SPECIMENS OF PROSE DESCRIPTION COMPILED AND EDITED CHARLES SEARS BALDWIN, PH. D. || Instructor in T^hetoric in Yale College ; formerly Instructor in Rhetoric and English Composition in Columbia College WIVER v*j n- NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1906 SENEBAL COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY HENRY HOLT & CO, THE MKRSHON COMPANY PRESS, RAHWAY, N. J, PREFACE. THESE Specimens of Prose Description, though intended primarily for college classes, will be found available in the higher classes of schools. For not only is description, in its simpler forms, the kind of writing most proper to elementary work in composi- tion, but even the theory of description, and its appli- cation in more finished art, may be very stimulating without being at all confusing. In fact, it is difficult to conduct a course in description adequately without leading up to the few fundamental principles enunci- ated here. And where the elaboration of these prin- ciples may seem beyond the grasp of the younger student, it is hoped that they will still be convenient for the teacher. To avoid the ugliness of a catalogue of fragments, the shorter extracts have been grouped within the introduction. Of course these are quite as important as the longer pieces, and are equally recognized in the index. Moreover, they serve, not only to give point to the enunciation of principle, but also to obviate the necessity of scattered comment on the longer pieces. Instead of such detailed annotation, it seemed better to present in one place, as compactly as possible, the whole theory of description; to fortify this theory by IV PREFACE. abundant examples; and to add at the head of each longer selection only such notes as might serve to indicate the purpose and to suggest the most profit- able lines of study. Thus the aim has been, at once to furnish doctrine and directions for its application, and to leave the main body of selections free for such use as may seem best for each class. The only exception to this rule is in Selection I., where the notes are intended to show how the application may be made in detail. In the selection of the longer extracts the aim has been to present such examples of all worthy methods as seemed most apt for instruction. Whether a given piece were characteristic of its author, whether it were famous, these considerations were but second- ary. In fact most of the selections are fairly char- acteristic. As for fame, the descriptions that every one has heard of are the least in need of reprinting. Moreover, they are not the most likely to bear examination. Indeed, the editor deprecates all charges of omis- sion. Scott and Thackeray, Dickens and George Eliot, are so near to every one's elbow that the student should be encouraged to bring into class and discuss those passages which seem to him most impressive. The omission of every teacher's favorite description is of the less moment because that description every teacher will surely quote. If the descriptions found here are good, each in its kind; if the kinds are many; finally, if the method in each case is pointed without being obtrusive, this little book will serve its purpose. The editor wishes to express his appreciation of the PREFACE. V courtesy through which he is permitted to reprint many of his best extracts. In each case due ac- knowledgment will be found to book, author, and publisher. To Professor G. R. Carpenter, Professor Brander Matthews, Professor Thomas R. Price, and Mr. W. T. Brewster of Columbia College, the editor presents his sincere thanks, both for valuable advice and for the favor of corrections in proof. Perhaps the greatest debt is to the dead. In look- ing over the first rough draft of his introduction, the editor found that a preponderating number of cita^ tions had been drawn involuntarily from one author. Though he was moved to restore equilibrium, the editor would not neglect to acknowledge his obliga- tion to Robert Louis Stevenson. COLUMBIA COLLEGE, May, 1895, CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction, , ix I. Ancient Athens, . John Henry Newman. I Edward Gibbon. 10 II. Pestilence, . Augustus H. Jessopp. 13 III. Paris before the Second Empire, George du Maurier. 19 IV. Bees, John Burroughs. 28 V. The Parish of Selborne, . . Gilbert White. 41 VI. Byzantium, .... Edward Gibbon. 45 VII. Geneva, ..... John Ruskin. 52 VIII. The Storming of the Bastille, Thomas Carlyle. 61 IX. Sketches by Michael Angelo, Algernon Charles Swinburne. 70 {I. La Gioconda, V II. A Roman Villa, > . . Walter Pater. 73 III. Auxerre, . ) XI. Blois, ...... Henry James. 81 XII. Spring in a Side Street, . Brander Matthews. 92 XIII. Scenes from Western Life, . Hamlin Garland. 101 The South-Sea House, . . . Charles Lamb. 114 Ser Francesco Goes to Church, Walter Savage Landor. 126 A Night Among the Pines, Memoirs of an Islet, Robert Louis Stevenson. 134 U THF or . CAI ire*:' INTRODUCTION. THE series of specimens of which Ithis volume is a part is founded upon the current rhetorical division of Rhetoric dis- a ^ wr i tm g ir} ^ ^ our kinds, description, kinds is of s writ- narrat i n exposition, and persuasion. 1 in e- The convenience of this division has not shielded it from objection. And it must of course remain doubtful to which category many well- known writings properly belong. Argument hardly proceeds without exposition, exposition without description ; and whether a given work shall be classed as narration or as description it is often im- possible to decide. The object of the division, how- ever, is not to classify writings, but to distinguish methods of writing. Thus, though only a pedant would insist on a definite label, the teacher of com- position insists properly on the definiteness of the methods, now argumentative, now expository, now descriptive. Thus again, though none of the selec- tions in the four volumes of this series may be purely argumentative, narrative, expository, descriptive, each will be found to exemplify some distinct phase or phases of a distinct method. What is true of the series in general is especially * Including argumentation. ix X INTRODUCTION. true of this volume. No form of writing has less independence than description. Pieces of pure de- scription are rare in English literature, rare especially Dependence in the, literature of the last thirty years, of description. Most description is naturally accessory to narration, and naturally, therefore, brief and frag- mentary. On the other hand, the methods of descrip- tion are distinct and tolerably indepen- Description . ..... r ^, 1 denned by its dent, because its aim is distinct. 1 he aim of description is the suggestion of mental images ; l and the means to this end are suffi- ciently distinct from the means of securing compre- hension, say, or conviction, to urge separate discussion and separate exemplification. For instance, description seeks to present the individual, exposition the class ; description the concrete, exposition the abstract. In description, action is purely incidental ; in narration, it is vital. 8 But in aiming to suggest images description is not only distinguished from the other " kinds of writing" ; it is at once associated with the other arts. The vul- gar phrase " word-painting " indicates that. Indeed, Description this word-painting, this apparent ten- and painting. dency i n description to poach on the manor of another art, has excited no little critical reprobation. Without beating over the ground so thoroughly explored by Lessing, 8 or attempting to 1 For more elaborate definition see Genung, p. 326 ; Fletcher and Carpenter , p. 2. * Genung, p. 327. 1 Laokoon, cf. especially capp. xvi, xvii. M. Ferdinand Bru INTRODUCTION. XI readjust the provinces of the arts, it is worth while to emphasize one practical consideration. What description lacks in vividness of appeal it properly aims to make good in range of appeal. Cer- tainly description may be said to fall as far below painting as suggestion falls below representation. But it is idle to speak of them as rival methods. The representation of painting is limited to form and attitude, light and colour. The suggestions of description, feebler in these, may add sound, motion, and even odour. The opportunity here, as will appear The range of l ater > * s not so HlUCll to accumulate SUg- suggestion. gestions as to select what is most apt to a particular case. But how valuable this range of appeal is in itself appears in descriptions like the following : The track that I had followed in the evening soon died out and I continued to follow over a bald turf ascent a row of stone pillars, such as had conducted me across the Goulet. It was already warm. I tied my jacket on the pack, and walked in my knitted waistcoat. Modestine herself was in high spirits, and broke of her own accord, for the first time in my experience, into a jolting trot that sent the oats swashing in the pocket of my coat. The view, back upon the northern Gtvaudan, extended with every step ; scarce a tree, scarce a house, appeared upon the fields of wild hill that ran north, east, and west, all blue and gold in the haze and sunlight of the morning. A multitude of little birds kept sweeping and twittering about my path ; they perched on the stone pillars, they pecked and strutted on the turf, and I netiere goes farther : " il n'y a pas de commune mesure entre les sensations de 1'oreille et celles de 1'oeil." V Impressionismc dam le Roman, pp. 103-108 of le Roman Naturaliste. xii INTRODUCTION. saw them circle in volleys in the blue air, and show, from time to time, translucent flickering wings between the sun and me. Almost from the first moment of my march, a faint large noise, like a distant surf, had filled my ears. Sometimes I was tempted to think it the voice of a neighboring waterfall, and sometimes a subjective result of the utter stillness of the hill. But as I con- tinued to advance, the noise increased and became like the hissing of an enormous tea-urn, and at the same time breaths of cool air began to reach me from the direction of the summit. At length I understood. It was ' blowing stiffly from the south upon the other slope of the Lozere, and every step that I took I was draw- ing nearer to the wind. Stevenson : Travels with a Dvnkey. Colour, form, light, sound, odour, motion, evidently all may be used in description. To be constantly mind- ful of this range is almost to insure one's self against word-painting. Though sound and motion are more easily and properly suggested by language, yet all the others may play some part. Which is most useful must be decided afresh for each description. In general, all the play of light and shadow, all the evanes- cent features so valuable in individualising a scene, and even the movements of living things, are deter- mined by the time of day and the kind of light, Madison Square in the spring has one aspect at high noon, when the lawns are brilliant in colour, the tulips flaring in the great flower-beds, the spar- rows and nurses chattering everywhere, and the loungers filling every bench ; and an^utterly different aspect an hour after sundown, when the birds and the nurses are gone, the tulips closed, and the electric lights beginning to cast sharp lines of inky shadow, and to turn the lawns a dull, unnatural hue. In particular, it has been remarked that Shelley's INTRODUCTION. X1U suggestiveness arises often from his abundant and ex quisite use of the half-forgotten element Odour. * of odour. The mention of Greek incense may be as suggestive of a Greek church as the resinous scent of burning pin^ is of an Adirondack camp. 1 v The mention of colour is, perhaps, more faintly suggestive, and should be simple. Re finement of hues may be confusing. 2 Before us lies a sea of fern, gone a russet brown from decay, in which are isles of dark green gorse, and little trees with scarlet and orange and lemon-colored leaflets fluttering down, and run- ning after each other on the bright grass, under the brisk west wind which makes the willows rustle, and turn up the whites of their leaves in pious resignation to the coming change. Harrow-on-the-Hill, with its pointed spire, rises blue in the distance ; and distant ridges, like receding waves, rise into blue- ness, one after the other, out of the low-lying mist ; the last ridge bluely melting into space. In the midst of it all gleams the Welsh Harp Lake, like a piece of sky that has become unstuck and tumbled into the landscape with its shiny side up. Du Maurier : Peter Ibbetson. Sounds may be suggested more quickly and defin- itely. Wordsworth's "soft inland murmur," Cole- Sound ridge's " the sails did sigh like sedge/' ! Dickens's rooks in David Copperfidd, 1 See also Holmes : A utocrat, iv. 8 Cf. the description in Ruskin's Prceterita^ iii (Naples, January 9, 1841), vol. ii, p. 85, of the Orpington edition. For a study in contrasted colours, see A Cameo and A Pastel, by Brander Matthews, The Story of a Story ^ Harper & Brothers, 1893. * It is well to point out the force of onomatopoeia, and at the same time to warn against the abuse of it. Cf. the opening of Dickens's Cricket on the Hearth* XIV INTRODUCTION. the " echoing footsteps" in the Tale of Two Cities^ and the kettle in The Cricket on the Hearth are famous instances. Further citation is unnecessary to show that description, without transgressing its proper limits, may attain distinct or even vivid images by the range of its appeal. Of course the range of any one man's appeal, the extent of his power in suggestion, is measured by the extent and the keenness of his own perceptions. Herein lies the real affinity of description to the other arts. For it is a truism that all artistic training is primarily and constantly the training of the eye or the The training ear. Truism though it be, however, it of the senses. should never become stale in the teach- ing of description. The observation of most men is dim in perception and narrow in range. When the student has been roused from blurred impressions of a few things to sharper impressions of many things, his description will take care of itself. Better than that, his whole education has gained a great impulse. For this reason more than one wise teacher has made description a foundation for the teaching of rhetoric. Do you know how a cow lies down, or a horse, or a dog, or a cat? Do you know the habits of each in drinking? Do you know how a hansom cab is balanced, or how a railway car takes a curve ? What is the difference in appearance between an ailanthus tree and a walnut, a spruce and a hemlock? How of the note of the meadow-lark, or the Roman- esque revivals in contemporary architecture ? Ques- tions like these have been known to stir a whole class. Realization of the range of suggestion, the awaken* INTRODUCTION. XV ing of closer observation, these are prerequisites. Definite instruction begins with the first principle of all art, the principle of selection. The The catalogue. student s first tendency is to catalogue. He needs to learn, then, first, that the details of his mental image are too numerous and too complex to be catalogued ; secondly, that the catalogue, even if he could achieve it, would not be suggestive. Its use is for identification, not for suggestion. It has no artistic value. Indeed, progress in description is mainly the development of an ability to get effects with fewer and fewer details. Be the details few or many, however, they must always be chosen chosen first according to their choose salient prominence. The salient details, those details that leap to meet the senses, are evi- dently suggestive : the clatter of a New York street, the white glare of Athens, the scent of buckwheat, the scarlet coat of a British soldier. But some details and character- tnat are not salient are still suggestive, istic details. because they are characteristic, as, for instance, the fact that the clocks on the church towers in southeastern Switzerland have only one hand, or that Coleridge would shift constantly from one side of his garden path to the other. Whatever serves to individualise, whatever is peculiar to the time or the person or the scene described, is always important for description, however slight its intrinsic value. Select what isjalient, what is characteristic. Fur- ther comment tends to become too minute, and ir? any case the choice is peculiarly the affair of the chooser. According as a writer merely suggests whaf XVI INTRODUCTION. he sees, or projects into his suggestion his own per- sonal feeling, his description is said to be Description , . objective and objective or subjective. The latter kind Ubjective. .. -r* T . is naturally the more common. It is, moreover, the habit of our century as distinguished from the habit, for instance, of the eighteenth cen- tury, and becomes one of the marks of Romanticism. 1 But in a certain sense all worthy description is sub- jective ; that is, \it cannot be worthy unless it repre- sent the seeing of the writer.) No two men see exactly alike. Literally and metaphorically every man's eyesight is really distinct from every other man's. Specimens of description, therefore, should not mislead any student into attempting Hawthorne description or Stevenson description./ Imitation here, The study of as * n a ll rhetorical study, should be study of method. ; The student on his high stool at the Louvre is not trying to paint like Rembrandt or Murillo. He is learning the manage- ment of colour and light. (And invaluable as is this study of models, his task remains to see for himself and to paint what he sees. ) No other way is thoroughly worth while. With these conditions, the study of models may be assisted by suck a classification as shall lead from the simplest handling of details, through more elaborate treatment, to the most artistic method. It will be un- derstood, however, that any given description may combine several methods, that no description, in 1 See W. L. Phelps : English Romantic Movement, p. 4. kin : Pratfrita, vi (vol. i, p. 195, Orpington edition). INTRODUCTION. XV11 fact, is likely to employ one method exclusively. The selections, therefore, both in this introduction and in simple enu- tne pages following, are grouped ac- meration. cording to the method that, in each case, is dominant. Now the simplest method is enumer- ation. The warrant for the arrest of Defoe described him as follows : He is a middle-aged, spare man, about forty years old, of a brown complexion, and dark-brown coloured hair, but wears a wig ; a hooked nose, a sharp chin, grey eyes, and a large mole near his mouth. This is not very suggestive. Indeed, the lesson of the description in a warrant is, first, how weak in sug- gestion the enumeration of details-may be, and, sec- ondly, how important is the slightest detail that is individual. ^Note in the following the same method more artistically applied : Nine years old, on 3d January, 1858, thus now rising towards ten ; neither tall nor short for her age ; a little stiff in her way of standing. The eyes rather deep blue at that time, and fuller and softer afterwards. Lips perfectly lovely in profile ; a little too wide and hard in the edge, seen in front ; the rest of the features what a fair, well-bred Irish girl's usually are ; the hair, perhaps, more graceful in short curl round the forehead, and softer than one sees often, in the close-bound tresses above the neck. Rus- kin : Praterita^ iii. How suggestive enumeration may be appears in the following descriptions : Almost every body knows, in our part of the world at least, how pleasant and soft the fall of the land is round about Plover's Barrows farm. All above it is strong dark mountain, spread with xviii INTRODUCTION. heath, and desolate, but near our house the valleys cove, and open warmth and shelter. Here are trees, and bright green grass, and orchards full of contentment, and a man may scarce espy the brook, although he hears it everywhere. And, indeed, a stout good piece of it comes through our farm-yard, and swells some- times to a rush of waves, when the clouds are on the hill-tops. But all below, where the valley bends, and the Lynn stream goes along with it, pretty meadows slope their breast, and the sun spreads on the water., And nearly all of this is ours, till you come to Nicholas Snowe's land. Blackmore : Lorna Doom. It was a delicious drive quite of itself, and the great end in view added a piquancy to the excursion that not every one who posts toward San Gimignano can hope to enjoy. The weather was charming, bright yet cool ; the country was ravishing, being in the first full green of spring ; and the country-folk, flocking to or from some great festa, filled the winding and undulating roads with a gay excess of life and color. The cypressed villas, the ruinous old abbeys in delightful gothic brickwork, the campanili of village churches rising from the olived slopes of hillsides, the twisted graces of vine-wreathed pergole, the wide-flapping straw hats of the women trudging by, the jauntily-carried jackets of the men, the gay romping of blossom-snatching children, the bustle of roadside osterie, the slow jolting of ox-carts along the common highway, the sturdy-arched, low-roofed farmhouses, the flowers, the sunshine, the lightly stirring breeze, all the thousand things that combine into that inexhaustible feast of grace and beauty and social and historical interest which Tuscany knows so well how to spread, caused our two friends more than once to quite lose sight of the great undertaking that they had been commis- sioned to carry through ; and, for the half hour previous to the first appearance of San Gimignano's high-set coronet of towers, I doubt if the Madonna Incognita received from them the tribute of a single thought. Henry B. Fuller : The Chevalier of Pensieri- Vani^ cap. iii. But high up in the steeple ! There the foul blast roars and whistles! High up in the steeple, where it is free to come and INTRODUCTION. xix go through many an airy arch and loophole, and to twist and twine itself about the giddy stair, and twirl the groaning weather- cock, and make the very tower shake and shiver ! High up in the steeple where the belfry is, and iron rails are ragged with rust, and sheets of lead and copper, shrivelled by the changing weather, crackle and heave beneath the unaccustomed tread ; and birds stuff shabby nests into corners of old oaken joists and beams ; and dust grows old and grey ; and speckled spiders, in- dolent and fat with long security, swing idly to and fro in the vibration of the bells, and never loose their hold upon their thread- spun castles in the air, or climb up sailor-like in quick alarm, or drop upon the ground and ply a score of nimble legs to save a life ! Dickens : The Chimes. Besides, some of the smaller cities are charming. If they have an old church or two, a few stately mansions of former grandees, here and there an old dwelling with the second story projecting, (for the convenience of shooting the Indians knocking at the front- door with their tomahawks,) if they have, scattered about, those mighty square houses built something more than half a century ago, and standing like architectural bowlders dropped by the for- mer diluvium of wealth, whose refluent wave has left them as its monument, if they have gardens with elbowed apple-trees that push their branches over the high board-fence and drop their fruit on the sidewalk, if they have a little grass in the side-streets, enough to betoken quiet without proclaiming decay, I think I conk* go to pieces, after my life's work were done, in one of those tranquil places, as sweetly as in any cradle that an old man may be rocked to sleep in. Holmes : Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. The last selection hints that enumeration needs usually some distinct suggestion of the whole, some single impression to give unitoL-and co- Enumeration . < 7* with suggestion herencc to the successive impressions of the whole. . . . of the separate details. This impres- sion of the whole may be of the simplest, as at the beginning of Defoe's description of Winchester : xx INTRODUCTION. From hence, at the end of seven miles over the Downs, we come to the very ancient city of Winchester ; not only the great church (which is so famous all over Europe, and has been so much talked of), but even the whole city has at a distance the face of venerable, and looks ancient afar off ; and yet here are many modern buildings too, and some very handsome. London to Land's End. Again, the impression of the whole may be used to pervade the whole enumeration and give it tone, as often in Carlyle : Mrs. Sterling, even in her later days, had still traces of the old beauty : then and always she was a woman of delicate, pious, affectionate character ; exemplary as a wife, a mother and a friend. A refined female nature ; something tremulous in it, timid, and with a certain rural freshness still unweakened by long converse with the world. The tall, slim figure, always of a kind of quaker neatness ; the innocent anxious face, anxious bright hazel eyes ; the timid, yet gracefully cordial ways, the natural in- telligence, instinctive sense and worth, were very characteristic. Her voice, too, with its something of soft querulousness, easily adapting itself to a light thin-flowing style of mirth on occasion, was characteristic : she had retained her Ulster intonations, and was withal somewhat copious in speech. A fine, tremulously sensitive nature, strong chiefly on the side of the affections, and the graceful insights and activities that depend on these : truly a beautiful, much-suffering, much-loving house-mother. Life of John Sterling. In my last I gave you the particulars of our little journey to Geneva : I have only to add that we stayed about a week in or- der to see Mr. Conway settled there : I do not wonder so many English choose it for their residence ; the city is very small, neat, prettily built, and extremely populous ; the Rhone runs through the middle of it, and it is surrounded with new fortifica- tions, that give it a military compact air ; which, joined to the happy, lively countenances of the inhabitants, and an exact dis- INTRODUCTION. XXI dpline always as strictly observed as in time of war, makes the little republic appear a match for a much greater power ; though perhaps Geneva, and all that belongs to it, are not of equal extent with Windsor and its two parks. To one that has passed through Savoy, as we did, nothing can be more striking than the contrast, as soon as he approaches the town. Near the gates of Geneva runs the torrent Arve, which separates it from the King of Sar- dinia's dominions ; on the other side of it lies a country naturally, indeed, fine and fertile ; but you meet with nothing in it but meagre, ragged, bare-footed peasants, with their children, in ex- treme misery and nastiness ; and even of these no great numbers. You no sooner have crossed the stream I have mentioned, but poverty is no more ; not a beggar, hardly a discontented face to be seen ; numerous and well-dressed people swarming on the ram- parts ; drums beating, soldiers, well clothed and armed, exercising ; and folks, with business in their looks, hurrying to and fro ; all contribute to make any person, who is not blind, sensible what a difference there is between the two governments, that are the causes of one view and the other. Gray to Philip Gray, Lyons^ October 25, N. S., 1739. This method, when used to emphasize the peculiar character of a person or a place, becomes what, in painting, is called genre study. 