it, they are still in avicious state. The man is not in health of body who is always thinkingof the bottle in the cupboard, though he bravely bears his thirst; butthe man who heartily enjoys water in the morning, and wine in theevening, each in its proper quantity and time. And the entire objectof true education is to make people not merely _do_ the right things, but _enjoy_ the right things:--not merely industrious, but to loveindustry--not merely learned, but to love knowledge--not merely pure, but to love purity--not merely just, but to hunger and thirst afterjustice. [203]

But you may answer or think, "Is the liking for outsideornaments, --for pictures, or statues, or furniture, orarchitecture, --a moral quality?" Yes, most surely, if a rightly setliking. Taste for _any_ pictures or statues is not a moral quality, but taste for good ones is. Only here again we have to define the word"good. " I don't mean by "good, " clever--or learned--or difficult inthe doing. Take a picture by Teniers, of sots quarrelling over theirdice; it is an entirely clever picture; so clever that nothing in itskind has ever been done equal to it; but it is also an entirely baseand evil picture. It is an expression of delight in the prolongedcontemplation of a vile thing, and delight in that is an "unmannered, "or "immoral" quality. It is "bad taste" in the profoundest sense--itis the taste of the devils. On the other hand, a picture of Titian's, or a Greek statue, or a Greek coin, or a Turner landscape, expressesdelight in the perpetual contemplation of a good and perfect thing. That is an entirely moral quality--it is the taste of the angels Andall delight in art, and all love of it, resolve themselves into simplelove of that which deserves love. That deserving is the quality whichwe call "loveliness"--(we ought to have an opposite word, hateliness, to be said of the things which deserve to be hated); and it is not anindifferent nor optional thing whether we love this or that; but it isjust the vital function of all our being. What we _like_ determineswhat we _are_, and is the sign of what we are; and to teach taste isinevitably to form character. 

As I was thinking over this, in walking up Fleet Street the other day, my eye caught the title of a book standing open in a bookseller'swindow. It was--"On the necessity of the diffusion of taste among allclasses. " "Ah, " I thought to myself, "my classifying friend, when youhave diffused your taste, where will your classes be? The man wholikes what you like, belongs to the same class with you, I think. Inevitably so. You may put him to other work if you choose; but, bythe condition you have brought him into, he will dislike the otherwork as much as you would yourself. You get hold of a scavenger or acostermonger, who enjoyed the Newgate Calendar for literature, and'Pop goes the Weasel' for music. You think you can make him like Danteand Beethoven? I wish you joy of your lessons; but if you do, you havemade a gentleman of him:--he won't like to go back to hiscoster-mongering. "

And so completely and unexceptionally is this so, that, if I had timeto-night, I could show you that a nation cannot be affected by anyvice, or weakness, without expressing it, legibly, and for ever, either in bad art, or by want of art; and that there is no nationalvirtue, small or great, which is not manifestly expressed in all theart which circumstances enable the people possessing that virtue toproduce. Take, for instance, your great English virtue of enduring andpatient courage. You have at present in England only one art of anyconsequence--that is, iron-working. You know thoroughly well how tocast and hammer iron. Now, do you think, in those masses of lava whichyou build volcanic cones to melt, and which you forge at the mouths ofthe Infernos you have created; do you think, on those iron plates, your courage and endurance are not written for ever, --not merely withan iron pen, but on iron parchment? And take also your great Englishvice--European vice--vice of all the world--vice of all other worldsthat roll or shine in heaven, bearing with them yet the atmosphere ofhell--the vice of jealousy, which brings competition into yourcommerce, treachery into your councils, and dishonour into yourwars--that vice which has rendered for you, and for your nextneighbouring nation, the daily occupations of existence no longerpossible, but with the mail upon your breasts and the sword loose inits sheath; so that at last, you have realized for all the multitudesof the two great peoples who lead the so-called civilization of theearth, --you have realized for them all, I say, in person and inpolicy, what was once true only of the rough Border riders of yourCheviot hills--

 They carved at the meal With gloves of steel, And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd;[204] do youthink that this national shame and dastardliness of heart are notwritten as legibly on every rivet of your iron armour as the strengthof the right hands that forged it?

Friends, I know not whether this thing be the more ludicrous or themore melancholy. It is quite unspeakably both. Suppose, instead ofbeing now sent for by you, I had been sent for by some privategentleman, living in a suburban house, with his garden separated onlyby a fruit wall from his next door neighbour's; and he had called meto consult with him on the furnishing of his drawing-room. I beginlooking about me, and find the walls rather bare; I think such andsuch a paper might be desirable--perhaps a little fresco here andthere on the ceiling--a damask curtain or so at the windows. "Ah, "says my employer, "damask curtains, indeed! That's all very fine, butyou know I can't afford that kind of thing just now!" "Yet the worldcredits you with a splendid income!" "Ah, yes, " says my friend, "butdo you know, at present I am obliged to spend it nearly all insteel-traps?" "Steel-traps! for whom?" "Why, for that fellow on theother side the wall, you know: we're very good friends, capitalfriends; but we are obliged to keep our traps set on both sides of thewall; we could not possibly keep on friendly terms without them, andour spring guns. The worst of it is, we are both clever fellowsenough; and there's never a day passes that we don't find out a newtrap, or a new gun-barrel, or something; we spend about fifteenmillions a year each in our traps, take it altogether; and I don't seehow we're to do with less. " A highly comic state of life for twoprivate gentlemen! but for two nations, it seems to me, not whollycomic. Bedlam would be comic, perhaps, if there were only one madmanin it; and your Christmas pantomime is comic, when there is only oneclown in it; but when the whole world turns clown, and paints itselfred with its own heart's blood instead of vermilion, it is somethingelse than comic, I think. 

Mind, I know a great deal of this is play, and willingly allow forthat. You don't know what to do with yourselves for a sensation:fox-hunting and cricketing will not carry you through the whole ofthis unendurably long mortal life: you liked pop-guns when you wereschoolboys, and rifles and Armstrongs are only the same things bettermade: but then the worst of it is, that what was play to you whenboys, was not play to the sparrows; and what is play to you now, isnot play to the small birds of State neither; and for the blackeagles, you are somewhat shy of taking shots at them, if I mistakenot. [205]

I must get back to the matter in hand, however. Believe me, withoutfurther instance, I could show you, in all time, that every nation'svice, or virtue, was written in its art: the soldiership of earlyGreece; the sensuality of late Italy; the visionary religion ofTuscany; the splendid human energy and beauty of Venice. I have notime to do this to-night (I have done it elsewhere before now);[206]but I proceed to apply the principle to ourselves in a more searchingmanner. 

I notice that among all the new buildings that cover your once wildhills, churches and schools are mixed in due, that is to say, in largeproportion, with your mills and mansions; and I notice also that thechurches and schools are almost always Gothic, and the mansions andmills are never Gothic. Will you allow me to ask precisely the meaningof this? For, remember, it is peculiarly a modern phenomenon. WhenGothic was invented, houses were Gothic as well as churches; and whenthe Italian style superseded the Gothic, churches were Italian as wellas houses. If there is a Gothic spire to the cathedral of Antwerp, there is a Gothic belfry to the Hotel de Ville at Brussels; if InigoJones builds an Italian Whitehall, Sir Christopher Wren builds anItalian St. Paul's. [207] But now you live under one school ofarchitecture, and worship under another. What do you mean by doingthis? Am I to understand that you are thinking of changing yourarchitecture back to Gothic; and that you treat your churchesexperimentally, because it does not matter what mistakes you make in achurch? Or am I to understand that you consider Gothic a pre-eminentlysacred and beautiful mode of building, which you think, like the finefrankincense, should be mixed for the tabernacle only, and reservedfor your religious services? For if this be the feeling, though it mayseem at first as if it were graceful and reverent, you will find that, at the root of the matter, it signifies neither more nor less thanthat you have separated your religion from your life. 

For consider what a wide significance this fact has: and remember thatit is not you only, but all the people of England, who are behavingthus, just now. 

