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ST. MARY 
 
THE LAWS OF FESOLE 
 
 ALSO 
 
 A JOY FOREVER 
 OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 MODERN PAINTERS 
 
 VOLUME I— OF GENERAL PRINCIPLES AND OF TRUTH 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, M.A. 
 
 AUTHOR OP “ THE SEVEN LAMPS OP ARCHITECTURE, 4 ’ “THE CROWN OP WILD OLIVV 
 “SESAME AND LILIES,” ETC, 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 ALDINE BOOK PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
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CONTENTS 
 
 LAWS OF FE'SOLE. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 Preface - 
 
 I. All great art is praise - 
 
 II. The three divisions of the art of Painting 
 
 III. First exercise in right lines, the quartering of St. 
 George’s Shield - 
 
 IV First exercise in curves. The circle 
 
 V. Of elementary form - 
 
 VI. Of elementary organic structure 
 
 VII. Of the twelve Zodiacal colors 
 
 VIII. Of the relation of color to outline 
 IX. Of Map drawing ..... 
 
 X. Of Light and Shade - 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 Preface 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 The discovery and application of art 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 The accumulation and distribution of art 
 
 PAGE 
 
 5 
 
 II 
 
 *5 
 
 22 
 
 27 
 
 37 
 
 48 
 
 64 
 
 79 
 
 94 
 
 116 
 
 139 
 
 141 
 
 176 
 
Addenda 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ■ ■ * * . 219 
 
 Education in Art 251 
 
 Remarks addressed to the Mansfield Art Night Class, 
 
 October 14, 1873 - 259 
 
 Social Policy. Based on natural selection - • • 264 
 
 OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US. 
 
 THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 Preface ....... 275 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. By the Rivers of Waters .... 279 
 
 Notes to Chapter I. - - - • - 299 
 
 II. Under the Drachenfels .... 304 
 
 III. The Lion Tamer ..... 333 
 
 IV. Interpretations ...... 362 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 Delivered at the Cambridge School of Art, October 
 
 29th, 1858, * - « • - • 415 
 
LIST OF PLATES 
 
 LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 St. Mary ...... Frontispiece 
 
 PLATE 
 
 I. 
 
 The Two Shields 
 
 . 
 
 • 
 
 PAGE 
 
 22 
 
 II. 
 
 Construction for placing the Honor points 
 
 • 
 
 24 
 
 III. 
 
 Primal Groups of the Circle 
 
 - 
 
 • 
 
 39 
 
 IV. 
 
 Primal Groups of Foils with Arc Centres 
 
 • 
 
 48 
 
 V. 
 
 Decorative Plumage.— i Peacock 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 62 
 
 VI. 
 
 Black Sheep’s Trotters. Pen outline with single wash 
 
 63 
 
 VII. 
 
 Landscape outline with the Lead 
 
 • 
 
 - 
 
 86 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Pen outline with advanced shade 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 89 
 
 IX. 
 
 Perspective of First Geometry 
 
 - 
 
 • 
 
 97 
 
 X. 
 
 Appellavitque Lucem Diem et Tenebras Noctem 
 
 117 
 
 XI. 
 
 Study with the Lead and Single 
 Herb.— Robert 
 
 Tint. Leaf of 
 
 129 
 
 XII. 
 
 Light and Shade with refusal of 
 vault of Scarlet Geranium 
 
 color. 
 
 Petal- 
 
 130 
 
 
 OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US. 
 
 
 
 I. 
 
 The Dynasties of France 
 
 - 
 
 . 
 
 279 
 
 II. 
 
 The Bible of Amiens. Northern 
 Restoration 
 
 Porch 
 
 BEFORE 
 
 304 
 
 III. 
 
 Amiens— Jour des Trespasses, 1880 
 
 . 
 
 - 
 
 3 22 
 

 
 
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 Ill 
 
THE LAWS OF FESOLE 
 
 A FAMILIAR TREATISE ON THE ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES AND 
 PRACTICE OF DRAWING AND PAINTING, AS DETER- 
 MINED BY THE TUSCAN MASTERS 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The publication of this book has been delayed by what 
 seemed to me vexatious accident, or (on my own part) un- 
 accountable slowness in work : but the delay thus enforced 
 has enabled me to bring the whole into a form which I do not 
 think there will be any reason afterwards to modify in any 
 important particular, containing a system of instruction in art 
 generally applicable in the education of gentlemen ; and se- 
 curely elementary in that of professional artists. It has been 
 made as simple as I can in expression, and is specially ad- 
 dressed, in the main teaching of it, to young people (extend- 
 ing the range of that term to include students in our univer- 
 sities) ; and it will be so addressed to them, that if they have 
 not the advantage of being near a master, they may teach 
 themselves, by careful reading, what is essential to their prog- 
 ress. But I have added always to such initial principles, 
 those which it is desirable to state for the guidance of ad- 
 vanced scholars, or the explanation of the practice of exemplary 
 masters. 
 
 The exercises given in this book, when their series is com- 
 pleted, will form a code of practice which may advisably be 
 rendered imperative on the youth of both sexes who show dis- 
 position for drawing. In general, youths and girls who do 
 not wish to draw should not be compelled to draw; but when 
 natural disposition exists, strong enough to render wholesome 
 discipline endurable with patience, every well-trained youth 
 and girl ought to be taught the elements of drawing, as of 
 music, early, and accurately. 
 
 To teach them inaccurately is indeed, strictly speaking, not 
 to teach them at all ; or worse than that, to prevent the possi- 
 
6 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 bility of their ever being taught. The ordinary methods of 
 water-color sketching, chalk drawing, and the like, now so 
 widely taught by second-rate masters, simply prevent the 
 pupil from ever understanding the qualities of great art, 
 through the whole of his after-life. 
 
 It will be found also that the system of practice here pro- 
 posed differs in many points, and in some is directly adverse, 
 to that which has been for some years instituted in our public 
 schools of art. It might be supposed that this contrariety was 
 capricious or presumptuous, unless I gave my reasons for it, 
 by specifying the errors of the existing popular system. 
 
 The first error in that system is the forbidding accuracy of 
 measurement, and enforcing the practice of guessing at the 
 size of objects. Now it is indeed often well to outline at first 
 by the eye, and afterwards to correct the drawing by measure- 
 ment ; but under the present method, the student finishes his 
 inaccurate drawing to the end, and his mind is thus, during 
 the whole progress of his work, accustomed to falseness in 
 every contour. Such a practice is not to be characterized as 
 merely harmful, — it is ruinous. No student who has sustained 
 the injury of being thus accustomed to false contours, can 
 ever recover precision of sight. Nor is this all : he cannot so 
 much as attain to the first conditions of art judgment. For a 
 fine work of art differs from a vulgar one by subtleties of line 
 which the most perfect measurement is not, alone, delicate 
 enough to detect ; but to which precision of attempted meas- 
 urement directs the attention ; while the security of boundaries, 
 within which maximum error must be restrained, enables the 
 hand gradually to approach the perfectness which instruments 
 cannot. Gradually, the mind then becomes conscious of the 
 beauty which, even after this honest effort, remains inimitable; 
 and the faculty of discrimination increases alike through fail- 
 ure and success. But when the true contours are voluntarily 
 and habitually departed from, the essential qualities of every 
 beautiful form are necessarily lost, and the student remains 
 forever unaware of their existence. 
 
 The second error in the existing system is the enforcement 
 of the execution of finished drawings in light and shade, be- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 7 
 
 fore the student has acquired delicacy of sight enough to ob- 
 serve their gradations. It requires the most careful and 
 patient teaching to develop this faculty ; and it can only be 
 developed at all by rapid and various practice from natural 
 objects, during which the attention of the student must be 
 directed only to the facts of the shadows themselves, and not 
 at all arrested on methods of producing them. He may even 
 be allowed to produce them as he likes, or as he can ; the 
 thing required of him being only that the shade be of the 
 right darkness, of the right shape, and in the right relation to 
 other shades round it ; and not at all that it shall be prettily 
 cross-hatched, or deceptively transparent. But at present, the 
 only virtues required in shadow are that it shall be pretty in 
 texture and picturesquely effective ; and it is not thought of 
 the smallest consequence that it should be in the right place, 
 or of the right depth. And the consequence is that the student 
 remains, when he becomes a painter, a mere manufacturer of 
 conventional shadows of agreeable texture, and to the end of 
 his life incapable of perceiving the conditions of the simplest 
 natural passage of chiaroscuro. 
 
 The third error in the existing code, and in ultimately de- 
 structive power, the worst, is the construction of entirely sym- 
 metrical or balanced forms for exercises in ornamental design; 
 whereas every beautiful form in this world, is varied in the 
 minutise of the balanced sides. Place the most beautiful of 
 human forms in exact symmetry of position, and curl the hair 
 into equal curls on both sides, and it will become ridiculous, 
 or monstrous. Nor can any law of beauty be nobly observed 
 without occasional wilfulness of violation. 
 
 The moral effect of these monstrous conditions of ornament 
 on the mind of the modern designer is very singular. I have 
 found, in past experience in the Working Men’s College, and 
 recently at Oxford, that the English student must at present 
 of necessity be inclined to one of two opposite errors, equally 
 fatal. Either he will draw things mechanically and symmet- 
 rically altogether, and represent the two sides of a leaf, or of a 
 plant, as if he had cut them in one profile out of a double 
 piece of paper ; or he will dash and scrabble for effect, with- 
 
8 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 out obedience to law of any kind : and I find the greatest dif- 
 ficulty, on. the one hand, in making ornamental draughtsmen 
 draw a leaf of any shape which it could possibly have lived in ; 
 and, on the other, in making landscape draughtsmen draw a 
 leaf of any shape at all. So that the process by which great 
 work is achieved, and by which only it can be achieved, is in 
 both directions antagonistic to the present English mind, 
 Real artists are absolutely submissive to law, and absolutely at 
 ease in fancy ; while we are at once wilful and dull ; resolved 
 to have our own way, but when we have got it, we cannot walk 
 two yards without holding by a railing. 
 
 The tap-root of all this mischief is in the endeavor to pro- 
 duce some ability in the student to make money by designing 
 for manufacture. No student who makes this his primary ob- 
 ject will ever be able to design at all : and the very words 
 “ School of Design ” involve the profoundest of Art fallacies. 
 Drawing may be taught by tutors : but Design only by 
 Heaven ; and to every scholar who thinks to sell his inspira- 
 tion, Heaven refuses its help. 
 
 To what kind of scholar, and on what conditions, that help 
 has been given hitherto, and may yet be hoped for, is written 
 with unevadable clearness in the history of the Arts of the 
 Past. And this book is called “The Laws of Fesole” because 
 the entire system of possible Christian Art is founded on the 
 principles established by Giotto in Florence, he receiving them 
 from the Attic Greeks through Cimabue, the last of their dis- 
 ciples, and engrafting them on the existing art of the Etrus- 
 cans, the race from which both his master and he were de- 
 scended. 
 
 In the centre of Florence, the last great work of native 
 Etruscan architecture, her Baptistery, and the most perfect 
 work of Christian architecture, her Campanile, stand within a 
 hundred paces of each other : and from the foot of that Cam- 
 panile, the last conditions of design which preceded the close 
 of Christian art are seen in the dome of Brunelleschi. Under 
 the term “ laws of Fesole,” therefore, may be most strictly and 
 accurately arranged every principle of art, practised at its pur- 
 est source, from the twelfth to the fifteenth century inclusive. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 9 
 
 And the purpose of this book is to teach our English students 
 of art the elements of these Christian laws, as distinguished 
 from the Infidel laws of the spuriously classic school, under 
 which, of late, our students have been exclusively trained. 
 
 Nevertheless, in this book the art of Giotto and Angelico is 
 not taught because it is Christian, but because it is absolutely 
 true and good : neither is the Infidel art of Palladio and Giulio 
 Romano forbidden because it is Pagan ; but because it is false 
 and bad ; and has entirely destroyed not only our English 
 schools of art, but all others in which it has ever been taught, 
 or trusted in. 
 
 Whereas the methods of draughtsmanship established by the 
 Florentines, in true fulfilment of Etruscan and Greek tradi- 
 tion, are insuperable in execution, and eternal in principle ; 
 and all that I shall have occasion here to add to them will be 
 only such methods of their application to landscape as were not 
 needed in the day of their first invention ; and such explana- 
 tion of their elementary practice as, in old time, was given 
 orally by the master. 
 