1 In enumerative descriptions of places the impres- sion of the whole is often strengthened by some indi- cation of plan, some grouping to avoid Enumeration . . with grouping confusion. This, again, may be ot the on plan. . , , simplest. In Ruskm s famous descrip- tion of St. Mark's the details are given from below upward. Equally simple are the following : The shores, now covered by the city of Oswego, were then a desolation of bare hills and fields, studded with the stumps of felled trees, and hedged about with a grim border of forests. Near 1 Cf. Selection XI. xxii INTRODUCTION. the strand, by the mouth of the Onondaga, were the houses of some of the traders : and on the higher ground behind them stood a huge block-house, with a projecting upper story. This building was surrounded by a rough wall of stone, with flankers at the angles, forming what was called the fort. Parkman : Montcalm and Wolfe. Only figure to yourself a vast semicircular basin, full of fine blue sea, and vessels of all sorts and sizes, some sailing out, some coming in, and others at anchor ; and all around it palaces, and churches peeping over one another's heads, gardens, and marble terraces full of orange and cypress trees, fountains, and trellis- works covered with vines, which altogether compose the grandest of theatres. Gray to Richard West, Genoa , November 21, 1739. His study-room in this house was perhaps mainly the drawing- room ; looking out safe, over the little dingy grass-plot in front, and the quiet little row of houses opposite, with the huge dust- whirl of Oxford Street and London far enough ahead of you as background, as back-curtain, blotting out only half your blue hemisphere with dust and smoke. On the right, you had the con- tinuous growl of the Uxbridge Road and its wheels, coming as lullaby not interruption. Leftward and rearward, after some thin belt of houses, lay mere country ; bright sweeping green ex- panses, crowned by pleasant Hampstead, pleasant Harrow, with their rustic steeples rising against the sky. Carlyle : Life of John Sterling. There were few cities of the Netherlands more picturesque in situation, more trimly built, and more opulent of aspect than the little city of Namur. Seated at the confluence of the Sambre with the Meuse, and throwing over each river a bridge of solid but graceful structure, it lay in the lap of a most fruitful valley. A broad, crescent-shaped plain, fringed by the rapid Meuse and enclosed by gently rolling hills cultivated to their crests, or by abrupt precipices of limestone crowned with verdure, was divided by numerous hedgerows, and dotted all over with cornfields, vineyards, and flower-gardens. Many eyes have gazed with INTRODUCTION. xxill delight upon that well-known and most lovely valley, and tnany torrents of blood have mingled with those glancing waters Mnce that long-buried and most sanguinary age which forms our theme ; and still placid as ever is the valley, brightly as *ver flows the stream. Even now, as in that vanished but never- forgotten time, nestles the little city in the angle of the two rivers ; still directly over its head seems to hang in mid-air the massive and frowning fortress, like the gigantic helmet in fiction, as if ready to crush the pigmy town below. Motley : Rise of the Dutch Republic, Part v, cap. iii. Often, however, clearness demands a more distinct, or even a more formal, plan. The look of the whole cannot be secured without establishing some frame- work on which the details may be hung without con- fusion. Thus the basis of Victor Hugo's description of the field of Waterloo is a capital A. Thus Mr. Rudyard Kipling presents the manoeuvres of a sham campaign : The Army of the South had finally pierced the centre of the- Army of the North, and was pouring through the gap hot-foot to capture a city of strategic importance. Its front extended fan- wise, the sticks being represented by regiments strung out along the Kne of route backwards to the divisional transport columns and all the lumber of an army on the move. On its right the broken left of the Army of the North was flying in mass. . . The elated com- mandant of the pursuing force telegraphed that he held all in check and observation. Unluckily he did not observe that three miles to his right flank a flying column of Northern horse . . . had been pushed around ... to cut across the entire rear of the Southern army, to break, as it were, all the ribs of the fan where they converged. Kipling : The Courting of Dinah Shadd. Though Constantino, from a very obvious prejudice, affects to mention the palace of Diocletian with contempt, yet one of their successors, who could only see it in a neglected and mutilated xxiv INTRODUCTION. state, celebrates its magnificence in terms of the highest admira- tion. It covered an extent of ground consisting of between nine and ten English acres. The form was quadrangular, flanked with sixteen towers. Two of the sides were near six hundred, and the other two near seven hundred, feet in length. The whole was constructed of a beautiful free-stone, extracted from the neighbour- ing quarries of Trau, or Tragutium, and very little inferior to marble itself. Four streets, .intersecting each other at right angles, divided the several parts of this great edifice, and the approach to the principal apartment was from a very stately entrance, which is still denominated the Golden Gate. Gibbon : Decline and Fall, cap. xiii. The Bay of Monterey has been compared by no less a person than General Sherman to a bent fishing-hook ; and the compari- son, if less important than the march through Georgia, still shows the eye of a soldier for topography. Santa Cruz sits exposed at the shank ; the mouth of the Salinas river is at the middle of the bend ; and Monterey itself is cosily ensconced beside the barb. Thus the ancient capital of California faces across the bay, while the Pacific Ocean, though hidden by low hills and forest, bom- bards her left flank and rear with never-dying surf. In front of the town, the long line of sea-beach trends north and north-west, and then westward to enclose the bay. Stevenson : Across the Plains. This method is used in histories to call up a sort of mental sketch-map : French America had two heads, one among the snows of Canada, and one among the cane-brakes of Louisiana ; one com- municating with the world through the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the other through the Gulf of Mexico. These vital points were feebly connected by a chain of military posts, slender, and often interrupted, circling through the wilderness nearly three thousand miles. Midway between Canada and Louisiana lay the valley of the Ohio. If the English should seize it, they would sever the chain of posts, and cut French America asunder. If the French INTRODUCTION. XXV held it, and entrenched themselves well along its eastern limits, they would shut their rivals between the Alleghanies and the sea, control all the tribes of the West, and turn them, in case of war, against the English borders, a frightful and insupportable scourge. 1 Parkman : Montcalm and Wolfe. More important even than a plan, however, in securing the impression of the whole, is some distinct indication of the point of view. 2 The point of view, The point of indeed, often determines the plan, as it always determines the aspect of the whole. Disregard of this cardinal maxim may con- fuse an entire description or render it absurd. On the other hand, insistence on this point strikes at the root of vulgar conventions. The description of a prospect from some point near a river bank must not speak of the stream as a silver thread, nor of the coarse prairie grass all about as velvety. It would be an equally gross error were the same scene described from some high bluff, to speak of the prairie grass, with its gaudy flowers and its countless insects, as a miniature tropical forest, a comparison apt enough to a man lying on his back in the tangle of it. 3 The following presents the same scene from two points of view, both carefully indicated : Upon these rocks there was nothing that could long detain attention, and we soon turned our eyes to the Duller or Bouilloir of Buchan, which no man can see with indifference, who has 1 Cf. Motley : Dutch Republic, Histor. Introd., p. I ; and the description of Harlem in Part iii, cap. viii. 2 Cf. Genung, 329. 1 For the application of this principle to decorative art, sec Ruskin : Stones of Venice, cap. xxi, xvii. xxvi INTRODUCTION. either sense of danger, or delight in rarity. It is a rock perpen dicularly tubulated, united on one side with a high shore, and on the other rising steep to a great height above the main sea. The top is open, from which may be seen a dark gulf of water which flows into the cavity, through a breach made in the lower part of the enclosing rock. It has the appearance of a vast well bordered with a wall. The edge of the Buller is not wide, and to those that walk round, appears very narrow. He that ventures to look downward, sees that if his foot should slip, he must fall from his dreadful elevation upon stones on one side, or into the water on the other. We, however, went round, and were glad when the circuit was completed. When we came down to the sea, we saw some boats, and rowers, and resolved to explore the Buller at the bottom. We entered the arch, which the water had made, and found ourselves in a place, which, though we could not think ourselves in danger, we could scarcely survey without some recoil of the mind. The basin in which we floated was nearly circular, perhaps thirty yards in diameter. We were enclosed by a natural wall, rising steep on every side to a height which produced the idea of insurmountable confinement. The interception of all lateral light caused a dismal gloom. Round us was a perpendicular rock, above us the distant sky, and below an unknown profundity of water. If I had any malice against a walking spirit, instead of laying him in the Red Sea, I would condemn him to reside in the Buller of Buchan. Johnson : Journey to the Western Islands. Note how carefully the arrangement of details is determined in each case by the point of view in the two following descriptions of the same valley : l The chine of highland, whereon we stood, curved to the right and left of us, keeping about the same elevation, and crowned with trees and brushwood. At about half a mile in front of us, but looking as if we could throw a stone to strike any man upon 1 Cf. notes on these passages in Genuntr : Handbook oj Rhetorical Analysis , p. 156 INTRODUCTION. XXVli it, another crest, just like our own, bowed around to meet it ; but failed, by reason of two narrow clefts, of which we could only see the brink. One of these clefts was the Doone-gate, with a port- cullis of rock above it ; and the other was the chasm, by which I had once made entrance. Betwixt them, where the hills fell back, as in a perfect oval, traversed by the winding water, lay a bright green valley, rimmed with sheer black rock, and seeming to have sunken bodily from the bleak rough heights above. It looked as if no frost could enter, neither winds go ruffling ; only spring, and hope, and comfort, breathe to one another. Even now the rays of sunshine dwelt, and fell back on themselves, whenever the clouds lifted ; and the pale blue glimpse of the growing day seemed to find young encouragement. A very rough and headstrong road was all that she remembered, for she could not think as she wished to do, with the cold iron pushed against her. At the end of this road they delivered her eyes, and she could scarce believe them. For she stood at the head of a deep green valley, carved from out the mountains in a perfect oval, with a fence of sheer rock standing round it, eighty feet or a hundred high ; from whose brink black wooded hills swept up to the sky-line. By her side a little river glided out from underground with a soft dark babble, un- awares of daylight ; then, growing brighter, lapsed away, and fell into the valley. There, as it ran down the meadow, alders stood on either marge, and grass was blading out upon it, and yellow tufts of rushes gathered, looking at the hurry. But further down, on either bank, were covered houses, built of stone, square and roughly cornered, set as if the brook were meant to be the street between them. Only one room high they were, and not placed opposite each other, but in and out, as skittles are ; only that the first of all, which proved to be the captain's, was a sort of double house, or rather, two houses joined together by a plank-bridge over the river. Blackmore : Lorna Doom. Compare also the following : It stands in a little quiet valley, which gradually rises behind the ruins into a half-circle crowned with thick wood. Before it, xxviii INTRODUCTION. on a descent, is a thicket of oaks, that serves to veil it from the broad day and from profane eyes, only leaving a peep on both sides, where the sea appears glittering through the shade, and vessels, with their white sails, that glide across and are lost again. Concealed behind the thicket stands a little castle (also in ruins), immediately on the shore, that commands a view over an expanse of sea clear and smooth as glass (when I saw it), with Southamp- ton and several villages three miles off to the right, Calshot Castle at seven miles' distance, and the high lands of the Isle of Wight to the left, and in front the deep shades of the New Forest dis- tinctly seen, because the water is no more than three miles over. Gray to the Rev. James Brown, October, 1764. i We must still have spent some time in town-seeing, for it was drawing toward sunset when we got up to some sort of garden promenade west of the town, I believe, and high above the Rhine, so as to command the open country across it to the south and west. At which open country of low undulation, far into blue, gazing as at one of our own distances from Malvern of Worcestershire, or Dorking of Kent suddenly behold beyond There was no thought in any of us for a moment of their being clouds. They were clear as crystal, sharp on the pure horizon sky, and already tinged with rose by the sinking sun. Infinitely beyond all that we had ever thought or dreamed, the seen walls of lost Eden could not have been more beautiful to us ; not more awful, round heaven, the walls of sacred Death. Ruskin : Pra- ter ita, vi (view of the Alps from Schaffhausen). The traveller from the coast, who, after plodding for a score of miles over calcareous downs and corn lands, suddenly reaches the verge of one of these escarpments, is surprised and delighted to behold, extended like a map beneath him, a country differing ab- solutely from that which he has passed through. Behind him the hills are open, the sun blazes down upon fields so large as to give an unenclosed character to the landscape, the lanes are white, the hedges low and plashed, the atmosphere colourless. Here, in the valley, the world seems to be constructed upon a smaller and more INTRODUCTION. xxix delicate scale ; the fields are mere paddocks, so reduced that from this height their hedge-rows appear a net-work of dark green threads overspreading the paler green of the grass. The atmosphere be- neath is languorous, and is so tinged with azure that what artists call the middle distance partakes also of that hue, while the hori- zon beyond is of the deepest ultramarine. Arable lands are few and limited ; with but slight exceptions the prospect is a broad rich mass of grass and trees, mantling minor hills and dales within the greater. Such is the Vale of Blackmoor. Thomas Hardy : Tess of the D* Urbervilles. It will be seen from all these extracts that care for the point of view tends to clarify the impression of the The principle whole by the observance of due pro- of proportion. p 0rt j ona if one keep the point of view, he will be the more likely to keep his perspective, more likely to make all his details converge upon one point or heighten one impression. This is exactly the bidding of that main principle of all good composi- tion, the principle of proportion. 1 DweJl upon the details that heighten the one desired effect, subdue those that are merely accessory, suppress those that are incongruous : this is the principle applied to de- scription. Ruskin's description of St. Mark's 3 is a study in contrast. The character of the Venetian cathedral is accentuated by an introductory descrip- tion of a typical English cathedral. But since this introductory description is merely accessory, it is com- pressed within narrow limits. Again, the beauty and aspiration inherent in the design and the ornament of St. Mark's are contrasted with the sordid brutality of Carpenter \ pp. 156, 179. Genung^ 207. 8 Stones of Venice, vol. ii, cap. iv, 10. Cf. notes thereon in Genung : Handbook^ p. 36. KXX INTRODUCTION'. the people that now live in its shadow. But this dark suggestion, since its use is merely to heighten the effect of brightness, is also compressed and subdued. Sound art, whether of suggestion or of representation, is careful not to elaborate the background unduly. All these principles apply equally to a kind of de- scription thus far unmentioned, the so-called narrative Description description. 1 This term, though it seems by narrative. to introduce confusion, defines precisely enough a description like the following : I consulted several things in my situation, which I found would be proper for me : first, health and fresh water, I just now men- tioned ; secondly, shelter from the heat of the sun ; thirdly, se- curity from ravenous creatures, whether man or beast ; fourthly, a view to the sea, that if God sent any ship in sight, I might not lose any advantage for my deliverance, of which I was not willing to banish all my expectation yet. In search of a place proper for this, I found a little plain on the side of a rising hill, whose front towards this little plain was as steep as a house-side, so that nothing could come down upon me from the top. On the side of the rock there was a hollow place worn a little way in, like the entrance or door of a cave ; but there was not really any cave, or way into the rock at all. On the flat of the green, just before this hollow place, I re- solved to pitch my tent. This plain was not above a hundred yards broad, and about twice as long, and lay like a green before my door ; and, at the end of it, descended irregularly every way down into the low ground by the sea-side. It was on the N. N. W. side of the hill ; so that it was sheltered from the heat every day, till it came to a W. and by S. sun, or thereabouts, which, in those countries, is near the setting. Before I set up my tent, I drew a half-circle before the hollow place, which took in about ten yards in its semi-diameter, from the rock, and twenty yards in its diameter, from its beginning and ending. 1 Fletcher and Carpenter \ p. 58. INTRODUCTION. xxxl In this half-circle I pitched two rows of strong stakes, driving them into the ground till they stood very firm like piles, the big- gest end being out of the ground above five feet and a half, and sharpened on the top. The two rows did not stand above six inches from one another. Then I took the pieces of cable which I had cut in the ship, and laid them in rows, one upon another, within the circle, be- tween these two rows of stakes, up to the top, placing other stakes in the inside, leaning against them, about two feet and a half high, like a spur to a post ; and this fence was so strong, that neither man nor beast could get into or over it. This cost me a great deal of time and labour, especially to cut the piles in the woods, bring them to the place, and drive them into the earth. The entrance into this place I made to be not by a door, but by a short ladder to go over the top ; which ladder, when I was in, I lifted over after me ; and so I was completely fenced in and fortified, as I thought, from all the world, and consequently slept secure in the night, which otherwise I could not have done ; though, as it appeared afterwards, there was no need of all this caution from the enemies that I apprehended danger from. Defoe : Robinson Crusoe. This is as obviously descriptive as its method is obviously narrative. Defoe wishes, indeed, to tell what Crusoe did, but he wishes mainly to make a picture of the hut, and he does the latter by doing the former. It makes no essential difference whether such descriptions occur in stories or not, or indeed whether they be called descriptions or stories. Here, at any rate, is a method of suggestion by enu- meration as common as it is effective. By this method, moreover, the difficulties urged by Lessing ' 1 See p. x, and note the following from Lessing's sixteenth chapter : 44 For one thing, I say that Homer has generally but a single xxxii INTRODUCTION. may be minimized. Note how Defoe resumes hu, description : I have already described my habitation, which was a tent under the side of a rock, surrounded with a strong pale of posts and cables ; but I might now rather call it a wall, for I raised a kind of wall up against it of turfs, about two feet thick on the outside ; and after some time (I think it was a year and a half) I raised rafters from it, leaning to the rock, and thatched or covered it with boughs of trees, and such things as I could get, to keep out the rain, which I found at some times of the year very violent. I have already observed how I brought all my goods into this pale, and into the cave which I had made behind me. But I must observe, too, that at first this was a confused heap of goods, which, as they lay in no order, so they took up all my place ; I had no room to turn myself : so I set myself to enlarge my cave, and work farther into the earth ; for it was a loose sandy rock, which yielded easily to the labour I bestowed on it ; and so, when I found I was pretty safe as to beasts of prey, I worked sideways, to the right hand, into the rock ; and then, turning to the right again, worked quite out, and made me a door to come out on the outside of my pale or fortification. This gave me not only egress and regress, as it was a back way to my tent and storehouse, but gave me room to store my goods. And now I began to apply myself to make such necessary things as I found I most wanted, particularly a chair and a table ; for without these I was not able to enjoy the few comforts I had in the world ; I could not write or eat, or do several things, with so much pleasure without a table : so I went to "work. characteristic ; a ship is for him now the black ship, now the hol- low ship, now the swift ship, at most the well-rowed black ship. Farther than this he does not enter into any description of the ship. But of the sailing, the setting out, and hauling up of the ship he draws a detailed picture enough, of which, if the artist wished to transfer the whole of it to his canvas, he would be compelled to make five or six different paintings." Beasley and Zimmern'* Translation. INTRODUCTION'. xxxill This is essentially the method of the newspaper " sketch," and of works like Defoe's Storm and Jour- nal of the Plague Year. 1 Compare also the following instances : Or again, if it rained, and Paris through the studio window loomed lead-colored, with its shiny slate roofs under skies that were ashen and sober, and the wild west wind made woeful music among the chimney-pots, and little gray waves ran up the river the wrong way, and the Morgue looked chill and dark and wet, and almost uninviting (even to three healthy-minded young Britons), they would resolve to dine and spend a happy evening at home. Little Billee, taking with him three francs (or even four), would dive into back streets and buy a yard or so of crusty new bread, well burned on the flat side, a fillet of beef, a litre of wine, pota- toes and onions, butter, a little cylindrical cheese called "bondon de Neufchatel," tender curly lettuce, with chervil, parsley, spring onions, and other fine herbs, and a pod of garlic, which would be rubbed on a crust of bread to flavor things with. Taffy would lay the cloth Englishwise, and also make the salad, for which, like everybody else I ever met, he had a special receipt of his own (putting in the oil first and the vinegar afterward) ; and indeed his salads were quite as good as everybody else's. The Laird, bending over the stove, would cook the onions and beef into a savory Scotch mess so cunningly that you could not v taste the beef for the onions nor always the onions for the garlic ! And they would dine far better than at le Pere Trin's, far bet- ter than at the English restaurant in the Rue de la Madeleine better than anywhere else on earth ! And after dinner, what coffee, roasted and ground on the spot, what pipes and cigarettes of "caporal," by the light of the three 1 It is also the method of Stevenson's Across the Plains, and of the description of storm in the twenty-sixth chapter of David Copperfald. xxxiv INTRODUCTION. shaded lamps, while the rain beat against the big north window, and the wind went howling round the quaint old mediaeval tower at the corner of the Rue Vieille des Mauvais Ladres (the old street of the bad lepers) and the damp logs hissed and crackled in the stove ! Du Maurier : Trilby. Of course I was up the very next morning before the October sunrise, and away through the wild and the woodland toward the Bagworthy water, at the foot of the long cascade. The rising of the sun was noble in the cold and warmth of it ; peeping down the spread of light, he raised his shoulder heavily over the edge of gray mountain and wavering length of upland. Beneath his gaze the dew-fogs dipped, and crept to the hollow places ; then stole away in line and column, holding skirts, and clinging subtly at the sheltering corners, where rock hung over grass-land ; while the brave lines of the hills came forth, one beyond other gliding. Then the woods arose in folds, like drapery of awakened moun- tains, stately with a depth of awe, and memory of the tempests. Autumn's mellow hand was on them, as they owned already, touched with gold, and red, and olive ; and their joy toward the sun was less to a bridegroom than a father. Yet before the floating impress of the woods could clear itself, suddenly the gladsome light leaped over hill and valley, casting amber, blue, and purple, and a tint of rich red rose, according to the scene they lit on, and the curtain flung around ; yet all alike dispelling fear and the cloven hoof of darkness, all on the wings of hope advancing and proclaiming that 4< God is here !" Then life and joy sprang reassured from every crouching hollow ; every flower, and bud, and bird had a fluttering sense of them ; and all the flashing of God's gaze merged into soft beneficence. -Black- more : Lorna Doone. The evening came as they passed along a steep white road with many windings among the pines, and it was night when they reached the temple, the lights of which shone out upon them paus- ing before the sacred enclosure, while Marius became alive to a singular purity in the air. A rippling of water about the place xxxv was the only thing audible, as they wailed till two priestty figures, speaking Greek to one another, admitted them into a large white- walled and clearly lighted guest-chamber, in which, while he par- took of a simple but wholesomely prepared supper, Marius still seemed to feel pleasantly the height they had attained to Among the hills. Pater : Marius the Epicurean. Thus far we have spoken only of description bjf enumeration. There is a pronounced modern ten- dency in both painting and literature t6 Description without enu- obtain a unified effect, riot by there meration. . * * i suj)oniLnaliQn of details, but by.ajctual suppression of as many details as possible. Carried to the extreme, this method is called impressiohisrrt > and has obtained only a partial and doubtful recogni- tion. But in description, at any rate, this reaction embodies a principle that appeals strongly to most readers. " No human being,*' says Stevenson, " ever spoke of scenery for above two minutes at a time, which makes one suspect we hear too much of it in literature." * " But methinks I am describing," writes Gray to West, 1 after reporting a great ecclesiastical function, " 'tis an ill habit, but this, like everything else, will wear off." It is certain, moreover, that the limits of effective* ness in enumerative description are stricter thai* writers of the older fashion, and those Lemaitre on enumerative dc- who follow them to-day, seem thor scription. . . oughly to appreciate. On this pomlj M. Jules Lemaitre has said, perhaps, the last word ; , , A 1 Memories and Portraits : Talk and Talkers^ 'Rome, April 16, N. S., 1740. XXX vi INTRODUCTION. Et puis, dans cette idylle neurasthenique d' Une Page a" amour, 1 il y a une chose que M. Samson 2 ne pouvait transporter dans sa piece : il y a Paris ; il y a le panorama de la grande ville vue des hauteurs du TVocadero, a toutes les heures du jour, par toutes les saisons et par tous les ciels. He'lene Grandchamp est courageuse, incertaine ou de'faillante, selon la fa9on dont est eclaire le dome des Invalides, suivant que la fa$ade de 1'Ecole Militaire est gris sale ou gris-perle, suivant qu'a 1'horizon le Pantheon est mauve ou parait en pain d'epice, et suivant que la Seine est couleur d'eme- raude, couleur de marne ou couleur d'etain. Ces descriptions, dont la moindre deborde sur dix pages d'imprime, sont restees fameuses. On les admire beaucoup, sans ton jours les avoir lues. Je crois que ce qu'on admire au fond, c'est 1'etrange effort dont elles te'moignent. 'a etc Tune des plus grossieres erreurs litteraires de ce temps, de confondje remuneration des parties avec la peinture, de croire que la juxtaposition interminable de details, meme pittoresques, peut finalement "former tableau," nous rendre sensibles les vastes spectacles de 1'univers physique. En realite, une description ecrite ne se compose et ne s'ordonne dans notre esprit que si Timpression des premiers traits dont elle est formee se prolonge et retentit assez en nous pour que nous les puissions rejoindre aisement a ceux qui la completent et la ter- minent. Bref, un morceau descriptif ne vaut que si nous pouvons en retenir et en embrasser a la fois tous les details. II faut que ces details coexistent tous dans notre memoire, comme ceux d'une toile peinte coexistent sous notre regard. Cela devient presque impossible, quand la description d'un objet determine' comporte un quart d'heure de lecture. Plus elle s'allonge, et plus elle s'obscurcit. Les traits particuliers s'effacent et s'oublient a mesure qu'ils nous sont presentes ; et c'est ici qu'on peut dire que Jes arbres empechent de voir le foret. Toute description qui de- passe cinquante lignes cesse d'etre clairement perceptible a un esprit de vigueur moyenne. On n'a plus alors qu'une serie de peinturcs partielles dont la succession fatigue et accable. ; Jules 1 fcmile Zola : Une Page d' Amour. * The compiler of a dramatic version of Zola's story. INTRODUCTION. xxxvii Lemaitre : Impressions de Thddtre^ Sme se'rie ; Une Page d* Amour. Moreover, since most description, as was said at the beginning, is merely accessory, it is well to learn how much can be done by rapid sug- Examples of tfon" d sugg " ne ; but beat a dimness cam a da ^ness INTRODUCTION. xliii not suffer me to think upon the words ; and my chief wish was to have the thing begin and be done with it. Stevenson: Kidnapped. The singers were (as usual) deplorable, but there was one girl (she called herself the Niccolina) with little voice and less beauty ; but with the utmost justness of ear, the strongest expression of countenance, the most speaking eyes, the greatest vivac ; ty and variety of gesture. Her first appearance instantly fixed their attention ; the tumult sunk at once, or if any murmur rose, it was hushed by a general cry for silence. Her first air ravished every, body ; they forgot their prejudices, they forgot that they d ; d not understand a word of the language ; they entered into all the humour of the part, made her repeat all her songs, and continued their transports, their laughter, and applause to the end of the piece. Gray to Count Algarotti^ Cambridge ; September 9, 1763. I had seen also for the third time, by the Chartreuse torrent, the most wonderful of all Alpine birds a grey, fluttering stealthy creature, about the size of a sparrow, but of colder grey, and more graceful, which haunts the sides of the fiercest torrents. There is something more strange in it than in the sea-gull that seems a powerful creature ; and the power of the sea, not of a kind so adverse, so hopelessly destructive ; but this small creature, silent, tender and light, almost like a moth in its low and irregular flight, almost touching with its wings the crests of waves that would overthrow a granite wall, and haunting the hollows of the black, cold, heibless rocks that are continually shaken by their spray, has perhaps the nearest approach to the look of a spiritual existence I know In animal life. Ruskin : Prceterita, xi. Suggestion by effect 1 has its chief value in portraits. In descriptions of scenery it involves what Ruskin 1 The method by effects seems to M. Brunetiere peculiarly artistic : " I) ne me reste plus qu'a louer dans V vangtliste les qualite's ordinaires de M. Daudet, mais plus saines, comme je i'ai deji dit, plus libre de toute preoccupation d'e'cole. Dans les meilleures pages de V vanglistt t la sobriete' de la description esf INTRODUCTION. calls the pathetic fallacy; and by becoming unduly emotional may become untrue. How effective it may The "pathetic be however, not only in description of fallacy.