You have all got into the habit of calling the church "the house ofGod. " I have seen, over the doors of many churches, the legendactually carved, "_This_ is the house of God and this is the gate ofheaven. "[208] Now, note where that legend comes from, and of whatplace it was first spoken. A boy leaves his father's house to go on along journey on foot, to visit his uncle: he has to cross a wildhill-desert; just as if one of your own boys had to cross the wolds tovisit an uncle at Carlisle. The second or third day your boy findshimself somewhere between Hawes and Brough, in the midst of the moors, at sunset. It is stony ground, and boggy; he cannot go one footfurther that night. Down he lies, to sleep, on Wharnside, where besthe may, gathering a few of the stones together to put under hishead;--so wild the place is, he cannot get anything but stones. Andthere, lying under the broad night, he has a dream; and he sees aladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reaches to heaven, andthe angels of God are ascending and descending upon it. And when hewakes out of his sleep, he says, "How dreadful is this place; surelythis is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate ofheaven. " This PLACE, observe; not this church; not this city; not thisstone, even, which he puts up for a memorial--the piece of flint onwhich his head has lain. But this _place_; this windy slope ofWharnside; this moorland hollow, torrent-bitten, snow-blighted! this_any_ place where God lets down the ladder. And how are you to knowwhere that will be? or how are you to determine where it may be, butby being ready for it always? Do you know where the lightning is tofall next? You _do_ know that, partly; you can guide the lightning;but you cannot guide the going forth of the Spirit, which is thatlightning when it shines from the east to the west. [209]

But the perpetual and insolent warping of that strong verse to serve amerely ecclesiastical purpose is only one of the thousand instances inwhich we sink back into gross Judaism. We call our churches "temples. "Now, you know perfectly well they are _not_ temples. They have neverhad, never can have, anything whatever to do with temples. They are"synagogues"--"gathering places"--where you gather yourselves togetheras an assembly; and by not calling them so, you again miss the forceof another mighty text--"Thou, when thou prayest, shalt not be as thehypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the churches" [weshould translate it], "that they may be seen of men. But thou, whenthou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father"--which is, not in chancel nor in aisle, but "insecret. "[210]

Now, you feel, as I say this to you--I know you feel--as if I weretrying to take away the honour of your churches. Not so; I am tryingto prove to you the honour of your houses and your hills; not that theChurch is not sacred--but that the whole Earth is. I would have youfeel, what careless, what constant, what infectious sin there is inall modes of thought, whereby, in calling your churches only "holy, "you call your hearths and homes "profane"; and have separatedyourselves from the heathen by casting all your household gods to theground, instead of recognizing, in the place of their many and feebleLares, the presence of your One and Mighty Lord and Lar. 

"But what has all this to do with our Exchange?" you ask me, impatiently. My dear friends, it has just everything to do with it; onthese inner and great questions depend all the outer and little ones;and if you have asked me down here to speak to you, because you hadbefore been interested in anything I have written, you must know thatall I have yet said about architecture was to show this. The book Icalled _The Seven Lamps_ was to show that certain right states oftemper and moral feeling were the magic powers by which all goodarchitecture, without exception, had been produced. _The Stones ofVenice_ had, from beginning to end, no other aim than to show that theGothic architecture of Venice had arisen out of, and indicated in allits features, a state of pure national faith, and of domestic virtue;and that its Renaissance architecture had arisen out of, and in allits features indicated, a state of concealed national infidelity, andof domestic corruption. And now, you ask me what style is best tobuild in, and how can I answer, knowing the meaning of the two styles, but by another question--do you mean to build as Christians or asInfidels? And still more--do you mean to build as honest Christians oras honest Infidels? as thoroughly and confessedly either one or theother? You don't like to be asked such rude questions. I cannot helpit; they are of much more importance than this Exchange business; andif they can be at once answered, the Exchange business settles itselfin a moment. But before I press them farther, I must ask leave toexplain one point clearly. 

In all my past work, my endeavour has been to show that goodarchitecture is essentially religious--the production of a faithfuland virtuous, not of an infidel and corrupted people. But in thecourse of doing this, I have had also to show that good architectureis not _ecclesiastical_. People are so apt to look upon religion asthe business of the clergy, not their own, that the moment they hearof anything depending on "religion, " they think it must also havedepended on the priesthood; and I have had to take what place was tobe occupied between these two errors, and fight both, often withseeming contradiction. Good architecture is the work of good andbelieving men; therefore, you say, at least some people say, "Goodarchitecture must essentially have been the work of the clergy, not ofthe laity. " No--a thousand times no; good architecture[211] has alwaysbeen the work of the commonalty, _not_ of the clergy. "What, " you say, "those glorious cathedrals--the pride of Europe--did their buildersnot form Gothic architecture?" No; they corrupted Gothic architecture. Gothic was formed in the baron's castle, and the burgher's street. Itwas formed by the thoughts, and hands, and powers of labouringcitizens and warrior kings. By the monk it was used as an instrumentfor the aid of his superstition; when that superstition became abeautiful madness, and the best hearts of Europe vainly dreamed andpined in the cloister, and vainly raged and perished in thecrusade, --through that fury of perverted faith and wasted war, theGothic rose also to its loveliest, most fantastic, and, finally, mostfoolish dreams; and in those dreams, was lost. 

I hope, now, that there is no risk of your misunderstanding me when Icome to the gist of what I want to say to-night;--when I repeat, thatevery great national architecture has been the result and exponent ofa great national religion. You can't have bits of it here, bitsthere--you must have it everywhere or nowhere. It is not the monopolyof a clerical company--it is not the exponent of a theologicaldogma--it is not the hieroglyphic writing of an initiated priesthood;it is the manly language of a people inspired by resolute and commonpurpose, and rendering resolute and common fidelity to the legiblelaws of an undoubted God. 

Now, there have as yet been three distinct schools of Europeanarchitecture. I say, European, because Asiatic and Africanarchitectures belong so entirely to other races and climates, thatthere is no question of them here; only, in passing, I will simplyassure you that whatever is good or great in Egypt, and Syria, andIndia, is just good or great for the same reasons as the buildings onour side of the Bosphorus. We Europeans, then, have had three greatreligions: the Greek, which was the worship of the God of Wisdom andPower; the Mediæval, which was the worship of the God of Judgment andConsolation; the Renaissance, which was the worship of the God ofPride and Beauty: these three we have had--they are past, --and now, atlast, we English have got a fourth religion, and a God of our own, about which I want to ask you. But I must explain these three old onesfirst. 

I repeat, first, the Greeks essentially worshipped the God of Wisdom;so that whatever contended against their religion, --to the Jews astumbling-block, --was, to the Greeks--_Foolishness_. [212]

The first Greek idea of deity was that expressed in the word, of whichwe keep the remnant in our words "_Di_-urnal" and "_Di_-vine"--the godof _Day_, Jupiter the revealer. Athena is his daughter, but especiallydaughter of the Intellect, springing armed from the head. We are onlywith the help of recent investigation beginning to penetrate the depthof meaning couched under the Athenaic symbols: but I may note rapidly, that her ægis, the mantle with the serpent fringes, in which sheoften, in the best statues, is represented as folding up her lefthand, for better guard; and the Gorgon, on her shield, are bothrepresentative mainly of the chilling horror and sadness (turning mento stone, as it were), of the outmost and superficial spheres ofknowledge--that knowledge which separates, in bitterness, hardness, and sorrow, the heart of the full-grown man from the heart of thechild. For out of imperfect knowledge spring terror, dissension, danger, and disdain; but from perfect knowledge, given by thefull-revealed Athena, strength and peace, in sign of which she iscrowned with the olive spray, and bears the resistless spear. [213]

This, then, was the Greek conception of purest Deity; and every habitof life, and every form of his art developed themselves from theseeking this bright, serene, resistless wisdom; and setting himself, as a man, to do things evermore rightly and strongly;[214] not withany ardent affection or ultimate hope; but with a resolute andcontinent energy of will, as knowing that for failure there was noconsolation, and for sin there was no remission. And the Greekarchitecture rose unerring, bright, clearly defined, andself-contained. 

Next followed in Europe the great Christian faith, which wasessentially the religion of Comfort. Its great doctrine is theremission of sins; for which cause, it happens, too often, in certainphases of Christianity, that sin and sickness themselves are partlyglorified, as if, the more you had to be healed of, the more divinewas the healing. The practical result of this doctrine, in art, is acontinual contemplation of sin and disease, and of imaginary states ofpurification from them; thus we have an architecture conceived in amingled sentiment of melancholy and aspiration, partly severe, partlyluxuriant, which will bend itself to every one of our needs, and everyone of our fancies, and be strong or weak with us, as we are strong orweak ourselves. It is, of all architecture, the basest, when basepeople build it--of all, the noblest, when built by the noble. 

And now note that both these religions--Greek and Mediæval--perishedby falsehood in their own main purpose. The Greek religion of Wisdomperished in a false philosophy--"Oppositions of science, falsely socalled. " The Mediæval religion of Consolation perished in falsecomfort; in remission of sins given lyingly. It was the selling ofabsolution that ended the Mediæval faith; and I can tell you more, itis the selling of absolution which, to the end of time, will markfalse Christianity. Pure Christianity gives her remission of sins onlyby _ending_ them; but false Christianity gets her remission of sins by_compounding for_ them. And there are many ways of compounding forthem. We English have beautiful little quiet ways of buyingabsolution, whether in low Church or high, far more cunning than anyof Tetzel's trading. [215]

Then, thirdly, there followed the religion of Pleasure, in which allEurope gave itself to luxury, ending in death. First, _bals masqués_in every saloon, and then guillotines in every square. And all thesethree worships issue in vast temple building. Your Greek worshippedWisdom, and built you the Parthenon--the Virgin's temple. The Mediævalworshipped Consolation, and built you Virgin temples also--but to ourLady of Salvation. Then the Revivalist worshipped beauty, of a sort, and built you Versailles and the Vatican. Now, lastly, will you tellme what _we_ worship, and what _we_ build?