 It will not be possible to give a sufficient number of exam- 
 ples for advanced students (or on the scale necessary for some 
 purposes) within the compass of this hand-book ; and I shall 
 publish therefore together with it, as I can prepare them, en- 
 gravings or lithographs of the examples in my Oxford schools, 
 on folio sheets, sold separate^. But this hand-book will con- 
 tain all that was permanently valuable in my former “ Elements 
 of Drawing,” together with such further guidance as my ob- 
 servance of the result of those lessons has shown me to be 
 necessary. The work will be completed in twelve numbers, 
 each containing at least two engravings, the whole forming, 
 when completed, two volumes of the ordinary size of my pub- 
 lished works ; the first, treating mostly of drawing, for begin- 
 ners ; and the second, of color, for advanced pupils. I hope 
 also that I may prevail on the author of the excellent little 
 treatise on Mathematical Instruments (Weale’s Rudimentary 
 Series, No. 82), to publish a lesson-book with about one-fourth 
 of the contents of that formidably comprehensive volume, and 
 in larger print, for the use of students of art ; omitting there* 
 
10 
 
 PREFACE . 
 
 from the descriptions of instruments useful only to engineers, 
 and without forty-eight pages of advertisements at the end of 
 it. Which, if I succeed in persuading him to do, I shall be 
 able to make permanent reference to his pages for elementary 
 lessons on construction. 
 
 Many other things I meant to say, and advise, in this Pref- 
 ace ; but find that were I to fulfil such intentions, my Preface 
 would become a separate book, and had better therefore end 
 itself forthwith, only desiring the reader to observe, in sum, 
 that the degree of success, and of pleasure, which he will fi- 
 nally achieve, in these or any other art exercises on a sound 
 foundation, will virtually depend on the degree in which he 
 desires to understand the merit of others, and to make his 
 own talents permanently useful. The folly of most amateur 
 work is chiefly in its selfishness, and self-contemplation ; it is 
 far better not to be able to draw at all, than to waste life in 
 the admiration of one’s own littlenesses ; — or, worse, to with- 
 draw, by merely amusing dexterities, the attention of other 
 persons from noble art. It is impossible that the performance 
 of an amateur can ever be otherwise than feeble in itself ; and 
 the virtue of it consists only in having enabled the student, by 
 the effect of its production, to form true principles of judg- 
 ment, and direct his limited powers to useful purposes. 
 
 Brantwood, 31sS July, 1877. 
 
THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 CHAPTEB I. 
 
 ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE. 
 
 1. The art of man is the expression of his rational and dis- 
 ciplined delight in the forms and laws of the creation of which 
 he forms a part. 
 
 2. In all first definitions of very great things, there must 
 be some obscurity and want of strictness ; the attempt to 
 make them too strict will only end in wider obscurity. We 
 may indeed express to our friend the rational and disciplined 
 pleasure we have in a landscape, yet not be artists : but it is 
 true, nevertheless, that all art is the skilful expression of such 
 pleasure ; not always, it may be, in a thing seen, but only in 
 a law felt ; yet still, examined accurately, always in the Crea- 
 tion, of which the creature forms a part ; and not in itself 
 merely. Thus a lamb at play, rejoicing in its own life only, is 
 not an artist ; — but the lamb’s shepherd, carving the piece of 
 timber which he lays for his door-lintel into beads, is express- 
 ing, however unconsciously, his pleasure in the laws of time, 
 measure, and order, by which the earth moves, and the sun 
 abides in heaven. 
 
 3. So far as reason governs, or discipline restrains, the art 
 even of animals, it becomes human, in those virtues ; but 
 never, I believe, perfectly human, because it never, so far as I 
 have seen, expresses even an unconscious delight in divine 
 laws. A nightingale’s song is indeed exquisitely divided ; but 
 only, it seems to me, as the ripples of a stream, by a law of 
 which the waters and the bird are alike unconscious. The 
 
12 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 bird is conscious indeed of joy and love, which the waters are 
 not ; but (thanks be to God) joy and love are not Arts ; nor 
 are they limited to Humanity. But the love-song becomes 
 Art, when, by reason and discipline, the singer has become 
 conscious of the ravishment in its divisions to the lute. 
 
 4. Farther to complete the range of our definition, it is to 
 be remembered that we express our delight in a beautiful or 
 lovely thing no less by lament for its loss, than gladness in its 
 presence, much art is therefore tragic or pensive ; but all 
 true art is praise.* 
 
 5. There is no exception to this great law, for even carica- 
 ture is only artistic in conception of the beauty of which it ex- 
 aggerates the absence. Caricature by persons who cannot con- 
 ceive beauty, is monstrous in proportion to that dulness ; and, 
 even to the best artists, perseverance in the habit of it is fatal. 
 
 6. Fix, then, this in your mind as the guiding principle of 
 all right practical labor, and source of all healthful life 
 energy, — that your art is to be the praise of something that 
 you love. It may be only the praise of a shell or a stone ; it 
 may be the praise of a hero ; it may be the praise of God : 
 your rank as a living creature is determined by the height 
 and breadth of your love ; but, be you small or great, what 
 healthy art is possible to you must be the expression of your 
 true delight in a real thing, better than the art. You may 
 think, perhaps, that a bird’s nest by William Hunt is better 
 than a real bird’s nest. We indeed pay a large sum for the 
 
 * As soon as the artist forgets his function of praise in that of imita- 
 tion, his art is lost. His business is to give, by any means, however 
 imperfect, the idea of a beautiful thing ; not, by any means, however 
 perfect, the realization of an ugly one. In the early and vigorous days 
 of Art, she endeavored to praise the saints, though she made but 
 awkward figures of them. Gradually becoming able to represent the 
 human body with accuracy, she pleased herself greatly at first in this 
 new power, and for about a century decorated all her buildings with 
 human bodies in different positions. But there was nothing to be 
 praised in persons who had no other virtue than that of possessing 
 bodies, and no other means of expression than unexpected manners of 
 crossing their legs. Surprises of this nature necessarily have their 
 limits, and the Arts founded on Anatomy expired when the changes of 
 posture were exhausted. 
 
ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE. 
 
 13 
 
 one, and scarcely care to look for, or save, the other. But it 
 would be better for us that all the pictures in the world per- 
 ished, than that the birds should cease to build nests. 
 
 And it is precisely in its expression of this inferiority that 
 the drawing itself becomes valuable. It is because a photo- 
 graph cannot condemn itself, that it is worthless. The glory 
 of a great picture is in its shame ; and the charm of it, in 
 speaking the pleasure of a great heart, that there is some- 
 thing better than picture. Also it speaks with the voices of 
 many : the efforts of thousands dead, and their passions, are 
 in the pictures of their children to-day. Not with the skill of 
 an hour, nor of a life, nor of a century, but with the help of 
 numberless souls, a beautiful thing must be done. And the 
 obedience, and the understanding, and the pure natural 
 passion, and the perseverance, in secula seculorum, as they 
 must be given to produce a picture, so they must be recog- 
 nized, that we may perceive one. 
 
 7. This is the main lesson I have been teaching, so far as 
 I have been able, through my whole life : Only that picture 
 is noble, which is painted in love of the reality. It is a 
 law which embraces the highest scope of Art ; it is one also 
 which guides in security the first steps of it. If you desire to 
 draw, that you may represent something that you care for, 
 you will advance swiftly and safely. If you desire to draw, that 
 you may make a beautiful drawing, you will never make one. 
 
 8. And this simplicity of purpose is farther useful in closing 
 all discussions of the respective grace or admirableness of 
 method. The best painting is that which most completely rep- 
 resents what it undertakes to represent, as the best language 
 is that which most clearly says what it undertakes to say. 
 
 9. Given the materials, the limits of time, and the condi- 
 tions of place, there is only one proper method of painting.* 
 And since, if painting is to be entirely good, the materials of 
 
 * In sculpture, the materials are necessarily so varied, and the cir- 
 cumstances of place so complex, that it would seem like an affected 
 stretching of principle to say there is only one proper method of sculpt- 
 ure : yet this is also true, and any handling of marble differing from 
 that of Greek workmen is inferior by such difference. 
 
14 
 
 THE LAWS OF F&SOLE. 
 
 it must be the best possible, and the conditions of time and 
 place entirely favorable, there is only one manner of entirely 
 good painting. The so-called ‘ styles ’ of artists are either: 
 adaptations to imperfections of material, or indications of im- 
 perfection in their own power, or the knowledge of their dayj 
 The great painters are like each other in their strength, and 
 diverse only in weakness. 
 
 10. The last aphorism is true even with respect to the dis- 
 positions which induce the preference of particular characters 
 in the subject. Perfect art perceives and reflects the whole 
 of nature : imperfect art is fastidious, and impertinently 
 prefers and rejects. The foible of Correggio is grace, and of 
 Mantegna, precision : Veronese is narrow in his gayety, Tin- 
 toret in his gloom, and Turner in his light. 
 
 11. But, if we know our weakness, it becomes our strength ; 
 and the joy of every painter, by which he is made narrow, is 
 also the gift by which he is made delightful, so long as he is 
 modest in the thought of his distinction from others, and no 
 less severe in the indulgence, than careful in the cultivation, 
 of his proper instincts. Recognizing his place, as but one 
 quaintly- veined pebble in the various pavement, — one richly- 
 fused fragment, in the vitrail of life, — he will find, in his dis- 
 tinctness, his glory and his use ; but destroys himself in 
 demanding that all men should stand within his compass, or 
 see through his color. 
 
 12. The differences in style instinctively caused by personal 
 character are however of little practical moment, compared to 
 those which are rationally adopted, in adaptation to circum- 
 stance. 
 
 Of these variously conventional and inferior modes of work, 
 we will examine such as deserve note in their proper place. 
 But we must begin by learning the manner of work which, 
 from the elements of it to the end, is completely right, and 
 common to all the masters of consummate schools. In whom 
 these two great conditions of excellence are always discernible, 
 — that they conceive more beautiful things than they can 
 paint, and desire only to be praised in so far as they can 
 yepresent these, for subjects of higher praising. 
 
THE THREE DIVISIONS OF PA1NTINQ. 
 
 15 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 THE THREE DIVISIONS OF THE ART OF PAINTING. 
 
 1. In order to produce a completely representative picture 
 of any object on a flat surface, we must outline it, color it, 
 and shade it. Accordingly, in order to become a complete 
 artist, you must learn these three following modes of skill 
 completely. First, how to outline spaces with accurate and 
 delicate lines. Secondly, how to fill the outlined spaces with 
 accurate, and delicately laid, color. Thirdly, how to gradate 
 the colored spaces, so as to express, accurately and delicately, 
 relations of light and shade. 
 
 2. By the word ‘ accurate ’ in these sentences, I mean nearly 
 the same thing as if I had written ‘ true ; 9 but yet I mean a 
 little more than verbal truth : for in many cases, it is possible 
 to give the strictest truth in words without any painful care ; 
 but it is not possible to be true in lines, without constant care 
 or accuracy. We may say, for instance, without laborious 
 attention, that the tower of Garisenda is a hundred and sixty 
 feet high, and leans nine feet out of thejDerpendicular. But 
 we could not draw the line representing this relation of nine 
 feet horizontal to a hundred and sixty vertical, without ex- 
 treme care. 
 
 In other cases, even by the strictest attention, it is not pos- 
 sible to give complete or strict truth in words. We could 
 not, by any number of words, describe the color of a riband 
 so as to enable a mercer to match it without seeing it. But 
 an 4 accurate ’ colorist can convey the required intelligence at 
 once, with a tint on paper. Neither would it be possible, in 
 language, to explain the difference in gradations of shade 
 which the eye perceives between a beautifully rounded and 
 dimpled chin, and a more or less determinedly angular one. 
 But on the artist’s 4 accuracy’ in distinguishing and represent* 
 ing their relative depths, not in one feature only, but in the 
 harmony of all, depend his powers of expressing the charm of 
 
16 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 beauty, or the force of character ; and his means of enabling 
 us to know Joan of Arc from Fair Eosamond. 
 
 3. Of these three tasks, outline, color, and shade, outline, 
 in perfection, is the most difficult ; but students must begin 
 with that task, and are masters when they can see to the end 
 of it, though they never reach it. 
 
 To color is easy if you can see color ; and impossible if you 
 cannot.* 
 
 To shade is very difficult ; and the perfections of light and 
 shadow have been rendered by few masters ; but in the degree 
 sufficient for good work, it is within the reach of every student 
 of fair capacity who takes pains. 
 