^ places, but even in detailed descrip- tion of places is abundantly shown in Poe's Fall of the House of Usher. More minute discrimination of descriptive methods would be but confusing. Indeed, of the methods The choice of already discussed, none is to be con- sidered as essentially independent ; each combines freely with the others. And whatever the method or combination of methods, the force of any description depends, of course, not only on the power to seize the most active source of suggestion, but quite as much on the power to find for it the apt word. It would be gratuitous to say over again for descriptive diction what is always true of diction in general. But it may be worth while to consider some common mis conceptions, and to apply briefly one or two funda- mental maxims. It is a common error, at least among students, to suppose that excellence in description is measured by An error aa to the fervour of imaginative language and the exaggeration of figure. The dcvenue, comme chez les vrais maftres, un element de leur charm e et de leur beaute. Au lieu de peindre par 1'accumulation des details, et la nouveaute des mots, etleurs 'rapprochements imprevus, Stst r impression de la figure ou du pay sage sur r esprit que M. Daudet de*gage et resume en quatres lignes. " Brunette : Le Roman Naturaliste, p. 390. 1 Ruskin : Modern Painters, iii. Cf. also, Fletcher and Carte* *" P- 54- INTRODUCTION. xlv world is weary of a style tending too readily to the grandiose and even the bombastic. Language is not to be tortured by the craze for extraordinary adjec- tives. Sensationalism, moreover, is as futile as it is The sens a- ludicrous, and this because it almost always marks weakness. Yet the plea for sanity should not ignore the fact that the struggle for the startling and the bizarre indicates a wholesome discon- tent with the trite and the commonplace. In ordinary intercourse things may be lovely or nice or quaint when they are not awful or splendid ; but nobody pretends that these adjectives are descriptive. They are used to avoid the trouble of description. In The trite. the matter of figures, moreover, there is little to choose between the sensational and tire trite. The true concern of the artist is exhibited sternly by Maupassant : Ayant, en outre, pose cette verite qu'il n'y a pas, de par le monde entier, deux grains de sable, deux mouches, deux mains ou deux nez absolument pareils, il me forcait a exprimer, en quelques phrases, un etre ou un objet de maniere a le particulariser nette- nt^ a le distinguer de tous les autres etres ou de tous les autres objets de meme race ou de meme espece. " Quand vous passez, me disait-il, devant un epicier assis sur sa porte, devant un concierge qui fume sa pipe, devant une station de nacres, montrez-moi cet epicier et ce concierge, leur pose, toute leur apparence physique contenant aussi, indiquee par 1'adresse de 1'image, toute leur nature morale, de fa9on a ce que je ne les confonde avec aucun autre epicier ou avec aucun autre concierge, et faites-moi voir, par un seul mot, en quoi un cheval de fiacre ne ressemble pas aux cinquante autres qui le suivent et le pre- cedent." Guy de Maupassant: Pierre et Jean^ Avant-propos.* 1 Cited by Fletcher and Carpenter^ p. 6. *1 vi IN TROD UCTION. Particularisernettement\\. is the error of indolence to suppose that such a habit robs expression of its glow and colour. A little yellow bird still continues to make a sibilous shivering noise in the tops of tall woods. Gilbert White : Natural History of Selborne. It was one of those mornings such as come only in the early autumn. The air was crisp, sonorous, and still. A. S. Hardv Passe Rose. It remained to choose a beast of burden. Now a horse is a fine among animals, flighty, timid, delicate in eating, of tender ; he ls too valuable and too restive to be left alone, so that are chained to your brute as to a fellow galley slave ; a dan- gerous road put, him out of hi, wits . in shor * h / g 1 * "' and ^^ thirty ' fold t0 the tr ubles Of figures be it said only that they are subject to the same law Equally foolish are they that would '' 1 . c 8ub - i! spense with them and the y that ^ ">- hem at random. " The horse is a fine INTRODUCTION. xlvii Against the abuse of figures, however, it is often wise to recommend the study of a style like Defoe's. The necessity Defoe has hardly any figures, because of the concrete. he j s unemot i ona l. But without them he secures effects that are always clear and often vivid by sheer abundance of concrete detail. This is the first business of descriptive dictron with or with- out figures, toj^ejtkoiiJJh^j^^ Concreteness is^ the force of Defoe, the force of Stevenson, the force of all writers between them who have succeeded in giving to their suggestions a moving power. Cow- per's contentment is moving so soon as it speaks through tangible objects : They think a fine estate, a large conservatory, a hothouse rich as a West Indian garden, things of consequence ; visit them with pleasure, and muse upon them with ten times more. I am pleased with a frame of four lights, doubtful whether the few pines it contains will ever be worth a farthing ; amuse myself with a greenhouse which Lord Bute's gardener could take upon his back and walk away with ; and when I have paid it the accustomed visit, and watered it, and given it air, I say to myself " This is not mine, 'tis a plaything lent me for the present ; I must leave it soon." Cowper to Newton^ May 3, 1780. If anyone doubts that the formula for description is simply concreteness plus aptness, let him study minutely the prologue to the "Canterbury Tales." Finally, be it said that descriptive power is not confined to one or two parts of speech.: It was said by the reviewer of certain recent short stories that they resembled " an exercise in composition for the abolition of the verb." : The same charge may be i Nation, 57 : 452. * Iv "' INTRODUCTION. brought against many pieces more purely descriptive than these. Now if the verb is the most essential Th import- part of speech in narrative, it is none '** the less most valuable in description. To confine one's elaboration, then, to adjectives and nouns, is not only to burden one's sentences, but also to ignore an excellent means of conciseness in sug- gestion. Let all the main words in the sentence tell let the verb be as full of suggestion as the noun and the adject.ve, and the description is spared many an overburdened phrase and lagging clause. A '"ge-headed. dwarfish individual, of smoke-bleared aspect ghiS WUe UPS ' f en - and give up The choice of details, their number, the method by they are presented, the choice of words,-these four headings will be found convenient, alike for the cons.deration of the selections in this volume and for cnticism of the student's own work. ~ l Cf. pp. xi, xviii-xix, xxxiv. LIST OF REFERENCES IN THE INTRODUCTION. Brewster, William Tenney, Specimens of Narration (New York, Henry Holt & Company). Brunetiere, Ferdinand, Le Roman Naturaliste. Carpenter, G. ft., 1 Exercises in Rhetoric and English Composi- tion (New York and London, Macmillan & Company). * Fletcher and Carpenter, Theme- Writing, by J. B. Fletcher and G. R. Carpenter (Boston, Allyn & Bacon). Genung, John F. t l The Practical Elements of Rhetoric (Boston, Ginn & Company) : A Handbook of Rhetorical Analysis (ibid.). Lemaitre, Jules, Impressions de Theatre, 8me serie. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, Laokoon. Maupassant, Guy de, Pierre et Jean (avant-propos). Phelps, William Lyon, The Beginning of the English Romantic Movement (Boston, Ginn & Company). Ruskin, John, The Stones of Venice ; Modern Painters. Stevenson, Robert Louis, Memories and Portraits. 1 Almost any other good text-book of rhetoric will meet all necessities of citation ; for example, Bain's standard work, or, for more recent and more popular presentation, Barrett Wendell's English Composition (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons). xlix SPECIMENS OF PROSE DESCRIPTION i. Bncicnt Btbens, JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. From Historical Sketches (I, iii). 1 This selection is annotated to suggest questions for class discussion of the following selections. For further suggestions of the same sort, see Genung's Hand- book of Rhetorical Analysis, pp. 156-186 ; Fletcher and Carpenter s Theme Writing, pp. 33-63. The passage, as a whole, exemplifies description for purposes of exposition. A simpler example of the same sort occurs at p. 13 of Lament's Specimens of Exposition, in this series. IF we would know what a University is, considered in its elementary idea, we must betake ourselves to the first and most celebrated home of European literature and source of European civilization, to the bright and 5 beautiful Athens, 2 Athens, whose schools drew to her bosom, and then sent back again to the business of life, the youth of the Western World for a long thou- 1 Printed by kind permission of Messrs. Longmans, Green & Company. * Bright and beautiful Athens, epithet of main physical aspect, followed by the presentation, in a few details, of the main intel- lectual aspect, a central metropolis of knowledge. 2 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. sand years. Seated on the verge of the continent, the city seemed hardly suited for the duties of a cen- tral metropolis of knowledge ; yet, what it lost in con- venience of approach, it gained in its neighborhood to the traditions of the mysterious East, and in the loveli- 5 ness of the region in which it lay. Hither, then, as to a sort of ideal land, where all archetypes of the great and the fair were found in substantial being, and all departments of truth explored, and all diversities of intellectual power exhibited, where taste and phil- 10 osophy were majestically enthroned as in a royal court, where there was no sovereignty but that of the mind, and no nobility but that of genius, where pro- fessors were rulers, and princes did homage, hither flocked continually from the very corners of the orbis 15 terrarum, the many-tongued generation, just rising, or just risen into manhood, in order to gain wisdom. * Pisistratus had in an early age discovered and nursed the infant genius of his people, and Cimon, after the Persian War, had given it a home. That 20 war had established the naval supremacy of Athens ; she had become an imperial state ; and the lonians, bound to her by the double chain of kindred and of subjection, were importing into her both their mer- chandise and their civilization. The arts and the 25 philosophy of the Asiatic coast were easily carried across the sea, and there was Cimon, as I have said, with his ample fortune, ready to receive them with due honours. Not content with patronising their pro- fessors, he built the first of those noble porticos, of 30 1 Two paragraphs of summary narrative, to heighten the sig- nificance of the description. ANCIENT ATHENS. 3 which we hear so much in Athens, and he formed the groves, which in process of time became the cele- brated Academy. Planting is one of the most graceful, as in Athens it was one of the most beneficent, of 5 employments. Cimon took in hand the wild wood, pruned and dressed it, and laid it out with handsome walks and welcome fountains. Nor, while hospitable to the authors of the city's civilization, was he un- grateful to the instruments of her prosperity. His 10 trees extended their cool, umbrageous branches over the merchants, who assembled in the Agora, for many generations. Those merchants certainly had deserved that act of bounty ; for all the while their ships had been carry- 15 ing forth the intellectual fame of Athens to the western world. Then commenced what may be called her University existence. Pericles, who succeeded Cimon both in the government and in the patronage of art, is said by Plutarch to have entertained the idea of mak- 20 ing Athens the capital of federated Greece : in this he failed, but his encouragement of such men as Phidias and Anaxagoras led the way to her acquiring a far more lasting sovereignty over a far wider empire. Little understanding the sources of her own greatness, 25 Athens would go to war : peace is the interest of a seat of commerce and the arts ; but to war she went ; yet to her, whether peace or war, it mattered not. The political power of Athens waned and disap- peared ; kingdoms rose and fell ; centuries rolled 30 away, they did but bring fresh triumphs to the city of the poet and the sage. 4 There at length the 4 Note the force of the specific. 4 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. swarthy 5 Moor and Spaniard were seen to meet the blue-eyed 6 Gaul ; and the Cappadocian, late subject of Mithridates, gazed without alarm at the haughty conquering Roman. Revolution after revolution passed over the face of Europe, as well as of Greece, 5 but still she was there, Athens, the city of mind, as radiant, as splendid, as delicate, as young, as ever she had been. * Many a more fruitful coast or isle is washed by the blue ^Egean, many a spot is there more beautiful IQ or sublime to see, many a territory more ample ; but there was one charm in Attica, which in the same per- fection was nowhere else. The deep pastures 7 of Arcadia, the plain 7 of Argos, the Thessalian vale, 7 these had not the gift ; Bceotia, which lay to its immediate 15 north, was notorious for its very want of it. The heavy atmosphere of that Bceotia might be good for vegetation, but it was associated in popular belief with the dulness of the Boeotian intellect : on the contrary, the special purity, elasticity, clearness, and salubrity 20 of the air of Attica, fit concomitant and emblem of its genius, did that for it which earth did not ; it brought out every bright hue and tender shade of the land- scape over which it was spread, and would have 5 Epithet description. See p. xxxix. 6 This paragraph presents one main physical trait, hinted at before, but here specified with delicate precision (purity, elasticity, etc.), and used as dominant. 7 Passing use of a single detail to suggest the different character of the neighbouring countries (cf. the selection at the bottom of p. xxiv). Bceotia, as being in direct contrast, receives more space (cf. p. xxix). ANCIENT ATHENS. 5 illuminated the face even of a more bare and rugged country. 8 A confined triangle, perhaps fifty miles its greatest length, and thirty its greatest breadth ; two elevated 5 rocky barriers, meeting at an angle ; three prominent mountains, commanding the plain, Parnes, Penteli- cus, and Hymettus ; an unsatisfactory soil ; some streams, not always full ; such is about the report which the agent of a London Company would have 10 made of Attica. He would report that the climate was mild ; the hills were limestone ; there was plenty of good marble ; more pasture land than at first sur- vey might have been expected, sufficient certainly for sheep and goats ; fisheries productive ; silver mines 5 once, but long since worked out ; figs fair ; oil first- rate ; olives in profusion. But what he would not think of noting down, was, that that olive tree was so choice in nature and so noble in shape, that it excited a religious veneration ; and that it took so kindly to the 20 light soil, as to expand into woods upon the open plain, and to climb up and fringe the hills. He would not think of writing word to his employers, how that clear air, of which I have spoken, brought out, yet blended and subdued, the colours on the marble, till 8 This paragraph proceeds to detailed description, as follows : (i) outline and salient features, merely enumerated, (2) details de- liberately enumerated as in an inventory, (3) the same details worked up in picturesque aspects, and other picturesque details added, the clarity of the atmosphere dominating throughout. The figures are few and simple {fringe^ cheek^ carpeted ', chain , etc.), but always apt and precise. Precision, indeed, is a main trait of the description, a precision that does not exclude emo- tional appreciation. 6 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. they had a softness and a harmony for all their rich- ness, which in a picture looks exaggerated, yet is after all within the truth. He would not tell, how that same delicate and brilliant atmosphere freshened up the pale olive, till the olive forgot its monotony, and its 5 cheek glowed like the arbutus or beech of the Umbrian hills. He would say nothing of the thyme and thou- sand fragrant herbs which carpeted Hymettus ; he would hear nothing of the hum of its bees ; fl nor take much account of the rare flavour of its honey, since 10 Gozo and Minorca were sufficient for the English demand. He 10 would look over the ^Egean from the height he had ascended ; he would follow with his eye the chain of islands, which, starting from the Sunian headland, seemed to offer the fabled divinities 15 of Attica, when they would visit their Ionian cousins, a sort of viaduct thereto across the sea : but that fancy would not occur to him 1 ; nor any admiration of the dark violet billows " with their white edges down below; nor 11 of those graceful, fan-like jets of silver 20 upon the rocks, which slowly rise aloft like water spirits from the deep, then shiver, and break, and 9 Thus far light has been the main element, as it is throughout. Here sound is introduced. Then colour, which has received only allusions, is defined in the violet and white of the billows, the roseate golden hue of the jutting crags, etc. 10 Note in this sentence the careful, yet unobtrusive, indication of the point of view (p. xxv). 11 From this point the description, having assured clearness, warms to more sympathetic presentation, keeping the clarity of the atmosphere dominant. With the introduction of motion come also more vivid and more imaginative figures {fan-like, water spirits, shiver, shroud, etc.), but without any loss of precision. ANCIENT A THENS. 7 spread, and shroud themselves, and disappear, in a soft mist of foam ; nor of the gentle, incessant heav- ing and panting of the whole liquid plain ; nor of the long waves, keeping steady time, like a line of sol- 5 diery, as they resound upon the hollow shore, he would not begin to notice that restless living element at all, except to bless his stars that he was not upon it. Nor the distinct detail, nor the refined colouring, nor the graceful outline and roseate golden hue of the 10 jutting crags, nor the bold shadows cast from Otus or Laurium by the declining sun ; our agent of a mer- cantile firm would not value these matters even at a low figure. Rather we must turn for the sympathy we seek to yon pilgrim student ia come from a semi- 15 barbarous land to that small corner of the earth, as to a shrine, where he might take his fill of gazing on those emblems and coruscations of invisible unorigi- nate perfection. It was the stranger from a remote province, from Britain or from Mauritania, who in a 20 scene so different from that of his chilly, woody swamps, 12 or of his fiery choking sands, 13 learned at once what a real University must be, by coming to under- stand the sort of country, which was its suitable home. Nor 18 was this all that a University required, and 12 Finally the presentation is concentrated in its effect (p. xl) upon a typical student, whose native country is briefly hinted, as before, by a single characteristic detail. 13 Though the appeal of Athens was to the poet, the scholar, the student, rather than to the man of business, yet it is not to be thought of as lacking in practical advantages. The relation of these two paragraphs shows that the progress of the description is logical, and this because its purpose is expository. The re- mainder of the passage is almost entirely expository description. 8 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. found in Athens. No one, even there, could live on poetry. If the students at that famous place had nothing better than bright hues and soothing sounds, they would not have been able or disposed to turn their residence there to much account. Of course 5 they must have the means of living, nay, in a certain sense, of enjoyment, if Athens was to be an Alma Mater at the time, or to remain afterwards a pleasant thought in their memory. And so they had : be it recollected that Athens was a port, and a mart of 10 trade, perhaps the first in Greece ; and this was very much to the point, when a number of strangers were *ver flocking to it, whose combat was to be with intel- lectual, not physical difficulties, and who claimed to have their bodily wants supplied, that they might be 15 at leisure to set about furnishing their minds. Now, barren as was the soil of Attica, and bare the face of the country, yet it had only too many resources for an elegant, nay luxurious abode there. So abundant were the imports of the place, that it was a common 20 saying, that the productions, which were found singly elsewhere, were brought all together in Athens. Corn and wine, the staple of subsistence in such a climate, came from the isles of the ^Egean ; fine wool and carpeting from Asia Minor ; slaves, as now, from the 25 Euxine, and timber too ; and iron and brass from the coasts of the Mediterranean. The Athenian did not condescend to manufactures himself, but encouraged them in others ; and a population of foreigners caught at the lucrative occupation both for home consumption 30 and for exportation. Their cloth, and other textures for dress and furniture, and their hardware for in- ANCIEtfT A TKEtfS. 9 stance, armour were in great request. Labour was cheap ; stone and marble in plenty ; and the taste and skill, which at first were devoted to public buildings, as temples and porticos, were in course of time applied 5 to the mansions of public men. If nature did much for Athens, it is undeniable that art did much more. II. pestilence. I. EDWARD GIBBON. II. AUGUSTUS H. JESSOPP. From The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (cap. xliii), by Edward Gibbon ; and The Black Death in East Anglia, by Augus- tus H. Jessopp. 1 These selections are printed together for com- parison. It is suggested, first, that the comparison be enlarged by study of the Egyptian plagues in Exodus (capp. vii-xii), of tne pestilence at Athens as described by Thucydides (Book ii, 47-53, of Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year, or of Dr. Hecker's Black Death (translated in Cassell's National Library, paper) ; and, secondly, that comparisons be introduced through- out the study of this volume, of one selection with another, or of any selection with some parallel drawn from the teacher's reading. I. ETHIOPIA and Egypt have been stigmatized in every age as the original source and seminary of the plague. In a damp, hot, stagnating air, this African fever is generated from the putrefaction of animal sub- stances, and especially from the swarms of locusts, not less destructive to mankind in their death than in their lives. The fatal disease which depopulated the earth in the time of Justinian and his successors first ap- 1 Printed, by kind permission of Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, from The Coming of the Friars, and Other Essays* PESTILENCE. II peared in the neighbourhood of Pelusium, between the Serbonian bog and the eastern channel of the Nile. From thence, tracing as it were a double path, it spread to the East, over Syria, Persia, and the Indies, 5 and penetrated to the West, along the coast of Africa and over the continent of Europe. In the spring of the second year Constantinople, during three or four months, was visited by the pestilence ; and Proco- pius, who observed its progress and symptoms with 10 the eyes of a physician, has emulated the skill and diligence of Thucydides in the description of the plague of Athens. The infection was sometimes announced by the visions of a distempered fancy, and the victim despaired as soon as he had heard the 15 menace and felt the stroke of an invisible spectre. But the greater number, in their beds, in the streets, in their usual occupation, were surprised by a slight fever ; so slight, indeed, that neither the pulse nor the colour of the patient gave any signs of the approach- 20 ing danger. The same, the next, or the succeeding day, it was declared by the swelling of the glands, particularly those of the groin, of the armpits, and under the ear ; and when these buboes or tumours were opened, they were found to contain a coal, or 25 black substance, of the size of a lentil. If they came to a just swelling and suppuration, the patient was saved by this kind and natural discharge of the morbid humour ; but if they continued hard and dry, a morti- fication quickly ensued, and the fifth day was com- 3omonly the term of his life. The fever was often accompanied with lethargy or delirium ; the bodies of the sick were covered with black pustules or car- IS EDWARD GIBBON* buncles, the symptoms of immediate death ; and in the constitutions too feeble to produce an eruption, the vomiting of blood was followed by a mortification of the bowels. To pregnant women the plague was generally mortal ; yet one infant was drawn alive from 5 his dead mother, and three mothers survived the loss of their infected foetus. Youth was the most perilous season, and the female sex was less susceptible than the male ; but every rank and profession was attacked with indiscriminate rage, and many of those who 10 escaped were deprived of the use of their speech, without being secure from a return of the disorder. The physicians of Constantinople were zealous and skilful ; but their art was baffled by the various symptoms and pertinacious vehemence of the disease : 15 the same remedies were productive of contrary effects, and the event capriciously disappointed their prognostics of death or recovery. The order of funerals and the right of sepulchres were confounded ; those who were left without friends or servants lay 20 unburied in the streets, or in their desolate houses ; and a magistrate was authorized to collect the promis- cuous heaps of dead bodies, to transport them by land or water, and to inter them in deep pits beyond the precincts of the city. Their own danger and the 25 prospect of public distress awakened some remorse in the minds of the most vicious of mankind : the con- fidence of health again revived their passions and habits ; but philosophy must disdain the observation of Procopius, that the lives of such men were guarded 30 by the peculiar favour of fortune or of Providence. He forgot, or perhaps he secretly recollected, that the PESTILENCE. 1 3 plague had touched the person of Justinian himself ; but the abstemious diet of the emperor may suggest, as in the case of Socrates, a more rational and honour- able cause for his recovery. During his sickness the 5 public consternation was expressed in the habits of the citizens ; and their idleness and despondence occasioned a general scarcity in the capital of the East. II. THIS is the earliest instance I have yet met with of 10 the appearance of the plague among us, and as it is the earliest, so does it appear to have been one of the most frightful visitations from which any town or vil- lage in Suffolk or Norfolk suffered during the time the pestilence lasted. On the ist of May another 15 court was held, fifteen more deaths are recorded thirteen men and two women. Seven of them without heirs. On the 3rd of November, apparently when the panic abated, again the court met. In the six months that had passed thirty-six more deaths had occurred, 20 and thirteen more households had been left without a living soul to represent them. In this little com- munity, in six months' time, twenty-one families had been absolutely obliterated men, women and children and of the rest it is difficult to see how there can 25 have been a single house in which there was not one dead. Meanwhile, some time in September, the parson of the parish had fallen a victim to the scourge, and on the 2nd of October another was insti- tuted in his room. Who reaped the harvest ? The 30 tithe sheaf too how was it garnered in the barn? *4 AUGUSTUS H. JESSOPP. And the poor kine at milking time ? Hush ! Let us pass on. The plague had apparently fallen with the greatest virulence upon the coast and along the water-courses, but already in the spring had reached the neighbour- 5 hood of Norwich, and was showing an unsparing im- partiality in its visitation. At Earlham and Wytton and Horsford, at Taverham and Bramerton, all of them villages within five miles of the cathedral, the parsons had already died. Round the great city, then the 10 second city in England, village was being linked to village closer and closer every day in one ghastly chain of death. What a ring-fence of horror and con- tagion for all comers and goers to overpass ! For two months Thomas de Methwold, the official, 15 stayed where he had been bidden to stay, in the thick of it all, at the palace. On the 29th of May he could bear it no longer. Do you ask was he afraid ? Not so ! We shall see that he was no craven ; but the bravest men are not reckless, and least of all are they 20 the men who are careless about the lives or the feel- ings of others. The great cemetery of the city of Nor- wich was at this time actually within the cathedral Close. The whole of the large space enclosed between the nave of the cathedral on the south and the 25 bishop's palace on the east, and stretching as far as the Erpingham gate on the west, was one huge grave- yard. When the country parsons come to present themselves for institution at the palace, they had to pass straight across this cemetery. The tiny church- 30 yards of the city, demonstrably very little if at all PESTILENCE. 15 larger than they are now, were soon choked, the soil rising higher and higher above the level of the street, which even to this day is in some cases five or six feet below the soppy sod piled up within the old enclosures. 