^ Y L\ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES GIFT OF Dr. ERNEST C. MOORE ~ ' f , THE SYLVAN YEAR. THE UNKNOWN RIVER. 3flltt6tratcti editions. THE SYLVAN YEAR. With 20 etchings by the author, and other artists. 8vo. Cloth, gilt edges. Price $5.50. THE UNKNOWN RIVER. With 37 plates etched by the author. 8vo. Cloth, gilt edges. Price $6.00. ROBERTS BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS. THE SYLVAN YEAR. LEAVES FROM THE NOTE BOOK OF RAOUL DUBOIS, PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON, AUTHOR OF "THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE," "ETCHING AND ETCHERS," ETC. 1 Non canimus surdis : respondent omnia silvae." VIRG. Eel. x. BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1876. Cambridge : Press of John Wilson and Son. 1 7s PREFACE. TN order to give more unity to these pages, it was * decided, after some hesitation, to introduce one or two fictitious personages and an element of human interest. Whatever Nature may be from the strictly scientific point of view, it is interesting to the artist (whether literary or pictorial) mainly as it is related, in ways more or less mysterious, to the world of feeling which lies hidden within our own breasts. Therefore, although a man of science might have written about the forest without reference to human sorrows or satisfac- tions, an artist could not do so except at the risk of sacrificing his most effective forces, those which have influence by means of sympathy and association. The principal personage of the narrative was in some degree suggested by the ' Obermann ' of De Senancour, a crea- tion which has been, if not precisely popular, certainly very influential amongst the more sensitive and studious minds of Continental Europe during the earlier part of 215163 vi Preface. the present century, and which has not even at the pres- ent day altogether lost its attraction ; for ' Obermann ' is still read by persons of culture, though the mental condition which De S^nancour painted in that work is much rarer in these days than it was in the days of Rene and Childe Harold. The fictitious personage who tells what there is of story in 'The Sylvan Year' is, however, a conception quite distinct from the dissatis- fied hero of De Senancour, and is intended to leave a very different impression upon the reader. The domi- nant note of ' Obermann ' is ennui; the ennui of a char- acter capable of long, indefinite suffering, but not capa- ble of passing out of such suffering by the discipline of active sight and thought. The following narrative, so far as it paints the character of the imaginary narrator, is intepded rather to exhibit the value of external nature as a refreshment to a spirit which, though it has suffered greatly, has still strength enough to take a hearty and healthy interest in everything that comes within the circle of its observation. Hz ~ OS) (jJjUtMjOiL &JL*j / 6My Vr lut^J^/}^ ft' THE SYLVAN" YEAR. w THE SYLVAN YEAR. A Woodland Estate LeVal Sainte Veronique Scenery of the Valley. IN the heart of the forests between the vine-lands of Burgundy and the course of the river Loire my mother's family had for centuries possessed a property which had descended to myself, but which I had visited only on rare occasions. It required singularly little care from its proprietor, being nearly the whole of it forest- land, and the cuttings took place only once in twenty years. The estate had been divided into five portions, and the times of cutting had been so arranged that one such period should recur every fourth year ; so we came to the place each Leap-year, like the 2Qth of February. There were about four hundred acres of woodland, and it would be difficult to find, except on the slopes of the Alps, a similar extent of country with so 'little that was level. Seven miles from the nearest public road stood our ancestral habitation. It occupied the bottom of a little valley, and had for its title the name of the locality, le Val Sainte Veronique. The house was not a chdteau, nor was it (I rejoice to say) an ordinary maison bour- geoisc. It consisted of the remains of a monastic establish- 2 November A Woodland Estate. ment which had never been either extensive or splendid, but our religious predecessors had left upon the place that which suits my taste and temper better than either size or splendor the impress of a quiet feeling, in harmony with the perfect seclusion that reigned there from year to year. They had left, too, a lovely chapel of perfect fourteenth-century work, which had been used by the farmer as a barn, and s'o little injured (for the soft hay did no harm to the delicate sculpture), that when I restored it some years since the walls and vaults required nothing but a careful cleaning, and the only serious outlay was that for a new pavement and the repair of the external roof. The monastic buildings pro- vided a capacious residence for one of my tenants, and a house for my own family ; but, as our visits had been so rare, we had gone to no expense in luxuries, and the furniture consisted of a few old things that had been left there by my maternal forefathers, who were people of simple tastes. Beyond the repair of the chapel which had not been costly, I had laid out scarcely anything on these old buildings in the Val Sainte Veronique, but I thought of them always with a certain quiet affection, and sought their shelter Willingly in the time of my deepest sorrow, going to that secluded place with a half- religious feeling, as if its monastic associations invited me, and made the retreat more perfect and its tranquillity more serene. I have said that the buildings were situated in a little valley. Three tiny meadows occupied the bottom, like a carpet of greenest velvet, and in the midst of them November The Val Ste. Veronique. 3 flowed a stream, about four yards wide, whose water was of the most lucid purity, and abundant even in the fiercest heats of summer. The hills around were so steep that they derived some sublimity from their steep- ness, but they were not exceedingly lofty, the highest of them not rising to more than seven hundred feet above the stream's level. Entirely clothed with wood, they offered an appearance of great richness, especially in the golden weeks of autumn, when the little valley became, for a brief season, a glorious study for a landscape- painter. II. Arrival at the Val Sainte Veronique Plans for the Employment of Time Paternal Education Companionship between Father and Son Sad Associations. WHEN we came to the place my boy and I after the lamentable events of the war, it had not this temporary splendor, but was gray under a gray and rainy sky ; and it seemed better so, more in unison with the sadness of our hearts. Our first visit was to the chapel, which, when we had last stayed here, my wife had decorated with some delicate needle-work of her own ; and here, as we knelt together, my boy and I had leisure to feel both the nearness of our lost ones and their remoteness. We chose two rooms that com- municated with each other, and, before evening, had given them an appearance of tolerable comfort. This 4 November Employment of Time. can never be very difficult in a place where firewood is inexhaustibly abundant. Logs were heaped on the old rusty fire-dogs, and the most cheerful beams illuminated the "red-brick floor and the naked, inhospitable walls. That night the good fire sufficed for us, but the next day we busied ourselves very actively in furnishing our little apartment with the least inconvenient of the old things that were scattered about the mansion. This activity was beneficial to both of us, and I was pleased to see how Alexis suddenly regained his boyish cheer- fulness in the toils of this novel occupation. Far from endeavoring to repress this happy elasticity of youth, I did my best to sustain and encourage it, for there is gloom enough between infancy and age without adding anything to it by the wilful refusal of whatever gleams of sunshine may be permitted to us. We passed a whole day in arranging the two rooms that were to be, in an especial sense, our home, and gradually they came to wear a pleasant and familiar aspect, as we unpacked our luggage and surrounded our- selves With our little personal belongings. We set up some book-shelves, and a rack for my pipes, and another for our fowling-pieces ; we hung up, with a melancholy satisfaction, the photographs of those who would come to us no more. The juxtaposition of these details is typical of what was going forward all the time in our innermost thoughts, for whilst we were busy about our things the images of the beloved ones were always near, always ready to rise vividly in the imagination. I had not come to the Val Sainte Veronique with- November Paternal Education. 5 out a definite plan for the employment of our time. Employment is necessary to us all, and in all circum- stances, but it is most especially necessary to those who have to bear some poignant and constantly-recurring sorrow. In the solitude that death had made for me, I felt myself drawn nearer to my remaining son, and resolved to have him with me for a whole year in that lonely dwelling of the Val Sainte Veronique. If this arrangement retarded his school-work, there might be, it seemed, an ample compensation in the constant exer- cise of a beneficent paternal influence, whilst the life he would lead with me was in the highest degree favora- ble to his physical growth and health. Nor was it inevitable, either, that his studies should be neglected during the months he passed with me. Though quite without ambition, I had employed a life of leisure in maintaining and extending my own culture in various directions, and might reasonably suppose myself capable of teaching what my boy, at his age, could have learned in an ordinary public school. The two disabilities which so commonly make paternal education practically an impossibility, the want of leisure and the want of the necessary scholarship, did not exist in my case. I par- ticularly desired to associate in my boy's mind the love of nature with the love of literature, and art, and science ; being firmly convinced, and knowing partly from my own experience, that these pursuits enhance the value of wealth to those who possess it, and are in themselves true riches for many who have little material gold. I determined, therefore, that we would not pass our time 6 November Sad Associations. in the forests like wild animals, but that some light of culture should brighten our sylvan year. I indulged myself, further, in the hope though this may have been, to some extent, a common parental illusion that by the constant but gentle exercise of paternal influence, whatever degree of that influence I already possessed over Alexis might be increased during the year that we were to live together in such close and uninterrupted companionship. It is the misfortune of public education that our sons are separated from us in their youth and delivered into the hands of teachers, who, however conscientious they may be, cannot, in the nature of things, take that earnest and complete inter- est in their whole mental and physical well-being which incessantly occupies the mind of every father who is worthy of the name. Since this boy alone remained to me, I desired to establish between us relations of inti- macy and friendship of a kind which cannot be incom- patible with respect on one side and dignity on the other. His brothers had loved me well, and when their life- blood flowed out upon the miry ground at Gravelotte, their last thoughts, so far as they related to anything in this world, were, I doubt not, thoughts of tender affection for their mother and dutiful love for me. I know that they loved me well. There have been times and occasions in our life . . . In vain I school myself into forgetful ness ; I can- not quite forget, for all things remind me of my sons. / Alexis himself reminds me of them continually, and he is constantly in my sight or in my thoughts. The place, /fit- ffiufQ t/w ^^ kAU-iafJju '^*f WVU WtlfWL frf*. Jfa* F" November The Old Building. 7 too, recalls them to my memory, for they came here to hunt the boar in the pride of their early manhood. And why should we endeavor to forget ? Do we not wrong the dead when we dismiss their memory as too disturb- ing and importunate ? Let me rather welcome these recollections, and be thankful for that clearness of the faculties which enables me still to see their faces and hear their voices as I heard and saw them when the only war they knew was that against the wild boar and the wolf. I will build a monument to their memory near the Val Sainte Veronique. On the crest of the hill before the house two columns of spotless marble shall rise high above the summits of the trees, and as the marble mellows to the sunsets of the years that are to come, so may their sacrifice appear to me more in harmony with the great purposes of the world ! III. The Old Building My Herbarium My Books A Year of Retire- ment Reading Botany Etching Animal Life. THE day after our arrival in our new home it rained incessantly, and not a ray of sunshine came to brighten the dreary November landscape. We had arrived at a time of the year that offered no pros- pect of cheering natural appearances. The splendor of autumn had utterly faded away ; the clear brightness of the frosty winter had not yet arrived to brace us 8 November My Herbarium. with its healthier influences ; we had nothing around us but the dulness of advanced decay. From sunrise to sunset, or, more accurately in a valley shrouded by mist, from the -time when the cloud grew paler in the morning to the time when it grew dark again in the afternoon, we remained in the house together. Our heavy baggage arrived from the distant railway station in the middle of the day, and we found an occupation in unpacking the various cases and in settling our interior arrangements. There was plenty of space in the old building, and, with unlimited supplies of excellent firewood, we were under no necessity for limiting our existence to the apartments we had especially selected as our own. We had dejeuner in the dining-room, but it seemed so large and dreary, with its broad stone floor and the black beams in the rude old ceiling, that we determined not to eat in it any more, and dined that evening in a circular cabinet, which occupied the basement of one of the round towers a cabinet which had been used by a lady of our family two generations before, and had still the charm of a faded elegance that affected the mind like the faint per- fume of withered flowers. The German invaders of Lorraine had carried away the greater part of my library and my little collection of pictures. My herbarium, which it had taken me years to collect and classify, had gone I knew not whither ; possibly some scientific invader may have been tempted by the rarer plants, and appropriated them, leaving the rest to comrades less enlightened, who may have used them to kindle fires.. Even the cabinets that contained November My Books. 9 them disappeared in the general ruin. All that remained to me of my material implements of culture were a few old books ; but these, as it fortunately happened, were my dearest friends and favorites. Better editions may have been printed by the enterprise of contemporary publishers, but to my feeling no copy of a beloved author, however fair, however faultless, can ever be worth the copy that has long been my companion^ Books increase in value for their possessor as they diminish in salableness at an auction of his effects. The remnant of what had been the best private library in the neighborhood I lived in had for me a precious- ness far beyond that of the finest editions that were once its glory in the eyes of others. Especially had I loved the true immortal poets. From them, and from them only, can we win that wondrous lore which en- chants for us the whole material world, and admits us into a fairy -land which is not illusory. A year of absolute retirement would seem like an interminable desert to any one without an occupation, but I knew from the experience of other years that when once we are absorbed in pursuits that are at the same time very interesting and very laborious, the months melt away like a treasure in the hands of a spendthrift. It was only, indeed, by the most method- ical arrangement of our time that we could possibly accomplish the tasks we had voluntarily undertaken. Besides our reading, which, for Alexis, was the most im- portant of my plans, I proposed to collect an herbarium, to include the entire flora of my woodland property, and io November An Excursion. to make an album of etchings which was to illustrate everything of interest on the estate. In the selection of subjects there was but one serious difficulty their inexhaustible and bewildering abundance. In the Val Sainte Veronique itself there were groups of magnificent chestnuts, centuries old, shadowing the woodland road that leads into the heart of the forest ; and though the dense young woods were cut regularly for their revenue, many an old giant had been spared from generation to .generation, and there were hollow trunks more ancient than monarchy in France, and far more deeply rooted. I desired also to illustrate the animal life of the great woods, from the wild geese flying over their summits in the chill evenings of the dying year, to the deer in the sunny glade and the wolves in the winter snow. IV. An Excursion in the Forest Dante's Suffering Trees The Forest- road A Hill-top We go astray Observation on the Adhesion of Dead Leaves Analogy in Human Affairs Wonderful Variety of Color Emerson on Winter Scenery The Forest-Fear of Dante How I first understood it. ON the third day after our arrival in the valley the weather, though still thickly overcast, was fair enough -to encourage ideas of exploration, and we set out after dejeuner with the intention of making an ex- cursion in shape something like the outline of a pear, and so getting home again about dinner-time. We November Dante's Suffering Trees. II began by following one of the narrow roads which from time immemorial have given access to the interior of the forest There is evidence that some of these roads existed in the old Gaulish times, and the engineers of those days, trusting to the strength and patience of their oxen, seem to have considered mere steepness as no objection whatever. The road we followed was often closely hemmed in on both sides by impenetrable hedges of old beech, whose trunks were twisted into the most fantastic shapes long ago, when they were young, and have remained so ever since in grim deformity. Some of them were really painful to contemplate, the efforts of nature had been so thwarted. They were like powerful arms of men bound at the wrists to some immovable front of rock, with muscles swelling in vain efforts for deliverance. I thought of that dreadful fancy of Dante's, the suffering human trees, that bled dark drops of blood when a little twig was broken, and asked so pitifully, ' Why dost thou break me, why dost thou tear me, hast thou no pity ? ' Perb disse'l Maestro : ' Se tu tronchi Qualche fraschetta d'una d'este piante Li pensier ch'hai si faran tutti monchi.' Allor pors'io la mano un poco avanti E colsi un ramoscel da un gran pruno, E'l tronco suo gridb: ' Perche mi schiante?' Da che fatto fu poi di sangue bruno. Ricomincio a gridar : ' Perche mi scerpi ? Non hat tu spirto di pietate alcuno ? ' After being hedged in by these gaunt arms for the distance of nearly a mile, the road became less distinctly 12 November The Forest Road. separated from the surrounding forest-land ; it made several sudden turns, and finally offered us a bifurcation. Having nothing to guide us but a general project of wan- dering, we took the side which seemed most in our in- tended direction, and followed it where it might lead. The wheel-ruts soon ceased altogether ; the road became a mere footpath, and after winding in an uncertain manner for a long distance emerged at last on the very summit of a lofty knoll, where, in the midst of an open space of greensward, stood four enormous chestnuts, surrounded by tall bushes of holly with an abundance of red berries in the midst of its varnished green. Although we were certainly on the top of one of the many hills which carry this great forest upon their ample sides, it was impossible to see anything beyond the narrow circle of the open space around us. We were enclosed by a sylvan wall, penetrable indeed by a pedestrian traveller, but as im- pervious to his vision as if it had been built of granite blocks. We were certainly not on our own land ; these giant chestnuts were not mine, for all the great old forest-trees that belonged to me were known to me as the richest plum-trees in his orchard are known to the market-gardener. It was impossible to ascertain the points of the compass. The whole sky was covered with one dense low cloud, not lighter in one place than another, so that we could not guess the sun's position ; nor did any inclination of the trees, or any growth of moss, give a reliable indication of the prevailing wind, and if they had done so the indication would have been useless to us in our ignorance of the local meteorology. November Dead Leaves. 13 To retrace the path we came by might have been pos- sible, though difficult; but I felt an invincible repug- nance to a mere retreat. So partly in reliance upon chance, and partly trusting an instinct of locality that I cannot account for or explain (an animal instinct, like that of the salmon or the housemarten), I determined to push on through the dense wood till the topography of the country. became somewhat more intelligible to us. Before quitting the great chestnuts, I made an obser- vation which confirmed what I had observed before with reference to the adherence of dead leaves. These trees, as a rule, were entirely denuded of their foliage ; but two or three branches, on the contrary, retained almost every leaf that had adorned them in the glory of summer changed indeed, in color, from rich dark green to a lovely pale gold, far more delicate than the winter color- ing of beech or oak, yet scarcely altered in form, and pre- serving great purity of curve. Now the question which interested me was, how it happened that these branches retained their foliage whilst all the others had lost it ? The answer is, that a branch which retains its foliage has always been virtually severed from the stem by fract- ure before the fall of the leaf., Why the leaves fall from a branch that shares the life of the tree, and adhere to one that is separated from it, I am not scientific enough to decide quite positively, but naturally conclude that it is due to the continuance of circulation in the one case and its stoppage in the other, the leaves adhering when the sap has not been able to descend, but detaching them- selves easily when the course of the descending sap has 14 November Analogy in Human Affairs. met with no interruption. This suggested the reflection that a very close analogy may be found in human affairs.^ A colony severed from the mother country will often preserve words, and even habits in thought and action, which have dropped off from the parent since the separa- tion took place, and which would also have been lost by the colony if the old closeness of connection had never been interrupted. The French Canadians are an excel- le"nt instance of this ; they have preserved traditional ways of thinking, and traditional manners, which have dropped off long since from the inhabitants of France itself. Although the season of the year was that which is generally reputed to be least interesting, and most com- pletely denuded of the charms of color ; although the sky above us was like lead, and there was not one flower on the earth beneath : still it would have been impossible for a painter, or for any one capable of seeing color in nature, not to be continually interested by the wonderful variety around us. It was not merely those pale, golden leaves of the broken chestnut branches, but the rich green of the holly with its bright red berries, and the abundant beech leaves, and the young oaks that kept their foliage as in summer, changed only in hue and in the form of the shrivelled leaves. Amidst intensities of green, of moss and holly, blood-red berries, and foliage like rusted iron or faded gilding, the grays and purples of a thousand trunks and bewildering intricate branches had a beauty that is lost in the too monotonous verdure of July. The American philosopher, Emerson, says, November Forest-Fear of Dante. 15 ' The inhabitants of cities suppose that the country landscape is pleasant only half the year. I please my- self with observing the graces of the winter scenery, and believe that we are as much touched by it as by the genial influences of summer. To_the 3JBliy eye, e moment of the year has its own beauty.' It was not without some feeling of anxiety that I quitted that open space, to enter once more the obscurity of innumerable trees. The words of Dante came to me again, this time with a deeper gravity of meaning than I had ever found in them before, Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura Che la diritta via era smarrita. j Ahi quanto a dir qual' era e cosa dura Questa selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte Che nel pensier rinnuova la paura ! Gradually there came upon me a certain feeling that I had never yet experienced, but which Dante had known well. Hour after hour we walked through that intermin- able forest, and the strange new feeling became more and more oppressive, till at length I realized what the old poet meant with Questa selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte. We were so hemmed in by millions of stems, that, although free to walk everywhere, we were held in an illimitable prison. The trees began to wear a hostile and menacing aspect, as if we were wandering amongst unnumbered enemies. They had no longer for us any grace or beauty, but united together in one horrible monotony. I remembered the enormous extent of this 1 6 November A Shepherdess. forest which covers a hundred square miles ; its com- plicated and difficult geography, not thoroughly known to any human being ; its endless variety of hill and dale, that it would take weeks of travel to explore in their intricate detail. And then I reflected on the single hour of daylight that remained to us one hour and that we were not only unprovided with food, but had no covering besides our light pedestrian dress. Alexis had brought his gun. I had my tobacco, and a good pro- vision of matches, and a little brandy in my flask ; but in the way of food, not even so much as a biscuit. Jvrr V. A Shepherdess Her Ignorance A Shepherd Lad I resolve to fol- low a Rivulet Emerson's Feeling about the Forest That of Dante How we were led by the Rivulet Our Situation Resolves for the Future The Silence of the Woods A Wild Sow We kill a little Pig Our Bonfire Signals Searchers Help reaches us Our Geographical Situation. THE time was past when it might have been yet possible to retrace our steps, and the only prac- ticable issue before us was to get out of the forest as we might. I knew that there were occasional openings, little patches of tilled ground with rude habitations for the woodmen, and in one of these openings we should probably find a guide. We came at last to a clearing of about five acres on the slope of a hill-side, and from this place were able to get a view of the surrounding country. All that was visible consisted November A Shepherd Lad. 17 chiefly of a valley, with a stream at the bottom, in character so precisely like the Val Ste. Veronique that I concluded it to' be the same rivulet, and therefore, of course, the most reliable of guides. On one side of the clearing passed a road of the kind common in these forests, so narrow in parts that an ox-cart would graze the trees on both sides, and then suddenly widening with verdant margins of pasture to the right hand or to the left. In one of these places, huddled in a coarse striped cloak and spinning from her distaff, stood the first human being we met with in these solitudes, a shep- herdess with a. flock of the tiny Morvan sheep, and a wolfish dog to guard them. The dog rushed at us as if we had been wild animals ; the girl threw her sabots at him, and hit him rather severely, uttering violent excla- mations in a language entirely unintelligible by us. I asked her whither the road led, pointing before me, and she answered ' a la foret ' (pronounced fooref) ; then I inquired whither the road led in the other direction, and she answered ' a la pdture' (p renounced pdature). These two words comprised her entire conception of geography. In vain I mentioned the names of the Val Ste. Veronique, of the villages I knew, of the nearest market town, all these were utterly unknown to her. Forest and pasture ! could we not see them with our eyes ? We followed the road for about a mile, and met a lad of sixteen with two curs after him. Here, at last, was a reliable guide. We asked him whither the road led, and got for answer 'a lafodret; ' then we asked him where it came from, and he answered ' de la pa&ture! 1 8 November I follow a Rivulet. He, too, was entirely impervious to questions about dis- tant localities, and he did not understand French, whether from weak intellect or mere isolation I know not. He spoke the uncouth patois of these regions, a language more remote from French than is either Spanish or Italian. Yet even his patois was spoken with the great- est hesitation, as if utterance of any kind were a difficulty for him. It being impossible to gain any information from these dwellers in the wilderness, I determined to take a resolution and follow the rivulet in the valley. If it were our own rivulet it would surely lead us home- wards ; if not, we should at least escape the danger of wandering uselessly in a circle. Every stream in the forest gets out of the forest ultimately, and he who follows a rivulet, if he can only follow it long enough, will emerge at last from its labyrinthine dells. ' In the woods,' says Emerson, ' is perpetual youth. ' Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair.' How different is this from Dante's feeling about the forest ! As the gloom of evening settled down upon the land the views of Dante prevailed with me more and more. I felt that our modern conception of wild nature, simply as a field for the pursuit of health and amusement, or pleasant study, is not a complete con- November Our Situation. 19 ception. The old dread of the wilderness had retained more of the early experience of man, when he found himself, in his weakness and ignorance, in the presence of natural forces that appalled but did not charm his imagination. The rivulet led us into the densest wood once more. Our easiest path, but a wet one, lay in the very bed of the stream itself, and we floundered along, guided by twilight glimmers on the fortunately shallow water. In this way we proceeded for a long time with considerable rapidity, and might have gone on until night fell in blackness, had we not met with an insurmountable dif- ficulty in a sudden alteration of geological character, which made the rivulet no longer a practicable path. It became closed in between precipitous rocks, and fell in a loud cascade into the depths of a ravine below. Nothing remained of daylight but a feeble grayness in the sky, every near object was invisible, and after some ineffectual attempts to get round the rocky sides of the watercourse I determined to abandon, for that night, all further effort to reach the Val Ste. Veronique. Most fortunately it did not rain, and we -were in a perfectly sheltered situation. The constant exercise of our long march (we had been walking for seven hours without intermission) had kept us hitherto safe from cold, but we could not prudently rest without a fire. I had matches and a newspaper in my pocket ; we collected a heap of the driest leaves and twigs, and soon -had the satisfaction of illuminating the little dell with a cheerful blaze of light, that brought the rocks and nearest trees into the most vigorous relief 2O November Silence of the Woods. against the forest gloom and the starless blackness of the sky. Near to us were some resinous firs, and under them Alexis found quantities of large cones, rich in tur- pentine, which kept our fire up very brilliantly. I had carefully economized my brandy, and now ad- ministered enough of it to give us a little temporary comfort ; but we suffered seriously from hunger. Alexis had killed nothing with his gun, or else we might have tried our skill at such rough cookery as the circumstan- ces permitted, but the cartridges he had with him turned out to be very useful to us ultimately. The lesson of the day's misadventure was certainly not lost upon either of us. Alexis declared that in future he would never trust himself in the forest without a mariner's compass in his pocket, and I mentally determined that on all future expeditions we would carry soldiers' rugs and a little supply of provisions. I had at least the consola- tion of my pipe, which aids a man wonderfully to sup- port privation, and deadens the sense of hunger. The hours passed one by one, and Alexis was over- powered with sleep. I cut a quantity of heather and covered him with it entirely ; after which I sat watching by his bed, and supplying fuel to the fire of our bivouac. There is a death-like silence in the woods on a winter's night, but I consoled myself for the quiescence of the nightingale by the torpor of a great population of vipers which inhabit the crevices of the rocks, and are danger- ous things in summer. No sound was audible but the rushing of the rapid stream and the monotonous murmur of its cascades. November A Wild Sow. 21 About three o'clock in the morning I heard, or fancied that I heard, a movement in the brushwood, quite clearly distinguishable from the music of the rivulet. To this succeeded a crash of breaking branches, and a wild boar, or rather sow, dashed through the water a few yards above our resting-place. She was followed by a well-grown litter, which I took to be rather numerous from the noise they made. On the impulse of the mo- ment I discharged both barrels amongst them, and killed a fine little pig, the rest of the family being immediately lost in the depths of the forest. The discharge aroused Alexis, who was delighted with this exploit, and finished the poor little brute with a hunting-knife of formidable dimensions, which he always carries about him. Here, at any rate, were the materials for a carnivorous breakfast. But this was not the only consequence of the incident. We were startled soon afterwards by the report of a gun in the distance, after too long an interval to be an echo. The inference was obvious ; we were in communication with some gun-carrying personage in the forest, either poacher or forester, or possibly a party in search of us from the Val Ste. Veronique. Instead of attempting to set out in the direction from which the sound proceeded, which would have been use- less in the dark entanglement of the forest, I determined to remain quietly where we were, and to increase our bonfire as much as possible, so that the reverberation from it on the clouds above might be strong enough to guide any seeker to our whereabouts. This may be done when the clouds are low, and it is the only advan- 22 November Help reaches us. tage I have ever been able to discover in losing yourself on a cloudy night. Alexis had a good supply of cartridges, so I told him to fire both barrels every five minutes. These signals were regularly answered, and we heard to our satis- faction, by the increasing loudness of the distant guns, that our friends were gradually approaching. It was slow and toilsome work, however, for them in the depth of the forest. We waited an hour and a half, firing regularly, before we heard a long cry from the top of the hill. This we answered, and twenty minutes later the forest was suddenly illuminated by the glare of torches, and a scene was accidentally composed which a painter could not have witnessed without finding mate- rial for his art. The farmer who rented from me whatever little pasture and arable land there was in the Val Ste. Ve"ronique, and my servant Francois, who, amongst other peculiarities, has a deep-seated unbelief in his master's capacity for taking care of himself (which the present adventure was not exactly calculated to remove), had become very anxious when we did not return at dinner-time, as we had promised. They soon arrived at the conclusion that we had lost ourselves in the forest, and organized, by the help of neighbors (who lived five miles away), a very well-arranged little expedition for our relief. Francois had taken care at starting to bring provisions in a heavily charged knapsack, and the first thing he did was to arrange them tidily on the ground. Alexis displayed the wonderful appetite of his age, and November Forest Scenery. 23 exhibited in triumph the ensanguined blade which had finished the little marcassin. Whilst we were breaking our fast our geographical situation was made clear to us. In the first place, this was not the stream leading to the Val Ste. Veronique, but another rivulet leading in quite a different direction. Had we been able to follow it we should have emerged from the forest at a point about forty miles from home. We had walked thirty miles, and were fifteen from the Val Ste. Veronique in a straight line. The farmer knew of a forester's hut within a reasonable distance, and pro- posed that we should go there when it was daylight, as we all needed a few hours' rest to prepare us for our homeward journey. VI. Scenery of the interior of the Forest The Forester's Hut Interior of the Hut The Forester and his Son A little pet Wild Boar A Boar that heard Mass Jean Bouleau the Forester His osten- sible Trade He is a Poacher Poachers and Magistrates An Indiscreet Poacher The Temptations of Good Eating The Pro- tectors of Poachers Professional Braconniers Their Wonderful Skill The Weasel Alexis fraternizes with the Weasel The Weasel described His manners and habits His affected igno- rance The Weasel's knowledge of the Forest. WE lay round our fire in the forest during the hours that remained of the night, but at ear- liest dawn we started for the forester's hut. The road to it passed through a narrow gorge, so enclosed by steep hills, densely wooded with young oak, that it was 24 November The Foresters Hut. impossible to see more than two or three hundred yards in any direction. After walking in single file for the distance of about a league, we came suddenly upon an abrupt turn in the little dell, and there it ended, for a barrier of hill rose directly in front of us, so steep as to be almost inaccessible. There was a little open space of natural meadow, and on one side of this stood the forester's hut, scarcely distinguishable from the dense vegetation that surrounded it, for the builder had used material ready to his hand, and simply constructed a sort of wigwam of young oak-trunks and branches, with a thatch of gorse that covered both roof and wall. A tiny rill had been artificially directed to a spout of hol- low wood, and fell in a little cascade of the most perfect purity on the stony ground in front of the cabin, trick- ling afterwards amongst the pebbles, and finding its way to the bit of meadow below. No human dwelling could be more humble and primitive than this was. In the remotest wilds of America there may be houses equally primitive, but there can be no habitations nearer in structure and conception to man's earliest ideal of a home. The inhabitants were already awake, and we had immediate access to the interior. There were a couple of low bedsteads, made roughly from young trees and covered with sheets of canvas. There were two or three shelves, with nothing on them but a little of the commonest earthenware, and the rest of the fur- niture included nothing that Socrates would have re- jected as unnecessary. It is just possible that Diogenes might have discovered a superfluity. November A Pet Wild Boar. 25 The inhabitants consisted of the forester and his son, a lad of fifteen, who seemed three years younger. They welcomed us with a surprised politeness, natural under the circumstances ; but we told our story, and this led to a more frank and intimate acquaintance. Our new host lived too far from the Val Ste. Veronique to know much about our extremity of the forest, and my name appeared to be unknown to him, but he treated us with an equal hospitality in which there was a great deal of simple dignity. The conversation turned upon our adventure, and when we told him about the little wild boar, and displayed the victim, he gave a peculiar whis- tle, and immediately a beast of the same species, a little older, came from a dark corner in the hut and sought his caresses like a dog. He had killed the sow in the forest, and taken this youngling home, at first with no definite intention of adopting it, but the creature had become so familiar that it now formed part of his house- hold. The wild boar, if taken young, is very easily domesticated, and capable of strong attachment to its human friends. The men present immediately began to mention other instances of boars that had been taken and brought up in the same way, and one was men- tioned which regularly followed its master to the village church, and would not be excluded, but came at last, by the toleration of the cure", to hear mass like a Christian ; till finally it grew to an alarming size, and was sold to a travelling menagerie for the sum of seventy francs. What a transition for a poor creature, that had loved its friends and enjoyed great freedom in their society, to 26 November Jean Bouleau. be taken suddenly away from all affectionate intercourse and shut up in a narrow cage, and carried from fair to fair like poor Gulliver in Brobdignag, but without the tender care of Glumdalclitch ! As for the future fate of this one, its owner admitted with sorrow that the time must ultimately arrive when it would be necessary to have him ' bled ; ' but when that day came he hoped he might be at a distance, and not be a witness of the sacrifice. The society of people who live with Nature, though it may be wanting in the variety of thought and expe- rience that we find only in great cities, has always some elements of interest ; and this forester, Jean Bouleau, was very observant in his own way, and half a naturalist. I learned afterwards that he had the reputation of being a wonderfully skilful poacher ; and indeed a man in his situation, buried in the depths of a vast forest, with no neighbors but wild animals, would naturally be tempted to lead the life of a trapper. His ostensible trade was woodcutting, and he worked at it sufficiently to give a fair color and pretext to his existence ; but a hardy and adventurous spirit desires other excitements than con- stant physical drudgery, and this man found in poach- ing exactly the excitement that he needed. The reader may ask how a man so well known to be a poacher could go on year after year without exciting hostility enough to drive him out of the country ; but the diffi- culty in this part of France is, that however strong the evidence against poachers, the magistrates will not convict. One conviction certainly did take place some TA^tf " v *vc' - f An Indiscreet Poachkr. 2 7 years ago, but it was owing to an extraordinary absen of tacton the part of the poacher himself, who had not yet learned the refinements of his trade. The President affected to interrogate him with great severity, on which the prisoner was simple enough to answer, ' What ? don't you know me ? I'm the man that supplies your own kitchen with game. It was I who sold that hare to your cook only last week.' ' Silence, prisoner ! ' shouted both the President and the Procureur Imperial, and the man was condemned at once ; not for poaching, but for indiscretion. The simple truth is, that the poachers are the regular purveyors of all who have a taste for game ; and as" magistrates and other official persons^ know that their kitchens are supplied by persons of this class, their lenity may be counted upon if only the prisoner has the tact to play his part in the little comedy so as not to compromise his betters. Even the dignitaries of the Church are not proof against the temptations of good eating, and sometimes consume viands which have not been come by either legally or honestly. There was a certain Bishop, now dead, who took his share of re- sponsibility in these matters with a pleasant humor. Wishing to eat venison when not quite in season, he sent half the body of the deer that tempted him as a present to the Prefect, who lived in the same town, and Accom- panied the gift by the following little note, -y ' Parta- geons la responsabilit6 : cfeargez-vous du temporel ; je me charge du spiritueK^ ' Sometimes a few sportsmen unite to prosecute poach- ers, but their efforts, encounter the perpetual difficulty 2 8 November Protectors of Poachers. that the lawyers and magistrates have private feel- ings of the tenderest regard for the clever and ad- venturous men who supply the greatest delicacies of their tables. Some sportsmen heard that a great game dinner was being cooked at a certain restaurant, and they required the Procureur Imperial to give a warrant for seizure. Armed with this and accompanied by the police, they entered the kitchen where the prepara- tions were busily going forward. On the spits before the fire were quails, partridges, pheasants evidence enough against the master of the establishment ; but he simply answered that, although the dinner might not be legal, for the game was not killed in season, still it would be useless to prosecute him, because the feast had been ordered by the President of the Assizes himself. The zeal of the trouble-fete sportsmen cooled at once on receiving this piece of information, and they desisted The plain truth is, that conscientiousness in game-preserving is almost entirely unknown in France, and the only people who desire a different state of things are the large land-owners, who are not power- ful enough to alter the habits of the whole nation. Every town of importance enough for the interchange of hospitality is sure to maintain a good many isolated braconniers, who supply its larders with game both in and out of what may be legally the season. They are less what an Englishman understands by the word poacher, than hunters and trappers by profession, like their brethren in the forests of America. There is still great variety of game in France, and no country could November Professional Braconnier s. 2 9 be more favorable to it if preservation of any serious kind could be resorted to ; but under present circum- stances, when it is impossible to protect it efficiently, it would be impossible also to purchase game without the assistance of the braconnier. The land-owners do not sell, they have only enough for their own tables ; the sportsmen who live in towns, and consider themselves rewarded if, after a day's march, they return home with a single partridge, are not skilful enough to ' do more than procure themselves a luxury from time to time : so there is clearly a sort of need for the true professional braconnier, who is to ordinary sportsmen what the artist is to the amateur, and can get game in quantity enough to supply the market regularly, though often at high prices. The skill of these men is often wonderful, but no one becomes a braconnier who has not a strong natural aptitude for the chase, with all those animal instincts and physical powers which are necessary to an incessant warfare against the cunning and swiftness of the brute. These instincts and powers gain greatly both in delicacy and strength by incessant use, and after ten or fifteen years of a life in the woods such a man as Jean Bouleau becomes a hunting animal, the most patient and cunning of all animals, and one of the most enduring. If there is a fish in the river, or a quadruped in the woods, he will have that fish, be will have that quadruped, when the common sportsman might as hope- fully propose to himself to arrest the wild swans in their longest and loftiest travelling in the upper air. I found afterwards that this man was never called by his own 30 November The Weasel. name, but was known in the forest and its outskirts as ' the Weasel,' and by this sobriquet we will speak of him in the present narrative. There is an instinct in the boyish nature by which it is strongly attracted to whatever is primitive in man, and I observed without surprise that Alexis fraternized almost immediately with the Weasel, even before he became aware of the man's remarkable talents and ac- complishments. It immediately occurred to me, that if Jean Bouleau were guilty of no greater crime than supplying the larders of rich citizens with game, which they offered him the strongest temptations to procure fpr them, merely because they had not skill and en- durance enough to procure it for themselves, I need not throw any hindrance in the way of an intimacy of this kind, which would be an education for Alexis in habits of self-reliance and observation, and the best possible introduction to the study of natural history. The Weasel was an excellent specimen of the race of men that he belonged to, as pure a Celt as any in all France. We, who belong to the taller races of man- kind, are rather apt to undervalue the qualities of the Celt. His superiorities may be summed up in rapidity of intelligence and of action. The Weasel was in stature even below the low standard of his race, but he was beautifully built, with legs and arms fit for a painter's model, and, notwithstanding his labor as a woodcutter, the hands retained an almost feminine delicacy. The hair on his head was richly abundant, black, and curly ; but the beard was scanty, like that November The Weasel Described. 