 5. The order in which students usually learn these three 
 processes of art is in the inverse ratio of their difficulty. They 
 begin with outline, proceed to shade, and conclude in color. 
 While, naturally, any clever house decorator can color, and 
 any patient Academy pupil shade ; but Kaphael at his full 
 strength is plagued with his outline, and tries half a dozen 
 backwards and forwards before he pricks his chosen one 
 down.f 
 
 Nevertheless, both the other exercises should be practised 
 with this of outline, from the beginning. We must outline 
 the space which is tp be filled with color, or explained by 
 shade ; but we cannot handle the brush too soon, nor too 
 long continue the exercises of the lead J point. Every system 
 is imperfect which pays more than a balanced and equitable 
 attention to any one of the three skills, for all are necessary in 
 equal perfection to the completeness of power. There will 
 indeed be found great differences between the faculties of dif- 
 ferent pupils to express themselves by one or other of these 
 methods ; and the natural disposition to give character by 
 delineation, charm by color, or force bjr shade, may be dis- 
 
 * A great many people do not know green from red ; and sucli kind 
 of persons are apt to feel it their duty to write scientific treatises on 
 color, edifying to the art-world. 
 
 f Beautiful and true shade can be produced by a machine fitted to 
 the surface, but no machine can outline. 
 
 X See explanation of term, p. 28. 
 
THE THREE DIVISIONS OF PAINTING. 
 
 17 
 
 creetly encouraged by the master, after moderate shill has 
 been attained in the collateral exercises. But the first condi- 
 tion of steady progress for every pupil — no matter what their 
 gifts, or genius — is that they should be taught to draw a calm 
 and true outline, entirely decisive, and admitting no error 
 avoidable by patience and attention. 
 
 7. We will begin therefore with the simplest conceivable 
 practice of this skill, taking 
 for subject the two elementary 
 forms which the shepherd of 
 Fesole gives us (Fig. 1), sup- 
 porting the desk of the master 
 of Geometry. 
 
 You will find the original 
 bas-relief represented very suf- 
 ficiently in the nineteenth of 
 the series of photographs from 
 the Tower of Giotto, and may 
 thus for yourself ascertain the 
 accuracy of this outline, which 
 otherwise you might suppose 
 careless, in that the suggested 
 square is not a true one, having 
 two acute and two obtuse angles ; nor is it set upright, but 
 with the angle on your right hand higher than the opposite 
 one, so as partly to comply with the slope of the desk. But 
 this is one of the first signs that the 
 sculpture is by a master’s hand. And 
 the first thing a modern restorer would 
 do, would be to “correct the mistake,” 
 and give you, instead, the, to him, more 
 satisfactory arrangement. (Fig. 2.) 
 
 8. We must not, however, permit our- 
 selves, in the beginning of days, to draw 
 ' inaccurate squares ; such liberty is only 
 the final reward of obedience, and the 
 generous breaking of law, only to be allowed to the loyal. 
 
 Take your compasses, therefore, and your ruler, and smooth 
 2 
 
18 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 paper over which your pen will glide unchecked. And take 
 above all things store of patience ; and then, — but for what is 
 to be done then, the directions had best be reserved to a fresh 
 chapter, which, as it will begin a group of exercises of which 
 you will not at once perceive the intention, had better, I think, 
 be preceded by this following series of general aphorisms, 
 which I wrote for a young Italian painter, as containing what 
 was likely to be most useful to him in briefest form ; and 
 which- for the same reason I here give, before entering on spe- 
 cific practice. 
 
 APHORISMS. 
 
 I. 
 
 The greatest art represents every thing with absolute sin- 
 cerity, as far as it is able. But it chooses the best things to 
 represent, and it places them in the best order in which they 
 can be seen. You can only judge of what is best , in process 
 of time, by the bettering of your own character. What is 
 true, you can learn now, if you will. 
 
 ii. 
 
 Make your studies always of the real size of things. A 
 man is to be drawn the size of a man, and a cherry the size 
 of a cherry. 
 
 £ But I cannot draw an elephant his real size 5 ? 
 
 There is no occasion for you to draw an elephant. 
 
 ‘ But nobody can draw Mont Blanc his real size ’ ? 
 
 No. Therefore nobody can draw Mont Blanc at all ; but 
 only a distant view of Mont Blanc. You may also draw a dis- 
 tant view of a man, and of an elephant, if you like ; but you 
 must take care that it is seen to be so, and not mistaken for a 
 drawing of a pigmy, or a mouse, near. 
 
 4 But there is a great deal of good miniature painting 9 ? 
 
 Yes, and a great deal of fine cameo-cutting. But I am go- 
 ing to teach you to be a painter, not a locket-decorator, or 
 medallist. 
 
APHORISMS. 
 
 19 
 
 ill. 
 
 Direct all your first efforts to acquire the power of drawing 
 an absolutely accurate outline of any object, of its real size, 
 as it appears at a distance of not less than twelve feet from 
 the eye. All greatest art represents objects at not less than 
 this distance ; because you cannot see the full stature and ac- 
 tion of a man if you go nearer him. The difference between 
 the appearance of any thing — say a bird, fruit, or leaf — at a 
 distance of twelve feet or more, and its appearance looked at 
 closely, is the first difference also between Titian’s painting of 
 it, and a Dutchman’s. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Do not think, by learning the nature or structure of a 
 thing, that you can learn to draw it. Anatomy is necessary 
 in the education of surgeons ; botany in that of apothecaries ; 
 and geology in that of miners. But none of the three will 
 enable you to draw a man, a flower, or a mountain. You can 
 learn to do that only by looking at them ; not by cutting them 
 to pieces. And don’t think you can paint a peach, because 
 you know there’s a stone inside ; nor a face, because you 
 know a skull is. 
 
 v. 
 
 Next to outlining things accurately, of their true form, you 
 must learn to color them delicately, of their true color. 
 
 VI. 
 
 If you can match a color accurately, and lay it delicately, 
 you are a painter ; as, if you can strike a note surely, and de- 
 liver it clearly, you are a singer. You may then choose what 
 you will paint, or what you will sing. 
 
 VII. 
 
 A pea is green, a cherry red, and a blackberry black, all 
 round. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Every light is a shade, compared to higher lights, till you 
 come to the sun ; and every shade is a light, compared to 
 
20 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 deeper shades, till you come to the night. When, therefore, 
 you have outlined any space, you have no reason to ask 
 whether it is in light or shade, but only, of what color it is, 
 and to what depth of that color. 
 
 IX. 
 
 You will be told that shadow is gray. But Correggio, when 
 he has to shade with one color, takes red chalk. 
 
 x. 
 
 You will be told that blue is a retiring color, because dis- 
 tant mountains are blue. The sun setting behind them is 
 nevertheless farther off, and you must paint it with red or 
 yellow. 
 
 XI. 
 
 “Please paint me my white cat,” said little Imelda. 
 “ Child,” answered the Bolognese Professor, “ in the grand 
 school, all cats are gray.” 
 
 XII. 
 
 Fine weather is pleasant ; but if your picture is beautiful, 
 people will not ask whether the sun is out or in. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 When you speak to your friend in the street, you take him 
 into the shade. When you wish to think you can speak to 
 him in your picture, do the same. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Be economical in every thing, but especially in candles. 
 When it is time to light them, go to bed. But the worst 
 ■waste of them is drawing by them. 
 
 xv. 
 
 Never, if you can help it, miss seeing the sunset and the 
 dawn. And never, if you can help it, see any thing but 
 dreams between them. 
 
APHOJUSMS. 
 
 21 
 
 XVI. 
 
 * A fine picture, you say ? ’ “ The finest possible ; Si Jerome, 
 and his lion, and his arm-chair. St. Jerome was painted by 
 a saint, and the lion by a hunter, and the chair by an up- 
 holsterer. ” 
 
 My compliments. It must be very fine ; but I do not care 
 to see it. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 * Three pictures, you say ? and by Carpaccio ! 5 “ Yes — St. 
 
 Jerome, and his lion, and his arm-chair. Which will you 
 see ? ” ‘ What does it matter ? The one I can see soonest.’ 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Great painters defeat Death ; the vile, adorn him, and 
 adore. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 If the picture is beautiful, copy it as it is ; if ugly, let it 
 alone,, Only Heaven, and Death, know what it was. 
 
 XX. 
 
 * The King’ has presented an Etruscan vase, the most beau- 
 tiful in the world, to the Museum of Naples. What a pity I 
 cannot draw it ! ’ 
 
 In the meantime, the housemaid has broken a kitchen tea- 
 cup ; let me see if you can draw one of the pieces. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 When you would do your best, stop, the moment you begin 
 to feel difficulty. Your drawing will be the best you can do ; 
 but you will not be able to do another so good to-morrow. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 When you would do better than your best, put your full 
 strength out, the moment you feel a difficulty. You will 
 spoil your drawing to-day ; but you will do better than your 
 to-day’s best, to-morrow. 
 
22 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 xxm. 
 
 “The enemy is too strong for me to-day,” said the wise 
 young general. “ I won’t fight him ; but I won’t lose sight of 
 him.” 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 “ I can do what I like with my colors, now,” said the proud 
 young scholar. “So could I, at your age,” answered the 
 master ; “ but now, I can only do what other people like.” 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FIRST EXERCISE IN RIGHT LINES, THE QUARTERING OF ST. GEORGE’S 
 
 SHIELD. 
 
 1. Take your compasses,* and measuring an inch on your 
 ivory rule, mark that dimension by the two dots at B and C 
 (see the uppermost figure on the left in Plate 1), and with 
 your black ruler draw a straight line between them, with a 
 fine steel pen and common ink.f Then measure the same 
 length, of an inch, down from B, as nearly perpendicular as 
 you can, and mark the point A ; and divide the height A B 
 into four equal parts with the compasses, and mark them with 
 dots, drawing every dot as a neatly circular point, clearly visi- 
 ble. This last finesse will be an essential part of your draw- 
 ing practice ; it is very irksome to draw such dots patiently, 
 and very difficult to draw them well. 
 
 Then mark, not now by measure, but by eye, the remaining 
 corner of the square, D, and divide the opposite side C D, by 
 dots, opposite the others as nearly as you can guess. Then 
 draw four level lines without a ruler, and without raising your 
 
 * I have not been able yet to devise a quite simple and sufficient case 
 of drawing instruments for my schools. But, at all events, the complete 
 instrument-case must include the ivory scale, the black parallel rule, a 
 divided quadrant (which I will give a drawing of when it is wanted), 
 one pair of simple compasses, and one fitted with pen and pencil. 
 
 f Any dark color that will wash off their fingers may be prepared for 
 children, 
 
The Two Shields. 
 
 Schools of St. George. Elementary Drawing. Plate I. 
 

 V 
 
 
 
 
 
FIRST EXERCISE IN RIGHT LINES. 
 
 23 
 
 pen, or stopping, slowly, from dot to dot, across tlie square. 
 The four lines altogether should not take less, — but not much 
 more, — than a quarter of a minute in the drawing, or about 
 foui’ seconds each. Repeat this practice now and then, at 
 leisure minutes, until you have got an approximately well- 
 drawn group of five lines ; the point D being successfully put 
 in accurate corner of the square. Then similarly divide the 
 lines A D and B C, by the eye, into four parts, and complete 
 the figure as on the right hand at the top of Plate 1, and test 
 it by drawing diagonals across it through the corners of the 
 squares, till you can draw it true. 
 
 2. Contenting yourself for some time with this square of 
 sixteen quarters for hand practice, draw also, with extremest 
 accuracy of measurement possible to you, and finely ruled 
 lines such as those in the plate, the inch square, with its side 
 sometimes divided into three parts, sometimes into five, and 
 sometimes into six, completing the interior nine, twenty-five, 
 and thirty-six squares with utmost precision ; and do not be 
 satisfied with these till diagonals afterwards drawn, as in the 
 figure, pass precisely through the angles of the square. 
 
 Then, as soon as you can attain moderate precision in in- 
 strumental drawing, construct the central figure in the plate, 
 drawing, first the square ; then, the lines of the horizontal 
 bar, from the midmost division of the side divided into five. 
 Then draw the curves of the shield, from the uppermost cor- 
 ners of the cross-bar, for centres ; then the vertical bar, also 
 one-fifth of the square in breadth ; lastly, find the centre of 
 the square, and draw the enclosing circle, to test the precision 
 of all. More advanced pupils may draw the inner line to 
 mark thickness of shield ; and lightly tint the cross with rose- 
 color. 
 