5 To the great cemetery within the close the people brought their dead, the tumbrels discharging their load of corpses all day long, tilting them into the huge pits made ready to receive them ; the stench of putre- faction palpitating through the air, and borne by the 10 gusts of the western breeze through the windows of the palace, where the Bishop's official sat, as the can- didates knelt before him and received institution with the usual formalities. It was hard upon him, it was doubly so upon those who had travelled a long day's 15 journey through the pestilential villages ; and on the 3oth of May the official removed from Norwich to Terlyng, in Essex, where the Bishop had a residence ; there he remained for the next ten days, during which time he instituted thirty-nine more parsons to their 20 several benefices. By this time other towns in the diocese had felt the force of the visitation. Ipswich had been smitten, and Stowmarket, and East Dereham how many more we cannot tell. Then the news came that the Bishop had returned ; Thomas de Methwold 25 was at once ordered back to Norwich come what might, that was his post ; there he should stay, whether to live or die. How could it be otherwise ? In the two counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, at least nineteen religious houses 30 were left without prior or abbot. We may be quite sure that where the chief ruler dropped off the *6 AUGUSTUS H. JESSOPP. brethren of the house and the army of servants and hangers-on did not escape. What happened at the great Abbey of St. Edmund's we know not yet, and until we get more light it is idle to conjecture, but, as a man stands in that vast graveyard at Bury, and looks 5 around him, he can hardly help trying trying, but failing to imagine what the place must have looked like when the plague was raging. What a Valley of Hinnom it must have been ! Those three mighty churches, all within a stone's throw of one another, 10 and one of them just one hundred feet longer than the cathedral at Norwich, sumptuous with costly offerings, and miracles of splendour within and outside ghastly heaps of corruption, and piles of corpses waiting their turn to be covered up with an inch or two of earth. 15 Who can adequately realize the horrors of that awful summer? In the desolate swamps through which the sluggish Bure crawls reluctantly to mingle its waters with the Yare ; by the banks of the Waveney where the little Bungay nunnery had been a refuge for the 20 widow, the forsaken, or the devout for centuries ; in the valley of the Nar the Norfolk Holy Land where seven monasteries of one sort or another clustered, each distant from the other but a few short miles among the ooze and sedge and chill loneliness of the 25 Broads, where the tall reeds wave and whisper, and all else is silent the glorious buildings with their sumptuous churches were little better than centres of contagion. From the stricken towns people fled to the monasteries, lying away there in their seclusion, 30 lonely, favoured of God. If there was hcpe anywhere it must be there. As frightened widows and orphans PESTILENCE. 17 flocked to these havens of refuge, they carried the Black Death with them, and when they dropped death- stricken at the doors, they left the contagion behind them as their only legacy. Guilty wretches with a 5 load of crime upon their consciences desperate as far as this world was concerned, and ready for any act of wickedness should the occasion arrive shud- dered lest they should go down to burning flame for ever now that there was none to shrive them or to 10 give the viaticum to any late penitent in his agony. In the tall towers by the wayside the bells hung mute ; no hands to ring them or none to answer to their call. Meanwhile, across the lonely fields, toiling dismally, and ofttimes missing the track for who should guide 15 them or show the path ? parson and monk and trembling nun made the best of their way to Norwich ; their errand to seek admission to the vacant prefer- ment. Think of them, after miles of dreary travelling, reaching the city gates at last, and shudderingly 20 threading the filthy alleys which then served as streets, stepping back into doorways to give the dead carts passage, and jostled by lepers and outcasts, the touch of whose garments was itself a horror. Think of them staggering across the great cemetery and stum- 25blingover the rotting carcases not yet committed to the earth, breathing all the while the tainted breath of corruption sickening, loathsome ! Think of them returning as they came, going over the same ground as before, and compelled to gaze again at 30 *' Sights that haunt the soul for ever. or THE" Poisoning life till life is done/' N I V E R S II OF c8 AUGUSTUS H. JESSOPP. Think of them foot-sore, half-famished, hardly dar- ing to buy bread and meat for their hunger, or to beg a cup of cold water for Christ's sake, or entreat shelter for the night in their faintness and weariness, lest men should cry out at them "Look! the Black Death has clutched another of the doomed ! " III. parts ^Before tbc Second Bmptre. GEORGE DU MAURIER. From Peter Ibbetson. 1 This selection is intended to exemplify the range of suggestion (p. xi) and the method of simple enumera- tion by narrative (p. xxx). Observe also the recurring suggestion of the aspect of the whole, and the frequent use of bold figures. Other examples of the cumulative method, with or without narrative, may be found in any good guide book, or better in Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer's English Cathedrals; in Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, in Lamb's Old Margate Hoy (Last Essays of Elia), in Hawthorne's Marble Faun, in Stevenson's Across the Plains, and in many familiar descriptions by Dickens, for example, in the third chapter of David Coppcrfield. As we grew older and wiser we had permission to extend our explorations to Meudon, Versailles, St. Germain, and other delightful places ; to ride thither on hired horses, after having duly learned to ride 5 at the famous " School of Equitation," in the Rue D u phot. Also, we swam in those delightful summer baths in the Seine, that are so majestically called " Schools of Natation," and became past masters in " la coupe " (a 10 stroke no other Englishman but ourselves has ever Copyright, 1891, Harper & Brothers. Printed by kind per- mission of the publishers. 19 20 GEORGE DU MAURIER. }>een quite able to manage), and in all the different delicate " nuances " of header-taking " la coulante," '* la hussarde," " la tete-beche," " la tout ce que vous voudrez." Also, we made ourselves at home in Paris, especially 5 old Paris. For instance, there was the island of St. Louis, with its stately old mansions entre cour et jar din, behind grim stone portals and high walls, where great magis- trates and lawyers dwelt in dignified seclusion the 10 nobles of the robe ; but where once had dwelt, in days gone by, the greater nobles of the sword crusa- ders, perhaps, and knights templars, like Brian de Bois Guilbert. And that other more famous island, la Cite, where 15 Paris itself was born, where Notre Dame reared its twin towers above the melancholy, gray, leprous walls and dirty brown roofs of the Hotel-Dieu. Pathetic little tumble-down old houses, all out of drawing and perspective, nestled like old spiders' 20 webs between the buttresses of the great cathedral ; and on the two sides of the little square in front (the Place du Parvis Notre Dame) stood ancient stone dwellings, with high slate roofs and elaborately- wrought iron balconies. They seemed to have such 25 romantic histories that I never tired of gazing at them, and wondering what the histories could be ; and now I think of it, one of these very dwellings must have been the Hotel de Gondelaurier, where, according to the most veracious historian that ever was, poor 30 Esmeralda once danced and played the tambourine to divert the fair damosel Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier PARIS BEFORE THE SECOND EMPIRE. 21 and her noble friends, all of whom she so transcended in beauty, purity, goodness, and breeding (although she was but an untaught, wandering gypsy girl, out of the gutter) ; and there, before them all and the gay 5 archer, she was betrayed to her final undoing by her goat, whom she had so imprudently taught how to spell the beloved name of " Phebus. n Close by was the Morgue, that grewsome building which the great etcher Meryon has managed to invest to with some weird fascination akin to that it had for me in those days and has now, as I see it with the charmed eyes of Memory. La Morgue ! what a fatal twang there is about the very name ! 15 After gazing one's fill at the horrors within (as became a healthy-minded English boy) it was but a step to the equestrian statute of Henri Quatre, on the Pont-Neuf (the oldest bridge in Paris, by the way) ; there, astride his long-tailed charger, he smiled, le roy 20 vert et galant, just midway between either bank of the historic river, just where it was most historic ; and turned his back on the Paris of the Bourgeois King with the pear-shaped face and the mutton-chop whiskers. 25 And there one stood, spellbound in indecision, like the ass of Buridan between two sacks of oats ; for on either side, north or south of the Pont-Neuf, were to be found enchanting slums, all more attractive the ones than the others, winding up and down hill and 30 round about and in and out, like haunting illustrations by Gustave Dore to Drolatick Tales by Balzac (not seen or read by me till many years later, I beg to say) 22 GEORGE DU MAURIER. Dark, narrow, silent, deserted streets that would turn up afterward in many a nightmare with the gutter in the middle and towerlets and stone posts all along the sides ; and high fantastic walls (where it was defendu d'affichcr), with bits of old battlement at the 5 top, and overhanging boughs of sycamore and lime, and behind them gray old gardens that dated from the days of Louis le Hutin and beyond ! And suggestive names printed in old rusty iron letters at the street corners " Rue Videgousset," " Rue Coupe-gorge," 10 " Rue de la Vieille Truanderie," " Impasse de la Tour de Nesle," etc., that appealed to the imagination like a chapter from Hugo or Dumas. And the way to these was by long, tortuous, busy thoroughfares, most irregularly flagged, and all alive 15 with strange, delightful people in blue blouses, brown woolen tricots, wooden shoes, red and white cotton nightcaps, rags and patches ; most graceful girls, with pretty, self-respecting feet, and flashing eyes, and no head-dress but their own hair ; gay, fat hags, all 20 smile ; thin hags, with faces of appalling wickedness or misery ; precociously witty little gutter-imps of either sex ; and such cripples ! jovial hunchbacks, lusty blind beggars, merry creeping paralytics, scrofulous wretches who joked and punned about 25 their sores ; light-hearted, genial mendicant monsters without arms or legs, who went ramping through the mud on their bellies, from one underground wine- shop to another ; and blue-chinned priests and bare- footed brown monks and demure Sisters of Charity, 30 and here and there a jolly chiffonnier with his hook, iind his knap-basket behind ; or a cuirassier, or a PARIS BEFORE THE SECOND EMPIRE. 23 gigantic carbineer, or gay little " Hunter of Africa," or a couple of bold gendarmes riding abreast, with their towering black bonnets a poil ; or a pair of pathetic little red-legged soldiers, conscripts just fresh from 5 the country, with innocent light eyes and straw- colored hair and freckled brown faces, walking hand in hand, and staring at all the pork-butchers' shops and sometimes at the pork-butcher's wife ! Then a proletarian wedding procession headed by 10 the bride and bridegroom, an ungainly pair in their Sunday best all singing noisily together. Then a pauper funeral, or a covered stretcher, followed by sympathetic eyes, on its way to the Hotel-Dieu ; or the last sacrament, with bell and candle, bound for the 15 bedside of some humble agonizer in extremis and we all uncovered as it went by. And then, for a running accompaniment of sound, the clanging chimes, the itinerant street criers, the tinkle of the marchand dc coco, the drum, the cor de zochasse, the organ of Barbary, the ubiquitous pet parrot, the knife-grinder, the bawling fried-potato monger, and, most amusing of all, the poodle-clipper and his son, strophe and antistrophe, for every minute the little boy would yell out in his shrill treble that 25 " his father clipped poodles for thirty sous, and was competent also to undertake the management of refractory tomcats," upon which the father would growl in his solemn bass, " My son speaks the truth " L' enfant dit vrai ! 30 And rising above the general cacophony the din of the eternally cracking whip, of the heavy cart-whee] jolting over the uneven stones, the stamp and neigh 24 GEORGE DU MAURIER. of the spirited little French cart-horse and the music of his many bells, and the cursing and swearing and hue! did,! of his driver ! It was all entrancing. Thence home to quiet, innocent, suburban Passy by the quays, walking on the top of the stone parapet 5 all the way, so as to miss nothing (till a gendarme was in sight), or else by the boulevards, the Rue de Rivoli, the Champs Elyse*es, the Avenue de St. Cloud, and the Chaussee de la Muette. What a beautiful walk ! Is there another like it anywhere as it was 10 then, in the sweet early forties of this worn-out old century, and before this poor scribe had reached his teens ? Ah ! it is something to have known that Paris, which lay at one's feet as one gazed from the heights 15 of Passy, with all its pinnacles and spires and gor- geously-gilded domes, its Arch of Triumph, its Ely- sian Fields, its Field of Mars, its Towers of our Lady, its far-off Column of July, its Invalids, and Vale of Grace, and Magdalen, and Place of the 20 Concord, where the obelisk reared its exotic peak by the beautiful unforgettable fountains. There flowed the many-bridged winding river, always the same way, unlike our tidal Thames, and always full; just beyond it was spread that stately, 25 exclusive suburb, the despair of the newly rich and recently ennobled, where almost every other house bore a name which read like a page o; French his- tory ; and farther still the merry, wicked Latin quarter and the grave Sorbonne, the Pantheon, the Garden of 30 Plants ; on the hither side in the middle distance, the PARIS BEFORE THE SECOND EMPIRE. 25 Louvre, where the kings of France had dwelt for centuries ; the Tuileries, where " the King of the French" dwelt then, and just for a little while yet. Well I knew and loved it all ; and most of all I 5 loved it when the sun was setting at my back, and innumerable distant windows reflected the blood-red western flame. It seemed as though half Paris were on fire, with the cold blue east for a background. Dear Paris ! 10 Yes, it is something to have roamed over it as a small boy a small English boy (that is, a small boy unattended by his mother or his nurse), curious, in- quisitive, and indefatigable ; full of imagination ; all his senses keen with the keenness that belongs to 15 the morning of life : the sight of a hawk, the hearing of a bat, almost the scent of a hound. Indeed, it required a nose both subtle and unpreju- diced to understand and appreciate and thoroughly enjoy that Paris not Paris of M. le Baron Hauss- 2omann, lighted by gas and electricity, and flushed and drained by modern science ; but the " good old Paris " of Balzac and Eugene Sue and Les Mysttres the Paris of dim oil-lanterns suspended from iron gibbets (where once aristocrats had been hung) ; of 25 water-carriers who sold water from their hand-carts, and delivered it at your door (au cinquieme) for a penny a pail to drink of, and wash in, and cook with, and all. There were whole streets and these by no means the least fascinating and romantic where the un- 30 written domestic records of every house were afloat in the air outside it records not all savory x>r sweet, but always full of interest and charm I 26 GEORGE DU MAURIER. One knew at a sniff as one passed the porU cochlre what kind of people lived behind and above ; what they ate and what they drank, and what their trade was ; whether they did their washing at home, and burned tallow or wax, and mixed chicory with their 5 coffee, and were over-fond of Gruyere cheese the biggest, cheapest, plainest, and most formidable cheese in the world ; whether they fried with oil or butter, and liked their omelets overdone and garlic in their salad, and sipped black-currant brandy or anisette as a 10 liqueur ; and were overrun with mice, and used cats or mouse-traps to get rid of them, or neither ; and bought violets, or pinks, or gillyflowers in season, and kept them too long ; and fasted on Friday with red or white beans, or lentils, or had a dispensation from 15 the Pope or, haply, even dispensed with the Pope's dispensation. For of such a telltale kind were the overtones in that complex, odorous clang. I will not define its fundamental note ever there, 20 ever the same ; big with a warning of quick-coming woe to many households ; whose unheeded waves, slow but sure, and ominous as those that rolled on great occasions from le Bourdon de Notre Dame (the Big Ben of Paris), drove all over the gay city and beyond, 25 night and day penetrating every corner, overflowing the most secret recesses, drowning the very incense by the altar-steps. " Le pauvre en sa cabane ou le chaume le couvre Est sujet a ses lois ; 30 Et la garde qui veille aux barrieres du Louvre N'en defend point nos rois." PARIS BEFORE THE SECOND EMPIRE. 27 And here, as I write, the faint, scarcely perceptible, ghost-like suspicion of a scent a mere nostalgic fancy, compound, generic, synthetic and all-embracing an abstract olfactory symbol of the " Tout Paris " of fifty 5 years ago, comes back to me out of the past ; and fain would I inhale it in all its pristine fulness and vigor. For scents, like musical sounds, are rare sublimaters of the essence of memory (this is a prodigious fine phrase I hope it means something), and scents need 10 not be seductive in themselves to recall the seductions of scenes and days gone by. Alas ! scents cannot be revived at will, like an " Air doux et tendre Jadis aime ! " { 15 Oh, that I could hum or whistle an old French smell ! I could wake all Paris, sweet, prae-imperial Paris, in a single whiff ! IV. JOHN BURROUGHS. From An Idyl of the Honey-Bee. 1 This selection is essentially of the same kind as the preceding, but involves some exposition. It may stand as typical of the large body of outdoor sketches that owe their force mainly to the keenness of the author's observa- tion. It should be used to stimulate the observation of the pupil, but also to induce a higher precision and aptness in recording the results of that observation. The keenness of Burroughs's observation, and the force and aptness of his figures, contrast sharply with the weakness of his occasional conventionalities in diction and looseness in sentences. It will be profitable for the student to distinguish the excellent parts of his description from the parts where he lapses. Parallels will be found in the works of Richard Jefferies, Maurice Thompson, W. Hamilton Gibson, Frank Bolles, Bradford Torrey, and in the classic Natural History of Selborne (printed in Cassell's National Library, 2 vols., paper). THERE is no creature with which man has surrounded himself that seems so much like a product of civiliza- tion, so much like the result of development on special lines and in special fields, as the honey-bee. Indeed, a colony of bees, with their neatness and love of order, their division of labor, their public spiritedness, their 1 Printed by kind permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Company, from Birds and Bees (Riverside Literature Series, No. 28, paper, fifteen cents). J3EES. 29 thrift, their complex economies and their inordinate love of gain, seems as far removed from a condition of rude nature as does a walled city or a cathedral town. Our native bee, on the other hand, "the burly, dozing 5 bumble-bee," affects one more like the rude, untutored savage. He has learned nothing from experience. He lives from hand to mouth. He luxuriates in time of plenty, and he starves in times of scarcity. He lives in a rude nest or in a hole in the ground, and in small 10 communities ; he builds a few deep cells or sacks in which he stores a little honey and bee-bread for his young, but as a worker in wax he is of the most primi- tive and awkward. The Indian regarded the honey- bee as an ill-omen. She was the white man's fly. In 15 fact she was the epitome of the white man himself. She has the white man's craftiness, his industry, his architectural skill, his neatness and love of system, his foresight ; and above all, his eager, miserly habits. The honey-bee's great ambition is to be rich, to lay up great 20 stores, to possess the sweet of every flower that blooms. She is more than provident. Enough will not satisfy her ; she must have all she can get by hook or by crook. She comes from the oldest country, Asia, and thrives best in the most fertile and long-settled lands. 25 Yet the fact remains that the honey-bee is essentially a wild creature, and never has been and cannot be thoroughly domesticated. Its proper home is the woods, and thither every new swarm counts on going ; and thither many do go in spite of the care and watch- jo fulness of the bee-keeper. If the woods in any given locality are deficient in trees with suitable cavities, the bees resort to all sorts of makeshifts ; they go into 30 JOHN BURROUGHS. chimneys, into barns and outhouses, under stones, into rocks, and so forth. Several chimneys in my locality with disused flues are taken possession of by colonies of bees nearly every season. One day, while bee- hunting, I developed a line that went toward a farm- 5 house where I had reason to believe no bees were kept. I followed it up and questioned the farmer about his bees. He said he kept no bees, but that a swarm had taken possession of his chimney, and another had gone under the clapboards in the gable end of 3iis house. 10 He had taken a large lot of honey out of both places the year before. Another farmer told me that one day his family had seen a number of bees examining a knot- hole in the side of his house ; the next day as they were sitting down to dinner their attention was 15 attracted by a loud humming noise, when they dis- covered a swarm of bees settling upon the side of the house and pouring into the knot-hole. In subsequent years other swarms came to the same place. Apparently, every swarm of bees before it leaves 20 the parent hive sends out exploring parties to look up the future home. The woods and groves are searched through and through, and no doubt the privacy of many a squirrel and many a wood mouse is intruded upon. What cozy nooks and retreats they do spy 25 out, so much more attractive than the painted hive in the garden, so much cooler in summer and so much warmer in winter ! The bee is in the main an honest citizen ; she prefers legitimate to illegitimate business; she is 30 never an outlaw until her proper sources of supply fail ; she will not touch honey as long as honey-yield- BEES. 3 1 ing flowers can be found ; she always prefers to go to the fountain-head, and dislikes to take her sweets at second hand. But in the fall, after the flowers have failed, she can be tempted. The bee-hunter takes 5 advantage of this fact ; he betrays her with a little honey. He wants to steal her stores, and he first en- courages her to steal his, then follows the thief home with her booty. This is the whole trick of the bee- hunter. The bees never suspect his game, else by 10 taking a circuitous route they could easily baffle him. , But the honey-bee has absolutely no wit or cunning outside of her special gifts as a gatherer and storer of honey. She is a simple-minded creature, and can be imposed upon by any novice. Yet it is not every 15 novice that can find a bee-tree. The sportsman may track his game to its retreat by the aid of his dog, but in hunting the honey-bee one must be his own dog, and track his game through an element in which it leaves no trail. It is a task for a sharp, quick eye, 20 and may test the resources of the best wood-craft. One autumn, when I devoted much time to this pur- suit, as the best means of getting at nature and the open-air exhilaration, my eye became so trained that bees were nearly as easy to it as birds. I saw and 25 heard bees wherever I went. One day, standing on a street corner in' a great city, I saw above the trucks and the traffic a line of bees carrying off sweets from some grocery or confectionery shop. One looks upon the woods with a new interest when 30 he suspects they hold a colony of bees. What a pleas- ing secret it is ; a tree with a heart of comb-honey, a decayed oak or maple with a bit of Sicily or Mount 32 JOHN BURROUGHS. Hymettus stowed away in its trunk or branches ; secret chambers where lies hidden the wealth of ten thousand little freebooters, great nuggets and wedges of precious ore gathered with risk and labor from e^ery field and wood about. 5 But if you would know the delights of bee-hunting, and how many sweets such a trip yields besides honey, come with me some bright, warm, late September or early October day. It is the golden season of the year, and any errand or pursuit that takes us abroad 10 upon the hills or by the painted woods and along the amber-colored streams at such a time is enough. So, with haversacks filled with grapes and peaches and apples and a bottle of milk for we shall not be home to dinner and armed with a compass, a hatchet, a 15 pail, and a box with a piece of comb-honey neatly fitted into it any box the size of your hand with a lid will do nearly as well as the elaborate and inge- nious contrivance of the regular bee-hunter we sally forth. Our course at first lies along the highway, 20 under great chestnut-trees whose nuts are just drop- ping, then through an orchard and across a little creek, thence gently rising through a long series of cultivated fields toward some high, uplying land, be- hind which rises a rugged wooded ridge or mountain, 25 the most sightly point in all this section. Behind this ridge for several miles the country is wild, wooded, and rocky, and is no doubt the home of many wild swarms of bees. What a gleeful uproar the robins, cedar-birds, high-holes, and cow black-birds make 30 amid the black cherry-trees as we pass along. The raccoons, too, have been here after black cherries, and BEES. 33 we see their marks at various points. Several crows are walking about a newly-sowed wheat field we pass through, and we pause to note their graceful move- ments and glossy coats. I have seen no bird walk 5 the ground with just the same air the crow does. It is not exactly pride ; there is no strut or swagger in i;, though, perhaps, just a little condescension ; it is the contented, complaisant, and self-possessed gait of a lord over his domains. All these acres are mine, he 10 says, and all these crops ; men plow and sow for me, and I stay here or go there, and find life sweet and good wherever I am. The hawk looks awkward and out of place on the ground ; the game birds hurry and skulk, but the crow is at home and treads the 15 earth as if there were none to molest or make him afraid. The crows we have always with us, but it is not every day or every season that one sees an eagle. Hence I must preserve the memory of one I saw the 20 last day I went bee-hunting. As I was laboring up the side of a mountain at the head of a valley, the noble bird sprang from the top of a dry tree above me and came sailing directly over my head. I saw him bend his eye down upon me, and I could hear 25 the low hum of his plumage, as if the web of every quill in his great wings vibrated in his strong, level flight. I watched him as long as my eye could hold him. When he was fairly clear of the mountain he began that sweeping spiral movement in which he 30 climbs the sky. Up and up he went without once breaking his majestic poise till he appeared to sight some far-off alien geography, when he bent his course 34 JOHN BURROUGHS. thitherward, and gradually vanished in the blue depths. The eagle is a bird of large ideas, he embraces long distances ; the continent is his home. I never look upon one without emotion ; I follow him with my eye as long as I can. I think of Canada, of the * Great Lakes, of the Rocky Mountains, of the wild and sounding seacoast. The waters are his, and the woods and the inaccessible cliffs. He pierces behind the veil of the storm, and his joy is height and depth and vast spaces. 