31 of an adolescent. The eyes were like the eyes of a wild animal, quite clear and brilliant, but unpleasantly rapid in their movements. He spoke in the most good- humored manner, and after the first quarter of an hour became extremely polite to us. ' Would we not accept something to eat ? he would do what he could for our entertainment.' Having kept a little inn some years before, he confessed to some skill in cookery, and pro- /^ duced as a specimen of it a large earthen pan filled with civet de Itivre. He had wine, too, rather rough to thg palate, but sound vin du pays, grown in a little ex- perimental vineyard on the outskirts of the forest, with sufficiently good soil and a southern aspect, but much too high above the level of the sea for any delicacy of flavor. There were goats' cheeses of his own making, which were excellent ; and to conclude, he gave us coffee and a dram of genievre, which consisted of brandy made from pressed grapes, in which he had steeped berries from the juniper bushes that abounded in the forest. These luxuries, and the cigarettes he smoked with us afterwards, were quite enough to prove that the Weasel did not really and truly belong to the class of woodcutters by his habits (for they live like ascetics), nor did he appear in the least anxious to go to his daily labor. His earlier life as an innkeeper, and his fre- quent visits to the city, where he ate in the kitchens of his patrons, had given him a taste for good living, which may have been one of the incentives to his career as a braconnier. It became evident in the course of our conversation 32 November Knowledge of the Forest. that his ignorance of the Val Ste. Veronique had been affected, probably to shield himself from the suspicion of poaching on my estate. The truth was that the whole of the forest was known to this man, and proba- bly to him only. He could find his way through its intricate hills and valleys by day or night, in fog or sunshine ; he needed no mariner's compass, but went about guided by the marvellous instinct of locality. His talk about the forest interested us exceedingly, and he offered to guide us if ever we felt disposed to pur- sue our explorations. It was an offer not to be rejected for the future, but for the time being we felt more dis- posed to return homewards with our relieving party. After a rest of three hours at the Weasel's cabin, we set off on our long march, and arrived at home before nightfall. The principal result of our adventure was a feeling of the awfulness of the forest, which was par- tially diminished by subsequent familiarity, but never quite effaced. We never set out on any excursion afterwards without a mariner's compass and a small supply of provisions. December Indoor Studies. 33 VII. I resolve to live in the Present Alexis How we passed December Wild Boars and Wolves Strength of the Wolf Courage of a Shepherdess The Wild Boar Eatable Wintry Splendor of Janu- ary Beauty of Dried Leaves Oak-leafage in January Common Hornbeam Leaves of Hornbeam in January Winter foliage of the Beech Its Form and Color Rich color of the Quince-tree in January Common Bramble. THE weather, which had been gloomy since our arrival in the Val Ste. Veronique, now became more cheerful, and as we were more settled in our new home the beauty of Nature grew more evident and more satisfying. In times of mental disturbance from what- ever cause, from the pressure of affairs, or anxieties, or sorrow, we do not see Nature clearly, nor do we see it either in the dulness of ennui. A certain middle state is needed between anxiety and too stagnant calm, in which the mind does not either suffer from the sense of pressure on the one hand, nor yet, on the other, become dulled from the want of use. Every day my sorrow pro- i duced less of disturbing pain, and knowing the past to \ be wholly beyond my power, I resolved to live as much] as possible in the present. This was rendered the easier by the companionship of Alexis, who, with the natural buoyancy and activity of his age, soon entered with great eagerness into the pleasures of our new existence, whilst he willingly accepted the studious discipline which I had felt to be necessary for both of us. The month of December was passed in indoor stud- ies, with occasional excursions in the forest, undertaken 3 34 December Boars and Wolves. rather for sport than observation. Few incidents of importance occurred to us during these wintry weeks. The neighborhood of our own valley was frequently visited by wild boars, which of late years had been more numerous than ever, whilst the wolves were be- coming rarer. The peasants affirm that this is an inevitable law, that the wolf and the wild boar always increase or diminish inversely. Why this is so I have not yet been able to ascertain, for these animals do not make war upon each other ; but there may be a mutual jealousy or dislike. However, although the wolves may be rarer in this forest than they have been in former years, there are still quite enough of them to occupy the attention of the shepherds on its outskirts. About the middle of December I happened to witness an incident which is not very rare. A few sheep were grazing quietly in a little sloping pasture along the wood's edge, when an animal first crept out cautiously and then rushed at the nearest sheep. That animal was a wolf, and his immense strength was proved by his manner of dealing with his victim. He got his head under the sheep's belly and threw her weight upon his own neck, her four feet beating the air. Holding her quite firmly in this position with his teeth, the wolf had strength enough to gallop very rapidly up the steep slope' back to the impenetrable density of the copsewood, where it was of no use trying to follow him. Now the wolf in this country is not a very large animal, and a feat like this implies a degree of muscular and constitutional power which is relatively enormous. I could not help January Wintry splendor. 35 admiring the courage of the little shepherdess whose flock had been thus suddenly invaded. She was very much irritated at the impudence of the wolf, but not alarmed by his ferocity ; and she threw her wooden shoe- after him as an expression of most earnest though in- efficacious hostility, uttering at the same time sentiments of her own in patois of extraordinary volubility, which were certainly not benedictions. The girl's father told me afterwards that on one occasion she had actually beaten a wolf till he retreated, and there are so many anecdotes" of a similar character that I infer a certain human influence over these animals, which as they are of canine race may have something of canine deference for humanity. The wild boar has one indisputable advantage over the wolf he is eatable. There is always wild boar in some form or other during the winter months in the lar- der at the Val Ste. V6ronique. It was a fancy of mine that our guns ought to supply a great part of our food, and they did so during what remained of the season. ( The month of January opened splendidly, with sun/ ^^^ /shine in the gray and gold of the forestJ/ I think that the sadness so often attributed to winter scenery is due much more to the prevalence of cloud and fog, and to the chilly, uncomfortable temperature, than to the state of vegetation. The color of winter scenery is not with out elements of variety and even brilliance. The leave of the preceding year are important, both for the rich ness of the tints they give, and, when seen close at hand, for the fixed beauty of their forms. A leaf that h 36 January Oak-leafage. passed the autumn on the tree, and dried there, is always sure to be well worth drawing, for the force and variety of its curvature. Even in January oak-leafage is rich upon the trees, and though its color is often too red and coppery to be altogether agreeable to the eye, still it breaks the monotony of the gray stems. Saplings retain their leaves longest, and there are varieties of oak which have a pale yellowish-brown that a painter might accept with pleasure. The common hornbeam also preserves its leaves far into the following year, and the underwood of this forest is full of it. Hardly a single leaf of hornbeam is missing in the month of January, but every one of them is curled up with a graceful twist, showing the lines of ribs under it quite distinctly, even at a distance of several yards. There is no material better than dried oak and hornbeam for the study of natural curvature, because you can carry a sprig home with you, and it will retain all its forms, day after day, as if the leaves were made of metallic gold. The hornbeam underwood is splendid in the slanting sun- shine of a January afternoon. The beech, too, is impor- tant for its winter foliage, which remains, almost all of it, in situations sheltered from the winds. The color is a beautiful light red brown, and the form of the leaf very perfect indeed, with a good surface. The roads in the forest about the Val Ste. Veronique are often bordered on both sides with trunks of beech, and the effect in January is rich in the extreme, on account of the splendid freshness of the green mosses, which are in perfection and give the best possible contrast to the beech-leaves. January The Quince-tree. 37 No tree in January is so variously rich in color aSrC the quince-tree. The branches (so wonderfully tortuous // / and interlaced) are tinted of a summer-like green painted, I may say, by Nature with the tiniest of her green mosses ; whereas the leaves, of which very many are still remarkably perfect in form, are of a rich red brown, and the under side is of a pale golden brown, with a little down remaining. The most decayed leaves are a good deal darker. Now, although the oak, beech, or hornbeam, still retain their leaves in the following year, they offer but little variety of hue ; and though a sprig of oak might instruct and occupy a designer, the quince-tree would occupy a colorist. So, indeed, would , the common bramble, with its crimson or purple stalk and leaves, often still retaining a perfectly fresh green, others being of a dark, ochrous red, but still very perfect in their form. Deschanel's description of an English Landscape Painter Botany and Art An Effect in January The Harmony of Gray and Gold How Diaz would have given it Sunset-light on Dead Foliage Use of Scientific Knowledge The Microscope Use of a Nomencla- ture Drawing Plants Jules Jacquemart's way of Drawing Plants Memoranda Colors of the Wintry Landscape Fanaticism about Nature Eglantine The rich green of Broom Woods in Mass Edges of Woods Birches Lichen. DESCHANEL, in his clever and amusing ' Essai de Critique naturelle,' gives a description of an English landscape-painter addicted to botanical study ; 215163 38 January Botany and Art. a description slightly caricatured, yet probably drawn from some living instance, and accurate in the main : ' II s'en va herboriser par champs, s'assure que tel vege- table a les feuilles pointues ou decoupees de telle fac_on, que telle fleurette a une telle corolle et tant de petales ; qu'il y a d'ailleurs, dans la nature des rouges violents, des verts crus, des jaunes impitoyables, beaucoup de violet/ &c. Well, this may be true with reference to some painters of that young realist school which was flourishing in England when M. Deschanel wrote his book, and he may have met with some English artists who were also botanists ; but the harm is not in the study of plants, it is in the forgetfulness of large relations to which this minute observation of Nature has occasion- ally led those who were addicted to it. It is well to know the plants with a loving familiarity that observes the minutest detail, but the great harmonies of natural effect and color concern the landscape-painter more closely. Here, for example, is an effect which, if painted in a masterly manner, with sufficient taste and feeling, would reward the labor of an artist ^One day in Jan- uary I was riding in the forest, where the ground is closely planted with young oaks, and the sun was setting behind them. The material was almost monotonous in its simplicity, one species of tree, and a sunset with no elaboration of cloud-form, but merely a suffusion of yellow light in a sky heavily charged with vapor. The trunks of the trees were all gray, the sun-gold pale yellow ; and as the light was well concentrated, and brilliantly scattered to right and left, but always from January An Effect in January. 39 one central point, it was just one of those simple and harmonious arrangements of light and color which are adapted to the purposes of art. It happened, too, that this color-harmony of gold and gray was precisely the one which an artist may attack without incurring the certainty of defeat from the unapproachableness of natural illumination ; for yellow is the one color which may be made luminous in painting without much sacri- fice of its chromatic quality. Had the sunset been a red one, the difficulty (as every painter knows) would have been immeasurably increased ; and, indeed, would have involved the necessity of painting the whole subject in so low a key, that the beautiful grays of the forest would have been lost in dark neutral tints far below the pearly tones of Nature. This would have been seen by an artist like Diaz as a flashing of gold on gray in- tricacy, and he would have painted it exactly in the way best fitted to convey that impression. Another very fine effect, often visible in winter at the hour of sun- set, is the illumination of the trees to the east of you. When the light of sunset catches the dead foliage of a forest of oaks their tops burst into sudden flame, so that the forest seems all on fire. The impression is greatly heightened if you are unable, from your posi- tion, to see the western sky, which is the origin of the light. Now, for the powerful rendering of such effects as these, the knowledge of plants need only be that which every artist is sure to possess who has been in the habit of sketching from Nature ; but whenever a painter desires to give something of the beauty of foreground 40 January Use of Scientific Knowledge. detail, and he may well desire this without abandoning his pictorial purposes and intentions, then it is most convenient for him to know the plants scientificallyy I cannot think that the Englishman in M. Deschanel's book was wrong even in using a microscope, though the idea conveyed is that he did so in order to be able to delineate microscopically. There is an obvious non- sequitur here. It does not follow that because an artist happens to use a microscope to dissect some plant in order that he may afterwards remember it, he will neces- sarily draw the plant otherwise than as it simply appears to the naked eye to the educated eye in its sub- ordinate place in Nature. Possibly M. Deschanel might argue that the landscape-painter need not trouble him- self even about the names of plants, since he does not write their names upon his canvas, and no doubt these plants have existed for innumerable generations before any nomenclature was contrived for them ; still he may surely avail himself of what is nothing more than a con- venient memoria tec/mica all ready to his hand. The objection does not seem to be so much to the knowledge of a little botany, as to the habit of drawing plants minutely in isolation ; and this habit is not injurious for the knowledge which it conveys, but because it en- courages us to neglect the more important truths of re- lation, and makes us think we have done something good and useful, when, in fact, we are busy in an occu- pation which is not fine art, and which is incomparably easier than fine art. Any 'young student whose eye for form has attained a tolerable degree of accuracy may January Memoranda. 4 1 soon draw studies of detached leaves very beautifully, and then he is likely to fall into a sort of mechanical routine which is the indolence of the industrious in all the handicraft trades. The only kind of study at all resembling this, which may be permitted to a real artist, is work done on the principles of Jules Jacquemart in his etchings of flowers. There you have leaf-drawing certainly, and careful copying of petals and calices, yet always subordinated to the effect of a bouquet as a mass. Before quitting the subject of leaf-drawing let me add, that careful memoranda of leaves and other objects may often be done with great advantage by those who are not troubled with any artistic ambition. They aid the memory wonderfully, and enable it to retain truths of form and color with an accuracy that may be of the greatest advantage in many studies and occupations. Much mechanical drawing is bad, because the draughts- man has looked only to those characteristics of plants which may be technically described in scientific language : these things he sees, but he fails to see the beauty of natural curvature even in those very forms where it is most conspicuous. Now it would be perfectly possible, and a worthy object of ambition to any student who really loved Nature in a catholic and comprehensive way, to preserve the strictest botanical truth in the delineation of plants, and yet add to it the true loveliness of their forms, the exquisite changes of curve and surface which the accidents of perspective are incessantly producing. Such an enterprise might not be directly remunerative 4 2 Ja nuary Eg la n tine. in the pecuniary sense, for scientific students appear to be satisfied with the sort of drawing which sets down what they want to know, whilst lovers of art are satisfied with nothing short of full artistic synthesis both in con- ception and execution, and yet the sort of work I now suggest would reward the laborer by certain delicate, intimate satisfactions of its own. There are often very brilliant colors in the wintry landscape, but the difficulty in making artistic use of the material that it presents would be to harmonize the color-material into synthesis. You may find very fresh- looking greens, and very bright reds, but there is a want of quieter color in their neighborhood sufficiently re- sembling them in quality to lead up to them as a climax. The coloring of Nature is not always good or available for art, any more than all her plants for food, and it is one of the first results of culture in an artist when he is able to perceive this. It is mere fanaticism to speak of the fortuitous arrangements of color which occur in natural scenery as examples of divine art which it is impiety to criticise. The simple truth is, that a plant will bud or fructify at a time determined by the action of heat or moisture upon its vessels, without the least reference to its effect upon a color-composition in the landscape. For instance, you may have a bush of eglan- tine, which will be a perfect mass of vermilion on account of its fruit. The stalks will be a very dark purple in shade, but crimson in the evening light, and they inten- sify the vermilion of the berries. Ten to one, this piece of splendor will be entirely isolated, and it will kill all January L ichen. 4 3 the delicate coloring in its neighborhood, as a scarlet coat kills a modest landscape in the Academy. Or you may have the fine rich green of broom, most valu- able in itself, especially in large masses, yet by its very richness likely to make you feel more acutely the wintry poverty of the decayed vegetation around it, and the naked branches overhead. A judicious artist might avail himself of these materials, but he would never permit them to injure the unity of his work, a kind of unity necessary in human art, but outside of the aims of Nature. / The seasons when Nature is most harmonious are the late summer and the earliest weeks of autumn, but in winter and spring she colors accidentally and in patches. Woods in the mass, however, are often grandly harmonious even in January, with their rich brown in nearest scenery passing through purple in the middle distance to a deep neutral tint on distant hills. On the edges of woods the white stems of the birches tell very"t/ effectually against dark purple as silvery lines, even at a considerable distance. In the immediate foreground all lichens and mosses assume an unusual importance during winter ; in the case of the mosses because they are really more brilliant, as they prosper and grow in moisture, whilst the lichens gain a more than common degree of prominence from the comparative poverty of the decayed vegetation around them. There are hedges so invaded by pale green tufted- lichen that it becomes in winter the principal element of their coloring ; and not a disagreeable element, being delicate in hue not- withstanding its opacity. 44 January Wintry Landscape. IX. Wintry Landscape Mummy Plants Common Teazle The Great Mullein Ferns and Grasses The Blackthorn The Whitethorn Coloring of Rushes Mistletoe Minute Mosses Viburnum Splendor of Berries in Sunset Light Mountain Ash Hazel Structure of Trunks and Branches Walnut Oak Ash Poplar Alder Horse-Chestnut. THE wintry landscape is a museum of dried vege- tation, bearing much the same resemblance to the verdant wealth of summer that a mummy does to a living human being, yet with the difference that the vegetable mummy often retains the most graceful ele- gance ; and this it is to be feared, can scarcely be said of any Egyptian princess, however distinguished in her time. Indeed I may go so far as to assert that some plants are positively more elegant as mummies than they were when the sap circulated in all their vessels. There is the common teazle, for example, which in winter acquires a quite remarkable perfection of curva- ture in all its leaves. There is a clump of them not far from the Val Ste. Veronique, of which the tallest is nearly eight feet high, and so very perfect and delicate that if some skilful goldsmith were to copy it as it stands in pure Australian gold (silver would be too chilly in tint) all Paris would wonder at its loveliness. Not a leaf of it but is fit to be the model for an archbishop's crozier, and round the head rise the thin bracts like guards, still perfect, every one of them, though the tall stem has January The Great Mullein. 45 swayed in the autumn storms. As to that head itself, what a miracle of texture ! Warm reddish brown in the sun, and at a short distance seeming soft as fur, but nearer a delicate net-work. Another very fine plant in winter, happily very com- mon in many places, is the greaj^ mullein, which, though it does not equal the teazle irT elegance, far surpasses it_in the expression of melancholy ruin. f Still it retains >A some rich, thick, pale, dusty, cottony leaves, between the earth and the blackened raceme where the pale yellow flowers once clustered so gaily in the sunshine, / / . but the large outer leaves have faded and lost form, M/rL and become mere brown rags, like the tatters of mis- erable poverty, drenched by the rains of winter, and draggled on the mud of the cold inhospitable earth. Of all the plants that grow, the mullein in its decay ' comes nearest to that most terrible form of humattTv^ poverty when the victim has still, to his misfortune, vitality enough for mere existence, yet not enough toj-4 make existence either decent or endurable. Groups of ] them will be found together, still strong enough to beaf up against the bitter wind that tears their rags into more pitiable raggedness, and flings foulness on their wet and withered leaves, to stick there, like contumely, till they die. Some freshness lingers yet within their folds, like hidden and tender recollections, some soft- ness and a little warmth, but their misery is like that awful destitution that stands clothed in the last shreds and remnants of prosperity. The ferns and grasses bear the season better, and 46 January Grasses. retain almost every charm but color. The forms of fern are still complete, and the plant still bears itself with a perfect grace, except where it has been exposed to injury, and then it will often be broken, for it is more fragile now than in the elasticity of summer. There are grasses which survive with all their elegance, and their delicate pale spears stand perfect in the air of winter, bending at every breath, and bearing trembling plumes, yet recovering themselves always. I value, too, the great old dead stalks of the bramble, all quite hoary and gray, with nothing but thorns upon them. They are often twelve or fifteen feet long, and trail about the hedges much more visibly at this season than when hid- den under the summer leafage. The blackthorn is valuable for the abundance of its dark purple fruit, as big as common grapes, and covered with a beautiful blue-gray bloom. The whole coloring of this plant in winter is strikingly harmonious, for the stem and twigs are of a pleasant purplish gray, which the fruit continues in another variety. It is well worth painting in studies of still-life for its peculiar quality of texture. The whitethorn is less harmonious, but richer, with the multitudes of its dark vermilion berries, in masses quite sufficient to affect the coloring of a fore- ground. Whilst the blackthorn is entirely bare of leaf- age at this season, the whitethorn is not altogether bare, but will often retain foliage rather abundantly in shel- tered corners, arid its remaining leaves are of a very warm brown, which sustains the berries well, and is better than the contrast of green. The way in which green will Jan uary Mistletoe. 4 7 be preserved or lost in winter is one of the most curious things about the local coloring of landscape. For ex- ample, in the case of rushes, the green remains vividly where there is water, except at the tops of the blades, which are tipped with yellow ; but in drier places the whole rush is pale yellow, often giving most brilliant and effective white lines, even when there is no sun- shine to relieve them. Ttoen you have the peculiar green of the mistletoe, often existing in such quantities as to give at a little distance quite a summer-like appearance to the tree it has chosen to establish itself upon. Seen nearer, the green is made perceptibly less powerful by the wax-like berries, which, being of a very pale greenish white, neither intensify the green by con- trast, as scarlet would have done, nor yet sustain it by a continuation of its own color. The mistletoe is, to my taste, one of the most beautiful plants we have ; and I like its coloring exceedingly, both because the hue of the leaves is not a vulgar green, and also because the fruit has the most exquisite delicacy of hue, in such perfect harmony with the leafage, that it seems tinted by a faint reflection. There is a great deal of pleasant green in winter, due to the delicate minute mosses that often cover the bark of certain trees ; as for instance, the quince-tree and the acacia. In some such cases the bark seems positively painted, and is quite bright in the wintry sunshine. Such moss-painted trunks and branches are a great resource when there happens to be holly in the foreground, which is dangerous from its isolation and the intensity of its 48 January Viburnum. . green, derived from contrast with the scarlet berries. One of the best things about the holly is the variety given by the lighter color of the under-side of the leaf, but it is not a very safe plant for the painter, as it offers a peculiar temptation to obtrusiveness both of crude color and of what may be called irritating detail, neither has it any softness of mass or grace of contour. For any one who enjoys the sight of red berries in the most jewel-like splendor there is nothing in winter like the viburnum, the species we call viorne obier (a relative of the guelder-rose of gardens) ; and if you meet with a fine specimen just when it is caught by the level rays of a crimson sunset, you will behold a shrub that seems to have come from that garden of Aladdin where the fruits of the trees were jewels. The birds love these splendid berries, and it is said that in Norway they are served at table for dessert. I have not forgotten the mountain-ash, but in January, although it still has berries, the most of them are withered and have lost their beautiful color ; however, they still keep a rich crimson vermilion tint. Nothing in the beginning of the year can be prettier than the hazel, with its thou- sands of pendulous catkins, all of a very pale and tender and lovely green in the sunlight ; they remind one of filigree, or the work in the fringe of epaulettes. It is a great advantage of the winter season for the study of sylvan nature that it enables us to see the structure of trunks and branches so much better than we ever can do when they are laden with summer foliage. Of all trees at this season of the year my favorite is January Walnut. 49 decidedly the walnut. Its bark is magnificent in the strength of the deeply-furrowed lines which mark it (tempting beyond measure to an etcher), and its fine pale grays exhibit to perfection that wealth of dark mosses which the landscape-painter knows and values. Besides this, there is so much grandeur in its far-spread- ing, powerful arms, that it is well for us to see them during part of the year without their voluminous green sleeves. Happily for the beauty of many a village | $Q^_ the walnut is productive during life, so that it is allowed j 3^. \o come to full maturity. The oak is inferior both int i. '$ form and color, and expresses only a sturdy strength. The ash shows her grace of structure, her tall and ele- gant limbs, whilst her bunches of ' keys' hang like orna- ments on the lofty branches ; and there will be a little rich green moss, perhaps, about her foot, and on her trunk one or two different kinds of lichen, either gray or golden. As for the towering poplar, there will be nothing whatever on all his height but here and there a remnant of last year's leaves, withered and curled, whilst the branches whiten towards the summit. The alder would be almost as naked were it not for the quantities of brown catkins, which give a deep and rather rich color at a distance. All the branches of the horse-chestnut are tipped with brown buds, whose abundant adhesive varnish protects the tiny leaf rudi- ments, all snugly wrapped in cotton. The ground beneath is strewn with the sere leaves of the preced- ing year, and the smooth-rinded old mahogany-colored fruit. 4 50 January Improvements. X. Improvements Wood-cutting Importance of fine Trees in Scenery Giant Brethren Spenser's Conception of the Forest. MY presence in the Val Ste. Veronique had the good effect of saving some trees from the woodman's axe, and by way of compensation I gave myself the pleasure of making an opening here and there to obtain glimpses of scenery, where the brushwood was as impen- etrable as a jungle. Of all country occupations I think this is the most interesting, whilst planting is perhaps the most satisfactory. It is flattering to the vanity of a creature so ephemeral as man to feel that he is settling the fate of oaks that might live for a thousand years. No sentiment can be more foolishly thrown away than that which would preserve all trees until they were rot- ten : it is best to cut them in their fullest maturity before decay begins. Still there are exceptions to this rule, and the chief of these are the cases where a tree is valu- able in life, either from its position as an ornament of scenery or else from association with past generations of men. How much of the beauty of the scenery we love best may be dependent upon the magnificence of a few trees which, once gone, a hundred years would not re- place, we do not adequately realize until accident or avarice has removed them. All scenery that is not January Giant Brethren. 5 1 positively mountainous owes to sylvan beauty nearly all its charm and attraction, and even where trees abound the whole dignity and character of some house or village may be dependent upon the immediate neighborhood of two or three venerable oaks or walnuts. And in the heart of the forest, remote from any human habitation, there may be scenes of the most striking grandeur, which would be utterly ravaged by the destruction of some venerable company of giants who have lived there side by side for full five hundred years. There is one such solitude in a narrow dell about a league from the Val Ste. Veronique. It is just at the end of a little valley, where a streamlet glides down a grassy slope rounded into the smoothest curves. On this slope stand twelve gigantic brethren, chestnuts, which by a happy fatality have escaped the axes of many successive generations. They have no definite association with human history ; they have dwelt together in this solitude undisturbed by the fall of dynasties or the noise of distant battle-fields. No king has ever sought refuge in their foliage, no gen- eral has encamped or held council beneath their shade. Only the birds have made nests in their world of leaves, and the wild deer found repose in the coolness of their shadowy seclusion. No poet has ever sung them, no lover ever carved linked initials on their bark. And yet the man would be dead to all sylvan feeling, who could go into that valley, axe in hand, and look at these ancient brethren with a base calculation of their price. Can we not spare a narrow spot of ground, where ground is worth so little, in order that one group of trees may 5 2 January Spenser. reach the limit of their age, in order that we may see both what they are and what they may become ? Every sapling in the forest gains dignity from their imposing presence, and he who has once beheld them in their place may read with better understanding the verse of those great old poets who wrote when such princes of the forest might be met with more frequently in the land. Think what was Spenser's conception of the forest, and what in our own time is too often the un- interesting reality ! He thought of it as a country shaded by a great roof of green foliage, which was car- ried on massive stems always so far apart that one or several knights could ride everywhere without incon- venience ; but we find the reality to be for the most part an impenetrable jungle of young trees, that will be cut down in a year or two for firewood. Ah, let us still preserve some dwelling of sylvan majesty, where the poet may dream and the artist may study, and both may forget the cares and interests of the present ! Are there not still left to us, here and there in the deep woods, such vales of ancient peace that wandering Una may haply meet us there ; or some splendid knight of fairy-land, like him whose glittering crest danced joyously as the rustling foliage of an almond-tree, ' On top of greene Selinis all alone ? ' February Mild Winters. 53 XL Mild Winters Arctic Sleep of Nature Beauty of Hoar-Frost Fairy Work of the Hoar-Frost One Day Snow Wild Boars The Weasel He becomes my Gamekeeper A Snow-storm Winter Reading Cowper's Description of the Ice-Palace Thom- son His Ficelles The Man Lost in the Snow. OUR winter in the Val Ste. Veronique had been hitherto one of those mild southern winters which deceive us with promises of a calm transition from the glow of autumn to the green of spring, as if there were nothing between the two seasons but an interval of grayer sky and briefer daylight, without any severity of temperature, or any white enshrouding of the departed year. Rarely, however, does the course of Nature in these latitudes entirely avoid the season of arctic sleep, and if it is delayed till the spring flowers are ready to blossom, it is almost sure to come down suddenly upon the earth, like a fit of somnolence on a weary human frame. So it happened that one day near the end of February the thermometer went down very rapidly, and every creature that was susceptible of cold began to feel the bracing of a keener air. It was evi- dent that we were to have real winter after all, though probably a very brief one. It came upon us in a single night ; and as men have gone to rest with hair all black or brown, and the next morning looked in the glass and seen a head white like 54 February Beauty of Hoar-Frost. the foam of the sea, so did our forest darken in the twi- light and whiten in next day's dawn. 'It is certainly not my intention to trouble the reader much with mere changes of the weather, but I mention this because it produced one of those enchantments which belong to sylvan scenery, and to sylvan scenery alone. The beauty of hoar-frost is nothing by itself, nothing on naked rock or mountain, nothing in the streets of the city, and out at sea it is visible only on the ship's cordage, if by accident it may whiten it for awhile. But on sylvan landscape it settles like a fairy decoration. No human work is delicate enough to be compared with such delicacy as this, no human artificer in silver or in ivory ever wrought such visible magic as these millions of tiny spears that thrust out points of unimaginable fineness from the lightest spray's utmost extremity. The perfect beauty of this adornment is visible only on tree-branches, and most visible on the thinnest and lightest ; on the dark thin twigs of the birch, that bend under the weight of a robin, or on the slender long sprays of the bird-cherry tree, that the little birds love so well. And it is not every lover of Nature, however keen his perception, however inveterate his habit of observation, who has had the good fortune, even mice in his whole existence, to see the hoar-frost in perfection, [jt needs a calm so perfect that a ship all her sails would sleep motionless upon the sea ; needs also a low cloud upon the earth, whose watery rticles, or hollow spheres, or whatever in their infinite littleness they may be, may fall and settle slowly in the February Snow. 5 5 stillness of the night, and freeze and fasten on the tiniest point they touch.j Not once in a dozen winters does this fairy building prosper to its completion ; but when the time is come, and the fairies are permitted to do their work without any disturbance from the great, strong gods of the tempest, or the rays of far-darting Apollo, then a strange enchantment descends upon the forest, and a fragile beauty clothes it ; so fragile that the alighting of a bird will shatter it, or the wind from jjis . rapid wings. The hoar-frost lasted for one day in this perfect beauty, as abundant as a considerable snowfall, but incomparably more exquisite, being indeed to the opac- ity of common snow what the lace of a princess is to the linen of ordinary life. During this one day of strange tranquillity I walked mile after mile in the narrow woodland roads, deeply enjoying the solemnity of their silence, and watching without sorrow the beau- tiful death of Nature. The next night came a storm of wind and rain that washed out all fairy-land ruthlessly, and after the rain came snow, and when the snow was deep in the meadows down in the valley the sky cleared and the stars shone as night deepened with that pecul- iar scintillating splendor which belongs to a frosty night, and a young bright moon cast a broad shadow from the wood's edge:, down a slope of snow untrodden by man or beast. ./" Alexis and I were watching this scene from a terrace in the garden, when he seized my arm suddenly, and pointed in silence to the broad shadow above mentioned, 56 February The Weasel. in which we discovered with some difficulty several slowly-moving objects, that seemed to be emerging from the blackness of the wood. They came out into the moonlight, half-a-dozen of them, all fine wild boars, and Alexis was just going to fetch his rifle when a shot was fired from the wood on the opposite side of the valley, and the largest boar rolled over on the snow. The others were lost immediately in the recesses of the forest. Soon a dark human figure became visible as it crossed the narrow open space before us. We quitted our post of observation, and went towards the boar as quickly as the depth of the snow would let us. It was a noble beast, weighing more than three hundred pounds ; and the successful chasseur, perceiving that his exploit had not been without witnesses, made no attempt to avoid us, but came up with perfect assur- ance. It was our new acquaintance, the Weasel, and he saluted us with an ease of manner like that of some considerable landowner, who finds himself by accident a trespasser on his neighbor's domain. He begged par- don for having yielded to an irresistible temptation, and said that he would ask of my generosity a pound or two of boar's flesh for himself. I had resolved before to keep on good terms with this active and enterprising neighbor, whose depredations it was impossible to pre- vent ; so, instead of wasting words in ineffectual anger, I simply observed that he would have done better to ask my permission, which would have been freely given, and added that he might remove the beast whenever he chose to fetch it. February A Snow-Storm. 57 He stayed at the farm that night, and the boar was carried on a rough litter to the house, where the Weasel performed the office of butcher with a degree of skill which gave clear evidence that the task was not new to his experience. The next day I came to a decision, and offered to take him into my employment as a gamekeeper ; which he agreed to more readily than I had expected, for his independent existence must have been in many respects more agreeable to his tastes and habits, and probably more lucrative also, though it was likely enough that he would never entirely abandon his private business as a braconnier, even after his engage- ment in my service. I did not regret this decision after- wards, for the Weasel was of the greatest use to us in subsequent sylvan labors and explorations. He occu- pied a vacant cottage in the Val Ste. Veronique, and attached himself more particularly to the service of my son. I was glad that Alexis, who wandered a great deal in the forest from the beginning, should have such a competent servant and guide. Although winter had come upon us late, the severity of it was enough to make amends for its want of punc- tuality. A tremendous snow-storm confined us to the Val Ste. Veronique ; .all the roads were impassable, and the house was isolated from the world. But what do we know of winter, what can any one know of it, in the latitudes of the chestnut and the vine? Even where the oak will not grow freely the winters are still sup- portable, and wherever the yet hardier pine-tree can bear the rigors of the long dark nights man lives 58 February Winter Reading. through the months of gloom, in crowded Lapland huts. The perfect winter, more horrible than any dream of poetry except Dante's frozen hell, is the winter of Spitzbergen, where indeed some timber may be found, but only driftwood, washed by the surf of the Atlantic on that treeless northern shore, or frag- ments of hapless vessels crushed long ago like nut- shells in the ice. I suppose that every European who has written any thing about winter has certainly alluded to the one indisputable benefit which that season brings to us, in inclining us to be more studious of books. We never read so profitably, I think, as we do by the fireside on a winter's evening ; and if in a future state of existence there should be any hours that we have passed in this world to which we may look back with feelings of tenderness and regret, it would be those fire-side hours in which our minds have sought a light that is not the sun's light, and which comes to us through literature. Amongst other readings that seemed more partic- ularly adapted to the season, I had selected passages of English poets who had described winter with great earnestness of manner, though not always with equal felicity of style. It is not easy, in the blank verse of Cowper, to find a passage that may be quoted without the wish to pass over some line that is either halting or prosaic, or else that slips away too suddenly from under you ; but there is one the description of that famous freak of the Empress Catherine, the ice-palace on the shore of the Neva which is firm and sound February Cowper. 59 throughout, and very grand. The subject is introduced by a few weak and prosaic verses, which injure the effect in the original, but when the nobler lines are detached from these the ore is pure indeed : ' No forest fell When thou wouldst build ; no quarry sent its stores To enrich thy walls : but thou didst hew the floods, And make thy marble of the glassy wave. In such a palace Aristffius found Cyrene, when he bore the plaintive tale Of his lost bees to her maternal ear : In such a palace Poetry might place The armory of Winter ; where his troops, The gloomy clouds, find weapons, arrowy sleet, Skin-piercing volley, blossom-bruising hail, And snow, that often blinds the traveller's course, And wraps him in an unexpected tomb. Silently as a dream the fabric rose ; No sound of hammer or of saw was there. Ice upon ice, the well-adjusted parts Were soon conjoined : nor other cement asked Than water interfused to make them one. Lamps gracefully disposed, and of all hues, Illumined every side ; a watery light Gleamed through the clear transparency, that seemed Another moon new risen, or meteor fallen From heaven to earth, of lambent flame serene.' Surely these lines have qualities which will survive the vicissitudes of taste ; but we are so impeded in our j-udgment of the poets by the fashions of two epochs, by their fashions and our fashions, that it is almost im- possible for us to arrive at an unprejudiced appreciation 60 February Thomson. of their work. And I think that no poets are farther removed from ourselves than those of the eighteenth century. There is Thomson, for instance ; how difficult it is to read him without being arrested at every page by a too clear perception of the minor tricks or ficellcs of his craft ! At the time he wrote, these were the accepted and customary ficelles, and probably attracted so little attention in themselves that the mind of the reader was left perfectly free to enjoy the thoughts and imagery of the poet ; but to us the work is old- fashioned, and strikes us as we are struck by whatever is just old-fashioned enough to be passt de mode. And yet, although his descriptions are not treated on the same principles as ours, although he has not learned the more temperate and perfect art which has resulted from a completer culture than the culture of his time, and has not been aided (as contemporary work is aided) by the development of the modern school in painting, there is still great force in his most finished passages. The episode of the man lost in the snow is one of the best of these : ' As thus the snows arise ; and foul and fierce All Winter drives along the darkened air ; In his own loose-revolving fields, the swain Disastered stands : sees other hills ascend, Of unknown, joyless brow ; and other scenes, Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain ; Nor finds the river, nor the forest, hid Beneath the formless wild ; but wanders on From hill to dale, still more and more astray ; Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps, March Sudden Change. 