^ 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.
 
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 THE SYLVAN" YEAR.
 
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 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 
 
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 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 ,</ 
 and colors could not be more vividly illustrated. In the ^f^ 
 artistic sense the rape is devoid of color, though it is of ' * 
 the most glaring yellow, and a patch of it on a hillside 
 flares over leagues of landscape. Not only ought artists 
 to avoid painting crudities of this kind, but they ought 
 even to avoid looking at them. It is enough to paralyze 
 any delicate color-faculty to live near a flowering rape- 
 field, at least so long as the abomination lasts. The 
 balance of color in the entire landscape is destroyed by 
 it, and the eye is rendered insensible to modulation. 
 There are times when even wild plants may be a danger
 
 ii4 April The Blackthorn. 
 
 to the general harmony, but a belt of azure from the 
 gentians on an Alp, or a large patch of rather crudely 
 purple heather on the flank of a Scottish mountain, has 
 always the great advantage of irregularity about its edges, 
 which also lose themselves with more or less of grada- 
 tion in the vegetation round about. The rape-field, on 
 the other hand, is as obtrusive from the mathematical 
 definition of its outline as from its insupportable intensity 
 of hue. 
 
 The spring of the year, like the adolescence of the 
 mind, is especially the time of crudities. May I venture 
 to observe that even the blackthorn, which the poets 
 have sung with affection, is at this time rather a crudity 
 also, and not very much better, from the colorist's point 
 of view, than snow on the hedges in winter ? Of course, 
 if you go close up to the flowers, and look at them as a 
 lady does at her bouquet, you will perceive the yellow of 
 anthers and green of calyx, but these have little effect at 
 a distance, and we feel the need of leaves. It is curious 
 how far a flowering shrub can make us feel its impor- 
 tance, for good or evil, in the landscape. A sirfgle black- 
 thorn can chill the edge of a forest, and this is the easier 
 that the forest, being as yet leafless, has a wintry look in 
 contradiction to the genial weather. A forest of oak is 
 even more leafless now than in the month of January. 
 The smaller oaks will retain the mass of their dead 
 leaves, but the larger ones, being more exposed to the 
 wind, will have lost the greater part of theirs, leaving a 
 few only in the light sprays, which catch the sunshine 
 as specks of ruddy gold.
 
 April The Cherry-tree. 115 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Cherry-tree Aspen Poplar Stem of the Birch Birch trunks in Sun- 
 shine Young Beech Birch against the heavenly Azure Young 
 leaves of Horse-chestnut Their apparent newness Dried old 
 Leaves Old Scales Their ornamental Utility Dry Oak Foliage 
 Last Year's Leaves of Bramble Their rich Coloring Principle 
 of Coloring in good Glass and Oil Painting Deathly Opacity Vig- 
 orous advance of many Plants Nettles Great Mullein Arum 
 Meadow Bittercress Its Constellations Marsh Marigold Creep- 
 ing Bugle Small-flowered Calamint Broom in Flower Broom 
 Yellow Prudence in Art Criticism of Nature Fanatical Oppo- 
 sition to it Artistic and Natural Color The Materials of Art in 
 Nature. 
 
 A MONGST the wild forest-trees in the Val Ste. 
 J~\. Veronique one of the finest is the cherry-tree, 
 which is believed to be indigenous here, and as the soil 
 and climate are most favorable to it, grows to such a 
 size that it may almost, in that respect, claim equality 
 with the oak and the beech. At the end of the first 
 week in April the wild cherry-trees are all in full bloom. 
 At a distance of fifty yards the flowers so entirely 
 eclipse the leaves that the latter are invisible, but the 
 young leaves take their place beautifully when you are 
 close at hand, not only for their form (the cherry-leaf 
 is one of the most beautiful of all leaves for a good 
 designer), but for their color also, which is not crude, 
 as young leafage generally is, but enriched with a red- 
 dish brown. There is one huge old cherry-tree just out- 
 side the wood, with plenty of space for growth, and a
 
 n6 April Aspen Poplar. 
 
 quite congenial situation. It is a great world of flowers, 
 and the bees are constantly going and coming between 
 it and their hives. Not only what are popularly called 
 flowers may produce an effect, but even the less generally 
 admired catkins may under certain circumstances acquire 
 pictorial importance.^One of the finest sights at the 
 -beginning of April is a tall aspen poplar in full morning 
 :: sunshine, with its thousands of pendent catkins, which 
 at a little distance take a rich dark crimson tint, and 
 strikingly contrast with the light gray stem and branches. 
 But the stem of the aspen is not to be compared with 
 that of the silvery birch, which is one of the master- 
 pieces of Nature./' Every thing has been done to heighten 
 its unrivalled brilliance. The horizontal peeling of the 
 bark, making dark rings at irregular distances, the brown 
 spots, the dark color of the small twigs, the rough text- 
 ure near the ground, and the exquisite silky smoothness 
 of the tight white bands above, offer exactly that variety 
 of contrast which makes us feel a rare quality like that 
 smooth whiteness as strongly as we are capable of feeling 
 it. And amongst the common effects to be seen in all 
 northern countries, one of the most brilliant is the oppo- 
 sition of birch trunks in sunshine against the deep blue 
 or purple of a mountain distance in shadow. At all 
 seasons of the year the beauty of the birch is attractive, 
 and peculiarly its own! The young beech may remind 
 you of it occasionally under strong effects of light, and 
 is also very graceful, but we have no tree that rivals the 
 birch in its own qualities of color and form, still less 
 in that air and bearing which are so much more difficult
 
 April Young Leaves of Horse-chestnut. 1 1 7 
 
 to describe. In winter you see the full delicacy of the 
 sprays that the lightest fofriage hides, and in early spring 
 this tree clothes itself, next after the willow, with tiny 
 triangular leaves, inexpressibly light in the mass, so that 
 from a distance they have the effect of a green mist 
 rather than any thing more material. When the tree is 
 isolated sufficiently to come against the sky, you may 
 see one of the prettiest sights in Nature, the pure deep 
 azure of heaven with the silvery white and fresh green of 
 the birch in opposition. And yet it is not a crude green, 
 for there is a great deal of warm red in it, which gives 
 one of those precious tertiaries that all true colorists 
 value. 
 
 No young leaves are more interesting than those of 
 the horse-chestnut, which every lover of Nature who 
 passes the spring in the country must have watched 
 daily in April, if the tree happened to grow within a 
 little distance of his residence. When they get fairly 
 out of the cotton, in which they have been so snugly 
 protected against the severities of the early season, they 
 first hang straight down in the most languid manner, 
 and it is only after many days that they begin to spread 
 themselves in the air like the fingers of an extended 
 hand. No leaf but that of the beech looks newer than 
 the young horse-chestnut. There is a great difference 
 amongst trees in this respect, for some young leaves 
 have a very old look indeed, and might be taken by a 
 half -observant person for remnants of the later year ; 
 but when the horse-chestnut leaf is young, it has that 
 air of newness which is seen in human work that has
 
 n8 April Dried Old Leaves. 
 
 just left the hands of the workman. The impression is 
 much increased by the quantities of leaves from the pre- 
 ceding year, which will generally be found on the earth 
 beneath, for the horse-chestnut leaf is very durable, and 
 retains its shape and substance long after it is dead and 
 sapless. Painters are not generally very partial to this 
 tree, because the size of the leaf and the definition of 
 its forms require more accurate drawing than can be 
 easily made compatible with the mystery that landscape- 
 painters desire ; but from the opening of the leaf -bud 
 to the ripening of the fruit the end of a horse-chestnut 
 twig presents a constant succession of interesting models 
 for a designer of ornaments. Even such a detail as the 
 position of the old scales, which remain after the accom- 
 plishment of their especial protective function, is of im- 
 portance from the ornamental point of view, as one 
 soon discovers after carefully drawing the extremity of 
 a twig in full detail, when the leaflets are still hanging 
 together vertically, or just gaining strength enough to 
 begin to spread themselves, and the scales decorate the 
 point from which all this new vegetation has issued, 
 making the separation between the old woody twig and 
 the fresh green leaf-stalks of the present year. 
 $ How long the coloring of foregrounds is affected by 
 the remains of the previous season ! and what aston- 
 ishing contrasts are produced by this juxtaposition of 
 death and birth ! All along the sides of the April 
 woods you may see the red of the dry oak foliage 
 close to the fresh green of the willow and the white of 
 the blackthorn, three colors as distinct as possible ;
 
 April Leaves of Bramble. 1 1 9 
 
 whilst in the nearest foregrounds the last year's leaves 
 of the bramble are still visibly an element in the land- 
 scape, with their stains of red and passages of russet and 
 dark green. Sometimes you may get a few such leaves 
 between you and the morning sunshine, and then, if the 
 coloring of them happen to be favorable, you will see 
 that which in all wild Nature comes nearest to the effect 
 of a painted window. The middle of the leaflet will 
 probably still retain some of the original green coloring 
 matter (being nearest to the midrib from which the sap 
 was supplied), and its edges will be quite brown and 
 dead ; but between these there will be gradations from 
 light crimson to deep purple, precisely of that quality 
 which Jean Cousin and his school successfully tried for 
 in their glass-painting that is, color intensified to the 
 utmost by light unequally transmitted. The same prin- 
 ciple is well known also to oil-painters, and can be (by 
 means of glazing) to a great extent acted upon in their 
 art, though not so strikingly as in glass-painting. When 
 this principle is absolutely neglected or ignored, as it is 
 in vulgar stained glass, in which a flat pane of blue is 
 put by the side of other flat little panes of yellow or red, 
 the color is never really luminous, nor can it be.*^- 
 
 Besides the jewels of transparence, last ye'ar has 
 bequeathed to us much deathly opacity, which lingers 
 
 * It does not follow, however, that to obtain luminous quality 
 in color each piece of glass should necessarily have a gradation 
 painted upon it. Luminous quality may also be obtained by the 
 graduated arrangement of small fragments, which, taken separately, 
 had no gradation; in a word, by glass arranged on the principle of 
 mosaic.
 
 1 20 April Nettles. 
 
 only too long in the spring landscape. There are great 
 quantities of dead light-brown rushes, which for my part 
 I am weary of, and should like to see hidden away 
 under fresher and greener growths. It is consoling that 
 so many plants come vigorously forward at this season. 
 The enormous roots of the bryony, hidden away in so 
 many places where no one suspects their existence, 
 begin to prove their vigor by sending forth a few green 
 leaves, which give promise of graceful festoons. Nettles 
 are growing in great abundance under the hedges, which 
 they border with a fresh and beautiful green ; and many 
 wild places are adorned with the richer and better 
 coloring of the ground ivy, which the peasants in 
 France, I know not wherefore, have chosen to dedicate 
 to St. John. The great mullein sprouts handsomely in 
 April, with his fine large cottony leaves, and it is a 
 pleasure to meet with him again when we remember 
 his summer grandeur. Contemporary with the great 
 mullein, the barbed leaves of the arum, smooth and 
 glistening, with their irregula'r spots of dark, grow 
 quickly in their shady retreats. By the streams no 
 April-flowering plant is prettier than the meadow bitter- 
 cress,* and I know some places where it clusters in 
 splendid constellations that bend over the water, and 
 are reflected on it 
 
 ' Like stars on the sea 
 When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.' 
 
 The flowers being of the purest possible white, or else 
 just delicately tinted with pinkish purple, show strongly 
 in the evening when the first approaches of twilight have
 
 April Broom in Flower. 121 
 
 darkened the damp recesses behind them. You will 
 find, too, in similar situations, the marsh marigold, often 
 in the most splendid abundance, making a rich yellow 
 foreground color, and those more modest little plants, 
 the creeping bugle and the small-flowered calamint, both 
 which are good and agreeable in hue, and some places 
 are known to me where the small purple flowers of the 
 calamint are sufficiently powerful from their quantity 
 to deserve the attention of a painter. 
 
 I suppose that no prudent artist would undertake to 
 paint a field of broom in full flower, as we see them 
 towards the end of April. The broom is certainly less 
 objectionable than a field of flowering rape, for the 
 yellow is more supportable and not so unmixed with 
 green ; besides, the green is much richer and darker 
 than that of the rape plant, even 'if the latter were 
 visible ; but the broom yellow is too powerful to be 
 acceptable in landscape-painting unless in very moderate 
 quantity. It is conceivable that an artist might admit a 
 broom amongst other plants in his foreground, but only 
 with the greatest care and moderation as to the painting 
 of its flowers ; and in saying this I do not wish to main- 
 tain the authority of the brown masters, but that of 
 sober and right judgment, which in art, as in other 
 matters, must always predominate in the end. When- 
 ever an artist admits any glaring and positive color 
 in quantity relatively great, he incurs the risk of not 
 being able to harmonize it with the quieter hues of 
 which the rest of his picture is composed ; and I may 
 add that Nature herself, from the artistic point of view,
 
 122 April Criticism of Nature. 
 
 does not always succeed in doing so. I have met with 
 people who consider any criticism of Nature as a sort 
 of heresy, who, having adopted the theory that Nature 
 is infallible, will not listen to any reasoning on the sub- 
 ject, and tell you that a field of cabbages is a finer sight 
 than a gallery of masterpieces in painting ; but if such 
 persons could understand what art is they would aban- 
 don this fanaticism. All who have practised art are 
 well aware that natural composition, though a suggestion 
 of artistic composition, is never quite good of itself, and 
 has always to be altered by the artist ; and why should 
 Nature be more artistic in her color ? I believe the 
 truth to be, that artistic color is as far removed from 
 natural color as artistic composition is from natural 
 composition, and that it will be found on investigation 
 impossible to produce what artists call fine color by 
 the simple copyism of Nature. It has been a vulgar! 
 error of the uneducated, whether practically painters or \ 
 not, to imagine that things in Nature were suitable for 
 painting which in fact were altogether outside its prov- j 
 ince, to believe that they had only to paint whatever 
 struck their fancy out-of-doors, and that toute verite 1 was I 
 bonne a dire. There could not be a greater mistake. Itjs/ 
 true that Art finds her materials in nature, but she chooses 
 them as we choose mushrooms for the table, and if she 
 were not careful in her selection it would be at her own 
 great peril. And even when the material has been judi- 
 ciously chosen it is only raw material still, but the finished 
 work of art is material that has been both modified and re- 
 organized by human taste, intelligence, and invention.
 
 May Early Rising. 123 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Early Rising Not a virtue, but a Compensation Chaucer's Early Ris- 
 ing His passionate Love of Daisies Chaucer's way of observing 
 Nature How Etymology may be Poetical. 
 
 IF early rising were so much of a virtue as its practi- 
 tioners generally assume, then indeed, in this respect 
 at least, should we be eminently virtuous in the Val Ste. 
 Veronique. We are all of us up and stirring before the 
 dawn, not for any particularly laudable passion for an 
 ideally perfect life, but in the case of the poor peasants 
 and servants who surround us from immemorial tradi- 
 tion simply, and the daily necessities of existence ; and 
 in my own case from taste and choice, and the love of a 
 kind of pleasure which is blameless, and no more. In- 
 deed, I think that early rising is not so much a virtue 
 in people who live in the country as one of the many 
 pleasant compensations of their existence. They can- 
 not go to the opera in the evening, and they miss a 
 hundred delights and advantages of great cities ; but 
 they have certain pleasures of their own which it is wise 
 to enjoy to the utmost, and early rising is one of them. 
 We had kept late hours at Paris, as every one must 
 who lives with and in the life of a great capital; but 
 here in the Val Ste. Veronique we followed the life of 
 Nature.
 
 124 May Chaucer. 
 
 Of all early risers that ever witnessed the beautiful 
 Aurora, surely old Chaucer was the happiest, and the 
 most keenly conscious of his happiness. What seemed 
 to him sweetest and purest of pleasant hours was that 
 cool, calm hour of the early morning, at the beginning 
 of the dawn, when having put on his 'gear and his 
 array' he walked forth into the fields and woods with 
 VvA^/fe**^^ 16811 cheerfulness in all his well-tuned feelings. 
 y^f \i It is true that Nature with all her beauty is mere 
 
 i V ;desolation until reflected in the eyes and soul of man, 
 -J then there must be gradations in the beauty of the 
 image according to the brightness or imperfection of 
 the living mirror; and if so, how fortunate were those 
 dawns, and those dewy fields and flowers, that were in 
 the deep, clear, happy, poet-soul of Chaucer ! If it were 
 possible to go back into the past, and enjoy the com- 
 panionship of the illustrious dead, I should like two 
 things most of all a drinking-bout with Socrates (not 
 for the wine's sake) and a very early walk in the morn- 
 ing with Dan Chaucer, yet not perhaps on the morning 
 immediately following the before-mentioned Athenian 
 symposium : 
 
 ' Wherefore I mervaile greatly of my selfe 
 That I so long withouten sleepe lay, 
 And up I rose three houres after twelfe, 
 About the springen of the day ; 
 And on I put my gear and mine array, 
 And to a pleasant grove I gan passe 
 Long er the bright Sonne up risen was.' 
 