10 We go out of our way to touch at a spring run in the edge of the woods, and are lucky to find a single scarlet lobelia lingering there. It seems almost to light up the gloom with its intense bit of color. Be- side a ditch in a field beyond we find the great blue 15 lobelia (Lobelia syphiliticd), and near it amid the weeds and wild grasses and purple asters the most beautiful of our fall flowers, the fringed gentian. What a rare and delicate, almost aristocratic look the gentian has amid its coarse, unkempt surroundings. It does not 20 lure the bee, but it lures and holds every passing human eye. If we strike through the corner of yondrr woods, where the ground is moistened by hidden springs, and where there is a little opening amid the trees, we shall find the closed gentian, a rare 25 flower in this locality. I had walked this way many tiir~s before I chanced upon its retreat ; and then I was following a line of bees. I lost the bees, but I got the gentians. How curiously this flower looks, with its deep blue petals folded together so tightly a 30 bud and yet a blossom. It is the nun among our wild flowers, a form closely veiled and cloaked. The BEES. 35 buccaneer bumble-bee sometimes tries to rifle it of its sweets. I have seen the blossom with the bee en- tombed in it. He had forced his way into the virgin corolla as if determined to know its secret, but he had 5 never returned with the knowledge he had gained. After a refreshing walk of a couple of miles we reach a point where we will make our first trial a high stone wall that runs parallel with the wooded ridge referred to, and separated from it by a broad 10 field. There are bees at work there on that golden- rod, and it requires but little manoeuvring to sweep one into our box. Almost any other creature rudely and suddenly arrested in its career and clapped into a cage in this way would show great, confusion and 15 alarm. The bee is alarmed for a moment, but the bee has a passion stronger than its love of life or fear of death, namely, desire for honey, not simply to eat, but to carry home as booty. " Such rage of honey in their bosom beats," says Virgil. It is quick to catch 20 the scent of honey in the box, and as quick to fall to filling itself. We now set the box down upon the wall and gently remove the cover. The bee is head and shoulders in one of the half-filled cells, and is oblivious to everything else about it. Come rack, 25 come ruin, it will die at work. We step back a few paces, and sit down upon the ground, so as to bring the box against the blue sky as a background. In two or three minutes the bee is seen rising slowly and heavily from the box. It seems loath to leave so 30 much honey behind and it marks the place well. It mounts aloft in a rapidly increasing spiral, surveying the near and minute objects first, then the larger and 36 JOHN BURROUGHS. more distant, till having circled about the spot five or six times and taken all its bearings it darts away for home. It is a good eye that holds fast to the bee till it is fairly off. Sometimes one's head will swim following it, and often one's eyes are put out by the 5 sun. This bee gradually drifts down the hill, then strikes away toward a farm-house half a mile away, where I know bees are kept. Then we try another and another, and the third bee, much to our satisfac- tion, goes straight toward the woods. We could see 10 the brown speck against the darker background for many yards. The regular bee-hunter professes to be able to tell a wild bee from a tame one by the color, the former, he says, being lighter. But there is no difference ; they are both alike in color and in man- 15 ner. Young bees are lighter that old, and that is all there is of it. If a bee lived many years in the woods it would doubtless come to have some distin- guishing marks, but the life of a bee is only a few months at the farthest, and no change is wrought in 20 this brief time. Our bees are all soon back, and more with them, for we have touched the box here and there with the cork of a bottle of anise oil, and this fragrant and pungent oil will attract bees half a mile or more. 25 When no flowers can be found, this is the quickest way to obtain a bee. It is a singular fact that when the bee first finds the hunter's box its first feeling is one of anger ; it is as mad as a hornet ; its tone changes, it sounds its 30 shrill war trumpet and darts to and fro, and gives vent to its rage and indignation in no uncertain man- BEES. 37 ner. It seems to scent foul play at once. It says, " Here is robbery ; here is the spoil of some hive, may be my own," and its blood is up. But its ruling passion soon comes to the surface, its avarice gets 5 the better of its indignation, and it seems to say, " Well, I had better take possession of this and carry it home." So after many feints and approaches and dartings off with a loud angry hum as if it would none of it, the bee settles down and fills itself. 10 It does not entirely cool off and get soberly to work till it has made two or three trips home with its booty. When other bees come, even if all from the same swarm, they quarrel and dispute over the box, and clip and dart at each other like bantam 15 cocks. Apparently the ill feeling which the sight of the honey awakens is not one of jealousy or rivalry, but wrath. When a bee-tree is thus " taken up" in the middle of the day, of course a good many bees are away from 20 home and have not heard the news. When they re- turn and find the ground flowing with honey, and piles of bleeding combs lying about, they apparently do not recognize the place, and their first instinct is to fall to and fill themselves ; this done, their next 25 thought is to carry it home, so they rise up slowly through the branches of the trees till they have at- tained an altitude that enables them to survey the scene, when they seem to say, "Why, this is home," and down they come again ; beholding the wreck and 30 ruins once more they still think there is some mistake, and get up a second or third time and then drop back 38 JOHN BURROUGHS. pitifully as before. It is the most pathetic sight of all, the surviving and bewildered bees struggling to save a few drops of their wasted treasures. Presently, if there is another swarm in the woods, robber-bees appear. You may know them by their 5 saucy, chiding, devil-may-care hum. It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, and they make the most of the misfortune of their neighbors ; and thereby pave the way for their own ruin. The hunter marks their course and the next day looks them up. On this oc- 10 casion the day was hot and the honey very fragrant, and a line of bees was soon established S. S. W. Though there was much refuse honey in the old stub, and though little golden rills trickled down the hill from it, and the near branches and saplings were be- 15 smeared with it where we wiped our murderous hands, yet not a drop was wasted. It was a feast to which not only honey-bees came, but bumble-bees, wasps, hornets, flies, ants. The bumble-bees, which at this season are hungry vagrants with no fixed place of 20 abode, would gorge themselves, then creep beneath the bits of empty comb or fragments of bark and pass the night, and renew the feast next day. The bumble-bee is an insect of which the bee-hunter sees much. There are all sorts and sizes of them. They 25 are dull and clumsy compared with the honey-bee. Attracted in the fields by the bee-hunter's box, they will come up the wind on the scent and blunder into it in the most stupid, lubberly fashion. The honey-bees that licked up our leavings on the 30 old stub belonged to a swarm, as it proved, about half a mile farther down the ridge, and a few days after- BEES. 39 ward fate overtook them, and their stores in turn became the prey of another swarm in the vicinity, which also tempted Providence and were overwhelmed. The first mentioned swarm I had lined from several 5 points, and was following up the clew over rocks and through gulleys, when I came to where a large hem- lock had been felled a few years before and a swarm taken from a cavity near the top of it ; fragments of the old comb were yet to be seen. A few yards away lo stood another short, squatty hemlock, and I said my bees ought to be there. As I paused near it I noticed where the tree had been wounded with an ax a couple of feet from the ground many years before. The wound had partially grown over, but there was an 15 opening there that I did not see at the first glance. I was about to pass on when a bee passed me making that peculiar shrill, discordant hum that a bee makes when besmeared with honey. I saw it alight in the partially closed wound and crawl home ; then came 20 others and others, little bands and squads of them heavily freighted with honey from the box. The tree was about twenty inches through and hollow at the butt, or from the ax mark down. This space the bees had completely filled with honey. With an ax we cut 25 away the outer ring of live wood and exposed the treasure. Despite the utmost care, we wounded the comb so that little rills of the golden liquid issued from the root of the tree and trickled down the hill. The other bee-tree in the vicinity, to which I have 30 referred, we found one warm November day in less than half an hour after entering the woods. It also was a hemlock, that stood in a niche in a wall of 40 JOHN BURROUGHS. hoary, moss-covered rocks thirty feet high. The tree hardly reached to the top of the precipice. The bees entered a small hole at the root, which was seven or eight feet from the ground. The position was a strik- ing one. Never did apiary have a finer outlook or 5 more rugged surroundings. A black, wood-embraced lake lay at our feet ; the long panorama of the Cats- kills filled the far distance, and the more broken out- lines of the Shawangunk range filled the rear. On every hand were precipices and a wild confusion of 10 rocks and trees. The cavity occupied by the bees was about three feet and a half long and eight or ten inches in diam- eter. With an ax we cut away one side of the tree and laid bare its curiously wrought heart of honey. It 15 was a most pleasing sight. What winding and devi- ous ways the bees had through their palace ! What great masses and blocks of show-white comb there were ! Where it was sealed up, presenting that slightly dented, uneven surface, it looked like some 20 precious ore. When we carried a large pail full of it out of the woods, it seemed still more like ore. V. Gbe fcarfeb of Selborne. GILBERT WHITE. From the Natural History of Selborne (i). This selection is an instance of enumerative description, with simple grouping of details (p. xxi). The purpose is expository, the diction remarka- ble for its precision and simplicity. THE parish of Selborne lies in the extreme eastern corner of the county of Hampshire, bordering on the county of Sussex, and not far from the county of Surrey ; is about fifty miles southwest of London, in 5 latitude fifty-one, and near midway between the towns of Alton and Petersfield. Being very large and extensive, it abuts on twelve parishes, two of which are in Sussex, viz., Trotton and Rogate. If you begin from the south and proceed westward, the adjacent 10 parishes are Emshot, Newton Valence, Faringdon, Hartely-Mauduit, Great Wardleham, Kingsley, Hed- leigh, Bramshot, Trotton, Rogate, Lysse, and Great- ham. The soils of this district are almost as various and diversified as the views and aspects. The 15 high part of the southwest consists of a vast hill of chalk, rising three hundred feet above the village, and is divided into a sheep-down, the high wood, and a long hanging wood called The Hanger. The covert of this eminence is altogether beech, the most lovely of 42 GILBERT WHITE. all forest trees, whether we consider its smooth rind or bark, its glossy foliage, or graceful pendulous boughs. The down, or sheep-walk, is a pleasant, park- like spot, of about one mile by half that space, jutting out on the verge of the hill-country, where it begins to 5 break down into the plains, and commanding a very engaging view, being an assemblage of hill, dale, wood- lands, heath, and water. The prospect is bounded io the southeast and east by the vast range of mountains called the Sussex downs, by Guild-down near Guild- 10 ford, and by the downs round Dorking, and Ryegate in Surrey, to the northeast, which altogether, with the country beyond Alton and Farnham, form a noble andi extensive outline. At the foot of this hill, one stage or step from the 15 uplands, lies the village, which consists of one single straggling street, three-quarters of a mile in length, in a sheltered vale, and running parallel with the Hanger. The houses are divided from the hill by a vein of stiff clay (good wheat land), yet stand on a rock of white 2o> stone, little in appearance removed from chalk ; but seems so far from being calcareous, that it endures extreme heat. Yet that the freestone still preserves; somewhat that is analogous to chalk, is plain from the- beeches, which descend as low as those rocks extend, 25 and no farther, and thrive as well on them, where the ground is steep, as on the chalks. The cart-way of the village divides, in a remarkable manner, two very incongruous soils. To the south- west is a rank clay, that requires the labour of years 30: to render it mellow ; while the gardens to the north- east, and small enclosures behind, consist of a warm, THE PARISH OP SELBORNE. 43 forward, crumbling mould, called black malm, which seems highly saturated with vegetable and animal manure : and these may perhaps have been the orig- inal site of the town ; while the woods and coverts 5 might extend down to the opposite bank. At each end of the village, which runs from south- east to northwest, arises a small rivulet : that at the northwest end frequently fails ; but the other is a fine perennial spring, little influenced by drought or wet 10 seasons, called Well-head. This breaks out of some high grounds joining to Nore Hill, a noble chalk prom- ontory, remarkable for sending forth two streams into two different seas. The one to the south becomes a branch of the Arun, running to Arundel, and so sail- 15 ing into the British Channel : the other to the north. The Selborne stream makes one branch of the Wey ; and, meeting the Black-down stream at Hedleigh, and the Alton and Farnham stream at Tilford-bridge, swells into a considerable river, navigable at Godal- soming ; from whence it passes toGuildford, and so into the Thames at Weybridge ; and thus at the Nore into the German Ocean. Our wells, at an average, run to about sixty-three feet, and when sunk to that depth seldom fail ; but 25 produce a fine limpid water, soft to the taste, and much commended by those who drink the pure ele- ment, but which does not lather well with soap. To the northwest, north and east of the village, is a range of fair enclosures, consisting of what is called a 30 white malm, a sort of rotten or rubble stone, which when turned up to the frost and rain, moulders to pieces, and becomes manure to itself. 44 GILBERT WHITE. Still on to the northeast, and a step lower, is a kind of white land, neither chalk nor clay, neither fit for pasture nor for the plough, yet kindly for hops, which root deep into the freestone, and have their poles and wood for charcoal growing just at hand. The white 5 soil produces the brightest hops. As the parish still inclines down towards Wolmer Forest, at the juncture of the clays and sand the soil becomes a wet, sandy loam, remarkable for timber, and infamous for roads. The oaks of Temple and 10 Blackmoor stand high in the estimation of purveyors, and have furnished much naval timber ; while the trees on the freestone grow large, but are what workmen call shaky, and so brittle as often to fall to pieces in sawing. Beyond the sandy loam the soil becomes a hungry, 15 lean sand, till it mingles with the forest ; and will pro- duce little without the assistance of lime and turnipa VI. EDWARD GIBBON. From the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (cap. xvii). This is a more formal and elaborate example of the kind of de scription seen in Selection V. Note the carefulness of the plan (p. xxiii), the principle followed in the selection of details, the conciseness inherent in the precision of the epithets. IF we survey Byzantium in the extent which it ac- quired with the august name of Constantinople, the figure of the Imperial city maybe represented under that of an unequal triangle. The obtuse point, which 5 advances towards the East and the shores of Asia, meets and repels the waves of the Thracian Bosphorus. The northern side of the city is bounded by the har- bour, and the southern is washed by the Propontis or Sea of Marmora. The basis of the triangle is opposed 10 to the West, and terminates the continent of Europe. But the admirable form and division of the circum- jacent land and water cannot, without a more ample explanation, be clearly or sufficiently understood. The winding channel through which the waters of 15 the Euxine flow with a rapid and incessant course towards the Mediterranean received the appellation of Bosphorus, a name not less celebrated in the history than in the fables of antiquity. A crowd of temples 45 46 EDWARD GIBBON. and of votive altars, profusely scattered along its steep and woody banks, attested the unskilfulness, the terrors, and the devotion. of the Grecian navigators who, after the example of the Argonauts, explored the dangers of the inhospitable Euxine. On these banks 5 tradition long preserved the memory of the palace of Phineus, infested by the obscene harpies ; and of the sylvan reigr. of Amycus, who defied the son of Leda to the combat of the Cestus. The straits of the Bos- phorus are terminated by the Cyanean rocks, which, 10 according to the description of the poets, had once floated on the face of the waters, and were destined by the gods to protect the entrance of the Euxine against the eye of profane curiosity. From the Cyanean rocks to the point and harbour of Byzan- 15 tium the winding length of the Bosphorus extends about sixteen miles, and its most ordinary breadth may be computed at about one mile and a half. The new castles of Europe and Asia are constructed, on either continent, upon the foundations of two celebrated 20 temples, of Serapis and of Jupiter Urius. The old castles, a work of the Greek emperors, command the narrowest part of the channel, in a place where the opposite banks advance within five hundred paces of each other. These fortresses were restored and 25 strengthened by Mahomet the Second when he medi- tated the seige of Constantinople : but the Turkish conqueror was most probably ignorant that, near two thousand years before his reign, Darius had chosen the same situation to connect the two continents by a 30 bridge of boats. At a small distance from the old castles we discover the little town of Chrysopolis, or BYZANTIUM. 47 Scutari, which may almost be considered as the Asi- atic suburb of Constantinople. The Bosphorus, as it begins to open into the Propontis, passes between Byzantium and Chalcedon. The latter of these cities 5 was built by the Greeks a few years before the former ; and the blindness of its founders, who overlooked the superior advantages of the opposite coast, has been stigmatized by a proverbial expression of contempt. The harbour of Constantinople, which may be con- losidered as an arm of the Bosphorus, obtained, in a very remote period, the denomination of the Golden Horn. The curve which it describes might be com- pared to the horn of a stag, or as it should seem, with more propriety, to that of an ox. The epithet of 15 golden was expressive of the riches which every wind wafted from the most distant countries into the secure and capacious port of Constantinople. The river Lycus, formed by the conflux of two little streams, pours into the harbour a perpetual supply of fresh 20 water, which serves to cleanse the bottom and to in- vite the periodical shoals of fish to seek their retreat in that convenient recess. As the vicissitudes of tides are scarcely felt in those seas, the constant depth of the harbour allows goods to be landed on the quays 25 without the assistance of boats ; and it has been ob- served- that, in many places, the largest vessels may rest their prows against the houses while their sterns are floating in the water. From the mouth of the Lycus to that of the harbour this arm of the Bos- jo phorus is more than seven miles in length. The entrance is about five hundred yards broad, and a strong chain could be occasionally drawn across it to 48 EDWAKD GIBBON. guard the port and city from the attack of an hostile navy. Between the Bosphorus and the Hellespont, the shores of Europe and Asia receding on either side en- close the Sea of Marmora, which was known to the 5 ancients by the denomination of Propontis. The navigation from the issue of the Bosphorus to the en- trance of the Hellespont is about one hundred and twenty miles. Those who steer their westward course through the middle of the Propontis may at once 10 descry the high lands of Thrace and Bithynia, and never lose sight of the lofty summit of Mount Olym- pus, covered with eternal snows. They leave on the left a deep gulf, at the bottom of which Nicomedia was seated, the imperial residence of Diocletian ; and 15 they pass the small islands of Cyzicus and Procon- nesus before they cast anchor at Gallipoli, where the sea, which separates Asia from Europe, is again con- tracted into a narrow channel. The geographers who, with the most skilful accuracy, 20 have surveyed the form and extent of the Hellespont, assign about sixty miles for the winding course, and about three miles for the ordinary breadth, of those celebrated straits. But the narrowest part of the channel is found to the northward of the old Turkish 25 castles, between the cities of Sestus and Abydus. It was here that the adventurous Leander braved the passage of the flood for the possession of his mistress. It was here likewise, in a place where the distance between the opposite banks cannot exceed five hun- 30 dred paces, that Xerxes imposed a stupendous bridge of boats, for the purpose of transporting into Europe BYZANTIUM. 49 a hundred and seventy myriads of barbarians. A sea contracted within such narrow limits may seem but ill to deserve the singular epithet of broad, which Homer, as well as Orpheus, has frequently bestowed Son the Hellespont. But our ideas of greatness are of a relative nature : the traveller, and especially the poet, who sailed along the Hellespont, who pursued the windings of the stream, and contemplated the rural scenery, which appeared on every side to ter- lominate the prospect, insensibly lost the remembrance of the sea ; and his fancy painted those celebrated straits with all the attributes of a mighty river, flowing with a swift current, in the midst of a woody and in- land country, and at length, through a wide mouth v 15 discharging itself into the ^Egean or Archipelago. Ancient Troy, seated on an eminence at the foot of Mount Ida, overlooked the mouth of the Hellespont, which scarcely received an accession of waters from the tribute of those immortal rivulets the Simois and 20 Scamander. The Grecian camp had stretched twelve miles along the shore, from the Sigean to the Rhcetean promontory ; and the flanks of the army were guarded by the bravest chiefs who fought under the banners of Agamemnon. The first of those promontories was 25 occupied by Achilles with his invincible myrmidons, and the dauntless Ajax pitched his tents on the other. After Ajax had fallen a sacrifice to his disappointed pride and to the ingratitude of the Greeks, his sepul- chre was erected on the ground where he had defended 30 the navy against the rage of Jove and of Hector ; and the citizens of the rising town of Rhceteum celebrated his memory with divine honours. Before Constantino 50 EDWARD GIBBON. gave a just preference to the situation of Byzantium, he had conceived the design of erecting the seat of empire on this celebrated spot, from whence the Romans derived their fabulous origin. The extensive plain which lies below ancient Troy, towards the 5 Rhcetean promontory and the tomb of Ajax, was first chosen for his new capital ; and, though the under- taking was soon relinquished, the stately remains of unfinished walls and towers attracted the notice of all who sailed through the straits of the Hellespont. 10 We are at present qualified to view the advantageous position of Constantinople, which appears to have been formed by nature for the centre and capital of a great monarchy. Situated in the forty-first degree of latitude, the Imperial city commanded, from her seven 15 hills, the opposite shores of Europe and Asia ; the climate was healthy and temperate, the soil fertile, the harbour secure and capacious, and the approach on the side of the continent was of small extent and easy defence. The Bosphorus and the Hellespont may be 20 considered as the two gates of Constantinople, and the prince who possessed those important passages could always shut them against a naval enemy and open them to the fleets of commerce. The preserva- tion of the eastern provinces may, in some degree, 25 be ascribed to the policy of Constantine, as the bar- barians of the Euxine, who in the preceding age had poured their armaments into the heart of the Mediter- ranean, soon desisted from the exercise of piracy, and despaired of forcing this insurmountable barrier. 30 When the gates of the Hellespont and the Bosphorus were shut, the capital still enjoyed within their BYZANTIUM. 51 spacious enclosure every production which could supply the wants or gratify the luxury of its numerous inhabitants. The sea-coasts of Thrace and Bithynia, which languish under the weight of Turkish oppres- 5 sion, still exhibit a rich prospect of vineyards, of gardens, and of plentiful harvests ; and the Propontis has ever been renowned for an inexhaustible store of the most exquisite fish, that are taken in their stated seasons, without skill, and almost without labour. But 10 when the passages of the straits were thrown open for trade, they alternately admitted the natural and arti- ficial riches of the north and south, of the Euxine, and of the Mediterranean. Whatever rude commodities were collected in the forests of Germany and Scythia, 15 as far as the sources of the Tanais and the Borys- thenes ; whatsoever was manufactured by the skill of Europe or Asia ; the corn of Egypt, and the gems and spices of the farthest India, were brought by the varying winds into the port of Constantinople, which, 20 for many ages, attracted the commerce of the ancient world. VII. Geneva. 1 JOHN RUSKIN. From Praterita ( v). Here also the method is enumeration with grouping and plan, but the aim is purely picturesque. Note that the free use of figures has the underlying force of precision. A LITTLE canton, four miles square, and which did not wish to be six miles square ! A little town, com- posed of a cluster of watermills, a street of penthouses, two wooden bridges, two dozen of stone houses, on a little hill, and three or four perpendicular lanes up and 5 down the hill. The four miles of acreage round, in grass, with modest gardens, and farm-dwelling houses ; the people, pious, learned, and busy, to a man, to a woman to a boy, to a girl, of them ; progressing to and fro mostly on their feet, and only where they had 10 business. And this bird's-nest of a place, to be the centre of religious and social thought, and of physical beauty, to all living Europe ! That is to say, think- ing and designing Europe, France, Germany, and Italy. They, and their pieties, and their prides, their 15 arts and their insanities, their wraths and slaughters, springing and flowering, building and fortifying, foam- ing and thundering round this inconceivable point of 1 Cf. The selection at the bottom of. p. xx. GENEVA. S3 patience : the most lovely spot, and the most notable, without any possible dispute, of the European uni- verse ; yet the nations do not covet it, do not gravitate to it, what is more wonderful, do not make a wilder- 5 ness of it. They fight their battles at Chalons and Leipsic ; they build their cotton mills on the Aire, and leave the Rhone running with a million of Aire power, all pure. They build their pleasure houses on Thames shingle and Seine mud, to look across to Lambeth, 10 and whatever is on the other side of the Seine. They found their military powers in the sand of Berlin, and leave this precipice-guarded plain in peace. And yet it rules them, is the focus of thought to them, and of passion, of science, and of contrat sociale ; of 15 rational conduct, and of decent and other manners. Saussure's school and Calvin's, Rousseau's and Byron's, Turner's, And of course, I was going to say, mine ; but I didn't write all that last page to end so. Yet Geneva 20 had better have ended with educating me and the likes of me, instead of the people who have hold of it now, with their polypous knots of houses, communal with ' London, Paris, and New York.' Beneath which, and on the esplanades of the 25 modern casino, New York and London now live no more the Genevese. What their home once was, I must try to tell, as I saw it. First, it was a notable town for keeping all its poor, inside of it. In the very centre, where an English 30 town has its biggest square, and its Exchange on the model of the Parthenon, built for the sake of the builder's commission on the cost ; there, on their little 54 JOHN RUSK IN. pile-propped island, and by the steep lane-sides, lived the Genevoise poor ; in their garrets, their laborious upper spinning or watch-wheel cutting rooms, their dark niches and angles of lane : mostly busy ; the infirm and old all seen to and cared for, their porringers 5 filled and their pallet-beds made, by household care. But, outside the ramparts, no more poor. A sputter, perhaps, southward, along the Savoy road ; but in all the champaign round, no mean rows of cubic lodgings with Doric porches ; no squalid fields 10 of mud and thistles ; no deserts of abandoned brick- field and insolvent kitchen garden. On the instant, outside Geneva gates, perfectly smooth, clean, trim- hedged or prim-walled country roads ; the main broad one intent on far-away things, its signal-posts inscribed 15 4 Route de Paris'; branching from it, right and left, a labyrinth of equally well-kept ways for fine carriage wheels, between the gentlemen's houses with their farms ; each having its own fifteen to twenty to fifty acres of mostly meadow, rich-waving always (in my 20 time for being there) with grass and flowers, like a kaleidoscope. Stately plane trees, aspen and walnut, sometimes in avenue, casting breezy, never gloomy shade round the dwelling-house. A dwelling-house indeed, all the year round ; no travelling from it to 25 fairer lands possible ; no shutting up for seasons in town ; hay-time and fruit-time, school-time and play, for generation after generation, within the cheerful white domicile with its green shutters and shingle roof, pinnacled perhaps, humourously, at the corners, 30 glittering on the edges with silvery tin. * Kept up ' the whole place, and all the neighbours' places, not osten- GENEVA. 