61 Stung with the thoughts of home ; the thoughts of home Rush on his nerves, and call their vigor forth In many a vain attempt. ****** In vain for him the officious^wife prepares f\^ t The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm ; In vain his little children, peeping out Into the mingling storm, demand their sire With tears of artless innocence. Alas ! Nor wife nor children, more shall he behold ; Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve The deadly Winter seizes ; shuts up sense ; And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold, Lays him along the snows, a stiffened corse ! Stretched out and bleaching in the northern blast.' XII. Sudden Change from Winter to Spring Floods Spring is come The Sweet Time Thomson Nash Daubigny The Spring Feeling Constable His Love of Spring Harmony of good Art- Work Nature not harmonious in the Spring Charms peculiar to Spring The Regrets which the Spring suggests. WHEN the winter comes very late in our latitude, as it does from time to time, we pass to sprang quite suddenly. The temperature rises in the course of a single night as if we had travelled far southwards, and felt the breezes from the African shore of the Mediter- ranean. The snow and ice thaw rapidly ; the little streams become impassable torrents ; the rivulets be- 6 2 March Floods. come rivers ; the rivers spread themselves over the plain, and carry ruin to a thousand homesteads. There was something ominous in the excessive mildness of the temperature when we awoke one morning in March. The snow lay deep upon the earth, but the air was warm and enervating. Already the tiny stream in the Val Ste. Veronique had increased in volume, and before nightfall it roared angrily, its turbid waters confined between steep banks, carrying logs of wood that had been purposely laid along its sides, and other burdens that had not been so intentionally confided to its care. Most of the little wooden bridges are removed in a flood of this kind, the earth is washed away from the roots of the trees, and .many an alder falls. With the thaw came a deluge of rain, and the tor- rents roared in all the glens. We who were at the head of the waters began to expect evil tidings from the plains. Every drop that now fell on the soaked earth of the forest must find its way ultimately to the Loire. Fortunately the hills were richly clothed with wood, which retards the departure of the rainfall, and converts what would be a sudden crisis of devastation into the endurable floods of twelve or twenty days. And still the waters descended rapidly enough to give ample reason for anxiety. We in our hills were safe, and the buildings in our valley had been so arranged by the foresight of the monks who first erected them as to be clear 'from any possible inundation ; but already the torrent was washing the stone-faced embankment of the garden-terrace, and if the monks had not built their March The Sweet Time. 63 stone bridge lower down, which to strangers always seemed so uselessly wide in summer, our road com- munication would have been entirely interrupted. I felt curious to see the effects of the flood, and, notwithstanding the incessant rain, we quitted the Val Ste. Veronique and drove in the direction of the Loire. The morning after our return to the valley we rose early, and breathed an air at once so mild and pure that we knew the spring had come. Spring is much rather the season of poets than of painters. What delights us in the spring is more a sensation than an appearance, more a hope than any visible reality, Plnere is something in the softness of " the air, in the lengthening of the days, in the very . "' sounds and odors of the sweet time, that caresses and consoles us after the rigorous weeks of winter. It is natural that poets should love the spring, which comes to them with a thousand flowers, with songs of birds, with purer, brighter light, and such refreshment that it is like a fountain of jouvence. So they hail the season with their most melodious invocations, sometimes in grave earnestness, as if its benefits were too great to be treated lightly, and sometimes in frolic merriment like the dancing of kids or lambs. Thomson is grave and stately : ' Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come, And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud, While music wakes around, veiled in a shower Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.' 64 March Nash. Nash greets the spring in another tone and measure : ' Spring, the sweet spring, is the year's pleasant king ; ^ Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring. Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo ! ' ese extracts are as dissimilar as can be, and yet in both of them we may observe a characteristic they have in common. It is much more the sounds and sensations of the pleasant time than any thing that is to be seen which awaken the enthusiasm of the poet. The 'ethereal mildness' of Thomson, with the shower .of shadowing roses and the awakening music, strike his imagination before any landscape distinctly rises before it. Nash says that ' cold doth not sting,' and he imitates the songs of the birds, which serve him for a refrain. On the other hand, I well remember a large picture of Spring by Daubigny, which was very disappointing both to myself and others ; and the disappointment was most probably due to the inevitable absence of those very delights of sound and sense which refresh us so much in Nature, and of which the poets are so careful to remind us. What would spring be without the spring feeling that quite peculiar exhilaration that comes to us, we know not how, like far-off reminiscences of youth ? The only landscape-painter who ever dedicated his powers to this season of the year with a devotion all but exclusive of every other was Constable. He liked the freshness of the season as a pleasure for the eye, and his own eye longed for it and loved it, because he was in a state of intense antagonism to the brown doctrine in March Constable. 65 landscape-painting, and the spring greens were all on his own side of the controversy. In estimating the value of Constable's opinion on this matter we ought there- fore to remember that it was not quite an unbiassed opinion, that his mind was not at all in a neutral or judicial state, but that he was like a Protestant theo- logian seeking texts against tradition ; and that his texts were the young verdure, the shade and shower, the cool and pearly light, and soft blue shadow beside it, the sparkle and glitter of daisy pied pastures in the moisture of an English April. Now whatever a good artist paints is sure to be harmonious, for the simple reason that he makes it so ; and there is no doubt that any first-rate landscape-painter who chooses to paint 'a spring scene will get a harmony out of it (as he will out of any thing in the world), which may be used after- wards as a critical argument in favor of the ' year's pleasant king.' But the plain truth is that Nature is not harmonious at this season, she is only in the way of becoming so. The colors that she gives are delicious separately, as we happen to come upon them, and they do our eyes good after the chills of winter ; the green especially is good for us, and we welcome it with an un- critical gladness : but when we think of painting, it may be doubted whether any season of the year is less pro- pitious than this to the broad and noble harmonies which are the secret of all grand effects in art. A patch of green in this place and that, quite crude as yet and utterly isolated ; a constant contradiction between the sunshine and the wintry-looking woods ; a few plants 5 66 March Charms of Spring. precociously early, and nobler ones lagging behind, the season resembles nothing so much as that uncomfort- able hour in the daily life of a household when some of its members, the early-risers, are already walking about as if they did not quite know what to do with themselves, and others have not yet come down to breakfast. No, summer and not spring is the landscape- painter's time of harmony, late summer, when the peasants go to the harvest-fields, and come home with songs in the warm-toned, mellow moonlight, and all the trees have had time to assume the fulness of their v foliage. Yet spring has its own charms, especially for young people, who have it within their breasts. I think per- haps, as we get older, and are saddened by the gloomier experiences of life, that the recurrence of the earliest leaves and flowers does not always increase our cheerful- ness very much. We know too well the limits of a year, how short a space it is, how little that will be satis- factory afterwards can be done in it whilst it lasts. We think of the other springs that now lie far behind us, and how we lost them in vain pleasures, or profitless labor that seems to us still more vain. Will *^\.- year be better used ? Already it is slipping away from under us, and pray what have we done ? Made plans, perhaps, to be afterwards modified, and, it may be, finally abandoned, to join all those other ghostly schemes and projects so various in conception, so mo- notonous in the negative result. It is only, I imagine, the simply and intensely practical who are never March Awakening of Townspeople to Spring. 6 7 assailed by any such regrets as these ; to them the business of living seems a very plain, straightforward business, and they follow their own lines, as loco- motives do, with the least possible friction or loss. XIII. Sudden Awakening of Townspeople to the Spring My Experience of this Wonderful Effect of a sudden Transition Horses The Thirst for Summer Case of a sick Boy Slow brightening of the new Season Water Ranunculus Effect of it on a Horse The Low Country Turple Willow Sallow Willow Osier Round- eared Willow Male Tree Female Tree Variety of Spring Land- scape Evanescence in Landscape. IN the life of men who work in great centres of popu- lation, and see nothing of the sylvan world except what may happen to have been planted in a plot of ground which they dignify with the name of a garden a few gardeners' plants so altered from the Divine ideal as to be unrecognizable, and so arranged as to be entirely without that charm of unexpected surprises which is the great source of interest in Nature there will often occur a sudden awakening, about the begin- ning of June, to the fact that the world has somehow painted itself green again, with touches of white, and crimson, and blue. In such lives as these the spring is often simply omitted, unless from time to time some breath of vernal mildness may reach them across the barrenness of the brick wilderness they live in. It hap- pened to me once to be confined by urgent business 68 March Effect of a Sudden Transition. during the spring season in the heart of a great English city, in which there were no green boulevards or avenues, and whose only refreshment in that kind was a park that had been recently purchased by the common council, far outside in the suburbs. After many delays my business came to an end, and I fled at once to a little corner in the country that was frequented only by artists and anglers a clean little inn by a river well shaded by ancient trees. We had got to the middle of June and I had not seen a leaf or a flower ; or if my eyes had seen one, the mind had not perceived it in the midst of wearing anxieties. When, therefore, this sudden leisure came upon me, in the glorious birth of summer, I felt the transition like the change from Purgatory to Para- dise. No summer ever seemed to me so wonderful as that did. Every leaf was a marvel, every flower was a delight ; I lay down in depths of dewy grass, and watched the pure sunshine streaming through the per- fect young leaves till they softened it to a quiet green light all around me, that seemed at once to strengthen my jaded eyes and soothe them. Three days after- wards the marvel had passed away, but the recollection of it has ever since remained with me, and explains for me the delight of the citizen in green leaves, and the intensity of sensation about Nature which we find in poets who were bred in towns ; whilst those who have lived much in the country, though they know and observe more, seem to feel more equably, and to go to Nature with less of sensuous thirst and excitement. Exactly the same difference may be observed between March Horses. 69 horses which have daily access to the pasture, and those which, after being kept in stables during a prolonged town season, are sent to grass in summer. The former will conduct themselves reasonably when the released prisoners of the town-stable will indulge in the most ex- travagant demonstrations. There is in men and animals a natural thirst for summer that begins to agitate them about the month of March, and if they live in rural freedom the advance of spring very gradually satisfies this craving, like slow-dropping rain on a parched land ; but if they pass into summer suddenly, and omit the spring from their experience, then the change is like the arrival of thirsty camels on the bank of the abounding Nile. Yet, although there is a deep delight in thus bathing ourselves in the full rich green of summer, when we have longed for it many a day, I like better the slow increase of satisfaction that the spring-time hourly brings to us, however parsimoniously, and I would not in ex- change for months of what is commonly reputed to be pleasure, miss the sight of the first leaves on the willow and the scent of the violets where they grow. I remember a boy who for many months, even for years, suffered agonies from a disease which was per- haps even the more terrible that there was no hope of release by death ; and one day, after he had been in bed so long and had suffered so much that he had lost his reckoning of time, his mother brought him a great full- blown rose that filled all the chamber with its fragrance. The lad took the flower very eagerly, and, after almost burying his face in the soft and perfumed petals, turned yo March Water-Ranunculus. wonderingly to the giver and said, ' Is it summer now, dear mother?' He, poor fellow, had missed his spring altogether, and missed it doubly ; for the spring of his life was passed on a couch of suffering, amidst odors of medicines, visits of grave-faced doctors, and a weari- ness almost without hope. Happier in this, at least, at the Val Ste. Veronique we were out every day from the very beginning of the new season, and watched the slow brightening of it. like a dawn. Where, in early March, will you find a plant already in the fullest pride of all its greenery, not yet in flower it is true, but in leaf abundantly ? The water precedes the land in the contest for spring primers, and our finest streams are full of the water-ranunculus, waving in the shallows like long green hair, the richest of all greens, certainly, though it might be treason to some paler and fairer land plants to affirm that it is also the loveliest. The water at this time is quite clear and abundant, and very swift in those depths of two or three feet where the ranunculus is happiest ; so that all the fine linear segments of its subaqueous leaves, the only ones yet developed, are washed by millions of gallons of pure water every day of their lives, and kept so exqui- sitely clean that no fragment of earth can ever adhere to them for an instant. It is very different later in the year, as we shall see when the time comes, but the plant is never so lovely as it is now, even when its flowers are all out in the sunshine and it has two sorts of leaves to boast of. I thought sometimes as I watched it waving so unweariedly with the motion that the current gave it, March The Low Country. 71 and flashing dark emerald from one end to the other like the scales of some swiftly-gliding serpent, that it seemed to have more than simply vegetable life, and to be a water-spirit tied fast in the stream's path and seek- ing relief in ineffectual struggles. Strangely enough, one of my horses came exactly to the same conclusion ; for as I was riding him across the river at a ford down in the plain, where the stream had a certain width and a depth of two feet or thereabouts, he saw the green ranunculus waving in the clear current, and, being at once per- suaded that it was some living creature likely to do him bodily harm, became frantic with fright, and bolted with me down the stream's bed till he got into a deep pool, where the necessity for swimming brought him to his senses again. I do not know whether artists have ever cared much for this plant, but it adds infinitely to the beauty of some rivers at this early time of the year, the effect of the waving various green through the lightly- rippling transparent water being a beautiful variety in the otherwise rather monotonous topaz of river-sands. Alexis and I quitted our retreat amongst the hills for an excursion in the low country to see the opening of the spring season, which occurs about a fortnight earlier there. The plain was rich in trees and fore- ground plants that were not so common in our forests, and the most conspicuous of these, at this time of the year, were the willows. During a walk of a few miles we found half-a dozen varieties, the most frequent and most effective near the rivers being the purple willow, whose thin red stems, all speckled with young shoots of 72 March The Willow. pale green, were brilliant in the first spring sunshine. Then there was the sallow-willow, with its soft white downy blossoms, and the brilliant silver of the osier changing -so beautifully, according to the direction in which you look at it ; for if you look in the direction of the down it is silvery, but if against it, then you see a delicate gray purple. This purple reddens later as the anthers become visible, and finally turns to a golden yellow with pollen, but the yellow is beautifully moderated by being always on a gray ground. Hardly any thing in Nature is more lovely than the round-eared willow in full blossom, especially the glory of the male tree, with the mingled greenish gold on its flowers, where the anthers make a sort of light golden filigree on a ground of tender green. The female tree is much less splendid, but her pale flowers are pleasant as young foliage is, with their soft grayish verdure on which lies no dust of gold. A little later in the season the com- mon white willow is sufficiently leaved to show a delicate green bloom in the distance when caught by the sun, but when the sun is clouded the bloom seems to disappear, and in certain positions relatively to the light the green will be scarcely, if at all, visible. This adds much to the liveliness and variety of the spring landscape, as the color comes and goes under the sunshine and cloud, adding greatly to our sense of motion and change in Nature, a sense that some artists have had in great strength, and even expressed verbally, which is rare with them. There is nothing prettier in the natural landscape than the appearance, and vanishing, and March Barbaras Song. 73 sudden reappearance of the fresh young green on wil- lows, at a distance, as the 'light touches or abandons them. We have something of* the same kind, but more sublime, in the evanescence and reappearance of crags or knolls on the sides of all noble mountains, whose structure can never be quite accurately ascertained unless you can make models of them by tedious sur- veys, and which cheat us and amuse us by endless alter- ations and disguises. XIV. The Willow Associated with Unhappiness Desdemona Barbara's Song Ophelia The Willow cheerful in Itself Cheerful use of Willow In Tennyson In Virgil Melody of the English Name The Latin Name The Italian Name The French Name In Lamartine. I WONDER how it is that so cheerful-looking a tree as the willow should ever have become associated with ideas of sadness. Yet the association was estab- lished by the great poets long ago, and must have been found by them already in the popular mind. It is es- pecially connected with unhappiness in love, and unhap- piness on the side of the woman when neglected and forsaken. So Desdemona says, ' My mother had a maid called Barbara : She was in love ; and he she loved proved mad, And did forsake her : she had a song of " willow ; " An old thing 'twas, but it expressed her fortune, And she died singing it.' 74 March Ophelia. Then Desdemona sings Barbara's song, with the refrain, ' Sing willow, willow, willow ; Sing all a green willow must be my garland.' And in ' Hamlet,' when Shakspeare wishes to give a poetical melancholy to the brook where Ophelia was drowned, he introduces a willow in the very beginning of the Queen's description, so that the word occurs in the first verse, and is the first substantive in the verse : ' There is a willow grows aslant a brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream ; There with fantastic garlands did she come Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them : There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds Clambering to hang, an envious silver broke ; When down her weedy trophies, and herself, Fell in the weeping brook.' This association seems the more curious that the wil- low is one of the lightest, liveliest, and most cheerful- looking of all the trees that grow. There is nothing funereal about its leaves either in form or color, and they play in the wind like butterflies. See how well the tree comes in when Tennyson uses it in the pleasant allegro overture to the ' Lady of Shalott ' : ' Willows whiten, aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk and shiver, Through the wave that runs for ever By the islaad in the river Flowing down to Camelot.' And how sweetly and cheerfully the willow occurs to March Cheerful Use of the Willow. 75 Virgil's mind in connection with a passage of pure con- gratulation, as a tree whose flowers would be haunted by the bees of Hybla : ' Fortunate senex ! hie, inter flumina nota Et fontes sacros, frigus captabis opacum ! Hinc, tibi, quae semper vicino ab limite sepes Hyblaeis apibus florem depasta salicti Saepe levi somnum suadebit inire susurro.' But what an advantage the English poets have over all others in the melody of that sweet word ' willow ' ! How beautifully it takes its place in verse, so beauti- fully that the mere repetition of it is music in itself. ' Sing willow, willow, willow.' Virgil was not nearly so fortunate as Shakspeare in this respect, for salictum is a word which can never have any beauty of sound, though it 'may be made, of course, to fit neatly into a Latin hexameter; neither is salix any better for euphony. And even the great soft- ening process which Latin underwent before it was moulded into other languages has not very much im- proved the word for poetry. Salce and salcio are both harsh ; and saule, though softer, is far inferior to willow for syllabic melody. Here it is, for example : the word occurs in some fine lines of Lama r tine, but the adjective which follows it is immeasurably more important in the structure of the verse : / ^6La, centre la fureur de Taquilon rapide Le saule caverneux nous pretait son tronc vide, Et j'ecoutais siffler dans son feuillage mort Dsjarises dont mon ame a retenu 1'accord.' 76 March Changes in Foregrounds. XV. Perceptible Changes in Foregrounds Honeysuckle Yellow Iris Furze Soapwort Arum The Names of the Periwinkle in dif- ferent Languages The unfortunate English name, Periwinkle Brilliant Contrasts in early Spring Viburnum Spindle-tree Precedence of Leaf or Flower Hawthorn and Blackthorn Oak. A LTHOUGH there is nothing at this early season JT\. which shows from a distance like the willow, whose silvery catkins and tiny nascent leafage have really an importance even in the general landscape, still the foreground is beginning to decorate itself with leaves that count for something, even before they are fully grown or accompanied by their sweet sisters, the flowers. The very tardiness of some plants gives greater consequence to those which precede them by a few weeks ; for instance, the honeysuckle is a more im- portant hedgeplant in March than it is two months later ;. for when the hedges are bare of every thing but a few incipient buds of thorn, or wide-apart scattered little leaves of eglantine, it is a great thing to find the soft, rather dark-green leaves of honeysuckle quite rich and abundant, so much more abundant as it seems to us than even in the height of summer, when they are lost in the general profusion, and only the flowers attract us by their color or their perfume. So by the edges of streams, although the yellow iris is a fine attractive plant at all times when it is visible, and most especi- March Yellow Iris. 77 ally so when it displays its regal flowers, still one welcomes it in March with a new sense of its value when the young pale-green blades stand straight out of the water, their points about six inches above the surface. There is, in truth, plenty to be seen in the young vegetation of the foreground, and there are more leaves everywhere than we think ; but most of them are so small yet that they escape attention individually, and only please the eye in the mass by a general sense of reviving greenness. So it is with the tiny green leaves of furze, an innumerable multitude, which as yet, how- ever, seem less numerous than its thorns. And there are plants which will be of great size and splendor in their maturity, and which have already quite a mature look on a much smaller scale, so that any one who did not know them would think they were satisfactory enough already. The young soapvvort is an example of this ; few young plants are better worth drawing, for the leaves take curves almost as good as those of fine naturally-dried leafage, and there is an interesting transition of color from the fresh green of the well- formed leaves down to purple near the root. Other plants, which will never reach any great height or size, are of consequence, because their leaves, though few in number, and close to the ground, happen to be rela- tively of rather large dimensions ; such a plant is the. arum, which is often visible now in damp nooks with more than a mere promise of verdure yet to come. I have said something about the beauty of the English word Willow. Other plants are less happy in 78 March The Periwinkle. their English names, and more fortunate in the names that have been given them by other nations. For ex- ample, there is that charming little spring flower which f is. called in Latin the Vinai. or Pervinca, because it is , supposed to conquer (vincere, pervincere) either the frosts x bf winter or some malady, whichever it may be, r ^arfetymologists suggest both explanations. And now r for the changes that we have made in the Latin name. The Italians, to begin with, have been in this instance singularly conservative, and they call the flower pervinca still ; but the French have softened the word, and made( j it more beautiful by changing it into 'pervencJie. Howl j sweetly it occurs in the following verses, addressed by a poet to a young lady who had captivated his admira- tion ! ' Je voudrais tre la pervenche, Qui joue avec tes noirs cheveux, Ou ton beau miroir qui se penche, Quand sur lui tu mires tes yeux.' The English, on their part, have also deviated from the Latin, but not, I think, with so happy a result. They have changed pervinca into periwinkle, and I submit that it is simply impossible to write about this flower in sen- tences worthy of its charm and beauty when you have to introduce such a barbarous word as that.* A poetical lover might wish to be a violet or a rose, but he would never, in written verse, have the temerity to wish he was a periwinkle. * I suppose the change must have come gradually, and through the form pervinke, which Chaucer uses. , UA; March Spindle-Tree. 79 Early spring is not the season of the most brilliant contrasts ; but they occur occasionally, and may be briefly alluded to in passing. You have the viburnum, for instance, which in the late winter is so splendid in its innumerable berries, with their jewel-like transparent red. In early spring a good many of these berries remain, and though their splendor is rather dimmed and faded by this time in reality, it seems to be revived by the effect of contrast, for the fresh green leaves have sprouted amongst them. Another little tree, whose foliage sprouts") | about the same time, is the spindle-tree, orfttsam, which me can never see without thinking of its two very oppo-j 'site uses. The charcoal from it is, it appears, especially ipproved for the manufacture of the ppwder used in can- nons, whilst at the same time artists prefer it for char- coal-drawing. Both these two things cannon powder and charcoal-drawing have been immensely improved of late years ; so war and art, barbarism and civilization, go on together yet as they did in old Greece, in old Rome, in the Europe of the Middle Ages, and in the time of the great Renaissance. The mere precedence -of flower before leaf, or leaf before flower, is in itself quite sufficient to insure variety in the early aspects of vegetation. It is illustrated by many plants which might be paired together in this con- nection as examples ; but it is enough to mention two of the commonest and best known, the hawthorn and the blackthorn. The leaves of the hawthorn will be all sprouting over it abundantly and rapidly covering the hedge with their fresh light-green, probably rather in- 8o March A Larch-Wood. tensified by the contrast of a few old haws that may linger yet from winter ; whilst, at the same time, the blackthorn will just begin to be abundantly dotted with little white buds which, here and there, are bursting into flower, the leaf-buds meanwhile, though contemporane- ous, being of no visible importance, mere points compared with the flower-buds. If the blackthorn were often an isolated plant it would scarcely, in early spring, be a cheerful-looking one, notwithstanding its abundant efflo- rescence, for the eye desires a little green amidst so much white and black ; but, as it very frequently happens that the hawthorn is not far off, this defect is fully compen- sated by the green and leafy neighbor. Besides this, in our scenery at least, you are never very far from an oak, and last year's leaves still remain very abundantly, offering another contrast which is not, I think, always quite harmonious or agreeable, but which, at any rate, is a variety. XVI. A Larch- Wood Rosy Plumelets Horse-Chestnut Quince Tree Ash Walnut Oak Keys of Ash Acacia Elder Privet Bird-cherry Wild Gooseberry Daffodil Wordsworth's Poem on the Daffodil Herrick's Poems on Daffodils The Poet's Narcissus The Legend of Narcissus na^u vupitiaaos Keats His Poem on Narcissus. BY far the most charming sight in the early spring is however, to my taste, a larch-wood. There is such a delightful mystery in it, just whe;i the leaves begin to sprout a pervading green-gray bloom, from the gray March Horse-Chestnut. 8 1 of the branches and trunks, and the delicate green of the young leaves. Still more beautiful is it rather later, when the rosy catkins come into being, as Tennyson says, ' When rosy plumelets tuft the larch, And rarely pipes the mounted thrush ; Or underneath the barren bush Flits by the sea-blue bird of March.' About this time, too, the leaves of the horse-chestnut have pushed vigorously through their varnished scales, and are now visible all wrapped together in a great ogive bud, in softest cotton down. The quince-trees, f . . . . . h Qfor+ always interesting in one way or another, are especially pretty at this time, for downy little pale leaves are com- " ing all over the tree in little clusters, each cluster almost like a flower, the effect at a short distance being that of a scattering of light-green points, as if a' swarm of small green butterflies had alighted on the tree. The ash and walnut, like the oak, show no change as yet at a distance, although the work of a new creation is elaborating itself within their closed buds ; but the 'keys' of the ash catch the sunshine strongly, and are important and elegant from their vertical hanging a quality which never fails to add a certain grace to trees whenever it occurs ; as, for example, in the flowers of the acacia and many others not so beautiful or con- spicuous. The elder, privet, and bird-cherry tree all advance simultaneously, and amongst the shrubs the wild gooseberry is in great haste to clothe itself with fresh green. This unpretending little shrub has been 6 82 March Daffodils. strangely unfortunate in being scientifically misnamed ribes a name which the Arabs gave to an acid rhu- barb, and a Frenchman by mistake applied to the wild gooseberry.* But of all the plants that flourish at this season of .the year not one is equal to the daffodil in its splen- dor of golden yellow on pale dusty basis of long green leaves. The causes of the singular and almost blinding intensity of the color are a gradation from semi-trans- parent outward petals, which are positively greenish in themselves, and still more so by transparence owing to green leaves around, to the depth of yellow in the womb of the flowers, where green influences are excluded, but yellow ones multiplied by the number of the petals. So in the heart the color is an intense orange cadmium, not dark, but most intense a color that we remember all the year round. Wordsworth found that this floral splendor haunted him, ' I gazed and gazed but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought. For oft when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude? It is well for our northern yellow daffodils that they should be thus associated with one of the most beauti- ful passages in which ar\y poet has ever revealed to us something of the working of his own memory and * I allude to the Ribes Grossularia, sometimes called Ribes Uva-crispa, the Gooseberry Ribes ; not to the Ribes Rubrum, Ribes petr&um, or Ribes nigrum, various species of currant Ribes. March Herrick. 83 imagination. And then we have a very exquisite little poem by Herrick, in which he laments their too early disappearance ; a regret which has been felt by many others who have loved the flower, yet never, it is prob- able, expressed with such exquisite conciseness, ' Fair daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon. As yet the early-rising sun Has not attained its noon : Stay, stay Until the hasting day Has run But to the even-song, And having prayed together we Will go with you along.' But of all the associations which are attached to our golden narcissus, the most ennobling is its near relation- ship to the ' poet's narcissus' of the Mediterranean, which bears a solitary flower of pure white, with a yellow crown often edged with orange or crimson ; and this is believed to be the flower to which the beautiful Greek legend has given the charm and interest which belong to imagina- tive tradition, and to that alone. (The different stories of Narcissus agree in these particulars, that he contem- plated the reflection of himself in the river Cephisus or in a fountain, and afterwards became a flower, either j^ - because his blood was changed into one after suicide, s or because a ^flower grew beside his grave after he died '" v v . of sorrow for his twin sister, unheeding the charms of Echo. The stories differ as to his reason for gazing upon his own image ; some say that he became enam- 84 March Legend of Narcissus. cured of it fancying it to be a water-nymph, and others that he could not help looking at it because it reminded him of the sister that he had loved too much and lost. The popular impression seems to be that Narcissus was a beautiful youth who simply admired his own beauty, and gazed upon his form as it was reflected in the smooth water, afterwards becoming a flower on the river's brim, and continuing, as a flower, the habit of self-admiration which he had contracted in his human adolescence. This last interpretation, or simplification, of the old legends, whose details it drops altogether, is still very happily in accordance with the genuine old Greek spirit, the spirit of a time when no possessor of eminent physical beauty could remain un- aware of a gift so much appreciated, but would see it reflected, not only in the waters of the Cephisus or other rivers, but in the admiring eyes of all Greek men and women whenever he appeared in public. In any shape it is peculiarly an artist's legend, having so direct a ref- erence to beauty, so that it has often been illustrated by modern painters and sculptors. We do not feel very grateful to those later classical writers who have been at the pains to inform us that our Ka\a vapida-cros (as The- ocritus called it) has no especial association with beauty, and is not called so after the beautiful youth who was beloved by Echo, but takes its name simply from vdpKrj, or, vap/cda), with reference to its narcotic properties. Was the flower called mp/acrcro? before the legend existed, and is the legend itself, as Keats imagined, simply the beautiful fancy of some early poet who, ' in some deli- March Young Hemlock. 85 cious ramble,' found the flower looking at itself in the water, and imagined for it the story that we know ? / ' And on the bank a lonely flower he spied, \ A meek and forlorn flower, with nought of pride, / Drooping its beauty o'er the watery clearness, To woo its own sad image into nearness : Deaf to light Zephyrus it would not move ; But still would seem to droop, to pine, to love. So while the poet stood in this sweet spot, Some fainter gleamings o'er his fancy shot, Nor was it long ere he had told the tale Of young Narcissus, and sad Echo's bale.' XVII. Young Hemlock Socrates Authorized Suicides The Death o Socrates Peach-bloom Apricot Blossoms Value of Old Walls. THERE is a corner of a neglected old garden at the Val Ste. Veronique in which grows a certain plant very abundantly, that inevitably reminds us of^an ancient philosopher. Towards the end of March it is all carpeted with young hemlock, which at this stage of its existence lies almost perfectly flat upon the ground, and covers it with one of the most minutely beautiful designs that can possibly be imagined ; the delicate division and sub- division of the fresh green leaves making a pattern that would be fit for some small room, if a skilful manu- facturer copied it. Our own hemlock is believed to be identical with that which caused the death of Socrates, 86 March Socrates. but its action in northern countries is much feebler than in the warmer climate of the Mediterranean. The Athe- nians added poppy-juice to the infusion of hemlock, that the approach of death might be painless ; and it is said by Valerius Maximus that the civil authorities of Mar- seilles kept a supply of this drink always ready for weary ones who had obtained the permission of the Senate to lay down the burden of existence. Those in- deed were waters of oblivion ; and it is astonishing how easily, in certain conditions of society, men have come to look on death as a deliverer, to be invoked whenever life is felt to be unpleasantly painful, or even simply ennuyeuse. But the death of Socrates, half voluntary, was grander than their death which was wholly volun- tary. His dignity seemed to him incompatible with flight, and he awaited the fatal cup with that perfect mental clearness which is so well known to us. He died for having preached the philosophy of the conscience, which the Athenians instinctively felt to be opposed to the antique religion of the State, however careful he might be in external conformity to its rites.* In the same old abandoned garden where the hem- lock grows on the walls there remain a few fruit-trees, * ' En vain prenait-il soin d'assister a toutes les fetes et de prendre part aux sacrifices ; ses croyances et ses paroles dementaient sa con- duite. II fondait une religion nouvelle, qui etait le contraire de la relig- ion de la cite. *On 1'accusa avec verite^de ne pas adorer les dieux que 1'etat adorait." On le fit perir pour avoir attaque les coutumes et les croyances des ancfitres, ou, comme on disait, pour avoir corrompu la generation presente.' La CM antique, by M. FUSTEL DE Cou- LANGES. March Apricot Blossoms. 87 and amongst these some peaches and apricots. They are in full bloom towards the end of March, and of all the beautiful sights to be seen at this time of the year I know of none to be compared to these old peach-trees with their wealth of rosy bloom, which would be beauti- / ful in any situation, but is so especially in this because there happen to be some mellow-tinted walls behind [jhem, the very background that a painter would delight in. There is some pretty coloring in the apricot blos- soms, on account of the pink calyx and the pinkish brown of the young twigs, which has an influence on the effect, but the peach is incomparably richer; and after the grays of wintry trees and wintry skies the sight is glad- dened beyond measure by the flush of peach-blossom and the blue of the clear spring heaven. But to enjoy these two fresh and pure colors to the utmost we need some quiet coloring in the picture, and nothing supplies this better than such old walls as those of the monastic , : \l f buildings at the Val Ste. Veronique ; walls that Nature has been painting in her own way for full four hundred years, with the most delicate changes of gray and brown ( ! . and dark gleamings of bronze and gold. There is some- thing, too, which gratifies other feelings than those of simple vision in the renewal of the youth of Nature, contrasting with the steady decay of any ancient human work ; and in the contrast, between her exquisiteness, her delicacy, her freshness, as exhibited in a thing so perfect as a fresh peach-blossom, with its rosy color, its almond-perfume, its promise of luscious fruit, and the roughness of all that man can do, even at his best. 88 March Little Fields. XVIII. Scenery round the Val Ste. Veronique Little Fields Oxen and Horses Ploughing with Oxen Example for the Intellectual How a Peasant Ploughed Beautiful Grouping Splendor of the Ploughshare Polish of Labor Independence and Dignity of Ploughmen Resolute Will and Strength needed in Ploughing. IT is one of the most striking peculiarities of the scenery around the Val Ste. Vdronique, that al- though the country is almost entirely covered with dense forest, and although the land is a sea of hills with nar- row valleys between them, there are here and there lit- tle patches of it .in full tillage, and these are often placed in the most unlikely situations. You will occasionally come upon a little field, islanded in the forest, and occupying very likely just the most awkward bit of steeply-sloping hillside that is to be found there, and yet this little field will be ploughed and sown with the utmost diligence and affection. I know two or three such places, which not only are on a most inconvenient slope to begin with, but have also on their own sur- face a variety of minor inconveniences, in the shape of miniature hills and valleys, or lumps and holes, which seem as if they would bafHe the most ingenious plough- man who ever stood behind a team of oxen. With horses, it is unnecessary to observe, such work as this would be simply an impossibility. The heaviest and most sluggish breed of horses in the world would still March Ploughing with Oxen. 89 be far too impatient for a kind of labor which is as try- ing to the patience of animals as if it were expressly contrived to irritate and torment them. The oxen go through it in their own inimitably firm and patient way, often dragging the plough against a slope so steep that merely to climb it, without dragging any thing at all, would be in itself an exhausting kind of labor, yet keep- ing up to their work always steadily and well, as if they were inwardly sustained by the firmest sense of duty. Such is the difficulty of the ground that a light plough requires six oxen to work it, and often eight. There is a certain field on a hillside visible from the Val Ste. Veronique which especially interests me when the farmer is ploughing it, which he does so conscientiously that his example would be excellent if transferred to the intel- lectual sphere ; and many a student, who finds the ground before him irregular and arduous, would do well to imitate that thoroughness which will leave no corner of it untilled. There is one place which interested me most especially, a sort of cup or hollow just on the edge of the field, so that the forest advanced into the very middle of it, and you could not go down one slope and up the other, which would have been comparatively con- venient, but must necessarily, if you would plough the place at all, take your team of oxen straight into the hol- low, then turn them, and bring them out again up a slope as steep as a house-roof. Would the peasant attempt this ? I watched him the first day to see what he would do, but the question was very soon decided. He took his eight oxen straight over the edge of the hole, down 90 March Beautiful Grouping. into the bottom of it, where they were huddled in tem- porary confusion, then calling them by their names got them into order and bravely ploughed his way out again. This he repeated till the sides of the hole were as well ploughed as any other part of his little field, and the groupings of his eight oxen when they got into it, with their grandly strenuous labor as they were getting out of it, were well worth the study of an animal-painter. The clear early sunshine cast them into strong light and shadow, and the creamy white of the oxen was splendid against the dark reds and yellows of the earth. That word 'splendid' which I have used just now, without especially thinking about it, reminds me of the right and accurate employment of the same word by Virgil with reference to a ploughshare. His ' sulco at- tritus (incipiaf) splendescere vomer ' is just one of those touches which show an artist's sense of what has been called the poetry of common things. Anybody can see that the Shah's diamonds are splendid, and perhaps the most essentially vulgar minds are the most likely to be strongly impressed by a splendor so much associated with great pecuniary value ; but only an artist or poet would notice the shining of a common agricultural im- plement. And yet- few things in the world are more resplendent than a well-used ploughshare as it catches the glory of the sunshine ; and it may be doubted whether even the glitter of martial steel can awaken more poetical associations. It is a fine sight to see a flash of sunshine run along a restless line of bayonets, or on the burnished helmets of some emperor's regiment of guards ; but a March Polish of Labor. 