 Such was Chaucer's way in the pleasant spring-time,
 
 May His Love of Daisies. 125 
 
 especially when he could count upon seeing plenty of 
 daisies, the flower he loved before all others. 
 
 ' Of all the floures in the mede 
 Than love I most these floures white and rede, 
 Soch that men callen daisies in our town ; 
 To hem I have so great affection, 
 As I said erst, whan comen is the May, 
 That in my bed there daweth me no day 
 That I nam up and walking in the mede, 
 To see this floure ayenst the Sunne sprede, 
 Whan it upriseth early by the morow 
 That blissful sight softeneth all my sorow.' 
 
 In some verses that follow soon after these we have 
 an account of the poet's own way of observing Nature ; 
 and notwithstanding the intensity of the modern passion 
 for natural beauty, it may be doubted whether there 
 exists in any writer of the eighteenth and nineteenth 
 centuries any passage so full of the true feeling as 
 this is : 
 
 ' My busie gost, that thirsteth alway newe 
 To seen this flower so yong, so fresh of hewe, 
 Constrained me, with so greedy desire, 
 That in my herte I fele yet the fire 
 That made me rise ere it were day, 
 
 And this was now the first morow of May, ]t*toJl ^* 
 With dreadfull herte, and glad devotion 
 For to been at the resurrection f\ V 
 
 Of this floure, whan that it should unclose 
 Again the Sunne that rose as redd as rose, 
 And downe on knees anon right I me sette ; 
 And as I could this fresh floure I grette, 
 Kneeling alway, till it unclosed was
 
 126 May How Etymology may be Poetical. 
 
 Upon the small, soft, swete gras, 
 
 That was with floures swete embroidered all. 
 
 ***** 
 In which methought I might day by day 
 Dwellen alway, the joly month of May, 
 Withouten sleepe, withouten meat or drinke. 
 Adown full softly I gan to sinke, 
 And leaning on my elbow and my side, 
 The long day I shape me for to abide 
 For nothing els, and I shall not lie 
 But for to look upon the daisie, 
 That well by reason men it call may 
 The daisie, or els the eye of the day.' 
 
 Who shall say, after this, that etymology may not be 
 poetical, since Chaucer teaches it us in his own sweet, 
 unpedantic way ? If he loved the daisy for itself, he 
 loved it also for its association with the day, and liked 
 to see in it the opening of the dawn. So, too, the French 
 marguerite has its own beautiful origin. In the Latin 
 Bible margarita is the word for pearl, from the Greek 
 /jLapyapiTtj<;; and Littre thinks that the Greek word in 
 its turn comes from the Persian word mervarid, which 
 means pearl also. So here we are again en pleme po/sie, 
 and just as Chaucer's English derivation may be ex- 
 plained in verse without lowering its tone, the origin of 
 the French word might be prettily dwelt upon by any 
 French poet who chose to write about the flower. 
 Shelley, indeed, though an Englishman, having in his 
 mind very probably the beautiful Greek association, uses 
 it as an epithet, . 
 
 /' Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth.' /
 
 May Starwort. 1 2 7 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Starwort Stalk of Starwort Composed and Simple Flowers The 
 Water Ranunculus The Gardener's hatred of it Its Beauty 
 Minute Study of Vegetation for Landscape-painters The Sheep- 
 sorrel Dock Its hot Color in May Important in Landscape 
 Warm rich Color of Oak Leaves in May May Landscape more 
 harmonious than that of April Brooms and Bugles The chief 
 Colors of May Chaucer's White and Green The Lily of the Val- 
 ley Perfection of the Lily of the Valley The Golden Water 
 Fabled Remedies The Potentilla Lung-wort Unscientific Rea- 
 soning. 
 
 SHELLEY'S allusion to constellations reminds one 
 of a flower, or family of flowers, to be seen in the 
 very greatest profusion in the beginning of May, and 
 which have certainly much more the effect of stars upon 
 the earth than daisies ever have. Everybody seems to. . 
 have been struck by this, as the name implies, stellaria, 
 starwort, stellaire./ It seems almost a crime to, compare \ 
 any thing with the daisy to its disadvantage/and yet so 
 far as mere appearance goes the starwoffs are greatly 
 superior. In quantity they may often be found, like the 
 stars in a clear sky, by myriads, their brilliant white- 
 ness illuminating the shadiest places ; and if you come 
 near enough to see the individual plants, if you lean on 
 your elbow and your side, as Chaucer did when he 
 studied daisies, then are you rewarded by the beauty 
 of one of the most graceful amongst the lighter vege- 
 table forms. The light green stems are elegant beyond 
 the common grace of Nature, and there is much delicate 
 curving in the slender pedicels. The whole stalk is but
 
 128 May Composed and Simple Flowers. 
 
 just barely strong enough to support the narrow lanceo- 
 late leaves, and the thin, all but imponderable petals. 
 I confess, too, that I feel a certain reasonable preference 
 for plants that carry well-cut leaves in the air to those 
 other plants which, like the daisy, have what botanists 
 call radical leaves, that never get much above the root, 
 and lie for the most part helplessly, making only a 
 sort of leaf-pattern on the green carpet of the earth. 
 Finally, notwithstanding my love and reverence for 
 Chaucer, and all the dear associations that we have 
 ^wlth the unpretending daisy, it seems to me that, when 
 we know enough of botany for ideas pf structure to be 
 inextricably bound up with our conceptions, a composed 
 flower, or congeries of flowers like the daisy, must always 
 seem to have much less individuality than a simple 
 flower like the starwort ; and it seems easier to me to 
 fall in love with an object that is clearly individual than 
 with a collection of objects such as the florets of the 
 composite?. This may be fanciful, but there is always a 
 great element of the fanciful in these things ; and it is 
 highly probable that Chaucer loved his favorite all the 
 better for not being aware that what he thought of as 
 a flower was, in reality, a sort of floral village, perched 
 on the top of a stalk. 
 
 If the starwort looks like constellations on the land, 
 the water ranunculus covers at the same season the 
 shallow streams and ponds where it has fixed itself with 
 other constellations of its own. Early in the year its 
 wavy hair of green is wonderfully lustrous in the rapid, 
 limpid water : but that green, the most beautiful of all
 
 May The Water Ranunculus. 129 
 
 greens in the world, has now become very dull ; yet out 
 of its dulness springs a novel life and beauty, as the 
 plant no longer limits itself to its old subaqueous fila- 
 ments, but sends forth leaves to float on the surface in 
 the sunshine, and covers the water with white blossom. 
 I find that people who see Nature from the gardener's 
 point of view have a hatred and horror of this plant, 
 because it is very prolific and persistent, and invades 
 little streams and ponds very rapidly when once it has 
 got a footing there ; but for my part I feel very grateful 
 to it for two quite distinct kinds of beauty : first and 
 above all, for the lovely, intense green of the moving 
 filaments in February and March, and afterwards for 
 the gayety of its prodigally abundant afflorescence. 
 
 There is a common belief amongst landscape-painters 
 that the minute study of vegetation is a waste of time, 
 and even a snare for them, impeding their broader and 
 more comprehensive observation of natural appearances,. 
 It is certainly true that any artist who studied too much 
 from the botanical point of view would be likely to lose 
 himself in unnecessary detail, but it may be shown very 
 easily that a very minute detail may become of immense 
 importance when multiplied, as Nature often multiplies 
 it, by millions. One of the best instances of this amongst 
 very familiar plants is that humble little member of the 
 Polygonum family, the sheep-sorrel dock. Its flowers 
 are so small, that one of them, taken separately, is a 
 mere unintelligible speck, until you apply the microscope 
 to it ; and yet with these little specks will Nature stipple 
 and color vast spaces of landscape. The flower is red- 
 9
 
 1 30 May Oak Leaves in May. 
 
 dish or greenish, and it often turns so red that whole 
 fields and hill-sides are painted with it early in May, 
 painted a deep, rich, hot color, of the sort which peo- 
 ple who do not observe accurately are accustomed to 
 associate exclusively with autumn. Now I cannot but 
 think that it is an advantage to an artist to have such a 
 resource as this rich color affords him, and to know 
 the cause of it ; and I think also that it would perhaps 
 be well if critics knew enough of Nature not to be taken 
 by surprise when a landscape-painter happened to avail 
 himself of this coloring. There are tints in spring, of 
 which this is an example, that everybody would call 
 autumnal in a picture, and yet in Nature they often com- 
 pensate for the crudeness of the early greens by ming- 
 ling with them in large masses. Amongst the numerous 
 varieties of oak that are indigenous in western Europe 
 there are species whose young leaves, freshly sprouting 
 in ' the month of May, give the richest golden color, 
 deepening into red, especially glorious when the sun- 
 shine filters through them ; and so, in a minor degree, 
 do the leaves of the aspen poplar in their season. 
 W Although the May landscape is richer in floral 
 ^f/snlendor than that of any other time, and splendor 
 ' "($ that kind is difficult to harmonize, it is still much 
 nearer to artistic harmony than the hues of April. The 
 hawthorn, having abundant leafage intermingled with 
 * its flowers, escapes the extreme chilliness of the snow- 
 like blossoming of the blackthorn, and the plentifully 
 s P rm kled starworts carry the white down into the 
 hedge-bottoms. Hardly any color at this season is un- 
 
 Jff r 
 /Ar^eai
 
 May Chaucer "s White and Green. 131 
 
 pleasantly isolated. The note that is pitched amongst 
 the branches of some tree or shrub is pretty sure to be 
 repeated on the ground by some humble wild-flower. 
 Notwithstanding the variety of flaming gold and blue 
 that may be found wherever the brooms and bugles are 
 abundant, the chief colors of May are the white and 
 green of Chaucer, as he describes them on one of his 
 customary early walks : 
 
 ' Anone as I the. day espide 
 
 No longer would I in my bed abide, 
 
 But unto a wood that was fast by 
 
 I went forth alone boldly, 
 
 And held the way down by a brooke side 
 
 Till I came to a laund of white and grene. 
 
 So faire one had I never in been ; 
 
 The ground was grene, y-poudred with daisie, 
 
 The floures and the greves on hie, 
 
 All grene and white, was nothing els seene.' 
 
 And now, if I were asked to name one plant as 
 typical of the color and fragrance of this sweet season, 
 what other could it be than that modest and singularly 
 beloved one, the lily of the valley ? I know not whether 
 it is from some dear early association, from having seen 
 one who is gone to her rest long ago arranging these 
 flowers that were her favorites, and setting them in 
 clear water on her work-table to be companions for her in 
 bygone months of May, but it is certain that of all the 
 flowers that grow this little one most surely touches 
 the tenderest place in my heart. And every year when 
 the time comes for its blossoming, and when first I find 
 it in the cool and shady spots that suit it best, there
 
 1 32 May The Lily of the Valley. 
 
 comes a film of moisture across my eyes, not quite con- 
 sistent perhaps with the hardness of perfect manhood. 
 But let each of us live after his own nature ; for of the 
 two figures that we remember as most characteristic of 
 the middle ages, the poet lying on the earth all through 
 the sunny day dreaming and doting on the flowers, and 
 the knight sheathed in complete steel crushing them 
 under the hoofs of his war-horse and sullying them 
 with the blood of his enemy, it is the first who has 
 ithy. Where in the world can there be any 
 more perfect than these lilies of the valley ? Look 
 at their twin-leaves, outlined so delicately, just two of 
 them, perfect as the wings of a bird, and the few white 
 bells that tremble on the slender stalk, shedding the 
 sweetest perfume ! Be sure that here we have one of 
 Nature's most complete conceptions. You may look 
 upon a mountain and wish that it were loftier or more 
 precipitous, upon a river and wish that it were clearer, 
 upon a tree and desire for it some farther spreading 
 of its boughs, some richer filling of its foliage, but 
 you cannot look upon a lily of the valley and wish it 
 to be other than it is. Only one addition is possible, 
 and that is given in the cool of the early morning, when 
 there hangs upon each of those fairy bells one pure, 
 bright drop of dew. 
 
 It is curious that a plant so humble and sweet as this 
 should have had a great reputation for giving strength 
 to the weary and the weak ; but with that strangely 
 groundless faith that characterized the pre-scientific 
 ages, our forefathers were quite strongly convinced
 
 May The Golden Water. 133 
 
 upon this point, and distilled from it a miraculous 
 water, the ' Golden Water-/ as they called it ; and 
 whoso drank thereof was believed to be sure of regain- 
 ing the strength that had left his limbs. Is it not 
 sad that we may no longer put trust in all those wonder- 
 ful remedies there are a hundred of them which in 
 old times gave hope at least, if they could not restore 
 to health ? There is another humble little plant that 
 flowers in May (and also in October) in pastures and 
 waste places, and was called Po ten till a, because it was [ 
 believed to be so potent as a remedy. In these days ' 
 we see its pretty yellow flowers without reverence for ' 
 its potency. Just in the same temper of ready credulity 
 on the most fanciful grounds our forefathers used to ] ^ 
 believe that the plant they called Lung-wort (Pulmona- 
 rid) must be good for the cure of lung disease, because 
 its leaves were blotched like the lungs of a consumptive 
 person ! What a wonderful piece of reasoning that 
 was ! How remote from the scientific spirit ! We may 
 laugh, and yet that is exactly the sort of reasoning 
 which finds ready acceptance with the untrained minds 
 of the vulgar, and a hundred things are still believed by 
 uneducated persons of all ranks on grounds at least 
 equally absurd. 
 
 
 / 
 
 z * 
 
 , 

 
 1 34 May The Songs of Birds. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 White of Selborne The Songs of Birds Canaries Birds in Liberty 
 Our Love for the Songs of Birds Poetical and not Musical The 
 Warbling of Birds really Discordant Disillusion Reason and Sen- 
 timent Condescension of the Divine Mind Poets and Birds 
 Mingled Warbling The Dominant Songster Chaucer's Fancy of 
 the Religious Singing-birds The Throstle The Peacock The 
 Owl The 'Romaunt of the Rose.' 
 
 IT is just a hundred years since Gilbert White of 
 Selborne lamented the ' frequent return of deaf- 
 ness ' that incommoded him, and deprived him of 
 much enjoyment and many opportunities of observa- 
 tion. Especially did he lament that when this deaf- 
 ness was upon him he ' lost all the pleasing notice and 
 little intimations arising from rural sounds/ so that May 
 was ' as silent and mute with respect to the notes of 
 birds as August.' Here, indeed, was a sad loss to one 
 who so deeply appreciated the pleasures of a country 
 life, and who used his senses so well for the work of a 
 naturalist while he possessed them. All true rural poets 
 and observers have loved the songs of birds. There are 
 occasionally to be found beings unfortunate enough not 
 to enjoy these melodies, and I know one wretch who 
 says he does not much care for his country-house at a 
 certain season of the year ' on account of that bother- 
 some noise of nightingales.' Certainly this bird-music
 
 May Canaries. 1 35 
 
 may sometimes become importunate. There is a land- 
 scape-painter in Paris who is a great canary-fancier, and 
 has a very large cage full of these birds in the studio 
 where he paints. So long as he is alone it may be very 
 delightful, for perhaps his little yellow friends sing to 
 him with moderation ; but no sooner does a visitor enter 
 the room and try to begin a conversation than all the 
 canaries set up such a clatter that no human voice is 
 audible. 
 