 In the lower part of the plate is a first study of a feather, 
 for exercise later on ; it is to be copied with a fine steel pen 
 and common ink, having been so drawn with decisive and 
 visible lines, to form steadiness of hand.* 
 
 * The original drawings for all these plates will be put in the Sheffield 
 Xvluseum ; but if health remains to me, I will prepare others of the same 
 
24 
 
 TEE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 3. The feather is one of the smallest from the upper edge 
 of a hen’s wing ; the pattern is obscure, and not so well 
 adapted for practice as others to be given subsequently, but I 
 like best to begin with this, under St. George’s shield ; and 
 whether you can copy it or not, if you have any natural feel- 
 ing for beauty of line, you will see, by comparing the two, 
 ^that the shield form, mechanically constructed, is meagre and 
 {stiff ; and also that it would be totally impossible to draw the 
 curves which terminate the feather below by any mechanical 
 law ; much less the various curves of its filaments. Nor can 
 we draw even so simple a form as that of a shield beautifully, 
 by instruments. But we may come nearer, by a more com- 
 plex construction, to beautiful form ; and define at the same 
 time the heraldic limits of the bearings. This finer method is 
 given in Plate 2, on a scale twice as large, the shield being 
 here two inches wide. And it is to be constructed as follows. 
 
 4. Draw the square A B C D, two inches on the side, with 
 its diagonals A C, B D, and the vertical P Q through its cen- 
 tre O ; and observe that, henceforward, I shall always use the 
 words ‘vertical’ for ‘perpendicular,’ and ‘level’ for ‘horizon- 
 tal,’ being shorter, and no less accurate. 
 
 Divide O Q, O P, each into three equal parts by the points, 
 K, a ; N, d. 
 
 Through a and d draw the level lines, cutting the diagonals 
 in b, c y e, and f ; and produce b c , cutting the sides of the 
 square in m and n, as far towards x and y as you see will be 
 necessary. 
 
 With centres m and n 3 and the equal radii m a, n a , de- 
 scribe semicircles, cutting x y in x and y. With centres x 
 and y, and the equal radii x n, y m, describe arcs m Y, n Y, 
 cutting each other and the line Q P, produced, in Y. 
 
 The precision of their concurrence will test your accuracy 
 of construction. 
 
 5. The form of shield B C Y, thus obtained, is not a per- 
 
 kind, only of different subjects, for the other schools of St. George. 
 The engravings, by Mr. Allen’s good skill, will, I doubt not, be better 
 than the originals for all practical purposes ; especially as my hand now 
 shakes more than his, in small work. 
 
V 
 
 • 6 
 
 • a 
 
 • c 
 
 
 K- 
 
 
 i 
 
 O 
 
 
 
 N* 
 
 
 • e 
 
 • d 
 
 •f 
 
 Construction for Placing the Honor Points. 
 Schools of St. George. Elementary Drawing, Plate II. 
 
FIRST EXERCISE IN RIGHT LINES. 
 
 25 
 
 feet one, because no perfect form (in the artist’s sense of the 
 word I * * 4 perfectness ’) can be drawn geometrically ; but it ap- 
 proximately represents the central type of English shield. 
 
 It is necessary for you at once to learn the names of the 
 nine points thus obtained, called ‘ honor-points,’ by which the 
 arrangement and measures of bearings are determined. 
 
 All shields are considered heraldically to be square in the 
 field, so that they can be divided accurately into quarters. 
 
 I am not aware of any formally recognized geometrical 
 method of placing the honor-points in this field : that which I 
 have here given will be found convenient for strict measure- 
 ment of the proportions of bearings. 
 
 6. Considering the square A B C D as the field, and re- 
 moving from it the lines of construction, the honor-points are 
 seen in their proper places, in the lower part of the plate. 
 
 These are their names,— 
 
 a Middle Chief 
 b Dexter Chief 
 c Sinister Chief 
 K Honor 
 O Fesse 
 N Numbril 
 d Middle Base 
 e Dexter Base 
 f Sinister Base 
 
 point. 
 
 I have placed these letters, with some trouble, as I think 
 best for help of your memory. 
 
 The a, b , c ; d, e, / are, I think, most conveniently placed 
 in upper and under series : I could not, therefore, put /for 
 the Fesse point, but the O will remind you of it as the sign 
 for a belt or girdle. Then K will stand for knighthood, or 
 the honor-point, and putting N for the numbril, which is 
 otherwise difficult to remember, we have, reading down, the 
 
 syllable KON, the Teutonic beginning of KONIGr or King, all 
 
 which may be easily remembered. 
 
26 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 And now look at the first plate of the large Oxford series.* 
 It is engraved from my free-hand drawing in the Oxford 
 schools ; and is to be copied, as that drawing is executed, 
 with pencil and color. 
 
 In which sentence I find myself face to face with a diffi- 
 culty of expression which has long teased me, and which I 
 must now conclusively, with the reader’s good help, over- 
 come. 
 
 7. In all classical English writing on art, the word ‘pencil,’ 
 in all classical French writing the word ‘ pinceau,’ and in all 
 classical Italian writing the word ‘pennello,’ means the paint- 
 er’s instrument, the brush.f 
 
 It is entirely desirable to return, in England, to this class- 
 ical use with constant accuracy, and resolutely to call the 
 black-lead pencil, the ‘ lead-crayon ; ’ or, for shortness, sim- 
 ply ‘ the lead.’ In this book I shall generally so call it, saying, 
 for instance, in the case of this diagram, “ draw it first with 
 the lead.” ‘ Crayon,’ from ‘ craie,’ chalk, I shall use instead 
 of ‘ chalk ; ’ meaning when I say black crayon,. common black 
 chalk ; and when I say white crayon, common white chalk ; 
 while I shall use indifferently the word ‘ pencil ’ for the in- 
 strument whether of water-color or oil painting. 
 
 8. Construct then the whole of this drawing, Plate 1, Ox- 
 ford series, first with a light lead line ; then take an ordinary J 
 camel’s-hair pencil, and with free hand follow the lead lines 
 
 * See notice of this series in Preface. 
 
 f The Latin ‘penicillum’ originally meant a ‘little tail,’ as of the 
 ermine. My friend Mr. Alfred Tylor informs me that Newton was the 
 first to apply the word, to light, meaning a pointed group of rays. 
 
 % That is to say, not a particularly small one ; hut let it be of good 
 quality. Under the conditions of overflowing wealth which reward our 
 national manufacturing industry, I find a curious tendency in my 
 pupils to study economy especially in colors and brushes. Every now 
 and then I find a student using a brush which bends up when it touches 
 the paper, and remains in the form of a fish-hook. If I advise purchase 
 of a better, he — or she — saystohne, “ Can’t I do something with this ? ” 
 “ Yes, — something, certainly. Perhaps you may paste with it ; but you 
 can’t draw. Suppose I was a fencing-master, and you told me you 
 couldn’t afford to buy a foil, — would you expect me to teach you to 
 fence with a poker ? ” 
 
FIRST EXERCISE IN CURVES. 
 
 27 
 
 in color. Indian red is the color generally to be used for 
 practice, being cheap and sufficiently dark, but lake or car- 
 mine work more pleasantly for a difficult exercise like this. 
 
 9. In laying the color lines, you may go over and over 
 again, to join them and make them even, ns often as you like, 
 but must not thicken the thin ones ; nor interrupt the thick- 
 ness of the stronger outline so as to confuse them at all with 
 each other. Giotto, Durer, or Mantegna, would draw them 
 at once without pause or visible error, as far as the color in 
 the pencil lasted. Only two or three years ago I could 
 nearly have done so myself, but my hand now shakes a little ; 
 the drawing in the Oxford schools is however very little re- 
 touched over the first line. 
 
 10. We will at this point leave our heraldry, § because we 
 cannot better the form of our shield until we can draw lines of 
 more perfect, that is to say, more varied and interesting, cur- 
 vature, for its sides. And in order to do this we must learn 
 how to construct and draw curves which cannot be drawn 
 with any mathematical instrument, and yet whose course is 
 perfectly determined. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FIRST EXERCISE IN CURVES. THE CIRCLE. 
 
 1. Among the objects familiarly visible to us, and usually 
 regarded with sentiments of admiration, few are more class- 
 ically representative of Giotto’s second figure, inscribed in his 
 
 § Under the general influence of Mr. Gradgrind, there has been lately 
 published a book of “ Heraldry founded on facts” (The Pursuivant of 
 Arms, — Chatto & Windus), which is worth buying, for two reasons : the 
 first, that its ‘facts’ are entirely trustworthy and useful (well illus- 
 trated in minor woodcut also, and, many, very curious and new) ; the 
 second, that tlxe writer’s total ignorance of art, and his education among 
 vulgar modernisms, have caused him to give figure illustrations, wher- 
 ever he draws either man or beast, as at pages 62 and 106 , whose horri- 
 ble vulgarity will be of good future service as a type to us of the maxi- 
 mum in that particular. But the curves of shields are, throughout, 
 admirably chosen and drawn, to the point mechanically possible. 
 
28 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 square, than that by common consent given by civilized na- 
 tions to their pieces of money. We may, I hope, under fort- 
 unate augury, limit ourselves at first to the outline (as, in 
 music, young students usually begin with the song) of Six- 
 pence. 
 
 2. Supposing you fortunate enough to possess the coin, 
 may I ask you to lay it before you on a stiff card. Do you 
 think it looks round ? It does not, unless you look exactly 
 down on it. But let us suppose you do so, and have to draw 
 its outline under that simple condition. 
 
 Take your pen, and do it then, beside the sixpence. 
 
 “ You cannot ? ” 
 
 Neither can I. Giotto could, and perhaps after working 
 due time under the laws of Fesole, you may be able to do it, 
 too, approximately. If I were as young as you, I should at 
 least encourage that hope. In the meantime you must do it 
 ignominiously, with compasses. Take your pen-compasses, 
 and draw with them a circle the size of a sixpence.* 
 
 3. When it is done, you will not, I hope, be satisfied with 
 it as the outline of a sixpence.*)* For, in the first place, it 
 
 * Not all young students can even manage tlieir compasses ; and it is 
 well to get over this difficulty with deliberate and immediate effort. 
 Hold your compasses upright, and lightly, by the joint at the top ; fix 
 one point quite firm, and carry the other round it any quantity of times 
 without touching the paper, as if you were spinning a top without quit- 
 ting hold of it. The fingers have to shift as the compasses revolve ; 
 and, when well practised, should do so without stopping, checking, or 
 accelerating the motion of the point. Practise for five minutes at a 
 time till you get skilful in this action, considering it equally disgraceful 
 that the fixed point of the compasses should slip, or that it should bore 
 a hole in the paper. After you are enough accustomed to the simple 
 mechanism of the revolution, depress the second point, and draw any 
 quantity of circles with it, large and small, till you can draw them 
 throughout, continuousljq with perfect ease. 
 
 f If any student object to the continued contemplation of so vulgar 
 an object, I must pray him to observe that, vulgar as it may be, the idea 
 of it is contentedly allowed to mingle with our most romantic ideals. I 
 find this entry in my diary for 26th January, 1876 : “To Crystal Palace, 
 through squalor and rags of declining Dulwich : very awful. In palace 
 afterwards, with organ playing above its rows of ghastly cream-colored 
 amphitheatre seats, with ‘SIXPENCE’ in letters as large as the organ- 
 
FIRST EXERCISE IN CURVES. 
 
 29 
 
 might just as well stand for the outline of the moon ; and in 
 the second, though it is true, or accurate, in the mere quality 
 of being a circle, either the space enclosed by the inner side 
 of the black line must be smaller, or that enclosed by the out- 
 side larger, than the area of a sixpence. So the closer you 
 can screw the compass-point, the better you will be pleased 
 with your line : only it must always happen even with the 
 most delicate line, so long as it has thickness at all, that its 
 inner edge is too small, or its outer too large. It is best, 
 therefore, that the error should be divided between these two 
 excesses, and that the centre of the line should coincide with 
 the contour of the object. In advanced practice, however, 
 outline is properly to be defined as the narrowest portion 
 which can be conveniently laid of a dark background round 
 an object which is to be relieved in light, or of a light back- 
 ground round an object to be relieved in shade. The Vene- 
 tians often leave their first bright outlines gleaming round 
 their dark figures, after the rest of the background has been 
 added. 
 
 4. The perfect virtue of an outline, therefore, is to be abso- 
 lutely accurate with its inner edge, the outer edge being of 
 no consequence. Thus the figures relieved in light on black 
 Greek vases are first enclosed with a line of thick black paint 
 about the eighth of an inch broad, afterwards melted into the 
 added background. 
 