You know we are speaking always of the real, active, continual, national worship; that by which men act, while they live; not thatwhich they talk of, when they die. Now, we have, indeed, a nominalreligion, to which we pay tithes of property and sevenths of time; butwe have also a practical and earnest religion, to which we devotenine-tenths of our property and sixth-sevenths of our time. And wedispute a great deal about the nominal religion: but we are allunanimous about this practical one; of which I think you will admitthat the ruling goddess may be best generally described as the"Goddess of Getting-on, " or "Britannia of the Market. " The Athenianshad an "Athena Agoraia, " or Athena of the Market; but she was asubordinate type of their goddess, while our Britannia Agoraia is theprincipal type of ours. And all your great architectural works are, ofcourse, built to her. It is long since you built a great cathedral;and how you would laugh at me if I proposed building a cathedral onthe top of one of these hills of yours, taking it for an Acropolis!But your railroad mounds, vaster than the walls of Babylon; yourrailroad stations, vaster than the temple of Ephesus, and innumerable;your chimneys, how much more mighty and costly than cathedral spires!your harbour-piers; your warehouses; your exchanges!--all these arebuilt to your great Goddess of "Getting-on"; and she has formed, andwill continue to form your architecture, as long as you worship her;and it is quite vain to ask me to tell you how to build to _her_; youknow far better than I. 

There might, indeed, on some theories, be a conceivably goodarchitecture for Exchanges--that is to say, if there were any heroismin the fact or deed of exchange which might be typically carved on theoutside of your building. For, you know, all beautiful architecturemust be adorned with sculpture or painting; and for sculpture orpainting, you must have a subject. And hitherto it has been a receivedopinion among the nations of the world that the only right subjectsfor either, were _heroisms_ of some sort. Even on his pots and hisflagons, the Greek put a Hercules slaying lions, or an Apollo slayingserpents, or Bacchus slaying melancholy giants, and earthborndespondencies. On his temples, the Greek put contests of greatwarriors in founding states, or of gods with evil spirits. On hishouses and temples alike, the Christian put carvings of angelsconquering devils; or of hero-martyrs exchanging this world foranother: subject inappropriate, I think, to our manner of exchangehere. And the Master of Christians not only left His followers withoutany orders as to the sculpture of affairs of exchange on the outsideof buildings, but gave some strong evidence of His dislike of affairsof exchange within them. [216] And yet there might surely be a heroismin such affairs; and all commerce become a kind of selling of doves, not impious. The wonder has always been great to me, that heroism hasnever been supposed to be in any wise consistent with the practice ofsupplying people with food, or clothes; but rather with that ofquartering one's self upon them for food, and stripping them of theirclothes. Spoiling of armour is an heroic deed in all ages; but theselling of clothes, old, or new, has never taken any colour ofmagnanimity. Yet one does not see why feeding the hungry and clothingthe naked should ever become base businesses, even when engaged in ona large scale. If one could contrive to attach the notion of conquestto them anyhow! so that, supposing there were anywhere an obstinaterace, who refused to be comforted, one might take some pride in givingthem compulsory comfort! and, as it were, "_occupying_ a country" withone's gifts, instead of one's armies? If one could only consider it asmuch a victory to get a barren field sown, as to get an eared fieldstripped; and contend who should build villages, instead of who should"carry" them! Are not all forms of heroism conceivable in doing theseserviceable deeds? You doubt who is strongest? It might be ascertainedby push of spade, as well as push of sword. Who is wisest? There arewitty things to be thought of in planning other business thancampaigns. Who is bravest? There are always the elements to fightwith, stronger than men; and nearly as merciless. 

The only absolutely and unapproachably heroic element in the soldier'swork seems to be--that he is paid little for it--and regularly: whileyou traffickers, and exchangers, and others occupied in presumablybenevolent business, like to be paid much for it--and by chance. Inever can make out how it is that a _knight_-errant does not expect tobe paid for his trouble, but a _pedlar_-errant always does;--thatpeople are willing to take hard knocks for nothing, but never to sellribands cheap; that they are ready to go on fervent crusades, torecover the tomb of a buried God, but never on any travels to fulfilthe orders of a living one;--that they will go anywhere barefoot topreach their faith, but must be well bribed to practise it, and areperfectly ready to give the Gospel gratis, but never the loaves andfishes. 

If you chose to take the matter up on any such soldierly principle; todo your commerce, and your feeding of nations, for fixed salaries; andto be as particular about giving people the best food, and the bestcloth, as soldiers are about giving them the best gunpowder, I couldcarve something for you on your exchange worth looking at. But I canonly at present suggest decorating its frieze with pendant purses; andmaking its pillars broad at the base, for the sticking of bills. Andin the innermost chambers of it there might be a statue of Britanniaof the Market, who may have, perhaps advisably, a partridge for hercrest, typical at once of her courage in fighting for noble ideas, andof her interest in game; and round its neck, the inscription in goldenletters, "Perdix fovit quæ non peperit. "[217] Then, for her spear, shemight have a weaver's beam; and on her shield, instead of St. George'sCross, the Milanese boar, semi-fleeced, with the town of Gennesaretproper, in the field; and the legend, "In the best market, "[218] andher corslet, of leather, folded over her heart in the shape of apurse, with thirty slits in it, for a piece of money to go in at, oneach day of the month. And I doubt not but that people would come tosee your exchange, and its goddess, with applause. 

Nevertheless, I want to point out to you certain strange characters inthis goddess of yours. She differs from the great Greek and Mediævaldeities essentially in two things--first, as to the continuance of herpresumed power; secondly, as to the extent of it. 

1st, as to the Continuance. 

The Greek Goddess of Wisdom gave continual increase of wisdom, as theChristian Spirit of Comfort (or Comforter) continual increase ofcomfort. There was no question, with these, of any limit or cessationof function. But with your Agora Goddess, that is just the mostimportant question. Getting on--but where to? Gathering together--buthow much? Do you mean to gather always--never to spend? If so, I wishyou joy of your goddess, for I am just as well off as you, without thetrouble of worshipping her at all. But if you do not spend, somebodyelse will--somebody else must. And it is because of this (among manyother such errors) that I have fearlessly declared your so-calledscience of Political Economy to be no science; because, namely, it hasomitted the study of exactly the most important branch of thebusiness--the study of _spending_. For spend you must, and as much asyou make, ultimately. You gather corn:--will you bury England under aheap of grain; or will you, when you have gathered, finally eat? Yougather gold:--will you make your house-roofs of it, or pave yourstreets with it? That is still one way of spending it. But if you keepit, that you may get more, I'll give you more; I'll give you all thegold you want--all you can imagine--if you can tell me what you'll dowith it. You shall have thousands of gold-pieces;--thousands ofthousands--millions--mountains, of gold: where will you keep them?Will you put an Olympus of silver upon a golden Pelion--make Ossa likea wart?[219] Do you think the rain and dew would then come down toyou, in the streams from such mountains, more blessedly than they willdown the mountains which God has made for you, of moss and whinstone?But it is not gold that you want to gather! What is it? greenbacks?No; not those neither. What is it then--is it ciphers after a capitalI? Cannot you practise writing ciphers, and write as many as you want?Write ciphers for an hour every morning, in a big book, and say everyevening, I am worth all those noughts more than I was yesterday. Won'tthat do? Well, what in the name of Plutus is it you want? Not gold, not greenbacks, not ciphers after a capital I? You will have toanswer, after all, "No; we want, somehow or other, money's _worth_. "Well, what is that? Let your Goddess of Getting-on discover it, andlet her learn to stay therein. 

2d. But there is yet another question to be asked respecting thisGoddess of Getting-on. The first was of the continuance of her power;the second is of its extent. 

Pallas and the Madonna were supposed to be all the world's Pallas, andall the world's Madonna. They could teach all men, and they couldcomfort all men. But, look strictly into the nature of the power ofyour Goddess of Getting-on; and you will find she is the Goddess--notof everybody's getting on--but only of somebody's getting on. This isa vital, or rather deathful, distinction. Examine it in your own idealof the state of national life which this Goddess is to evoke andmaintain. I asked you what it was, when I was last here;--you havenever told me. [220] Now, shall I try to tell you?

Your ideal of human life then is, I think, that it should be passed ina pleasant undulating world, with iron and coal everywhere underneathit. On each pleasant bank of this world is to be a beautiful mansion, with two wings; and stables, and coach-houses; a moderately-sizedpark; a large garden and hot-houses; and pleasant carriage drivesthrough the shrubberies In this mansion are to live the favouredvotaries of the Goddess; the English gentleman, with his graciouswife, and his beautiful family; always able to have the boudoir andthe jewels for the wife, and the beautiful ball dresses for thedaughters, and hunters for the sons, and a shooting in the Highlandsfor himself. At the bottom of the bank, is to be the mill; not lessthan a quarter of a mile long, with a steam engine at each end, andtwo in the middle, and a chimney three hundred feet high. In this millare to be in constant employment from eight hundred to a thousandworkers, who never drink, never strike, always go to church on Sunday, and always express themselves in respectful language. 