 The birds in the free woods fill the air incessantly 
 in spring with their merry noises, but their garrulity 
 never tries our patience like that of the poor prisoners, 
 in cages. Is it really music that they make, and do 1 
 they charm the ear as music does, or move some fibre 
 of poetic sentiment in our hearts ? I believe that the 
 feeling they reach within us is a poetical and not a 
 musical feeling. The notes of birds may be imitated 
 with deceptive accuracy, and yet a concert of such 
 imitations would not attract an audience. The wild 
 bird utters its notes and we are delighted ; the human 
 imitator accurately reproduces the same notes with in- 
 geniously contrived whistles, and we remain indifferent. 
 Here, too, is another consideration which may be worth 
 notice. So long as one bird performs a solo it may be 
 a melody, but when half-a-dozen are singing at the 
 same time is it concerted music that they sing ? Does 
 each of them take his part in a general harmony, like a 
 chorus-singer at the opera ? No, their science is not 
 equal to any thing requiring subordination of parts. 
 And the plain truth is, that the warbling of a multitude
 
 136 May Reason and Sentiment. 
 
 of birds must necessarily be full of discords ; yet people 
 of musical taste endure it, and even delight in it. For 
 the birds are pets of ours, they have especially been pets 
 of the poets, and we regard their performances with 
 the most tender and affectionate indulgence. It has 
 occurred to me more than once to hear what I took for 
 birds' notes, and to think ' what delicious purity of tone, 
 what softness, what ravishing quality ! ' and immediately 
 afterwards to discover that these wondrous notes had 
 been simply whistled by some boy behind a hedge, after 
 which discovery all their fine qualities vanished. 
 
 So much for the criticism of reason ; but when we 
 let sentiment have her way, as in this matter we may 
 and ought to do, then we fall at once under the old 
 charm and can listen enraptured, as Chaucer did. For 
 the songs of birds convey to us far more than the mere 
 sound ; they are voices of Nature speaking to us joy- 
 ously, tenderly, caressing the childish part of our being 
 with simple lullabies, and thus gently effacing the too sad 
 or awful impression which many other sounds of wild 
 things make upon us ; such as the screeching of church- 
 yard owls, the croak of the raven, the wild cry of plovers 
 toppling over in the wind on the ridges of desolate 
 moors.yff We love the little singing-birds because they so 
 prettily tell us that, notwithstanding the hard regularity 
 of the laws that govern the world, the Divine Mind 
 condescended to take pleasure in cheerful little beings 
 that sing of gladness only, and know no other theme. 
 Who can tell what man himself may have gained from 
 the singing of the birds, how much his heart may have
 
 May Poets and Birds. 137 
 
 been cheered by it, and his labor lightened ? All the 
 poets, without exception, who have written of what is 
 charming and beautiful in Nature, have spoken lovingly 
 of singing-birds ; and therefore it may be presumed that 
 the great multitude of 'poets who have never penned 
 their inspiration,' and the still greater multitude who, 
 without being mute poets, have nevertheless some share 
 of poetic faculty or feeling, do all take pleasure in this 
 simple sylvan music. In aviaries it easily becomes over- 
 powering, but in the open woods it is mellowed by many 
 various distances ; and as there is a perspective in what 
 we see there, as the trees at a distance mingle a thousand 
 various tints into a quiet harmony of color, so do the 
 songs of a thousand birds mix together into a delicious 
 indistinguishable warbling, of which the most perfect 
 ear could never analyze the elements. And just as 
 some one branch or leaf will detach itself brilliantly in 
 the sunshine from the rich mystery that lies behind it, 
 so will the voice of one songster pipe clearly over all 
 the rest till it is lost again in the pervading atmosphere 
 of sound, ji 
 
 Every one who cares for old poetry will remember 
 the stanzas in Chaucer's ' Court of Love/ where h6 
 makes all the birds sing religiously in May, one of 
 the quaintest and prettiest of his fancies, but worked 
 out too fully in detail to admit of any complete quota- 
 tion. Here are just a couple of stanzas as specimens of 
 the whole : 
 
 ' " Te deum amoris" sang the throstel cocke ; 
 Tuball himself, the first musician,
 
 1 38 May Chaucer J s Fancy. 
 
 With key of armony could not unlocke 
 
 So swete tune as that the throstel can : 
 
 " The lorde of love we praisen " (quod he then, 
 
 And so done all the foules great and lite), 
 
 Honour we May, in false lover's despite. 
 
 " Dominus regnavit" said the pecocke there, 
 
 " The lord of love, that mighty prince ywis, 
 
 He is received here and everywhere. 
 
 Now Jubilate sing." " What meaneth this ? " 
 
 Said then the linnet : " Welcome, lord of blisse." 
 
 Out sterte the owl with " Beneditite, 
 
 What meaneth all this merry fare ? " (quod he.)' 
 
 There is no end to the allusions to singing-birds in 
 Chaucer, but one of the most delicately charming of 
 these consists of three couplets in the ' Romaunt of the 
 Rose,' which always come back to my memory when I 
 hear the birds in May. ' Harde is his heart,' says the 
 poet: , 
 
 ' ' Harde is his heart that loveth nought 
 
 In May, when all this mirth is wrought, 
 
 When he may on these branches here 
 
 The smalle birdes singen clere 
 
 Hir blissful sweet song piteous, 
 
 And in this season delitious.'
 
 May Hymn of the Birds. 139 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Hymn of the Birds to the Sun, by Gawin Douglas The Birds hail the 
 Sun with Welcomes How the Poets love the Birds How the Bird- 
 catchers love them The Mistletoe St. Lambert's Poem of the Four 
 Seasons Gentle Heartlessness The Bird-catcher in Buffon The 
 Work of Nest-building Are Birds Architects or Masons ? Magpies 
 The Labor given to a Magpie's Nest Thrush, Tom-tit, Linnet 
 Greenfinch and Goldfinch \Vren Excellent Arrangement of Wren's 
 Nest Building a House Building for Oneself Varieties of Nest- 
 building Raising and Fixing of Material Adhesion of Martin's 
 Nests Birds that like to be rocked in their Nests The Cuckoo 
 Poet-cuckoos Birds and Plants The Cuckoo-pint Value of the 
 Common Arum for Artists. 
 
 OF all the fine passages in old poetry concerning the 
 life of birds in Nature, the most magnificent is 
 the hymn of the birds to the Sun in Gawin Douglas's 
 prologue to the twelfth book of the ' Eneid.' I should 
 have been glad to abridge the quotation had it been 
 possible without spoiling it, but I find, as the reader will 
 also, that the series of verses beginning with the word 
 ' Welcome ' could not have their due effect if given by 
 themselves ; the mind needs to be led up to them and 
 tuned to the proper poetical pitch before it can fully 
 enter into the fine spirit of the hymn itself. As for the 
 little difficulty with the old Scottish words it vanishes
 
 140 May The Birds Welcome to the Sun. 
 
 on the second or third reading, and such poetry as this 
 is worth reading a hundred times : 
 
 ' The cushat crouds and pykkis on the rise,* 
 The sterling changes divers steunnys nise,f 
 The sparrow chirpis in the walles cleft, 
 Gold spink and linnet fordynnand the lyft.t 
 The cuckoo galis, and so twitteris the quail 
 While rivers reirdit \ \ schaws and every dale, 
 And tender twistis tremble on the trees, 
 For birdes song and bemyng of the bees, 
 And all small fowlis singin on the spray, 
 " Welcome thou lord of light and lampe of day, 
 Welcome thou fosterer of herbis grene, 
 Welcome quickener of freshest flouris shene, 
 Welcome support of every root and vein, 
 Welcome comfort of al kind frute and grein, 
 Welcome depainter of the blooming meads, 
 Welcome the life of every thing that spreads, 
 Welcome restorer of all kind bestial, 
 Welcome be thy bright bemes gladding all." ' 
 
 What is pleasant in these passages of the quaint old 
 poets is their hearty love for the birds themselves and 
 full participation in their gladness. The sylvan feeling 
 of the bird-catcher is of a very different character ; he, 
 too, rejoices in the woods ; he, too, likes to hear the birds 
 sing, for if they sing they exist, and if they exist they 
 may be ensnared, and afterwards sold or roasted as 
 poverty or gluttony may suggest. The mistletoe is in 
 full berry in the month of May, and its berries, which 
 
 * The dove crows and picks on the bush, 
 t Tuneful voices. J Heaven. Cries. || Sounded.
 
 May Saint-Lambert. 1 4 1 
 
 seem like waxen pearls at a little distance, suggest some 
 rather painful reflections. The birds plant the mistletoe 
 on the branches of trees by depositing its seeds there, 
 undigested ; man comes and makes bird-lime from this 
 very mistletoe, which by a strange fatality causes the 
 destruction of the very creatures to whom its own propa- 
 gation is due. Could any poet rejoice over their miser- 
 able fate, and think those moments sweet when his 
 victims are hopelessly struggling ? Yes, M. Saint- Lam- 
 bert, whose poem of ' The Seasons ' is, to say the least, 
 a piece of beautiful versification, sometimes rising into 
 more elevated regions, expresses the keenest delight in 
 that exquisitely cruel business of bird-catching, and avows 
 his crimes in verses of the most finished harmony : 
 
 ' Cent fois, dans ma jeunesse, aux rives des ruisseaux 
 J'ai seme les buissons d'innombrables reseaux: 
 Avec quel mouvement d'esperance et de joie 
 Vers la fin d'un beau jour, j'allais chercher ma proie ! 
 A present meme encor, sous les rameaux naissans ; 
 De 1'oiseau de la nuit imitant les accents, ) > 
 
 ', 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<v 
 flowers towards the end of it, giving considerable mag- 
 nificence of color to the banks of streams. It is re- 
 markable amongst flowers % as having been chosen by 
 the kings of France to decorate their shields and 
 banners, for in the middle ages it was called the Us. 
 This, at least, is the more probable view, considering 
 the form and color of the flower, though the popular 
 belief is that the large white lily is the royal flower of 
 the Bourbons. But the white lily bears no resemblance 
 to the fleur-de-lis, whereas the water iris curves out its 
 petals in such a way as to produce a very striking like- 
 ness to the heraldic flower. Besides this, the fleur-de-lis 
 is or in heraldry, and, without attaching too much im- 
 portance to the choice of the metal, one cannot but 
 think it likely that a sovereign who had felt pleased 
 with the white lily would have preserved the record of 
 its whiteness by blazoning it argent. For my part I 
 feel no doubt about the matter, and the golden flowers
 
 150 May Lychnis. 
 
 of the water iris have, for me, associations with history 
 as well as landscape. 
 
 From the beginning of May there are also immense 
 quantities of flowering lychnis, whose bright red is like 
 gems scattered prodigally by field and river. The plant 
 was used in Greece for garlands, and it seems possible 
 that in this way it may have been associated with the 
 idea of a light-giving gem that was called \vxyk also. I 
 am aware that another interpretation has been suggested. 
 It is said that the Greeks used a plant of this kind for 
 lamp-wicks, and as they called a portable lamp Xu^i/o.? 
 the flower got its name from this more utilitarian origin. 
 I cling by preference to the association with the gem 
 rather than the lamp, and I should like very much to 
 know -what was the color of the gem Xtr^W?. If it 
 were red, that would almost settle the question. But 
 whatever may Rave been the origin of its name, the 
 lychnis is one of the brightest and most abundant of 
 wild flowers, giving a wonderful gayety to foregrounds 
 wherever it occurs. 
 
 A perfect contrast in this respect are the members 
 of the humble spurge family, with their flowers, green- 
 like leaves, and their cold, white, milky blood, caustic 
 and pungent. With a poet's felicity of choice Rossetti 
 selected this unattractive plant as the object of contem- 
 plation in an hour of bitter reverie: 
 
 ' Between my knees my forehead was, 
 My lips, drawn in, said not Alas ! 
 My hair was over in the grass, 
 My naked ears heard the day pass.
 
 May A Poefs Botany. 
 
 ' My eyes, wide open, had the run 
 Of some ten weeds to fix upon ; 
 Among those few, out of the sun, 
 /The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one. 
 
 From perfect grief there need not be 
 Wisdom or even memory : 
 /"One thing then learnt remains to me, 
 The woodspurge has a cup of three.' * 
 
 is, of course, is a poet's botany, and one does not 
 expect it to be very accurately scientific. Rossetti 
 means, by his ' cup of three,' the pair of flowers at the 
 end of each ray of the umbel, and the floral leaves 
 beneath the pair which are connected into one large 
 orbicular leaf. The two flowers and the orbicular leaf 
 below make up the number three, and this is the only 
 explanation I can venture to suggest. Is it worth while 
 to dwell in this way upon poets' fancies in connection 
 with the subjects of our study? Yes, I think it is; for 
 experience proves that nothing impresses natural objects 
 upon the memory so much as association with human 
 thought and fancy, even when, as in the case of many 
 popular superstitions, it has no foundation in fact. 
 
 D. G. Rossetti's Poems, Roberts Brothers' Ed. p. 249.
 
 1 5 2 May The Horse-chestnut. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Artistic and other Ideas of Beauty The Horse-chestnut A Painter's 
 Embarrassment Countable yet Numerous Things Leaves Foli- 
 age Objection to the Horse-chestnut Glory of the Tree in May 
 Transparencies Bold and decided Contrasts Flowers of the 
 Horse-chestnut. 
 
 ONE of the most striking examples of the difference 
 between artistic ideas of beauty and those ideas 
 of beauty which we derive directly from Nature without 
 the intervention of painting is supplied by the horse- 
 chestnut. In Nature it is one of the most noble of all 
 frees, yet it has rarely been celebrated by landscape- 
 painters, who, when you talk to them about it, almost 
 invariably express a dislike for the peculiar quality of 
 its foliage ; nor have they been more attracted by its 
 magnificent efflorescence, although in our northern 
 countries no other tree of equal dimensions bears such 
 splendid flowers, or any thing comparable to them. The 
 reason is easily discovered. In the art of painting there 
 is always a peculiar embarrassment in dealing with 
 things that are countable and yet exceedingly numerous. 
 Such things require great labor for their individualiza- 
 tion, because the eye so easily detects a failure or in- 
 sufficiency in design ; whilst, on the other hand, there is 
 a difficulty in passing from this complete individuality 
 of the things seen near at hand to the mystery of the 
 things that are utterly past counting. When things are
 
 May Foliage. 153 
 
 large enough, and shapely enough, to require careful 
 drawing, an artist does not wish them to be too nu- 
 merous ; thus, there is no work that can be offered to 
 a figure-painter more distasteful to his artistic feeling 
 than a crowd of a hundred faces, of which every one 
 must be a portrait, since the mere attention to indi- 
 viduality imperils the unity of the whole work. On the 
 other hand, if the numbers are very great the painter 
 likes them to be far past any possibility of counting, so 
 that his only duty may be to represent the mystery 
 and infinity of the innumerable. Thus, in leaf -drawing, 
 the greatest figure-painters have always designed a few 
 leaves of the kinds whose forms are beautiful, both 
 pleasurably and successfully, and such a thing as a 
 wreath of laurel is perfectly agreeable to their taste ; 
 whilst, on the other hand, the great landscape-painters 
 have delighted in the immensity of foliage, where the 
 leaf is nothing individually and only the mass is seen. 
 J/The objection to the horse-chestnut is, that to render it 
 perfectly we should need the skill of the figure-painter 
 drawing a wreath of laurel, and the skill of the land- 
 scape-painter sketching the masses of a forestMrhe 
 leaves are so large, and so peculiar in their form, that 
 they cannot be treated negligently, for the negligent 
 hand would commit errors in shape and scale that the 
 first comer would at once detect ; yet, at the same time, 
 they are so numerous, that any attempt to draw them 
 individually, as you would the twin-leaves of the lily of 
 the valley, must inevitably spoil the unity of the tree, 
 not to speak of the still vaster unity of a picture. The
 
 154 May Glory of the Horse-chestnut. 
 
 consequence of this is, that the horse-chestnut is hardly 
 ever painted, and never painted quite sufficiently and suc- 
 cessfully. But now, having stated the artistic difficulty, 
 let us turn our backs for the moment upon all picture 
 exhibitions, and, forgetting art altogether, go straight to 
 the world of Nature, f The horse-chestnut, in the earlier 
 weeks of May, is a sight for gods and men.V If you are 
 well outside its branches, you see the richly-painted 
 flowers rising tier above tier on all its glorious slope up 
 to the odorous heights that belong to the birds and the 
 bees ; if you are under its shadow, you walk in a soft 
 green light that comes through the broad-spreading 
 leaflets. No transparencies are finer than this sun- 
 illumined canopy of green, and whilst the leaves are 
 quite young and perfect, they are cut out so clearly 
 as to have a grandly decorative effect. Next, as to 
 direction of line and surface, this tree is very remark- 
 able for its bold and decided contrasts. You have the 
 curve of the twig, first downwards and then upwards, 
 where it carries the flowers at its extremity. The ten- 
 dency of the flowery spike itself is to be vertical, and 
 the large leaves spread themselves out horizontally and 
 as flatly as possible to right and left. The flowers 
 themselves are amongst the very richest of spring 
 blossoms. The coloring of the petals is made lively 
 by the presence of white, but admirably preserved from 
 crudity by dashes of red and yellow. When the spikes 
 or cones of flowers are in their full splendor, the horse- 
 chestnut reminds one of a magnificent Christmas-tree, 
 carrying a thousand lighted tapers upon its branches,
 
 May Willow. 155 
 
 but with the difference that the flowers promise life, 
 and the renewal of life ; whereas when the pretty 
 Christmas tapers are lighted upon a tree they are a 
 sign that its end is near, according to Andersen's mel- 
 ancholy story. The horse-chestnut has only been an 
 European tree for the last three centuries, and is one of 
 the happiest importations from Asia. There is an octa- 
 gon of them at the Val Ste. Veronique, and the eight 
 brothers are all equally well grown, tradition says, that 
 eight boar-hounds are buried under them, a hound under 
 each tree. In the heat of summer they offer a delight- 
 ful shade, for their broad leafage makes an impenetrable 
 dome of verdure. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Willow Spanish Chestnut Walnut Ash and Walnut Beech 
 Young Beech-leaves Light through them Birch Character of 
 Birch It bears extremes of Heat and Cold Birch-bark Sap of 
 Birch Prejudices against Trees Abuse of Painters who study 
 certain Trees Trees and Politics The Birch always Beautiful 
 Willow Spanish Chestnut Its Strength and Longevity Beauty 
 of Foliage of Chestnut Oak and Chestnut Bird-cherry Prunus. 
 