91 true poet would be set dreaming just as surely by the polish of the ploughshare a polish not due to any in- tentional scheming about effect, but simply a proof of labor, like that noble polish which comes of itself upon the laborious human mind when it has toiled in the in- tellectual fields. The mere fact that Virgil noticed the shining of a ploughshare nineteen hundred years ago is of itself a poetical association, as Thomson felt when he wrote : ' Such themes as these the rural Maro sang To wide imperial Rome, in the full height Of elegance and taste, by Greece refined. In ancient times, the sacred plough employ'd The kings and awful fathers of mankind. And some, with whom compared, your insect tribes Are but the beings of a summer's day, Have held the scale of empire, ruled the storm Of mighty war ; then, with victorious hand Disdaining little delicacies, seized The plough, and greatly independent lived.' I was bred to the plough,' wrote Burns, ' and am in- dependent ; ' the two ideas of ploughing and indepen- dence connecting themselves together very easily, in part perhaps because the ploughman whilst he works is not commanded by another, but is lord of his own team, and guides his own implement as it makes the long furrow in the earth. There is certainly a great dignity in the grand old agricultural operations ; so much dignity, indeed, that they are compatible with the grandest traditions of religious or political history. One is tempted to avoid the allusion to Cincinnatus because 92 March Strength needed in Ploughing. it is so familiar to every one, but I may observe that the very familiarity of it, the universality of its recep- tion and preservation in the memory of the cultivated world, is the proof that we have an ideal sense of a cer- tain harmony and compatibility between the dignity of ploughing and the dignity of government which finds its satisfaction in the story of that worthy Roman. And I think the true dignity and grandeur of this labor is never so conspicuous as it is under circumstances such as those which I have just now attempted to describe, when the earth to be subdued is so difficult and rebel- lious, and it is necessary to have a strong team of six or eight well-trained oxen thoroughly under command. Think of the long hours from early dawn to sunset, with the incessant exercise of resolute will and strong, con- trolling arm on the plough-handle ; a guidance needing far more strength than that of the seaman's tiller, whilst the team of animals is not so mechanically obedient as the unresisting ship ! Steadily they all go forward to- gether, team and plough and ploughman, through wind and calm, through shine or shower, and still the iron coulter turns up the heavy soil, resisting always, and always resisting vainly ! March Sowing. 9 3 XIX. Sowing Its sublime Trust Spiritual Sowing Parable of the Sower Intellectual Sowing Our Age more favorable to it than other Ages An Old Peasant The First Sower The First Cultivator of the Cereals Roman Bread Our Ignorance of our earliest Benefactors. at least equal dignity is the great religious actjrf sowing, with its sublime well-grounded confidence in the natural repayment of what we wisely trust to ^Nature. We are so familiar with this act of confidence that the meaning of it is almost lost to our apprehension, yet man's trust in the order of the universe is never more grandly proved than when he goes forth from some poor house where the children have scanty bread, and carries the precious grain and scatters it on the ground. There is another kind of sowing on which it is not always possible to have such secure reliance, because it is so difficult to know accurately the condition of the soil. He who sows corn sows it in earth that can be analyzed, and agricultural chemistry can tell him with great certainty what may be his chances of success ; but who knows the minds of nations and their chemistry ? who can tell whether the most precious seed-thoughts of philosophy will lie utterly unproductive or yield illimit- able harvests ? The condition of that soil varies from year to year ; one year you might as well sow corn on 94 March Intellectual Sowing. icebergs as trust any living thought to the deadly cold- ness of the world,, and yet a few years later this same world will be no longer an iceberg but good earth wait- ing for the seed. We all of us know the parable of the sower, how 'the sower soweth the word' by the wayside, and on stony ground, and amongst thorns, and finally on good ground also. That is the way the preacher sows his doctrine, and in every age from the day when that parable was first spoken the preacher has had exactly those chances of success. But it is not quite the same in the intellectual sphere, for here the soil itself all changes together, and in one age it will be all stones or thorns, whilst in another it will be good ground ready for the reception of great thoughts or astonishing discoveries. And whatever may be the faults of the age in which we live, whatever may be the crudeness, rawness, uncouthness, of our half-developed industrial system with the unpleasant forms of human life which it has made discouragingly conspicuous, one thing at least may be boldly advanced in defence of it ; namely, that it is incomparably more favorable than any age that has preceded it to the sowing of the seeds of knowledge. There is an old peasant near the Val Ste. Veronique whom I like to see especially at this time of the year. He is very tall and thin, with large bones, and a white head carried. high with natural dignity. When he walks teadily along the furrow, casting the seed with that regular motion of the hand and arm which comes from years of practice, I look at him and think that, of all the March The First Sower. 95 great works that ancient tradition has handed down to us, there is none more full of majesty than this. The old man has' sown crops that were harvested long ago, and his fathers before him have done this also for un- numbered generations. When the legions of Caesar swept through the country in pursuit of the Helvetii, there were great granaries in the hill-fortresses that the Gauls had filled from their well-cultivated cornfields. In what far Eastern land, I wonder, did the sower first go forth to sow ? And what keen-minded, far-seeing, early discoverer, aided by no hint from Science, first con- ceived the notion of cultivating those utterly unpromising gramina which were shortly to become corn, and wheat, and barley ? Nobody knows how long the human race used the cereal grasses before the clever bakers found out at last the art of making what we call a loaf of bread. It was nearly six hundred years after the foundation of Rome when the Roman bakers developed their art to a degree before undreamed of, and produced what at that time was a novelty and a luxury, but is to us a matter of primary necessity. Before that they made bread indeed, but of the sort that was eaten by the besieged Parisians, with bits of straw and awns in it ; and soldiers on the march carried a sack of ill-ground flour, that they mixed with water when they came to a spring or stream. We know nothing of the first discoverers, humanity's earliest benefactors, but not the least among them were the discoverers of the cereals. The author of ' Lothair ' did well to remind us of what we forget so easily the merits of discoverers whose discoveries have been long familiar. 96 March The Common Reed. We think that nothing can be more natural than the growth of the cereals, but it is not so : the wild grasses // with tiny uneatable seeds, these are natural, and not the { nourishing cereals. XX. The Common Reed Music of Reeds Pan and a Reedy Stream Sadness of the Willow and of Reeds Tennyson's use of them Song of the Dying Swan 'The Morte d' Arthur ' Association of Reeds with a dreary Scene Mrs. Browning's Association of Reeds with the Sacrifice of the Poet to his Art Associations of noble Utility Various practical uses of Reeds The Reed's Motto The lesson of the Reed not very noble Pascal's comparison of man to a Reed. AMONGST the good gifts of Nature which have needed absolutely no amelioration by human care or culture, one of the best and handsomest is the common reed, and March is its harvest-time. There is hardly any thing in Nature more delicately beautiful than some damp corner where the reeds have grown un- disturbed, and turned finally to that pale reed-yellow, a. tint far exceeding in refinement the golden hues of straw. The long lanceolate leaves seem like fairy papyrus, on which some elfin bard might indite his exquisite inven- tions, and the tall stalks rustle together as the cool March ~* wind blows through them, and the sound is very sad and melancholy; because although the glorious spring is coming, when the earth will be covered with flowers, March Music of Reeds. 97 these last year's reeds will never be green again, and they watch the spring as old people watch sadly some festival of youth. Their music is not unknown to thee, great Pan ! ' Who lovest to see the hamadryads dress Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken, And through whole solemn hours dost sit and hearken The dreary melody of bedded reeds In desolate places, where dark moisture breeds The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth, Bethinking thee how melancholy loth Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx.' And in another poem by Keats, where Pan and a reedy stream both recur to his fancy, we have in the space of four lines a strong expression of pity, with weeping, sighing, and desolation : ' Poor Nymph poor Pan how did we weep to find Nought but a lovely sighing of the wind Along the reedy stream ! a half-heard strain, Full of sweet desolation, balmy pain? As the willow is associated with the sadness of dis- appointed lovers * The willow, worne of fornlorne paramours ' so whenever the poets speak of reeds, it is in connection with dreariness or weariness of some kind, and always to give sadness to the landscape. This may be because no plant answers so exactly to our idea of ghosts as reeds do when they stand still in their places, so changed and pale, when the sap no longer flows, and a phantom /W, ro 98 March Tennyson's use of Reeds. of their former self remains, all ghastly in the twilight. So Tennyson says : ' Ever the vueary wind went on, And took the reed-tops as it went.' And farther on in the same poem the song of the dying swan is associated with ' The wavy swell of the soughing reeds.' And in the ' Morte d' Arthur,' where the poet has sought every circumstance which could heighten the ef- fect of melancholy sublimity, the ' dark strait of barren land/ the sea-wind singing ' shrill, chill, with flakes of foam,' ' the winter moon,' he has not failed to remem- ber the poetical use of reeds : ' Better to leave Excalibur conceal'd There in the many -knotted water/lags That whistled stiff and dry about the marge! And a few lines farther on, ' " I heard the ripple washing in the reeds, And the wild water lapping on the crag." To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale, " Thou hast betrayed thy nature and thy name." ' This reference to the reeds occurs a second time with the effect of a mournful refrain : ' Then spoke King Arthur, breathing heavily, " What is it thou hast seen, or what hast heard ? " And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere, " I heard 'the water lapping on the crag, And the long ripple washing in the reeds." ' Even in Mrs. Browning's fine little poem, ' A Musical March Associations of Utility. 99 Instrument,' there is an undertone of regretful melan- choly. The ' great god Pan ' goes down in the reeds by the river/ and hacks and hews at them till he has got the material for his instrument ; but then comes the deeper meaning of the poem the regret that poetical culture and discipline should so isolate us from the common world; and pray just observe how sadly sweet are the final cadences of the verse, and how much the sadness is aided by our old association of melancholy with reeds : ' Yet half a beast is the great god Pan To laugh, as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man. The true gods sigh for the cost and pain, For the reed that grows nevermore again As a reed with the reeds in the river? Reeds have many associations of utility as well as >r froetry. The reed-pen, still used by a few artists and V'j^greatly valued by them on account of its qualities as an ument for powerful and picturesque design, was in the early centuries of our era universally employed by authors and transcribers, so that the plant has been a servant both to literature and art, and has the dignity which belongs to every instrument of culture.* Besides these delicate uses, the reed has aided the early steps of civilization by providing its first requisite, a roof ; and a requisite only secondary to that, (frpdyfj-a, a fence, * To this might be added some reference to the papyrus of antiq- uity, which was the leaf of the Nile reed, so that this plant has supplied both pens and paper. ioo March The Reed's Motto. so that botanists have called it Arundo PJiragmitcs. The moralists, on their part, have found the reed extremely useful as an illustration of weakness and in- stability, which may however save itself by a timely yielding to forces that cannot be resisted. The reed's motto is given with the neatest brevity by Lafontaine : ' Je pile, et ne romps pas.' But although the reed in the fable had practically the advantage over the oak that the wind uprooted, and al- though worldly prudence always counsels us to do as the reed did, and bend, still it may be observed that the reed's lesson is not a very noble one, and that hu- manity scarcely requires it, being only too ready to bow before every breath that assumes the tone of authority. And it may be observed, farther, that whatever political liberty, and whatever intellectual light, may be at pres- ent enjoyed by the most advanced nations of the world, are due to exceptional men, who had much more of the oak in them than the reed ; men who often paid their resistance with their life, but who were not fail- ures, since their example has bequeathed fortitude to their successors. Pascal said, ' L'/tomme nest quitn roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mats cest un roseau pensant! Surely, however, the thinkers are of robuster quality than that. April Play of Light and Shadow. 101 1) > /k ^ p April Play of Light and Shadow Genuine April Weather Hills in April Weather The Willow in April Streams in April Con- stable His observation about Clouds His Affection for the Spring-time Chaucer His wonderful PaSsion for Landscape His description of Spring The Draba Verna Figwort Ranun- culus Wordsworth's Poem on the Little Celandine Buttercups The Lesser Celandine in Decay Unresisting nature of Decay in Plants Resistance to Decay in Men Beautiful Association of the name Celandine. IT happened that the month of April opened with April's own characteristic weather. March had ended with a gray sky through which sunshine filtered, as it were, in a way much more trying to the strongest eyesight than the intensest glare of summer. All Nature was a picture of the most various and delicate grays, with fresh green sparingly scattered ; a sort of coloring quite peculiar to the season and full of a quiet charm, when we are in a mood quiet enough to enjoy it. But the//) first of April brought with it a perfect revolution. M- Instead of the almost uniform gray sky, broken only by. /^ gleams of semi-transparence in the universal cloud- canopy, we had now separate clouds, having a magnifi- cent individuality, and sunshine in perfect though tern-, porary splendor. No weather is, to my feel.i.r delightful as this genuine April weather. The play light and shadow, so rapid in its transitions, so powerft 102 April Hills in April Weather. in the suddenness of its unexpected yet most effective contrasts, would of itself be a subject of inexhaustible interest in any country where the landscape is not too irremediably dull for any thing to make it lively ; but this is not all. In genuine April weather you have not only the play of light and shadow, but that of mystery and definition, caused by the frequent showers, which pass before the hills at one time with the half-trans- parence of a veil, at another with the opacity of a curtain ; so that it is hardly possible to find any considerable extent of hill-scenery of which one part will not be in the clearest definition that brilliant sunshine and a pure atmosphere can give to it, whilst another will be in purple shadow, and a third paled by a light-gray shower. It is a season, too, which will give to ordinary hill-sce- nery much of the life and glory of the true mountains. A forest-covered colline, which in summer is simply a rising land of rather sombre green, with a monotonous outline on a blue sky, becomes, under the lively effects of April, as rich in purple and blue, and silvery grays of distance, as a mountain-range in the north of Scotland. Nothing can exceed the vivacity and brilliance of these effects in April, and their brilliance is heightened to the utmost by the freshness of the unsullied greens in the foreground, which are made splendid by the glittering varnish of the rain. This is the time of the willow's jride and glory. He is as yet almost alone amongst the trees, and begins the concert of the year with a lelicate and tender solo, to which we are all sure to (listen ; and he is sustained by an accompaniment of April Constable. 103 purple background, with such variations of sunshine that his singing, not naturally of the strongest, is made to seem quite powerful for the time. All the streams, too, are in a season of prosperity ; for although they are rather swollen by frequent showers, they run plentifully but not foully as they did in winter, and all their little islets are like emeralds with the new grass that the clear water refreshes as it flows past them. It is impossible to watch the effects of April thinking of a painter who loved and understood them better than any other, and who painted them in all their freshness at a time when the connoisseurship of all Europe was in the brown stage of art-criticism, and liked nothing so much as thickly-varnished old canvases, so obscure that it was not always easy to distinguish what the artist had intended to represent. Constable said that he preferred spring to autumn, in which I find it difficult to agree with him ; but as he loved the spring pre-eminently he studied it earnestly, which landscape- painters who pass the season in great cities have few opportunities for doing. There is a description of an engraving from one of Constablej5j)ictures of Spring^ written by the artist himself, which is well worth quoting] , for its truth of observation about clouds. ' It may per- haps,' he says, 'give some idea of one of those bright and silvery days in the spring, when at noon large garish clouds, surcharged with hail or sleet, sweep with YQ their broad shadoxvs the fields, woods, and hills ; and by their depths enhance the value of the vivid greens and yellows so peculiar to the season. The natural & 1 04 April Chaucer. history, if the expression may be used, of the skies, which are so particularly marked in the hail-squalls at this time of the year, is this : the clouds accumulate in very large masses, and from their loftiness seem to move but slowly ; immediately upon these large clouds appear numerous opaque patches, which are only small clouds passing rapidly before them, and consisting of isolated portions detached probably from the larger cloud. . These, floating much nearer the earth, may perhaps fall in with a stronger current of wind, which, as well as their com- parative lightness, causes them to move with greater rapidity ; hence they are called by wind-millers and sailors messengers, and always portend bad weather. They float midway in what may be termed the lanes of the clouds ; and from being so situated are almost uniformly in shadow, receiving a reflected light only from the clear blue sky immediately above them. In passing over the bright parts of the large clouds they appear as dark ; but in passing the shadowed parts they assume a gray, a pale, or a lurid hue.' Notwithstanding Constable's passionate affection for the spring-time, and the advantage of possessing an eye that had been educated by the constant practice of art, it may be doubted whether he felt its influences more keenly than did a great early English poet, who had been influenced by no such general appreciation of the beautiful in Nature as that which exists (or seems to exist) in modern society, and is so continually stimulated by modern writers and artists. It is truly amazing that a poet situated as Chaucer was situated, who had seen April His Description of Spring. 105 no landscape art but such as existed in the backgrounds of illuminated manuscripts or the sylvan scenery of hunting-pieces in mediaeval tapestry, who had read no literature in which the landscape sentiment was more developed than it is in the Eclogues of Virgil, should have felt as Chaucer felt, and seen what he perceived. I do not mean that he wrote from the landscape-painter's point of view, for that has only been done by quite recent poets, and the attempt has in most instances been injurious to their compositions as literature, which is not painting, and ought not to imitate painting ; but I mean, that to any one who thoroughly realizes what Chaucer's situation was, it must be matter of astonishment that he loved Nature with such intensity. There is a sort of quiet enjoyment of Nature in the classical pastorals. Theocritus and Virgil evidently liked a country life, and they mention different kinds of trees and shrubs, and a few flowers, with a tranquil contentment that occasion- ally becomes almost affectionate ; but they have nothing like Chaucer's passion. The note of the following ex- tract from ' The Flower and the Leaf ' may, it is true, seem delicate and tender rather than passionate, yet its tenderness is passion in repose : ' When shoures sweet of raine descended soft, Causing the grounde fele times and oft Up for to give many an wholesome aire, And every plaine was clothed faire ' With new grene, and maketh small floures To springen here and there in field and mede, So very good and wholesome be the shoures io6 April The Draba Vcrna. That it renueth what was old and dede In winter time ; and out of every sede Springeth the hearbe, so that every wight Of this season waxeth glad and li If from the ' small floures ' of Chaucer we descend to particulars, and ask of what ' small floures ' the verse at once reminds us, I think we can hardly fail to re- member the common Draba, or Draba verna, which is both small and early, and as pretty in its elegant humility as many little plants that happen to be more popularly known. Tiny as it is, with stalks just strong enough to carry its little pods and flowers, and not burdened by any leaves, for they lie on the ground about its root, it still has an appreciable effect on the color of an April foreground, which it powders with white like a hail- shower, and even at a distance it will make the green of a pasture grayer. The power of small plants in the coloring of landscape is often forced upon the attention of artists, and there are many remarkable examples of it in different parts of the world. The Draba does not strike the eye as it would if the flower were scarlet or bright blue, but it has its influence nevertheless as a moderator of crude greens. A much more important spring flower in size and splendor is the Figwort Ranunculus, which, happily for its reputation, possessed a much prettier and more musical name ; probably the great motive that induced Wordsworth to write about it. The rose might smell as sweetly by another name, and yet not occur so favor- ably to the euphony of verse. Wordsworth, in a foot- April The Celandine. 107 note, called the Figwort Ranunculus ' common pilewort,' but he was extremely careful not to call it so in the stanzas of the poem itself. Hear how prettily the poetical name ends the first stanza : ' Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies, Let them live upon their praises ; Long as there's a sun that sets Primroses will have their glory ; Long as there are violets, They will have a place in story : There's a flower that shall be mine, 'Tis the little Celandine.' And again, the last stanza but one : ' 111 befall the yellow flowers, Children of the flaring hours ! Buttercups that will be seen Whether we will see or no ; Others, too, of lofty mien ; They have done as worldlings do, Taken praise that should be thine, Little, humble Celandine ! ' It is curious what a hold this flower seems to have taken on Wordsworth's affections. He wrote three poems about it, two in the rather jingling measure of the stanzas just quoted, and a third, of far more serious tone and deeper meaning, in a measure adapted to the expression of earnest thought ; and so closely does the noble sadness of these stanzas associate itself with the flower by which they were suggested, that it is impossible for any one who has read Wordsworth as poetry ought to be read, io8 April The Celandine in Decay. not to remember them when he sees the Lesser Celandine in her decay. ' But lately, one rough day this Flower I passed, And recognized it, though an altered form, Now standing forth an offering to the blast And buffeted at will by rain and storm. I stopped, and said with inly-muttered voice, " It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold, This neither is its courage nor its choice, JSut its necessity in being old. The sunshine may not cheer it, nor the dew ; It cannot help itself in its decay" ' Surely in all the range of poetry there is no finer and truer description of the real nature of decay that there is no courage in it, nor choice, but only necessity and helplessness - yet in the association with old age in man, which occupies the concluding stanza of this poem, one cheering consideration is omitted, that the note of melan- choly might be wholly unrelieved. It is certain that by courage and strength of will men really can resist, for long years, some of the worst evils of old age, and at least one happy consequence of the modern feeling de senectute (so different from Cicero's) is that men not only try to keep themselves young, but actually succeed for a very long time in doing so. In the vegetable world there is neither courage, nor choice, nor effort, but only sub- mission. The plant is rooted in its place, and can seek no shelter against the weather, nor any protection against its enemies, neither can it strengthen by voluntarily di- rected nervous force the resisting power of stalk or branch. We are so much accustomed to that old artifice April The Name Celandine. 109 of the poets, so suitable to the childish condition of the in- tellect, by which they attribute human feelings to the oak and reed, to rose and lily, that we have a difficulty in realiz- ing the true nature of a plant's existence. And yet there is poetry in the truth also, as my last quotation proves. The Lesser Celandine attracts us by scattering a little bright gold on the earth so early in the season, but its yellow is neither more modest nor more beautiful than that of the later flowers that Wordsworth playfully sacri- ficed at the shrine of his early favorite. It is evident, however, that in addition to its sweetly-sounding name, the poet found another attraction in the Lesser Celandine the idea of connecting his own fame with that of the flower permanently, and of conferring fame upon what had been hitherto unnoticed ; an idea that has always been pleasing to poets, from Horace downwards. Words- worth does not appear to have remembered that the name which pleased him by its music is associated with, and even derived from, the name of one of the most beautiful and poetical of the birds. Celandine is a corruption of the French chelidoine, which in Italian is chelidonia or celidonia, in Latin chelidonium, in Greek ^eXtSoi/toi', from a swallow.* Opinions differ as to the reason * The classical reader may remember the beautiful passage in the thirteenth idyl of Theocritus, where Hylas goes down to the fountain to fetch water for the heroes who are eating. Several plants are mentioned by name : Tlepl 6s Opiia 7roAA TTE^VKEI ~K.VU.VEOV ' ' Kal diMovra aefava, Kai Ei/urei% d Liddell and Scott suggest that KVUVEOV (which presents a little no April The Common Primrose. why the Greeks associated the celandine with the swal- low ; some say that it is because the celandine * (not the lesser) comes when the swallows come, and stays as long as they remain with us ; but others affirm that it is because the swallow used the plant (in which a caustic juice circulates like blood) to give sight to her little ones. Be this as it may, the plant takes her name from the bird. XXII. The Common Primrose Nooks where the Primrose grows Etymology Beauty of Primrose Yellow Cowslip and Oxslip Influence of Agriculture upon Landscape French Dislike to Solitude Nature and the Farmers Wheat-fields in April A flowering Rape-field Gentians and Heather The Blackthorn Its Chilling Effect Leafless Oaks. A MUCH more delicately beautiful flower is the cojamon primrose, but her praises have been sung so often that it is difficult in this century to say any thing of her that can be either new or interesting. Still, if we can say nothing that is new, there is always a delightful novelty, not unpleasantly mingled with half-melancholy difficulty, as there is no positive blue about the plant) may have stood for yhavKov ; and this is the more probable that the under- side of the leaves might be accurately described by the latter adjective. * The Figwort Ranunculus, which Wordsworth wrote about, has scarcely any thing in common, with the true Celandine but the color and the name. The two plants do not even belong to the same family botanically. The figwort belongs to the Ranunculacea, and the true celandine to the Papaveracece. April Beauty of Primrose Yellow. 1 1 1 -reminiscences of by-gone years, in the sensation of meeting with primroses for the first time in the spring, especially if they happen to be in great rich clusters, in some corner where we come upon them unexpectedly. There are several nooks in the Val Ste. Veronique which the primroses have elected for their homes, particularly one place between the rivulet and a great wild cherry- tree, where there must be two or three thousand of these flowers. Primaveris, first of the spring, primevdre, and first not only in the sense that it is earliest, but first also in the perfection of its loveliness, if you think only of the delicate corolla, and not of the great coarse leaves, which seem as if they had been put there for nothing but to make us feel the exquisiteness of the pale corolla more completely. That corolla is the perfection of Nature's yellow, for it shows all the delicacy the color is capable of ; and if you seek that coloring elsewhere, you need not look for it on the earth, but may haply find it once in a twelvemonth in the purity of the clear heaven after sunset. The bees are glad when the primroses bloom in the grassy hollows, and they come to them from far, well knowing that there is honey down in the tube of the one soft beautiful petal. And whilst the primroses live in great companies in the shady places that suit them best, the cowslip and oxslip, their very near relations, liv out in the meadows and pastures, over which also th bees range at this time very busily. The influence of agriculture upon landscape is one of those questions which force themselves irresistibly upon our attention when we think about art and Nature. 1 1 2 April French Dislike to Solitude. There are two quite opposite schools amongst artists and poets in reference to this rather difficult and complicated subject. Constable was entirely on the side of agricul- ture, and plainly said that he liked the fields the farmers worked in, and the work they did in them ; in short, the Nature that Constable loved best was Nature modified by man, and so he painted a well-cultivated country with villages and mills, and village-steeples seen over the hedges and between the permitted trees. This feeling about Nature is a very common one in France, where people will often tell you that such a place ' is delightful for its scenery you can count the steeples of eight vil- lages, and you cannot drive two miles in any direction without passing either a village or a country-house.' The essence of this feeling is the dislike to solitude, and a sense of oppression when not relieved either by the com- panionship of man or by visible evidence of his presence. On the other hand there have been several modern land- scape-painters, and a few writers, who believe in wild Nature as an article of faith, being persuaded that nothing that occurs in ' unspoiled Nature ' can by any possibility be defective from the artistic point of view a dogma of natural religion which is seductive by reason of its simplicity, and because it offers what man so much de- sires, an infallible authority and guide. But supposing that a thinker were to approach this subject armed with a good deal of artistic taste and experience, yet not in the least inclined to pin his faith to any absolute dogma on one side or the other, what would he be likely to decide ? He would say most probably that both Nature April Wheat-fields in April. 113 and the farmers often made arrangements which might be good and reasonable on the solid earth that we in- habit, but which, for the clearest artistic reasons, would be perfectly intolerable in a picture ; and such an opinion would be compatible with the profoundest reverence for the Divine arrangements, and a sincere respect for the useful work of agriculture. The material world was not made exclusively for the purpose of being painted ; it has other uses, and there may be some incompatibility ) Between those other uses and the exigencies of artistic or composition. Who^ would venture to paint a rheat-field at the beginning of April ? Its intense crude ' ^/f / green may be in itself agreeable as a refreshing change / after the grays and browns of winter, but it harmonizes with nothing else in the landscape, and the quantity of it is unmanageably great for a color of such intensity. And if a wheat-field is too dangerous to be thought of, what shall we say to such a blinding phenomenon as a ^ flowering field of rape ? The difference between color , ', Des habitans des bois j'entends la troupe ailee * S'avancer, voltiger autour cle ma feuillee. J'ecoute, en palpitant, leur vol precipite ; D'un transport vif et doux mon cceur est agite Quand je les vois tomber sur ces verges perfides . \A /// X/* Qu'infectade ses sues 1'arbrisseau des druides, O doux emploi des jours ! agreables momens ! ' ' * It would be difficult to find any thing more gently heartless and amiably selfish than these last well-polished verses. It is like the gentleness of the mild-minded angler enjoying the pleasant sunshine and the purling 142 May The Bird-catcher. stream, whilst the living bait writhes in torture on his hook. Agreables momens ! Not for the birds, surely ! not for the birds ! And before quitting this subject let me just observe how painfully the bird-catcher is con- tinually reappearing in so great a writer as Buffon. He never fails to give his readers instructions, in this line of business, and generally tells them whether every little bird is good to eat or not. Fancy eating a brace of wrens, or of torn-tits ! It is true that we eat smaller creatures still, shrimps, for example; and the Bur- gundy vine-snail is both good and nourishing : but our sentiments are not enlisted in their behalf. To my feeling the most agreeable bit of information about bird- catching that I ever gleaned from the great naturalist of Montbard is, that the wren, from its extreme small- ness, gets through the meshes of the finest nets and so happily escapes. I wish all the other birds could do likewise. The wonderful work of nest-building goes on with immense activity in the spring. What a difference there is in relation to this business between a human couple and the wedded birds ! The human couple either inherit a nest already made, generally without the most remote conception of the labor it cost to make it, or else they hire another nest without much serious interest or affection ; but the bird and his wife are their own masons, and also their own architects, being usually more successful in this latter capacity than the unprofessional human designer of habitations. Or is it not more accurate to say of them that, strictly May Magpies. 1 43 speaking, they are masons only, working after the plans of a greater Architect than those who devise big palaces in stone and mortar ? If masons only, at least they are most industrious masons. The Marquis de Cherville, who is an accurate observer of what passes too often unobserved in the quiet routine of Nature, says that he watched a pair of magpies from the beginning of their nest-building to the end. They had fixed themselves in a large poplar, just before M. de Cherville's window, and he watched them both from his desk and from his bed, missing hardly any thing that they did. The work lasted for forty-seven days, during which, especially in the morning and evening, the two birds carried materials with a feverish activity. In a single day he counted two hundred and eight journeys in quest of material, and this was not the whole. But the nest of a magpie is a very rude affair, indeed, when compared with the highly finished and delicate workmanship of many other birds. The thrush, the torn-tit, and some kinds of lin- net, are master-builders in different ways. The thrush makes the outside of his nest with almost any thing that comes to hand, with moss, with straw, or dried leaves ; but his great skill is displayed in the fabrica- tion of the stout mill-board that constitutes its inner wall or shell, made 'of wet mud well beaten, strength- ened with bits of straw and roots. The thrush likes this hard and smooth interior, not caring for the lux- ury of soft feather-beds, but some other birds are more luxurious. The greenfinch and goldfinch are amongst the cleverest of bird .upholsterers. They know how to 1 44 May The Wren. feather their nests well, and have an English taste for carpets and interior comfort, well knowing the value of bits of wool, and hair, and feathers. The wren has another English taste also, for he likes his house to be not only comfortable, but big ; and, small as he is, he has large ideas in the way of architecture. I like his plan of a little doorway in the side, just big enough for his small person to pass through ; it is infinitely more snug than the commoner system of sitting in a sort of enlarged egg-cup : and, besides these advan- tages, the wren's house is not easily discovered, being apparently a shapeless lump of moss, though so artfully .shaped within. How interesting it would be if some ^ ^observer, like the Marquis de Cherville, could watch a tuple of wrens at work from the very beginning to the loment of their happy house-warming, when the soft ^clear down was all arranged snugly as a lining to the wee dwelling, and just ready to receive the wonderfully tiny white eggs ! Is not this much more interesting, as well as more admirably laborious, than the furnishing of some house in a row run up by some speculator, with balconies that you dare not step out upon for fear that they should fall with you down upon the dangerous- looking railings ? I think there must be an infinite pleasure in building one's own house, not as rich peo- ple use the words, when they say ' I am going to build,' but in doing it with one's own hands a pleasure founded upon the primitive depths of our original wild nature. It has sometimes occurred to me to talk with very poor men who really had done this with their own May Varieties of Nest- building. 145 hands, and the satisfaction their rough work gave them was evidently of a kind that no wealth could ever pur- chase. Observe the zest with which travellers in wild countries, who have been compelled to erect dwellings for themselves, describe the interesting process, and gravely give directions to others, a spirit of the keenest enjoyment being visible throughout the prudence of their precepts ! / I have noticed the wide difference of refinement and skill in nest-building between such different birds as the magpie and the thrush, linnets, &c., but Gilbert White remarked that there was a great disparity in this respect between ' birds of the same genus, and nearly corre- spondent in their general mode of life ; for while the swallow and the house-martin discover the greatest address in raising and securely fixing crusts, or shells, of loam, as cunabula for their young, the bank-martin terebrates a round and regular hole in the sand or earth, which is serpentine, horizontal, and about two feet deep. At the inner end of this burrow does this bird deposit, in a good degree of safety, her rude nest, consisting of fine grasses and feathers, usually goose-feathers, very inartificially laid together.' Here, in a very few words, he perfectly describes what is most wonderful in the skilful toil of the swallows and house-martins, their address in raising and securely fixing the crusts they build so cleverly. The raising, however, is compara- tively mechanical ; it is the fixing that always surprises one. Some windows in the old house at the Val Ste. Veronique had been left unopened for years, and the 146 May Martins Nests. hirondelles des fenetres had fixed their nests in the corners, partly on the woodwork and the stone sides, but partly also upon the very glass itself. It seemed necessary to air these chambers and to open the win- dows, which I did with the greatest regret, but it afforded a singularly good opportunity for ascertain- ing the actual strength of adhesion in the nests, which was truly surprising. Not only are the birds themselves perfectly safe in them, for they weigh scarcely any thing to speak of, but it would require a considerable weight to detach the little structure from its place ; and even after the nests had been torn away from the windows, large fragments of them still adhered obstinately to the stonework. I imagine that these birds, which are almost always in movement, have a particular satisfac- tion in feeling that their nest is firm and substantial ; so they fix it to the strong work of human masons that is not shaken by the wind. In this preference for what is fixed and substantial they differ notably from some other birds that like their nests to be rocked like a sailor's hammock, which one would imagine must be fatiguing in windy weather ; however, it is their taste, and there is no disputing about tastes. Buffon re- marks that goldfinches like to build upon thin and weak branches, especially of plum-trees and walnuts, that are rocked by the wind. It is to be supposed that these little creatures are independent of the sensation of sea-sickness. One has a particular respect for the industrious nest- builders that have houses of their own and establish May The Cuckoo. 147 themselves respectably in life ; but it is difficult to feel any such sentiment towards the cuckoo when we hear the two notes of his monotonous ditty, and see him pass from grove to grove with his silently gliding flight. But if the cuckoo is not a respectable personage, since he will neither build his own house nor bring up his own offspring, he has an advantage in common with cer- tain celebrities in literature and art ; which is, that every- body knows his voice. It requires considerable sylvan experience to distinguish some birds by their voices, and it is only the most observant naturalists who can recognize each of them with certainty ; but the citizen, who rarely visits the country, knows the cuckoo when he hears him. The reader at once perceives the moral which is impending. The cuckoo is like a poet who says but little, and always repeats that little without variety, yet who enjoys a great reputation because his one song is at the same time agreeable, perfectly original, and perfectly inimitable. There have been such poet-cuckoos. Nothing is more curious in popular botany and ornithology than the way in which popular beliefs associate together certain birds and plants. Why, for example, is the cuckoo particularly associated with the common arum, which is called the cuckoo-pint ? Is the bird supposed to drink the dew or the rain-water from the spatha ? The explanation of the popular fancy about cuckoo-spit, which is the frothy exudation of a certain larva, was suggested with great probability by Buffon. He thought it possible that a cuckoo might 148 May The Common Arum. have been observed in the act of seeking the larva in the froth, and that the rustic observer had concluded the froth to be the cuckoo's own saliva ; after which it might have been noticed that an insect came out of such froth, whence the conclusion that vermin was engendered from the saliva of the bird. And what a strange old notion it was that the cuckoo travelled on the back of a kite, which was thought to be amia- ble enough to submit to the inconvenience of such a burden ! It is almost impossible to imagine any ob- served fact which may have given rise to such an improbable myth as this. Whether or not the cuckoo takes any particular interest in the common arum, it is a valuable fore- ground plant for artists, being one of the earliest in the season of those whose leaves are large enough to be of some consequence in a picture. The only misfor- tune about it is a love of shelter, which makes it grow almost always in situations where it is half concealed, such as nooks and thickets, and shady places under hedges. One of the earliest of our botanical expe- riences is a feeling of astonishment about its peculiar way of flowering, and the incipient botanist is sure to feel at the same time interested and puzzled by the long spike and the leafy spatha, which he always remembers afterwards. May The Water Iris. 149 XXVIII. Water Iris The Royal Flower Lychnis Origin of the Name The Spurge Family Bitter Reverie A Poet's Botany Use of Poets' Fancies. OF other plants that show themselves in May it would be easy to make a considerable catalogue. There is the water iris, for example, which in this p of the world has tall blades early in the month and \2,. receive it. * 208 June The Ash. XXXVIII. The Ash Cantharides The Elder-flower Elder-flower Wine Elder-tree Honeysuckle Forget-me-Not Coloring of the For- get-me-Not Dislike to certain Trees The Robinia Robinia and Birch Branching of the Robinia Odor of the Flowers of the Robinia Wild Thyme Beloved by Hares and Bees Honey- suckle Creeping Bugle Veronica Galium Goldfinch This- tle Lime-tree. THE ash comes into full leaf in June, and is one of our finest and most artistic trees. The country people about the Val Ste. Veronique have a proverb to the effect that it neutralizes poisons : ' Dessous le frane venin ne regne.' Certain insects have also an especial belief in the salubrity of the ash, or at least in its suitableness to their own constitutions. Those remarkable insects, the cantharides, fix upon it as a lodging for their colonies. The Val is sufficiently far south for this to happen occasionally, and when it does happen the effect is most curious. The trees are entirely covered with the glossy green insects, which emit such a pungent odor that it is almost impossible to remain under them or near them. A much more agreeable, yet rather heavy and in- toxicating fragrance, is that of the elder-flower, which is abundant towards the middle of June. In grape- producing countries the wine made from this flower is June The Elder-Tree. 209 always unknown, but in the north it yields its properties by infusion, and the product, after fermentation, is used as a substitute for champagne, often by very rich people. As is generally the case with substitutes, there is little real relation between the original wine and that which is made to replace it. Elderjlower wine is not champagne, nor any thing like it, but it has great claims to con- sideration on its own merits ; and although no poet has ever sung its praises, they certainly ought to be sung, and not coldly spoken only, as in this pedestrian prose.