Is not that, broadly, and in the main features, the kind of thing youpropose to yourselves? It is very pretty indeed seen from above; notat all so pretty, seen from below. For, observe, while to one familythis deity is indeed the Goddess of Getting-on, to a thousand familiesshe is the Goddess of _not_ Getting-on. "Nay, " you say, "they have alltheir chance. " Yes, so has every one in a lottery, but there mustalways be the same number of blanks. "Ah! but in a lottery it is notskill and intelligence which take the lead, but blind chance. " Whatthen! do you think the old practice, that "they should take who havethe power, and they should keep who can, "[221] is less iniquitous, when the power has become power of brains instead of fist? and that, though we may not take advantage of a child's or a woman's weakness, we may of a man's foolishness? "Nay, but finally, work must be done, and some one must be at the top, some one at the bottom. " Granted, myfriends. Work must always be, and captains of work must always be; andif you in the least remember the tone of any of my writings, you mustknow that they are thought unfit for this age, because they are alwaysinsisting on need of government, and speaking with scorn of liberty. But I beg you to observe that there is a wide difference between beingcaptains or governors of work, and taking the profits of it. It doesnot follow, because you are general of an army, that you are to takeall the treasure, or land, it wins; (if it fight for treasure orland;) neither, because you are king of a nation, that you are toconsume all the profits of the nation's work. Real kings, on thecontrary, are known invariably by their doing quite the reverse ofthis, --by their taking the least possible quantity of the nation'swork for themselves. There is no test of real kinghood so infallibleas that. Does the crowned creature live simply, bravely, unostentatiously? probably he _is_ a King. Does he cover his body withjewels, and his table with delicates? in all probability he is _not_ aKing. It is possible he may be, as Solomon was; but that is when thenation shares his splendour with him. Solomon made gold, not only tobe in his own palace as stones, but to be in Jerusalem as stones. [222]But, even so, for the most part, these splendid kinghoods expire inruin, and only the true king-hoods live, which are of royal labourersgoverning loyal labourers; who, both leading rough lives, establishthe true dynasties. Conclusively you will find that because you areking of a nation, it does not follow that you are to gather foryourself all the wealth of that nation; neither, because you are kingof a small part of the nation, and lord over the means of itsmaintenance--over field, or mill, or mine, --are you to take all theproduce of that piece of the foundation of national existence foryourself. 

You will tell me I need not preach against these things, for I cannotmend them. No, good friends, I cannot; but you can, and you will; orsomething else can and will. Even good things have no abidingpower--and shall these evil things persist in victorious evil? Allhistory shows, on the contrary, that to be the exact thing they nevercan do. Change _must_ come; but it is ours to determine whether changeof growth, or change of death. Shall the Parthenon be in ruins on itsrock, and Bolton priory[223] in its meadow, but these mills of yoursbe the consummation of the buildings of the earth, and their wheels beas the wheels of eternity? Think you that "men may come, and men maygo, " but--mills--go on for ever?[224] Not so; out of these, better orworse shall come; and it is for you to choose which. 

I know that none of this wrong is done with deliberate purpose. Iknow, on the contrary, that you wish your workmen well; that you domuch for them, and that you desire to do more for them, if you sawyour way to such benevolence safely. I know that even all this wrongand misery are brought about by a warped sense of duty, each of youstriving to do his best; but, unhappily, not knowing for whom thisbest should be done. And all our hearts have been betrayed by theplausible impiety of the modern economist, telling us that, "To do thebest for ourselves, is finally to do the best for others. " Friends, our great Master said not so; and most absolutely we shall find thisworld is not made so. Indeed, to do the best for others, is finally todo the best for ourselves; but it will not do to have our eyes fixedon that issue. The Pagans had got beyond that. Hear what a Pagan saysof this matter; hear what were, perhaps, the last written words ofPlato, --if not the last actually written (for this we cannot know), yet assuredly in fact and power his parting words--in which, endeavouring to give full crowning and harmonious close to all histhoughts, and to speak the sum of them by the imagined sentence of theGreat Spirit, his strength and his heart fail him, and the wordscease, broken off for ever. They are at the close of the dialoguecalled _Critias_, in which he describes, partly from real tradition, partly in ideal dream, the early state of Athens; and the genesis, andorder, and religion, of the fabled isle of Atlantis; in which genesishe conceives the same first perfection and final degeneracy of man, which in our own Scriptural tradition is expressed by saying that theSons of God inter-married with the daughters of men, [225] for hesupposes the earliest race to have been indeed the children of God;and to have corrupted themselves, until "their spot was not the spotof his children. "[226] And this, he says, was the end; that indeed"through many generations, so long as the God's nature in them yet wasfull, they were submissive to the sacred laws, and carried themselveslovingly to all that had kindred with them in divineness; for theiruttermost spirit was faithful and true, and in every wise great; sothat, in _all meekness of wisdom, they dealt with each other_, andtook all the chances of life; and despising all things except virtue, they cared little what happened day by day, and _bore lightly theburden_ of gold and of possessions; for they saw that, if _only theircommon love and virtue increased, all these things would be increasedtogether with them_; but to set their esteem and ardent pursuit uponmaterial possession would be to lose that first, and their virtue andaffection together with it. And by such reasoning, and what of thedivine nature remained in them, they gained all this greatness ofwhich we have already told; but when the God's part of them faded andbecame extinct, being mixed again and again, and effaced by theprevalent mortality; and the human nature at last exceeded, they thenbecame unable to endure the courses of fortune; and fell intoshapelessness of life, and baseness in the sight of him who could see, having lost everything that was fairest of their honour; while to theblind hearts which could not discern the true life, tending tohappiness, it seemed that they were then chiefly noble and happy, being filled with an iniquity of inordinate possession and power. Whereupon, the God of Gods, whose Kinghood is in laws, beholding aonce just nation thus cast into misery, and desiring to lay suchpunishment upon them as might make them repent into restraining, gathered together all the gods into his dwelling-place, which fromheaven's centre overlooks whatever has part in creation; and havingassembled them, he said "--

The rest is silence. Last words of the chief wisdom of the heathen, spoken of this idol of riches; this idol of yours; this golden image, high by measureless cubits, set up where your green fields of Englandare furnace-burnt into the likeness of the plain of Dura:[227] thisidol, forbidden to us, first of all idols, by our own Master andfaith; forbidden to us also by every human lip that has ever, in anyage or people, been accounted of as able to speak according to thepurposes of God. Continue to make that forbidden deity your principalone, and soon no more art, no more science, no more pleasure will bepossible. Catastrophe will come; or, worse than catastrophe, slowmouldering and withering into Hades. But if you can fix someconception of a true human state of life to be striven for--life, goodfor all men, as for yourselves; if you can determine some honest andsimple order of existence; following those trodden ways of wisdom, which are pleasantness, [228] and seeking her quiet and withdrawnpaths, which are peace;--then, and so sanctifying wealth into"commonwealth, " all your art, your literature, your daily labours, your domestic affection, and citizen's duty, will join and increaseinto one magnificent harmony. You will know then how to build, wellenough; you will build with stone well, but with flesh better; templesnot made with hands, [229] but riveted of hearts; and that kind ofmarble, crimson-veined, is indeed eternal. 

 [202] Delivered in the Town Hall, Bradford, April 21, 1864. 

 [203] _Matthew_ v, 6. 

 [204] Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, canto 1, stanza 4. 

 [205] The reference was to the reluctance of this country to take arms in defence of Denmark against Prussia and Austria. [Cook and Wedderburn. ]

 [206] See, e. G. , pp. 167 ff. And 270 ff. 

 [207] Inigo Jones [1573-1652] and Sir Christopher Wren [1632-1723] were the best known architects of their respective generations. 

 [208] _Genesis_ xxviii, 17. 

 [209] _Matthew_ xxiv, 27. 

 [210] _Matthew_ vi, 6. 

 [211] And all other arts, for the most part; even of incredulous and secularly-minded commonalties. [Ruskin. ]

 [212] 1 _Corinthians_ i, 23. 

 [213] For further interpretation of Greek mythology see Ruskin's _Queen of the Air_. 

 [214] It is an error to suppose that the Greek worship, or seeking, was chiefly of Beauty. It was essentially of Rightness and Strength, founded on Forethought: the principal character of Greek art is not beauty, but design: and the Dorian Apollo-worship and Athenian Virgin-worship are both expressions of adoration of divine wisdom and purity. Next to these great deities, rank, in power over the national mind, Dionysus and Ceres, the givers of human strength and life; then, for heroic example, Hercules. There is no Venus-worship among the Greeks in the great times: and the Muses are essentially teachers of Truth, and of its harmonies. [Ruskin. ]

 [215] Tetzel's trading in Papal indulgences aroused Luther to the protest which ended in the Reformation. 

 [216] _Matthew_ xxi, 12. 

 [217] _Jeremiah_ xvii, 11 (best in Septuagint and Vulgate). "As the partridge, fostering what she brought not forth, so he that getteth riches not by right shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool. " [Ruskin. ]

 [218] Meaning, fully, "We have brought our pigs to it. " [Ruskin. ]

 [219] Cf. _Hamlet_, 5. 1. 306. 