 THE horse-chestnuts are amongst the earliest of 
 the trees in leaf and flower. The willow, as 
 we know, is earlier still, and its leaves are now fully 
 developed, glittering a great deal in the sunshine, when 
 the pleasant May breezes move them. The young green 
 leaves of the Spanish chestnut are rapidly making foli-
 
 1 5 6 May Walnut. 
 
 age now, and hide already the heavy, magnificent stems, 
 at least in places. The young leaves of the walnut 
 are pleasant upon the cool gray of the stems, being 
 of an exceedingly warm green, that differs greatly 
 from the crude color of most of the other vegetation. 
 The reader may have observed how peculiarly rich are 
 the dark mosses upon walnuts, but the glory of mosses 
 is not in the time of leaves. The French word noyer 
 comes in a very roundabout way from the Latin nux, 
 a nut, so that noyer means the nut-tree par excellence ; 
 and the Latin name Juglans comes from Jovi.s glans, 
 Jupiter's nut, as the fruit of this tree was thought good 
 enough for the father of the gods. The ash and the 
 walnut come on very nearly together in the spring, 
 and are not much advanced in the middle of May ; 
 the beech at this season is more attractive, from the 
 particularly lovely and fresh green of the leaves, which 
 have all the exquisiteness of Nature's softest and pret- 
 tiest new things. Their green is delicately pale with- 
 out being crude, and they have downy edges, and 
 are so soft that it is a luxury to touch them ; then, 
 on the upper side, they are protected by a gloss of 
 varnish. I spoke of the transparence of the horse- 
 chestnut leaves ; that of beech-leaves, when they are 
 young and fresh, is still more delicate and beautiful, and 
 the light under them is like what one fancies the pale 
 sea-green light where the mermaids live in submarine 
 grottos and gardens. 
 
 /l| jjL&i i 1, As for the birches, they are in full leaf in May, as if 
 "U'il; were the height of summer, and their shining silvery 
 
 -Hitx 
 
 \\\
 
 May Character of Birch. 157 
 
 stems, so brilliant in wintry sunshine, are now greatly 
 overshadowed by their foliage. Nothing can be more 
 decided than the character of the birch, and the leaves 
 add to its expression. In winter it is simply the most 
 graceful of trees, but in summer it seems nervously 
 sensitive and easily disquieted. The slightest breath 
 of air sets it all in a flutter, and it has the appearance 
 of the extremest delicacy of temperament. However, 
 in this case, as in some human constitutions, the ap- 
 pearance of delicacy is in the highest degree deceptive, 
 for the birch is gifted with singular powers of resist- 
 ance. I do not believe that a tree can be mentioned 
 which bears so well the extremes of heat and cold. It 
 lives high on the sides of the Alps and thrives in the 
 terrible Lapland winter. The last trees near the polar 
 ice are birches, and yet at the same time the birch lives 
 uninjured through the burning summers of Burgundy, 
 and does not apparently suffer from a temperature that 
 ripens the grape, the peach, and the apricot. The bark, 
 too, that looks so fragile on account of its thin white 
 epiderm, so easily torn and never without a rent, is 
 really of considerable thickness, and quite remarkable 
 amongst vegetable substances for its all but unlimited 
 durability. The tree is respectable for its uses, espe- 
 cially for the uses of the bark, out of which the ingen- 
 ious northern races have contrived to make many 
 different things, including canoes, ropes, roofs, drinking- 
 vessels, shoes, and even food, whilst that product of 
 high civilization called Russia leather is tanned with it. 
 The abundant sap is good to drink, and an alcoholic
 
 158 May Prejudices against Trees. 
 
 beverage is prepared from it. Haller says that the cat- 
 kins yield wax. Therefore, although the birch does not 
 give fine timber like the oak, nor abundant edible fruit 
 like the walnut and what are commonly called the fruit- 
 trees, it is still one of man's best friends, and a friend 
 to him in climates of such rigorous severity that the 
 rich southern fruit-bearers cannot live there. The 
 Southerner may know the birch by sight, for its slender 
 stem gleams here and there in his forests ; but he does 
 not know the tree as the Laplander knows it, in the 
 hardship and adversity of a life so little cheered by the 
 genial gifts of Nature. What the reindeer is to him 
 amongst animals, the birch is amongst trees. 
 
 I spoke about the suitableness of the horse-chestnut 
 for the purposes of the landscape-painter, and I showed 
 a reason why artists have so generally abstained from 
 any attempt to represent the horse-chestnut in their 
 works. But if there are reasonable objections to trees 
 that may be beautiful in Nature, there are also unreason- 
 able ones, that are due to the most absurd prejudices, 
 prejudices so absurd that the existence of them would 
 be absolutely incredible if we did not meet them from 
 time to time in reading and in conversation. One of 
 the clearest and most outspoken expressions of such 
 prejudices that it was ever my lot to meet with occurred 
 in an ultra-conservative French newspaper, which is 
 taken in by my neighbor the cur/, and I made an ex- 
 tract from it as a curiosity. It is certain that many 
 trees and the graceful birch is one of them were 
 systematically neglected by the landscape-painter of
 
 May Trees and Politics. 159 
 
 former centuries, and have only of late years had their 
 beauties reflected in the mimic world of painting. It 
 is not probable that, in illustrating these neglected yet 
 not less noble species, the artists' of this generation have 
 had any feeling of hostility to the trees which their pre- 
 decessors studied, not too affectionately, but too exclu- 
 sively ; they have simply acted with that independence 
 of tradition and that large desire to study the whole of 
 Nature which are distinguishing characteristics of our 
 age in art, as in science and in literature. But now see 
 how they get abused and ill-spoken of for their large- 
 
 ' It looks like a conspiracy. The painters of the old regime, 
 the artists who were faithful to tradition, sought for and hon- 
 ored certain beautiful and aristocratic trees, and considered 
 them alone worthy of the selection and the efforts of art j the 
 majestic oak, the elegant poplar, the pompous pine, and the 
 funereal cypress. 
 
 ' " Let us upset tradition ! " say the realists. " Down with 
 the trees that are symbols of superannuated and odious dis- 
 tinctions ! Let us lift up the humble and insignificant ; let us 
 open a broad way to the new ' couches sociales ' of the forests j 
 there is the truth, the strength, and the honor of the societies 
 of the future ! " And with these fine reasonings we see the 
 rustic apple-tree, the shivering birch, the amphibious willow, 
 the crude and hard Spanish chestnut, come out of their enclo- 
 sures, or their rocks, to display themselves outrageously in gilt 
 frames on the walls of palaces and galleries that were never 
 built for them ! It is a new form of the democracy which is 
 about to overwhelm us. The populace of the woods puts 
 itself on the level of the populace of the faubourgs. It was 
 not enough to have beheld the noisy and unsavory crowds cast
 
 1 60 May The Birch always Beautiful. 
 
 themselves upon the Louvre and come to Versailles and the 
 Trianon : we must, in addition, endure the contact of the 
 inferior species in our woods, justly rejected to the second 
 rank, and condemned to inferior functions.' * 
 
 Now, on behalf of the birch especially, I protest 
 energetically against this comparison with the lowest 
 Parisian democracy. So far from being coarse and offen- 
 sive, it is the most delicately elegant of all the trees 
 that prosper in our climate. It is always beautiful : in 
 winter for the exquisite refinement of its ramification, 
 only to be followed by the most finished and accom- 
 plished drawing ; in spring and summer for the beauty 
 of its cloud of light foliage; in autumn for its color. 
 The writer just quoted mentions also, and with equal 
 disdain, the willow and Spanish chestnut. The beauty 
 of the natural willow is very little known, because the 
 farmers almost invariably make a pollard of it, which 
 is the artificial production of a painful and horrible 
 deformity. Very possibly the critic may have supposed, 
 as many people do, that willows are born so ; but the 
 truth is, that if you only have the kindness to let the 
 willow alone he becomes a very good landscape tree, 
 and there are species which cast their arms out with a 
 noble freedom and grace, having also a fair stature. Of 
 the Spanish chestnut one can scarcely exaggerate the 
 merits. His expression is that of sturdy strength : his 
 trunk and limbs are built, not like those of Apollo, but 
 
 * This passage is quoted from 'L'Union,' Sept. 2, 1873. ^ ' s a 
 very curious example of a political spirit invading the domain of 
 art.
 
 May Oak and Chestnut. 161 
 
 like the trunk and limbs of Hercules ; and though for 
 his inflexibility he loses an arm now and then in the 
 hurricane, he lives to be a Methuselah amongst trees, 
 and dynasties rise and fall, empires are built and de- 
 molished, literatures flourish and decay, whilst he is still 
 green in his old place, unheeding the lapse of time. 
 His foliage is magnificent in mass and beautiful in the 
 individual leaf ; it is always worth drawing and painting, 
 both for its lines and shadows : it cannot be mean or in- 
 significant. Whether he is an aristocratic tree, or a tree 
 tainted with democracy, I am not subtle enough in social 
 distinctions to determine, but .tradition informs us that 
 the chestnut of Mount Etna once sheltered a queen and 
 her hundred nobles, and is called for this reason the 
 ' Chestnut of the Hundred Horses.' In the comparison 
 of the chestnut with the oak, it is fair, too, that we 
 should remember what animals are fed by each. The 
 oak feeds herds of swine, but the chestnut supplies to 
 great multitudes of human beings a food as agreeable 
 as it is nutritious. There are countries where it is the 
 staff of life, and its alimentary importance is greater 
 than that of any other tree that grows, with the single 
 exception of the date. 
 
 Amongst the shrubs which are almost trees, and 
 sometimes fully deserve to be called so, let me not 
 forget, in connection with the mpnth of May, to mention 
 the bird-cherry primus, of which we have some excep- 
 tional specimens in the Val Ste. Veronique, where they 
 grow to a height of sixteen or twenty feet, and have the 
 most perfectly graceful proportions. I have often much
 
 162 
 
 May Broom. 
 
 regretted that this tree was not more common in this 
 fully developed form ; ordinarily it is a mere shrub six 
 or eight feet high, to be found in luxuriant hedges. As 
 a tree it shows splendidly in blossom, and the droop- 
 ing racemes of flowers are not only very graceful, but 
 fill the air -with a delicious odor. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Broom Flaming Flowers of Broom Fortissimo in Color Pansies 
 Their Variety Heartsease Poetry in the Language of Science^ 
 Daisy Buttercup Disagreeable Scientific Name Ranunculus 
 Aquatilis Lousewort The Rose fortunate in her Name Name 
 of the Horse-chestnut Cuckoo-flower Marsh Caltha Names 
 of the Marsh Caltha. 
 
 IT is rarely that I feel myself capable of any thing 
 like hostility towards any plant that grows wild in 
 our country, but there is one of them the broom 
 which tires my patience a little in its flowering season 
 by the very loudness of its self-assertion. At all other 
 times of the year it is welcome enough, and its pleasant 
 green is often most agreeable to the eye when very 
 little green of a cheerful kind is to be found upon any 
 thing else ; but really, when the yellow flowers are all 
 ablaze, I feel that we have too much of a good thing, 
 and are positively incapacitated for the enjoyment of 
 delicate color by this all but intolerable glare. A 
 strong pure color of this kind ought not to be sur-
 
 May Flaming Flowers of Broom. 163 
 
 rounded by delicate tertiary colors, because it kills 
 them at once. What it requires is the neighborhood 
 of other colors pure enough to hold their own against 
 it. This theory is fully borne out by the coloring of 
 two places which I will now describe. The first is a 
 beautiful bit of river-shore, very delicately tinted and 
 covered with pansies and violets, with a mountainous 
 distance usually in tender gray. All this is lovely indeed 
 till the broom explodes into flames of chrome-yellow, 
 but after that what becomes of such a thing as a pansy ? 
 You may take it up, of course, and satisfy yourself by 
 minute inspection that it is a beautiful flower of palen 
 parchment-yellow, with a bold touch of cadmium on the ' . 
 lower lip of the corolla, and seven effective little black J-/ 
 streaks ; but the moment you look at it on the ground 
 you can see nothing but gray. The other place is the 
 edge of an abandoned quarry, where the red earth is as 
 hot in the sunshine as it can be ; and as you look up 
 at it from below, the edge is brought against the intens- 
 est azure of the sky. Just along this edge grow twenty 
 or thirty magnificent plants of broom, and between the 
 -azure of the sky and the fiery red of the sun-lighted 
 earth below they hold their own effectively enough with 
 their blaze of yellow, but are unable to extinguish either 
 the azure or the red. It is just one of those tournaments 
 of natural colors that the English painters seem born 
 to enjoy, and the French to run away from, a spectacle 
 to delight the strong natural sense in its naiveti, but not 
 either the tender or the educated sense. It answers in 
 music, to a brass band playing fortissimo with blare of
 
 1 64 May Pansies. 
 
 trumpet and clash of cymbals ; it answers, also, in gas- 
 tronomy, to the hottest of London pickles, of which one 
 knows not which element is most fierce. 
 
 I mentioned pansies just now, but did not stop to 
 dwell upon them. They have several notable merits 
 and pleasant associations. One of their merits is that 
 of variety. Hardly any plant in a wild state is so 
 various as the pansy ; other plants become various in 
 the hands of the horticulturist, who obtains curious 
 noveltie^ by selection and culture, but Nature herself 
 does this with the pansy, and you have it purple, or 
 yellow, or whitish, or mixed in ways that it would be 
 an endless business to describe. Another merit is that 
 it flowers for many months ; unlike the broom, which 
 blazes only for a week or two, and is then completely 
 extinguished, like a fire that has burned itself out. 
 Then one likes the pansy for its pretty association with 1 1 
 indly and affectionate thought, with the memory of /I 
 those we love who are separated from us by distance.! * 
 Pansy is the French word pens/e, scarcely even cor- 
 rupted, but rather written phonetically in a rude, ap- 
 proximative way ; and in France the flower pensfe is 
 connected only with thoughts of a tender and kindly 
 nature. Many such a flower, that bloomed in a bygone 
 summer, is still religiously preserved in an old letter or 
 book, and never looked uponWithout a moistening of 
 the eyes. So Ophelia said,ijr There's rosemary, that's 
 for remembrance : pray you, /ove^remember ; and there 
 is pansies, that's for thoughisJjjp In English the pansy 
 violet is called heartsease als^showing in another form
 
 May Daisy. 165 
 
 the close connection between tender human feeling and 
 this flower, which has somehow mysteriously established 
 itself. Science, of course, ignores all such associa- 
 tions, but it would be a pity, surely, to lose and forget 
 them altogether. The writer of a lively and fanciful 
 little volume, called ' La Vie des Fleurs,' is indignant 
 against men of science for their barbarity ; yet even the 
 men of science, hard as their hearts may be, do some- 
 times wrap up a little kernel of poetry in the rough and 
 repulsive covering of their Greek erudition. They will 
 not call a pansy a pansy, but they call it viola tricolor ; 
 and some of them have fancied that viola came from 
 LOV, and lov from the heifer lo, which fed on flowers of 
 this kind. So difficult is it to shut out poetry alto- 
 gether from language, even from the language of stern 
 Science herself ! 
 