* The closeness of the relation between taste and perfume is rarely more manifest than in this beverage, for to drink it is to drink perfume, the perfume of an elder- bush in June. I may add that the heaviness in the natural fragrance is maintained in the somnolence which the wine induces, for he who has indulged in it is sure to be overpowered by drowsiness unless he resists with all his might, or counteracts the sleepy drink by some awakening stimulant. The elder-tree sometimes grows high enough to be of ( some importance in the near landscape, and its white yf corymbs of flowers are visible at a great distance. The/ way in which these corymbs are carried on the tree is one of its chief beauties, their flat surfaces being in so many different positions, but always in obedience to a regular law of growth ; the foliage, too, is elegant and gracefully borne. * Elder-flower wine is at least mentioned in a very well-known Scottish ballad, ' The Laird of Cockpen : ' ' Mistress Jean she was making the elder-flower wine, Now what brings the Laird at sic a like time?' 4 2 1 o Ju ne Honeysuckle. The honeysuckle begins to flower a little later than the elder-tree. When the elder is all covered with its corymbs the honeysuckle flowers are opening, a bud or two here and there entirely out, the rest not yet. Their pink and yellow are pleasant with the peculiar tertiary green of the older leaves, one of the best sober greens in landscape. The new leaves are brighter and cruder. A flower strictly contemporary with the elder, and of some importance from its quantity, notwithstanding its extreme minuteness, is the forget-me-not, the Myosotis (called so because its leaf is like the ear of a mouse). The effect of the color of this tiny flower is amazing when you consider how little there is of it ; but this is due to a principle well known to modern painters, even too well known, the principle of stippling with pure color in minute touches. Here is one of those in- stances in which .Nature herself does this. If the flower were wholly blue it would still act in the fore- ground, when abundant, as a stippling with pure color, but the principle is carried still farther. There is a central eye of yellow entirely surrounded by sky-blue, and the effect of the flower is due in great part to the purity of the central spot. Even the least observant are struck by the forget-me-not, and how much of the popu- larity of the flower is due to its bright coloring may be guessed if we suppose it green like its mouse-ear leaves. No lover would have paid much attention to it then. I alluded in a preceding chapter to the intense dislike which some people feel for particular trees. Amongst the trees which have bitter enemies may be mentioned June Robinia and Birch. 2 1 the acacia, or, more correctly, the robinia.' It wa brought into France from Canada by a botanist called J Robin, in the reign of Henry IV., and has thriven so well that you find it all over the country. The re- markable rapidity of its growth is a great temptation to its use as an ornamental tree ; but now come the objec- tions. Its enemies dislike it because the leaves grow late in the spring, and some people cannot endure the odor of its flowers ; which to me, however, is very agreeable, especially when it comes on the soft, mild, evening air of June, and is thus wafted from a little distance. Other objections are that the stem is ugly because so deeply furrowed, and that the thin, light foliage gives but little shade. I confess that there is almost a contradiction in character between such a rude stem and such delicate leaves and flowers, or at least a very striking contrast, and I admit that the shade given is not comparable to that of the lime-tree or the horse- chestnut ; still it may be answered, that we feel the delicacy of the leaves all the more from the roughness of the furrowed trunk, and that the robinia gives as much shade as the birch, whose beauty is generally appreciated. The branching of the robinia is rather straggling and wayward, so that the twigs do not com- pose so well together as those of the ash or birch ; but even this is interesting as a special characteristic, for if all trees threw their branches out in exactly the same manner we should be wearied by their monotony. There is a great deal of imprevu in the branching of the robinia ; no painter would invent such branching unless 212 June Wild Thyme. he had studied it in Nature. Its spring colors, light green leaves, and white flowers, are gay and pleasant. As for the odor of the flowers, there are people who detest the perfume of the rose, so that it is difficult to please everybody. Most people like the fragrance of wild thyme. There are often great quantities of it in dry, stony places, where its tiny dull-green leaves make an agreeable sober fore- ground color, not harshly interrupted by the modest violet of the flowers./ Its strong perfume is due in part ! I to the presence of camphor in the plant. It is beloved of hares and bees, and the scent is so refreshing that it will revive a weary or fainting person. It is constantly used by the clever French cooks to give flavor to their dishes. The poets have loved it since classic times, and with reason, for there is a great charm in the union of its modest appearance with so sweet and healthy a per- fume. It is one of the humble plants which form the variegated carpet of the earth ; a plant to be crushed under hoof and foot, yet so strong and spreading that it is never seriously injured, and in return for much ill- usage only yields its fragrance the more abundantly. The later weeks of June are remarkably rich in flowers. The honeysuckle is then fully out (at least in the Val Ste. Veroniqne). We have the creeping bugle in abundance, with its fine blue corolla ; the germander veronica, with its veined flowers of tender blue ; the crosswort galium, the ' slender galingale ' of poetry, with yellow flowers, honey-scented ; the emollient mallow ; and the harsh thistle with its purple glories. It is June Goldfinch. 2 1 3 curious that the thistle, which we so generally associate with donkeys, should have given, in one language at least, its name to that sweet singing-bird which, ac- cording to Chaucer, had a singing conversation with the nightingale the goldfinch ; in French, cJiardonneret, from char don, because it frequents the thistle. The plant may also be associated with the fine arts, as its spiky forms are peculiarly rich and interesting in certain kinds of decorative drawing and silversmiths' work. They are excessively difficult to draw, from the complicated perspectives of the prickly wings on the leaf-margins. Few artists have ever drawn a thistle thoroughly, probably from a feeling that any complete rendering of such a plant would lead to hardness in execution. Of the large plants which flower late the lime-tree deserves special mention, for its agreeable qualities as a shade-giving tree, and its pleasant color and odor. Few trees are more intimately connected with human life than this. It is so constantly used to shade private and public walks, that most of ' us have re- collections associated with it. The lime has also its heroic traditions. It has never supplied masts for war-ships like the fir, nor material for their strong hulls like the oak, but it was used in ancient times for bucklers ; and its bark must have had a sacred character, as it was worn by sacrificing priests. The flower of the lime-tree is gathered in great quantities for medicinal purposes, and administered very exten- sively in France as an infusion. 214 July Gray Coloring after Heat. XXXIX. Gray Coloring after Heat Blue Sky turns to Gray French Landscape- painting Monotony of Sunshine P'avorable to Work Abundant Light Ennui of Sunshine Despondency caused by it Oppres- sion of Sunshine 'Mariana in the South ' The Black Shadow Auguste Bonheur's Interpretation of Sunshine Changes in the Con- dition of the Eye Sunshine of Different Degrees Streams in the Val Ste. Ve'ronique Dreary Scenes on Southern Rivers The Loire Its Affluents The Great Bridges The Herds Processions for Rain Oppressive Heat Sudden Coming of a Thunderstorm. TOWARDS the end of July, if the year has not been exceptionally wet, the landscape of Eastern France loses its freshness, and acquires that rather dull and gray look which often astonishes English critics in the works of the most faithful French landscape- painters. From the artistic point of view I cannot think that this gray look is altogether a misfortune, The brightness of the spring color is quite gone, much of the herbage is dried by a sun that is almost African in its severity ; but what the landscape loses in gayety it gains in sobriety, and the tints, quiet as they are, often go very well together, and richly deserve study. The greens all become tertiary greens, but there is great variety in them, and it is just the variety which a cultivated colorist is sure to pay great attention to, July Monotony of Sunshine. 2 1 5 whilst a crude one will as surely neglect it. As an ac- companiment to this dulling of all the greens, the sky changes from the clear blue of early summer and the dark blue of the first heats to a sort of gray, which is very well known to the inhabitants of southern climates the dark gray of the hot weather. This particular kind of gray is never to be seen at all in northern coun- tries. It is a real sky-color, not cloud-color ; but it is far, indeed, from the blue which we most commonly associate with the open heaven. I have often matched it very carefully in oil and water color, and always with renewed astonishment at the quantity of red and yellow that it requires. These gray' skies of the in- tensely hot weather are often most accurately rendered by the French landscape-painters, which makes north- ern critics affirm that they cannot color. -{ There are long weeks of monotony in the fine summers, that may be appreciated for their practical convenience by landscape-painters who work from Na- ture, as the same effect of gray sunshine recurs day after day ; but their influence upon the mind is rather a tranquillizing than an exciting influence./}] The mo- notony of sunshine is like any other monotony ; it tends to lull the mind into a condition of fixed routine, in which activity is still possible, yet repeats itself as the days do. Through the long summer, which seems not merely long but endless, we do always the same things at the same hours, moving with the quiet regularity of the shadow on the sun-dial. When the physical con- stitution is inured to heat, there is no season of the 2 1 6 July Ennui of Sunshine. year more favorable to regular work. The intense light does not weary the eyes, it is astonishing how easily they endure the solar glare, and it is easy to provide an artificial shadow. Then the mind, being entirely undisturbed by any considerations about the weather, settles into a routine of habits, and pursues its objects with a tranquil simplicity of purpose which is sure to lead to some tangible result. There is light enough, and there is time enough for every thing : thus, with plenty of work and a sustained energy, a man may pass through the long monotony of the southern sum- mer without weariness, and even regret the conclusion of it when it breaks up at last in thunder ; but if once the ennui of sunshine seizes you it is very terrible and very difficult to contend against. Then the con- stant gray-blue of the sky becomes hateful, the well- known forms of the surrounding landscape, of which nothing is relieved and nothing veiled, sicken you like the mechanical repetition of a tune on the barrel-organ : day after day you look vainly for the change that ^will not come, and you sink at last into a kind of despond- ency, which looks upon the condition of the world as hopeless, a globe whose wretched inhabitants are slowly roasted before a steady central fire from which there is no escape. This temper has been accurately described, or rather the feeling of it has been conveyed to the reader, by Tennyson in ' Mariana in the South.' Over and over again, in the poem, recurs the oppres- sion of sunshine, the wearisome monotony of light. She dreams of native breezes and runlets babbling down July * Mariana in the South! 217 the glen, but awakes to the 'steady glare' of the south : ' She woke : the babble of the stream Fell, and without the steady glare / Shrank one sick olive sere and small. The river-bed was dusty-white ; And all the furnace of the light Struck up against the blinding wall.' In the last stanza but one the same note recurs : '*j ' And flaming downward over all From heat to heat the day decreased, And slowly rounded to the east The one black shadow from the wall.' W This last touch of the black shadow is a repetition of one given in the opening of the poem, where the black shadow is the very first thing mentioned. It was rightly chosen for two reasons, since not only did it prepare the reader for the black shadow dwelling steadily on a' hopeless life, but it also truly depicted an effect of glaring sunshine upon landscape. Here, again, is a very common error of northern criticism. In the north the black shadow does not exist, because the sun is not glaring enough to produce it, and north- ern criticism denies the truth of it when adequately interpreted in painting. The poet is not scientifically exact in calling the shadow black, as a painter in study- ing from Nature will find it to be gray or green, purple or brown, according to its situation ; but as a poet- ical artist Tennyson chose the right word, for it is the word which conveys the idea of darkness best, 2 1 8 July The Black Shadow. ' dark ' not being dark enough. It would be easy, too, to prove that a painter who conveys the impression of the black shadow paints it falsely. Auguste Bonheur may be mentioned as an example. He paints southern sunshine truly so far as the impression on the spectator is concerned, falsely as to imitation of particular tints. & In very intense sunshine the eye adapts itself to cir- cumstances, and for its own protection contracts so that a glaring thing, such as a white ox, shall not hurt it. Now, if you can look at a white ox at all in the glare of a Burgundy July, even the lighted side of an oak-tree will seem dark to you, and a cast shadow on foliage will seem what in popular language is called ' black.' Auguste Bonheur renders this effect with great truth, but necessarily in a much lower key than Nature's. And now comes the one important consideration which reconciles art with Nature, and is always overlooked by writers on these subjects. The eye looking at Nature in glaring light, and the eye looking at a picture in the quiet light of a gallery, is not in the same state ; but a picture of sunshine painted on Auguste Bonheur's principles bears the same relation to the open pupil in a shaded room that the natural scene bore to the contracted pupil in the brilliant sunshine out of doors. -ATThe rule which affirms that if you match shades by yielding the palette-knife up to Nature you will get right i relations of color, is true only of figure-painting and still-life, when the model is carefully placed in a gal- lery light. In open sunshine such a practice would x induce an artist to paint in too high a key, so that he July Sunshine of different Degrees. 2 1 9 could not convey the sense of darkness in shadow and local color, which is one of the peculiar effects of really intense light. Thus Turner, working in a high key, expressed the sunshine of England ; but his system, good as it was for the pale northern landscape, was inadequate to the expression of the southern summer, with its apparently dark dull greens and grays, and shadows far darker still.* The chief misery of a long hot season the want of water is entirely unknown in the Val Ste. Veronique, where the pure little streams rush over their clean granite beds with as much vivacity as if it had been raining the day before. They are fed by springs in the upper hills, which never fail in the hot weather, and the consequence is a perennial refreshment of the valleys for several miles ; but if you follow these babbling rivulets farther down, you observe the gradual loss of their early freshness and brightness, till finally they are absorbed in the river of the plain, and in great part lost by evaporation. Nothing, even in winter sce- nery, is drearier than the bed of some broad southern river after the torrid months have dried it. The Loire, amongst French rivers, most abounds in dreary scenes of this kind. For hundreds of miles you may follow broad tracts of burning sand, or hot white pebbles through which the stream finds its way tortuously, often * This seeming darkness of certain tints in intense sunshine is chiefly, no doubt, due to contrast. As a matter of fact (not of human sensation), Tennyson's 'black shadows' must be lighter than a white object in dull daylight. But art ought always to go by impressions and sensations rather than scientific facts. 2 2O July Processions for Rain. breaking into several different channels, of which not one is navigable ; whilst the occasional trees along the banks are too far from the water to get the slightest benefit from it, and their foliage is burnt to the sem- blance of a premature autumn. The most important affluents in such a time often cease to flow altogether, and consist of nothing but a long series of stagnant pools, which infect the air, with hot stones or baked mud between them. At such a time the great bridges seem nothing but lines of useless arches built long ago for 'some forgotten purpose. Leaves wither, flowers fade, the pastures are scorched, and animals droop and languish. Yet, even here, might the art of a true landscape-painter find motives, like that of the poet, in the very desolation of the persistent sunshine, which has its own melancholy like the gloom of the north, and, like it, cannot be borne without resignation. The starving herds resign themselves to a condition of Na- ture beyond their power to alter; the peasants go to the priests and ask them to pray for rain, or get up some procession. At length, in some ancient city, the cathedral doors are opened wide, and out of the cool pleasant gloom within comes forth into the fierce heat of an August afternoon a mitred bishop, all gleaming with gold and jewels, behind a heavy shrine carried on eight priests' shoulders, with little windows in its gilded sides, through which you may see the brown bones of a saint who died long ago, and a long procession winds slowly chanting about the quaint old streets. Then the evening comes with its short twilight, and the July Oppressive Heat. 2 2 1 night without a breath in the motionless hot air. The day dawns just like yesterday and the unnumbered days before it. Will there ever be any change, or has the sea forgotten to send her clouds for the refreshment of the land? Is the sea dry like the rivers ? ' Tout est morne, brulant, tranquille ; et la lumiere Est seule en mouvement dans la nature entiere.' Suddenly in the fiery sky rolled a black cloud, like volumes of smoke from a mine, and out of the cloud came a ball of fire that struck an ash-tree close to the house and split it, and sent fragments of the wood in every direction like scattered lucifer-matches. Half a second afterwards came a sound, not like thunder with its reverberations, but like a deafening explosion. The next day every leaf on that ash-tree was shrivelled and brown, and the tree died. Then began the usual series of thunderstorms, and every night the landscape was illuminated by the flames of farm-buildings in the dis- tance, and every morning brought news of loss or ruin, of crops destroyed or animals too frightened to move burnt together in their stalls. So after the steady flame of the sunshine comes the far more terrible flame of the unavoidable lightning, and all night long the peasant, awake and anxious, goes watching about his barns. 222 July The Harvest-time. XL. The Harvest-time What our Bread costs Merriment in Harvest Strength of the Girls A Picture by Jules Breton Jules Breton's Poetry Alfred de Musset The 'Chanson de Fortunio' Rossetti 'The Blessed Damozel' Stalks of Wheat .Weight of Wheat needed in the World Buckwheat. THERE is a time of the year, varying in date with the climate of different places, which is felt by all to be the richest and mellowest time, and that is when the wheat is garnered. The reapers go down from the hill villages into the fertile plains, walking in bands through the sultry night, when not a cloud obscures the starry sky, and the broad yellow harvest- moon comes up in the east to light them. Many a league do they march, singing the old harvest songs, and at sunrise they are at work already in the ripe wheat, and their sickles are set to the harvest. Oh the toil and the endurance that are paid for the bread we eat ! From dawn to dusk, in the full blaze of morning, noon, and afternoon, the reapers reap without ceasing, except their little half-hours for food, and in the late evening they load the harvest-wains. All that time they have to bend to their toil, with the heat of the earth in their faces and the heat of the sun upon their backs. Their food is poor indeed, and the wonder is how it supplies the waste of sweat and toil. And yet July A Picture by Jules Breton. 223 they all delight in the harvest-time, and keep to their work gaily with many a merry jest. The strength of the girls is surprising ; often a girl will lead the line and keep up to her work quite steadily, which confirms the theory that women were made for labor. One of ( i I fj/ these strong girls was the subject of a picture by Jules/ * Breton ; but in his picture she has done with reaping J&^w''' and sits apart from her companions, who are dancing, 1C /(# for they forget their fatigues in the dance. She has reasons of her own for not joining them ; very likely some feeling of jealousy or disappointment ; perhaps a certain youth may have invited another maiden, and now, according to peasant custom, is engaged to her for the whole evening. Jules Breton writes admirable verses, and in a little poem of his, which has been pub- lished, I find some stanzas which may refer to this very picture : ' Dans la poussiere ardente et les rayons de flammes Joyeusement, les mains aux mains, dansent les femmes, Mais la plus belle reve, assise un peu plus loin. Elle est la seule . . . . ' No wonder that painters like the harvest-time, it is so rich in color, and in the association of human life and labor with the bountiful gifts of Nature. The toil that it brings is sweet and healthy toil, and the only laborers who are really to be pitied are the few weaker ones whose strength is hardly equal to the work. For the rest it is a time of merriment and gladness, a change of scene and of society for the laborers who come from a distance, and the pay is far higher than in 224 July Alfred de Mussct. ordinary times, which also disposes the heart of man to gayety. Wheat is almost sacred from the great service it yields to man, so that it is not surprising that the poets should speak of it with an especial tenderness and delicacy. Thus Alfred de Musset, in one of his most exquisite little songs, the ' Chanson de Fortunio,' com- pares the fairness of a fair lady to wheat, and with how pure a touch ! ^>*Si vous croyez que je vais dire Qui j'ose aimer, Je ne saurais pour un empire Vous la nommer. Nous aliens chanter a la ronde Si vous voulez, Que je 1'adore, et qu'elle est blonde Comme les bles.' Jjf And when Rossetti describes the Blessed Damozel in heaven, he can think of no more delicate comparison for her hair than to say that it was like ripe corn : ' Her hair that lay along her back Was yellow like ripe corn.' A stalk of wheat is not a very strong thing ; it can only just bear the weight of a very little bird, and even that seems wonderful till we reflect how light a small bird is, and how perfectly it is able to balance itself ; and yet on these slender stalks what an enormous weight of bread-making material is carried ! Many a great ship is deeply laden with it, many a granary-floor is covered till the great oak-beams visibly bend beneath July Buckivheat. 225 the load! And what tons upon tons of it does the world need ! There are more or less acceptable sub- stitutes, but always far inferior to the wheat that gives white bread. One of these, buckwheat, a cultivated polygonum, is now in much favor with the peasants, and ought to be with artists also, on account of its wonderfully rich color. It is called sarrasin in France, because the Moors took it into Spain, whence it came northward. It grows easily on soil too poor for wheat, and you may now see many little fields of it up amongst the rocks in the poorer and wilder districts. Early in September it is in the full richness of its color, the stalks being of a beautiful red, that is easily heightened when there are warm tones in the general light, which often happens at that season of the year. 226 A ugust Soap wort. XLI. Soapwort Use of Soapwort Horsemint Common Mint Wild Carrot Vervein Polygonum Change Dock-leaves, their Color Hornbeam Juniper Bracken Heather Cherry Moun- tain-Ash. LET us take a last look at the wild flowers before the season for them is quite over. We never could have omitted all mention of that handsome plant, the common soapwort, or Saponaria, which in August is prodigal of its large flowers, pink or nearly white, in dense corymbs at the summit of the stem. Every house- wife in country places where the plant grows, and where people are simple enough and sensible enough to accept a benefit directly from Nature without going to a shop for it, every housewife so situated well knows that to put this plant into her washing-tub is as good as a lump of soap. It grows abundantly by the streams here, so those two great aids to cleanliness, soap and water, are given by Nature together. The saponaria is not only useful but beautiful : a stately, handsome plant, that holds quite an important place, especially on the little islets in the streams; but the pale tender color of its flowers is not so conspicuous as the brilliant yellow of the senecio, for example, which abounds at the same season. However, it is not merely for brilliancy that a plant may have pictorial value : sometimes the very A ugust Horsemint. 227 opposite of brilliancy may be the reason why a judicious artist would care for it. There is horsemint, whose pale cottony leaves are very valuable as a cool gray green. It makes great masses in some places, and has much thei same qualities as the mullein, except as to the flowers ; for whilst those of the mullein are of a fine lemon- yellow, the tiny flowers of horsemint merely make a sort of pale purplish gray. //The flowers of common mint l\ ^. are much more visible, and have some effect in quantity.//^ The large white umbel of the wild carrot is extremely % common at this season, but cannot be said to add much' to the beauty of foregrounds, except perhaps by giv- ing a certain lightness. We must not omit that sacred plant, the vervein, which the Romans used in their re- ligious ceremonies, and which in war-time was carried by heralds as the white flag of truce is now. The Druids had a great respect for it also, and only culled it after a sacrifice. This plant appears to make a great fuss at starting near the ground with very big leaves, to end meagrely at the top, where the twigs and flowers are so thin and small. The tiny pale violet flowers are, however, effective in the same way, though not to the same degree, as those of the forget-me-not. Sometimes they fill a ditch, for hundreds of yards, with their in- numerable constellations. One of the most beautiful and important of all aquatic plants is the amphibious polygonum. Its rosy flowers stand up boldly above the surface of the water, "K whilst its long green leaves float upon it. This is a * good plant to study for pictures that have a pond or a 228 August Change. stream in the foreground, as it detaches itself well, and the flat leaves give a good horizontal surface, whilst the erect flower supplies a vertical object of the greatest use for contrast. There is a good contrast of color, too, between the flower and the leaf. It would be tiresome to prolong this into a mere cat- alogue, and the limits of these sylvan talks are nearly reached. Vegetation never stands still, but there is a time when it appears to pause, before the change tow- ards decay. Yet even then the change has already begun, and you have only to look around you to find evidences of the coming destruction. In meadows and pastures the docks soon take their rich deep red of leaves and fruit, the stalks being yellowish streaked with f re4l, and quite harmonious ; they are a most important '; element of landscape. The curled clock makes especi- i . x- /jally magnificent color, with its dark-red stalks and leaves. v"-Mi Some of the leaves of hornbeam turn pale yellow, and others dark red. You have them pale yellow, dark red, and fresh green, quite on the same branch or twig. The juniper turns red altogether, much resembling the tint known to painters and colormen as light red ; but this happens capriciously, as it seems, to one plant, whilst others in the same place remain quite green as in sum- mer. At the same time the bracken is just beginning to turn yellowish brown at the tips and edges of the leaves. The crude violet purple of the heather is en- tirely gone, and in its place we have a sad brown in the flowers. The leaves of the wild cherry-trees are beginning to turn red, and the robinia leaves are turning August Mountain- Ash. 229 pale yellow. But where in all Nature is there such a red as the vermilion berries of the rowan-tree, or mountain- ash, the sorbier des oiseaux f There are such prodigal quantities of it, too ! I know a little village churchyard, r with a tiny old gray church, and just along the walL/ there grows a row of rowan-trees that look like the trees in the garden of Aladdin when the fire of sunset '' ' is upon them ; and there is a place near a mountain village where the road winds between an avenue of them, a sight to see in the autumn ! 230 September Sunlight on Thistles. XLII. Sunset-light on Thistles Fruits not generally Conspicuous The Rowan The common Cornel Elder-berry Blackberry Small Polygonum Ferns Persicaria Wild Hop. I SPOKE just now of vermilion berries bathed in the flame of sunset, and will add another obser- vation about sunset-light. One of the finest sights in Nature is a field of thistles in September, with the level r$/ rays of a golden sunset striking across and catching the ^ down of the heads. The light is detained by them, and \Jf in them as it were, so that each thistle-head becomes a distinct source of light ; not with glittering reflection like the ripples on water, but with a charming softness, as if the rays were entangled in meshes of floss silk, \^ The ' reader may think, that after saying so much about flowers I dismiss fruits very summarily ; but it so happens that fruits (I use the word, of course, in the large botanical sense) are, as a general rule, less visible than flowers, and in these chapters we have talked almost exclusively of what is visible. Some fruits are conspicuous, like those of the rowan-tree lately mentioned ; and the black, bitter fruit of the common cornel, or dogwood, is visible enough at the beginning of autumn in the hedges, the smooth leaves turning pale as the fruit ripens. The elder-berries are Sep tern ber Blackberry. 231 out at the same time, berries from which a wine is made greatly inferior to that from the flowers of the same tree. It may be mentioned as a little detail worth re- membering for foreground color, that the fruit of the blackberry is red before it turns black. The leaves of the bramble are, however, more important than the fruit, as they have quite a peculiar way of changing color in autumn. Many of them turn bright red quite suddenly, whilst quantities of others will be spotted with dark purple. The isolation of the red leaves may be of use to an artist who wants an intense color in small quantities. A very valuable cause of color in some situations is the small polygonum, which, with its red stalk and leaves just turning yellow, produces the most beautiful dark gold in mass. //The ferns begin to take autumnal color rather capriciously;/ it seems to seize upon some leaves to the neglect of others, and these leaves will be entirely affected by. it, passing from dark brown near the root to yellow at the end. One of the latest flowering plants is the fine polygonum called Persicaria, often nearly two feet high, with a red stalk and spikes of rosy flowers ; but the stalk strikes the eye more than the flowers do. A very familiar plant, the wild hop, has an appearance at this season which bears some resemblance to flowers. The scales of the spike become enlarged so as to entirely conceal the fruit ; and these dry scales are visible in September as a pleasant light brown, the leaves being still green. 2 3 2 October Ferns. XLIII. Ferns Robinia Oak, Birch, Ash Poplar Chestnut Cherry and Pear Pear Hornbeam Beech Willow. AS we get deeper into autumn the changes of vege- tation accelerate. The ferns turn red and yel- ^s low to begin with, to end in a uniform dry light red ; generally the change is completed about the middle of October. Some trees turn yellow in places, a leaf or two ^ at a time, like the walnut ; the robinia does the same : indeed, in the robinia it is not by leaves but by leaflets \ that the process begins. Oak, birch, and ash, begin by showing yellow leaves here and there, like a sudden attack of disease ; but, considered as a whole, an ash- tree passes from green through pale yellowish-green to yellow. The poplar yellows all over gradually. Chest- nuts at this time are much denuded of leaves ; those which remain are green, or brown, or yellow, about one- third of each, and the yellow ones are often brown ; about their edges. Cherry and pear-trees give most of the red in the woods, the latter often reaching a bright v \3 sdarlet, which tells with great effect in the distance. Some pear-trees turn darker than others, and there are often both vivid red and fresh green together on the same tree. So in hornbeam ; you have pale yellow leaves and leaves of reddish gold, whilst the rest are October A ngelica. 233 fresh green. In beech there are three colors, light red, yellowish red, and green. A few days later the pale yellow tinge of hornbeam is entirely gone, and has given place to a rusty brown. ^'Meanwhile the willows remain still perfectly green.^ XLIV. Angelica Leaves of Angelica Bramble Blackberry Scabious Honeysuckle Tufted Hair-grass. OF foreground plants, the angelica may be men- tioned for its important size. The leaves are but little seen, being for the most part low down upon the stem, but they become a very pale green, and turn whitish or yellowish, often also inclining to purple. At the same time the angelica becomes brown in the um- bels, because the fruit is ripening fast ; in doing which it turns from green to brown. A little later, the leaves turn pure Naples yellow. Once more, for the last time, we must mention the bramble, now most rich in color with deep crimson or bright vermilion, passing to russet and green, and the abundant black fruit for a rich dark at the bottom of the scale/^ When the morning mists of October clear away and the bright sunshine succeeds, as it does regularly about eleven o'clock, all the black- /tf~ / berry leaves glitter in the bright light, and many of // * 234 October Tufted Hair-grass. them show a colored transparence like jewels. At the same time they are often covered with threads of gos- samer, on which are hung millions of minute drops, each of them clearer than a diamond, and with a sparkle of light inside it. Even so late as this you may occa- sionally find a flower in all its perfection the scabious, for instance which preserves for us the memory of summer. A few honeysuckle flowers may be found in October, although the plant is generally in berry. The tall grasses become very beautiful at this season ; the tufted hair-grass may be mentioned specially for the re- markable way in which it catches the light. Under the sun it seems full of warm yellow light, almost as if it were luminous by a light of its own ; indeed the sun- shine seems to get entangled amongst it as in the down of a thistle, and this often gives great splendor to a fore- ground, but the effect is to be seen only when you are looking towards the sun. October Close of our Sylvan Year. 235 ;> XLV. - Close of our Sylvan Year What is a Year ? My Schemes Alexis Master and Pupil Holidays Alexis and the Gamekeeper A Private Tutor A Young Abbe Our Dinner-table The Abbe sees a Ghost Alexis turns Sportsman What Alexis learned during the Sylvan Year Conclusion. HERE, perhaps, it is well that these notes should come to an end ; for we began them with the late autumn, and have now completed our cycle. Our year of retirement, our sylvan year, is drawing to its close, and we leave the Val Ste. Veronique to return to the outer world. We always begin by expecting too much from the time that lies before us, as if the experience of the past were not there for a warning, with its long list of schemes unrealized, its losses (especially of time), and its disappointments. When I came with Alexis to our lonely house in the valley, I expected more from this space of calm and peace than it appears to have yielded now that it lies behind me in a retrospect. ' A year/ I thought, ' will do much towards the healing of my sorrows ; and in a year I can learn much, and acquire a beneficial influence over Alexis.' But what is a year in the life of a mature man ? All the old impressions remain just as vivid after it as before ; and the more .painful they were then, the more vivid they are now. Still the study of Nature has been good for me, and it 236 October My Schemes. is agreeable to have renewed or increased one's ac- quaintance with the sylvan world. My plans for doing something in science, and art, and literary study, were larger than my powers of realization in so limited a space of time : however, they have constantly and not unprofitably occupied me. The paternal scheme, with reference to Alexis, has been farther from any perfect realization than the others. I had counted upon his companionship in my pursuits, and hoped that I might be able to teach him a good deal without his suspecting that he was being instructed ; but he very soon found this out, and by calling every thing a lesson compelled me to fix regular hours for study, exactly as if we had been master and pupil at a school : in fact, he called them ' school-hours,' and asked for his liberty at other times, or took it. He had full holiday on Thursday and Saturday, on which days I was in no danger of being disturbed by him, for he never made his appear- ance, but went great distances on foot with my keeper (who had been known as a famous poacher under the nickname of 'the Weasel'). In a word, I discovered that my didactic propensities must be greatly restrained if I did not wish to frighten this young bird away into the woods altogether. On the other hand, it was im- possible to suspend his education for twelve months. In this perplexity I took a neighbor (who lived ten miles off) into my confidence, and he recommended a private tutor for the young gentleman. The plan seemed feasible, and the more so that there were so many spare rooms at the Val Ste. V6ronique : so one October A Young Abbe. 237 day a young abbe arrived, who knew, I suppose, what every abbe knows, but who was utterly incapable of conversation, and replied always in monosyllables, with a modesty that was perfectly irritating. My dinner-table had been tolerable with Alexis, when I did not put him out of humor by attempting to convey instruction to his mind ; but it was not tolerable with the abbe, and the long spaces of silence must have been as uncomfort- able to him as to me, for he made a request that he might be served in his own apartments, a relief both to him and me. He had not been accustomed, how- ever, to solitude, so that the silence of the big house, where we never heard any thing but the whistling of the wind, or the cry of a bird or wild animal in the forest, ended by preying upon his mind ; and one day, pale with terror, he declared he had seen a ghost, and announced his sudden departure. From a malicious look of Alexis, I suspected that he knew more about the ghost than he chose to tell ; however, the abbe left us with an un- earthly expression on his otherwise not very interesting physiognomy, and when he was gone I attempted to resume my former office of pedagogue. My young pu- pil, however, affirmed that it was now the long vaca- tion, when nobody learned any thing ; and no sooner had the shooting season begun than he got himself invited to a chateau twenty miles off, where, with a merry party of young gentlemen, he did nothing but shoot from morning till night. I was vexed with him at first for his indifference to learning, his insensibility to the melancholy events which had happened in our family, 238 October Conclusion . and his pleasure in escaping from my own paternal society ; but a little reflection soon set me right on these points. His was not the age when learning of any kind is a solace or a pleasure, nor does the for- tunate elasticity of youth accept any bereavement, however terrible, as a sufficient reason for perpetual sadness ; whilst as to the charms of my own society, I quite understood that a lad, who for nine months had sat at table opposite to a grave old face like mine, might wish to see younger faces and merrier. How- ever, I confess that what Alexis learned during our time at the Val Ste. Veronique was not of a very intel- lectual nature. He picked up a good deal of natural history from the keeper, and acquired something of the knowledge which distinguishes Red Indians, at least in Cooper's novels ; and he educated his legs, for he became an excellent pedestrian. All this is excellent in its way ; but another year of our wood-life would turn the boy into a half-savage, and unfit him for any other society than that of his dear friend, the Weasel. So our experiment of sylvan retirement is not likely to be repeated, except for briefer spaces. We may, in the future, permit ourselves the enjoyment of sylvan weeks or months ; but this long stay in the Val Ste. Veronique will remain alone in our memory as THE SYLVAN YEAR. -J/L ^1 j/^ INDEX TO "SYLVAN YEAR." Acacia-robinia, 211 Agriculture, its influence upon landscape, in Alder, in January, 49 'Aminta,' Tasso's, 190 Anchorite and cicada, 182 Angelica, in October, 233 Apricot-blossoms in March, 87 April weather, 101 Arcadia of classic imagination, 185 Art and Botany, 38 Arum, 148; in April. 120 Ash, grace of, 49 ; in March, 81 ; in May, 156 ; in June, 208 ; its way of changing color, 232 Aspen poplar, its leaves in May, 130 Beech, 116 ; its young leaves in May, 156 ; its way of changing color in autumn, 233 ; winter foliage of, 36 Bees, in Birch, 211 ; its stem, 43, 116; in May, 157; its resistance to heat and cold, ib. ; its uses, ib. ; a defence of, 160 Bird-catcher, his feelings, 140 Bird-cherry, in March, 81 ; prunus, 161 Bird-music, 135 Birds associated with plants, 147 ; songs of, 134 ; language of, 206-7 Bishop, anecdote of a French, 27 Bittercress, meadow, 120 Blackthorn, its wintry coloring, 46 ; in March, 80; in spring, 114 Boar, the domesticated, 25 ; the wild, 56 ; as food, 35 Bonheur, Auguste, his painting of south- em sunshine, 218 ; Rosa, 195 Botany and landscape-painting, 37 ; poet- ical, 151 Bouleau, Jean, a forester, 26 Boy, anecdote of a, 69 Bracken, its change of color in August, 228 Bramble, in January, 37 ; stalks of, in Jan- uary, 46 ; leaves of, 23 1 ; in October, 233 Breton, Jules, 195 ; a picture of his, 223 Broom, green of, 43 ; in flower, 121 ; its loud self-assertion, 162 Browning, Mrs., her use of reeds in poetry, 99 Bryony, its roots, 120 Buckwheat, 225 Buffon, his description of the nightingale's song, 205 Bugle, the creeping, 212 Buttercup, its learned name, 165 Byron, how he celebrated the nightingale, Caltha, the marsh, 168 Canadians, the French, 14 Cantharides, 208 Celandine, the lesser, 107 Chaucer, his intense love for nature, 105 ; his habit of early rising, 124; his love of daisies, 125 ; his description of the col- ors of May, 131 ; his allusion to birds, 1378; Chaucer and Virgil, 173; his abounding eloquence, 1 74 ; his love of the nightingale, 203 Cherry-tree, in April, 115 Cherry-trees, wild, their change of color n August, 228 Cherville, Marquis de, his observation of nest-building, 143 240 Index. Chestnut, ancient trees, 10, 51 ; pale golden leaves of its broken branches, 14 ; Spanish, its young green leaves, 155; the Spanish, artistic merits of, 1 60 ; its way of changing color in au- tumn, 232 Cicada and anchorite, 182 Classical writers, their inferiority in the passion for natural beauty, 173 Color, natural, in patches, 43 Colors, intense and delicate, 163 Constable, the painter, his love of spring, 65 ; his preference for spring, 103 ; quoted, ib. ; his taste for a cultivated country, 112 Cornel, its fndt, 230 Cowper, his description of the Empress Catherine's ice-palace, 58 Cowslip, in Cuckoo, 147, 148 Cuckoo-flower, 167 Cuckoo-pint, 167 Daffodil, splendor of, in March, 82 Dante, his suffering trees, 1 1 ; his ' selva selvaggia,' 15 ; his feeling about the forest, 1 8 Daubigny, his picture of spring, 64 Decay, its true nature, 108 December, how passed, 33 Deschanel, quoted, 38 Diaz, the painter, 39 Dinner, a game, 28 Discoveries, the early, 95 Dock, the sheep-sorrel, 129 Docks, their color in August, 228 Douglas, Gawin, his hymn of the birds to the sun, 139-40 Draba Verna, 106 Drawing of plants, 40 Dupont, Pierre, his song of ' Les Bceufs,' 171 Education, paternal, 5 ; public, 6 Eglantine, its vermilion fruit, 42 Elder, in March, 81 ; tree, 209 ; berries, 231 Emerson, quoted, 15; his feeling about the woods, 18 Etching, subjects for, 10 Etymology, how it may be poetical, 120 Fadette, la Petite, quoted from, 196 Ferns, in January, 46 ; their change of color in September, 231 Figwort ranunculus, 106 Firs, their resinous cones, 20 Fleur-de-lis, 149 Floods in spring, 62 Florian, a satirist of, 197 Flower and leaf, 79 Forest, excursion in, 10 ; scenery of its interior, 23 Forget-me-not, 210 French, the, their dislike to solitude, 112 Frost, hoar, beauty of, 54 Furze, in March, 77 Galingale, 212 Galium, 212 Gentians, on the Alps, 114 Germander, 212 Girls, peasant, 223 Goldfinch, 143, 213 Gooseberry, the wild, in March, 81 Grasses, in January, 46 ; tufted hair, 234 Greek language in idyllic poetry, 183 Green, in winter, 46-7 Greenfinch, 143 Harvest-time, 222 Hawthorn, in March, 79 Hazel, in January, 48 Heat, its effects on landscape color, 214 ; in July, 221 Heather, its change of color in August, 228 Helps, Sir Arthur, his description of a pine-wood, 170 Hemlock, the young, 83 Herbarium, the winter's, 8 Herrick, his poem on daffodils, 83 Hills in April, 102 Hill-tops with many springs, 183 Holly, 12 ; in winter, 48 ; its time of flowering, 172 Honeysuckle, leaves of, in March, 76 ; its time of flowering, 210-12 ; late flowers of, 234 Index. 