 [220] Referring to a lecture on _Modern Manufacture and Design_, delivered at Bradford, March 1, 1859 published later as Lecture III in _The Two Paths_. 

 [221] See Wordsworth's _Rob Roy's Grave_, 39-40. 

 [222] 1 Kings x, 27. 

 [223] A beautiful ruin in Yorkshire. 

 [224] Cf. Tennyson's _The Brook_. 

 [225] _Genesis_ vi, 2. 

 [226] _Deuteronomy_ xxxii, 5. 

 [227] _Daniel_ iii, 1. 

 [228] _Proverbs_ iii, 17. 

 [229] _Acts_ vii, 48. 

LIFE AND ITS ARTS

 This lecture, the full title of which is "The Mystery of Life and its Arts, " was delivered in Dublin on May 13, 1868. It composed one of a series of afternoon lectures on various subjects, religion excepted, arranged by some of the foremost residents in Dublin. The latter half of the lecture is included in the present volume of selections. The first publication of the lecture was as an additional part to a revised edition of _Sesame and Lilies_ in 1871. Ruskin took exceptional care in writing "The Mystery of Life": he once said in conversation, "I put into it all that I know, " and in the preface to it when published he tells us that certain passages of it "contain the best expression I have yet been able to put in words of what, so far as is within my power, I mean henceforward both to do myself, and to plead with all over whom I have any influence to do according to their means. " Sir Leslie Stephen says this "is, to my mind, the most perfect of his essays. " In later editions of _Sesame and Lilies_ this lecture was withdrawn. At the time the lecture was delivered its tone was characteristic of Ruskin's own thought and of the attitude he then took toward the public. 

We have sat at the feet of the poets who sang of heaven, and they havetold us their dreams. We have listened to the poets who sang of earth, and they have chanted to us dirges and words of despair. But there isone class of men more:--men, not capable of vision, nor sensitive tosorrow, but firm of purpose--practised in business; learned in allthat can be, (by handling, ) known. Men, whose hearts and hopes arewholly in this present world, from whom, therefore, we may surelylearn, at least, how, at present, conveniently to live in it. Whatwill _they_ say to us, or show us by example? These kings--thesecouncillors--these statesmen and builders of kingdoms--thesecapitalists and men of business, who weigh the earth, and the dust ofit, in a balance. [230] They know the world, surely; and what is themystery of life to us, is none to them. They can surely show us how tolive, while we live, and to gather out of the present world what isbest. 

I think I can best tell you their answer, by telling you a dream I hadonce. For though I am no poet, I have dreams sometimes:--I dreamed Iwas at a child's May-day party, in which every means of entertainmenthad been provided for them, by a wise and kind host. It was in astately house, with beautiful gardens attached to it; and the childrenhad been set free in the rooms and gardens, with no care whatever buthow to pass their afternoon rejoicingly. They did not, indeed, knowmuch about what was to happen next day; and some of them, I thought, were a little frightened, because there was a chance of their beingsent to a new school where there were examinations; but they kept thethoughts of that out of their heads as well as they could, andresolved to enjoy themselves. The house, I said, was in a beautifulgarden, and in the garden were all kinds of flowers; sweet, grassybanks for rest; and smooth lawns for play; and pleasant streams andwoods; and rocky places for climbing. And the children were happy fora little while, but presently they separated themselves into parties;and then each party declared it would have a piece of the garden forits own, and that none of the others should have anything to do withthat piece. Next, they quarrelled violently which pieces they wouldhave; and at last the boys took up the thing, as boys should do, "practically, " and fought in the flower-beds till there was hardly aflower left standing; then they trampled down each other's bits of thegarden out of spite; and the girls cried till they could cry no more;and so they all lay down at last breathless in the ruin, and waitedfor the time when they were to be taken home in the evening. [231]

Meanwhile, the children in the house had been making themselves happyalso in their manner. For them, there had been provided every kind ofin-door pleasure: there was music for them to dance to; and thelibrary was open, with all manner of amusing books; and there was amuseum full of the most curious shells, and animals, and birds; andthere was a workshop, with lathes and carpenters' tools, for theingenious boys; and there were pretty fantastic dresses, for the girlsto dress in; and there were microscopes, and kaleidoscopes; andwhatever toys a child could fancy; and a table, in the dining-room, loaded with everything nice to eat. 

But, in the midst of all this, it struck two or three of the more"practical" children, that they would like some of the brass-headednails that studded the chairs; and so they set to work to pull themout. Presently, the others, who were reading, or looking at shells, took a fancy to do the like; and, in a little while, all the children, nearly, were spraining their fingers, in pulling out brass-headednails. With all that they could pull out, they were not satisfied; andthen, everybody wanted some of somebody else's. And at last, thereally practical and sensible ones declared, that nothing was of anyreal consequence, that afternoon, except to get plenty of brass-headednails; and that the books, and the cakes, and the microscopes were ofno use at all in themselves, but only, if they could be exchanged fornail-heads. And at last they began to fight for nail-heads, as theothers fought for the bits of garden. Only here and there, a despisedone shrank away into a corner, and tried to get a little quiet with abook, in the midst of the noise; but all the practical ones thought ofnothing else but counting nail-heads all the afternoon--even thoughthey knew they would not be allowed to carry so much as one brass knobaway with them. But no--it was--"who has most nails? I have a hundred, and you have fifty; or, I have a thousand, and you have two. I musthave as many as you before I leave the house, or I cannot possibly gohome in peace. " At last, they made so much noise that I awoke, andthought to myself, "What a false dream that is, of _children!_" Thechild is the father of the man;[232] and wiser. Children never do suchfoolish things. Only men do. 

But there is yet one last class of persons to be interrogated. Thewise religious men we have asked in vain; the wise contemplative men, in vain; the wise worldly men, in vain. But there is another groupyet. In the midst of this vanity of empty religion--of tragiccontemplation--of wrathful and wretched ambition, and dispute fordust, there is yet one great group of persons, by whom all thesedisputers live--the persons who have determined, or have had it by abeneficent Providence determined for them, that they will do somethinguseful; that whatever may be prepared for them hereafter, or happen tothem here, they will, at least, deserve the food that God gives themby winning it honourably: and that, however fallen from the purity, orfar from the peace, of Eden, they will carry out the duty of humandominion, though they have lost its felicity; and dress and keep thewilderness, [233] though they no more can dress or keep the garden. 

These, --hewers of wood, and drawers of water, [234]--these, bent underburdens, or torn of scourges--these, that dig and weave--that plantand build; workers in wood, and in marble, and in iron--by whom allfood, clothing, habitation, furniture, and means of delight areproduced, for themselves, and for all men beside; men, whose deeds aregood, though their words may be few; men, whose lives are serviceable, be they never so short, and worthy of honour, be they never sohumble;--from these, surely, at least, we may receive some clearmessage of teaching; and pierce, for an instant, into the mystery oflife, and of its arts. 

Yes; from these, at last, we do receive a lesson. But I grieve to say, or rather--for that is the deeper truth of the matter--I rejoice tosay--this message of theirs can only be received by joining them--notby thinking about them. 

You sent for me to talk to you of art; and I have obeyed you incoming. But the main thing I have to tell you is, --that art must notbe talked about. The fact that there is talk about it at all, signifies that it is ill done, or cannot be done. No true painter everspeaks, or ever has spoken, much of his art. The greatest speaknothing. Even Reynolds is no exception, for he wrote of all that hecould not himself do, [235] and was utterly silent respecting all that hehimself did. 

The moment a man can really do his work he becomes speechless aboutit. All words become idle to him--all theories. 

Does a bird need to theorize about building its nest, or boast of itwhen built? All good work is essentially done that way--withouthesitation, without difficulty, without boasting; and in the doers ofthe best, there is an inner and involuntary power which approximatesliterally to the instinct of an animal--nay, I am certain that in themost perfect human artists, reason does _not_ supersede instinct, butis added to an instinct as much more divine than that of the loweranimals as the human body is more beautiful than theirs; that a greatsinger sings not with less instinct than the nightingale, but withmore--only more various, applicable, and governable; that a greatarchitect does not build with less instinct than the beaver or thebee, but with more--with an innate cunning of proportion that embracesall beauty, and a divine ingenuity of skill that improvises allconstruction. But be that as it may--be the instinct less or more thanthat of inferior animals--like or unlike theirs, still the human artis dependent on that first, and then upon an amount of practice, ofscience, --and of imagination disciplined by thought, which the truepossessor of it knows to be incommunicable, and the true critic of it, inexplicable, except through long process of laborious years. Thatjourney of life's conquest, in which hills over hills, and Alps onAlps arose, and sank, --do you think you can make another trace itpainlessly, by talking? Why, you cannot even carry us up an Alp, bytalking. You can guide us up it, step by step, no otherwise--even so, best silently. You girls, who have been among the hills, know how thebad guide chatters and gesticulates, and it is "put your foot here";and "mind how you balance yourself there"; but the good guide walks onquietly, without a word, only with his eyes on you when need is, andhis arm like an iron bar, if need be. 