 There are some exceptions, but the rule is that the 
 popular names for plants are either charming for some 
 sweet rustic association, or else from a direct reference 
 to the deep feelings of the human heart. I showed how 
 prettily Chaucer introduced etymology into his verse 
 with reference to ' the daisie, or els the eye of the day ; ' 
 and the rustic name 'buttercup,' which explains itself 
 without analysis, is redolent of the dairy and the farm. 
 The common French name, bonton d'or, has reference 
 to the flower in the bud ; the English one, to the flower 
 full-blown. And now think of the learned name, Ra- I 
 iiuncuhis acris ; how disagreeably it grates upon the ear! i 
 The popular name hits at once upon what is agreeable 
 in the plant, its pretty yellow color ; the scientific one
 
 1 66 May Ranunculus Aquatilis. 
 
 refers to what would be disagreeable if we went out of 
 our way to try it, namely, its acrid taste ; but what have 
 we to do with its taste, I wonder ? Just in the same way 
 I have no doubt that the sweetest of pictures would 
 be extremely disagreeable if we were to eat it. And 
 ranunculus comes from rana, a frog or toad, a strange 
 connection of ideas in this instance, for what has a but- 
 tercup particularly to do with frogs ? It may be more 
 appropriate in the case of the Ranunculus aquatilis, 
 because that plant is born in the water like a frog, 
 and passes its infancy there ; after which it comes up 
 to breathe and flower in the upper air, as frogs come 
 to air themselves in their maturity. A plant may, how- 
 ever, be still more unfortunate than to have its name 
 associated with frogs, or even toads, for there is one 
 very pretty little pinkish flower, common, from April 
 to June, in damp meadows and woods, which takes its 
 name from a minute animal celebrated by the poet 
 Burns, who discovered it on a lady's bonnet at church, 
 when he ought to have been thinking of something else. 
 Few plants are prettier than the common pedicularis, 
 with its delicate wax-like flowers and deeply-cut leaves ; 
 and it is a robust plant, too, with a strong perennial 
 root. But what a misfortune to be called lousewort, and , 
 that precisely for the plant's utility and efficacy against 
 lice ! As men afflicted with very disagreeable names 
 often take care to change them (and they do right), so 
 would the plants, if they were conscious of such ill- 
 luck. Begging the reader's pardon for introducing the 
 hackneyed quotation from Shakspeare about the rose
 
 May The Rose fortunate in its Name. 167 
 
 smelling as sweetly by another name, I would just ob- 
 serve that the rose has been remarkably fortunate in 
 her name, wherever it is derived from the Latin. It 
 is perfectly euphonious ; it calls up no association what- 
 ever but that of the flower itself, except in the mind of 
 some learned pundit, who thinks it may have some- 
 thing to do with the Sanscrit word vrad, which means 
 ' flexible ; ' and wherever either rose or rosa is used in 
 poetry it always comes in charmingly. Now, without 
 referring again to the supremely unfortunate pedicu- 
 laris, let me take the case of a particularly magnificent 
 tree which has occupied us a little quite recently, the 
 horse-chestnut. I have often wished that awkward com- 
 pound word could be exchanged for one at the same 
 time more convenient and better sounding. Imagine 
 the embarrassment of the poets if the rose had been 
 called the horse-chestnut ! They would simply have 
 passed it in silence. It is fatal to the celebrity of a 
 flower for it to be known by an awkward name, even 
 though it may smell as sweetly as if some poet had 
 named it with musical syllables. And why the connec- 
 tion with the horse ? Are horses fond of the fruit ? 
 Most probably it is only a way of implying that it is 
 unfit for human food. I might have mentioned, when 
 speaking of the cuckoo and the use of his name with 
 the arum, which the people call cuckoo-pint, that another 
 plant is also dedicated to the same bird, the cuckoo- /vV. 
 flower, or meadow-bittercress. This plant is often found 
 in great abundance in dampish meadows, and I know of 
 one place near a little stream where the water is entirely 
 
 
 j 
 . ^ & -
 
 1 68 May Marsh Caltha. 
 
 bordered with its beautiful flowers, which in that place 
 are of the purest white, though they are often purplish. 
 Whatever the cuckoo may have to do with this elegant 
 and abundantly flowering plant, it is one of the glories 
 of advancing spring, and where you find it you are very 
 likely to find the marsh caltha not far off, for both of 
 them like damp places. The botanical name Caltha is 
 an allusion to the basket shape of the flower, which 
 reminded some one of a little gilt basket, not that it 
 is much more like a basket than a buttercup is ; how- 
 ever, a name was got for it in this way from KakaQos. 
 The French name for it, populage, is an allusion to its 
 habits. The flower likes damp places as a poplar does, 
 so it was called after populus, a poplar ; which is a very 
 singular way of naming a plant, for similarities of struct- 
 ure are much more generally noticed than similarities 
 of taste. As the flower is much larger than that of the 
 buttercup, and equally golden in color, it often becomes 
 of considerable importance in spring foregrounds.
 
 May Cones of Pine. 169 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Cones of Pine The Author audaciously Plagiarizes Quotation from 
 Sir A. Helps A Pine-wood Sycamore-maple ' Les Boeufs,' by 
 Pierre Dupont Holly Flowers of Bird-cherry and Holly. 
 
 74 / i 
 
 JUST before the middle of May the pines are begin- ^M/^ 
 ning to form their cones, which, afa little distance, 
 
 have a powerful effect upon the color. At this time 
 they are just disengaging themselves from the brown 
 covering, and are of a light and cheerful green ; how- 
 ever, the brown still dominates, especially at a distance. 
 There is scarcely any thing in Nature to be compared 
 with a pine-wood, I think. Now, this sentence which 
 I have just written is not my own, but a piece of down- 
 right audacious plagiarism from a very eminent author, 
 who wrote ' Companions of my Solitude,' and whose 
 charming thoughts have become companions to enliven 
 the solitude of many other persons beside himself ; and 
 in that book any ingenious critic, keen to detect a 
 larceny, may find the above sentence printed word for 
 word. I ought, no doubt, to have honestly written 
 it as a quotation with inverted commas, but as the 
 opinion it expresses is just as much my own as his I 
 prefer to appropriate it absolutely. But as one cannot 
 exactly steal a whole paragraph or page, I will now 
 proceed to quote a passage which has always seemed 
 to me one of the most complete expressions of the syl- 
 van influence on the mind of a thinking creature :
 
 1 70 May Quotation from Sir A. Helps. 
 
 'I remember once when, after a long journey, I was ap- 
 proaching a city ennobled by great works of art, and of great 
 renown, that I had to pass through what I was told by the 
 guide-books was most insipid country, only to be hurried over 
 as fast as might be, and nothing to be thought or said about it. 
 But the guide-books, though very clever and useful things in 
 their way, do not know each of us personally, nor what we 
 secretly like and care for. Well, I was speeding through this 
 "uninteresting" country, and now there remained but one 
 long dull stage, as I read, to be gone through before I should 
 reach the much-wished-for city. It was necessary to stay some 
 time (for we travelled vetturino fashion) at the little post- 
 house, and I walked on, promising to be in the way whenever 
 the vehicle should overtake me. The road led through a wood, 
 chiefly of pines, varied, however, occasionally by other trees. 
 
 ' Into this wood I strayed. There was that indescribably 
 soothing noise (the Romans would have used the word 
 susurrus), the aggregate of many gentle movements of gentle 
 creatures. The birds hopped but a few paces off, as I ap- 
 proached them ; the brilliant butterflies wavered hither and 
 thither before me ; there was a soft breeze that day, and the 
 tops of the tall trees swayed to and fro politely to each other. 
 I found many delightful resting-places. It was not all dense 
 wood ; but here and there were glades (such open spots, I 
 mean, as would be cut through by the sword for an army to 
 pass) ; and here and there stood a clump of trees of different 
 heights and foliage, as beautifully arranged as if some triumph 
 of the art of landscape had been intended, though it was only 
 Nature's way of healing up the gaps in the forest. For her 
 healing is a new beauty. 
 
 ' It was very warm, without which nothing is beautiful to 
 me ; and I fell into the pleasantest train of thought. The 
 easiness of that present moment seemed to show the pos- 
 sibility of all care being driven away from the world some 
 day. For thus peace brings a sensation of power with it. I
 
 June A Pine-wood. 171 
 
 shall not say what I thought of, for it is not good always to be 
 communicative ; but altogether that hour in the pine-wood was 
 the happiest hour of the whole journey, though I saw many 
 grand pictures and noble statues, a mighty river, and buildings 
 which were built when people had their own clear thoughts 
 of what they meant to do and how they would do it.' * 
 
 This is as different as possible from Dante's feeling 
 about woods, but then the English writer knew that he 
 could easily get out of his pine-wood to catch the 
 vetturino again ; and in England, where he had learned 
 to love woods as places to meditate in, they are never 
 large enough to inspire the forest-fear of which I have 
 spoken elsewhere. And yet the pine is not in the 
 spring-time the most cheerful-looking of forest-trees, 
 though it has a wholesome influence on the mind, and 
 fills the air with a healthy and stimulating odor. The i 
 sycamore-maple is far more gay, with its long pendent 
 racemes of greenish-yellow flowers. The botanists call 
 this family the Aceracea, because the wood is sturdy ; 
 and the reader may remember how in that magnificent 
 rustic song ' Les Bceufs,' by Pierre Dupont, the poet 
 begins by particularizing the woods from which the 
 plough and the goad are made, and the wood used 
 in the plough is sycamore : 
 
 ' J'ai deux grands bceufs dans mon etable, 
 Deux grands bceufs blancs marques de 
 La charrue est en bois d'erable 
 L'aiguillon en branche de houx.' 
 
 1 Companions ( 
 Brothers' Ed. p. 77. 
 
 Deux grands bceufs blancs marques de rou* ; /__ 
 i charrue est en bois d'erable 
 L'aiguillon en branche de houx.' 
 
 my Solitude.' By Sir ARTHUR HELPS. Roberts
 
 172 June The Classic Pastorals. 
 
 The holly, that served for the goad, flowers nearly at 
 the same time with the sycamore, but not at all con- 
 spicuously, though its flowers are visible. I may just 
 observe what a great difference there often is in pictorial 
 importance between the flowers and fruit of the same 
 plant. In some plants, as, for example, the bird-cherry 
 tree, the flowers are glorious, and the berry of scarcely 
 any visible importance ; in others, as the holly, the 
 flowers would almost escape the notice of anybody but 
 a botanist, whilst it is impossible to avoid paying atten- 
 tion to the fruit. 
 
 1*1 k, 
 
 o- , 
 
 The Classic Pastorals Inferiority of the Classical Writers in Passion 
 for Natural Beauty Superiority of Chaucer to Virgil Virgil's 
 laconic Way Chaucer's abounding Eloquence Virgil never 
 intense when speaking of Nature Virgil's blending of Human 
 Interest with Nature How Virgil particularizes He cared for 
 Nature independently of Personal Ease and Enjoyment Catho- 
 licity of Taste in Virgil His preference of Olive to Willow Affec- 
 tionate Comparison of Species True Classic Love for Nature 
 contrasted with Wilful Ignorance of False Modern Classicism 
 Facility of brief poetical Word-painting A little Virgilian Picture 
 Virgil's Coloring Much effect with little Labor Excessive 
 Brevity of Classical Writers Their Laborious Corrections Per- 
 manent Interests of Sylvan Life Virgil's prospective Sense of 
 Duration in Sylvan Things The Anchorite and the Cicada. 
 
 I HAD reserved the reading of the classic pastorals 
 for the full bloom of leafy summer, hoping that 
 in our retirement we might have better access to the 
 thoughts of the poets when the green light fell upon
 
 June Superiority of Chaucer to Virgil. 173 
 
 their pages through the forest-leaves, and every thing 
 around us might illustrate their sylvan imagery. So 
 when June came I seldom went out without some old 
 Idyllist in my pocket, and sometimes Alexis read with 
 me, and often I read alone. 
 
 One general result of these readings remains with 
 me, and that is a strong sense of the inferiority of the 
 classical writers in the passion for natural beauty, I 
 will not say to the moderns, who have made a trade 
 of this passion, just as landscape-painters do, but to 
 the poets of the early renaissance, who wrote simply 
 from the heart, and had no idea of making poetical 
 capital from a business-like observation of Nature. 
 There is not the slightest comparison, for example, 
 between Virgil and Chaucer with respect to wealth of 
 landscape description, either in quantity or passion, 
 Chaucer is so much the more opulent and powerful 
 poet of the two in every thing that relates to external 
 Nature. And yet when I mention Virgil, I mention 
 a poet highly distinguished amongst the ancients for 
 this very delight in Nature ; a poet who certainly did 
 love sylvan things with a rare degree of affection, and 
 that not simply for his own physical enjoyment of 
 pleasant shade or thirst-assuaging fountain, or fruit 
 delicious in the mouth, but for their own beauty out- 
 side of human needs. But how laconically he expresses 
 this feeling ! how little he dwells upon it ! A few 
 neatly-ordered words suffice; the poet thinks he has 
 said all that is to be said, or need be, and there is an 
 end. Chaucer, on the other hand, whenever he begins
 
 1 74 June Chaucer s abounding Eloquence. 
 
 to talk about his enjoyment of Nature, hardly knows 
 how or when to stop ; he has the abounding eloquence 
 of a warm and earnest enthusiasm, the freshness and 
 variety of his ideas and sensations suggest an equal 
 variety and abundance of poetical expression ; he tries 
 hard to utter all that is in him, very frequently finds 
 that he has not yet succeeded to his mind, and tries 
 again and again, but without effacing the previous 
 attempts, so that there is a string of them one after 
 another. Hence Virgil may be quoted easily ; there 
 are passages of his, not more than three words long, 
 which afford excellent quotations and good subjects 
 for literary disquisition : whereas to quote Chaucer is 
 difficult in the extreme, for he leads you down to the 
 bottom of the page, and over the leaf, before you have 
 time to pause. Of course I am clearly aware that a 
 comparison of this kind cannot be made with justice 
 unless we duly consider the reserve which was a part 
 of the classical temper, and the remarkable tendency 
 to think 'it is enough/ which formed habits of work 
 in classic artists so directly opposed to the careless 
 fecundity of the mediaeval ones, and to the money- 
 getting productiveness of the moderns. It is quite 
 evident that if Virgil, whilst retaining this classical 
 reserve, had been imbued with Chaucer's passion for 
 flowers and birds, and spring mornings in the woods 
 and by streams, he would have concentrated the utter- 
 ance of it into a tenth of the space that Chaucer covered 
 with his facile verse ; but then the utterance would have 
 been all the more intense and powerful for that very
 
 June Virgil never intense. 175 
 
 concentration, whereas what we have of Virgil's is 
 delicate, but never intense, I mean, when he speaks 
 of Nature. He is always pleased to be in the woods, 
 and, whilst he is telling the story of this or that poetical 
 shepherd, the landscape is constantly seen by little 
 glimpses behind and between the figures ; but it is 
 painted with a quiet affection, no more, and an affection 
 that is immediately satisfied. One thing, however, is in 
 the highest degree delightful in Virgil, and that is the 
 lovely blending of human interests with his observations 
 upon inanimate nature ; exactly like the wreathing of 
 leaves and branches about fair or mighty human limbs, 
 that occurs so frequently in the work of the great figure- 
 painters. Thus when Gallus says, in the tenth Eclogue, 
 that he will go and suffer in the woods, the young trees 
 are associated with his passion in a way that could have 
 occurred to no other poet : 
 
 ' Certum est in silvis, inter spelaga ferarum 
 Malle pad, tenerisque meos incidere amores 
 Arboribus : crescent illas ; crescetis, amores.' 
 
 ' My mind is made up to prefer suffering in the woods 
 amongst the dens of wild beasts, and to engrave my loves 
 upon the saplings : the saplings grow grow (with them, my) 
 loves.' 
 