55 tatiously, but perfectly : enough gardeners to mow, enough vintagers to press, enough nurses to nurse ; no foxes to hunt, no birds to shoot ; but every household felicity possible to prudence and honour, felt and 5 fulfilled from infancy to age. Where the grounds came down to the waterside, they were mostly built out into it, till the water was four or five feet deep, lapping up, or lashing, under breeze, against the terrace wall. Not much boating ; fancy 10 wherries, unmanageable, or too adventurous, upon the wild blue ; and Swiss boating a serious market and trade business, unfashionable in the high rural empyrean of Geneva. But between the Hotel des Etrangers (one of these country houses open to the 15 polite stranger, some half-mile out of the gates, where Salvador took us in '33 and '35) and the town, there were one or two landing-places for the raft-like flat feluccas ; and glimpses of the open lake and things beyond, glimpses only, shut off quickly by garden 20 walls, until one came to the inlet of lake-water' moat which bent itself under the ramparts back to the city gate. This was crossed, for people afoot who did not like going round to that main gate, by the delicatest of filiform suspension bridges ; strong enough it 25 looked to carry a couple of lovers over in safety, or a nursemaid and children, but nothing heavier. One was allowed to cross it for a centime, which seemed to me always a most profitable transaction, the portress receiving placidly a sort of dirty flattened sixpence, 30(1 forget its name), and returning me a waistcoat- pocketful of the loveliest little clean-struck centimes ; and then one might stand on the bridge any time, in 56 JOHN RUSKIK. perfect quiet. (The Genevese didn't like paying the centime, and went round by the gate.) Two swans, drifting about underneath, over a couple of fathoms of purest green water, and the lake really opening from the moat, exactly where the Chamouni range of 5 aiguilles rose beyond it far away. In our town walks we used always to time getting back to the little bridge at sunset, there to wait and watch. That was the way of things on the north side ; on the south, the town is still, in the main buildings of it, 10 as then ; the group of officially aristocratic houses round the cathedral and college presenting the same inaccessible sort of family dignity that they do to-day ; only, since then, the Geneva Liberals Well, I will not say what they have done ; the main town stands still 15 on its height of pebble-gravel ; knit almost into rock ; and still the upper terraces look across the variously mischievous Liberal woods to the open southern country, rising in steady slope of garden, orchard, and vineyard sprinkled with pretty farm-houses and bits 20 of chateau, like a sea-shore with shells ; rising always steeper and steeper, till the air gets rosy in the dis- tance, then blue, and the great walnut-trees have become dots, and the farmsteads, minikin as if they were the fairy-finest of models made to be packed in a 25 box ; and then, instant above vineyard, above farm- stead, above field and wood, leaps up the Saleve cliff, two thousand feet into the air. I don't think anybody who goes to Geneva ever sees the Saleve. For the most part, no English 30 creature ever does see farther than over the way ; and the Saleve, unless you carefully peer into it, and make GENEVA. 57 out what it is, pretends to be nothing, a long, low swell like the South Downs, I fancy most people take it for, and look no more. Yet there are few rocks in the high Alps more awful than the ' Angle ' of the 5 Saleve, at its foot seven Shakespeare's Cliffs set one on the top of another, and all of marble. On the other side of the high town the houses stand closer, leaving yet space for a little sycamore- shaded walk, whence one looks down on the whole 10 southern reach of lake, opening wide to the horizon, and edged there like the sea, but in the summer sun- shine looking as if it was the one well of blue which the sunbeams drank to make the sky of. Beyond it, ghostly ranges of incredible mountains the Dent 15 d'Oche, and first cliffs toward Fribourg ; to the west, the long wave of Jura, fading into the air above Neuchatel. That was the view for full noon, when the lake was brightest and bluest. Then you fell down a perpen- 2odicular lane into the lower town again, and you went to Mr. Bautte's. Virtually there was no other jeweller in Geneva, in the great times. There were some respectable, uncompetitive shops, not dazzling, in the main street ; 25 and smaller ones, with an average supply of miniature watches, that would go well for ten years ; and uncostly, but honest trinketry. But one went to Mr. Bautte's with awe, and of necessity, as one did to one's bankers. There was scarcely any external sign of 30 Bautte whatever a small brass plate at the side of a narrow arched door, into an alley into a secluded alley leading into a monastic courtyard, out of 58 JOHN RUSK IN. which or rather out of the alley, where it opened to the court, you ascended a winding stair, wide enough for two only, and came to a green door, swinging, at the top of it ; and there you paused to summon courage to enter. 5 A not large room, with a single counter at the further side. Nothing shown on the counter. Two confidential attendants behind -it, and it might pos- sibly be Mr. Bautte ! or his son or his partner or anyhow the Ruling power at his desk beside the back 10 window. You told what you wanted : it was neces- sary to know your mind, and to be sure you did want it ; there was no showing of things for temptation at Bautte's. You wanted a bracelet, a brooch, a watch plain or enamelled. Choice of what was wanted was 15 quietly given. There were no big stones, nor blinding galaxies of wealth. Entirely sound workmanship in the purest gold that could be worked ; fine enamel for the most part, for colour, rather than jewels ; and a certain Bauttessque subtlety of linked and wreathed 20 design, which the experienced eye recognized when worn in Paris or London. Absolutely just and moderate price ; wear, to the end of your days. You came away with a sense of duty fulfilled, of treasure possessed, and of a new foundation to the 25 respectability of your family. You returned into the light of the open street with a blissful sense of a parcel being made up to be sent after you, and in the consequently calm expatiation of mind, went usually to watch the Rhone. 30 Bautte's was in the main street, out of which one caught glimpses, down the short cross ones, of the GENEVA. 59 passing water, as at Sandgate, or the like fishing towns, one got peeps of the sea. With twenty steps you were beside it. For all other rivers there is a surface, and an under- 5 neath, and a vaguely displeasing idea of the bottom. But the Rhone flows like one lambent jewel ; its sur- face is nowhere, its ethereal self is everywhere, the iridescent rush and translucent strength of it blue to the shore, and radiant to the depth. ro Fifteen feet thick, of not flowing, but flying water ; not water, neither melted glacier, rather, one should call it ; the force of the ice is with it, and the wreath- ing of the clouds, the gladness of the sky, and the con- tinuance of Time. 15 Waves of clear sea are, indeed, lovely to watch, but they are always coming or gone, never in any taken shape to be seen for a second. But here was one mighty wave that was always itself, and every fluted swirl of it, constant as the wreathing of a shell. No 20 wasting away of the fallen foam, no pause for gather- ing of power, no helpless ebb of discouraged recoil ; but alike through bright day and lulling night, the never-pausing plunge, and never-fading flash, and never-hushing whisper, and, while the sun was up, the 25 ever-answering glow of unearthly aquamarine, ultra- marine, violet-blue, gentian-blue, peacock-blue, river- of-paradise blue, glass of a painted window melted in the sun, and the witch of the Alps flinging the spun tresses of it forever from her snow. 30 The innocent way, too, in which the river used to stop to look into every little corner. Great torrents always seem angry, and great rivers too often sullen ; 60 JOHN RUSK IN. but there is no anger, no disdain, in the Rhone. It seemed as if the mountain stream was in mere bliss at recovering itself again out of the lake-sleep, and raced because it rejoiced in racing, fain yet to return and stay. There were pieces of wave that danced all day 5 as if Perdita were looking on to learn ; there were little streams that skipped like lambs and leaped like chamois ; there were pools that shook the sunshine all through them, and were rippled in layers of over- laid ripples, like crystal sand ; there were currents 10 that twisted the light into golden braids, and inlaid the threads with turquoise enamel ; there were strips of stream that had certainly above the lake been mill- streams, and were looking busily for mills to turn again ; there were shoots of stream that had once shot 15 fearfully into the air, and now sprang up again laugh- ing that they had only fallen a foot or two ; and in the midst of all the gay glittering and eddied lingering, the noble bearing by of the midmost depth, so mighty, yet so terrorless and harmless, with its swallows skim- 20 ming in spite of petrels, and the dear old decrepit town as safe in the embracing sweep of it as if it were let in a brooch of sapphire. VIII. Storming of tbe Pastille. THOMAS CARLYLE. From The French Revolution (V, vi). This selection should be discussed to bring out the means of its vividness. The method is narrative enumeration, with constant suggestion of the look of the whole, often by effect (p. xl). ALL morning, since nine, there has been a cry every- where, To the Bastille ! Repeated " deputations of citizens" have been here, passionate for arms, whom De Launay has got dismissed by soft speeches through 5 port-holes. Toward noon, Elector Thuriot de la Rosiere gains admittance, finds De Launay indisposed for surrender, nay, disposed for blowing up the place rather. Thuriot mounts with him to the battlements ; heaps of paving-stones, old iron, and missiles lie piled ; 10 cannon all duly levelled ; in every embrasure a cannon only drawn back a little ! But outward, behold, O Thuriot, how the multitude flows on, welling through every street ; tocsin furiously pealing, all drums beating the ge*nerale ; the suburb Saint Antoine 15 rolling hitherward wholly, as one man ! Such visiop (spectral, yet real) thou, O Thuriot, as from thy mount of visions, beholdest in this moment, prophetic of what other phantasmagories and loud-gibbering spectral 61 62 THOMAS CARLYLE. realities which thou yet beholdest not, but shalt ! " Que voulez-vous ? " said De Launay, turning pale at the sight, with an air of reproach, almost of menace. " Monsieur," said Thuriot, rising into the moral sublime, " what mean you ? Consider if I could not precipi- $ tate both of us from this height/' say only a hundred feet, exclusive of the walled ditch ! Whereupon De Launay fell silent. Thuriot shows himself from some pinnacle, to comfort the multitude becoming sus- picious, fremescent, then descends, departs with pro- 10 tests, with warning addressed also to the Invalides, on whom, however, it produces but a mixed, indistinct impression. The old heads are none of the clearest ; besides, it is said, De Launay has been profuse of beverages (prodigue des boissons). They think they 15 will not fire if not fired on if they can help it ; but must, on the whole, be ruled considerably by circum- stances. Woe to thee, De Launay, in such an hour, if thou canst not, taking some one firm decision, ride circum- 20 stances ! Soft speeches will not serve, hard grape-shot is questionable, but hovering between the two is un- questionable. Ever wilder swells the tide of men, their infinite hum waxing ever louder, into impreca- tions, perhaps into crackle of stray musketry which 25 latter, on walls nine feet thick, cannot do execution. The outer drawbridge has been lowered for Thuriot ;, new deputation of citizens (it is the third and noisest of all) penetrates that way into the outer court ; soft speeches producing no clearance of these, De Launay 30 gives fire, pulls up his drawbridge. A slight splutter, which has kindled the too combustible chaos, made it 'THE STORMING OF THE BASTILLE. 63 a roaring fire-chaos ! Bursts forth insurrection, at sight of its own blood (for there were deaths by that splutter of fire), into endless, rolling explosion of mus- ketry, distraction, execration, and overhead, from the 5 fortress, let one great gun, with its grape-shot, go boom- ing, to show what we could 'do. The Bastille is besieged! On, then, all Frenchmen that have hearts in your bodies ! Roar with all your throats of cartilage and metal, ye sons of liberty ; stir spasmodically whatso- 10 ever of utmost faculty is in you, soul, body, or spirit, for it is the hour ! Smite thou, Louis Tournay, cart- wright of the Marais, old soldier of the Regiment Dauphine* ; smite at that outer drawbridge chain, though the fiery hail whistles round thee ! Never, 15 over nave or felloe, did thy axe strike such a stroke. Down with it, man ; down with it to Orcus ; let the whole accursed edifice sink thither, and tyranny be swallowed up forever ! Mounted, some say, on the roof of the guard-room, some " on bayonets stuck into 20 joints of the wall," Louis Tournay smites, brave Aubin Bonnemere (also an old soldier) seconding him. The chain yields, breaks ; the huge drawbridge slams down, thundering (avec fracas). Glorious ! and yet, alas ! it is still but the outworks. The eight grim towers, 25 with their Invalide musketry, their paving-stones and cannon-mouths, will soar aloft intact ; ditch yawning impassable, stone-faced ; the inner drawbridge with its back toward us ; the Bastille is still to take ! To describe this siege of the Bastille (thought to be 30 one of the most important in history) perhaps tran- scends the talent of mortals. Could one but, after in- finite reading, get to understand so much as the plan 64 THOMAS CARLYLE. of the building ! But there is open esplanade at the end of the Rue Saint Antoine ; there are such fore- courts (cour avance"), cour de 1'orme, arched gateway (where Louis Tournay now fights); then new draw- bridges, dormant-bridges, rampart-bastions, and the $ grim eight towers, a labyrinthic mass, high-frowning there, of all ages from twenty years to four hundred and twenty, beleaguered in this its last hour, as we said, by mere chaos come again ! Ordnance of all calibres, throats of all capacities, men of all plans, 10 every man his own engineer ; seldom since the war of pygmies and cranes was there seen so anomalous a thing. Half-pay Elie is home for a suit of regimen- tals, no one would heed him in coloured clothes ; half- pay Hulin is haranguing Gardes Frai^aises in the ij Place de Greve. Frantic patriots pick up the grape- shots, bear them, still hot (or seemingly so), to the Hotel de Ville. Paris, you perceive, is to be burnt ! Flesselles is " pale to the very lips," for the roar of the multitude grows deep. Paris, wholly, has got to 20 the acme of its frenzy, whirled all ways by panic mad- ness. At every street-barricade there whirls, simmer- ing, a minor whirlpool, strengthening the barricade, since God knows what is coming ; and all minor whirl- pools play distractedly into that grand fire-maelstrom 25 which is lashing round the Bastille. And so it lashes and it roars. Cholat, the wine-mer- chant, has become an impromptu cannoneer. See Georget, of the marine service, fresh from Brest, ply the King of Siam's cannon. Singular (if we were not used 30 to the like). Georget lay, last night, taking his ease at his inn ; the King of Siam's cannon also lay, know- THE STORMING OF THE BASTILLE. 65 ing nothing of him for a hundred years ; yet now, at the right instant, they have got together, and discourse eloquent music ; for, hearing what was toward, Geor- get sprang from the Brest diligence, and ran. Gardes f 5 Francaises, also, will be here, with real artillery. Were not the walls so thick ! Upward from the esplanade, horizontally from all the neighbouring roofs and win- dows, flashes one irregular deluge of musketry, without effect. The Invalides lie flat, firing comparatively at 10 their ease from behind stone ; hardly through port- holes show the tip of a nose. We fall, shot, and make no impression ! Let the conflagration rage of whatsoever is combus- tible ! Guard-rooms are burnt, Invalides mess-rooms. 15 A distracted " peruke-maker with two fiery torches " is for burning " the saltpetres of the arsenal," had not a woman run screaming, had not a patriot, with some tincture of natural philosophy, instantly struck the wind out of him (butt of musket on pit of stomach), 20 overturned barrels, and stayed the devouring element. A young, beautiful lady, seized, escaping, in these outer courts, and thought, falsely, to be De Launay's daughter, shall be burnt in De Launay's sight : she lies, swooned, on a paillasse ; but, again, a patriot it 25 is brave Aubin Bonnemere, the old soldier dashes in and rescues her. Straw is burnt ; three cartloads of it, hauled hither, go up in white smoke, almost to the choking of patriotism itself ; so that Elie had, with singed brows, to drag back one cart, and Reole, the 3 "gigantic haberdasher," another. Smoke as of Tophet, confusion as of Babel, noise as the crack of doom I Blood flows, the aliment of new madness. The 66 THOMAS CARLYLE. wounded are carried into houses of the Rue Cerisaie ; the dying leave their last mandate not to yield till the accursed stronghold fall. And yet, alas ! how fall ? The walls are so thick ! Deputations, three in number, arrive from the Hotel de Ville, Abbe Fauchet (who was * of one) can say with what almost superhuman courage of benevolence. These wave their town-flag in the arched gateway, and stand, rolling their drum, but to no purpose. In such a crack of doom, De Launay cannot hear them, dare not believe them ; they return, ic with justified rage, the whew of lead still singing in their ears. What to do ? The firemen are here, squirt- ing with their fire-pumps on the Invalides cannon, to wet the touch-holes ; they unfortunately cannot squirt so high, but produce only clouds of spray. Individ- *s uals of classical knowledge propose catapults. Santerre, the sonorous brewer of the suburb Saint Antoine, ad- vises rather that the place be fired by a " mixture of phosphorus and oil of turpentine spouted up through forcing pumps." O Spinola-Santerre, hast thou the 20 mixture ready? Every man his own engineer ! And still the fire-deluge abates not ; even women are firing, and Turks at least one woman (with her sweetheart), and one Turk. Gardes Francaises have come ; real cannon, real cannoneers. Usher Maillard is busy; 25 half-pay Elie, half-pay Hulin, rage in the midst of thousands. How the great Bastille clock ticks (inaudible) in its inner court, there, at its ease, hour after hour ; as if nothing special, for it or the world, were passing ! It 30 tolled one when the firing began, and is now pointing toward five, and still the firing slakes not. Far down, THE STORMING OF THE BASTILLE. 67 in their vaults, the seven prisoners hear muffled din as of earthquakes ; their turnkeys answer vaguely. Woe to thee, De Launay, with thy poor hundred Invalides ! Broglie is distant, and his ears heavy ; 5 Besenval hears, but can send no help. One poor troop of hussars has crept, reconnoitring, cautiously along the quais, as far as Pont Neuf. " We are come to join you," said the captain, for the crowd seems shoreless. A large-headed dwarfish individual, of 10 smoke-bleared aspect, shambles forward, opening his blue lips, for there is sense in him, and croaks, " Alight then, and give up your arms ! " The hussar captain is too happy to be escorted to the barriers and dismissed on parole. Who the squat individual was ? Men 15 answer, It is M. Marat, author of the excellent pacific "Avis au Peuple ! " Great, truly, O thou remarkable dog-leech, is this thy day of emergence and new-birth ; and yet this same day come four years but let the curtains of the future hang. 20 What shall De Launay do ? One thing only De Launay could have done what he said he would do. Fancy him sitting, from the first, with lighted taper, within arm's-length of the powder magazine ; motion- less, like old Roman senator, or bronze lamp-holder ; 25 coldly apprising Thuriot, and all men, by a slight motion of his eye, what his resolution was. Harmless he sat there, while unharmed ; but the king's fortress, meanwhile, could, might, would or should in nowise be surrendered save to the king's messenger ; one old 30 man's life is worthless, so it be lost with honour ; but think, ye brawling canaille, how will it be when a whole Bastille springs skyward ? In such statuesque, 68 THOMAS CARLYLE. taper-holding attitude, one fancies De Launay might have left Thuriot, the red clerks of the basoche, cure of Saint Stephen, and all the tag-rag and bobtail of the world, to work their will. And yet, withal, he could not do it. Hast thou 5 considered how each man's heart is so tremulously responsive to the hearts of all men ? hast thou noted how omnipotent is the very sound of many men ? How their shriek of indignation palsies the strong soul ? their howl of contumely withers with unfelt pangs ? 10 The Ritter Gliick confessed that the ground-tone of the noblest passage in one of his noblest operas was the voice of the populace he had heard at Vienna, crying to their kaiser, Bread ! Bread ! Great is the combined voice of men, the utterance of their instincts, 15 which are truer than their thoughts; it is the greatest a man encounters, among the sounds and shadows which make up this world of time ! He who can re- sist that, has his footing somewhere beyond time. De Launay could not do it. Distracted, he hovers be- 20 tween two hopes in the middle of despair ; surrenders not his fortress ; declares that he will blow it up, seizes torches to blow it up, and does not blow it. Unhappy old De Launay, it is the death-agony of thy Bastille and thee ! Jail, jailoring, and jailor, all 25 three, such as they may have been, must finish. For four hours now has the world-bedlam roared ; call it the world-chimera, blowing fire ! The poor Invalides have sunk under their battlements, or rise only with reversed muskets ; they have made a white 30 flag of napkins, go beating the chamade, or seeming to beat, for one can hear nothing. The very Swiss at THE STORMING OF THE BASTILLE. 69 the portcullis look weary of firing, disheartened in the fire-deluge ; a port-hole at the drawbridge is opened, as by one that would speak. See Huissier Maillard, the shifty man ! On his plank, swinging over the 5 abyss of that stone ditch, plank resting on parapet, balanced by weight of patriots, he hovers perilous such a dove toward such an ark ! Deftly, thou shifty usher ; one man already fell, and lies smashed, far down there, against the masonry ! Usher Maillard 10 falls not ; deftly, unerring, he walks, with outspread palm. The Swiss holds a paper through his port-hole ; the shifty usher snatches it and returns. Terms of surrender, Pardon, immunity to all ! Are they ac- cepted ? " Foi d'officier " (on the word of an officer), 15 answer shall half-pay Hulin, or half-pay Elie for men do not agree on it " they are ! " Sinks the draw- bridge, Usher Maillard bolting it when down ; rushes in the living deluge ; the Bastille is fallen ! Victoirc ! La Bastille est prise ! IX. Sfeetcbes b flfcfcbael Bngelo. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. From Notes on Designs of the Old Masters at Florence* This is almost entirely description by effect. It is a useful exercise to compare the descriptive diction with that of Selections VIII. and X. BUT in one separate head there is more tragic attrac- tion than in these : a woman's, three times studied, with divine and subtle care ; sketched and re-sketched in youth and age, beautiful always beyond desire and cruel beyond words ; fairer than heaven and more 5 terrible than hell ; pale with pride and weary with wrong-doing; a silent anger against God and man burns, white and repressed, through her clear features. In one drawing she wears a head-dress of eastern fashion rather than western, but in effect made out 10 of the artist's mind only ; plaited in the likeness of closely-welded scales as of a chrysalid serpent, raised and waved and rounded in the likeness of a sea-shell. In some inexplicable way all her ornaments seem to partake of her fatal nature, to bear upon them the 15 brand of beauty fresh from hell ; and this through no vulgar machinery or symbolism, no serpentine or 1 Essays and Studies, London, Chatto & Windus. SKETCHES BY MICHAEL ANGELO. 71 otherwise bestial emblem : the bracelets and rings are innocent enough in shape and workmanship ; but in touching her flesh they have become infected with deadly and malignant meaning. Broad bracelets w divide the shapely splendour of her arms; over the nakedness of her firm and luminous breasts, just below the neck, there is passed a band as of metal. Her eyes are full of proud and passionless lust after gold and blood ; her hair, close and curled, seems ready to 10 shudder in sunder and divide into snakes. Her throat, full and fresh, round and hard to the eye as her bosom and arms, is erect and stately, the head set firm on it without droop or lift of the chin ; her mouth crueller than a tiger's, colder than a snake's, and beautiful 15 beyond a woman's. She is the deadlier Venus incar- nate : v ev Oeolai KOVK av&vv/j,o 0ed t for upon earth also many names might be found for her : Lamia re-transformed, invested now with a fuller 20 beauty, but divested of all feminine attributes not native to the snake a Lamia loveless and unassailable by the sophist, readier to drain life out of her lover than to fade for his sake at his side ; or the Persian Amestris, watching the only breasts on earth more 25 beautiful than her own, cut off from her rival's living bosom ; or Cleopatra, not dying, but turning serpent under the serpent's bite ; or that queen of the East who with her husband marked every day as it went by some device of a new and wonderful cruelty. In one 30 design, where the cruel and timid face of a king rises behind her, this crowned and cowering head might 72 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. stand for Ahab's and hers for that of Jezebel. Another study is in red chalk ; in this the only orna- ments are ear-rings. In a third, the serpentine hair is drawn up into a tuft at the crown, with two ringlets hanging heavy and deadly as small tired snakes. 1T. 3La (Bfoconfca. 1 ffir. & IRoman 1Tirir. Bujerre. 3 WALTER PATER. La Gioconda is, in the truest sense, Leonardo's masterpiece, the revealing instance of his mode of thought and work. In suggestiveness, only the Melancholia of Durer is comparable to it ; and no 5 crude symbolism disturbs the effect of its subdued and graceful mystery. We all know the face and hands of the figure set in its marble chair, in that cirque of fantastic rocks, as in some faint light under sea. Per- haps of all ancient pictures time has chilled it least. 10 The presence that thus rose so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which all 4< the ends of the world are come," and the 1 From The Renaissance. 9 From Marius the Epicurean. 8 From Imaginary Portraits. Printed by kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Company. The first is description by effect ; the other two, what in painting is called genre study (p. xxi). 73 74 WALTER PATER. eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of s antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed ! All the thoughts and experiences of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the out- 1^ ward form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the reverie of the middle age with its spiritual ambi- tion and imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she sits ; like the vampire, she 15 has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave ; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her ; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants ; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as St. Anne, 20 the mother of Mary ; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing linea- ments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thou- 25 sand experiences, is an old one ; and modern thought has conceived the idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the 30 modern idea. A ROMAN VILLA 75 II. THE traveller, descending from the slopes of Luna, even as he got his first view of the Port-of- Venus, would pause by the way, to read the face as it were, of so beautiful a dwelling-place, lying away from the 5 white road, at the point where it began to decline somewhat steeply to the marsh-land below. The building of pale red and yellow marble, mellowed by age, which he saw beyond the gates, was indeed but the exquisite fragment of a once large and sumptuous 10 villa. Two centuries of the play of the sea-wind were in the velvet of the mosses which lay along its inac- cessible ledges and angles. Here and there the marble plates had slipped from their places, where the delicate weeds had forced their way. The graceful wildness 15 .vhich prevailed in garden and farm gave place to a singular nicety about the actual habitation, and a still more scrupulous sweetness and order reigned within. The old Roman architects seem to have well under- stood the decorative value of the floor, the real econ- 20 omy there was, in the production of rich interior effect, of a somewhat lavish expenditure upon the surface they trod on. The pavement of the hall had lost something of its evenness ; but though a little rough to the foot, polished and cared for like a piece of 25 silver, looked, as mosaic-work is apt to do, its best in old age. Most noticeable among the ancestral masks, each in its little cedarn chest below the cornice, was that of the wasteful but elegant Marcellus, with the quaint resemblance in its yellow waxen features to 30 Marius, just then so full of animation and country 76 WALTER PATER. colour. A chamber, curved ingeniously into oval form, which he had added to the mansion, still con- tained his collection of works of art ; above all, that head of Medusa, for which the villa was famous. The spoilers of one of the old Greek towns on the coast had 5 flung away or lost the thing, as it seemed, in some rapid flight across the river below, from the sands of which it was drawn up in a fisherman's net, with the fine golden lamina still clinging here and there to the bronze. It was Marcellus also who had contrived the prospect- 10 tower of two stones with the white pigeon-house above, so characteristic of the place. The little glazed windows in the uppermost chamber framed each its dainty landscape the pallid crags of Carrara, like wildly twisted snow-drifts above the purple heath ; 15 the distant harbour with its freight of white marble going to sea ; the lighthouse temple of Venus Speciosa on its dark headland, amid the long-drawn curves of white breakers. Even on summer nights the air there had always a motion in it, and drove the scent of new- 20 mown hay along all the passages of the house. in. OP the French town, properly so called, in which the products of successive ages, not without lively touches of the present, are blended together harmoni- ously with a beauty specific a beauty cisalpine and 25 northern, yet at the same time quite distinct from the massive German picturesque of Ulm, or Freiburg, or Augsburg, and of which Turner has found the ideal in certain of his studies of the rivers of France, a per- AUXERRE. 