241 Hop, wild, its appearance in 'September, 2 3'- Hornbeam, its leaves in January, 36 ; its change of color in August, 228 ; its way of changing color in autumn, 233 Horse, and water ranunculus, 71 Horse-chestnut, its leaves in March, 81 ; its young leaves, 117; dislike of paint- ers to it, 152; objections to, 153; in May, 154; its name, 167 Horsfr^nint, 227 House, the writer's, in the Val Ste. Veronique, 8 House-martins, their nest-building, 145 Hut, a forester's, 24 Idyl, nature of the, 185 Idyllists, their method, 186 ; their cun- ning, 187 Imitators of pastoral poets, their weak- ness, 190 Immorality of the ancient poets, 184 Independence, associated with ploughing, 9i Iris, the yellow, in March, 76 ; the water, 149 Ivy, ground, 120 January, 35 ; an effect in, 38 Jean Cousin, principle of his glass-paint- ing, 119 June, rich in flowers, 212 Juniper, its change of color in August, Keats, his account of the origin of the Narcissus legend, 83 ; his use of reeds in poetry, 97 Lafontaine, his motto for the reed, 100 Lamartine, his ' Laboureurs, ' 195 Lamotte, Houdard de, quoted, 193 Larch-wood, in early spring, 80 Leaf-drawing, 41 Leaves, dead, law of their adherence to branches, 13 ; dried, their beauty, 35 ; of preceding year, 118 Le Brun, 193 Lichen, 43 Lily of the valley, 131, 132 Lime-tree, 213 Locality, instinct of, 13 Loire, the river, in summer, 219 Lousewort, 166 Lungwort, 133 Lychnis, red, in flower, 150 Magpies, how they build, 143 Mallow, 212 'Mariana,' Tennyson's, quoted, 217 Marigold, marsh, 121 Meadow bittercress,- 167 Millet, 195 Mistletoe, in January, 46 Mosses, in January, 46 ; minute, 47 Mountain-ash, 48 Mullein, the great, in winter, 45 ; in April, 120 Musset, Alfred de, his ' Chanson de For- tunio,' 224 Names of plants, their utility, 40, 166 Narcissus, the poet's, 83 ; legend of, 84 Nature, wild, incompleteness of the mod- ern conception of it, 18 ; coloring of, 42 ; not harmonious in spring, 65 ; her coloring, 122 Nest-building, 142 Nettles, in April, 120 Nightingale, the, his wonderful voice, 198, 199 ; his emotional expression, 200 November, landscape in, 7 Oak, its leafage in January, 36 ; inferior to walnut, 49 ; in March, 81 ; more leafless in spring than in winter, 114 ; its leaves sometimes golden in May, 130 ; its way of changing color in au- tumn, 232 Observation, minute, artistic clanger of, 38 . Ophelia, her mention of pansies, 164 Osier, in March, 72 Oxen, their use in ploughing, 89 Oxslip, in Painters, their dislike to distinctness in multitude, 153 Pansies, their merits and associations, 164 16 242 Index. ' Parisina,' Byron's poem, opening of, 201 Pascal, quoted, 100 Pastoral, in French imitations, 193 ; the classic, 172 Peach-blossom in March, 87 Pear-trees, their scarlet color in autumn, 232 Peasant, an old, 94 Pedicularis, 166 Periwinkle, the, 78 ; its Latin and French names, ib. Persicaria, flowers late, 231 Picture in Virgil, 1 79-80 Pine, cones of, in May, 169 Planting, 50 Ploughing with oxen, 89 Ploughshare in Virgil, 90 Poaching in France, 27 Poets, of the eighteenth century, 60 ; their love for spring, 63 Polygonum, the amphibious, 227 Poplar, aspen, in January, 49 ; in April, 116; its way of changing color in autumn, 232 Potentilla, 133 Primrose, the common, no Privet, in March, 81 Pulmonaria, 133 Quince-tree, in January, 37 ; in March, 81 Ranunculus aquatilis, 70, 166 ; in May, 128 Rape, a field of, 113 ; in flower, 121 Reed, the common, 96 Reeds, in poetry, 97 Retirement and occupation, 9 Rising early, 124 Roads, ancient Gaulish, 1 1 Robinia, 211 ; change of color in August, 229 Rose, fortunate name, 167 Rossetti, his poem of the wood-spurge, '5 1 Rowan-tree, its vermilion berries, 229 Rushes in January, 47 ; of preceding year, 1 20 Saint-Lambert, his poem of the ' Seasons ' quoted, 141 Sallow-willow, 72 Sand, George, her exquisite writing on rustic subjects, 196 Saplings and their leaves, 36 Satyr, conception of the, 184 Scabious, its late flowers, 234 Science, barbarity of, 165 Shakspeare, his use of the willow in 'Othello,' 74 Shelley, on daisies, 126 Shepherd, a, 17 Shepherdess, a, ib. Skies, gray, of hot weather, 215 Snow, 55 Soapwort, in March, 77 ; in August, 226 Socrates, his death, 86 Sow, a wild, 21 Sowing of two kinds, 93 Spenser, his conception of the forest, 52 Spindle-tree, 79 Spring, its sudden arrival, 61 ; more the season of poets than of painters, 63 ; the feeling, 64 Spurge, its flower and leaf, 150 Starwort, 127 Stellaria, ib. Streams in spring, 103 Summer, the landscape-painter's time of harmony, 66 ; a wonderful, 68 ; the thirst for, 69 Summers, fine, their monotony, 215 Sunshine, oppression of, 216; English, 219 Swallow, associated with the celandine, no Swallows, their nest-building, 145 Sycamore-maple, in flower, 171 Sylvan life, permanence of its interests, 181 Tasso, his 'Aminta,' 190; his way of sketching, 192 Teazle, in winter, 44 Tennyson, his use of the willow in the ' Lady of Shalott,' 74 ; his use of reeds in poetry, 98 Theocritus, landscape studies in his Idyls, 183 ; compared with Virgil, 187; his personal experience of Na-^ ture, 1 88; his seventh Idyl quoted.' 188-9 Index. 243 Thistle, 212, 213 ; in September, 230 Thomson, his poetry, 60 ; on ploughing, 9 1 Thrush, as a nest-builder, 143 Thunderstorms, 221 Thyme, wild, its fragrance, 212 Tomtit, 142-3 Trees, venerable, how important in sce- nery, 51 ; prejudices against, 158 Troyon, 195 Trunl**nd branches in winter, 48 Vegetation, change of, in autumn, 232 Veronique, le Val Ste., I Viburnum, in January, 48 Virgil, his use of the willow, 75 ; how he mentions trees particularly, 176; his preference of olive to willow, 177; his affectionate comparison of species amongst trees, 1 78 ; how far he may be compared to a modern painter, 1 79 Virgil and Chaucer, 173 Virgil and Theocritus compared, 187 Walnut, bark of, 49 ; in March, 81 ; in May, 156 Walls, old, 87 Weasel, the, 30, 56, 236 Wheat, 224 Wheatfield, in April, 113 White, Gilbert, 134 Whitethorn, its wintry coloring, 46 Wilderness, the old dread of, 19 Willow, varieties of, 71 ; round-eared, in blossom, 72 ; associated with unhappi- ness, 73 ; Latin for, 75 ; French for, ib. ; Italian for, ib. ; the time of his glory, 1 02 ; in May, 155 ; beauty of it when unmaimed, 160; keeps green late, 233 Wine, elder-flower, 209 Winter, colors in, 42 ; mild, 53 ; com- parative rigors of, 57; the perfect, 58 Winter scenery, beauties of, 15; color of, 35 Wolves and boars, 34 Woods, their color in January, 43 Wordsworth, his poem on the daffodil, 82 ; his poem on the lesser celandine, 108 Wrens, their nests, 144 Year, limits of a, 66 ; sylvan, close of, 2 35 - > THE UNKNOWN RIVER. Ctcijet's (Hopge of jDi PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON, AUTHOR OF "THOUGHTS ABOUT ART," "CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS," "ROUND MY HOUSE," " A PAINTER'S CAMP," ETC. BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1876. PUBLISHERS' NOTE. IN reproducing an edition of " The Unknown River" without the illustrations, the publishers have not thought it important to make any changes in the text. To the general reader their absence will not lessen the charm of the narrative, and those who prefer the more expensive edition with the etchings can gratify their tastes. TO THE REV. HORATIO N. POWERS, D.D. ONE OF THE MOST VALUED OF MANY KIND FRIENDS IN AMERICA, I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME. PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. TN the revival of the too long neglected art of * etching, we who in England and France have tried to recover the right use of the needle have had to contend against many difficulties ; and little of what we have hitherto done can be considered more than tentative and experimental. Etching, however, has this advantage over line-engraving, that the comparatively rapid and spontaneous nature of the process, and its purely artistic and intellectual aims, obtain indulgence for many im- perfections which would not be tolerated in a craft professing great mechanical finish. In etching, the spirit of the work is of more consequence than manual accuracy ; and I have therefore allowed several plates to be published in this series, in which the manual work is rude, because they expressed my meaning, though in a rough way. 252 Preface to the American Edition. Nearly all the plates in this series indeed, the whole of the landscape subjects were etched directly from Nature, often under circumstances very different from the convenient surroundings of an engraver's table at home, with rain pouring over the plate, or daylight rapidly declining, joined to serious apprehensions about passing some dan- gerous rapid before I could get to a village inn, or find shelter beneath the thatch of some humble hamlet nestled in a nook of the wooded and rocky shore. Hence they are literally no more than the notes of impressions which an artist takes in his memorandum-book. As for the two or three sub- jects in which the author himself appears, it may be remarked, that, as he could not pose and draw at the same time, there was a peculiar difficulty in these attempts, which the author, from want of practice in figure-drawing, could scarcely be ex- pected to overcome. A friend of mine, who is a figure-painter by profession, kindly made one or two slight sketches as helps ; but, as the artist in question belonged to the severest French classi- cal school (with which, as an artist, I have no affinity whatever, though as a critic I admire much of what it has accomplished), his sketches were Preface to the American Edition. 253 conceived in a temper so opposed to mine that they turned out to be of no use for this particular purpose. Dog Tom was introduced at the urgent request of an unknown correspondent whose love of dogs touched the author in a tender place, and made him, somewhat rashly, turn animal-designer for the occasion. American critics are therefore requested to remember that the figures and dog are thrown in, as it were, simply for the reader's amusement, and not with any ambitious artistic pretensions. However, such as they are, it has been the good fortune of these little plates to please many people in Europe, and amongst them a few more than ordinarily fastidious and capable judges. This may be attributed to the fact that in etching them the artist worked without the least reference to criticism of any kind, in the simple enjoyment of one of the pleasantest artistic expeditions imagi- nable. Indeed, although working very hard the whole time, I was under the delusion it may be strictly said, labored under the delusion that the voyage was a perfect holiday, a belief that was greatly encouraged by an absolute indecision as to which plates should be published and which de- 254 Preface to the American Edition. stroyed. Another piece of luck was, that I had no time, nor acid, to bite the plates there and then, and so innocently fancied that they were all very pretty (an etching done according to the old nega- tive process always looks pretty when it is first drawn, because the lines glitter charmingly on the black ground), and felt agreeably encouraged, the evil hour of disappointment being put off until my return to home and the printing-press, which told the painful truth with a frankness equal to that of the most unpleasantly honest dilettante in England. It may interest readers who share the author's boating propensities to know that the voyage was undertaken in a canoe fabricated by his own hands of paper, on a light skeleton of laths. The whole of the voyage was accomplished in this fragile craft ; but it is only honest to add that she became leaky before it was over, and was condemned as unriverworthy at the end. Not that I think, even now, that paper is a bad material for canoes, but I had not then (1866) hit upon the right material for gluing it. I employed the enduit Ruolz, which takes about twelve months to harden, and I had not patience to wait the twelve months ; so the Preface to the American Edition. 255 sheets or bands of paper did not really adhere, and the water oozed between them after a while. The proper gum to use for fastening paper so as to resist water is simply a strong solution of shell-lac in spirits of wine. I have a canoe at present and two small punts which are made of thin wood, lined with paper, applied with shell-lac. When a leak shows itself, it is stopped at once with a bit of paper and a touch of the solution, which dries immediately. An English oarsman tells me that for the last two years he has used bits of calico with the same solution in an old wooden canoe, which remains serviceable, thanks to the shell-lac. One result of the voyage narrated in this volume was the invention of a machine which is a punt by day on the water, and a hut by night on shore, large enough to stretch a hammock in. The American reader will no doubt pardon an allusion to these fancies, and believe them compatible with serious work in other ways. If it is boyish to like boating, in all its forms (as some grave and wise men seem to imagine), I hope to remain puerile yet a little longer. The cold sapience of age comes on rapidly enough to all of us; and it is not a misfortune to be able still to feel an irra- 256 Preface to the American Edition. tional delight in a canoe when she glides in safety, and an imprudent indifference when she upsets. The verses at the beginning of this book were written during the late war, in anticipation of an attack from the Germans, which took place shortly afterwards ; and I witnessed the combat for many hours on the banks of the river, between Garibaldi, who defended Autun, and a strong body of Bavari- ans who attacked it, not exactly the moment for descending the river in a paper canoe ! Another chapter was added that day to the long history of that ancient city by the Arroux ; and as I watched the flight of the shells in the clear December air, and saw, beneath the moon, the fiery tongues dart- ing from the mouths of the enemy's guns, I thought of many a former siege in times when war was less noisy and less bloody, but more cruelly protracted. How little I imagined, when writing the chapter about Augustodunum in this book, that I should see an army in battle-array drawn up against it, a dark, thick line of Germans, with cannon glitter- ing at intervals ! Yet once again the Roman wall rang in echoes to the war-trumpet, and once again the river was stained with blood ! The wild rain drives in gusty showers, And past the moon the storm-clouds fly . The river, rising, hurries by The gray ' old city of fair towers? The bayonets gleam in all her streets : All hearts are anxious, homes are sad Oh, when shall victory make them glad, And light the faces that one meets f O River ! once so fair and clear, Now dark as death thy currents flow ; They may be reddened who can know f Before the closing of the year. O River ! made for my delight, I see upon thy wintry flood A floating corpse a streak of blood, And flames reflected in the night. October, 1870. 17 THE UNKNOWN RIVER. CHAPTER I. ON a bright afternoon in autumn I lay on the green bank of a little stream. The stream was so little that my dog Tom cleared it at one bound, as in the eager excitement of a wildly impossible chase he rushed after flying game. Of course he never yet caught a bird on the wing, but his faith in the practicability of such an achievement does not seem to be in the least shaken by the discouraging lessons of a constantly recurring expe- rience. Only a peregrine falcon, strong-winged, sharp- taloned, could follow and slay those partridges ; but Tom dashes after them through and over all manner of obsta- cles, hoping, by perseverance, to attain his object, like the man who ran after the express train. Tom is a dog of immense energy when out of doors, and the most listless indolence at home. He will run a hundred miles in a day, or swim fifteen, but he will not walk across the room without the most elaborate prepa- ration in the way of stretchings which he believes to be necessary ; and when the little distance is at last accom- plished he falls down with a grunt as if extenuated by 260 The Unknown River. fatigue. Another peculiarity of his is the wonderful difference in the state of his affections, for when in the open air he is in the highest degree grateful for the least word or gesture of his master, and very demonstrative himself ; whereas in the studio, where he passes too many tedious hours, he has scarcely ever been known to acknowledge a caress even by one movement of his tail. He is by race a setter, and seemed destined to a sporting career, but, as his master's fowling-piece has not been used for some years, Tom's instincts are quite undisciplined; and though in outward appearance the finest setter in the whole neighborhood, so that all sportsmen stop and look at him when he passes by, he is a lamentable instance of the consequences of a neg- lected education, and almost any dog of the same breed is professionally his superior, if only he has passed through a proper course of discipline. We digressed into this talk about Tom after saying that he jumped over a brook. The brook murmurs over the pebbles about a hundred yards lower down, and we hear the refreshing sound coming on the faint, cool breeze ; but the brook is very calm and quiet just here, and washes its sandy banks with silent regularity, taking the earth away grain by grain, an unceasing agent of waste, and author of endless change. There is no rest to faculties wearied by labor like rest by a quiet stream, on a beautiful afternoon in summer. If you distribute your work wisely, and are fortunate enough to have work of a kind that may be done at your own hours, you will take care, when the days are long, An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 261 to reserve some considerable part of the afternoon as sacred to utter idleness, and, if a quiet stream is within an easy distance, there you will go and rest. Most men under such circumstances take a rod and fish, but it does not always happen that there is any thing which the dig- nity of manhood may avow an interest in catching. The man who rents a salmon river in Scotland, or even the Englishman whose trout stream is well preserved, may go forth with the implements of the angler and a 'con- sciousness of noble aims. But can anybody past boy- hood pretend to take an interest in catching minnows, unless, indeed, he be a Frenchman who has just landed a goujon, and is vain of the exploit ? It is curious how capable we all are of seeing people and things every day of our lives without being once prompted to ascertain any thing further about them, whence they come, whither they go, what their past has been, or what may be reserved for them in the future. The inhabitants of great cities, being satiated by the con- tinual sight of innumerable persons and things, have this indifference in the most strongly developed form, but it may be observed in the country with regard to what is most commonly seen there. For instance, brooks and streams are very commonly met with in all northern countries, and therefore very few people ever give a thought to the geography of them, or have any thing beyond a very vague and general notion of their course. The inhabitants of the region through which the stream passes usually know it at bridges and fords, and farmers know it where it eats away the land, and where, in times 262 The Unknown River. of flood, it is most likely to leave a deposit of sand and pebbles ; the angler, too, may have followed it for a few miles, and some professional landscape-painter or ama- teur may have explored a few of its most picturesque parts. But no man living knows the whole stream, and so there is always a great mystery about it ; and any one who cares to follow its course faithfully may enjoy all the keen delights, and feel all the unceasing interest, which belong to a true exploration. In this especial sense our little river is indeed un- known, and as I lay idly on its bank on that bright autumn afternoon, it occurred to me clearly for the first time that the river came from far, and went yet farther ; that it was not confined to the fields about my house, and that this little scene was not a solitary gem, but one only of a thousand links in a long chain of various and unimagined beauty. Why had not this been equally clear to me years be- fore ? Why do we dream ever in one place, or travel by the same weary old roads, when infinite beauty and nov- elty are open to us ? It is because the beauty and the novelty are so very near to us that we miss them, and often so cheap that our pitiful small dignity despises them as something puerile. When we are weary of the monotony of life, and the whole human organism longs for the refreshment of change, we would go to the end of the earth, and, in order to defeat our purposes as completely as possible, carry our habits with us. We are accustomed to railways and newspapers, to bitter ale and sweet tea ; and we seek these things, and a thousand others An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 263 that habit has rendered necessary, wherever on earth we go. And yet change more refreshing and novelty more complete are here within one day of slowest travel, than in journeys to Berlin and Vienna ; for the truest change and best novelty are not in length of travel, but in the abandonment of habit, and especially in the zest of free and personal discovery. There is an unfortunate belief that this glorious pleasure and passion of the discoverer are not now to be enjoyed in Europe. It is supposed that since every State in that region has been explored by many travellers, and even more or less accurately surveyed by the makers of maps, there is nothing new to be found there. The reason for this appears to be a confusion between the genuine pleasures of the discoverer and the satisfaction of his pride. Of course there can be nothing to boast of in discoveries such as those here narrated, but there is much to be enjoyed. The explorer of a nameless Eu- ropean river need not hope to be remembered like Liv- ingstone or Speke, but he may set forth, in the full assurance of finding much that is worth finding, and of enjoying many of the sensations, deducting those con- nected with personal vanity, which give interest to more famous explorations. It is necessary, however, to the complete enjoyment of an excursion of discovery, that the region to be explored, whether mountain or river, or whatever else it may be, should not have been already explored by others, or at any rate not with the same objects and intentions. A geologist has a certain sat- isfaction in marching, hammer in hand, over a tract of 264 The Unknown River. country not yet conquered for geology ; and an artist likes to sketch in secluded valleys where it is not proba- ble that any artist has been before. On the same prin- ciple a traveller who is fond of boating has an especial pleasure in descending some stream of which it may be safely presumed that nobody ever descended it in a boat. In this especial sense there is much yet to be done in the way of exploration, even in the most known countries. No sooner had these ideas formed themselves in the writer's mind, than the little stream by which he was lazily reclining acquired a new importance ; and the low music of its shallows, instead of being, as formerly, the lullaby of Mother Nature, became an awakening call to action, and a promise of joyful change. A thousand scenes rose rapidly before his mind, and the pipe which had languidly yielded half an hour before the tiniest puffs of smoke to the fragrant air now gave dense clouds, in which the smoker saw endless visions. He saw the deep, calm pools under the rich, overhanging foliage where the currents fall asleep together, like tired children that have filled the fields with their merry noise, till weariness fell on their swift limbs, and hushed their happy voices, and laid them in silent sleep under the soft green leaves. He saw the rapids dashing into white foam amongst the rocks, and- the kingfisher glancing above them like a sapphire-flash in the sun. He saw the picturesque farms and cottages by the unfrequented shore, the gray, deserted castles, the antique cities, the remains of a thousand years. And then came the An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 265 majesty of the effects of Nature, the splendor of the sun- set and the promise of the dawn, the mysterious poetry of summer twilight, and the long hours alone beneath the moon. By this time it became impossible to remain quiet in that place any longer. Tom was called back from his vagrant courses and taken into his master's confidence. Tom listened with the utmost attention whilst the novel project was explained to him, and, although he may not have clearly understood its details, he perceived at least that action of some kind was meditated, and eagerly expressed his willingness to take a share in it. 266 The Unknown River. CHAPTER II. DURING the last few years the noble old art of etch- ing has been revived by many painters. Some of my friends have practised it with distinguished suc- cess, and their example led me to recur to an art which I had first attempted in boyhood, and then neglected for many years. Of the means at my disposal for the illus- tration of the projected voyage none seemed better than etching, as it is the only kind of engraving which can be done directly from Nature, and the only engraving, too, which has enough of the spirit of liberty to harmonize with such a state of mind as that of a wandering canoist. It accepts laborious finish when the artist has time for it, but it also allows of rapid sketching when he is in a hurry. So it was decided that the voyage should be written, and that the illustrations should be etched from Nature on the way. All the plates being prepared at home in my own etching-room (nearly sixty of them), I laid them on small drawing-boards, four to each board, and, by means of two very small screws to each plate, fixed them to the board so as to resist any jolting that they might be ex- posed to. There was no necessity to pierce the plates with holes to receive the screws, since, by placing the screws near the edge of the copper, the screw-heads held the plates firmly enough. I had previously tried An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 267 many experiments for the carriage of plates, but none succeeded so well as this. If the coppers had been all of precisely the same dimensions, they might have been carried in a grooved box, such as photographers use for their glasses ; and this, no doubt, would have been a considerable economy of space, and would, at the same time, have saved the weight of all drawing-boards except one.* Having screwed my sixty plates to a quantity of small drawing-boards, I slipped these boards into several grooved boxes ; each box provided with a lock and key. I then calculated the probable length of the voyage, and, having locked my boxes, sent them to inns at different distances down the river, to await my arrival. Thus I was never obliged to carry more than one box of plates at a time. It is unnecessary to go into the detail of my other preparations, which were of the kind now so well known to canoe-men, and to all who take an interest in canoe-travelling. Here is the little village from which the expedition started. The canoe had been transported thither in a cart, and as we arrived in the evening it was not con- sidered advisable to begin the voyage till the following day. So I dined at the little inn, and after dinner went out to walk in the village by the shore of the narrow rivulet I was to embark upon on the morrow. It was a clear, bright moonlight night (the etching, it * It is necessary, however, when plates are carried in a grooved box, without being fixed to a drawing-board, to revarnish their edges before biting. 268 The Unknown River. may be well to observe, is intended to represent a moon- light), and I wandered first about the river, and then in a small valley between precipitous little hills. I was in the heart of the Morvan, a highland district in the east of France, almost unknown to tourists. The river to be explored was the Arroux, that - passes by the antique Augustodunum, and flows to the historic Loire. No- body had explored it yet, and all the hazards of the enterprise rose before me as I leaned over the low para- pet of the one-arched bridge at Voudenay. The stream flowed under the bridge, after a curve like a snake in the grass, a silvery snake glittering under the moon. It came from a rustic mill, and the monotonous noise of the mill-wheel was the only audible sound, ex- cept the wash of the swift current on its pebbly margin. Beyond the bridge the stream looked dark and treacher- ous (for the moon was behind me then), and it went and buried itself in a black wood. This was all that could be seen of it from Voudenay. It was very narrow, and wilful and swift, and it hurried away into the black wood as if it had some deadly linavowable work to do there, somebody to stifle and drown in the awful shade of the forest. What would this adventure bring me to ? No man knew the river, no man had ever known it. Its course was full of dangers. A thousand strong boughs were waiting for me, stretching their gnarled and knotty arms across the stream. There were festoons of briers and thorns, there were deep black pools hidden under the intricate branches, there were roots in the river, and An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 269 lower down I had to expect sharp rocks also. But could I not swim ? Yes, in water, but not amongst stones and snags. Better the angry waves of the ocean, than these treacherous, suffocating snares ! There was just so much of apprehension as sufficed to give interest to the adventure. It amounted to a cer- tainty that I should be upset (probably more than once), and have to struggle for dear life, but it was not so certain that I should struggle for it unsuccessfully. I returned to the little inn, and had a long talk with a set of peasants, and then went to bed in a room that looked out upon the river, the moonlight falling on the counter- pane. The night was exquisitely calm, the peasants left the inn, and all the house was still. I have accustomed myself to do with what suffices for the peasantry, and can therefore lodge in the poorest country inn or cottage without any painful sense of pri- vation. This is a valuable accomplishment for an ex- plorer of unknown rivers, who may have to lodge very simply from time to time. Thus, my first night I slept in the same room with a farmer's boy, my second with a wheelwright, and my third with the family of a poor miller; but I always had a bed to myself and clean sheets (though coarse). A sleepy traveller needs no more.* We are afloat at last on the little river, which loses its terrors in broad daylight. I am in the paper canoe, and Tom is swimming behind. If that is the way he intends * I much prefer the independence of a tent, but in this voyage it did not seem practicable to carry a tent and provisions. 270 The Unknown River. to follow me during the whole voyage he will incur much useless fatigue. Why does not Tom simply run along the bank ? he would go twice as fast, with a tenth of the fatigue. I stop the canoe and reason with poor Tom. I explain all this to him both verbally and by signs, but his only answer is to look at me imploringly, and lift up his wet old nose, and splash with his fore-paws, and put one of them timidly on the edge of the canoe. I remove the paw, and use one word of menace: the sensitive creature takes an expression of extreme sadness ; I have wounded his feelings. I speak more kindly, and explain that the only objection is to his bigness ; that he is dearly beloved, but unhappily too big ; and that the canoe can never carry both of us. The kind tones encourage him again ; this time he puts both paws on the canoe, and is within a hairbreadth of upsetting her. My only chance of getting the great, heavy, clinging paws off is to hit their owner a smart rap on the nose with the paddle. The narrow stream winds rapidly between banks of gravel, and four little boys are running along the shore, keeping pace with the swift canoe. Poor Tom cannot swim quite so fast, and has been left behind for several turns of the river, but now he comes galloping like a racehorse across the fields. Nothing could be easier and more agreeable than the voyage has hitherto been, but the stream, already very rapid, runs faster and faster, and is evidently carrying me into a dense grove of trees, which will probably be long, and which may offer very serious difficulties. The worst of these very narrow rivers is that there is not room to use the paddle, and An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 271 you are carried along by the impetuous current with a very slight chance either of stopping yourself, if rush- ing upon obvious peril, or of defending yourself against the branches. Here we are amongst the willows, carried rapidly down a little sylvan tunnel, three or four feet wide and about a yard high. It is wonderfully beautiful, if one had only the time to appreciate its beauty ; but the cur- rent is so strong and impetuous, and the turns are so numerous, that there is hardly time to think of any thing but the management of the canoe. The little boys are behind somewhere ; I hear their loud chatter in the dis- tance, and a yelping bark from Tom informs me that he is yet alive, though I know not whether in water or on land. The first insurmountable obstacle is a young tree, lying quite across the stream. It has not been cut down, but the water has eaten away the earth about its roots, and it has fallen across the current. If the place had been a little more open I might have hauled the canoe on shore and launched her a little lower down, but here the dense underwood makes that manoeuvre impossible. Here come the little boys ! I have a long and strong cord in the canoe ; I tie a stone to one end of it, and throw it over a branch to a boy on the other side, telling him to tie it to the top of the fallen tree. Then, with the branch for a fulcrum, I and the little boys on my side pull very hard, and gradually the little tree rises and rises till the course is clear. After overcoming other difficulties with the help of the little boys, who were exceedingly useful, 272 The Unknown River. I came to a place where the river was less impetuous, and where I had leisure to admire its beauty. The canoe was floating pleasantly through a rich wood of oak and chestnut with here and there a group of grace- ful poplars. It was a constant succession of scenes like the one given opposite, whose exquisite loveliness it is not easy to convey by Art. An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 273 CHAPTER III. THE etching which illustrated the end of our last chapter was done on the copper from Nature at a little place that seemed convenient for lunch. A few square yards of firm sand-bank lay between the dense underwood and a deep pool, and this sand-bank was covered with short grass. The canoe was drawn up here, and her owner took out the materials for luncheon, and made what would have been a solitary meal, if Tom had not come up in great glee, doubly delighted at find- ing his master on terra firma, and all the signs of a festival spread out around him. Tom loves his master dearly, but his affection for beef and mutton is at least equally strong ; and it is probable that the happiest hours of Tom's existence are such hours as this, when, in addition to the excitement of travel, and the free ex- penditure of his immense energy, he has the satisfaction of dining with his master on terms of something like equality. All the little boys had now been left behind except one, and he, unfortunately for his own interest, was on the other side of the stream. I wanted to get him over and invite him to lunch, and crossed for the purpose in the canoe ; but the canoe only held one per- son, and the youth did not sit steadily, so that before we were two yards from the shore a capsize seemed inevita- ble, and I put back. After luncheon the voyage was re- 18 274 The Unknown River. sumed ; the nature of it will be best gathered from the etching. There are two little villages in the region where I was now voyaging, about a mile apart, and bearing the same name of Voudenay ; so, to know one from the other, the inhabitants have called them Voudenay-l'Eglise and Voudenay -le-Chateau. My first day's voyage was from one of these villages to the other, total distance one mile. The reader may laugh if he likes, but that is about the proper degree of speed for an artist on his travels. After dark, as I wished to get a few miles lower down the stream, I determined, as the moon did not rise till rather late, to continue the voyage by lamp-light. The canoe was provided with a carriage-lamp for the pur- pose, which was fixed in the forepart of the deck, and it was found quite possible to pursue a very intricate and sometimes even perilous navigation by the help of this artificial light. Where the narrow river was most thickly shaded on both sides by dense vegetation, the branches meeting immediately overhead, and festooned with over- hanging creepers, the lamp-light gave a strange beauty to the scene ; and as the canoe floated somewhat rapidly down this little green corridor, it seemed like a voyage in fairyland. Every tiny leaf and spray, every slender thread of stalk, came for one moment out of the black- ness of night into the full brilliance of the lamp-light, then passed into the darkness behind. An endless suc- cession of this inexhaustible loveliness made the night voyage one continual enchantment, and I was not sorry An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 275 to have seen a river under an aspect so strikingly new. There exists, unfortunately, an especial difficulty in ren- dering the peculiar beauty of these effects in etching ; and, knowing this, I have not wasted time in the at- tempt. The art of etching cannot reserve white lines of sufficient thinness and purity to give the effect of lamp-light on delicate sprays and grasses. The effect would be broadly given, and it would be possible enough to reserve white lines, but not with the fineness neces- sary to do full justice to the kind of delicacy which, in subjects such as these, would become the particular aim of the artist. Nothing struck me so much, in this delightful little voyage with the lamp, as the exquisite tenuity of the smaller plants as they came out with tiny leaves and stems against the black void of night. This might be approximately interpreted in wood-engraving, which most naturally works in white lines, but not so well in other processes. It was found that this voyag- ing by night added considerably to the interest of the exploration, for the mystery of the unknown was still more strongly felt when all that lay before us was in absolute darkness, and only became suddenly illumi- nated as the lamp approached. He who attempts the exploration of a river not re- puted navigable must be prepared for passages of such extreme difficulty that it may be necessary to remove his canoe altogether from the water, and drag her over the dry land. The morning after the voyage by lamp- light I had a good deal of such work, so much that at length I lost patience and hired a spring-cart in which 276 The Unknown River. both the vessel and her owner were transported by a fast-trotting horse to a place four kilometres lower down, whilst Tom galloped along the road with a sense of freedom much greater than any which he had enjoyed amongst the tangled vegetation of the river's bank. When the boat was launched again, the stream took quite a new character. Instead of flowing with a cur- rent of equal breadth, and almost equal rapidity, it now alternately slept in calm pools and rushed hurriedly over short pebbly shallows. It is difficult, in words, to convey any idea of the variety of these beautiful pools, except by simply saying that they are various. If there were eighty of them, or a hundred of them, or however many there may have been, there were just as many new and admirable pictures. The shallows, too (though in pass- ing rapidly over them we had not time to think of much but the safety of the canoe), were by no means the least interesting portions of the voyage, especially when they .turned mysterious corners, and opened out new glimpses down the stream. At length we carne to a pool so very long and so very tranquil that it seemed as if it would never end. The canoe glided over its glassy surface for many a long minute, and, just as the explorer rested on his paddle and the little vessel had gone forward alone so long that the impetus was dying gradually away, something unwonted was reflected in the smooth water ; and, instead of the accustomed intricacy of boughs and fluttering of innumerable leaves, the voyager saw great stones as of a feudal castle, and surely on the green shore there stood a great ruin ! An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 277 Whoever wishes to enjoy the sight of some noble ruin should come upon it in this unpremeditated way. One- half the delight of it is in the surprise. When you have been told at starting, by a guide-book, that ' at three miles from your inn is such a castle, now ruinous but formerly belonging to the Counts of, &c.,' and read the description of it in detail, you will either be quietly pleased or provokingly disappointed ; but you will never feel the gladness of a delightful surprise. How noble look the gray old towers when the mind has been occu- pied all day with Nature and forgotten the history of man ! What a welcome interruption to the perpetual sylvan harmony ! This ruined Castle of Igornay has towers, round and square, and a great court-yard, now full of the pictur- esque of a French farm. It has true machicolations, and must have been a strong place formerly. I found a young miller at the mill, who was more intelligent than lads of his class usually are, and a diligent reader of the newspaper. All the recent events in Italy and America were familiar to him, and he asked me a hun- dred questions. As it was cold, he made a blazing fire for me, and when I left helped to carry the boat, so as to avoid the mill-weir. There are some shallows just below Igornay, so the young miller waded and dragged the boat after him, with me in it, till we got into deeper water ; he would not hear of my wading, though I told him I was accustomed to it, and it would do me no harm. I paid him with nothing but thanks. Few hours of travel have ever been more delightful 278 The Unknown River. than those which now followed. A misty morning had ended in an afternoon of brilliant sunshine; the river was seldom less than three or four feet deep, and it turned continually, every turn offering some new and beautiful picture. The splendid autumn trees burned in the glow- ing light against the pure blue of an unclouded sky, and their long reflections trailed in glimmering gold on the calm surface of the quiet, sequestered pools. In such delightful scenery as this two or three miles a day seemed only too rapid travelling ; I longed continually to tie the boat to some tree, and etch whilst any light remained. Soon, however, the stream narrowed again, and an impetuous current rushed under closely woven boughs, and between many awkward snags. Many a place seemed impassable, but the stream was too swift and too narrow to admit of any going back, and there was nothing for it but to shut one's eyes and dash at the branches with the paddle lying useless on the deck. Once the boat was jammed between a root and a tree where the stream was strongest, but I got through by pulling at the tree with both hands. As for landing, it was out of the question ; there was no land to be seen, nothing but branches, branches everywhere, overhead, before, behind, to the right and to the left, with an im- petuous current under them, strong, swift, and deep. Then I heard a roar of water amongst rocks, and, in an instant, turning a corner, found myself at the foot of a steep hill, thickly wooded as far as I could see ; and where the water had eaten into the hill the rocks were bare, a long row of them, and there were stones in the An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 279 stream, over which it boiled with white foam. How- ever, there was paddle-room, and I was really far safer than five minutes before under the branches. Whilst happily congratulating myself on my escape from so many difficulties, I turned a sharp corner; a long branch lay athwart the stream from side to side, two feet above the water ; the boat passed under it, but I could not diminish myself sufficiently to pass under it too, so was upset in an instant, and fell in head first. 280 The Unknown River. CHAPTER IV. THE shipwreck that ended the last chapter occurred just at sunset. After a night's rest in a poor cot- tage, the voyage was resumed in the brilliant light of a new and cloudless day. The river was still most dangerous, slipping furtively and fast through the thickest underwood, turning sharply in unforeseen ways and places, like a panther in the dense jungle. At last, after being hurried down a narrow channel, with about as much freedom of will as the train in an atmospheric tube, we came suddenly out upon a great open pool. This was the confluence of the Arroux and the Dree, and the Arroux had doubled his substance by this alliance. Before it, he had been a wild young rivulet of the most imprudent and impetuous character ; after it, he had times of leisure, and lived in visible dignity, an im- portant occupier of land. Imagine a constant succes- sion of large and beautiful pools linked together by rapid babbling shallows on which the canoe darted gayly and swiftly without grounding. The pools were deep, with sloping bottoms of the finest sand, perfect bathing-places every one, and every one a picture. After many windings, one curve of the beautiful river disclosed a noble city, rising far off on the slope of a An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 281 lofty hill, blue in the haze of the bright afternoon, with massive walls and many towers. It is old Augusto- dunum, once the sister of Rome and her rival, since then strong in the middle ages with all the picturesque strength of turret and battlement, now narrowed till within the vast enclosure of the Roman fortifications the market-gardener grows his vegetables, and the farmer ploughs his fields. Still by the quiet river the Roman wall stands rugged, rich branches hanging over it, heavy and full, and striving to reach the flowing water. And the Roman gate still augustly receives the traveller as he crosses the bridge over the Arroux, its gray arches and pilasters borne high over the mighty portals with a little statue of the Virgin between them, record of the faith of the middle ages, and a gas-lamp to prove that the modern time has come. A great and wonderful Roman city, one of the noblest in the Roman world, stood here on the banks of the Arroux. In the circuit of her walls were more than two hundred towers. She had a great amphitheatre, and innumerable temples, and theatres, and baths. The soil to this day is full of fragments of precious marbles from the luxurious Roman dwellings. For a thousand years the earth has been yielding a harvest of antiquities, still inexhaustible ; columns, and statues, and bronzes, and pavements of Roman mosaic. And when the glorious Roman city, SOROR ET AEMULA ROMAE, was utterly ravaged and destroyed, there arose upon her site a mediaeval city, smaller, yet not less beautiful, so that a king of France called it his ' City of Beautiful Towers.' 