 This is ingenious, and affectionate also ; and please 
 observe the thoroughly classical brevity of the last four 
 words. Here, however, we have only the young trees 
 in general, and we know that it is one of the marks of 
 true affection to particularize, to distinguish the qualities 
 belonging especially to each of the things or persons
 
 176 June How Virgil particularizes. 
 
 that we love. Well, Virgil particularizes also, just like 
 a modern landscape-painter; and I take time to make 
 this observation in passing, that when the pseudo- 
 classical school opposed itself so strongly to the dis- 
 tinction between the species of trees which the modern 
 school of landscape felt to be essential, it would have 
 been easy to reply that their own idol, Virgil, did ex- 
 actly the same thing in poetry that the new school 
 was humbly endeavoring to do in the sister art of 
 painting. Thus, in the seventh Eclogue, Thyrsis says, 
 just at the last : 
 
 ' Fraxinus in silvis pulcherrima, pinus in hortis, 
 Populus in fluviis, abies in montibus altis : 
 Saspius at si me, Lycida formose, revisas, 
 Fraxinus in silvis cedat tibi, pinus in hortis.' 
 
 This illustrates at the same time both the two quali- 
 ties that I have been speaking of, for not only are the 
 trees mentioned specially, but they are connected with 
 a human interest : 
 
 ' The ash is most beautiful in the woods, the pine in gar- 
 dens, the poplar by rivers, the fir on lofty mountains ; but 
 if thou earnest to see me oftener, beautiful Lycidas, the- ash 
 would yield to thee in the woods, the pine in gardens.' 
 
 Nor would our analysis of the Virgilian spirit in this 
 passage be complete without the observation, that it 
 affords evidence against the theory that the ancients 
 could see no beauty in Nature except such as was con- 
 nected with personal ease .or physical enjoyment. The 
 allusion to gardens is brief and cursory in the extreme, 
 whilst there is no mention of what are popularly called
 
 June Catholicity of Taste in Virgil. 177 
 
 fruit-trees ; but the poet is clearly alive to the beauty 
 of the ash, to that of the poplar, very different kinds 
 of sylvan beauty, whilst it may be especially observed 
 that the faculty of perceiving any thing to admire in 
 the 'fir on the lofty mountains' has been supposed 
 to be exclusively modern. Yet, although Virgil had 
 the catholicity of taste which appreciates many different 
 forms of beauty, he had, like all true lovers of Nature, 
 his own little private preferences, which it is interesting 
 to note when an accident of his verse reveals them. 
 For example : he preferred the olive-tree to the willow, 
 a preference which, when I think of the perfect 
 beauty of willows that have never been mutilated by 
 farmers, I find it difficult to share, though it is possible 
 that a poet living so far south may have had in his 
 mind the peculiar grandeur of very ancient olive-trees, 
 and the value of their pale foliage, which he especially 
 notices, in scenes pervaded by the Italian azure of sky 
 and Mediterranean bays : 
 
 ' Lenta salix quantum pallenti cedit olivae, 
 
 Puniceis humilis quantum saliunca rosetis ; 
 
 Judicio nostro tantum tibi cedit Amyntas.' 
 
 ' As much as the pliant willow is inferior to the pale olive- 
 tree ; as much as the humble lavender is inferior to red roses ; 
 so much, in our opinion, is Amyntas inferior to thee.' 
 
 Every lover of Nature has preferences of this kind, 
 and the poet supposes that the gods must have them 
 also ; thus he reminds us that the vine was especially 
 beloved by Bacchus, the poplar by Hercules, the myrtle 
 by beautiful Venus, and 'his laurel' by Phoebus. But
 
 178 June Affectionate Comparison of Species. 
 
 ' Phyllis amat corylos,' Phyllis loves hazels, and so 
 long as Phyllis shall love hazels neither the myrtle nor 
 illo's laurel shall surpass them. 
 
 his comparison of species is full of affection, and 
 lot a narrow affection either ; for though the poet may 
 have had an especial liking for the olive, and probably 
 for the hazel also (there is reason to suppose that 
 Phyllis expresses a taste of the poet himself), he frankly 
 tells us that other trees have been preferred by other 
 personages, and gives each the honor that is its due. 
 This largeness is strikingly different from a bigoted 
 narrowness on this very subject, which is not unfre- 
 quently met with in our own time, and of which I have 
 lately given a very striking example. Here is evi- 
 dence sufficient, though in laconic passages, that the 
 Roman poet had a love for sylvan Nature, which if not 
 so cultivated by attention to minute detail as that of 
 a modern botanist, or a landscape-painter of the botani- 
 cal school, still paid far more attention to detail than 
 the wilfully ignorant criticism of the false modern clas- 
 sical school, which held the almost inconceivable the- 
 ory that trees were to be regarded simply as trees, 
 without distinguishing their species. I well know that 
 we are strongly tempted, on the faith of a word here 
 and there, to give credit to an ancient author for much 
 more knowledge and much keener perception than he 
 probably ever possessed ; and that it is one of the com- 
 monest illusions of our complex intellectual civilization 
 to forget the simplicity of sight and thought in which 
 men lived long ago, and to attribute to them our own
 
 June A Little Virgilian Picture. 179 
 
 habits and ideas from a respectful unwillingness to 
 acknowledge any inferiority in them : but the exact 
 truth about their ways of thinking is still ascertain- 
 able. It is clear that Virgil had much of the sort of 
 vision which belongs to a modern painter. Let us not 
 exaggerate this praise : there is an immense difference 
 between merely writing down the words 'fraxinus in 
 silvis pulcherrima,' and painting an ash-tree well, so as 
 to make us see that it is ' pulcherrima.' It is easy to say 
 that a bull has a white side and that the herbage he eats 
 is 'pale ;' but it requires an incomparably higher culture 
 of the faculty which perceives color to paint the white 
 bull and the pale herbage in the right tints. However, 
 it may be affirmed with truth that Virgil had the faculty 
 of pictorial sight in the rudimentary state, because he 
 takes notice of the things that painters give their lives 
 to study ; and it is perfectly conceivable, that had he 
 lived in our own time he might have become a painter 
 of rustic subjects, equal to Troyon in breadth and repose, 
 superior to him in delicacy. Here, in two lines, is a 
 picture that really reminds one of Troyon, it was the 
 recollection of these very verses that made me mention 
 that painter just now, a picture as highly finished as it 
 can be in so brief a space, the subject being a bull with 
 landscape adjuncts, exactly the kind of subject that 
 Troyon painted with so much simplicity and truth: 
 
 ' Ille, latus niveum molli fultus hyacintho 
 Ilice sub nigra pallentes ruminat herbas.' 
 
 ' He, with his snow-white side resting upon the soft hyacinth, 
 ruminates the pale herbage under the black ilex.'
 
 180 June Much Effect with little Labor. 
 
 You have the white bull, the dark ilex, and then the 
 middle tint of herbage, which is called pale by com- 
 parison with the tree. ' Black ' is merely the popular 
 term for dark, whether dark green or dark purple ; it is 
 still constantly used in this way in different languages, 
 especially with reference to trees : thus we have the 
 black poplar, the black forest, the black islands, &c. 
 It is not too much to say that another color is sug- 
 gested by the simple mention of the hyacinth, and 
 there is a delicate hint of pity for the flower crushed 
 under the weight of the animal ; but this belongs to 
 poetry rather than to painting. I do not believe that 
 any artist in words ever painted so complete a picture 
 of animal and landscape with so few touches. You 
 have color (niveunt, hyacinthd), you have texture (molli), 
 and you have light and shade (iiigra pallentes}. What- 
 ever may be wanting in the tiny masterpiece is supplied 
 at once by our own memory and imagination, form 
 is only indicated by the mention of the kind of animal 
 and the kinds of plants ; but then we remember imme- 
 diately what is the shape of a bull, of an ilex, and of a 
 hyacinth. 
 
 To appreciate the full artistic quality of such a per- 
 fect bit of work as this, it is enough to place beside it 
 any piece of common descriptive verse having a similar 
 subject. But whilst thus heartily acknowledging Virgil's 
 peculiar gift, and the art with which he so skilfully used 
 it, a modern critic can hardly escape some feeling of 
 surprise at what seems to him the excessive brevity 
 of the classical writers. They said what they had to
 
 June Interests of Sylvan Life. 181 
 
 say so well, that the wonder is they were not tempted 
 to say more, or, if not more on the same subjects, that 
 they did not treat other subjects in the same manner. 
 Their inspiration does not seem to have been frequent 
 in its recurrence, or of long duration when it came. We 
 know that they corrected laboriously, and their correc- 
 tions, like those of a sculptor on the marble, would result 
 (with their taste) in a diminution of the mass. This 
 being so, it is a subject of special regret that so much 
 of the Georgics should have been occupied with mere 
 receipts and advice for the use of farmers. 
 
 The interests of the sylvan life are very much the 
 same in aU ages, the differences which time has brought 
 about being more in the arms and instruments we use 
 than in the objects of our study or the manner of our 
 enjoyment. The ancients had not our guns and micro- 
 scopes, but they hunted and botanized after their own 
 more primitive fashion, chasing the same animals, and 
 gathering the same plants/fl In the fifth Eclogue there 
 is a prospective sense of the duration of sylvan things 
 which expresses itself very strongly in two verses : 
 
 ' Dum juga mentis aper, fluvios dum piscis amabit, 
 Dumque thymo pascentur apes, dum rore cicadae ; 
 Semper honos, nomenque tuum, laudesque manebunt' 
 
 ' So long as the wild boar shall love the ridges of the hills, 
 or the fish the streams; so long as the bees shall feed on 
 thyme, or the cicada drink the dew ; thy name and honor 
 shall remain.' 
 
 Well, here, within so short a distance of the Val Ste. 
 Veronique, there are wild boars on the ridges of the
 
 1 82 Jinie The Anchorite and the Cicada. 
 
 hills, there are fish in the clear streams, and the bees 
 feed on the wild thyme, and the cicada drinks the dew. 
 So permanent are sylvan things, that Virgil described 
 prospectively all these neighbors of mine just nineteen 
 hundred years ago. Neighbors, indeed ! though, per- 
 haps, it is not very neighborly of me to shoot the wild 
 boars, and catch the trout, and take the honey from the 
 bees ; but my conscience is clear as to the cicada, her 
 I have never injured or robbed, not being able to see 
 my advantage in so doing ; and, therefore, I will call 
 her 'neighbor' without remorse. As we have been 
 quoting Latin lately, I may recall what an anchorite of 
 the desert said with a true affection for this humble 
 creature, that he had learned in the depth of his soli- 
 tude, ' Soror, arnica mea, cicada / ' ' My sister, and 
 friend, cicada ! ' I never see one of them without think- 
 ing of this, and loving that holy anchorite.
 
 June Theocritus. 183 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Theocritus Greek, French, and English The real Subject of Greek 
 Idyl and Roman Eclogue The Idyllic Shepherds Their Immoral- 
 ity A Protest Nature of the Idyl Few Landscape Pictures in 
 the great Idyllists Method of the Idyllists Their simplest Art 
 Cufining of the Idyllists in describing Things The pervading 
 Sylvan Spirit Virgil and Theocritus compared Personal Expe- 
 rience of Theocritus His lively Description of Repose near a Coun- 
 try House Description by Theocritus Touches of Reality The 
 true Idyllists call every thing by its own Name. 
 
 THERE are not many separate landscape studies 
 in Virgil's idyllic poetry ; there are fewer still in 
 that of Theocritus. Greek and Roman remained within 
 the rigid limits of their art ; and perhaps the Greek, by 
 the quality of his language, even exceeded the Roman in 
 that brevity that we approach with so much difficulty 
 when we care to rival it at all. So Theocritus, in the 
 twenty-fifth Idyl, speaks of the hill-tops with many 
 springs, 7roA,t7rt8a/co<? aKpwpeir)?, which the best French 
 translation calls collines aux sources nombreuses, how 
 awkwardly ! and which could not be adequately trans- 
 lated into English without borrowing Tennyson's ex- 
 pression, ' many-fountained,' 
 
 ' Dear mother Ida, many-fountained Ida,' 
 
 which is itself an exotic form, borrowed from the very 
 Greek word that Theocritus used, taken evidently from 
 Homer, who uses it in connection with Ida. 
 
 But the real subject or motive of the Greek idyl and
 
 1 84 June The Idyllic Shepherds. 
 
 of the Roman eclogue, the imitation of it, is not external 
 nature ; it is the life of man in Nature, of man as an 
 animal, or lower than any other animal, with pretty hills 
 and foliage for a background, and flower-bearing, grassy 
 lands to play in. It is strange that an immorality so 
 disgusting, so inconceivable by us, should ever have 
 been united with any simple and hearty love of Nature, 
 and it is the stranger that the immorality itself was of 
 a kind completely out of harmony with natural instinct 
 and law : but the truth is, that in the measure of their 
 powers these ancient poets, when they wrote idyls, set 
 themselves to paint animal pictures with rustic back- 
 grounds, the animal being sometimes a bull, sometimes 
 a goat, but more frequently man. We have only to 
 read these poems to perceive at once how inevitable it 
 was for the ancients to arrive at the conception of the 
 satyr. The sentimental shepherds whom they celebrate 
 are morally so much beneath what we charitably hope 
 is the common human level, that it is really a relief and 
 a necessary transition to pass from them to the honestly 
 semi-bestial condition of half-animal, in which we see 
 at once that responsibility has been diminished by 
 monstrosity of organization. Had these poets simply 
 taken man as a part of Nature and described his passions 
 naturally, however frankly, we might have read their 
 descriptions with the indulgence that we feel for savages 
 in the South Sea Islands ; but their groves are like the 
 Cities of the Plain, and one desires for them, if not the 
 consuming fire, at any rate the oblivion of Asphaltites, 
 that dreariest, bitterest of seas, whose waters lie for 
 
 fo*Lto*
 
 June Nature of the Idyl. 1 85 
 
 ever, and so heavily heaviest of all waters on a vale 
 not morally more impure than the Arcadia of classic 
 imagination.* 
 
 I know that morality is not art, and that as we 
 began to talk of these things simply from the artistic 
 point of view, it is a complete change of key to pass 
 into moral criticism. But it was impossible for me to 
 speak of the old idyllic poetry at all without this pro- 
 test ; and now that the protest has got itself fairly 
 uttered I am free to return to art. 
 
 The nature of the idyl has been accurately defined 
 by a recent English writer on Greek poetry. ' The 
 name of the idyl/ he says, ' sufficiently explains its 
 nature. It is a little picture. Rustic or town life, 
 legends of the gods, and passages of personal experi- 
 ence, supply the idyllist with subjects. He does not 
 treat them lyrically, following rather the rules of epic 
 and dramatic composition. Generally there is a nar- 
 rator, and in so far the idyl is epic ; its verse, too, is 
 the hexameter. . . . Perhaps the plastic arts deter- 
 mined the direction of idyllic poetry, suggesting the 
 name and supplying the poet with models of compact 
 and picturesque treatment. In reading the Idyls it 
 
 * Thus I have no hesitation in preferring the twenty-seventh idyl 
 of Theocritus to the twenty-third, notwithstanding the frank license 
 of the one and the decent language of the other. Indeed I think that 
 the twenty-third idyl of Theocritus, and some of Virgil's, are the most 
 essentially and perfectly abominable things, from the moral point of 
 view, in literature. Everybody knows this who has read them, but 
 somehow these authors escape the stigma of immorality because of their 
 sacred character as classics. The worst of modern literature is purity 
 itself in comparison.
 
 1 86 June Method of the Idyllists. 
 
 should never be forgotten that they are pictures, so 
 studied and designed by their authors : they ought to 
 affect us in the same way as the bas-reliefs and vases 
 of Greek art, in which dramatic action is presented at 
 a moment of its evolution, and beautiful forms are 
 grouped together with such simplicity as to need but 
 little story to enhance their value.' * 
 
 Although, as I have already observed, the landscape 
 pictures that can be detached are rare in the great 
 iclyllists, they continually associate, as we have seen in 
 Virgil, the material of landscape with the human life, 
 which they paint in their little compositions ; and so 
 closely, that if you cannot separate the landscape from 
 the figures, so it is hardly possible, on the other hand, 
 to separate the figures from the landscape. J\Thus, in 
 his first idyl, Theocritus begins wjth a pine-tree close 
 to fountains, and speaks of its whispering or rustling, 
 ^riBvpia-fjua, instantaneously connecting this vague music 
 with the music of a goatherd playing upon his pipe ; 
 whilst the goatherd himself, in answer, connects the 
 sound of water falling from a rock with the song of a 
 shepherd. This was distinctly the method of the idyl- 
 ists, who blended figures and landscape as closely 
 together as they possibly could, often in a way that 
 might fairly blame as being too obviously 
 \} intentional. The simplest and most natural way of 
 1 doing this was by merely informing the reader that the 
 little incident narrated occurred in such or such a 
 
 ^ 
 
 jJ^jjificisni 
 W\V\} intentio 
 
 * ' Studies of the Greek Poets.' By John Addington Symonds. 
 London : Smith and Elder. 1873.
 