In that slow way, also, art can be taught--if you have faith in yourguide, and will let his arm be to you as an iron bar when need is. Butin what teacher of art have you such faith? Certainly not in me; for, as I told you at first, I know well enough it is only because youthink I can talk, not because you think I know my business, that youlet me speak to you at all. If I were to tell you anything that seemedto you strange, you would not believe it, and yet it would only be intelling you strange things that I could be of use to you. I could beof great use to you--infinite use--with brief saying, if you wouldbelieve it; but you would not, just because the thing that would be ofreal use would displease you. You are all wild, for instance, withadmiration of Gustave Doré. Well, suppose I were to tell you, in thestrongest terms I could use, that Gustave Doré's art was bad--bad, notin weakness, --not in failure, --but bad with dreadful power--the powerof the Furies and the Harpies mingled, enraging, and polluting; thatso long as you looked at it, no perception of pure or beautiful artwas possible for you. Suppose I were to tell you that! What would bethe use? Would you look at Gustave Doré less? Rather, more, I fancy. On the other hand, I could soon put you into good humour with me, if Ichose. I know well enough what you like, and how to praise it to yourbetter liking. I could talk to you about moonlight, and twilight, andspring flowers, and autumn leaves, and the Madonnas of Raphael--howmotherly! and the Sibyls of Michael Angelo--how majestic! and theSaints of Angelico--how pious! and the Cherubs of Correggio--howdelicious! Old as I am, I could play you a tune on the harp yet, thatyou would dance to. But neither you nor I should be a bit the betteror wiser; or, if we were, our increased wisdom could be of nopractical effect. For, indeed, the arts, as regards teachableness, differ from the sciences also in this, that their power is founded notmerely on facts which can be communicated, but on dispositions whichrequire to be created. Art is neither to be achieved by effort ofthinking, nor explained by accuracy of speaking. It is the instinctiveand necessary result of power, which can only be developed through themind of successive generations, and which finally burst into lifeunder social conditions as slow of growth as the faculties theyregulate. Whole æras of mighty history are summed, and the passions ofdead myriads are concentrated, in the existence of a noble art; and ifthat noble art were among us, we should feel it and rejoice; notcaring in the least to hear lectures on it; and since it is not amongus, be assured we have to go back to the root of it, or, at least, tothe place where the stock of it is yet alive, and the branches beganto die. 

And now, may I have your pardon for pointing out, partly withreference to matters which are at this time of greater moment than thearts--that if we undertook such recession to the vital germ ofnational arts that have decayed, we should find a more singular arrestof their power in Ireland than in any other European country. For inthe eighth century Ireland possessed a school of art in hermanuscripts and sculpture, which, in many of its qualities--apparentlyin all essential qualities of decorative invention--was quite withoutrival; seeming as if it might have advanced to the highest triumphs inarchitecture and in painting. But there was one fatal flaw in itsnature, by which it was stayed, and stayed with a conspicuousness ofpause to which there is no parallel: so that, long ago, in tracing theprogress of European schools from infancy to strength, I chose for thestudents of Kensington, in a lecture since published, twocharacteristic examples of early art, of equal skill; but in the onecase, skill which was progressive--in the other, skill which was atpause. In the one case, it was work receptive of correction--hungryfor correction; and in the other, work which inherently rejectedcorrection. I chose for them a corrigible Eve, and an incorrigibleAngel, and I grieve to say[236] that the incorrigible Angel was also anIrish angel!

And the fatal difference lay wholly in this. In both pieces of artthere was an equal falling short of the needs of fact; but theLombardic Eve knew she was in the wrong, and the Irish Angel thoughthimself all right. The eager Lombardic sculptor, though firmlyinsisting on his childish idea, yet showed in the irregular brokentouches of the features, and the imperfect struggle for softer linesin the form, a perception of beauty and law that he could not render;there was the strain of effort, under conscious imperfection, in everyline. But the Irish missal-painter had drawn his angel with no senseof failure, in happy complacency, and put red dots into the palms ofeach hand, and rounded the eyes into perfect circles, and, I regret tosay, left the mouth out altogether, with perfect satisfaction tohimself. 

May I without offence ask you to consider whether this mode of arrestin ancient Irish art may not be indicative of points of characterwhich even yet, in some measure, arrest your national power? I haveseen much of Irish character, and have watched it closely, for I havealso much loved it. And I think the form of failure to which it ismost liable is this, --that being generous-hearted, and whollyintending always to do right, it does not attend to the external lawsof right, but thinks it must necessarily do right because it means todo so, and therefore does wrong without finding it out; and then, whenthe consequences of its wrong come upon it, or upon others connectedwith it, it cannot conceive that the wrong is in any wise of itscausing or of its doing, but flies into wrath, and a strange agony ofdesire for justice, as feeling itself wholly innocent, which leads itfarther astray, until there is nothing that it is not capable of doingwith a good conscience. 

But mind, I do not mean to say that, in past or present relationsbetween Ireland and England, you have been wrong, and we right. Farfrom that, I believe that in all great questions of principle, and inall details of administration of law, you have been usually right, andwe wrong; sometimes in misunderstanding you, sometimes in resoluteiniquity to you. Nevertheless, in all disputes between states, thoughthe strongest is nearly always mainly in the wrong, the weaker isoften so in a minor degree; and I think we sometimes admit thepossibility of our being in error, and you never do. [237]

And now, returning to the broader question, what these arts andlabours of life have to teach us of its mystery, this is the first oftheir lessons--that the more beautiful the art, the more it isessentially the work of people who _feel themselves wrong_;--who arestriving for the fulfilment of a law, and the grasp of a loveliness, which they have not yet attained, which they feel even farther andfarther from attaining the more they strive for it. And yet, in stilldeeper sense, it is the work of people who know also that they areright. The very sense of inevitable error from their purpose marks theperfectness of that purpose, and the continued sense of failure arisesfrom the continued opening of the eyes more clearly to all thesacredest laws of truth. 

This is one lesson. The second is a very plain, and greatly preciousone: namely, --that whenever the arts and labours of life are fulfilledin this spirit of striving against misrule, and doing whatever we haveto do, honourably and perfectly, they invariably bring happiness, asmuch as seems possible to the nature of man. In all other paths bywhich that happiness is pursued there is disappointment, ordestruction: for ambition and for passion there is no rest--nofruition; the fairest pleasures of youth perish in a darkness greaterthan their past light; and the loftiest and purest love too often doesbut inflame the cloud of life with endless fire of pain. But, ascending from lowest to highest, through every scale of humanindustry, that industry worthily followed, gives peace. Ask thelabourer in the field, at the forge, or in the mine; ask the patient, delicate-fingered artisan, or the strong-armed, fiery-hearted workerin bronze, and in marble, and in the colours of light; and none ofthese, who are true workmen, will ever tell you, that they have foundthe law of heaven an unkind one--that in the sweat of their face theyshould eat bread, till they return to the ground;[238] nor that theyever found it an unrewarded obedience, if, indeed, it was renderedfaithfully to the command--"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do--do itwith thy might. "[239]

These are the two great and constant lessons which our labourers teachus of the mystery of life. But there is another, and a sadder one, which they cannot teach us, which we must read on their tombstones. 

"Do it with thy might. " There have been myriads upon myriads of humancreatures who have obeyed this law--who have put every breath andnerve of their being into its toil--who have devoted every hour, andexhausted every faculty--who have bequeathed their unaccomplishedthoughts at death--who, being dead, have yet spoken, [240] by majesty ofmemory, and strength of example. And, at last, what has all this"Might" of humanity accomplished, in six thousand years of labour andsorrow? What has it _done_? Take the three chief occupations and artsof men, one by one, and count their achievements. Begin with thefirst--the lord of them all--Agriculture. Six thousand years havepassed since we were sent to till the ground, from which we weretaken. How much of it is tilled? How much of that which is, wisely orwell? In the very centre and chief garden of Europe--where the twoforms of parent Christianity have had their fortresses--where thenoble Catholics of the Forest Cantons, and the noble Protestants ofthe Vaudois valleys, have maintained, for dateless ages, their faithsand liberties--there the unchecked Alpine rivers yet run wild indevastation; and the marshes, which a few hundred men could redeemwith a year's labour, still blast their helpless inhabitants intofevered idiotism. That is so, in the centre of Europe! While, on thenear coast of Africa, once the Garden of the Hesperides, an Arabwoman, but a few sunsets since, ate her child, for famine. And, withall the treasures of the East at our feet, we, in our own dominion, could not find a few grains of rice, for a people that asked of us nomore; but stood by, and saw five hundred thousand of them perish ofhunger. [241]