 In dark outline on white ground, however, it is often neces- 
 sary to draw the extremities of delicate forms with lines which 
 give the limit with their outer instead of their inner edge ; 
 else the features would become too large. Beautiful examples 
 of this kind of work are to be seen in face-drawing, especially 
 of children, by Leech, and Du Maurier, in “Punch.” 
 
 Loose lines, doubled or trebled, are sometimes found in 
 work by great, never by the greatest, masters ; but these are 
 
 ist, — occupying the full field of sight below him. Of course, the names 
 of Mendelssohn, Orpheus, Apollo, Julien, and other great composers, 
 were painted somewhere in the panelling above. But the real inscrip- 
 tion — meant to be practically, and therefore divinely, instructive — 
 was ‘SIXPENCE.’ ’’ 
 
30 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 only tentative ; processes of experiment as to tlie direction in 
 which the real outline is to he finally laid. 
 
 5. The fineness of an outline is of course to he estimated 
 in relation to the size of the object it defines. A chalk sketch 
 on a wall may he a very subtle outline of a large picture ; 
 though Holbein or Bewick would he able to draw a complete 
 figure within the width of one of its lines. And, for your own 
 practice, the simplest instrument is the best ; and the line 
 drawn by any moderately well-cut quill pen, not crow quill, 
 but sacred goose, is the means of all art which you have first ' 
 to master ; and you may be sure that, in the end, your prog- 
 ress in all the highest skill of art will be swift in proportion 
 to the patience with which in the outset you persist in exer- 
 cises which will finally enable you to draw with ease the out- 
 line of any object of a moderate size (plainly visible, be it 
 understood, and firmly terminated),* with an unerring and 
 continuous pen line. 
 
 6. And observe, once for all, there is never to beany scrawl- 
 ing, blotting, or splashing, in your work, with pen or any 
 thing else. But especially with the pen, you are to avoid 
 rapid motion, because you will be easily tempted to it. Be- 
 mernber, therefore, that no line is w T ell drawm unless you can 
 stop your hand at any point of it you choose. On the other 
 hand, the motion must be consistent and continuous, other- 
 wise the line will not be even. 
 
 7. It is not indeed possible to say with precision liow r fast 
 the point may move, while yet the eye and fingers retain per- 
 fect attention and directing power over it. I have seen a 
 great master’s hand flying over the paper as fast as gnats over 
 a pool ; and the ink left by the light grazing of it, so pale, 
 that it gathered into shade like gray lead ; and yet the con- 
 tours, and fine notes of character, seized with the accuracy of 
 Holbein. But gift of this kind is a sign of the rarest artistic 
 faculty and tact : you need not attempt to gain it, for if it is 
 in you, and you w 7 ork continually, the pow T er will come of 
 
 * By ‘firmly terminated,’ I mean having an outline which can be 
 drawn, as that or your sixpence, or a book, or a table. You can’t out- 
 line a bit of cotton wool, or the fiarne of a candle. 
 
FIRST EXERCISE IN CUR VES. 
 
 31 
 
 itself ; and if it is not in you, will never come ; nor, even if 
 you could win it, is the attainment wholly desirable. Draw- 
 ings thus executed are always imperfect, however beautiful : 
 they are out of harmony with the general manner and scheme 
 of serviceable art ; and always, so far as I have observed, the 
 sign of some deficiency of earnestness in the worker. What- 
 ever your faculty may be, deliberate exercise will strengthen 
 and confirm the good of it ; while, even if your natural gift 
 for drawing be small, such exercise will at least enable you to 
 understand and admire, both in art and nature, much that 
 was before totally profitless or sealed to you. 
 
 8. We return, then, to our coin study. Now, if we are 
 ever to draw a sixpence in a real picture, we need not think 
 that it can always be done by looking down at it like a hawk, 
 or a miser, about to pounce. We must be able to draw it 
 lying anywhere, and seen from any distance. 
 
 So now raise the card, with the coin on it, slowly to the 
 level of the eye, so as at last to look straight over its surface. 
 As you do so, gradually the circular outline of it becomes 
 compressed ; and between the position in which you look 
 down on it, seeing its outline as a circle, and the position in 
 which you look across it, seeing nothing but its edge, there are 
 thus developed an infinite series of intermediate outlines, which, 
 as they approach the circle, resemble that of an egg, and as they 
 approach the straight line, that of a rolling-pin ; but which are 
 all accurately drawn curves, called by mathematicians c ellip- 
 ses,’ or curves that ‘leave out ’ something ; in this first prac- 
 tice you see they leave out some space of the circle they are 
 derived from. 
 
 9. Now, as you can draw the circle with compasses, so you 
 can draw any ellipse with a bit of thread and two pins.* But 
 as you cannot stick your picture over with pins, nor find out, 
 for any given ellipse, without a long mathematical operation, 
 where the pins should go, or how long the thread should be, 
 there is now no escape for you from the necessity of drawing 
 the flattened shape of the sixpence with free hand. 
 
 *No method of drawing it by points will give a finely continuous 
 line, until the hand is free in passing through the points. 
 
32 
 
 TEE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 10. And, therefore, that we may have a little more freedom 
 .for it, we will take a larger, more generally attainable, and 
 more reverendly classic coin ; namely, the ‘ Soldo/ or solid 
 thing, from whose Italian name, heroes who fight for pay 
 were first called Soldiers, or, in English, Pennyworth-men. 
 Curiously, on taking one by chance out of my pocket, it 
 proves to be a Double Obolus (Charon’s fare ! — and back 
 again, let us hope), or Ten Mites, of which two make a Five- 
 thing*. Inscribed to that effect on one side — 
 
 AIQBOAON 
 
 10 
 
 AEIITA 
 
 while the other bears an effigy not quite so curly in the hair 
 as an ancient Herakles, written around thus, — 
 
 TEQPriOS A 
 
 BASIAEY2 TON EAAHNQN 
 
 I lay this on a sheet of white paper on the table ; and, the 
 image and superscription being, for our perspective purposes, 
 just now indifferent, I will suppose you have similarly placed 
 a penny before you for contemplation. 
 
 11. Take next a sheet of moderately thick note-paper, and 
 folding down a piece of it sharply, cut out of the folded edge 
 a small flat arch, which, when you open the sheet, will give 
 you an oval aperture, somewhat smaller than the penny. 
 
 Holding the paper with this opening in it upright, adjust 
 the opening to some given point of sight, so that you see the 
 penny exactly through it. You can trim the cut edge till it 
 fits exactly, and you will then see the penny apparently 
 painted on the paper between you and it, on a smaller scale. 
 
 If you make the opening no larger than a grain of oats, 
 and hold the paper near you, and the penny two or three feet 
 back, you will get a charming little image of it, very pretty 
 and quaint to behold ; and by cutting apertures of different 
 sizes, you will convince yourself that you don’t see the penny 
 
FIRST EXERCISE IN CURVES. 
 
 33 
 
 of any given size, but that you judge of its actual size by 
 guessing at its distance, the real image on the retina of the 
 eye being far smaller than the smallest hole you can cut in 
 the paper. 
 
 12. Now if, supposing you already have some skill in paint- 
 ing, you try to produce an image of the penny which shall 
 look exactly like it, seen through any of these openings, be- 
 side the opening, } r ou will soon feel how absurd it is to make 
 the opening small, since it is impossible to draw with fineness 
 enough quite to imitate the image seen through any of these 
 diminished apertures. But if you cut the opening only a 
 hair’s-b read tli less wide than the coin, you may arrange the 
 paper close to it by putting the card and penny on the edge 
 of a book, and then paint the simple image of what } r ou see 
 (penny only, mind, not the cast shadow of it), so thajt you 
 can’t tell the one from the other ; and that will be right, if 
 your only object is to paint the penny. It will be right also 
 for a flower, or a fruit, or a feather, or aught else which you 
 are observing simply for its own sake. 
 
 13. But it will be natural-history painting, not great paint- 
 er’s painting. A great painter cares only to paint his penny 
 while the steward gives it to the laborer, or his twopence 
 while the Good Samaritan gives it to the host. And then it 
 must be so painted as you would see it at the distance where 
 you can also see the Samaritan. 
 
 14. Perfectly , however, at that distance. Not sketched or 
 slurred, in order to bring out the solid Samaritan in relief 
 from the aerial twopence. 
 
 And by being £ perfectly ’ painted at that distance, I mean, 
 as it would be seen by the human eye in the perfect power 
 of youth. That forever indescribable instrument, aidless, is 
 the proper means of sight, and test of all laws of work which 
 bear upon aspect of things for human beings. 
 
 15. Having got thus much of general principle defined, we 
 return to our own immediate business, now simplified by hav- 
 ing ascertained that our elliptic outline is to be of the width 
 of the penny proper, within a hair’s breadth, so that, practi- 
 cally, we may take accurate measure of the diameter, and on 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 THE LAWS OF FJESOLE. 
 
 that diameter practise drawing ellipses of different degrees 
 of fatness. If you have a master to help you, and see that 
 they are well drawn, I need not give you farther direction at 
 this stage ; hut if not, and we are to go on by ourselves, we 
 must have some more compass work ; which reserving for 
 next chapter, I will conclude this one with a few words to 
 more advanced students on the use of outline in study from 
 nature. 
 
 16. I. Lead, or silver point, outline. 
 
 It is the only one capable of perfection, and the best of all 
 means for gaining intellectual knowledge of form. Of the 
 degrees in which shade may be wisely united with it, the 
 drawings of the figure in the early Florentine schools give 
 every possible example : but the severe method of engraved 
 outline used on Etruscan metal-wrork is the standard appointed 
 by the law’s of Fesole. The finest application of such method 
 may be seen in the Florentine engravings, of which more or 
 less perfect facsimiles are given in my “ Ariadne Florentina.” 
 Raphael’s silver point outline, for the figure, and Turner’s lead 
 outline in landscape, are beyond all rivalry in abstract of 
 graceful and essential fact. Of Turner’s lead outlines, exam- 
 ples enough exist in the National Gallery to supply all the 
 schools in England, when they are properly distributed.* 
 
 17. II. Pen, or woodcut, outline. The best means of pri- 
 mal study of composition, and for giving vigorous impression 
 to simple spectators. The woodcuts of almost any Italian 
 books towards 1500, most of Durer’s (a), — all Holbein’s; but 
 especially those of the ‘ Dance of Death ’ (5), and the etchings 
 by Turner himself in the c< Liber Studiorum,” are standards of 
 
 My kind friend Mr. Burton is now so fast bringing all tilings under 
 his control into good working order at the National Gallery, that I have 
 good hope, by the help of his influence with the Trustees, such distri- 
 bution may be soon effected. 
 
 (а) I have put the complete series of the life of the Virgin in the St 
 George’s Museum, Sheffield. 
 
 (б) First edition, also in Sheffield Museum. 
 
FIRST EXERCISE IN CURVES . '. 
 
 35 
 
 it (c). With a light wash of thin color above, it is the no- 
 blest method of intellectual study of composition ; so em- 
 ployed by all the great Florentine draughtsmen, and by Man- 
 tegna (i d ). Holbein and Turner carry the method forward 
 into full chiaroscuro ; so also Sir Joshua in his first sketches 
 of pictures (e). 
 
 18. III. Outline with the pencil. Much as I have worked 
 on illuminated manuscripts, I have never yet been able to dis- 
 tinguish, clearly, pencilled outlines from the penned rubrics. 
 But I shall gradually give large examples from thirteenth cen- 
 tury work which will be for beginners to copy with the pen, 
 and for advanced pupils to follow with the pencil. 
 
 19. The following* notes, from the close of one of my Ox- 
 ford lectures on landscape, contain the greater part of what it 
 is necessary farther to say to advanced students * on this sub- 
 ject 
 
 When forms, as of trees or mountain edges, are so complex 
 that you cannot follow them in detail, yon are to enclose them 
 with a careful outside limit, taking in their main masses. Sup- 
 pose you have a map to draw on a small scale, the kind of 
 outline which a good geographical draughtsman gives to the 
 generalized capes and bays of a country, is that by which you 
 are to define too complex masses in landscapes. 
 