 June Cunning of the Idyllists. 187 
 
 pleasant place, where this or that species of tree was 
 growing. ' Let us sit down here,' the goatherd says, 
 ' under this elm, before this Priapus and these (carved) 
 Kraniades, where there are a rustic seat and oak-trees.' 
 When the poet describes a vase he takes the oppor- 
 tunity of doing a little leaf-painting at the same time, 
 by twining round the lips of it a garland of ivy mixed 
 with pelichrysum, giving a dainty little touch of color 
 just at the last, KapTrw Kpotcoevn, of saffron-colored 
 fruit. The vase, too, is varnished with * odorous wax,' 
 the simple mention of which carries the imagination 
 instantaneously to the bees and their labors, and thence 
 to the flowers where the odorous wax is found. Nor 
 is this all ; for, in continuing the description of the 
 vase, Theocritus, whilst speaking of the figures upon it, 
 says that near to one of them is a vine laden with 
 grapes, and round about the vase is a wreath of the 
 flexible acanthus. So in Virgil's third Eclogue the two 
 cups, made by the divine Alcimedon,' are decorated 
 with carvings of vine and ivy ; whilst on two other cups 
 by the same artist, belonging to Damcetas, the acanthus 
 is used for the handles ; and in the midst the artist has 
 represented Orpheus and tJie forests following him 
 'sylvasque sequentes.' How completely the sylvan 
 spirit flows into every thing here ! flf 
 
 Mr. Symonds, whom I have already quoted, thinks 
 that, whilst it is difficult to speak in terms of exag- 
 gerated praise concerning the appreciation of scenery 
 by Theocritus, Virgil lacks his vigor and enthusiasm 
 for the open-air life of the country. The sentiment that
 
 1 88 June Personal Experience of Theocritus. 
 
 we find in Virgil appears to be of a different nature. 
 It is not so fresh and lively, but is more indolent and 
 tender ; still, it seems genuine also. The difference 
 between the two is very like a difference that may 
 frequently be observed between two landscape-painters 
 in our own day, one of whom is remarkable for sketching 
 vigorously in color, and the other for concentrated 
 finish and artistic arrangement of his material in the 
 studio. The two artists may have an equal love for 
 Nature, although the work of the first will seem to have 
 more vitality, and that of the second more accomplished 
 art. Theocritus writes like a man who is accustomed 
 to walk in all sorts of wild places, and who remembers 
 his experiences in such walks. Thus, in the fourth 
 Idyl, Corydon says, ' When you come to the mountain, 
 Battus, don't come unshod ; for on the mountain-land 
 grow pdfjivoi, and acnraKado^ prickly shrubs of Sicily. 
 Evidently this is the recommendation of a practical 
 pedestrian. Then he has the art of finding pleasant 
 spots to rest in ; so Lacon says to his companion, 
 ' Don't be in such a hurry, the fire is not at your 
 heels. You will sing more agreeably when you are 
 seated here under the wild olive-tree and those shrubs. 
 Cool water trickles here ; we have grass and a leafy 
 couch, and the grasshoppers chirp close' by.' Writing 
 like this takes us out of doors at once, and to the very 
 spot. In the seventh Idyl we have a rich description 
 of a pleasant country-house, and the arrival there : 
 ' Then Lycidas turned to the left ' observe the vivid 
 reality given by this detail ' and took the road to
 
 June Touches of Reality. 189 
 
 Pyxus. But Encritus and I turned towards where 
 Phrasidamus lived, and so did handsome little Amyntas. 
 We reclined rejoicing in deep beds of odorous mastic- 
 leaves, and in leaves just stripped from the vines ; and 
 many poplars and elms swayed to and fro over our 
 heads, and close to us the sacred fountain babbled 
 whilst it flowed from the grotto of the nymphs. And 
 in the shade-giving branches the sun-browned cicadas, 
 tired themselves with chirruping, and the 6\o\vya)v 
 made its murmuring noise far off* in bloomless thickets 
 of bramble. The larks and goldfinches sang, the turtle- 
 dove uttered her plaintive note, the brown-yellow bees 
 flew round about the fountains, every thing smelt of the 
 rich late summer, of the fruit-time. Pears and apples 
 were beside us and at our feet, and the branches were 
 weighed down to the earth.' 
 
 Evidently this description is from memory ; it is a 
 lively account of a rest in some house the poet himself 
 must have visited. There is especially one touch, the 
 poplars and elms waving to and fro over the heads of 
 the boon companions, which must have been got from 
 Nature. There are other touches scattered about the 
 idyls, which have a like reality. ' I began to love thee,' 
 the Cyclops says to Galatea, 'when first thou earnest 
 with my mother to gather hyacinths upon the hill.' 
 
 Whatever may be the differences between Theocritus 
 and his greatest imitator, one thing they have in com- 
 
 * The creature is unknown, and the translation of the word 
 can only be guessed at. M. Remer thinks it meant the green 
 frog.
 
 190 June The Aminta of Tasso. 
 
 mon, or perhaps it may be more accurate to say that one 
 quality was preserved in the imitation, and that is, their 
 habit of calling every thing by its own name. It is un- 
 necessary to give examples of this, because every extract 
 that I have made is an example. The weak pastoral 
 poetry of their feeblest and latest imitators is not 
 marked by this masterly precision. Theocritus always 
 had before his mind's eye the image of a tree, when he 
 thought of a tree at all, much too clearly for him to be 
 ignorant of its species. The weak imitator does not see 
 an elm or a poplar, but only 'trees,' which in English 
 have generally the advantage of rhyming with breeze, 
 and ' groves/ which are useful because they rhyme with 
 loves. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 The Aminta of Tasso His Indifference to Scenery His Musical 
 Verse Tasso's Treatment of Landscape His Way of Sketching 
 Human Interest. 
 
 WHEN we pass from the early genuine pastorals to 
 such a pastoral as the ' Aminta ' of Tasso, we 
 very soon find out that we have left sylvan Nature 
 behind us. We have shepherds, and satyrs, and pas- 
 toral costumes, and an abundance of pretty talk, but 
 we are no more in the fresh air of Theocritus than if the 
 Tuscan poet had studied nothing but a classical die-
 
 June Tassos Musical Verse. 191 
 
 tionary. He does not really care in the least about the 
 scenery of his poem ; occasionally a tree is mentioned, 
 or the woods, or a rivulet, or a little lake, but curso- 
 rily, in the temper of a figure-painter who dashes in a 
 bit of background with what may happen to be upon 
 his palette. The words of course come in well and 
 musically, as words: ' F onde' rhymes prettily with 
 'fronde* 
 
 1 Ho visto al pianto mio 
 Risponder per pietate i sassi e 1'onde ; 
 E sospirar le fronde 
 Ho visto al pianto mio ; 
 Ma non ho visto mai, 
 Ne spero di vedere 
 Compassion nella crudele e bella.' * 
 
 These verses are quite typical of Tasso's treatment 
 of landscape. He may use it for rapid allusion, but will 
 not dwell upon it an instant longer than is necessary for 
 his immediate purpose, and recurs to human passion as 
 a workman who has glanced out of window applies him- 
 self again to his own business. So in the second scene 
 (Act I.) Aminta tells, very exquisitely, that pretty story 
 about the bee stinging, and how Filli, who was stung 
 on the cheek, was cured by Silvia's lips ; after which he, 
 Aminta, who had not been stung by the bee, pretended 
 that he had been, and so got a sort of kiss from Silvia, 
 
 * ' I have known the stones and the water answer my complaint 
 from pity, and I have known the leaves sigh to it ; but I have never 
 found, nor do I ever hope to find, compassion in her who is cruel and 
 beautiful.'
 
 192 June Tassos Way of Sketching. 
 
 who did not know that she was kissing him ; by which 
 act of innocent charity Silvia inflicted a deeper wound 
 than any bee could have inflicted. This little scene 
 takes place 'air ornbra d'un bel faggioj under the shade 
 of a fine beech-tree, and in the course of the narrative 
 Aminta compares Silvia's sweet words to the mur- 
 muring of a slow rivulet that makes its way amongst 
 little stones, or to the noise of a light breeze under 
 the leaves. 
 
 ' E le dolci parole, assai piu dolci 
 Che '1 mormorar d' un lento fiumicello 
 Che rompa il corso fra minuti sassi, 
 O che '1 garrir dell' aura infra le frondi.' 
 
 But the poet instantly passes from these light 
 touches of landscape-sketching to the real subject of 
 his thoughts : ' Then I felt in my heart a new desire 
 to bring this mouth of mine nearer to her mouth.' 
 
 ' Allor sentii nel cuor nuovo desire 
 D' appressar alia sua questa mia bocca.' 
 
 And when Dafne mentions a pond and an islet, it 
 is only to tell how Silvia looked at herself in the water 
 whilst she was dressing her hair and adorning it with 
 flowers.
 
 June The French Imitation-Pastoral. 193 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 The French Imitation-Pastoral Le Brun Le Brun's Good Inten- 
 . tions The Modern Genuine Pastoral Lamartine's 'Laboureurs' 
 Troyon and Rosa Bonheur Millet and Jules Breton George Sand 
 ' La Petite Fadette ' Landry and Sylvinet A perfect Bit Diffi- 
 culty of treating Rustic Subjects A Satirist of Florian. 
 
 WHEN you come to the French imitation-pastoral, 
 the indifference to landscape is pretty nearly 
 absolute. You have ' rockers' and 'bois' and 'forltsl 
 of course, but not the faintest sign that the writer has 
 ever walked in the woods with his eyes open. The 
 following lines from Houdard de Lamotte are a fair 
 specimen of the sort of landscape-painting you have to 
 expect : 
 
 ' Aux plaintes de Daphnis les Nymphes s'attendrirent ; 
 VyDans le creux des rochers les echos en gemirent ; 
 Comme aux accords d'Orphe'e on vit du fond des bois 
 Les lions attendris accourir a sa voix.' 
 
 The most curious thing about the French pastoral 
 writers of the eighteenth century is that they do really 
 seem to fancy themselves students of Nature. Le Brun 
 wrote a poem on ' La Nature, ou le Bonheur Philoso- 
 phique et Champetre/ and in the first canto invokes the 
 wood-gods and the nymphs : 
 
 ' Et vous, de la Nature immortelles compagnes, 
 Vous, deites des bois, vous, nymphes des campagnes, 
 Laissez-moi parcourir vos bosquets ombrage's 
 Que 1'art contagieux n'a jamais outrage's.' 
 13
 
 1 94 June The Modern Genuine Pastoral. 
 
 Here are decided intentions of taking walks in the 
 woods, but they come to nothing ; and the poet does 
 not get beyond a very external interest in agriculture, 
 which leaves him at liberty to soliloquize at great length 
 upon things in general. 
 
 It was only after the mania for imitating Virgil and 
 Theocritus had completely spent itself that the genuine 
 modern school of pastoral art arose. The feeling which 
 inspired Theocritus exists in our own day, but now, 
 when it is genuine, it never expresses itself in the form 
 that was natural to him. Most commonly, a modern 
 poet who has this inspiration gives utterance to it by 
 means of color upon canvas, making his idyl really 
 visible, according to the derivation of the word from 
 etSo9 and etSw, and he who cares for this kind of poetry 
 may find good pages of it in the annual exhibitions 
 of pictures. Sometimes our modern writers in verse 
 or prose describe rural things with idyllic grace and 
 sweetness, yet hardly ever with idyllic concision ; and it 
 is for this reason chiefly that a painted idyl, which pro- 
 duces its effect instantaneously on the spectator, is 
 nearer to the original conception of the iSv\\iov. I 
 should like very much to quote some of the best 
 modern work in writing, but it is almost impossible 
 to do so without invading one's space too much : such 
 quotations are like the young cuckoo in a small bird's 
 nest ; they grow and grow till they push the native prog- 
 eny aside. 
 
 ' Les Laboureurs ' of Lamartine is a very good speci- 
 men of the genuine modern rustic poem. Here is one
 
 June Lantar tine's ' Laboureurs! 195 
 
 extract, spoiled, or nearly so, by being cut too short. It 
 is quite a picture : 
 
 * Laissant souffler ses boeufs, le jeune homme s'appuie 
 Debout au tronc d'un chene, et de sa main essuie 
 La sueur du sentier sur son front male et doux ; 
 Lafemme et les enfants tout petits, a genoux 
 Devant les boeufs prives baissant leur corne a terre, 
 Leur cassent des rejets defrene et defougere, 
 Et jettent devant eux en verdoyants monceaux 
 Les feuilles que leurs mains emondent des rameaux ; 
 Us ruminent en paix pendant que 1'ombre obscure 
 Sous le soleil montant se replie a mesure, 
 Et, laissant de la glebe attiedir la froideur, 
 Vient mourir, et border les pieds du laboureur. 
 II rattache le joug, sous sa forte courroie, 
 Aux comes qu'en pesant sa main robuste ploie 
 
 ' Les enfants vont cueillir des rameaux decoupes 
 
 I Des gouttes de rosee encore tout trempes ; 
 
 Aujoug avec lafeuille en verts festons les nouent, 
 Que sur leurs fronts voiles les fiers taureaux secouent 
 Pour que leurflanc qui bat et leur poitrail poudreux 
 Portent sous le soleil un peu d' ombre avec eux.' 
 
 This is just as truthful as the best bits of Virgil, and 
 it is a charming rustic scene. I have Italicized what 
 seem to me the best and happiest touches. We see 
 that this is strictly the same rustic inspiration that 
 animated Troyon and Rosa Bonheur, yet sweeter and 
 tenderer than theirs. Millet and Jules Breton, two 
 poets who have worked in color, have much more 
 human sympathy than the two illustrious animal- 
 painters just mentioned, and are nearer, but in their 
 own original way, to the temper of the literary artists.
 
 196 June 'La Petite Fadette! 
 
 But by far the greatest of all modern writers on rustic 
 subjects is George Sand. She alone has found the 
 means of conciliating a perfectly rustic tone of thought 
 with the exigences of accomplished art. You may read 
 her ' La Petite Fadette ' in any farmhouse within sixty 
 miles of the place where it was written, and the peas- 
 ants will understand you and be grateful ; you may read 
 the same book to the most learned critics in polite liter- 
 ature, and they will feel the freshness of Theocritus, the 
 consummate art of Virgil. When Landry is seeking 
 his twin-brother Sylvinet by the brook-side there occur 
 the most exquisite paragraphs, finished like portions of 
 a poem : 
 
 ' Chacun sait pourtant qu'il y a danger a rester au bord de 
 notre riviere quand le grand vent se leve. Toutes les rives 
 sont minees en dessous, et il n'est point d'orage qui, dans la 
 quantit^, ne deVacine quelques-uns de ces vergnes qui sont 
 toujours courts en racines, a moins qu'ils ne soient tres gros 
 et tres vieux, et qui vous tomberaient fort bien sur le corps 
 sans vous avertir. Mais Sylvinet, qui n'e'tait pourtant ni plus 
 simple ni pluJou qu'un autre, ne paraissait pas tenir compte 
 du danger. ) II n'y pensait pas plus que s'il se fut trouve a 
 1'abri dans une bonne grange.' ( 
 
 Landry finds his brother by the brook-side, and then 
 comes one of the most perfect bits in the whole story. 
 See how delicately finished it is, and yet how full of 
 Nature, and how free ! It is precisely in the early Greek 
 idyllic manner, the unaffected manner of Theocritus : 
 
 ' II se mit done a siffler comme s'il appelait les merles pour 
 les faire chanter, ainsi que font les patours quand ils suivent
 
 June A Satirist of Florian. 197 
 
 les buissons a la nuit tombante. Cela fit lever la tete a 
 Sylvinet, et, voyant son f rere, il cut honte et se leva vivement, 
 croyant n'avoir pas etc vu. Alors Landry fit comme s'il 
 1'apercevait, et lui dit sans beaucoup crier, car la riviere 
 ne chantait pas assez haut pour empecher de s'entendre : 
 " He, mon Sylvinet, tu es done la ? Je t'ai attendu tout 
 ce matin, et voyant que tu etais sorti pour si longtemps, je 
 suis venu me promener par ici, en attendant le souper, ou 
 je comptais bien te retrouver a la maison : mais puisque te 
 voila, nous rentrerons ensemble. Nous allons descendre la 
 riviere chacun sur une rive, et nous nous joindrons au gue 
 des Roulettes." ' 
 
 The difficulty of writing well about rustic subjects is 
 'twofold. Either the writer may be untrue, as Florian 
 was by a false refinement, or he may be too realist, too 
 terre-d-terre, like a vulgar painter, and be excluded from 
 all access to the ideal. Our knowledge of Nature feels 
 itself insulted by the first, and our sense of artistic con- 
 venance by the second. The two faults, of utterly oppo- 
 site kinds, were very cleverly united in the same song 
 by a writer who felt the absurdity of Florian and the 
 crudeness of the realism that is entirely without an 
 ideal. He makes a poet go into the fields with his head 
 full of Florian's notions, and enter into a conversation 
 with a shepherdess of the least imaginative type. What 
 he says is the 18th-century pastoral, with its false ideal ; 
 what she answers is the gross modern realism that has 
 no idea whatever. In the chanson the male speaker has 
 entirely the worst of it, yet before the tribunal of a com- 
 petent art-criticism she also would be condemned as 
 unfit for the world of art that world which has laws of
 
 198 June The Nightingale. 
 
 its own about truth, where truth is studied earnestly, yet 
 never uttered without reserve. Here is one stanza : 
 
 'HE. 
 