77 fectly happy conjunction of river and town being of the essence of its physiognomy the town of Auxerre is perhaps the most complete realization to be found by the actual wanderer. Certainly for picturesque 5 expression it is the most memorable of a distin- guished group of three in. these parts, Auxerre, Sens, Troyes each gathered, as if with deliberate aim at such effect, about the central mass of a huge gray cathedral. 10 Around Troyes the natural picturesque is to be sought only in the rich, almost coarse, summer colour- ing of the champagne country, of which the very tiles, the plaster and brickwork of its tiny villages and great straggling, village-like farms have caught the 15 warmth. The cathedral, visible far and wide over the fields seemingly of loose wild-flowers, itself a rich mixture of all the varieties of the Pointed style down to the latest Flamboyant, may be noticed among the greater French churches for breadth of proportions 20 internally, and is famous for its almost unrivalled treasure of stained glass, chiefly of a florid, elaborate, later type, with much highly conscious artistic con- trivance in design as well as in colour. In one of the richest of its windows, for instance, certain lines of 25 pearly white run hither and thither, with delightful distant effect, upon ruby and dark blue. Approach- ing nearer you find it to be a Traveller's window, and those odd lines of white the long walking staves in the hands of Abraham, Raphael, the Magi, and the 30 other saintly patrons of journeys. The appropriate provincial character of the bourgeoisie of Cham- pagne is still to be seen, it would appear, among the 78 WALTER PATER. citizens of Troyes. Its streets, for the most part in timber and pargeting, present more than one unaltered specimen of the ancient hdtel or town house, with fore- court and garden in the rear ; and its more devout citizens would seem even in their church-building to 5 have sought chiefly to please the eyes of those occu- pied with mundane affairs and out of doors, for they have finished, with abundant outlay, only the vast, useless portals of their parish churches, of surprising height and lightness, in a kind of wildly elegant 10 Gothic on stilts, giving to the streets of Troyes a peculiar air of the grotesque, as if in some quaint nightmare of the Middle Age. At Sens, thirty miles away to the west, a place of far graver aspect, the name of Jean Cousin denotes 15 a more chastened temper, even in these sumptuous decorations. Here all is cool and composed, with an almost English austerity. The first growth of the Pointed style in England the hard " early English " of Canterbury is indeed the creation of William, a 20 master reared in the architectural school of Sens ; and the severity of his taste might seem to have acted as a restraining power on all the subsequent changes of manner in this place changes in themselves for the most part toward luxuriance. In harmony 25 with the atmosphere of its great church is the cleanly quiet of the town, kept fresh by litttle channels of clear water circulating through its streets, derivatives of the rapid Vanne which falls just below into the Yonne. The Yonne, bedding gracefully, link after 30 link, through a never-ending rustle of poplar trees, beneath lowly vine-clad hills, with relics of delicate AUXERRE. 79 woodland here and there, sometimes close at hand, sometimes leaving an interval of broad meadow, has all the lightsome characteristics of French river-side scenery on a smaller scale than usual, and might pass ' 5 for the child's fancy of a river, like the rivers of the old miniature painters, blue, and full to a fair green margin. One notices along its course a greater pro- portion than elsewhere of still untouched old seignorial residences, larger or smaller. The range of old gibbous 10 towns along its banks, expanding their gay quays upon the water-side, have a common character Joigny, Ville- neuve, St. Julien-du-Sault yet tempt us to tarry at each and examine its relics, old glass, and the like, of the Renaissance or the Middle Age, for the acquisition of 15 real, though minor lessons, on the various arts which have left themselves a central monument at Auxerre. Auxerre ! A slight ascent in the winding road ! and you have before you the prettiest town in France the broad framework of vineyard sloping upward 20 gently to the horizon, with distant white cottages inviting one to walk : the quiet curve of river below, with all the river-side details : the three great purple- tiled masses of St. Germain, St. Pierre, and the cathe- dral of St. Etienne, rising out of the crowded houses 25 with more than the usual abruptness and irregularity of French building. Here that rare artist, the sus- ceptible painter of architecture, if he understands the value alike of line and mass, of broad masses and delicate lines, has "a subject made to his hand." 30 A veritable country of the vine, it presents never- theless an expression peaceful rather than radiant. Perfect type of that happy mean between northern 8o WALTER PATER. earnestness and the luxury of the south, for which we prize midland France, its physiognomy is not quite happy attractive in part for its melancholy. Its most characteristic atmosphere is to be seen when the tide of light and distant cloud is travelling quickly 5 over it, when rain is not far off, and every touch of art or of time on its old building is defined in clear gray. A fine summer ripens its grapes into a valuable wine ; but in spite of that it seems always longing for a larger and more continuous allowance of the sun- 10 shine that is so much to its taste. You might fancy something querulous or plantive in that rustling move- ment of the vine-leaves, as blue-frocked Jacques Bon- homme finishes his day's labour among them. XI. JNote, HENRY JAMES. From A Little Tour in France.* Selections XI, XII, and XIII are also examples of genre study. They should be examined to determine by what means the author suggests constantly the typical aspect. YOUR business at Tours is to make excursions, and if you make them all, you will be very well occupied. Touraine is rich in antiquities ; and an hour's drive from the town in almost any direction will bring you 5 to the knowledge of some curious fragment of domes- tic or ecclesiastical architecture, some turreted manor, some lonely tower, some gabled village, or historic site. Even, however, if you do everything, which was not my case, you cannot hope to relate every- 10 thing, and, fortunately for you, the excursions divide themselves into the greater and the less. You may achieve most of the greater in a week or two ; but a summer in Touraine (which, by the way, must be a charming thing) would contain none too many days f5 for the others. If you come down to Tours from Paris, your best economy is to spend a few days at Blois, where a clumsy, but rather attractive little inn, 1 Printed by kind permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin $ Company. 82 HENR Y JAMES. on the edge of the river, will offer you a certain amount of that familiar and intermittent hospitality which a few weeks spent in the French provinces teaches you to regard as the highest attainable form of accommodation. Such an economy I was unable 5 to practise. I could only go to Blois (from Tours) to spend the day ; but this feat I accomplished twice over. It is a very sympathetic little town, as we say nowadays, and one might easily resign one's self to a week there. Seated on the north bank of the Loire, 10 it presents a bright, clean face to the sun, and has that aspect of cheerful leisure which belongs to all white towns that reflect themselves in shining waters. It is the water-front only of Blois, however, that ex- hibits this fresh complexion ; the interior is of a 15 proper brownness, as befits a signally historic city. The only disappointment I had there was the dis- covery that the castle, which is the special object of one's pilgrimage, does not overhang the river, as I had always allowed myself to understand. It overhangs 20 the town, but it is scarcely visible from the stream. That peculiar good fortune is reserved for Amboise and Chaumont. The Chateau de Blois is one of the most beautiful and elaborate of all the old royal residences of this 25 part of France, and I suppose it should have all the honours of my description. As you cross its thresh- old, you step straight into the brilliant movement of the French Renaissance. But it is too rich to describe I can only touch it here and there. It must be pre- 30 mised that in speaking of it as one sees it to-day, one speaks of 3. monument unsparingly restored. The BLOIS. 83 work of restoration has been as ingenious as it is pro- fuse, but it rather chills the imagination. This is per- haps almost the first thing you feel as you approach the castle from the streets of the town. These little 5 streets, as they leave the river, have pretensions to romantic steepness : one of them, indeed, which resolves itself into a high staircase with divergent wings (the escalier monumental], achieved this result so successfully as to remind me vaguely I hardly 10 know why of the great slope of the Capitol, beside the Ara Cceli, at Rome. The view of that part of the castle which figures to-day as the back (it is the only aspect I had seen reproduced) exhibits the marks of restoration with the greatest assurance. The long 15 facade, consisting only of balconied windows deeply recessed, erects itself on the summit of a considerable hill, which gives a fine, plunging movement to its foundations. The deep niches of the windows are all aglow with colour. They have been repainted with 20 red and blue, relieved with gold figures ; and each of them looks more like the royal box at a theatre than like the aperture of a palace dark with memories. For all this, however, and in spite of the fact that, as in some others of the chateaux of Touraine (always 25 excepting the colossal Chambord, which is not in Touraine !), there is less vastness than one had ex^ pected, the least hospitable aspect of Blois is abund- antly impressive. Here, as elsewhere, lightness ancj grace are the keynote ; and the recesses of the win- 30 dows, with their happy proportions, their sculpture, and their colour, are the empty frames of brilliant pictures. They need the figure of a Francis I. 19 84 HENR Y JA MES. complete them, or of a Diane de Poitiers, or even of a Henry III. The base of this exquisite structure emerges from a bed of light verdure, which has been allowed to mass itself there, and which contributes to the springing look of the walls ; while on the right it 5 joins the most modern portion of the castle, the build- ing erected, on foundations of enormous height and solidity, in 1635, by Gaston d'Orleans. This fine, frigid mansion the proper view of it is from the court within is one of the masterpieces of Francois 10 Mansard, whom a kind providence did not allow to make over the whole palace in the superior manner of his superior age. This had been a part of Gaston's plan he was a blunderer born, and this precious pro- ject was worthy of him. The execution of it would 15 surely have been one of the great misdeeds of history. Partially performed, the misdeed is not altogether to be regretted; for as one stands in the court of the castle and lets one's eye wander from the splendid wing of Francis I. which is the last word of free and 20 joyous invention to the ruled lines and blank spaces of the ponderous pavilion of Mansard, one makes one's reflections upon the advantage, in even the least per- sonal of the arts, of having something to say, and upon the stupidity of a taste which had ended by 25 becoming an aggregation of negatives. Gaston's wing, taken by itself, has much of the bel air, which was to belong to the architecture of Louis XIV. ; but, taken in contrast to its flowering, laughing, living neighbour, it marks the difference between inspiration 30 and calculation. We scarcely grudge it its place, however, for it adds a price to the rest of the chateau. BL01S. 85 We have entered the court, by the way, by jumping over the walls. The more orthodox method is to fol- low a modern terrace, which leads to the left, from the side of the chateau that I began by speaking of, 5 and passes round, ascending, to a little square on a considerably higher level, which is not, like the very modern square on which the back (as I have called it) looks out, a thoroughfare. This small, empty place, oblong in form, at once bright and quiet, with a 10 certain grass-grown look, offers an excellent setting to the entrance-front of the palace the wing of Louis XII. The restoration here has been lavish ; but it was, perhaps, but an inevitable reaction against the injuries, still more lavish, by which the unfortunate 15 building had long been overwhelmed. It had fallen into a state of ruinous neglect, relieved only by the misuse proceeding from successive generations of soldiers, for whom its charming chambers served as barrack room. Whitewashed, mutilated, dishonoured, 20 the castle of Blois may be said to have escaped sim- ply with its life. This is the history of Amboise as well, and is to a certain extent the history of Cham- bord. Delightful, at any rate, was the refreshed fagade of Louis XII. as I stood and looked at it one bright 25 September morning. In that soft, clear, merry light of Touraine, everything shows, everything speaks. Charming are the taste, the happy proportions, the colour of this beautiful front, to which the new feeling for a purely domestic architecture an architecture 30 of security and tranquillity, in which art could in- dulge itself gave an air of youth and gladness. It is true that for a long time to come the castle of 86 HENR Y JAMES. Blois was neither very safe nor very quiet ; but its dangers came from within, from the evil passions of its inhabitants, and not from siege or invasion. The front of Louis XII. is of red brick, crossed here and there with purple ; and the purple slate of the high 5 roof, relieved with chimneys beautifully treated, and with the embroidered caps of pinnacles and arches, with the porcupine of Louis, the ermine and the fes- tooned rope which formed the devices of Anne of Brittany the tone of this rich-looking roof carries 10 out the mild glow of the wall. The wide, fair win- dows look as if they had expanded to let in the *osy dawn of the Renaissance. Charming, for that matter, are the windows of all the chateaux of Touraine, with their squareness corrected (as it is not in the 15 Tudor architecture) by the curve of the upper cor- ners, which makes this line look above the expres- sive aperture like a pencilled eyebrow. The low door of this front is crowned by a high, deep niche, in which, under a splendid canopy, stiffly astride of a 20 stiffly draped charger, sits in profile an image of the good King Louis. Good as he had been the father of his people, as he was called (I believe he remitted various taxes) he was not good enough to pass mus- ter at the Revolution ; and the effigy I have just 25 described is no more than a reproduction of the primitive statue demolished at that period. Pass beneath it into the court, and the sixteenth century closes round you. It is a pardonable flight of fancy to say that the expressive faces of an age in 30 which human passions lay very near the surface seem to look out at you from the windows, from the balcc- BLOTS. 87 nies, from the thick foliage of the sculpture. The portion of the wing of Louis XII. that looks toward the court is supported on a deep arcade. On your right is the wing erected by Francis I., the reverse of 5 the mass of building which you see on approaching the castle. This exquisite, this extravagant, this transcendent piece of architecture is the most joyous utterance of the French Renaissance. It is covered with an embroidery of sculpture, in which every detail 10 is worthy of the hand of a goldsmith. In the middle of it, or rather a little to the left, rises the famous winding staircase (plausibly, but I believe not relig- iously, restored), which even the ages which most mis- used it must vaguely have admired. It forms a kind *5 of chiselled cylinder, with wide interstices, so that the stairs are open to the air. Every inch of this struc- ture, of its balconies, its pillars, its great central col- umns is wrought over with lovely images, strange and ingenious devices, prime among which is the great 20 heraldic salamander of Francis I. The salamander is everywhere at Blois over the chimneys, over the doors, on the wills. This whole quarter of the castle bears the stamp of that eminently pictorial prince. The running cornice along the top of the front is like 25 an unfolded, an elongated, bracelet. The windows of the attic are like shrines for saints. The gargoyles, the medallions, the statuettes, the festoons, are like the elaboration of some precious cabinet rather than the details of a building exposed to the weather and the 30 ages. In the interior there is a profusion of restora- tion, and it is all restoration in colour. This has been, evidently, a work of great energy and cost, but it wiJJ 88 HENRY JAMES. easily strike you as overdone. The universal fresh* ness is a discord, a false note ; it seems to light up the dusky past with an unnatural glare. Begun in the reign of Louis Philippe, this terrible process the more terrible always the more you admit that it has 5 been necessary has been carried so far that there is now scarcely a square inch of the interior that has the colour of the past upon it. It is true that the place had been so coated over with modern abuse that something was needed to keep it alive ; it is only, 10 perhaps, a pity that the restorers, not content with saving its life, should have undertaken to restore its youth. The love of consistency, in such a business, is a dangerous lure. All the old apartments have been rechristened, as it were ; the geography of the 15 castle has been re-established. The guard rooms, the bedrooms, the closets, the oratories, have recovered their identity. Every spot connected with the mur- der of the Duke of Guise is pointed out by a small, shrill boy, who takes you from room to room, and o who has learned his lesson in perfection. The place is full of Catherine de' Medici, of Henry III., of memories, of ghosts, of echoes, of possible evoca- tions and revivals. It is covered with crimson and gold. The fireplaces and the ceilings are magnificent; 25 they look like expensive " sets " at the grand opera. I should have mentioned that below, in the court, the front of the wing of Gaston d'Orleans faces you as you enter, so that the place is a course of French history. Inferior in beauty and grace to the other 30 portions of the castle, the wing is yet a nobler monu- ment than the memory of Gaston deserves. The BLOIS. 89 second of the sons of Henry IV., who was no more fortunate as a father than as a husband, younger brother of Louis XIII., and father of the great Made- moiselle, the most celebrated, most ambitious, most 5 self-complacent, and most unsuccessful fille a marier in French history, passed, in enforced retirement at the Castle of Blois, the close of a life of clumsy intrigues against Cardinal Richelieu, in which his rashness was only equalled by his pusillanimity, and his ill-luck TO by his inaccessibility to correction, and which, after so many follies and shames, was properly summed up in the project begun, but not completed of demolishing the beautiful habitation of his exile in order to erect a better one. With Gaston d'Orleans, however, who 15 lived there without dignity, the history of the Chateau de Blois declines. Its interesting period is that of the wars of religion. It was the chief residence of Henry III., and the scene of the principal events of his depraved and dramatic reign. It has been re- 20 stored more than enough, as I have said, by architects and decorators ; the visitor, as he moves through its empty rooms, which are at once brilliant and ill-lighted (they have not been refurnished), undertakes a little restoration of his own. His imagination helps itself 25 from the things that remain ; he tries to see the life of the sixteenth century in its form and dress its tur- bulence, its passions, its loves and hates, its treacheries, falsities, touches of faith, its latitude of personal de- velopment, its presentation of the whole nature, its 30 nobleness of costume, charm of speech, splendour of taste, unequalled picturesqueness. The picture is full of movement, of contrasted light and darkness, full 90 HENR Y JA MRS. altogether of abominations. Mixed up with them all is the great name of religion, so that the drama wants nothing to make it complete. What episode was ever more perfect looked at as a dramatic occurrence than the murder of the Duke of Guise ? The insolent pros- 5 perity of the victim ; the weakness, the vices, the terrors, of the author of the deed ; the perfect execution of the plot ; the accumulation of horror in what followed it, give it, as a crime, a kind of immortal solidity. But we must not take the Chateau de Blois too 10 hard : I went there, after all, by way of entertainment. If among these sinister memories your visit should threaten to prove a tragedy, there is an excellent way of removing the impression. You may treat yourself at Blois to a very cheerful after-piece. There is a 15 charming industry practised there, and practised in charming conditions. Follow the bright little quay down the river till you get quite out of the town, and reach the point where the road beside the Loire be- comes sinuous and attractive, turns the corner of di-2o minutive headlands, and makes you wonder what is beyond. Let not your curiosity induce you, however, to pass by a modest white villa which overlooks the stream, enclosed in a fresh little court ; for here dwells an artist an artist in faience. There is no sort of 25 sign, and the place looks peculiarly private. But if you ring at the gate you will not be turned away. You will, on the contrary, be ushered upstairs into a parlour there is nothing resembling a shop encum- bered with specimens of remarkably handsome pottery. 30 The work is of the best a careful reproduction of old forms, colours, devices ; and the master of the BLOTS. 91 establishment is one of those completely artistic types that are often found in France. His reception is as friendly as his work is ingenious ; and I think it is not too much to say that you like the work the better 5 because he has produced it. His vases, cups and jars, lamps, platters, plaques, with their brilliant glaze, their innumerable figures, their family likeness, and wide variations, are scattered through his occupied rooms ; they serve at once as his stock-in-trade and as house- 10 hold ornament. As we all know, this is an age of prose, of machinery, of wholesale production, of coarse and hasty processes. But one brings away from the establishment of the very intelligent M. Ulysse the sense of a less eager activity and a greater search for 15 perfection. He has but a few workmen, and he gives them plenty of time. The place makes a little vignette, leaves an impression, the quiet white house in its garden on the road by the wide, clear river, without the smoke, the bustle, the ugliness, of so much of our 20 modern industry. It ought to gratify Mr. Ruskin. orrHr UNIVERSITY or XII. Spring in a SfDe Street BRANDER MATTHEWS. From Vignettes of Manhattan* This is an especially careful study in " local colour." The details, that is, belong, not to any large city, but to New York. To secure local colour has been a main effort in many recent short stories, as in George W. Cable's of Creole Louisiana, Miss Murfree's of the Tennessee Moun- tains, Miss Wilkins's of the New England village, J. M. Barrie's of the Scotch village, W. D. Howells's of Boston, and so on through a long list. Students in advanced courses may profitably spend some time in attempting stories each of his own particular environment (see Specimens of Narration, Introduction) ; but every student should be urged from the beginning to realize his own environ- ment in description. IN the city the spring comes earlier than it does in the country, and the horse-chestnuts in the sheltered squares sometimes break into blossom a fortnight be- fore their brethren in the open fields. That year the spring came earlier than usual, both in the country and in the city, for March, going out like a lion, made an April-fool of the following month, and the huge banks of snow heaped high by the sidewalks vanished in three or four days, leaving the gutters only a little Copyright, 1894, Harper & Brothers. Printed by kind per- mission of the publishers. SPRING IN A SIDE STREET. 93 thicker with mud than they are accustomed to be. Very trying to the convalescent was the uncertain weather, with its obvious inability to know its own mind, with its dark fog one morning and its brisk 5 wind in the afternoon, with its mid-day as bright as June and its sudden chill descending before nightfall Yet when the last week of April came, and the grass in the little square around the corner was green again, and the shrubs were beginning to flower out, the to sick man also felt his vigour returning. His strength came back with the spring, and restored health sent fresh blood coursing through his veins as the sap was rising in the branches of the tree before his window. He had had a hard struggle, he knew, although he did 15 not suspect that more than once he had wrestled with death itself. Now his appetite had awakened again, and he had more force to withstand the brooding sad- ness which sought to master him. The tree before his window was but a shabby syca- 20 more, and the window belonged to a hall bedroom in a shabby boarding-house down a side street. The young man himself lay back in the steamer chair lent him by one of the few friends he had in town, and his overcoat was thrown over his knees. His hands. 25 shrunken yet sinewy, lay crossed upon a book in his lap. His body was wasted by sickness, but the frame was well knit and solid. His face was still white and thin, although the yellow pallor of the sick-bed had gone already. His scanty boyish beard that curled 30 about his chin had not been trimmed for two months, and his uncut brown hair fell thickly on the collar of his coat. His dark eyes bore the mark of recent 94 BRANDER MATTHEWS. suffering, but they revealed also a steadfast soul, strong to withstand misfortune. His room was on the north side of the street, and the morning sun shone in his window, as he lay back in the chair, grateful for its warmth. A heavy cart 5 lumbered along slowly over the worn and irregular pavement ; it came to a stand at the corner, and a gang of workmen swiftly emptied it of the steel rails it contained, dropping them on the sidewalk one by one with a loud clang which reverberated harshly far down 10 the street. From the little knot of men who were re- laying the horse-car track came cries of command, and then a rail would drop into position, and be spiked swiftly to its place. Then the labourers would draw aside while an arrested horse-car urged forward again, 15 with the regular footfall of its one horse, as audible above the mighty roar of the metropolis as the jingle of the little bell on the horse's collar. At last there came from over the house-tops a loud whistle of escaping steam, followed shortly by a dozen similar 20 signals, proclaiming the mid-day rest. A rail or two more clanged down on the others, and then the cart rumbled away. The workmen relaying the track had already seated themselves on the curb to eat their dinner, while one of them had gone to the saloon at 25 the corner for a large can of the new beer advertised in the window by the gaudy lithograph of a frisky young goat bearing a plump young goddess on his back. The invalid was glad of the respite from the more 30 violent noises of track-layers, for his head was not yet as clear as it might be, and his nerves were strained SPRING IN A SIDE STREET. 95 by pain. He leaned forward and looked down at the street below, catching the eye of a young man who was bawling " Straw-b'rees ! straw-b'rees !" at the top of an unmelodious voice. The invalid smiled, for he 5 knew that the street venders of strawberries were an infallible sign of spring an indication of its arrival as indisputable as the small square labels announcing that three of the houses opposite to him were " To .Let." The first of May was at hand. He wondered 10 whether the flower-market in Union Square had al- ready opened ; and he recalled the early mornings of the preceding spring, when the girl he loved, the girl who had promised to marry him, had gone with him to Union Square to pick out young roses and full blown 15 geraniums worthy to bloom in the windows of her parlour looking out on Central Park. He thought of her often that morning, and without bitterness, though their engagement had been broken in the fall, three months or more before he v/as taken 20 sick. He had not seen her since Christmas, and he found himself wondering how she would look that afternoon, and whether she was happy. His reverie was broken by the jangling notes of an ill-tuned piano in the next house, separated from his little room only 25 by a thin party-wall. Someone was trying to pick/ out the simple tune of " Wait till the clouds roll by." Seemingly it was the practice hour for one of the children next door, whose playful voices he had often heard. Seemingly also the task was unpleasant, for 30 the piano and the tune and the hearer suffered from the ill-will of the childish performer. A sudden hammering o. r a steel rail in the street 96 BRANDER MATTHEWS. below notified him the nooning was over, and that the workmen had gone back to their labours. Somehow he had failed to hear the stroke of one from the steeple of the church at the corner of the avenue, a short block away. Now he became conscious of a per- 5 mealing odour, and he knew that the luncheon hour of die boarding-house had arrived. He had waked early, and his breakfast had been very light. He felt ready for food, and he was glad when the servant brought him up a plate of cold beef and a saucer of prunes. His appe- 10 tite was excellent, and he ate with relish and enjoyment. When he had made an end of his unpretending meal, he leaned back again in his chair. A turbulent wind blew the dust of the street high in the air and set swinging the budding branches of the sycamore 15 before the window. As he looked at the tender green of the young leaves dancing before him in the sun- light he felt the spring-time stir his blood ; he was strong again with the strength of youth ; he was able to cope with all morbid fancies, and to cast away all 20 repining. He wished himself in the country some- where where there were brooks and groves and grass somewhere where there were quiet and rest and sur- cease of noise somewhere where there were time and space to think out the past and to plan out the future 25 resolutely somewhere where there were not two hand-organs at opposite ends of the block vying which should be the more violent, one playing " Annie Laurie " and the other " Annie Rooney." He winced as the struggle between the two organs attained its 30 height, while the child next door pounded the piano more viciously than before. Then he smiled. SPRING IN A SIDE STREET. 