 An outline thus perfectly made, with absolute decision, and 
 with a wash of one color above it, is the most masterly of all 
 
 * I find tliis book terribly difficult to arrange ; for if I did it quite 
 rightly, I should make the exercises and instructions progressive and con- 
 secutive ; but then, nobody would see the reason for them till we came 
 to the end ; and I am so encumbered with other work that I think it best 
 now to get this done in the way likeliest to make each part immediately 
 useful. Otherwise, this chapter should have been all about right lines 
 only, and then we should have had one on the arrangement of right 
 lines, followed by curves, and arrangement of curves. 
 
 (c) ‘ iEsaeus and Hesperie,’ and ‘ The Falls of the Reuss,’ in Sheffield 
 Museum. 
 
 ( d ) 1 The Triumph of Joseph.’ Florentine drawing in Sheffield Mu- 
 seum. 
 
 fi) Two, in Sheffield Museum. 
 
36 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 methods of light and shade study, with limited time, when the 
 forms of the objects to be drawn are clear and unaffected by 
 mist. 
 
 But without any wash of color, such an outline is the most 
 valuable of all means of obtaining such memoranda of any 
 scene as may explain to another person, or record for your- 
 self, what is most important in its features ; only when it is 
 thus used, some modification is admitted in its treatment, and 
 always some slight addition of shade becomes necessary in 
 order that the outline may contain the utmost information 
 possible. Into this question of added shade I shall proceed 
 hereafter. 
 
 20. For the sum of present conclusions : observe that in all 
 drawings in which flat washes of color are associated with 
 outline, the first great point is entirely to suppress the influ- 
 ences of impatience and affectation, so that if you fail, you 
 may know exactly in what the failure consists. Be sure that 
 you spread your color as steadily as if you were painting a 
 house wall, filling in every spot of white to the extremest cor- 
 ner, and removing every grain of superfluous color in nook3 
 and along edges. Then when the tint is dry, you will be able 
 to say that it is either too warm or cold, paler or darker than 
 you meant it to be. It cannot possibly come quite right till 
 you have long experience ; only, let there be no doubt in your 
 mind as to the point in which it is wrong ; and next time you 
 will do better. 
 
 21. I cannot too strongly, or too often, warn you against 
 the perils of affectation. Sometimes color lightly broken, or 
 boldly dashed, will produce a far better instant effect than a 
 quietly laid tint ; and it looks so dexterous, or so powerful, or so 
 fortunate, that you are sure to find everybody liking your work 
 better for its insolence. But never allow yourself in such things. 
 Efface at once a happy accident — let nothing divert you from 
 the purpose you began with — nothing divert or confuse you 
 in the course of its attainment ; let the utmost strength of 
 your work be in its continence, and the crowning grace of it 
 in serenity. 
 
 And even when you know that time will not permit you to 
 
OF ELEMENTARY FORM. \ 
 
 37 
 
 finish, do a little piece of jour drawing rightly, rather than 
 the whole falsely : and let the non-completion consist either 
 in that part of the paper is left white, or that only a founda- 
 tion has been laid up to a certain point, and the second colors 
 have not gone on. Let your work be a good outline — or part 
 of one ; a good first tint — or part of one ; but not, in any 
 sense, a sketch ; in no point, or measure, fluttered, neglected, 
 or experimental. In this manner you will never be in a state 
 of weak exultation at an undeserved triumph ; neither will 
 you be mortified by an inexplicable failure. From the begin- 
 ning you will know that more than moderate success is im- 
 possible, and that when you fall short of that due degree, the 
 reason may be ascertained, and a lesson learned. As far as 
 my own experience reaches, the greater part of the fatigue of 
 drawing consists in doubt or disappointment, not in actual 
 effort or reasonable application of thought ; and the best 
 counsels I have to give you may be summed in these — to be 
 constant to your first purpose, content with the skill you are 
 sure of commanding, and desirous only of the praises which 
 belong to patience and discretion. 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 OF ELEMENTARY FORM. 
 
 1. In the 15th paragraph of the preceding chapter, we were 
 obliged to leave the drawing of our ellipse till we had done 
 some more compass work. For, indeed, all curves of subtle 
 nature must be at first drawn through such a series of points 
 as may accurately define them ; and afterwards without points, 
 by the free hand. 
 
 And it is better in first practice to make these points for 
 definition very distinct and large ; and even sometimes to 
 consider them rather as beads strung upon the line, as 
 if it were a thread, than as mere points through which it 
 passes. 
 
 2. It is wise to do this, not only in order that the points 
 
38 
 
 TEE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 themselves may be easily and unmistakably set, but because 
 all beautiful lines are beautiful, or delightful to sight, in show - 
 ing the directions in which material things may be wisely arranged , 
 or may serviceably move . Thus, in Plate 1, the curve which 
 terminates the hen’s feather pleases me, and ought to please 
 you, better than the point of the shield, partly because it ex- 
 presses such relation between the lengths of the filaments of 
 the plume as may fit the feather to act best upon the air, for 
 flight ; or, in unison with other such softly inlaid armor, for 
 covering. 
 
 3. The first order of arrangement in substance is that of 
 coherence into a globe ; as in a drop of water, in rain, and 
 dew, — or, hollow, in a bubble : and this same kind of cohe- 
 rence takes place gradually in solid matter, forming spherical 
 knots, or crystallizations. Whether in dew, foam, or any other 
 minutely beaded structure, the simple form is always pleasant 
 to the human mind ; and the ‘ pearl ’ — to which the most pre- 
 cious object of human pursuit is likened by its wisest guide — 
 derives its delightfulness merely from its being of this perfect 
 form, constructed of a substance of lovely color. 
 
 4. Then the second orders of arrangement are those in 
 which several beads or globes are associated in groups under 
 definite laws, of which of course the simplest is that they 
 should set themselves together as close as possible. 
 
 Take, therefore, eight marbles or beads* about three-quar- 
 ters of an inch in diameter ; and place successively two, three, 
 four, etc., as near as they will go. You can but let the first 
 two touch, but the three will form a triangular group, the four 
 a square one, and so on, up to the octagon. These are the 
 first general types of all crystalline or inorganic grouping : you 
 must know their properties well ; and therefore you must 
 draw them neatly. 
 
 5. Draw first the line an inch long, which you have already 
 practised, and set upon it five dots, two large and three small, 
 
 * In St. George’s schools, they are to be of pale rose-colored or 
 amber-colored quartz, with the prettiest veins I can find it bearing : 
 there are any quantity of tons of rich stone ready for us, waste on our 
 beaches. 
 

c 
 
 Primal Groups of the Circle. 
 
 Schools of St. George. Elementary Drawing, Plate III. 
 
OF ELEMENTARY FORM. 
 
 39 
 
 dividing it into quarter inches, — A B, Plate 3. Then from 
 the large dots as centres, through the small ones, draw the 
 two circles touching each other, as at C. 
 
 The triangle, equal-sided, each side half an inch, and the 
 square, in the same dimensions, with their dots, and their 
 groups of circles, are given in succession in the plate ; and 
 you will proceed to draw the pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, 
 and octagon group, in the same manner, all of them half an 
 inch in the side. All to be done with the lead, free hand, cor- 
 rected by test of compasses till you get them moderately 
 right, and finally drawn over the lead with common steel pen 
 and ink. 
 
 The degree of patience with which you repeat, to perfection, 
 this very tedious exercise, will be a wholesome measure of 
 your resolution and general moral temper, and the exercise 
 itself a discipline at once of temper and hand. On the other 
 hand, to do it hurriedly or inattentively is of no use whatever, 
 either to mind or hand. 
 
 6. While you are persevering in this exercise, you must also 
 construct the same figures with your instruments, as delicately 
 as you can ; but complete them, as in Plate 4, by drawing 
 semicircles on the sides of each rectilinear figure ; and, with 
 the same radius, the portions of circles which will include the 
 angles of the same figures, placed in a parallel series, enclos- 
 ing each figure finally in a circle. 
 
 7. You have thus the first two leading groups of what archi- 
 tects call Foils ; i.e., trefoils, quatrefoils, cinquefoils, etc., 
 their French names indicating the original dominance of 
 French design in their architectural use. 
 
 The entire figures may be best called ‘Roses,’ the word 
 rose, or rose window, being applied by the French to the 
 richest groups of them. And you are to call the point which 
 is the centre of each entire figure the ‘ Rose-centre.’ The 
 arcs, you are to call * foils ; ’ the centres of the arcs, c foil- 
 centres ; ’ and the small points where the arcs meet, ‘ cusps/ 
 from cuspis, Latin for a point. 
 
 8. From the group of circle-segments thus constructed, we 
 might at once deduce the higher forms of symmetrical ( or 
 
40 
 
 THE LA WS OF FESOLE. 
 
 equally measured*) architecture, aud of symmetrical flowers, 
 such as the rose, or daisy. But it will be better first, with 
 only our simple groups of circles themselves, to examine the 
 laws which regulate forms not equally measured in every 
 direction. 
 
 In this inquiry, however, we should find our marbles run 
 inconveniently about the table : we will therefore take to our 
 coins again : they will serve admirably, as long as we keep 
 clear of light and shade. We will at first omit the dual and 
 
 trine groups, being too simple for interesting experiment ; and 
 begin with Figure 4, Plate iii. 
 
 9. Take, accordingly, four sixpences, and lay then on a sheet 
 of paper in this arrangement (Fig. 3), as evenly square as you 
 can. 
 
 Now, lift one up out of its place, thus (Fig. 4), but still 
 keeping it in contact with its next neighbor, f 
 
 You don’t like that arrangement so well, do you ? You 
 * As distinguished from the studiously varied design, executed in all 
 its curves with the free hand, characteristic of less educated hut more 
 living schools. The south end of the western aisle of Bolton Abbey is 
 an exquisite example of Early English of this kind. 
 
 f If you have the book, compare the exercises in “ Ethics of the Dust,” 
 page 67. 
 
OF ELEMENTARY FORM. 
 
 41 
 
 ought not to like it so well. It is suggestive of one of the 
 sixpences having got “liberty and independence.” It is a 
 form of dissolution. 
 
 Next push up one of the coins below, so as to touch the one 
 already raised, as in Figure 5. 
 
 You dislike this group even more than the last, I should 
 think. Two of the sixpences have got liberty and independ- 
 ence now ! Two, if referred to the first quatrefoil ; or, if the 
 three upper ones are considered as a staggering trefoil, three. 
 
 Push the lower one up to join them, then ; Figure 6. 
 
 That is a little more comfortable, but the whole figure seems 
 squinting or tumbling. You can’t let it stay so ! 
 
 Put it upright, then ; Figure 7. 
 
 And now you like it as well as the original group, or, it may 
 be, even better. You ought to like it better, for it is not only 
 as completely under law as the original group, but it is under 
 two laws instead of one, variously determining its height and 
 width. The more laws any thing, or any creature, interprets, 
 and obeys, the more beautiful it is (cseteris paribus). 
 
 10. You find then, for first conclusion, that you naturally 
 like things to be under law ; and, secondly, that your feeling 
 
42 
 
 THE LAWS OF FES OLE. 
 
 of the pleasantness in a group of separate, (and not living,) or* 
 jects, like this, involves some reference to the great law of grav- 
 ity, which makes you feel it desirable that things should stand 
 upright, unless they have clearly some reason for stooping. 
 
 It will, however, I should think, be nearly indifferent to you 
 whether you look at Figure 7 as I have placed it, or from the 
 side of the page. Whether it is broad or high will not matter, 
 so long as it is balanced. But you see the charm of it is in- 
 creased, in either case, by inequality of dimension, in one di- 
 
 rection or another ; by the introduction, that is to say, of 
 another law, modifying the first. 
 
 11. Next, let us take fine sixpences, which we see wdll at 
 once fall into the pleasant equal arrangement, Figure 5, Plate 
 iii. ; but w T e will now break up that, by putting four together, 
 as in our first quatre-foil here ; and the fifth on the top, 
 (Figure 8). 
 
 But you feel this new arrangement awkward. The upper- 
 most circle has no intelligible connection with the group be- 
 low, which, as a foundation, would be needlessly large for it. 
 If you turn the figure upside-down, however, I think you will 
 like it better ; for the lowest circle now seems a little related 
 
OF ELEMENTARY FORM. 
 
 43 
 
 to the others, like a pendant. But the form is still unsatis- 
 factory. 
 
 Take the group in Figure 7, above, then, and add the fifth 
 sixpence to the top of that (Figure 9). 
 
 Are you not better pleased ? There seems now a unity of 
 
 vertical position in three circles, and of level position in two ; 
 and you get also some suggestion of a pendant, or if you turn 
 the page upside-down, of a statant,* cross. 
 