Then, after agriculture, the art of kings, take the next head ofhuman arts--weaving; the art of queens, honoured of all nobleHeathen women, in the person of their virgin goddess[242]--honouredof all Hebrew women, by the word of their wisest king--"She layethher hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff; shestretcheth out her hand to the poor. She is not afraid of the snowfor her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet. She maketh herself covering of tapestry; her clothing is silk andpurple. She maketh fine linen, and selleth it, and deliverethgirdles unto the merchant. "[243] What have we done in all thesethousands of years with this bright art of Greek maid and Christianmatron? Six thousand years of weaving, and have we learned to weave?Might not every naked wall have been purple with tapestry, and everyfeeble breast fenced with sweet colours from the cold? What have wedone? Our fingers are too few, it seems, to twist together some poorcovering for our bodies. We set our streams to work for us, andchoke the air with fire, to turn our pinning-wheels--and, --_are weyet clothed_? Are not the streets of the capitals of Europe foulwith the sale of cast clouts and rotten rags?[244] Is not the beautyof your sweet children left in wretchedness of disgrace, while, withbetter honour, nature clothes the brood of the bird in its nest, andthe suckling of the wolf in her den? And does not every winter'ssnow robe what you have not robed, and shroud what you have notshrouded; and every winter's wind bear up to heaven its wastedsouls, to witness against you hereafter, by the voice of theirChrist, --"I was naked, and ye clothed me not"?[245]

Lastly--take the Art of Building--the strongest--proudest--mostorderly--most enduring of the arts of man; that of which the produceis in the surest manner accumulative, and need not perish, or bereplaced; but if once well done, will stand more strongly than theunbalanced rocks--more prevalently than the crumbling hills. The artwhich is associated with all civic pride and sacred principle; withwhich men record their power--satisfy their enthusiasm--make suretheir defence--define and make dear their habitation. And in sixthousand years of building, what have we done? Of the greater part ofall that skill and strength, _no_ vestige is left, but fallen stones, that encumber the fields and impede the streams. But, from this wasteof disorder, and of time, and of rage, what _is_ left to us?Constructive and progressive creatures that we are, with rulingbrains, and forming hands, capable of fellowship, and thirsting forfame, can we not contend, in comfort, with the insects of the forest, or, in achievement, with the worm of the sea? The white surf rages invain against the ramparts built by poor atoms of scarcely nascentlife; but only ridges of formless ruin mark the places where oncedwelt our noblest multitudes. The ant and the moth have cells for eachof their young, but our little ones lie in festering heaps, in homesthat consume them like graves; and night by night, from the corners ofour streets, rises up the cry of the homeless--"I was a stranger, andye took me not in. "[246]

Must it be always thus? Is our life for ever to be withoutprofit--without possession? Shall the strength of its generations beas barren as death; or cast away their labour, as the wild fig-treecasts her untimely figs?[247] Is it all a dream then--the desire of theeyes and the pride of life--or, if it be, might we not live in noblerdream than this? The poets and prophets, the wise men, and thescribes, though they have told us nothing about a life to come, havetold us much about the life that is now. They have had--theyalso, --their dreams, and we have laughed at them. They have dreamed ofmercy, and of justice; they have dreamed of peace and good-will; theyhave dreamed of labour undisappointed, and of rest undisturbed; theyhave dreamed of fulness in harvest, and overflowing in store; theyhave dreamed of wisdom in council, and of providence in law; ofgladness of parents, and strength of children, and glory of greyhairs. And at these visions of theirs we have mocked, and held themfor idle and vain, unreal and unaccomplishable. What have weaccomplished with our realities? Is this what has come of our worldlywisdom, tried against their folly? this, our mightiest possible, against their impotent ideal? or, have we only wandered among thespectra of a baser felicity, and chased phantoms of the tombs, insteadof visions of the Almighty; and walked after the imaginations of ourevil hearts, [248] instead of after the counsels of Eternity, until ourlives--not in the likeness of the cloud of heaven, but of the smoke ofhell--have become "as a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, andthen vanisheth away"?[249]

_Does_ it vanish then? Are you sure of that?--sure, that thenothingness of the grave will be a rest from this troublednothingness; and that the coiling shadow, which disquiets itself invain, cannot change into the smoke of the torment that ascends forever?[250] Will any answer that they _are_ sure of it, and that thereis no fear, nor hope, nor desire, nor labour, whither they go?[251] Beit so: will you not, then, make as sure of the Life that now is, asyou are of the Death that is to come? Your hearts are wholly in thisworld--will you not give them to it wisely, as well as perfectly? Andsee, first of all, that you _have_ hearts, and sound hearts, too, togive. Because you have no heaven to look for, is that any reason thatyou should remain ignorant of this wonderful and infinite earth, whichis firmly and instantly given you in possession? Although your daysare numbered, and the following darkness sure, is it necessary thatyou should share the degradation of the brute, because you arecondemned to its mortality; or live the life of the moth, and of theworm, because you are to companion them in the dust? Not so; we mayhave but a few thousands of days to spend, perhaps hundredsonly--perhaps tens; nay, the longest of our time and best, looked backon, will be but as a moment, as the twinkling of an eye; still we aremen, not insects; we are living spirits, not passing clouds. "Hemaketh the winds His messengers; the momentary fire, His minister";[252]and shall we do less than _these_? Let us do the work of men whilewe bear the form of them; and, as we snatch our narrow portion oftime out of Eternity, snatch also our narrow inheritance of passionout of Immortality--even though our lives _be_ as a vapour, thatappeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. 

But there are some of you who believe not this--who think thiscloud of life has no such close--that it is to float, revealed andillumined, upon the floor of heaven, in the day when He cometh withclouds, and every eye shall see Him. [253] Some day, you believe, within these five, or ten, or twenty years, for every one of us thejudgment will be set, and the books opened. [254] If that be true, far more than that must be true. Is there but one day of judgment?Why, for us every day is a day of judgment--every day is a DiesIræ, [255] and writes its irrevocable verdict in the flame of itsWest. Think you that judgment waits till the doors of the grave areopened? It waits at the doors of your houses--it waits at thecorners of your streets; we are in the midst of judgment--theinsects that we crush are our judges--the moments that we fret awayare our judges--the elements that feed us, judge, as theyminister--and the pleasures that deceive us, judge as they indulge. Let us, for our lives, do the work of Men while we bear the form ofthem, if indeed those lives are _Not_ as a vapour, and do _Not_vanish away. 

"The work of men"--and what is that? Well, we may any of us know veryquickly, on the condition of being wholly ready to do it. But many ofus are for the most part thinking, not of what we are to do, but ofwhat we are to get; and the best of us are sunk into the sin ofAnanias, [256] and it is a mortal one--we want to keep back part of theprice; and we continually talk of taking up our cross, as if the onlyharm in a cross was the _weight_ of it--as if it was only a thing tobe carried, instead of to be--crucified upon. "They that are His havecrucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts. "[257] Does thatmean, think you, that in time of national distress, of religioustrial, of crisis for every interest and hope of humanity--none of uswill cease jesting, none cease idling, none put themselves to anywholesome work, none take so much as a tag of lace off their footmen'scoats, to save the world? Or does it rather mean, that they are readyto leave houses, lands, and kindreds--yes, and life, if need be?Life!--some of us are ready enough to throw that away, joyless as wehave made it. But "_station_ in Life"--how many of us are ready toquit _that_? Is it not always the great objection, where there isquestion of finding something useful to do--"We cannot leave ourstations in Life"?

Those of us who really cannot--that is to say, who can only maintainthemselves by continuing in some business or salaried office, havealready something to do; and all that they have to see to is, thatthey do it honestly and with all their might. But with most people whouse that apology, "remaining in the station of life to whichProvidence has called them" means keeping all the carriages, and allthe footmen and large houses they can possibly pay for; and, once forall, I say that if ever Providence _did_ put them into stations ofthat sort--which is not at all a matter of certainty--Providence isjust now very distinctly calling them out again. Levi's station inlife was the receipt of custom; and Peter's, the shore of Galilee; andPaul's, the antechambers of the High Priest, --which "station in life"each had to leave, with brief notice. 

And, whatever our station in life may be, at this crisis, those of uswho mean to fulfil our duty ought first to live on as little as wecan; and, secondly, to do all the wholesome work for it we can, and tospend all we can spare in doing all the sure good we can. 

And sure good is, first in feeding people, then in dressing people, then in lodging people, and lastly in rightly pleasing people, witharts, or sciences, or any other subject of thought. 

I say first in feeding; and, once for all, do not let yourselves bedeceived by any of the common talk of "indiscriminate charity. " Theorder to us is not to feed the deserving hungry, nor the industrioushungry, nor the amiable and well-intentioned hungry, but simply tofeed the hungry. [258] It is quite true, infallibly true, that if anyman will not work, neither should he eat[259]--think of that, and everytime you sit down to your dinner, ladies and gentlemen, say solemnly, before you ask a blessing, "How much work have I done to-day for mydinner?" But the proper way to enforce that order on those below you, as well as on yourselves, is not to leave vagabonds and honest peopleto starve together, but very distinctly to discern and seize yourvagabond; and shut your vagabond up out of honest people's way, andvery sternly then see that, until he has worked, he does _not_ eat. But the first thing is to be sure you have the food to give; and, therefore, to enforce the organization of vast activities inagriculture and in commerce, for the production of the wholesomestfood, and proper storing and distribution of it, so that no famineshall any more be possible among civilized beings There is plenty ofwork in this business alone, and at once, for any number of people wholike to engage in it. 