97 With returning health, why should he mind petty annoyances ? In a week or so he would be able to go back to the store and to begin again to earn his own living. No doubt the work would be hard at first, 5 but hard work was what he needed now. For the sake of its results in the future, and for its own sake also, he needed severe labour. Other young men there were a-plenty in the thick of the struggle, but he knew himself as stout of heart as any in the whole city, and 10 why might not fortune favour him too ? With money and power and position he could hold his own in New York ; and perhaps some of those who thought little of him now would then be glad to know him. While he lay back in the steamer chair in his hall 15 room the shadows began to lengthen a little, and the long day drew nearer to its end. When next he roused himself the hand-organs had both gone away, and the child next door had given over her practising, and the street was quiet again, save for the high notes 20 of a soprano voice singing a florid aria by an open window in the conservatory of music in the next block, and save also for an unusual rattle of vehicles drawing up almost in front of the door of the board- ing-house. With an effort he raised himself, and saw 25 a line of carriages on the other side of the way, mov- ing slowly toward the corner. A swirling sand-storm sprang up again in the street below, and a simoom of dust almost hid from him the faces of those who sat in the carriages young girls dressed in light colours, 30 and young men with buttoned frock-coats. They were chatting easily ; now and again a gay laugh rang out. 98 BRANDER MATTHEWS. He wondered if it were time for the wedding, With difficulty he twisted himself in his chair and took from the bureau behind him an envelope containing the wedding-cards. The ceremony was fixed for three. He looked at his watch, and he saw that it 5 lacked but a few minutes of that hour. His hand trembled a little as he put the watch back in his pocket ; and he gazed steadily into space until the bell in the steeple of the church at the corner of the avenue struck three times. The hour appointed for 10 the wedding had arrived. There were still carriages driving up swiftly to deposit belated guests. The convalescent young man in the little hall bed- room of the shabby boarding-house in the side street was not yet strong enough to venture out in the spring 15 sunshine and to be present at the ceremony. But as he lay there in the rickety steamer chair with the old overcoat across his knees, he had no difficulty in evoking the scene in the church. He saw the middle- aged groom standing at the rail awaiting the bride. 20 He heard the solemn and yet joyous strains of the wedding-march. He saw the bride pass slowly up the aisle on the arm of her father, with the lace veil scarcely lighter or fairer than her own filmy hair. He wondered whether she would be pale, and whether 25 her conscience would reproach her as she stood at the altar. He heard the clergyman ask the questions and pronounce the benediction. He saw the new-made wife go down the aisle again on the arm of her hus- band. He sighed wearily, and lay back in his chair 30 with his eyes closed, as though to keep out the unwel- come vision. He did not move when the carnages SPRING IN A SIDE STREE7\ 99 again crowded past his door, and went up to the church porch one after another in answer to hoarse calls from conflicting voices. He lay there for a long while motionless and silent. $ He was thinking about himself, about his hopes, which had been as bright as the sunshine of spring, about his bitter disappointment. He was pondering on the mysteries of the universe, and asking himself whether he could be of any use to the world for he still had 10 high ambitions. He was wondering what might be the value of any one man's labour for his fellow-men, and he thought harshly of the order of things. He said to himself that we all slip out of sight when we die, and the waters close over us, for the best of us are 15 soon forgotten, and so are the worst, since it makes little difference whether the coin you throw into the pool is gold or copper the rarer metal does not make the more ripples. Then, as he saw the long shafts of almost level sunshine sifting through the tiny leaves 20 of the tree before his window, he took heart again as he recalled the great things accomplished by one man. He gave over his mood of self-pity ; and he even smiled at the unconscious conceit of his attitude toward himself. 25 He was recalled from his long reverie by the thun- dering of a heavy fire-engine, which crashed its way down the street, with its rattling hose-reel tearing along after it. In the stillness that followed, broken only by the warning whistles of the engine as it 30 crossed avenue after avenue further and further east, he found time to remember that every man's struggle forward helps along the advance of mankind at large, ioo BRANDER MATTHEWS. The humble fireman who does his duty and dies serves the cause of humanity. The swift twilight of New York was almost upon him when he was next distracted from his thoughts by the crossing shouts of loud-voiced men bawling forth 5 a catch-penny extra of a third-rate evening paper. The cries arose from both sides of the street at once, and they ceased while the fellows sold a paper here and there to the householders whose curiosity called them to the doorstep. 10 The sky was clear, and a single star shone out sharply. The air was fresh, and yet balmy. The clanging of rails had ceased an hour before, and the gang of men who were spiking the iron into place had dispersed each to his own home. The day was 15 drawing to an end. Again there was an odour of cooking diffused through the house, heralding the dinner hour. But the young man who lay back in the steamer chair in the hall bedroom of the boarding-house was 20 unconscious of all except his own thoughts. Before him was a picture of a train of cars speeding along moonlit valleys, and casting a hurrying shadow. In this train, as he saw it, was the bride of that after- noon, borne away by the side of her husband. But it 25 was the bride he saw, and not the husband. He saw her pale face and her luminous eyes and her ashen- gold hair ; and he wondered whether in the years to come she would be as happy as if she had keot her promise to marry him. 30 XIII. Scenes from ^Western %ite* HAMLIN GARLAND. From Main Travelled Roads. 1 These brief extracts are essentially of the same character, but lose, of course, much of their flavour by being detached. I. SUNRISE. IN the windless September dawn a voice went sing- ing, a man's voice, singing a cheap and common air. Yet something in the Man of it all told he was young, jubilant, and a happy lover. 5 Above the level belt of timber to the east a vast dome of pale undazzling gold was rising, silently and swiftly. Jays called in the thickets where the maples flamed amid the green oaks, with irregular splashes of red and orange. The grass was crisp with frost under :c the feet, the road smooth and gray-white in colour, the air was indescribably sweet, resonant, and stimulating. No wonder the man sang. He came into view around the curve in the lane. He had a fork on his shoulder, a graceful and polished 15 tool. His straw hat was tilted on the back of his head, his rough, faded coat buttoned close to the chin, and he wore thin buckskin gloves on his hands. He 1 The Arena Publishing Company, Boston. 102 HAM LIN GARLAND. looked muscular and intelligent, and was evidently about twenty-two or three years of age. As he walked on, and the sunrise came nearer to him, he stopped his song. The broadening heavens had a majesty and sweetness that made him forget the 5 physical joy of happy youth. He grew almost sad with the great vague thoughts and emotions which rolled in his brain as the wonder of the morning grew. He walked more slowly, mechanically following the road, his eyes on the ever- shifting streaming banners 10 of rose and pale green, which made the east too glorious for any words to tell. The air was so still it seemed to await expectantly the coming of the sun. Then his mind flew back to Agnes. Would she see it ? She was at work, getting breakfast, but he hoped 15 she had time to see it. He was in that mood so com- mon to him now, when he could not fully enjoy any sight or sound unless he could share it with her. Far down the road he heard the sharp clatter of a wagon. The roosters were calling near and far, in many keys 20 and tunes. The dogs were barking, cattle-bells jangling in the wooded pastures, and as the youth passed farmhouses, lights in the kitchen windows showed that the women were astir about breakfast, and the sound of voices and currycombs at the barn told 25 that the men were at their daily chores. And the east bloomed broader. The dome of gold grew brighter, the faint clouds here and there flamed with a flush of red. The frost began to glisten with a reflected colour. The youth dreamed as he walked ; 30 his broad face and deep earnest eyes caught and reflected some of the beauty and majesty of the sky. SCENES FROM WESTERN LIFE. 103 II. THRESHING. Boo-oo- oo-oom, boo-woo-woo-oom-oom-ow-owm v yarr-yarr ! The whirling cylinder boomed, roared and snarled as it rose in speed. At last, when its tone became a rattling yell, David nodded to the pitchers, 5 rasped his hands together, the sheaves began to fall from the stack, the band-cutter, knife in hand, slashed the bands in twain, and the feeder, with easy majestic motion, gathered them under his arm, rolled them out into an even belt of entering wheat, on which the 10 cylinder tore with its frightful, ferocious snarl. Will was very happy in his quiet way. He enjoyed the smooth roll of his great muscles, the sense of power he felt in his hands as he lifted, turned, and swung the heavy sheaves two by two down upon the 15 table, where the band-cutter madly slashed away. His frame, sturdy rather than tall, was nevertheless lithe, and he made a fine figure to look at, so Agnes thought, as she came out a moment and bowed and smiled to both the young men. 20 This scene, one of the jolliest and most sociable of the Western farm, had a charm quite aside from human companionship. The beautiful yellow straw entering the cylinder ; the clear yellow-brown wheat pulsing out at the side ; the broken straw, chaff, and dust puf- 25 fing out on the great stacker ; the cheery whistling and calling of the driver ; the keen, crisp air, and the bright sun somehow weirdly suggestive of the passage of time. 104 HAMLIN GARLAND. III. HILL-COUNTRY. The ride from Milwaukee to the Mississippi is a fine ride at any time, superb in summer. To lean back in a reclining-chair and whirl away in a breezy July day, past lakes, groves of oak, past fields of barley being reaped, past hay-fields, where the heavy 5 grass is toppling before the swift sickle, is a panorama of delight, a road full of delicious surprises, where down a sudden vista lakes open, or a distant wooded hill looms darkly blue, or swift streams, foaming deep down the solid rock, send whiffs of cool breezes in at 10 the window. It has majesty, breadth. The farming has nothing apparently petty about it. All seems vigorous, youth- ful, and prosperous. Mr. Howard McLane in his chair let his newspaper fall on his lap, and gazed out 15 upon it with dreaming eyes. It had a certain mysteri- ous glamour to him ; the lakes were cooler and brighter to his eye, the greens fresher, and the grain more golden than to anyone else, for he was coming back to it all after an absence of ten years. It was, 20 besides, his West. He still took pride in being a Western man. His mind all day flew ahead of the train to the little town far on toward the Mississippi, where he had spent his boyhood and youth. As the train passed 25 the Wisconsin River, with its curiously carved cliffs, its cold, dark, swift-swirling water eating slowly under cedar-clothed banks, Howard began to feel curious little movements of the heart, like a lover as he nears his sweetheart. SCENES FROM WESTERN LIFE. 105 The hills changed in character, growing more inti- mately recognizable. They rose higher as the train left the ridge and passed down into the Black River valley, and specifically into the La Crosse valley. 5 They ceased to have any hint of upheavals of rock, and became simply parts of the ancient level left standing after the water had practically given up its post-glacial, scooping action. It was about six o'clock as he caught sight of the 10 dear broken line of hills on which his baby eyes had looked thirty-five years ago. A few minutes later and the train drew up at the grimy little station set in at the hillside, and, giving him just time to leap off, plunged on again toward the West. Howard felt a 15 ridiculous weakness in his legs as he stepped out upon the broiling hot splintery planks of the station and faced the few idlers lounging about. He simply stood and gazed with the same intensity and absorp- tion one of the idlers might show standing before the 20 Brooklyn Bridge. The town caught and held his eyes first. How poor, and dull, and sleepy, and squalid it seemed ! The one main street ended at the hillside at his left, and stretched away to the north, between two rows of 25 the usual village stores, unrelieved by a tree or a touch of beauty. An unpaved street, drab-coloured, miserable, rotting wooden buildings, with the inevi- table battlements the same, only worse, was the town. The same, only more beautiful still, was the majes- 30 tic amphitheatre of green wooded hills that circled the horizon, and toward which he lifted his eyes. He thrilled at the sight. 106 HAMLIN GARLAND. " Glorious ! " he cried involuntarily. Accustomed to the White Mountains, to the Alle- ghanies, he had wondered if these hills would retain their old-time charm. They did. He took off his hat to them as he stood there. Richly wooded, with R gently-sloping green sides, rising to massive square or rounded tops with dim vistas, they glowed down upon the squalid town, gracious, lofty in their greeting, immortal in their vivid and delicate beauty. Over the western wall of the circling amphitheatre ic the sun was setting. A few scattering clouds were drifting on the west wind, their shadows sliding down the green and purple slopes. The dazzling sunlight flamed along the luscious velvety grass, and shot amid the rounded, distant purple peaks, and streamed i* in bars of gold and crimson across the blue mist of the narrower upper coules. The heart of the young man swelled with pleasure almost like pain, and the eyes of the silent older man took on a far-off, dreaming look, as he gazed at the 2 c scene which had repeated itself a thousand times in his life, but of whose beauty he never spoke. Far down to the left was the break in the wall, through which the river ran, on its way to join the Mississippi. As they climbed slowly among the hills, 25 the valley they had left grew still more beautiful, as the squalor of the little town was hid by the dusk of distance. Both men were silent for a long time. Howard knew the peculiarities of his companion too well to make any remarks or ask any questions, and 30 besides it was a genuine pleasure to ride with one who SCENES FROM WESTERN- LIFE. 107 could feel that silence was the only speech amid such splendours. Once they passed a little brook singing in a mourn- fully sweet way its eternal song over its pebbles. It 5 called back to Howard the days when he and Grant, his younger brother, had fished in this little brook for trout, with trousers rolled above the knee and wrecks of hats upon their heads. IV. RAIN ON THE FARM. The rain was still falling, sweeping down from the 10 half-seen hills, wreathing the wooded peaks with a gray garment of mist, and filling the valley with a whitish cloud. It fell around the house drearily. It ran down into the tubs placed to catch it, dripped from the mossy 15 pump, and drummed on the upturned milk-pails, and upon the brown and yellow bee-hives under the maple- trees. The chickens seemed depressed, but the irre- pressible bluejay screamed amid it all, with the same insolent spirit, his plumage untarnished by the wet. 20 The barnyard showed a horrible mixture of mud and mire, through which Howard caught glimpses of the men, slumping to and fro without more additional protection than a ragged coat and a shapeless felt hat. In the sitting-room where his mother sat sewing 25 there was not an ornament, save the etching he had brought. The clock stood on a small shelf, its dial so much defaced that one could not tell the time of day ; and when it struck, it was with noticeably dispropor- tionate deliberation, as if it wished to correct any mis- lo8 HAMLIN GARLAND. take into which the family might have fallen by reason of its illegible dial. The paper on the walls showed the first concession of the Puritans to the Spirit of Beauty, and was made up of a heterogeneous mixture of flowers of unheard- 5 of shapes and colours, arranged in four different ways along the wall. There were no books, no music, and only a few newspapers in sight a bare, blank, cold, drab-coloured shelter from the rain, not a home. Nothing cosey, nothing heart-warming ; a grim and 10 horrible shed. V. A DAKOTA PRAIRIE. Leaving Rob to sputter over his cooking, Seagraves took his slow way off down toward the oxen grazing in a little hollow. The scene was characteristically, wonderfully beautiful. It was about five o'clock in a 15 day in late June, and the level plain was green and yellow, and infinite in reach as a sea ; the lowering sun was casting over its distant swells a faint impal- pable mist, through which the breaking teams on the neighbouring claims ploughed noiselessly, as figures in 20 a dream. The whistle of gophers, the faint, wailing, fluttering cry of the falling plover, the whir of the swift-winged prairie-pigeon, or the quack of a lonely duck, came through the shimmering air. The lark's infrequent whistle, piercingly sweet, broke from the 25 longer grass in the swales near by. No other climate, sky, plain, could produce the same unnamable weird charm. No tree to wave, no grass to rustle ; scarcely a sound of domestic life ; only the faint melancholy SCENES FROM WESTERN LIFE. 109 soughing of the wind in the short grass, and the voices of the wild things of the prairie. Seagraves, an impressionable young man (junior editor of the Boomtown Spike\ threw himself down on 5 the sod, pulled his hat-rim down over his eyes, and looked away over the plain. It was the second yeai of Boomtown's existence, and Seagraves had not yet grown restless under its monotony. Around him the gophers played saucily. Teams were moving here and 10 there across the sod, with a peculiar noiseless, effort^ less motion, that made them seem as calm, lazy, and unsubstantial as the mist through which they made their way ; even the sound of passing wagons was a sort of low, well-fed, self-satisfied chuckle. 15 Seagraves, " holding down a claim " near Rob, had come to see his neighbouring " bach " because feeling the need of company ; but now that he was near enough to hear him prancing about getting supper, he was content to lie alone on a slope of the green 20 sod. The silence of the prairie at night was well-nigh terrible. Many a night, as Seagraves lay in his bunk against the side of his cabin, he would strain his ear to hear the slightest sound, and be listening thus some- 25 times for minutes before the squeak of a mouse or the step of a passing fox came as a relief to the aching sense. In the daytime, however, and especially on a morning, the prairie was another thing. The pigeons, the larks, the cranes, the multitudinous voices of the 30 ground-birds and snipes and insects, made the air pul- sate with sound a chorus that died away into an infinite murmur of music. 110 HAM LIN GARLAND. " Hello, Seagraves ! " yelled Bob from the door. " The biscuit are 'most done/' Seagraves did not speak, only nodded his head, and slowly rose. The faint clouds in the west were getting a superb flame-colour above and a misty purple below, 5 and the sun had shot them with lances of yellow light. As the air grew denser with moisture, the sounds of neighbouring life began to reach the ear. Children screamed and laughed, and afar off a woman was sing- ing a lullaby. The rattle of wagons and voices of men 10 speaking to their teams multiplied. Ducks in a neigh- bouring lowland were quacking. The whole scene took hold upon Seagraves with irresistible power. VI. A CORN-FIELD. A corn-field in July is a hot place. The soil is hot and dry ; the wind comes across the lazily murmuring 15 leaves laden with a warm sickening smell drawn from the rapidly-growing, broad-flung banners of the corn. The sun, nearly vertical, drops a flood of dazzling light and heat upon the field over which the cool shadows run, only to make the heat seem the more 20 intense. Julia Peterson, faint with fatigue, was toiling back and forth between the corn-rows, holding the handles of the double-shovel corn-plough, while her little brother Otto rode the steaming horse. Her heart 25 was full of bitterness, and her face flushed with heat, and her muscles aching with fatigue. The heat grew terrible. The corn came to her shoulders, and not a breath seemed to reach her, while the sun, nearing the SCENES FROM WESTERN LIFE in noon mark, lay pitilessly upon her shoulders, protected only by a calico dress. The dust rose under her feet, and as she was wet with perspiration it soiled her till, with a woman's instinctive cleanliness, she shuddered. Her 5 head throbbed dangerously. What matter to her that the kingbird pitched jovially from the maples to catch a wandering blue-bottle fly, that the robin was feeding its young, that the bobolink was singing ? All these things, if she saw them, only threw her bondage to 10 labour into greater relief. Across the field, in another patch of corn, she could see her father a big, gruff-voiced, wide-bearded Nor- wegian at work also with a plough. The corn must be ploughed, and so she toiled on, the tears dropping 15 from the shadow of the ugly sun-bonnet she wore. Her shoes, coarse and square-toed, chafed her feet ; her hands, large and strong, were browned, or more properly burnt, on the backs by the sun. The horse's harness ">nd spouted on the rock itself. Times were # ; fferent upon Dim Heartach when it blew, and the n:ht fei 1 . dark, and the neighbour lights 5 of Skerryvore ar,d P.hiwal were quenched in fog, and the men sat prisoned high up in their iron drum, that then resounded with che lashing of the sprays. Fear sat with them in their sea-beleaguered dwelling ; and the colour changed in anxious faces when some greater 10 billow struck the barrack, and its pillars quivered and sprang under the blow. It was then that the foreman builder, Mr. Goodwillie, whom I see before me still in his rock-habit of undecipherable rags, would get his fiddle down and strike up human minstrelsy amid 15 the music of the storm. But it was in sunshine only that I saw Dhu Heartach ; and it was in sunshine, or the yet lovelier summer afterglow, that the steamer would return to Earraid, ploughing an enchanted sea ; the obedient lighters, relieved of their deck cargo, 20 riding in her wake more quietly ; and the steersman upon each, as she rose on the long swell, standing tall and dark against the shining west. But it was in Earraid itself that I delighted chiefly. The lighthouse settlement scarce encroached beyond 25 its fences ; over the top of the first brae the ground was all virgin, the world all shut out, the face of things unchanged by any of man's doings. Here was no living presence, save for the limpets on the rocks, for some old, gray, rain-beaten ram that I might rouse 30 out of a ferny den betwixt two boulders, or for the haunting and the piping of the gulls. It was older than man ; it was found so by incoming Celts, and 144 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. seafaring Norsemen, and Columba's priests. The earthy savour of the bog plants, the rude disorder of the boulders, the inimitable seaside brightness of the air, the brine and the iodine, the lap of the billows among the weedy reefs, the sudden springing up of a 5 great run of dashing surf along the sea-front of the isle, all that I saw and felt my predecessors must have seen and felt with scarce a difference. I steeped myself in open air and in past ages. " Delightful would it be to me to be in Uchd Ailiun, 10 On the pinnacle of a rock, That I might often see The face of the ocean ; That I might hear the song of the wonderful birds, Source of happiness ; 15 That I might hear the thunder of the crowding waves Upon the rocks : At times at work without compulsion This would be delightful ; At times plucking dulse from the rocks ; 20 At times at fishing." So, about the next island of lona, sang Columba himself twelve hundred years before. And so might I have sung of Earraid. And all the while I was aware that this life of sea- 25 bathing and sun-burning was for me but a holiday. In that year cannon were roaring for days together on French battle-fields ; and I would sit in my isle (I call it mine, after the use of lovers) and think upon the war, and the loudness of these far-away battles, and 30 the pain of the men's wounds, and the weariness of their marching. And I would think too of that other MEMOIRS OF AN ISLET. 145 war which is as old as mankind, and is indeed the life of man : the unsparing war, the grinding slavery of competition ; the toil of seventy years, dear-bought bread, precarious honour, the perils and pitfalls, and 5 the poor rewards. It was a long look forward ; the future summoned me as with trumpet calls, it warned me back as with a voice of weeping and beseeching ; and I thrilled and trembled on the brink of life, like a childish bather on the beach. 10 There was another young man on Earraid in these days, and we were much together, bathing, clambering on the boulders, trying to sail a boat and spinning round instead in the oily whirlpools of the roost. But the most part of the time we spoke of the great un- 15 charted desert of our futures ; wondering together what should there befall us ; hearing with surprise the sound of our own voices in the empty vestibule of youth. As far, and as hard, as it seemed then to look forward to the grave, so far it seems now to look back- 20 ward upon these emotions ; so hard to recall justly that loath submission, as of the sacrificial bull, with which we stooped our necks under the yoke of destiny. I met my old companion but the other day ; I cannot tell of course what he was thinking ; but, upon my 25 part, I was wondering to see us both so much at home, and so composed and sedentary in the world ; and how much we had gained, and how much we had lost, to attain to that composure ; and which had been upon the whole our best estate : when we sat there prating 30 sensibly like men of some experience, or when we shared our timorous and hopeful counsels in a western islet. O; THf xv INDEX OF AUTHORS CITED, Blackmore, Richard Doddridge, Lorna Doone, xvii-xviii, xxvi-xxvii, xxxiv, xlii Burroughs, John, An Idyl of the Honey-Bee, 28-40 Carlyle, Thomas, Frederick the Great, xxxviii The French Revolution, xlviii, 61-69 Life of John Sterling, xx, xxii, xxxviii Cowper, William, Letters, xlvii Defoe, Daniel, From London to Land's End, xx Robinson Crusoe, xxx, xxxii Dickens, Charles, The Chimes, xix, xxxvii, xli The Cricket on the Hearth, xiii David Copperfield, xiii A Tale of Two Cities, xiv Fuller, Henry B., The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani, xviii Garland, ffamlin, Main Travelled Roads, 101-113 Gibbon, Edward, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, xxiii-xxir, xl, 10-13, 45-51 Gray, 7^homas t Letters, xx-xxi, xxii, xxvii-xxviii, xxxviii, xliii '47 148 INDEX OF AUTHORS CITED. Hardy, Arthur Sherburnc, Passe Rose, xlvi Hardy, Thomas ', Tess of the D'Urbervilles, xxviii-xxix Holmes, Oliver Wendell, The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, xix james, Henry, A Little Tour in France, 81-91 Jessopp, Augustus H., The Coming of the Friars and Other Essays, 13-18 Johnson, Samuel A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, xxv-xxvi, xxx vii, xl Kipling, Rudyard, The Courting of Dinah Shadd, xxiii Lamb, Charles, The Essays of Elia, 114-125 Landor, Walter Savage, The Pentameron, xxxviii, 126-133 Pericles and Aspasia, xxxviii Matthews, Brander, Vignettes of Manhattan, 92-100 du Maurier, George, Peter Ibbetson, xiii, 19-27 Trilby, xxxiii Motley, J. Lothrop, The Rise of the Dutch Republic, xxii-xxiii Newman, John Henry, Cardinal t Historical Sketches, 1-9 Parkman, Francis, Montcalm and Wolfe, xxii, xxiv, xxxix Pater, Walter, Imaginary Portraits, 76-80 Marius the Epicurean, xxxiv-xxxv, xxxviii, xxxix, 75-76 The Renaissance, 73-74 INDEX OF AUTHORS CITED. 149 Ruskin, John, Praeterita, xvii, xxviii, xxxvii-xxxviii, xliii, 52-60 Stevenson, Robert Louis ; Across the Plains, xxiv Kidnapped, xlii-xliii Memories and Portraits, 140-145 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, xxxvi. -di Travels with a Donkey, xi, xlvi, 134-140 Swinburne, Algernon Charles, Essays and Studies, 70-72 White, Gilbert, The Natural History of Selborne, xlvi, 41-44