 If, however, you now raise the two level circles, and the 
 
 * Clearly, tin's Latin derivative is needed in English, besides our own 
 4 standing ; ’ to distinguish, on occasion, a permanently fixed ‘ state ’ of 
 anything, from a temporary pause. Stant, (as in extant,) would be 
 merely the translation of ‘standing so I assume a participle of the ob- 
 solete ‘ statare ’ to connect the adopted word with Statina, (the goddess,) 
 Statue, and State. 
 
44 
 
 THE LA WS OF FESOLE. 
 
 lowest, so as to get the arrangement in Figure 10, the result 
 is a quite balanced group ; more pleasing, if I mistake not, 
 than any we have arrived at yet, because we have here perfect 
 order, with an unequal succession of magnitudes in mass and 
 interval, between the outer circles. 
 
 12. By now gradually increasing the number of coins, we 
 can deduce a large variety of groups, more or less pleasing, 
 which you will find, on the whole, throw themselves either 
 into garlanded shapes, — seven, eight, and so on, in a circle, 
 
 with differences in the intervals ; — or into stellar shapes, of 
 which the simplest is the cross, and the more complex will be 
 composed of five, six, seven, or more rays, of various length. 
 Then farther, successive garlands may be added to the gar- 
 lands, or crossing rays, producing chequers, if we have un- 
 limited command of sixpences. But by no artifice of arrange- 
 ment shall we be able to produce any perfectly interesting or 
 beautiful form, as long as our coins remain of the same size. 
 
 13. But now take some fourpenny and threepenny pieces 
 also ; and, beginning with the cross, of five orbs (Fig. 10), 
 try first a sixpence in the middle, with four fourpenny pieces 
 
OF ELEMENTARY FORM. 
 
 45 
 
 round it ; and then a fourpenny piece in the middle, with four 
 sixpences round it. Either group will be more pleasing to 
 you than the original one : and by varying the intervals, and 
 removing the surrounding coins to greater or less distances, 
 you may pleasantly vary even this single group to a curious 
 extent ; while if you increase the number of coins, and farther 
 vary their sizes, adding shillings and half-crowns to your 
 original resources, you will find the producible variety of 
 pleasant figures quite infinite. 
 
 14. But, supposing your natural taste and feeling moder- 
 ately good, you will always feel some of the forms you arrive 
 at to be pleasanter than others ; for no explicable reason, but 
 that there is relation between their sizes and distances which 
 satisfies you as being under some harmonious law. Up to a 
 certain point, I could perhaps show you logical cause for these 
 preferences ; but the moment the groups become really in- 
 teresting, their relations will be found far too complex for 
 definition, and our choice of one or another can no more be 
 directed by rule, or explained by reason, than the degrees of 
 enjoyment can be dictated, or the reasons for admiration 
 demonstrated, as we look from Cassiopeia to Orion, or from 
 the Pleiades to Arcturus with his sons. 
 
 15. Three principles only you will find certain : 
 
 A, That perfect dependence of every thing on every 
 
 thing else, is necessary for pleasantness. 
 
 B, That such dependence can only become perfect by 
 
 means of differences in magnitude (or other quali- 
 ties, of course, when others are introduced). 
 
 C, That some kind of balance, or ‘ equity,’ is necessary 
 
 for our satisfaction in arrangements which are 
 clearly subjected to human interference. 
 
 You will be perhaps surprised, when you think of it, to find 
 that this last condition — human interference, — is very greatly 
 involved in the principles of contemplative pleasure ; and that 
 your eyes are both metaphysical, and moral, in their approval 
 and blame. 
 
 Thus, you have probably been fastidious, and found it ne- 
 
THE LAWS OF FES OLE. 
 
 46 
 
 cessary to be so, before you could please yourself with enough 
 precision in balance of coin against coin, and of one division 
 of each coin-group against its fellow. But you would not, I 
 think, desire to arrange any of the constellations I have just 
 named, in two parallel parts ; or to make the rock-forms on 
 one side of a mountain valley, merely the reversed images of 
 those upon the other ? 
 
 16. Yet, even among these, you are sensible of a kind of 
 order, and rejoice in it ; nay, you find a higher pleasure in 
 the mystery of it. You would not desire to see Orion and the 
 Pleiades broken up, and scattered over the sky in a shower of 
 equal-sized stars, among which you could no more trace group, 
 or line, or pre-eminence. Still less would you desire to see 
 the stars, though of different magnitudes, arrested on the vault 
 of heaven in a chequer-pattern, with the largest stars at the 
 angles, or appointed to rise and set in erected ranks, the same 
 at zenith and horizon ; never bowed, and never supine. 
 
 17. The beautiful passage in Humboldt’s “Personal Narra- 
 tive ” in wdiich he describes the effect on his mind of the first 
 sight of the Southern Cross, may most fitly close, confirm, 
 and illumine, a chapter too wearisome ; by which, however, I 
 trust that you will be led into happier trust in the natural 
 likings and dislikings which are the proper groundwork of 
 taste in all things, finding that, in things directly prepared for 
 the service of men , a quite palpable order and symmetry are 
 felt by him to be beautiful ; but in the things which involve 
 interests wider than his own, the mystery of a less compre- 
 hensible order becomes necessary for their sublimity, as, for 
 instance, the forms of mountains, or balances of stars, express- 
 ing their birth in epochs of creation during which man had 
 no existence, and their functions in preparing for a future 
 state of the world, over which he has no control. 
 
 “We saw distinctly for the first time the Cross of the South 
 only, in the night of the 4th and 5th of July, in the sixteenth 
 degree of latitude ; it was strongly inclined, and appeared 
 from time to time between the clouds, the centre of which, 
 furrowed by uncondensed lightnings, reflected a silver light. 
 
 “ Tf a traveller may be permitted to speak of his personal 
 
OF ELEMENTARY FORM. 
 
 47 
 
 emotions* I shall add, that in this night I saw one of the rev- 
 eries of my earliest youth accomplished. 
 
 % % % * * * 
 
 “At a period when I studied the heavens, not with the in- 
 tention of denoting myself to astronomy, but only to acquire a 
 knowledge of the stars, f I was agitated by a fear unknown to 
 those who love a sedentary life. It seemed painful to me to 
 renounce the hope of beholding those beautiful constellations 
 which border the southern pole. Impatient to rove in the 
 equinoctial regions, I could not raise my eyes toward the 
 starry vault without thinking of the Cross of* the South, and 
 without recalling the sublime passage of Dante, which the 
 most celebrated commentators have applied to this constella- 
 tion : 
 
 ‘ Io mi volsi a man destra, e posi inent 
 All’ altro polo ; e vidi quattro stelle 
 Non viste mai fuor ch' alia prima gente 
 Goder pare a lo ciel di lor fiammelle ; 
 
 O settentrional vedovo sito, 
 
 Poi die privato se’ di mirar quelle ! ’ 
 
 “ The two great stars which mark the summit and the foot 
 of the Cross having nearly the same right ascension, it follows 
 hence that the constellation is almost perpendicular at the 
 moment when it passes the meridian. This circumstance is 
 known to every nation that lives beyond the tropics, or in the 
 southern hemisphere. It has been observed at what hour of 
 the night, in different seasons, the Cross of the South is erect, 
 or inclined. It is a timepiece that advances very regularly 
 near four minutes a day ; and no other group of stars exhibits, 
 to the naked eye, an observation of time so easily made. How 
 often have we heard our guide exclaim, in the savannahs of 
 the Venezuela, or in the desert extending from Lima to Trux- 
 iilo, ‘ Midnight is past, the Cross begins to bend ! ’ How 
 
 * I italicise, because the reserve of the “ Personal Narrative,” in this 
 respect, is almost majestic ; and entirely exemplary as compared with 
 the explosive egotism of the modern tourist 
 
 f Again note the difference between modestly useful, and vainly arm 
 bitious, study. 
 
48 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE . 
 
 often those words reminded us of that affecting scene where 
 Paul and Virginia, seated near the source of the river of 
 Latainers, conversed together for the last time, and where the 
 old man, at the sight of the Southern Cross, warns them that 
 it is time to separate ! ” 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 OF ELEMENTARY ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 
 
 1. Among the •various arrangements made of the coins in 
 our last experiment, it appeared that those were on the whole 
 pleasantest which fell into some crosslet or stellar disposition, 
 referred to a centre. The reader might perhaps suppose that, 
 in making him feel this, I was preparing the way for assertion 
 of the form of the cross, as a beautiful one, for religious reasons. 
 But this is not so. I have given the St. George’s cross for 
 first practice, that our art-work might be thus early associated 
 with the other studies of our schools ; but not as in any wise 
 a dominant or especially beautiful form. On the contrary, if 
 we reduce it into perfectly simple lines, the pure cross (a 
 stellar group of four lines at right angles) w T ill be found to 
 look meagre when compared with the stellar groups of five, 
 six, or seven rays ; and, in fact, its chief use, when employed 
 as a decoration, is not in its possession of any symbolic or ab- 
 stract charm, but as the simplest expression of accurate, and 
 easy, mathematical division of space. It is thus of great value 
 in the decoration of severe architecture, where it is definitely 
 associated with square masonry : but nothing could be more 
 painful than its substitution, in the form of tracery bars, for 
 the stellar tracery of any fine rose window ; though, in such a 
 position, its symbolic office would be perfect. The most im. 
 aginative and religious symbolist will, I think, be surprised 
 to find, if he thus tries it fairly, how little symbolism can 
 please, if physical beauty be refused. 
 
 2. Nor do I doubt that the author of the book on heraldry 
 above referred to,* is right in tracing some of the earliest 
 
 * “Pursuivant of Arms,” p. 48. 
 
Primal Groups of Foils with Arc Centres. 
 Schools of St. George. Elementary Drawing, Plate IV. 
 
OF ELEMENTARY ORGANIC STRUCTURE, 
 
 49 
 
 forms of the heraldic cross itself “ to the metal clamps or 
 braces required to strengthen and protect the long, kite-shaped 
 shield of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.” The quartering 
 of the field, which afterwards became the foundation of the 
 arrangement of bearings, was thus naturally suggested by the 
 laws of first construction. But the “ Somerset Herald ” pushes 
 his modern mechanics too far, when he confuses the Cross 
 Fleury with an “ ornamental clamp ” ? (p. 49). It is directly 
 traceable to the Byzantine Fleur-de-lys, and that to Homer’s 
 Iris. 
 
 3. So also with respect to the primary forms of crystals, the 
 pleasure of the eye in perceiving that the several lines of a 
 group may be traced to some common centre is partly refer- 
 able to our mere joy in orderly construction : but, in our gene- 
 ral judgment of design, it is founded on our sense of the 
 nature of radiant light and heat as the strength of all organic 
 life, together with our interest in noticing either growth from 
 a common root in plants, or dependence on a nervous or other- 
 wise vital centre in animal organism, indicating not merely 
 order of construction, but process or sequence of animation. 
 
 4. The smallest number of lines w r hich can completely express 
 this law of radiation* is five ; or if a completely opposite sym- 
 metry is required, six ; and the families of all the beautiful 
 flowers prepared for the direct service and delight of man are 
 constructed on these two primary schemes, — the rose repre- 
 senting the cinqfold radiation, and the lily the sixfold, (pro- 
 duced by the two triangles of the sepals and petals, crossed, 
 in the figure called by the Arabs ‘ Solomon’s Seal ’) ; while 
 the fourfold, or cruciform, are on the whole restricted to more 
 servile utility. One plant only, that I know of, in the Rose 
 family, — the tormentilla, — subdues itself to the cruciform type 
 with a grace in its simplicity which makes it, in mountain 
 pastures, the fitting companion of the heathbell and thyme. 
 
 * The groups of three, though often very lovely, do not clearly express 
 radiation, hut simply cohesion ; because by merely crowding three globes 
 close to each other, you at once get a perfect triune form ; but to put 
 them in a circle of five or more, at equal distances from a centre, re- 
 quires an ordering and proportionate force. 
 
 I 
 
50 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 5. I shall have occasion enough, during the flower study 
 carried on in “Proserpina,” to analyze the laws of stellar group- 
 ing in flowers. In this book I shall go on at once to the more 
 complex forms produced by radiation under some continually 
 altering force, either of growth from a root, or of motion from 
 some given point under given law. 
 
 We will therefore return to our feather from the hen’s wing, 
 and try to find out, by close examination, why -we think it, and 
 other feathers, pretty. 
 
 6. You must observe first that the feathers of all birds fall 
 into three great classes : 
 
 (1) The Feathers for Clothing. 
 