 ' Permets qu'a ton corsage 
 
 Je place ce bouquet, 
 A tes pieds ce feuillage, 
 Sur ta tete ces bluets ! 
 
 SHE. 
 Monsieur, tout 93 m'ennuie, 
 
 Moi qui n'ai qu'mes sabiots, 
 S'il vous en prend 1'envie 
 
 J'vous les casserai d'sus le dos.' 
 
 (^ XXXVII. 
 
 The Nightingale His wonderful Voice His various Emotional Ex- 
 pression His Music is also Poetry and Eloquence The Charm of 
 the Nightingale's Singing Byron The Opening of 'Parisina' 
 The Nightingale sings on a height Chaucer's Love of the Night- 
 ingale Goldfinch and Nightingale A Poet's Paradise Tradition 
 amongst the Peasants Buffon's Description of the Nightingale's 
 Song The Talk of the Birds The Secret of the Bird-Language. 
 
 AS an eloquent speaker dislikes interruption, and 
 never attempts to display his eloquence when 
 he cannot be sure of silence round about him, so the 
 nightingale says nothing in the daytime, when a thousand 
 other voices and noises of all kinds would interrupt his 
 melodious utterance, but reserves it for the silence of 
 the night, when he alone is king of the forest, and he ; 
 may fancy that all other creatures are listening. His
 
 June His Wonderful Voice. 199 
 
 song was too original and too beautiful to be mixed 
 with the vulgar noises of the day, and even the glare 
 of sunshine would have been too violent an accom- 
 paniment ; but when the woods lie dark in the broad 
 shadows that are cast by the midnight moon, and only 
 a leaf glitters here and there as it trembles in the soft, 
 noiseless breezes of the summer night, then, on some 
 thin high branch, the nightingale sits and sings alone. 
 And what wonderful singing it is ! Many a human 
 reputation has been overdone, but this reputation of the 
 nightingale, great as it has been in all countries that 
 are favored by his performances, and even in other coun- 
 tries, too, by hearsay, has never yet fully prepared any 
 sensitive person to hear him for the first time with- 
 out both delight and amazement. The wonder ever 
 remains that a creature so small and weak, so little 
 gifted with the graces of outward appearance, a little, 
 thin, gray bird that only weighs half-an-ounce the 
 weight of a letter should possess a voice as strong as 
 the voice of a prima donna at the Opera, and at the 
 same time so marvellously sweet and pure. But not 
 alone for its strength and its purity is the song of the 
 nightingale astonishing. Its variety and flexibility are 
 more astonishing still. No musician ever better under- 
 stood the value of piano and pianissimo, of forte and 
 fortissimo, no musician ever developed a crescendo with 
 more sure and delicate gradatiorf^"And then the clear, f JL\ 
 shrill pipings, the long brilliant shakes, the sudden sharp 
 strokes of sound like the crash of a violinist's bow upon 
 the strings, the tender passionate cadences fading away
 
 2OO June His Emotional Expression, 
 
 into the night air and dying slowly in a prolonged agony 
 till they grow so thin and faint that you know not 
 whether yet they have wholly ceased or not ! The bird 
 runs over the whole range of emotional expression, from 
 the intoxication of loudest triumph that can be heard as 
 far as the shouting of a strong man, down to the sighing 
 of an airy voice that seems like the lamentation of an 
 inconsolable spirit. Often there is an evident artist- 
 pride in consummate executive accomplishment, often 
 the bird plays upon its own marvellous instrument as a 
 musician plays the flute or the violin, seeking for the 
 most varied and original effects, and rejoicing in them 
 when they are found. Again, the song of the night- 
 ingale being his only utterance, it is not music simply 
 as music is for us, but also poetry and eloquence. The 
 nightingale is not merely a musician playing on an 
 instrument, he is a singer as we say that the poets 
 themselves are singers. No one who listens can doubt 
 that he expresses an original emotion. The abundant 
 variety of his song is evidence that it is not simply 
 mechanical, and the pauses that he allows himself are 
 not merely to recruit from physical weariness, but much 
 more to seek a fitting expression for the emotion that 
 is beginning to succeed to that which has just been 
 expressed. If the reader thinks that it is too much 
 to claim for this the character of poetry, since there 
 is no conscious exercise of creative intellect, he will 
 scarcely deny to the bird a gift like that of some mu- 
 sician who in the late evening sits at his piano, and 
 in a long series of unpremeditated improvisations gives
 
 June Byron . 201 
 
 expression to his feelings as they arise. He, too, in "a 
 certain sense, is a poet, though not in words. And the 
 true ineffable charm of the nightingale's singing is not 
 in the quality of the sound, exquisite as it is, but in 
 the wonder of the communication from the little bird 
 to us. ' What ! ' thinks the human listener, ' can the bird 
 feel all these mighty emotions ? can he feel such glory 
 of triumph, such tender melancholy, such languor of 
 passion ? ' Man, as he listens, quite easily falls under 
 the spell. The very hour and season conspire together 
 against him. It is summer in its richness, it is night 
 in its beauty and calm. The heart is hushed and sub- 
 dued, the eyes are quite ready to moisten at any 
 suggestion of melancholy, or the imagination to be 
 aroused by any awakening voice. The voice comes 
 mysteriously from an unseen being, the quiet of the 
 night is filled and flooded with it, we are bathed in 
 the sound as in moonlight, and then all our great human 
 feelings are played upon by that tiny creature as an 
 organ is played upon by the organist. 
 
 Some of the very sweetest lines in poetry have been 
 suggested by the nightingale. Byron, from his residence 
 in southern climates, where the song of the bird is bolder 
 and more varied than in England, was familiar with it, 
 and has celebrated it in two of his best-known and most j 
 beautiful passages. There is nothing in all poetry more ' 
 exquisitely finished than the opening lines of 'Parisina.'' 
 Byron was always happy in his openings, but this one 
 comes upon the reader with a sudden sweetness, that 
 makes him feel in an instant the delicate firm touch
 
 202 June The Opening of ^ Parisina! 
 
 of the master's hand. What a way of telling us that 
 it is late evening! 
 
 ft ' It is the hour when from the boughs 
 
 The nightingale's high note is heard ; 
 
 It is the hour when lovers' vows 
 
 Seem sweet in every whispered word ; 
 
 And gentle winds and waters near 
 
 Make music to the lonely ear. 
 
 Each flower the dews have lightly wet, 
 
 And in the sky the stars are met, 
 
 And on the wave a deeper blue, 
 
 And on the leaf a browner hue, 
 
 And in the heaven that clear obscure, 
 
 So softly dark, and darkly pure, 
 
 Which follows the decline of day 
 
 As twilight melts beneath the moon away.' fi\ 
 
 In this passage the ' nightingale's high note ' is the 
 dominant note of the whole composition, nor is there 
 any more perfect example in the poetic art of the im- 
 mense importance that a true master can give to a single 
 line. The bird is only mentioned once, and then with the 
 utmost brevity ; but that ' high note ' once sounded, fills 
 the whole exquisite description in the succeeding verses. 
 Byron seems to have been particularly impressed by 
 the height from which the voice of the bird announced 
 itself ; and here, no doubt, is one of the elements of its 
 effect ; just as it is in the bell's note from a cathedral 
 tower, or the Muezzin's voice from a minaret.* 
 
 * Not to multiply quotations, I have omitted the beautiful passage 
 near the beginning of the ' Giaour,' but may remind the reader of the 
 well-known line, 
 
 ' His thousand songs are heard on highS
 
 June Chaucer s Love of the Nightingale. 203 
 
 Chaucer, always so alive to every thing that could 
 add a charm to the woods and fields where he delighted 
 to wander, paid great attention to the songs of birds, 
 and to the nightingale especially. He tells us in ' The 
 Flower and the Leaf ' how eagerly he listened for this 
 bird, although many others were singing in a way that 
 ought to have gladdened any one : 
 
 ' And eke the briddes songe for to here 
 Would have rejoiced any earthly wight, 
 And I that couth not yet in no manere 
 Heare the nightingale of all the yeare, 
 Full busily hearkened with herte and with eare, 
 If I her voice perceive coud any where.' 
 
 There is a charming description, in the same poem, 
 of a conversation between a goldfinch and a nightingale ; 
 the goldfinch singing first when he had eaten ' what he 
 eat wold,' and the nightingale answering him with so 
 merry a note that all the wood rang suddenly. Then 
 comes one of the most naif passages in all Chaucer, 
 when he tells us how he wanted to get sight of the 
 nightingale, which at first was not easy (as any one 
 knows who has tried) ; however, he managed it at last, 
 and then felt so gladdened by seeing what he wanted 
 to see that he fancied himself in Paradise : 
 ' Wherefore I waited about busily 
 On every side, if I might her see ; 
 And at the last I gan full well espy 
 Where she sat in a fresh grene laurer tree, 
 On the further side even right by me, 
 That gave so passing a delicious smell 
 According to the eglantere full well.
 
 204 June Tradition amongst the Peasants. 
 
 Whereof I had inly so great pleasure, 
 That, as methought, I surely ravished was 
 Into Paradise, where my desire 
 Was for to be.' 
 
 Beautifully, however, as the poets may have sung of 
 the nightingale, I doubt whether it ever occurred to the 
 most inventive of them to imagine such an exquisitely 
 poetical reason for his choice of the night-time for 
 singing as the simple peasants about the Val Ste. 
 Veronique have handed down by a believed tradition. 
 Some peasant-poet must have had this original fancy, 
 and then been pleased with it, and told it to his neigh- 
 bors, whose poetic sense preserved it with that inability 
 to distinguish between history and fiction which always 
 marks the uncultivated human being. They say, and 
 believe, that long ago the nightingale sang in the day- 
 time like other birds, but that once in a warm night of 
 May, when the vine was growing quickly, a bird of this 
 species went to rest upon a vine and fell asleep there ; 
 and whilst he slept the tendrils grew very fast, and as 
 they grew they twined about his tiny legs and held 
 them, so that when morning came he could not get 
 away, though his comrades came to help him. The 
 poor bird died in this miserable situation, and his com- 
 rades were so impressed by what they had seen that 
 they dared no longer go to 'sleep at night, but watched 
 in fear of the same sad fate, and sang to keep each 
 other awake. Even now, in the early summer, they 
 utter the same notes of warning, and what they say 
 is this : ' La vigne pousse pousse pousse vite vite
 
 June Buff on s Description. 205 
 
 vite vite vite vite vite ! ' When a peasant tells this he 
 always pronoun CQS pousse pousse very slowly, and in 
 a low voice, as if he were telling you a secret that deeply 
 concerned you ; but when he comes to the vite vite vite 
 he breaks into louder and higher tones, and finishes in 
 a hurried presto. 
 
 The finest and most complete description of the 
 nightingale's song that I ever met with is in Buffon. 
 It is remarkably accurate, and full of the closest study, 
 whilst the mastery of language displayed in the literary 
 workmanship is quite inimitable, so that after reading 
 it no other author would venture to attempt any such 
 piece of work with the hope of excelling it in the same 
 way. The most astonishing thing from the critical 
 point of view, in this masterpiece, is that, although 
 Buffon wrote in a language which is remarkably poor 
 in words that express varieties of sound, we never feel 
 this poverty in the least when reading it. The entire 
 passage is too long to quote, but the following extract 
 from it is sufficiently independent to be detached : 
 
 ' II commence par un prelude timide, par des tons faibles, 
 presqu'indecis, comme s'il voulait essayer son instrument et 
 interesser ceux qui 1'ecoutent ; mais ensuite prenant de 1'assur- 
 ahce, il s'anime par degres, il s'echauffe, et bientot il de'ploie 
 dans leur plenitude toutes les ressources de son incomparable 
 organe ; coups de gosiers eclatants ; batteries vives et Mgeres ; 
 fusees de chant ou la nettete' est e'gale a la volubilite, murmure 
 interieure et sourd qui n'est point appreciable a 1'oreille, mais 
 tres propre a augmenter 1'eclat des sons appreciates ; roulades 
 precipitees, brillantes et rapides, articulees avec force et meme 
 avec une durete de bon gout ; accents plaintifs cadences avec
 
 206 June Talk of the Birds. 
 
 mollesse ; sons filds sans art mais enfles avec ame ; sons en- 
 chanteurs et pdnetrants,' &c. 
 
 Then follows a very sagacious observation on the 
 artistic utility of those intervals of silence which the 
 nightingale employs so well, and which answer, in his 
 singing, to the spaces of smooth wall in architecture, to 
 the spaces of blank paper in an etching. , 
 
 After the month of June the nightingale sings no 
 more, but cries and croaks a lamentable change for the 
 worse ; and more than that, a loss of all that we care 
 for in the creature. After that the bird is forgotten by 
 those whom he once enchanted, and dwells in perfect 
 obscurity under the shadows of the deep woods that 
 were filled by his marvellous melody. Happier, how- 
 ever, than men who have been famous and are famous 
 no longer, he lives on in a prosaic way, without re- 
 gretting the wonderful nights when his voice was 
 supreme beneath the moon, and all things that had 
 ears must listen. 
 
 There is a popular superstition in the Val Ste. 
 
 eronique, and in the country for some miles round, 
 that every bird repeats some phrase of its own in dis- 
 tinct French words, which we should all hear and under- 
 stand if we were only clever enough. It is believed 
 also that certain wise and elderly persons in the villages 
 do really understand the language of the birds, and they 
 seem to be disposed to profit by the popular illusion, which 
 they are at no pains to dispel by disclaiming the knowl- 
 edge imputed to them. Very probably this superstition 
 may have had its origin in mere tales of infancy. Some
 
 June Secret of the Bird Language. 207 
 
 parent may have pretended to know the language of 
 the birds to amuse or govern his children, and after- 
 wards the tradition of this may have remained. The 
 same pretension is to be found in Oriental story. But 
 there is one peculiarity about it in the neighborhood of 
 the Val Ste. Veronique, which is this. He who knows 
 the bird-language is forbidden by the popular supersti- 
 tion to communicate it to any one until he lies upon 
 
 1 1 _ , 1 1 _ 1 1__1__ __.____ 1 ".L.l__ 1 _ _ _ 
 
 ,V* 
 
 his family ; who, of course, is bound by the same law. 
 
 Now as it generally happens that a man lying upon 
 his death-bed has other things to think about than the 
 transmission of bird-lore, the consequence of course is 
 that the knowledge of it is conveniently attributable to 
 people who have not transmitted it. ' My father knew 
 their language,' a peasant-girl will tell you, 'but when 
 he came to die he did not teach it us.' In this way 
 a pleasant and permanent mystery is maintained, and 
 it is still believed that one or two ancient men and 
 women know the bird-lore, and may possibly commu- 
 nicate it when they come to die, if any one is there to >,. 
 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.
 
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 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 
 
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