282 The Unknown River. But the mediaeval city has disappeared almost as com- pletely as the Roman. The classic amphitheatre is razed to the ground ; of the mediaeval cathedral (a great edifice of the purest Gothic) there remains one arch in a garden. The present cathedral is a church which stood under the shadow of the old one. A few fragments of the mediaeval city remain here and there, the house of Rolin, chancellor of Burgundy, now a carpenter's shop, a tower of the old Donjon, and here and there a few houses of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Still Autun is a picturesque and quaint place, full of endless subjects for an etcher. If there is any thing in the history of the past that can move or interest the present, the past of this strange city cannot leave us cold. Who could float here on the Arroux, close to the- Roman wall, without thinking of all that has happened here, by the shore of this now peace- ful river ? A simple catalogue of the vicissitudes of this city, unparalleled in the succession of her misfortunes, reads like some marvellous poem. The story of all her sieges has a Homeric grandeur. First she was ravaged by Tetricus. After a resistance of seven months she was punished by the conqueror of Tetricus, Aurelian. Ruined by German hordes in the third century, she was sacked again under Diocletian. For twenty-five years she lay prostrate in her ashes, and the lands about her were untilled. She was punished again by Constantius after the defeat of Magnentius. She was besieged by Chonodomarus and Vestralphus ; and after that by the Vandals ; and after that by the Bur- An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 283 gundians ; and then by Attila, who massacred the inhab- itants and reduced the whole place to ashes. Childebert and Clotaire ruined the city on the flight of Godmar. The Saracens sacked Autun ; the Normans sacked it in 886, and a few years later Rollo pillaged it again. After the battle of Poictiers the English came and burned part of the city. Admiral Coligny came and burned a pri- ory and the palace of an abbot, pillaging the abbey. Towards the end of the sixteenth century Autun was beseiged by the Marshal Daumont, and her archives used for gun-wadding. There are great incidents in her history : the martyr- dom of St. Symphorien, the visit of Bishop Proculus to Attila. The reader may remember the great picture by Ingres, of the young Symphorien led by the Roman lictors to execution, his mother encouraging him from the wall. And if Symphorien sacrificed himself for his faith, Proculus did the same for his fellow-citizens. He went to Attila's, camp to entreat him to spare the city, and Attila beheaded him. A memorable circumstance, in another way, was the visit of Constantine to Autun. , Constantine had raised the city from ruin and despair ; rebuilt her edifices, re- established her schools. Finally he came in person with his court. The expression of the people's gratitude moved him to tears. He forgave them five whole years of taxes. The saddest history connected with the city is that of poor Queen Brunehault, early in the seventh century. She wished to place her grandson (she had four) on the 284 The Unknown River. throne of her son Tyherri, who was dead. Clotaire II. had the four sons arrested. The queen herself was arrested near the lake of Yverdun, and taken to Clo- taire' s camp in Burgundy. Three days of torture ended by a derisive promenade on a camel through the camp. Her grandsons were slaughtered before her eyes ; then she herself was tied to the tail of a wild horse. Her body was brought to Autun and laid in a marble tomb. But the grandest and noblest action of all that shed lustre on the antique city is the refusal of the Count de Charni to execute the massacre of St. Bartholomew. There were eight hundred Calvinists in the place, and the order came to slay them ; but the advocate Jeannin recommended the Bailly, de Charni, to disobey the royal mandate, and they spared the Calvinists, to their own eternal honor. In his disobedience De Charni had the boldness to tell the king that he wished to leave him time to reflect upon orders issued in anger ; and the Chancellor, on reading De Charni's letter to his majesty, observed : ' Cest un juge de village qui nous prescrit notre devoir ! ' The bishops of Autun, when newly appointed, used to make a solemn entry into their city. They had an episcopal residence at Lucenay (an exquisitely beautiful little place amongst the hills), and the new bishop left this residence in state. But he did not enter Autun at once. First he stopped at the monastery of St. Andoche, without the walls, and the abbess was obliged to enter- tain him and all his retinue. Near the convent there was a country-house called Genetoie, and the proprietor An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 285 of it was obliged to give the bishop hot water for his feet, an obligation much less heavy than that which fell upon the abbess. The bishop went to Genetoie to await the arrival of the chapter. When they came he pre- sented himself at the closed door of the cloister, and was refused admission twice, answering each time that he was the bishop of Autun. The third time he was admitted, and took the oath. The accompanying illustration shows all that remain of the house of Genetoie as it appeared when islanded by the flood of 1866. 286 The Unknown River. CHAPTER V. THE bishops made their entry into the city by the bridge of St. Andoche, but one of them went out of it again by the other bridge, and his carriage-wheels rattled on the road to Paris ; and in Paris he took up a new trade which he practised with the most distinguished success. Can you fancy Talleyrand as a bishop going about gravely in violet, and giving his precious benedic- tion ? All the portraits I ever saw of him represent him in court dress, and nothing is more difficult than to rid one's self, even temporarily, of an association. The con- verse difficulty is that of imagining Pius IX. as an offi- cer of dragoons. Had it been possible to see the two together, in the garb of their first professions, who would have guessed which was to become a famops pope, and which an equally celebrated diplomatist ? When Autun was left behind, the river went for half a mile in such a stately manner that anybody would have given it credit for being navigable in the most serious sense of the word, -navigable for vessels laden with much more valuable merchandise than the mate- rials of an unpopular art. In this long, quiet reach the lads from the college came to practise themselves in swimming, and this led me to think about three youths who may have bathed here not so very long ago, but whose history was at least as romantic as that of the An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 287 Greek and Roman heroes they read about in their text- books at the college. One of these youths was called Neapoleonne de Bounaparte,* and the two others were brothers of his. Napoleon did not remain quite four months at the college of Autun (the fact is unknown to all his biographers), but his brother Joseph stayed here as many years. Napoleon's lijtle cell (the colleges had cells in those days) still existed two or three years since. It was positively known to be one of the five or six that remained, but which there was no means of ascertaining. At length the towers of Autun, which showed them- selves in glimpses during the windings of the river, and completed in this way a hundred pretty compositions, disappeared finally behind a spur of hill clothed with a dense pine forest. Once more the canoe floated on a quite lonely river without evidence of human labor or habitation, except now and then the smoke of a distant farm, or the cry of the drivers of oxen, generally the name of each animal, sung out with a musical cadence. It was pleasant to get into the perfect country again, though Autun scarcely seems a city, and the Arroux flows past it undisturbed by human interference except when the strong brown-skinned horsemen ride up to their waists in the water, and the fishermen cast their nets. Westwards rose the blue mass of the Beuvray, where recent investigations have fixed the site of a city older than Augustodunum, the Bibracte of the Gauls. But * So entered on the college books. 288 TJie Unknown River. Bibracte is almost without a history. Caesar went there, and said that it was a great stronghold, and took provi- sions from it for his army, but left us scarcely a word of description. Bibracte can never have been more than a great fortified hill-village, or Gaulish oppidum, com- posed of Very rude huts, huddled close together, and protected by solid walls built in the strong Gaulish way, with logs nailed together with huge nails, and earth and stone between them. Floating down the river in the evening I saw the last flames of sunset die behind the Beuvray, and the majesty of its purple crests was en- hanced by its ancient strength. What 'is on the hill- crest now ? On the site of the buried city is a forest of old gnarled beeches, and in the midst of the forest stands a little camp of huts, where an antiquary passes his sum- mers, with a band of faithful men. Even now, I thought, in the evening, he is standing on some brow of rock, and looking over the boundless plains. He can see the lands beyond the Loire, and the whole course of the river that I am obscurely exploring. And when the twilight comes, and his evening walk is over, he will go to his wooden hut and sleep amidst his trophies. A pleasant, enthusiastic, absorbed life he has of it up there ! He tells me that there is danger in the delight of it, the danger of a too complete abandonment to the enjoyment of glorious Nature and the dear antiquarian dream. He has a charming house in the city, with its salons filled with pictures and its museum with antiqui- ties, and only a rough hut up there on the mountain ; but every year as the summer comes he longs for the An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 289 little hut, and the free range of the wild forest, and the fresh, high air, and the silence and the calm, and the healthy days of toil, and the lonely evening walks about the hill, and the vast, illimitable horizons. Who- ever has once known this passion for wild Nature never, whilst health lasts, can lose it. There comes upon him every year, first a vague uneasiness, then a craving and longing for something, he knows not what, and then he begins to dream at night of regions beautiful and wild. The streets of the town, even the spacious country- house, begin to feel like prisons, and he wants to get out into the forest, or on the mountain, or float on flow- ing rivers and tossing seas. In consequence of having etched the little plate which the reader has just seen, I had to paddle some miles after sunset, and did not reach the next village until darkness had fairly set in. The river, fortunately, pre- sented few of those dangers which had been so frequent in the earlier part of its course. There were a few rapids here and there, but not dangerous rapids, and now and then one of those disturbed places called ' re- mous,' produced by sudden alterations in the form of the river's bed, often at a considerable depth. On the whole, however, the river was safer here than anywhere else on its whole course until it reached the plain of the Loire, and this will be readily understood after a few words on the geology of the district. The basin of Autun is a wide valley hollowed in the rock, formerly a lake-bed, and afterwards filled to the brim with alluvial deposits. It is through these deposits that the river cuts its serpen- 19 2 go The Unknown River. tine course, and so long as it has to do with nothing but soft loam, and sand, and little rounded pebbles, the navi- gation is safe and easy. But when we come to the thick granite lip of the great basin, we shall find that the stream suddenly takes a new character. It is a lowland river in the basin of Autun, a highland stream for twenty miles as it crosses the rocky edge of the basin, and after that a lowland river again as it meanders through the plain of the Loire. This accounts for my getting safely to the inn after dark ; a little lower down all night-travelling was out of the question. But at the inn there was not a bed to be had, so I went to a country-house on the other side of the river, belong- ing to a rich land-owner whom I did not know personally, but who had an encouraging reputation for hospitality. Going to beg a night's lodging at a private house where you are unknown requires more assurance, I think, than any thing I ever attempted. The master of the mansion was absent. The butler put his head out of a bedroom window and heard my petition. The butler was a very decent fellow ; he dressed himself and came downstairs, and kindly heard all I had to say. For a moment I believed the difficulty overcome, but unluckily the favorable impression which I had succeeded in making on this man's mind availed me nothing, for the supreme authority was the house- keeper. She put her face out of a window, an ugly vis- age whose thousand wrinkles were strongly illumined by a candle in her skinny hand, and one glance assured me that she would be inexorable Nothing could be more An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 291 decided than her refusal. And they talk of the tender- heartedness of women ! How and where I passed that night shall be a mystery. How do vagrants and vagabonds pass theirs ? This castle is the Castle of Chaseux, a picturesque old ruin by the river-side, in a charming situation. The effect is more picturesque in the etching than in the reality, because he who only sees the drawing does not realize the curiously small scale of the towers. They are decidedly the tiniest towers I ever saw in any castle of feudal times ; but they looked larger, no doubt, when they had their pepper-box roofs. For the rest the place is not without grandeur, and it has some literary interest as an occasional residence of Madame de Sevigne with that cousin of hers, Roger de Rabutin, Count de Bussy, commonly called Bussy Rabutin. How she could ever forgive him his offences against decency, and his slan- ders against herself, is one of the mysteries of the womanly heart. I never had the curiosity to read any thing of Bussy' s except a few of his brevities. One does not care to plunge into dirty water ; it is enough for me that Bussy shocked Louis XIV. (not an eminent model of virtue) to such a degree that the indignant monarch first put him into the Bastile, and afterwards banished him to his estates in Burgundy. Here, at Chaseux, he spent part of his seventeen years of exile ; and it is one of the most extraordinary instances of the irony of fate, that the portrait of this wretched noble, who disgraced his family and his age, actually now hangs in the little village church where he heard mass, hangs over the 292 The Unknown River. altar, and does duty as a saint The dress and accesso- ries have been repainted, to suit the present destination of the work ; but the worldly, seventeenth-century face looks still out of its flowing wig, between the tall candles on the altar. And the priest kneels, and the people bow, and the incense rises before it ! f )/: >L**1L ih*Lu JkAfa ?;<., n*~ / /m^^> ^ WAVL4 , . 14/Ji .1 An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 293 CHAPTER VI. THIS etching is intended to represent one of those effects of twilight on the river which are amongst the charms of a lonely voyage. You see the great masses of the magnificent trees, but you hardly see the dark ground they stand upon, and it is not easy to tell where the water ends and the land begins. For the full enjoyment of such an hour as this, the scenery should be previously unknown to you, that the sense of mystery may be felt in its fullest intensity ; but, on the other hand, there ought not to be any apprehension of danger. It is after a day of peril and adventure that you most enjoy the peace of the solemn gloaming, when the reaches of the river sleep in their glassy calm, and the heron lifts himself languidly on the breadth of his great gray wings. The heron is not mentioned by accident or put in for the sake of a poetical effect. He was there. He passed the canoe like a winged shadow, and then rose in the calm, pure air. Just then came a great flock of rooks, and, as they were flying about four hundred feet above me, the heron attained nearly the same altitude. The impertinent rooks attacked the noble bird (fit game for peregrine falcons ! ), and they plagued him and insulted him till he knew not what to make of it. But he pre- sented his sharp, long beak to his assailants, and after 294 The Unknown River. teasing him for a quarter of an hour they left him to take his lonely way in peace. Danger a-head ! O captain ! hearest thou not the roar of the rapid ? It was time to cease gazing up into the unfathomable blue ; it was time to get a firm seat, and grasp the paddle well ! No more enjoyment of the poetry of the twilight, only a wish for the ' light of common day,' wherein all sweet illusions fade. It was a great rapid amongst boulders, the largest of which were as big as the room you are sitting in, dear reader. They were scattered to the right and to the left, and one or two ugly fellows apparently barred the way. The channels were narrow and deep, and the water hissed and twisted amongst them like serpents. A yel- low glimmer from the evening sky shone on the swift currents, and said, 'I show you all their complexity select ! ' After another rapid, apparently much less dangerous than the first, and in reality (as often happens) much more so, the author arrived at Etang, a little old village, with two fine bridges and a railway station just built. There were some good subjects for etching in this place, especially the old houses near the river. A relic of great interest for me (who have a peculiar weakness for tents and encamping) is preserved at the house of a rich man in the neighborhood of Etang. It is a fragment of the famous pavilion of Charles the Bold, which fell into the hands of the victorious Swiss, after the battle of Granson. The faded glory of its An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 295 magnificent embroidery recalled the costliest of all the countless tents that ever trembled at the blast of trum- pets ; and such is the power of great associations, that the last rag and remnant of a splendor which dazzled men's eyes four hundred years ago gives poetry to the house where it is preserved, and to the very landscape that lies around it. Etang possessed, at the time of my visit, the ugliest church (and this is saying a great deal) ever erected in the eighteenth century. Preparations were, however, being made for rebuilding it in a better form ; and, as the new church was to be rather larger than the old one, it was necessary to make new foundations in the sur- rounding graveyard. This disturbed numbers of crosses which marked the graves, and these crosses were thrown all together into a corner. The graves themselves had to be cut through, and, as the workmen simply dug the new foundation without troubling themselves about the bodies, they often cut them in two ; so that many a dead man had his legs amputated, or his head cut off, in a manner quite unforeseen by his friends and relatives when they interred him near the old church wall. The writer witnessed some incidents of this kind which were not much to his taste ; and when the new church stands in the glory of its Gothic arches and groined vault, and windows of brilliant stained glass, if ever he visits the place again he will never be able to see the stately walls of the fabric without thinking of the mutilated remains on each side of their deep foundations. Two fine hills are visible from Etang, not mountains, 296 The Unknown River. but true hills of noble aspect, with rocky heights and deep ravines. One of these is the Beuvray, mentioned in the preceding chapter as the probable site of Bibracte ; and exactly opposite to the Beuvray, on the other side of the river, is. the hill of Uchon, which may not have been the site of a Gaulish place of strength, but which still carries on its rocky height the tall fragment of a mediaeval castle, once of considerable extent I deter- mined to explore this hill in detail, and gave a whole day to it, with two guides, a village schoolmaster, who kindly offered his services, and a fine boy who was one of his best scholars. The first thing to be seen was a rocking-stone, a natural curiosity of sufficiently frequent occurrence to need little description here. This stone, commonly called ' La Pierre qui croule,' or by abbrevia- tion ' La pierre croule,' is nearly at the crest of the hill, in a large wood. Without the help of my guide I could not possibly have found it. As in the case of other rocking-stones, many attempts to remove it from its pivot have been made by stupid peasants, who have harnessed oxen to it with ropes ; but the stone, which weighs nearly thirty tons, has always resisted all such attempts to deprive it of its peculiar virtue and pre- eminence. When set in motion, its movement is so regular and sure that it cracks nuts without injuring the kernel ; and as the schoolmaster was provided with nuts for the occasion, and we had a boy with us willing to eat them, I had the opportunity of verifying this. The ' Pierre qui croule ' is close to a deep ravine ; and near it, on the summit of the hill, were many magnifi- An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 297 cent groups of rocks. Wherever a plough could be driven, even on the very summit, the land was culti- vated, and the cottages of the peasantry were scattered amongst the rocks in the little fields. The hill has an industry of its own, that of sabot-making, due to the neighborhood of the forest. I and my companions called at a cottage which was a workshop of sabotiers, and were very kindly received. As I was very thirsty, I begged the sabotiers to give me a drink of water, which one of them immediately did, in a perfectly clean but most extraordinary cup, a new sabot. I had some rum in a flask, and offered a drink to all present ; on which the four workmen and three visitors provided them- selves with sabots, and, having half filled them with water, passed the flask to flavor it. A little incident occurred then, which amused and delighted me by its quaintness and originality. It was proposed to trinquer, to klink,* and the seven sabots were solemnly struck against each other in token of good-fellowship. They were not the most elegant of cups, and they did not ring very musically when struck ; but, after drinking out of glasses all one's life, it may be an agreeable nov- elty, for once, to drink out of a wooden shoe.f * The old Shakspearian word. t What added to the fun was, that, in addition to the schoolmaster and boy, a friend of mine accompanied me, who is a dignitary of Autun (not mentioned in the text for that reason), and it was highly comic to see his dignity condescend to such a drinking-vessel. Some time after- wards, an old gentleman who had heard of this incident, but did not know the name of my companion, told the story, with the remark that ' no eccentricity could astonish one in an Englishman, but the wonder 298 The Unknown River. Uchon is the quaintest little hill-village that I ever met with in my travels. Perched on the very highest and steepest part of the hill, not safely on the summit, but on the slope just below it, the village commands a view of immense extent. There is not a place of equal height for sixty miles before it, and the eye ranges to the illimitable plain of the Loire. It is just the site for a feudal castle, and accordingly we find the last remnant of one, a tall fragment of wall, leaning, like the Tower of Pisa, over the narrow road, with a fine Gothic fireplace high up its side where the floor once was, and where the lady sat in her lofty chamber, and looked out on the world below. The most curious thing at Uchon is the church, which simply follows the slope of the ground, the floor in the interior being as steep as the hill-side on which the edifice is built. As the altar is at the higher end, the effect produced is really fine, and might be worth imitating artificially. e walk was enlivened by a continual conversation with the school-master, who was even more intelligent than his usually intelligent class. Amongst other inter- esting things, he mentioned several words which, so far as he had been able to ascertain, were peculiar to the place. Two of these were especially interesting, the verb douler, to suffer (Lat. dolere), and the substantive vialet, a foot-path (diminutive of via). The writer, in his descent of the mountain, was in was how Mr. Hamerton could find a Frenchman to share his freaks.' 'That Frenchman,' replied the dignitary above mentioned, who happened ,. seif i :L ,' W* w*' N *| iciH An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 299 that state of excitement peculiar to landscape-painters when they find themselves in a place full of good mate- rial for study. The foregrounds were excellent, espe- cially the magnificent old trees, and the groups of oxen and peasants in the steep little fields composed in a charmingly accidental way. The worst of it was, that, being anxious to resume my voyage, I had not time to etch upon the mountain ; and the next etching I did was at noon on the following day, when I had landed in a quiet place for lunch, and the canoe lay idly on the water. 3co The Unknown River. CHAPTER VII. THE river now flowed through very majestic sylvan scenery, equal in some places to the finest parts of the Thames, and curiously destitute of every thing that we in England are accustomed to consider especi- ally French in character. The banks were often rocky, and the foregrounds rich in heather and fern, with im- mense quantities of broom. Out of this rose gigantic oaks, that would have done credit to any park in Eng- land. Here is a sketch of the trunk of one which I found to be fifty feet in circumference. This noble tree was in every respect one of the most perfectly and equally developed I ever met with. Suf- ficiently isolated for its growth not to be in the least interfered with, and yet at the same time not too much exposed to any prevailing wind, its massive column rose straight upwards, and its enormous branches (themselves equal to considerable trees) spread equally in every direction. I have only given the trunk here because the attempt to represent the whole tree always failed to give any notion of its vast dimensions. Its crown of foliage, too perfect and too regular to be picturesque, was like a sylvan world erected on a pedestal. At some distance the tree did not strike one as being particularly big, probably on account of its beautiful proportions, An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 301 and the not inconsiderable size of its neighbors ; but once under the shade of the great branches, the specta- tor suddenly becomes aware of the weight and size of the enormous limbs, and then makes deductions concerning the strength of the trunk that can support them. The impression is completed by making the tour of the trunk. The whole tree is perfectly sound, and neither lightning nor human hand has ever lopped off one branch. An impression prevails in England that the French are indifferent to sylvan beauty, probably because wood is their principal fuel, and therefore an immense destruc- tion of young trees takes place yearly in the forests, whilst the peasants amputate the arms of the older ones. They often, however, preserve fine timber for ornament as we do ; and I learned without surprise that the fine oaks, of which the giant just described was the chief and king, enjoyed, in consequence of a decree of the owner of the soil, absolute immunity from the axe. Many trees in the same neighborhood, especially the old chestnuts, must count their age by centuries ; and the beeches that crest the Beuvray, though not finely developed, owing to the altitude of their situation, give every evidence of antiquity. The park of Monjeu, an estate belonging to the Talleyrand family, near Autun, is full of magnificent timber even yet, though much was destroyed by the imprudence of a man of business, who, in the owner's absence, sold it to a contractor. The haste with which this unfortunate contract was annulled, at a heavy loss, so soon as M. de Talleyrand became aware of what had been done, is a proof that he valued the timber 302 The Unknown River. for something more than its mere salableness. But the best evidence that the French are not indifferent to the beauty of their trees is, that scarcely a single town, however insignificant, is without its public avenues, in which the trees are encouraged to attain their fullest possible development. What English town, of equal population, has any thing comparable to the magnificent avenues that encircle Sens ? The navigation during this part of the voyage was more agreeable to the traveller himself than likely to prove interesting when narrated. Here and there the rocky bed of the stream produced narrow passes of a trifling degree of difficulty, and after them the river widened into long and tranquil reaches, over which drooped the heavy-leaved branches, dipping their ex- tremities in the deep water that reflected them. At length, when these were gilded by the refulgence of sunset, the sound of a mill-wheel became audible in the distance, and that pleasant rush of water that may indi- cate either a rapid or a weir. Then a village church came into sight, and finally a few roofs of picturesque mossy thatch, which turned out to be the whole village. The church was one of those simple old Romanesque edifices which abound in this part of France. The architects of to-day have broken with the Romanesque tradition, and, in order to get more imposing effects of height and size, have adopted a very plain kind of lancet-Gothic. But for a little village church I think nothing can be so well adapted as the, Romanesque, with its tiny apse and aisles, and its general air of snUg- An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 303 ness, completion, and solidity on a most unpretendingly small scale. A little Romanesque church never seems to need any thing more ; but a very plain, tall, lanky, modern, Gothic church, with its invariable gawky tower at the west end, looks hungry and uncomfortable, as if the architect had been pinched in his financial condi- tions, which he very generally is, and at the same time obliged to give as many square yards of wall as possible for the money.* The church of this little village of St. Nizier had been closed at the Revolution, and never opened since. The inside was full of straw, and my canine companion rolled his wet hide upon it in a manner which appeared to indicate that he would consider it very eligible bedding if we stayed all night there. Seeing no sign of any thing like an inn amongst the half-dozen cottages which constituted the whole burgh, I felt greatly inclined to accept the dog's suggestion ; but, although the church was an ample and sufficiently comfortable bedroom, one could not hope to find any dinner there, and I looked about the small cottages if haply there might dwell therein some man or woman skilled in the preparation of food. Now a certain observant villager, seeing me thus in quest of something which I had not found, came * One of these churches was erected lately in a certain commune, and when the plans had been made I asked the priest what sort of architecture had been determined upon ; but neither the priest, nor the maire, nor any other notable of the place, could tell me, the fact being that, though the plans had been presented for their august approval and honored therewith, they did not know the difference between one sort of architecture and another. 304 The Unknown River. with much courtesy and proffered me his services ; and it turned out that this villager was in a position to be particularly useful to a traveller, for he was at the same time innkeeper and mayor, a man capable at once of nourishing the stranger, and casting over him the aegis of political protection. He lived in a small cottage whose worst defect, in my view, was that of being alarm- ingly damp. It had been submerged in a great flood which had happened a few weeks before, and the walls were still full of moisture that oozed out from the plaster on every side. However, here I stayed two nights, and contended against the damp by means of a blazing fire and warm bedding. The place was rather amusing, foi the inn was at the same time the village shop, and my bed was in the shop itself ; so I had ample opportunities for studying the inhabitants of the place. As all the villagers went to bed about sunset they did not disturb my privacy in the evening ; but they began their shop- ping at such an uncommonly early hour in the morning, that it was rather a perplexing matter how and when to go through the business of dressing. The most amusing plan seemed to be to lie quietly in bed and watch them ; but this, though agreeable to a sltiggardly mind, did not especially advance my own projects. One thing struck me very much, and that was the total absence of any visible stock-in-trade ; yet notwithstanding this apparent deficiency every article in demand always came forth at once. The innkeeper was a man of some culture, and both could and did read, which is more than can be said of An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 305 most French villagers of his class. I found books in his house which interested me exceedingly, especially ' Charton's History of France,' which is carefully illus- trated from authentic memorials of preceding centuries,- not with fancy compositions invented by some artist of our own. My host was doing what he could to increase the free library in the village, already considerable enough to be a great treasury for a poor student. He took me to see it, and I certainly had not expected to find a library in a place where there was not a tiled roof, nor even a priest. Every one who has travelled (unless he be a down- right gourmand) will probably have remarked, that it is not the places where we have fared most luxuriously, which usually leave the most agreeable impression upon the mind. At the fine places we expect too much, I think, and are almost always either disappointed or within a very little of being so. I have heard a whole carriage full of men do nothing but grumble and swear as they drove home after a most extravagant Greenwich feast, and I have seen the same men quite happy and contented with a slice of beef and potatoes. In this latter frame of mind, which expects nothing, and is always satisfied with what fortune sends, did the present writer stay his two nights at St. Nizier ; and he left it with a pleasing impression, as he walked down, paddle in hand, towards the rocky shore, his canoe being borne with great ceremony behind him by the mayor him- self and one of the most active and influential mem- bers of the Common Council. Nevertheless, it may be 306 The Unknown River. acknowledged that the beautiful scenery lower down the river was not a whit the less attractive for the fact, that a renowned French cook kept an hotel somewhere in those more favored regions, an hotel where a man might not only eat, but dine. An Etcher s Voyage of Discovery. 307 CHAPTER VIII. AFTER St. Nizier the river became even more pic- turesque as it proceeded. Rushing swiftly and merrily between willowy islets it carried the traveller along with very little consideration for his private tastes and preferences. The only possible exercise of choice was at the moment of selecting the channel ; after that, retreat was simply out of the question, and all that could be done was to keep as clear of accident as might be. A river voyage has been compared over and over again to the course of human life, and no wonder, for the simile holds good in the minutest details, especially in such a voyage as this. How very important, for exam- ple, and at the same time how very difficult, it is to choose the right channel when several lie before you of which you are about equally ignorant ! If you have made a mistake, if you have chosen the wrong profession or the wrong wife, then there is nothing for it but to try to get along as safely and creditably as you can, and avoid an upset if possible. If the mistake has been made it cannot be unmade, but skill and courage may still often save a man from its most disagreeable consequences. There are lives which must be as easy as it would be to paddle down the broad Loire with the ordnance map in your pocket, which shows the safest way everywhere ; but these existences lose in interest what they gain in 308 The Unknown River. safety : and the most interesting life to live, like the best river to explore, is one in which the course is not known in detail beforehand, but constantly calls for the exercise of skill and judgment, and is even to some degree affected also by pure hazard. The tiny hamlets on the shores of the river were often very beautiful in their way, or, at least, very picturesque, and quite unspoiled by any modern perfections and reg- ularities of brickwork or of roof. Many of the best of these hamlets are of great antiquity. I know one where the cottages have not received any important addition, and have not been repaired in any other sense than that of simply replacing parts as they decayed, for the last four or five hundred years. And the life in them has followed the same unswerving tradition. The language, the religion, the customs, of the inhabitants remain al- most precisely what they were in the Middle Ages. The oxen are yoked to the char as they were centuries ago ; the char itself is a precise copy of that used by remote ancestors ; the ploughs and other implements of agri- culture are untouched by modern improvement. We know little of the lives that are led in these out-of-the- way cottages and hamlets, because it is so difficult for us to get rid of London and Paris, of literature and sci- ence, and modern thought and reflection ; so difficult to realize what a life must be which neither London nor Paris influences in any perceptible way whatever ; a life quite beyond the range of literature, inaccessible even to the cheapest of cheap newspapers, ignorant of every thing which makes us men of the nineteenth century An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 309 instead of the fifteenth or the tenth. This simple patri- archal existence will not, however, endure very much longer ; the light of modernism is breaking in upon it already here and there, through chinks in its ancient walls. It is difficult to find a place which is forty miles from a railway, and the railway brings its influences with it. A youth leaves the parental cottage for some distant place, and when he comes back gives his parents some rude notions of geography. The region through which flows ' the Unknown River ' is so near to the Alps that their white crests may be seen occasionally from the summits of these hills ; yet the peasants are not aware that the Alps exist. Once, however, a young man went to work at Grenoble, and he came back and told the people in his village that there were high mountains on which the snow never melted, even in the heats of sum- mer. This is the way a little knowledge comes to them ; it comes personally, by oral communication, not by books. A soldier comes back from Mexico, and tells them that Mexico is beyond the sea. I was greatly astonished at the little hamlet, here faithfully repre- sented, to hear a man of saddened aspect speak of Boston. ' What Boston ? ' I asked, wondering how he should know of any Boston unless there were such a place quite near to him in France. ' It is of Boston in the United States of America, that I am speaking, sir,' answered the man of the sad countenance, aston- ishing me more and more, for what French peasant knows that the United States exist, or the Atlantic Ocean either ? So then he told me his tale, and as it 310 The Unknown River. is both a pretty tale and a true one, I repeat it here for the reader. It is simple and short enough. He and his wife were very poor indeed, almost destitute, and so, though they loved each other much, she went out as a nurse to Paris. In Paris she entered the service of some rich Americans, who, when they returned to their own country, offered her terms so tempting that she crossed the Atlantic with them. Year after year she sent her earnings to her hus- band, and year after year he laid by the hard-won gold until there was enough of it to buy the cottage he lived in, and a little field or two ; enough to keep them in inde- pendence all their lives. He took me into the cottage, and showed me his wife's portrait (blessings on photog- raphy, that enables a poor man to have a portrait of the absent or the dead !) and kissed it tenderly in my pres- ence, and said how hard the long separation was, and how he looked for her return. As he said this the tears ran down his cheeks, and he showed me the bright good walnut furniture in the cottage, and the fields by the river side, and said that all this comfort was Jier doing, all this wealth her winning. She had learned to write on purpose that she might write to him, and month after month her kindly letters came, cheering him under the long trial of her absence. It was four years since she had left the cottage, and for these four lonely years the father had been like a widower, and the children had grown around him. And now the months went ever more and more slowly, as it seemed, when he wanted them to go faster, for this very autumn she was to sail An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 311 and come to enjoy the peace she had created. May the ship that brings her paddle prosperously across the wide Atlantic, and the good woman find her way in safety to her own cottage, and to the loyal heart that yearns and waits for her so wearily ! ' Fair stands her cottage in its place Where yon broad water sweetly, slowly glides ; It sees itself from thatch to base Dream in the sliding tides.' The character of the river became more and more strikingly picturesque as it advanced towards the Loire. Promontories of rock jutted into the stream, which took sharp curves under steep and richly wooded banks, and went to sleep in out-of-the-way corners, where it made wonderfully perfect and tranquil harbors for the canoe. Sometimes there would be a ruin on some height, which though on a small scale was not without grandeur, and afterwards the rich meadows and woods descended to the level of the water. Then came a long decline where the water rushed over a thousand dangerous crests of rock, and after that a pool so long and sleepy and quiet that it seemed as if the river had finally made up its mind not to flow any more, but to lie for ever in that place like a fish-pond. However, when it did awake and start again, it started with such freshness and energy that the interval of rest had evidently done it good, and it went gambolling amongst the rocks in a manner which, if not absolutely alarming to the canoist (one never confesses to feelings of serious alarm) did at least call for the best exercise of his skill. In this manner we came to one of the very loveliest 312 The Unknown River. places I ever saw in the course of all my wanderings, a place where a rich avenue came down to the water's edge. I left the canoe and walked up between the stately trees. When the long avenue came to an end I found myself in a noble demesne with a little lake, and an island in the middle of it. On that island once stood a noble feudal castle, where royal guests have been entertained; and the castle lasted/in all its strength, till the last century, when a great fire gutted it from roof to basement. It would have been a noble ruin, but the marquis, its proprietor, in sheer anger at the accident, utterly effaced every vestige of the stronghold of his ancestors ; so that literally not one stone remains upon another. An exquisite old gateway, of the loveliest Renaissance work, with sculpture as delicate as that of Melrose, has been re -erected at a little distance by the present owner, who inhabits a simple modern house. He intends to build a new castle more worthy of his an- cient name ; but an ancestral mansion, once destroyed, can never be replaced. Even an ancient avenue may be replaced in time : young trees will grow old, and they succeed each other naturally in generations ; but the real feudal castle is one of those things that neither man nor Nature restores when once it is destroyed and lost. We may build an imitation of it, but not the thing itself ; the spirit that created it has departed, never to return. There was something terribly childish in the anger of that old marquis ! The flames had destroyed the wood- work ; and so, in a pet, he finished what they could not achieve, and levelled all his towers ! An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 313 CHAPTER IX. A CERTAIN critic in the ' Athenaeum ' has lately accused the author of this little narrative * of 'intense egotism;' and not very long since somebody complained that he talked too much about his dog. Now, in the present chapter, if the story of the voyage is to be faithfully narrated, there ought to be a thrilling account of a perilous and extraordinary shipwreck ; but if the writer is neither to talk about himself, nor his dog, nor any thing that is his, how is he to tell the tale ? The truth is, that if you listen to critics you will never publish any thing. One critic dislikes the egotistic bits, another hates all landscape descriptions, another cannot endure any allusion to past history, another feels bored by any thing resembling philosophical reflection, a fifth scorns the repeater of an anecdote, and so on ; till, if you try to please them all, simple abstinence from writ- ing is the only thing possible for you. On the other hand, if you eliminate one of these elements in order to please one critic, the others immediately complain that it is wanting. It is a fact, that a very eminent publisher complained to me a little while since that there was not enough about myself in a MS. I sent him, and too much about Julius Caesar and the Gaulish System of fortifica- * These chapters were first published in the Portfolio; an Artistic Periodical. 314 The Unknown River. tion. Now it so happens that the present chapter might be dedicated plausibly enough to Julius Caesar, for he crossed the Arroux at this very place in his chase after the Swiss ; and no doubt it would be more modest, and more scholarly, to give a learned little dissertation on that event than an account of my own shipwreck. The only objection is, that most readers would skip the spec- ulations about Caesar. It was already rather late in the evening, and I was sketching by the river-side at Laboulaye, and smoking the pipe of consolation. The high-road passes not far from the river at that place, and my dog-friend, hearing the sound of wheels, went to see what sort of a carriage was passing by. Soon after the carriage stopped, and I heard the sort of bark which a dog gives when he meets an old friend, a bark of joyous congratulation. It was a fat doctor of my acquaintance, who was driving towards Toulon-sur-Arroux in the cool of the evening. It is his nature to be sociable, and he is a hater of solitude. He had recognized Tom at once, which is easy on account of the dog's uncommon size and beauty, and so knew that I could not be far off. Then he ad- mired the canoe. Would I take a passenger ? He would be delighted to go with me to Toulon if I would give him a berth. Could he swim ? Swim ! not in the least, but he would risk the adventure nevertheless. Well, but then he would most likely be drowned. He did not care if he were. Solitude is very pleasant, but students of landscape get rather too much of it perhaps, and at times one will An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 315 incur a risk for the pleasure of a genial companion. So it was settled that the doctor should send his servant on to Toulon with his carriage, and that we should see how the canoe would behave with both of us. Amongst my stores I had a waistcoat containing India-rubber air- bags, to be worn whilst descending particularly danger- ous rapids ; so I made the doctor put this waistcoat on, and inflated the air-bags, till he looked like a pouter pigeon. All being ready, we got into our places very steadily, sitting face to face ; and I took the paddle, making my passenger promise to turn neither to the right hand nor to the left. He quietly lit a cigar, and sat as coolly as if he had been on a safe ship and a deep and tranquil sea. The river here was a series of rapids and deep pools, where the swirling water was always trying to get you under the steep walls of rock. It was necessary in several places to cross a rapid to avoid being caught between great boulders, and we had very near shaves for it once or twice. The coolness of the doctor all this time was admirable to behold. He smoked his cigar qui- etly and sat with perfect equilibrium, so that I had no trouble with him of any kind except for his weight, which was considerable indeed. I praised his self-pos- session, and he answered that he had perfect confidence in my skill. I said I could not promise to get us through such a succession of dangers without an accident. ' In that case,' he replied, ' I am satisfied that you will do what can be done, and am content to take the consequences.' ' But, if we capsize, you may be drowned in spite of the 316 The Unknown River. waistcoat, the current is tremendous.' 