Secondly, dressing people--that is to say, urging every one withinreach of your influence to be always neat and clean, and giving themmeans of being so. In so far as they absolutely refuse, you must giveup the effort with respect to them, only taking care that no childrenwithin your sphere of influence shall any more be brought up with suchhabits; and that every person who is willing to dress with proprietyshall have encouragement to do so. And the first absolutely necessarystep towards this is the gradual adoption of a consistent dress fordifferent ranks of persons, so that their rank shall be known by theirdress; and the restriction of the changes of fashion within certainlimits. All which appears for the present quite impossible; but it isonly so far even difficult as it is difficult to conquer our vanity, frivolity, and desire to appear what we are not. And it is not, norever shall be, creed of mine, that these mean and shallow vices areunconquerable by Christian women. 

And then, thirdly, lodging people, which you may think should havebeen put first, but I put it third, because we must feed and clothepeople where we find them, and lodge them afterwards. And providinglodgment for them means a great deal of vigorous legislation, andcutting down of vested interests that stand in the way, and afterthat, or before that, so far as we can get it, thorough sanitary andremedial action in the houses that we have; and then the building ofmore, strongly, beautifully, and in groups of limited extent, kept inproportion to their streams, and walled round, so that there may be nofestering and wretched suburb anywhere, but clean and busy streetwithin, and the open country without, with a belt of beautiful gardenand orchard round the walls, so that from any part of the cityperfectly fresh air and grass, and the sight of far horizon, might bereachable in a few minutes' walk. This is the final aim; but inimmediate action every minor and possible good to be instantly done, when, and as, we can; roofs mended that have holes in them--fencespatched that have gaps in them--walls buttressed that totter--andfloors propped that shake; cleanliness and order enforced with our ownhands and eyes, till we are breathless, every day. And all the finearts will healthily follow. I myself have washed a flight of stonestairs all down, with bucket and broom, in a Savoy inn, where theyhadn't washed their stairs since they first went up them; and I nevermade a better sketch than that afternoon. 

These, then, are the three first needs of civilized life; and the lawfor every Christian man and woman is, that they shall be in directservice towards one of these three needs, as far as is consistent withtheir own special occupation, and if they have no special business, then wholly in one of these services. And out of such exertion inplain duty all other good will come; for in this direct contentionwith material evil, you will find out the real nature of all evil; youwill discern by the various kinds of resistance, what is really thefault and main antagonism to good; also you will find the mostunexpected helps and profound lessons given, and truths will come thusdown to us which the speculation of all our lives would never haveraised us up to. You will find nearly every educational problemsolved, as soon as you truly want to do something; everybody willbecome of use in their own fittest way, and will learn what is bestfor them to know in that use. Competitive examination will then, andnot till then, be wholesome, because it will be daily, and calm, andin practice; and on these familiar arts, and minute, but certain andserviceable knowledges, will be surely edified and sustained thegreater arts and splendid theoretical sciences. 

But much more than this. On such holy and simple practice will befounded, indeed, at last, an infallible religion. The greatest of allthe mysteries of life, and the most terrible, is the corruption ofeven the sincerest religion, which is not daily founded on rational, effective, humble, and helpful action. Helpful action, observe! forthere is just one law, which obeyed, keeps all religionspure--forgotten, makes them all false. Whenever in any religiousfaith, dark or bright, we allow our minds to dwell upon the points inwhich we differ from other people, we are wrong, and in the devil'spower. That is the essence of the Pharisee's thanksgiving--"Lord, Ithank Thee that I am not as other men are. "[260] At every moment of ourlives we should be trying to find out, not in what we differ withother people, but in what we agree with them; and the moment we findwe can agree as to anything that should be done, kind or good, (andwho but fools couldn't?) then do it; push at it together: you can'tquarrel in a side-by-side push; but the moment that even the best menstop pushing, and begin talking, they mistake their pugnacity forpiety, and if's all over. I will not speak of the crimes which in pasttimes have been committed in the name of Christ, nor of the follieswhich are at this hour held to be consistent with obedience to Him;but I _will_ speak of the morbid corruption and waste of vital powerin religious sentiment, by which the pure strength of that whichshould be the guiding soul of every nation, the splendour of itsyouthful manhood, and spotless light of its maidenhood, is averted orcast away. You may see continually girls who have never been taught todo a single useful thing thoroughly; who cannot sew, who cannot cook, who cannot cast an account, nor prepare a medicine, whose whole lifehas been passed either in play or in pride; you will find girls likethese, when they are earnest-hearted, cast all their innate passion ofreligious spirit, which was meant by God to support them through theirksomeness of daily toil, into grievous and vain meditation over themeaning of the great Book, of which no syllable was ever yet to beunderstood but through a deed; all the instinctive wisdom and mercy oftheir womanhood made vain, and the glory of their pure conscienceswarped into fruitless agony concerning questions which the laws ofcommon serviceable life would have either solved for them in aninstant, or kept out of their way. Give such a girl any true work thatwill make her active in the dawn, and weary at night, with theconsciousness that her fellow-creatures have indeed been the betterfor her day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm will transformitself into a majesty of radiant and beneficent peace. 

So with our youths. We once taught them to make Latin verses, andcalled them educated; now we teach them to leap and to row, to hit aball with a bat, and call them educated. Can they plough, can theysow, can they plant at the right time, or build with a steady hand? Isit the effort of their lives to be chaste, knightly, faithful, holy inthought, lovely in word and deed? Indeed it is, with some, nay withmany, and the strength of England is in them, and the hope; but wehave to turn their courage from the toil of war to the toil of mercy;and their intellect from dispute of words to discernment of things;and their knighthood from the errantry of adventure to the state andfidelity of a kingly power. And then, indeed, shall abide, for them, and for us, an incorruptible felicity, and an infallible religion;shall abide for us Faith, no more to be assailed by temptation, nomore to be defended by wrath and by fear;--shall abide with us Hope, no more to be quenched by the years that overwhelm, or made ashamed bythe shadows that betray:--shall abide for us, and with us, thegreatest of these; the abiding will, the abiding name of our Father. For the greatest of these is Charity. [261]

 [230] _Isaiah_ xl, 12. 

 [231] I have sometimes been asked what this means. I intended it to set forth the wisdom of men in war contending for kingdoms, and what follows to set forth their wisdom in peace, contending for wealth. [Ruskin. ]

 [232] See Wordsworth's poem, _My heart leaps up when I behold_. 

 [233] See _Genesis_ ii, 15, and the opening lines of the first selection in this volume. 

 [234] _Joshua_ ix, 21. 

 [235] In his _Discourses on Art_. Cf. Pp. 24 ff. Above. 

 [236] See _The Two Paths_, §§ 28 _et seq_. [Ruskin. ]

 [237] References mainly to the Irish Land Question, on which Ruskin agreed with Mill and Gladstone in advocating the establishment of a peasant-proprietorship in Ireland. 

 [238] _Genesis_ iii, 19. 

 [239] _Ecclesiastes_ ix, 10. 

 [240] _Hebrews_ xi, 4. 

 [241] During the famine in the Indian province of Orissa. 

 [242] Athena, goddess of weaving. 

 [243] _Proverbs_ xxxi, 19-22, 24. 

 [244] _Jeremiah_ xxxviii, 11. 

 [245] _Matthew_ xxv, 43. 

 [246] _Matthew_ xxv, 43. 

 [247] _Revelation_ vi, 13. 

 [248] _Jeremiah_ xi, 8. 

 [249] _James_ iv, 14. 

 [250] _Psalms_ xxxix, 6 and _Revelation_ xiv, 11. 

 [251] _Ecclesiastes_ ix, 10. 

 [252] _Psalms_ civ, 4. 

 [253] _Revelation_ i, 7. 

 [254] _Daniel_ vii, 10. 

 [255] _Dies Iræ_, the name generally given (from the opening words) to the most famous of the mediæval hymns, usually ascribed to the Franciscan Thomas of Celano (died c. 1255). It is composed in triplets of rhyming trochaic tetrameters, and describes the Last Judgment in language of magnificent grandeur, passing into a plaintive plea for the souls of the dead. 

 [256] _Acts_ v, 1, 2. 

 [257] _Galatians_ v. 24. 

 [258] _Isaiah_ lviii, 7. 

 [259] 2 _Thessalonians_ iii, 10. 

 [260] _Luke_ xviii, 11. 

 [261] 1 _Corinthians_ xiii, 13. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

_Editions_. The standard edition of Ruskin is that of Cook and Wedderburn in 34 volumes. Most of his better-known works may be had in cheap and convenient forms. 

The best lives are:

COLLINGWOOD, W. G. The Life and Work of John Ruskin Houghton Mifflin Company, 1893. (2 vols. ) The standard biography. 

HARRISON, P. John Ruskin (English Men of Letters). The Macmillan Company, 1902. A short and readable biography.