'I'm not afraid of death,' he answered with unfeigned courage. He had hardly spoken the words, when, in attempting to cross the rapid to avoid an ugly piece of polished granite, about the shape and color of a whitened skull, I found it could not be done without uncommon effort, and broke the paddle in trying. Of course, after that, the upset was inevitable. The doctor did not stir, but smoked tranquilly still, not uttering a single word ; the canoe was carried against the granite, broadside on. She rose upon it a foot or two, then slipped to the right a little, the stern dipped, the water clasped me round the waist and filled the well, and she (slowly as it seemed) capsized. Just as she went over, but not before, I saw the doctor throw away his cigar. Once in the water I found myself hurried along irresistibly, but soon got my head clear, and hoped, by surface swimming, to escape contusions on the knees. In this way I got down the rapid quite safely, and was hurled at last into a deep pool, where, after the first plunge, I felt comparatively at ease. Finding it impossible to land on the rocky side, I allowed myself to float into an eddy, and was quietly car- ried out of the central current into a sort of tiny haven or bay, where I landed. It then became necessary to think about the doctor. He was not far behind. Like myself he had been car- ried down the rapid, and was now bobbing about in the great pool, thanks to the inflated waistcoat. But he had not the slightest notion about directing himself, and had got into a cercle vicieux, in a whirlpool that turned him An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 317 round and round. Seeing that he would probably be carried out of the pool into some other rapid, I thought it time to set about saving him, and called out that he was not to grasp me, but simply lay his hands on my shoulders. When I approached him in the water (rather cautiously at first), he behaved with the same coolness he had displayed in the canoe. He laid a hand on each shoulder so lightly that I hardly felt it, and I towed him easily into port. He began by expressing polite regrets ; but these were interrupted by the arrival of the canoe, bottom upwards, and many articles that had been in her. There was the box of etchings, which I swam for first, and many another thing. Luckily, I secured the canteen, and the doctor prescribed brandy for both of us. After that, we hauled the canoe under the copse, and left it. After walking about half an hour through a dense wood and over very rough and broken ground, we came to the river again, where it spread itself into a little lake, and at the lower end of the lake there was a weir and a mill. We looked miserable creatures, both of us. We had lost our hats, and the miller's wife took us' for beggars. But the doctor entered exactly as if the place belonged to him, and declared that we must have a change of raiment. Now, considering that we were constructed by Nature on totally opposite principles resembling each other as the Tower of London resem- bles the Clock-tower at Westminster it is obvious that the miller's clothes could not fit both of us. When \ve \vere dressed in this disguise, the doctor filled the 318 The Unknown River. miller's suit to overflowing, and looked like an overpacked carpet-bag, whereas the present writer had the appear- ance of a village school-boy who had suddenly outgrown his habiliments. At first the miller's wife viewed us with suspicion, but the doctor made himself so agreeable that the cloud disappeared from her countenance, and the light of it beamed upon us kindly. By this time it was dark, and our hostess took clean, coarse sheets out of her polished presses, and laid them on two of the four beds that were in the room. But the doctor wrote a few words on a slip of paper, and sent it to Toulon by a little boy, and in a while his carriage came up to the mill with the boy in it, and under cover of night we made our entry into the town, still in our borrowed clothes. The worthy innkeeper was just going to bed when we arrived, but the active little mar- mitons, in their white jackets and caps, set to work with alacrity at their tiny charcoal fires and shining copper- pans. And we sat down, in our queer costume, to the best of suppers, with wonderful appetites and joyous laughter. And so pleasantly ended our shipwreck ; but it might have ended not so pleasantly as that. One thing is certain, without the inflatable waistcoat the doctor's patients would have benefited by his advice no more. As this chapter has been written from the beginning in open defiance of criticism, I may as well sin to the very end, and speak of the faithful hound that followed me. He needed no inflatable waistcoat, but came danc- ing down the rapids like a cork, and never left us. He An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 319 is the most indefatigable of swimmers ; mile after mile did he follow the canoe, like some tame, affectionate seal. And is he not to be mentioned, he, the un- wearied follower, the brave defender, the faithful com- panion and friend ? No one dare approach the canoe when he is there ; and shall he not sup with us after our shipwreck, and be honorably mentioned here ? Ce qu'il y a de nteilleur dans Vhomme, c'est k chien. 320 The Unknown River. CHAPTER X. THIS little etching gives a tolerably good notion of the present condition of those fortifications which, in the middle ages, were the citadel of Toulon- sur-Arroux. The etching was made some time since ; had it been executed during the last few weeks, I should have run considerable risk of being ill-used as a Prus- sian spy. For it is not safe, in this month of Septem- ber, 1870, to draw so much as the wicket-gate of a cottage garden anywhere in France, whether you are a Frenchman or a foreigner ; and, if the latter, your chances are so much the worse. It had formed part of my plan to republish this series of papers with addi- tional etchings on a larger scale, and I began these additional plates in the month of July, intending to re- visit the scenery of the whole river, and select about a dozen of the finest subjects. I had done a few of these when the great spy-mania took possession of all French minds, at least in the lower classes, and there arose such a hubbub about my doings over an extent of country thirty miles in diameter, that it would have been abso- lute madness to let myself be seen with any thing of the nature of drawing materials about me. So the larger etchings were brought to an abrupt termination. The reader, who is by this time familiar with the slight and purely artistic little plates which have illustrated An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 321 these chapters, will be amused at the notion that they can be supposed to be of any imaginable utility to Von Moltke and the Crown Prince in their brilliant invasion of France ; but the peasantry in these parts have made up their ingenious minds on the subject, and, as to arguing with them, one might as well try to argue with a tribe of hostile savages. Like the country people in England, they confound drawing with surveying, and believe that artists are men employed to make maps. Who employs them ? that is the next question ; and the answer, of course, is, ' The King of Prussia.' * When I made these little plates at Toulon, I was enjoying one of the blessings and privileges of peace. He would be a bold man to-day, who would sit down and draw a citadel anywhere in France, even though it had been disman- tled for the last three hundred years. Here, again, is the bridge. If any one drew that bridge to-day, it would clearly be that the Prussians might pass over it. But in those happy times of peace the peasants felt rather flattered that a ' map ' should be made of their bridge ; and the more knowing ones sug- gested that, since the present writer made such good maps of bridges, he would do well to make one of the new railway-bridge at Etang, which was of iron, and perfectly straight, and had been pushed from shore to * In the good old times, before Bismarck was heard of, tra-vailler pmtr le roi de Prusse used to mean working without any probability of payment. In that sense, undoubtedly, the present writer, like most artists, has worked a good deal for the King of Prussia. But tell it not in Gath, repeat it not in the villages of Burgundy! a pleasantry of that kind, in these times, might cost the jester's life. 21 322 The Unknown River. shore all in a single piece, just as you would put a plank over a rivulet. Toulon is a very quaint little town, with a rather pic- turesque market-place on a hill-top, and the streets slop- ing down on all sides to the river and the surrounding country. On the top of the hill is the old citadel, of which one tower serves for the tower of the old church. The population of Toulon has diminished of late years, but the church, which used to be considered quite large enough for the place (a quaint old Norman-looking edifice), has not satisfied the ambition of the present incumbent, who saw big churches rising in all the neigh- boring villages, and thought he might as well have a big church too. So he raised a subscription and built one ; but a certain pillar of it was unfortunately erected im- mediately over an old well, and the covering of the well gave way, and the pillar went down into it, as a steel ramrod used to go down the barrel of a rifle before these breech-loading times. In lonely travel the great secret of avoiding ennui is to take an interest in the people as well as the scenery. Any one who is on the look-out for characters is always sure to meet with them. For instance, I found a doctor at Toulon who smoked without ceasing when he was awake, except when he laid down his pipe to take his knife and fork. He was an old man, in perfect health, and still in full professional practice. This last fact may seem incompatible with incessant smoking, and would, no doubt, be so in London ; but in a tiny town where everybody knew the doctor, he was indulged in his habit A n Etcher *s Voyage of Discovery. 323 by everybody. I spent a good many hours with him, and during the whole time he was doing one of two things, either smoking his pipe or filling it. He had read most of our best authors in the original, having taught himself English alone, with the help of nothing but books. He had a capital little English library at home, and had read every volume in it : all Scott, all Dickens, all Shakspeare, Byron, and many others. His pronunciation was, of course, as bad as our pro- nunciation of Latin ; and I felt, on hearing him read a little, as an old Roman would feel if he could go to Oxford and hear the men there deliver Latin orations. However, in this instance there was nothing to laugh at, because there was no pretension ; and the doctor knew our literature better than many Englishmen do, and understood it, and loved it. He had never heard an English word pronounced by a native before he hit upon me, so that I was a real trouvaille ; and he was extremely kind to me, and invited me to breakfast, point- ing out a charming harbor for the canoe at the end of his garden, as a temptation to future voyages. But the best character in Toulon was the maire of the place, Monsieur B., an artist of reputation in a much more useful line than any etcher. I fear that no plate of mine will ever give Monsieur B. half as much pleas- ure and satisfaction as \.\\Q plats of his cooking gave to me. He keeps the hdtel where I stayed, and he made me a little portable dejeuner to take with me every morn- ing when I set out to work. French cookery is always either exquisite or abominable, and his was of the former. 324 The Unknown River. Monsieur B. is a very celebrated man indeed. People write from a distance to order a dinner, and then travel to Toulon to eat it. Unfortunately, he is also celebrated as the most irascible man in the country ; which, con- sidering the generally explosive character of French tempers, is saying a good deal. As that man must be a wonderfully perfect Sabbatarian who can win fame in Scotland for his observance of the day of rest, so that Frenchman must be irascible indeed who can make him- self famous for his irritability. His powers of voluble invective surpassed all that I had ever heard in the way of scolding, and their effect was immensely enhanced by the most scientific modulation of tone. His loud voice disturbed me in the early morning as he scolded a boy-cook for having used a pound of first-rate butter, reserved especially for pastry, in cooking yesterday's dinner. Now the misapplication of the butter was commented upon in a restrained and subdued piano, with deep concentrated rage ; and now it passed with a rapid crescendo to forte and a terrible fortissimo, that made the very windows rattle. When a servant is to be reprimanded, the first observations are made in the utmost moderation, and if only Monsieur B. could stop there, he would deserve the credit of being a reasonable though vigilant master ; but the sound of his own voice exasperates him, and even when the culprit offers no reply, his fault is described to him over and over again, every time with increasing vehemence, till at length the floodgates of invective are opened wide, and the torrent rolls and roars. An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 325 Yet nothing can exceed Monsieur B.'s politeness to his guests. In the midst of his loudest furies, he will turn aside and speak to you with a serene countenance and gentle voice, whilst over the door of the dining-room is the inscription : ' Rien ne doit d^r anger V honndte homme qui dine' 326 The Unknown River. CHAPTER XL THE admirers of beautiful scenery are often some- what narrow, and even bigoted, in their admira- tion. It has been the fashion, for the last half-century, to enjoy mountain scenery very much, and to undertake long journeys in search of it ; but the proof that this love of Nature is rather the love of a certain kind of exhilara- tion, to be had best in mountainous districts, is that most people still remain perfectly indifferent to the beauty of the plains. They can understand that you have reason- able motives for going to Switzerland or the Tyrol, but what can you see to care for on the Loire ? ' Mere pop- lars, you know, and that sort of thing,' say the few who have visited the river that Turner loved. Therefore I feel a little apprehensive that the sympathy of many readers, which has gone with me whilst I had to speak of rocks and rapids, and heathery hills purple in the evening, may leave me now that I come to the broader waters and less romantic landscapes of the plain. And yet, when the last rapid had been passed, and the river spread into sleepy reaches, only occasionally interrupted by the gentle murmur of a safe and sandy shallow, over which the canoe glided like a boat on some languid stream ; when the sun at evening, instead of suddenly and prematurely disappearing behind the wooded heights, sank slowly in the immensity of the An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 327 clear heaven, till he set on the far horizon as he sets on the summer sea, there came upon the spirit of the voy- ager such a sense of boundless space and free breathing of balmy, illimitable air, as he never knew in the narrow gorges where dark hills and dense woods overshadowed him. Every scene of Nature has its own character, and its own charm. The plains have not the sublimities of the hills, nor the guarded seclusion of the shaded valleys, and we miss the weird shapes of the gray rocks that breast the stream where its flowing is strongest ; yet it is glorious to see all the blue sky in the daytime, and all the stars at night. And the river seems to gain a cer- tain dignity too, with its assurance of perfect peace. It has space for all its waters, and knows restraint no more. The graceful trees only adorn its borders, but do not arrest its course. If it winds in beautiful curves, it does so from deliberate preferences. It would be easy, as it seems, to go straight to its distant bourn, but to go indi- rectly is yet a little easier ; so it turns for its own pleas- ure, and visits here a village, and there a solitary farm, where the oxen stand knee-deep in the evening. The gradual growth of a river might be illustrated by drawings of its bridges. First you have the trunk of a single tree, rudely flattened on the upper side by strokes of a peasant's axe, and supported by two rude abutments of unhewn granite blocks. A little lower down the stream has become too wide for the single trunk to cross it ; so now you have two trees that meet on a rock in the middle. "" After that you come to the first serious 328 The Unknown River. attempt at construction : a wooden bridge for foot- passengers only, the cattle and cart traffic still passing through the water in a shallow ford a little below. Then comes the first stone bridge, a single arch, if the people are rich enough to afford a piece of accomplished engi- neering ; but, if the village masons have done the work, more usually two or three tiny arches, that a stray cow might possibly pass under, and which are pretty sure to be choked with water in a flood which will wash over the rude parapet. As the river widens it passes near some town or city, and then we find the stately stone bridge of careful masonry three arches, perhaps where the high-road enters the town. After that the number of arches increases, till at last you meet with those long and stately constructions, whose fine perspec- tive attracted Turner so much when he illustrated the rivers of France. The accompanying sketch, which represents the bridge of Gueugnon, gives evidence that the Unknown River has quite grown out of the romantic and tumultuous period of its existence, and become a sober stream capa- ble even of rendering service to navigation, if it were worth while to deepen a few shallows here and there. Indeed, from this bridge to the Loire the river is classed amongst those which, if not positively navigable, might easily be made so. Gueugnon is rather an industrial place, as may be guessed from the smoky chimneys in the etching, which belong to some ironworks, where they make wire, and sheet-iron for tinning. Here the traveller found an iron An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 329 canoe, flat-bottomed, and extremely even uncomfortably narrow. She must have been terribly crank ; but that is a defect the body accustoms itself to so easily, that, after a fortnight's practice, one sits in a crank boat as easily as in a stiff one. There is usually a certain amount of jealousy amongst boat-builders, and the me- chanic who had made the iron canoe spoke very dispar- agingly of mine, which I took with British coolness ; merely inquiring whether he had ever descended the rapids in his invention, which was entirely without a deck, and would have certainly gone to the bottom like a lump of lead after half a dozen waves had washed into it. The crowd around us seemed to consider that the best proof of the quality of my own vessel was her successful voyage down the wildest parts of the river. After that, the inimical mechanic became suddenly very amiable, and conducted me over the ironworks, explain- ing every process most politely. The reason for this amiability became evident at last ; for just as I left him, and thanked him, he proposed to build me an iron canoe which should be made exactly according to my own fancy, and have a deck, and every thing I had a mind to. In a word, he was a shipbuilder (on a very small scale) touting for orders. Had the present writer been a permanent resident at Gueugnon, it would have been rather a tempting proposal, as there is no employment in the world more congenial to his feelings than super- intending the construction of a boat. There is a great weir at Gueugnon, which offers a slope of most excellent masonry very like a great rail- 330 The Unknown River. way embankment, and when the water flows over it in one smooth sheet, it would be delightful to glide down it in a canoe. Unfortunately, however, there are rude stones at the bottom, which would give the adventurer a most unpleasant reception. I got amongst these stones in the dark, and had plenty of trouble with them, the last inconvenience of that kind in the course of the voyage. There was a comfortable inn at Gueugnon well, comfortable is perhaps hardly the word for any French inn of that class ; but these things go by comparison, and, after lodging in peasants' cottages amongst the hills, it seemed quite stately and luxurious to sit at dinner in the evening with two candles in tall candlesticks on the table, and an attentive waiter at one's elbow. The etching opposite shows the way in which I used to have to seek for a lodging when belated ; and it was always disagreeable to me, mainly on account of the necessary yet almost impossible explanations. How can you make a peasant understand your purposes in an artistic excursion of any kind ? How, especially, can you make him understand such purposes when complicated with the amusement of canoing ? On a. fine night it was positively more agreeable to sleep in the canoe, in the manner represented at the close of the chapter. Since then the author has invent- ed much more luxurious arrangements ; * but it was not * This alludes to a contrivance by which a hut and a punt are united in one construction. During the day, the punt, which is of wood, contains a second punt of tinned iron. The iron punt is divided into An Etc tier's Voyage of Discovery. 331 unpleasant to make a bed of rushes, and sleep soundly and softly, covered up to the chin with waterproofs to guard one from the dews of the night. Many a poor soldier in the present war, forced to lie on the bare ground, often stony and muddy, would consider these contrivances a luxury. It was something, too, before going to sleep, to look up at the moonlit clouds and the stars in the depths between them. several compartments, in the largest of which sits the canoist. All the other compartments are closed. Two of them are kept accessible by movable lids ; one of these is used for provisions and the other for clothing. That for provisions contains eight boxes fitted to each other carefully, in which may be kept the different requisites for a week's voyage, and a complete cooking apparatus. That for clothing con- tains a change of dry clothes, a hammock, &c., and bedding. When night comes the boat is drawn up on the shore, and the tin punt re- moved from the interior of the wooden one. Two light frames are then fixed upright in the wooden punt, and the tin one is easily lifted upon these frames. A double curtain is then fixed all round, and we have a hut with a wooden floor, a metallic roof, and canvas sides. In this hut the hammock is easily suspended. This contrivance has been completely realized in every detail, but I have never had an opportunity of using it, because, during the sum- mer of 1870 thfre was no water in the rivers, and since the beginning of the Prussian War it would be madness to show one's self in any such mysterious-looking invention, as it would set all the peasants per- fectly mad. In times of sanity anfl peace it seems to me that nothing could be better adapted for a tour such as that described in these pages. It is unpleasant to have to leave work undone in order to go five or six miles lower down a river to seek for a lodging. Many etch- ings were left unfinished tor that reason in the excursion here narrated, and have consequently been thrown aside. Many subjects remarkably suited for etching had also to be passed without illustration when the weather was not mild enough for a bivouac. 332 The Unknown River. CHAPTER XII. ON leaving Gueugnon, in the cool of a bright autumn evening, I saw a magnificent piece of black oak which had been disengaged from the bed of the river during the great inundation, and thrown upon the high shore. The whole trunk was complete, and measured seventy feet in length by forty in girth. I cut it in several places with a penknife and found it as black as ebony. How many centuries it had lain in the river's bed I know not, but, judging from the color and condi- tion of the wood, which was all black bog-oak of the finest quality, the tree must have lain beneath the flow- ing water as long as the black oak in the deepest bogs of Ireland. What noble chambers might have been furnished out of it ! what rich inlaying of parquets and wainscot would it not have supplied ! The landscape now began to wear an aspect of un- common sadness and desolation. The river divided itself into many straggling currents in a wide desert of sand and pebbles. A low, yellow precipice of the same material hid all the fields from my sight, as I sat low in the canoe on the level of the dreary gray water. How mournfully, too, the water seemed to murmur down its tortuous, divided channels ! For miles and miles there was nothing to be seen except a great chateau on the top of a bare slope, a long, ugly, melan- An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 333 choly building, enough to make one miserable to look at it, and think that any one could be condemned to live in it. When I came near this chateau, the twilight was already very far advanced, and I landed to eat a little supper. The land was bare of trees, a desolate expanse of uncultivated soil, where a herd grazed in the distance. Suddenly I wondered not to see Tom galloping towards me, as he generally had done at these improvised meal- times on the shore. I called and whistled for him long and loudly, but in vain, and during all that remained of the voyage I saw his affectionate face no more. This caused me some anxiety, and rather spoiled my pleasure, but I trusted that he would find his way home again. On my return I made inquiries, and found that he had first returned to the inn at Gueugnon, after losing me in the tortuous channels of the river, and stayed at the inn till dejeimer the next morning. After his meal he suddenly disappeared, and the innkeeper could give no further account of him. The same evening, however, he arrived at my house, a distance of fifty kilometres, where he rushed to his kennel at once, and fell down in it like lead, exhausted. The next day he was all right again. But it was a severe run, for no doubt he had made the fifty kilometres a hundred, and followed the river's brink in the thick underwood ; often, I dare say, swimming against the stream. I never knew such a persistent swimmer. He never had the sense to follow the canoe on the bank, but would always swim behind it, however cold the water or long the distance. It was 334 The Unknown River. this which had separated him from me. Being rather pressed for time in the late evening, I had pushed on too fast for Tom. The voyage had been a lonely one from the beginning, but it seemed doubly solitary after the loss of my com- panion. I had never been able to do with him in the canoe, he was much too large and heavy for that, but every time I landed, either to make an etching or eat a dinner and I never did either afloat Tom had always joined me, and so the long solitude had been made less difficult to endure. I humbly thank Divine Providence for having invented dogs, and I regard that man with wondering pity who can lead a dogless life. The dreary hours and the dreary landscape both came to an end at the same time. The moon rose, trees began to reappear on the river's brink, the scattered currents met together again, and there were vistas of prolonged perspective. I remember one especially, a scene of most perfect and extraordinary beauty. For a length of about a thousand fathoms the stream was straight as a cathedral aisle, and at about half the distance there was a transept on each side, that might have been designed by art. All along, the shores were shaded by the richest foliage. Boughs hung gracefully till they dipped their golden leaves in the glassy water. Tall poplars rose at intervals, like towers, to mark the far perspective. It was midnight. A pure semi-transparent mist filled -the still and silent air, and above in the clear heaven shone the round and brilliant moon. Not a sound was to be heard but the alternate dip of the paddle, which I used An Etcher^s Voyage of Discovery. 335 as gently as might be, for it seemed wrong to break so beautiful a mirror. At last I toiled no more, and the little boat glided on and on with its own motion, as if drawn by invisible spirits. During the whole voyage I had found nothing so exquisite as this, nor has any other impression fixed itself so perfectly in my memory. That scene was too ethereal to be etched ; but next day I drew this bridge, partly because it was the last bridge on the Unknown River, and partly as a memorial of the great and disastrous flood. In these terrible months of 1870, when a thousand bridges that spanned the fair rivers of France have been ruined to check the progress of an invader more to be dreaded than any inundation, men pray that the rains may fall and the waters rise till the streams are all torrents and the plains all inland seas. After this bridge, the scenery of the shore began to assume the large aspect that belongs to the stately Loire. A steep bank rose in the distance, clothed with vines and crowned with a group of buildings clustering round convent-towers. The current became swifter, as if the Unknown River were hastening to its end ; it curved rapidly once or twice, then suddenly behold an expanse of broad water before me, flowing westwards, and, before I had time quite perfectly to realize the change, the canoe was carried out upon the Loire. And so the voyage came to a successful end, and for the first time since first his waters flowed, the Unknown River has been navigated. Shall I conclude with a triumphant boast, and affirm that although Gaul and 336 The Unknown River. Roman have dwelt upon its shores, and reddened it in sanguinary conflict, its perfect exploration was reserved for the audacity of an Englishman ? Let me rather, more modestly, rejoice in sharing that capacity for tak- ing pleasure in the beauty of natural scenery which belongs to so many in our own time. It is this, much more than any particular satisfaction in the somewhat monotonous business of paddling, which constitutes the principal charm of all canoe voyages ; and it is this, more peculiarly and especially, which made privations light to me, and labor pleasant, and time swift, dur- ing the weeks I spent in, ' An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.' Results. 337 RESULTS. A FEW words concerning the especial purpose of this voyage etching from Nature may pos- sibly be of use to a few readers who may undertake etching tours. No art is more agreeable for direct work from Nature than etching is. The rapidity of it, and its freedom, are greatly in its favor, and so is its remarkable indepen- dence of damp and wet. Many of the plates in this series were immersed in the river, after being etched, when the artist was upset ; others 'were executed in bad weather, with the rain literally pouring over the copper in a manner which would have rendered any other kind of drawing quite impossible. In the course of the ex- cursion I did sixty plates, from which these are selected. It is better, I think, to be rather prolific in production, and select afterwards the plates which seem most suc- cessful, than to spend much time in correcting bad plates in the studio. My advice to etchers would be to spend time rather in doing many plates than in polishing and mending a few. This may be contrary to the feeling of some painters, who rightly, in their art, obey the maxims of Boileau ; but whatever value an etching may have depends mainly on the inspiration of the moment. If it were only possible to possess that inspiration always, the 33$ Results. art would be easier than it is. The only consolation I have to suggest for the many failures and the disap- pointing uncertainty which ever attend it, is that it leads us to work from Nature, and look at Nature, in the most essentially artistic spirit. ' Cambridge: Press of John Wilnon & Son. MR. HAMERTON'S WORKS. * The style of this writer is a truly admirable one, light and pictur- esque, without being shallow, and dealing with all subjects in a charming way. Whenever our readers see or hear of one of Mr. Hamerton' 1 s books, we advise them to read it.' 1 '' SPRINGFIELD REPUBLICAN. THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. Square i2mo. Price $2.00. " Not every day do we take hold of a book that we would fain have always near us, a book that we read only to want to read again and again, that is so vitalized with truth, so helpful in its relation to humanity, that we would almost sooner buy it for our friend than spare him our copy to read. Such a "book is 'The Intellectual Life,' by Philip Gilbert Hamerton, itself one of the rarest and noblest fruits of that life of which it treats. (Here we must beg the pardou of our younger readers, since what we have to say about this book is not for them, but for their parents, and older brothers and sisters, though we can have no better wish for them than that they may soon be wise and thoughtful enough to enjoy it too.) " Just how much this book would be worth to each individual reader it would be quite impos- sible to say, but we can hardly conceive of any human mind, born with the irresistible instincts toward the intellectual life, that would not find in it not only ample food for deep reflection, but also living waters of the sweetest consolation and encouragement " We wonder how many readers of this noble volume, under a sense of personal gratitude, have stopped to exclaim with its author, in a similar position, ' Now the only Croesus that I envy is he who is reading a better book than this.' " From the Children's Friend. THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. New Edition, Revised, with Notes and an Introduction. " Fortunate is he who at an early age knows what art is." GOETHE. Square I2mo. Price $2.00. " The whole volume is adapted to give a wholesome stimulus to the taste for art, and to Elace it in an intelligent and wise direction. With a knowledge of the principles, which it sets >rth in a style of peculiar fascination, the reader is prepared to enjoy the wonders of ancient and modern art, with a fresh sense ot their beauty, and a critical recognition of the sources of their power." New York Tribune " Beginning with a recommendation to capable artists to write on art, and illustrating his arguments on this point by some forcible illustrations, Mr. Hamerton proceeds to discuss the different styles of painting, defines the place of landscape among the fine arts, treats of the telatipn between photography and paintme, makes some curious comparisons between word- painting and color-painting, speaks of the painter in his relation to society, and finally offers some practical and valuable suggestions concerning picture-buying and the choice of furniture of artistic patterns for our houses. All these subdivisions of the general subject are touched airily and pleasantly, but not flippantly, and the book is delightful from beginning to end." New York Commercial Advertiser. MR. HAMERTON'S WORKS. A PAINTER'S CAMP. A new edition, in i vol. 161110 Price $1.50. Square 1 2mo. Price $2.00. " We are not addicted to enthusiasm, but the little work before us is really so full of Rood points that we grow so admiring as to appear almost fulsome in its praise. ... It has been many a day since we have been called upon to review a work which gave us such reaJ pleas- ure " Philadelphia Evening Telegraph. " If any reader whose eye chances to meet this article has read ' The Painter's Camp,' by Mr. Philip Gilbert Hamerton, he will need but little siimulus to feel assured that the same author's work, entitled 'Thoughts about Art,' is worth his attention. The former, I confess, was so unique that no author should be expected to repeat the sensation produced by it. Like the ' Adventures of RobinsOn Crusoe,' or the ' Swiss Family Robinson,' it brought to maturer minds, as those do to all, the flavor of breezy out of-door experiences, an aroma of poetry and adventure combined It was full of art, and art-discussions too; and yet it needed no rare technical knowledge to understand and enjoy it." Joel Benton. "They ('A Painter's Camp' and 'Thoughts about Art') are the most useful books that could be placed in the hands of the American art public. If we were asked where the most intelligent, the most trustworthy, the most practical, and the most interesting exposition of modern art and cognate subjects is to be found, we should point to Hamerton's writings." The Atlantic Monthly. THE UNKNOWN RIVER: An Etcher's Voyage of Discov- cry. With an original Preface for the American edition, and thirty-seven plates etched by the author. One elegant 8vo volume, bound in cloth, extra, gilt, and gilt edges. Price $6.00. (A cheaper edition now ready.) " Wordsworth might like to come back to earth for a summer, and voyage with Philip Gilbert Harp.'.rton down some 'Unknown River" ! If this supposition seem extravagant to any man, let him buy and read 'The Unknown River, an Etcher's Voyage of Discovery,' by P. G. Hamerton. It is not easy to write soberly about this book while fresh from its presence. The subtle charm of the very title is indescribable ; it lays hold in the outset on the deepest romance in every heart ; it is the very voyage we are all yearning for. When, later on, we are told that this 'Unknown River* is the Arroux, in the eastern highlands of France, that it empties into the Loire, and has on its shores ancient towns of historic interest, we do not quite believe it. Mr. Hamerton has flung a stronger spell by his first word than he knew. " It is not too much to say that this book is artistically perfect, perfectly artistic, and a poem from beginning to end ; the phrasing of its story is as exquisite as the etching of its pictures ; each heightens the other; each corroborates the other ; and both together blend in harmonious and beautiful witness to what must have been one of the most delicious journeys ever made by a solitary traveller. The word solitary, however, has no meaning when applied to Hamerton, poet, painter, adventurous man, all in one, and with a heart for a dog ! There is no empty or barren spot on earth for such as he. The book cannot be analyzed nor described in any way which will give strangers to it any idea of its beauty." Scribner\s Monthly. CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. With Twenty Illustrations by J. VEYRASSAT and KARL BODMER. Square i2mo. Price $2.00. "This is a choice book. No trainer of animals, no whipper-in of a kennel, no master of fox-hounds, no equine parson, could have written this book. Only such a man as Hamerton could have written it, who, by virtue of his great love of art, has been a quick and keen observer of nature, who has lived with and loved animal nature, and made friends and com- panions of the dog and horse and bird. And of such, how few there are! W<: like to amuse ourselves for an idle moment with any live thing that has grace and color and strength. We like to show our wealth in fine equipages ; to be followed by a fond dog at our heel, to hunt foxes and bag birds, but \\e like all this merely in the way of ostentation or personal pleasure. But as for caring really for animals, so as to study their happiness, to make them, knowing us, love us, so as to adapt ourselves to themselves, is quite another thing. Mr. Hamerton has observed to much purpose, for he has a curious sympathy with the ' painful mystery of brute MR. HAMERTON'S WORKS. creation,' as Dr. Arnold called it. He recognizes the beauty and the burden ot that life which is bounded by so fine and sensitive a mortality. He finds in the uses ot the domestic animal something supplementary to his own manhood, and which develops both the head and heart of the good master. We have been often reminded of Montaigne in reading this book, as we always associate him with his cat. We never shall hear the name of Hamerton without think- inc of that little polished skull of the terrier which lor so many years Hamerton has preserved in love of the creatures whom God has made but as little lower than man, as He has made man but little lower than the angels." Boston Courier. THE SYLVAN YEAR. Leaves from the Note-Book of RAOUL DUBOIS. With Twenty Etchings by the Author and other Artists. 8vo. Cloth, gilt edges. Price 5.50. (A cheaper edition now ready.) " With every successive book by Philip Gilbert Hamerton, his American audience becomes larger and more appreciative. His 'Intellectual Life' has been one of the best read and most often quoted books of the last two years, and the quiet charm of his style has won its way to a more cordial appreciation than almost any latter-day English essayist has received among us. ... The book comprises the account of this year of daily wanderings in search of beauty. To artists it will be invaluable, for it will educate them in the habit of minute obser- vation. No writer so detects the changing expressions, as well as the features, of Mother Nature, as does Hamerton. He knows the color of every twig and leaf, every bit of moss or lichen, the formation of every rock. No light or shade on the face of the day escapes his anointed vision, he sees the soul of things as well as the surface ; and he has the rare art to inspire others for the time being with the gift of his own clairvoyance." L. C. M. in the N. Y. Tribune. "'The Sylvan Year' is one of Mr. Hamerton's best books; and Mr. Hamerton, at his best, is one of the most charming modern writers. ... A record rich in intelligent observation of animals, trees, and all the forest-world ; rich, too, in the literary beauty, the artistic touches, and the sentiment that mark Mr. Hamerton's style." From the Boston Daily Advertiser. " Among the holiday books there is none more charming than Hamerton's ' Sylvan Year.' It attracts at first by its outside, which is uncommonly pretty, and its contents win increasing interest. Its author lived a year in the Val Sainte Veronique, watching the forest through all its changes, and adding to his already large stock of woods lore. He has enough scientific knowl- edge, but, in talking of nature, he adds to that the observation of the artist, and the sentiment of the poet and the man of true feeling. Then he knows the literature of the woods, the flowers, and the seasons ; and his pages are enriched by quotations from Theocritus, Virgil, Chaucer, and modern poets. The style is very quiet, one reads it with a slow sort of delight that nothing else gives, and the enjoyment of it grows with every new book that the author writes. These out-door books of Mr. Hamerton are more attractive than his graver works which treat of the Intellectual Life and of Art, although those are admirable in their way. But 'The Unknown River,' k Chapters on Animals,' and 'The Sylvan Year,' have a simpli city, a delicacy, a depth of feeling, and a wealth of literary beauty that are very rarely foun. united. A new volume, just come, ' Around my House,' probably belongs to the same class, and promises more days of pleasure in the reading." Boston Correspondent of the Worcester Spy. ETCHING AND ETCHERS. Illustrated with Etchings printed in Paris under the supervision of Mr. HAMERTON. A new, revised, and enlarged edition. 8vo. Cloth, gilt and black. Price 97.50. " We are not in the habit of overpraising publishers or authors, but we have no hesitation in saying that Mr. Hamerton's 'Etching and Etchers' will henceforth deserve to have, and certainly obtain a place, in every gentleman's library in the country who can afford to buy the book. The subject is treated so conscientiously, theie is such a maturity and repose of thought and exposition, and in every page, whether you agree or disagree, so much to think over with luxurious reflection, besides which the illustrations are so valuable and delicately chosen for the object in view, that the book rather resembles the mediaeval labors of life-long devotion, than a nineteenth-century forty-steam-power of ephemeral production. In his ' Painter's MR. HAMERTON'S WORKS. Camp, 1 a small j*em of composition, Mr. Hamerton says somewhere, that his notirn of art- study is not rapid travelling, but crawling through a country like a snail with your house on your back. He could not have given a more beautiful illustration of his ov/n ideal, or of the truth of his theory applied to authorship." The Spectator' ROUND MY HOUSE: Notes of Rural Life in France in Peace and War. Square I2mo. Price $2.00. (Just ready. ) " We know of no book worthy to be compared -with this in point of judiciousness, accuracy, and fulness of information about the character and life of provincial France. It is sprightly and full of anecdote, and written with an easy grace that is very charm- ing." Tlie Literary World. THE SYLVAN YEAR AND THE UNKNOWN RIVER, in one volume. Uniform with the "Intellectual Life," &c., and with a fine steel-engraved portrait of the Author. Price $2.00. HARRY BLOUNT. Passages in a Boy's Life on Land and Sea. i6mo. Price Ji. 50. " Mr. Himerton is the most versatile of writers. He has written 'The Intellectual Life, 'A Painter's Camp,' and a book about animals, edits the ' Portfolio,' and has now published a boy's book of adventure, which is among the best of its kind. There is nothing strained or impossible about Harry Blount's adventures, yet the volume is full of incident ; the characters are naturally drawn, and the slight artistic touches which come in here and there show that the author has not forgotten his main avocation. Mr. Hamerton fairly contradicts the popular proverb about ' Jack of all Trades.' and shows that a man may excel in two arts at the same time. We heartily commend his book to boys and to their mothers, as a healthy and high-toned story." Godey* s Lady's Book- " It is a book that a man can read with pleasure, and one that a boy will not put aside after beginning until he has reached the conclusion. It is full of quiet touches of humor, and the characters have an individuality that leave an impression not easily effaced. . . . Altogether the story is one of the best of its class since ' Tom Brown's School-days at Rugby,' and Mr. Hamerton is to be congratulated on his success in a new field, for which his experience on land and sea has amply prepared him." Boston Courier. By Mrs. Eugenie Hamerton. THE MIRROR OF TRUTH, and other Marvellous Histo- ries. With Eight Illustrations by C. O. MURRAY. i6mo. Cloth, gilt and black lettered. Price $2.00. " In his graceful preface to his wife's stories, Mr. Hamerton says that in listening to these tales, which were told to the children, he invariably found that there was something for him as well as for them. This may have come from the fact that Mrs. Hamerton's ' marvellous stories ' are not mere tales of giants and fairies and wonders, but that lurking in odd nooks and corners she has stowed away an under-current of satire, or has suggested something which gives opportunity for real thought and reflection. She does this very artfully, not oppressively and laboriously, as some professedly moral teachers would do. ... Mrs. Hamerton writes with something of the same grace which we are wont to find in her husband's more serious books. What a happy, almost idyllic couple they must be, if all that we have heard and can imagine about them is true ! " The Liberal Christian. For sale by all booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, on receipt of adver- tised price, by ROBERTS BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, Boston. University of California Y SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 d helow Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. Form L-9-15m-3, 001 182774 8