 (2) The Feathers for Action. 
 
 (3) The Feathers for Ornament. 
 
 (1) Feathers for clothing are again necessarily divided into 
 (a) those which clothe for warmth, (down,) which are the bird’s 
 blankets and flannel ; and (b) those which clothe it for defence 
 against weather or violence ; these last bearing a beautiful 
 resemblance partly to the tiles of a house, partly to a knight’s 
 armor. They are imbricated against rain and wind, like tiles ; 
 but they play and move over each other like mail, actually be- 
 coming effective armor to many of the warrior birds ; as in 
 the partial protection of others from impact of driven boughs, 
 or hail, or even shot. 
 
 (2) Feathers for action. These are essentially, again, either 
 (a) feathers of force, in the wing, or (b) of guidance, in the 
 tail, and are the noblest in structure which the bird possesses. 
 
 (3) Feathers for ornament. These are, again, to be divided 
 into (a), those which modify the bird’s form, (being then 
 mostly imposed as a crest on the head, or expanded as a fan 
 at the tail, or floating as a train of ethereal softness,) and (b) 
 those which modify its color ; these last being, for the most 
 part, only finer conditions of the armor feathers on the neck, 
 breast, and back, wfiiile the force-feathers usually are reserved 
 and quiet in color, though more or less mottled, clouded, or 
 barred. 
 
 7. Before proceeding to any closer observation of these 
 
OF ELEMENTARY ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 
 
 51 
 
 three classes of feathers, the student must observe generally 
 how they must all be modified according to the bird’s size. 
 Chiefly, of course, the feathers of action, since these are strictly 
 under physical laws determining the scale of organic strength. 
 It is just as impossible for a large bird to move its wings with 
 a rapid stroke, as for the sail of a windmill, or of a ship, to 
 vibrate like a lady’s fan. Therefore none but small birds can 
 give a vibratory (or insect-like) motion to their wings. On the 
 other hand, none but large birds can sail without stroke, because 
 small wings cannot rest on a space of air large enough to sus- 
 tain the body. 
 
 8. Therefore, broadly, first of all, birds range — with relation 
 to their flight — into three great classes : (a) the sailing birds, 
 who, having given themselves once a forward impulse, can rest, 
 merely with their wings open, on the winds and clouds ; (b) 
 the properly so-called flying birds, who must strike with their 
 wings, no less to sustain themselves than to advance ; and, 
 lastly, (c) the fluttering birds, who can keep their wings quiver- 
 ing like those of a fly, and therefore pause at will, in one spot 
 in the air, over a flower, or over their nest. And of these three 
 classes, the first are necessarily large birds (frigate-bird, alba- 
 tross, condor and the like) ; the second, of average bird-size, 
 falling chiefly between the limiting proportions of the swallow 
 and seagull ; for a smaller bird than the swift has not power 
 enough over the air, and a larger one than the seagull has not 
 power enough over its wings, to be a perfect flyer. 
 
 Finally, the birds of vibratory wing are all necessarily mi- 
 nute, represented chiefly by the humming-birds ; but suffici- 
 ently even by our own smaller and sprightlier pets : the robin’s 
 quiver of his wing in leaping, for instance, is far too swift to 
 be distinctly seen. 
 
 9. These are the three main divisions of the birds for whom 
 the function of the wing is mainly flight. 
 
 But to us, human creatures, there is a class of birds more 
 pathetically interesting — those in whom the function of the 
 wing is essentially, not flight, but the protection of their 
 young. 
 
 Of these, the two most familiar to us are the domestic fowl 
 
52 
 
 THE LA WS OF FESOLE. 
 
 and the partridge ; and there is nothing in arrangement of 
 plumage approaching the exquisiteness of that in the vaulted 
 roofs of their expanded covering wings ; nor does any thing I 
 know in decoration rival the consummate art of the minute 
 cirrus-clouding of the partridge’s breast. 
 
 10. But before we can understand either the structure of 
 the striking plumes, or the tincture of the decorative ones, we 
 must learn the manner in which all plumes whatsoever are 
 primarily made. 
 
 Any feather — (as you know, but had better nevertheless take 
 the first you can find in your hand to look at, as you read on) 
 — is composed of a central quill, like the central rib of a leaf, 
 with fine rays branching from it on each side, united, if the 
 feather be a strong one, into a more or less silky tissue or 
 4 web,’ as it has hitherto been called by naturalists.* Not un- 
 
 * So far as one can make out wliat they call any thing ! The follow- 
 ing lucid passage is all that in the seven hundred closely printed pages 
 of Mr. Swainson’s popular ornithology, the innocent reader will find 
 vouchsafed to him in description of feathers (§ 71, p. 77, vol. 1) : — 
 “ The regular external feathers of the body, like those of the wings and 
 tail, are very differently constructed from such as are called the down ; 
 they are externally composed of three parts or substances: 1. The 
 down; 2. The laminae, or webs (!) ; and, 3. The shaft, or quill, on the 
 sides of which the two former are arranged. The downy laminae, or 
 webs of these feathers, are very different from the substance we have 
 just described, since they not only have a distinct shaft of their own, 
 but the laminae which spring from both sides of it are perceptibly and 
 regularly arranged, although, from being devoid of all elasticity, (!) like 
 true down, they do not unite and repose parallel to each other. The 
 soft downy laminae are always situated close to the insertion of the 
 quill into the skin ; and although, for obvious reasons, they are more 
 developed on those feathers which cover the body, they likewise exist 
 on such as are employed in flight, as shown in the quill of a goose ; 
 and as they are always concealed from sight when the plumage is un- 
 injured, and are not exposed to the action of the air, so they are al- 
 ways colorless. The third part of a feather consists in the true external 
 laminae, which are arranged in two series, one on each side the shaft ; 
 and these sides are called the external and the internal (! J) webs. To 
 outward appearance, the form of the laminae which compose these 
 webs appears to be much the same as that of down, which has been 
 just described, with this difference only, that the laminae are stronger 
 
ON ELEMENTARY ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 
 
 53 
 
 reasonably, in some respects ; for truly it is a woven thing, 
 with a wrap and woof, beautiful as Penelope’s or Arachne’s 
 tapestry ; but with this of marvel beyond beauty in it, that it 
 is a web which reweaves itself when you tear it ! Closes 
 itself as perfectly as a sea-wave torn by the winds, being 
 indeed nothing else than a wave of silken sea, which the 
 winds trouble enough ; and fret along the edge of it, like 
 fretful Benacus at its shore ; but which, tear it as they will, 
 closes into its unruffled strength again in an instant. 
 
 11. There is a problem for you, and your engines, — good 
 my Manchester friends ! What with Thirlmere to fill your 
 boilers, and cotton grown by free niggers, surely the forces of 
 the universe must be favorable to you, — and, indeed, wholly at 
 your disposal. Yet of late I have heard that your various 
 tissues tear too easily ; — how if you could produce them such 
 as that they could mend themselves again wdtliout help from a 
 sewing-machine ! (for I find my glove-fingers, sewn up the 
 seam by that great economist of labor, split down all at once 
 like walnut-shells). But even that Arabian web which could 
 be packed in a walnut-shell w r ould have no chance of rivalling 
 with yours if you could match the delicate spirit that weaves 
 — a sparrow’s wing. (I suppose you have no other birds to 
 look at now — within fifty miles.) 
 
 However, from the bodies of birds, plucked for eating — or 
 the skins of them, stuffed for wearing, I do not doubt but the 
 reader, though inhabitant of modern English towns, may still 
 possess himself, or herself, of a feather large enough to be easily 
 studied ; * nay, I believe British Law still indites itself with 
 
 and elastic, and seem to stick together, and form a parallel series, 
 which the downy laminae do not. Now, this singular adhesiveness is 
 seen by the microscope to be occasioned by the filaments on each side 
 of these laminae being hooked into those of the next laminae, so that 
 one supports the other in the same position; while their elasticity (!) 
 makes them return to their proper place in the series, if by any accident 
 they are discomposed. This will be sufficient to give the reader a cor- 
 rect idea of the general construction of a feather, without going into 
 further details on the microscopic appearance of the parts. ” 
 
 * My ingenious friend, Mr. W. E. Dawes, of 72 Denmark Hill, will 
 attend scrupulously to a feather, to any orders sent him from Fesole. 
 
54 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 the legitimate goose-feather. If that be attainable, with grate- 
 ful reverence to law, in general, and to real Scripture, which 
 is only possible with quill or reed ; and to real music, of Doric 
 eagerness, touched of old for the oaks and rills, while the still 
 morn went out with sandals gray — we will therewith begin 
 our inquiry into the weaving of plumes. 
 
 12. And now, for convenience of description, observe, that 
 as all feathers lie backwards from the bird’s head towards its 
 tail, when we hold one in our hand by the point of the quill so 
 as to look at its upper surface, we are virtually looking from 
 the bird’s head towards the tail of it : therefore, unless with 
 warning of the contrary, I shall always describe the feathers 
 which belong to the bird’s right side, which, when we look 
 down on its back and wing, with the head towards us, curve 
 for the most part with the convex edge to our own left ; and 
 when we look dowm on its throat and breast, with the head 
 towards 11 s, curve for the most part with the convex edge to 
 our right. 
 
 13. Choosing, therefore, a goose-feather from the bird’s 
 right wing, and holding it with the upper surface upwards, 
 you see it curves to your own right, with convex edge to the 
 left ; and that it is composed mainly of the rapidly tapering 
 quill, with its two so-called ‘webs,’ one on each side, meeting 
 in a more or less blunt point at the top, like that of a kitchen 
 carving-knife. 
 
 14. But I do not like the word ‘web’ for these tissues of 
 the feather, for two reasons : the first, that it would get con- 
 fused with the word we must use for the membrane of the 
 foot ; and the second, that feathers of force continually re- 
 semble swords or scimitars, striking both with flat and edge ; 
 and one cannot rightly talk of striking with a web ! And I 
 have been a long time (this number of Fesole having, indeed, 
 been materially hindered by this hesitation) in deciding upon 
 any name likely to be acceptable to my readers for these all- 
 important parts of the plume structure. The one I have at 
 last fixed upon, ‘Fret,’ * will not on the instant approve itself 
 
 * ‘ Vane ’ is used in tlie English translation of Cuvier ; but would he 
 too apt to suggest rotation in the quill, as in a weathercock. 
 
OF ELEMENTARY ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 
 
 55 
 
 to them ; but they will be content with it, I believe, in use. I 
 take it from the constant fretting or rippling of the surface of 
 the tissue, even when it is not torn along its edge, * and one 
 can fancy a sword ‘fretted’ at its edge, easily enough. 
 
 15. The tw T o frets are composed, you see, each of — (I was 
 going to write, innumerable ; but they are quite numerable, 
 though many,) — smaller feathers ; for they are nothing less, 
 each of them, than a perfect little feather in its own way. You 
 will find it convenient to call these the ‘rays.’ In a goose’s 
 feather there are from thirty to forty in an inch of the fret ; 
 three or four hundred, that is to say, on each side of the 
 quill. You see — and much more, may feel — how firmly these 
 plumelets fasten themselves together to form the continuous 
 strength of silken tissue of the fret. 
 
 16. Pull one away from the rest, and you find it composed 
 of a white piece of the substance of the quill, extended into a 
 long, slightly hollowed strip, something like the awn of a grain 
 of oats — each edge of this narrow white strip being fringed 
 with an exquisitely minute series of minor points, or teeth, 
 like the teeth of a comb, becoming softer and longer towards 
 the end of the ray, where also the flat, chaff-like strip of quill 
 becomes little more than a fine rod. 
 
 Again, for names clear and short enough to be pleasantly 
 useful, I was here much at a loss, and cannot more satisfacto- 
 rily extricate myself than by calling the awnlike shaft simply 
 the ‘ Shaft ; ’ and the fine points of its serrated edges, (and 
 whatever, in other feathers, these become,) ‘Barbs.’ 
 
 1 7. If, with a sharp pair of scissors, you cut the two frets 
 away from the quill, down the whole length of it, you will 
 find the frets still hold together, inlaid, woven together by 
 their barbs into a white soft riband, — feeling just like satin 
 to the finger, and looking like it on the under surface, which 
 is exquisitely lustrous and smooth. And it needs a lens of 
 some power to show clearly the texture of the fine barbs that 
 weave the web, as it used to be called, of the whole. 
 
 Nevertheless, in the goose feather, the rays terminate some- 
 what irregularly and raggedly ; and it will be better now to 
 * See “Lore’s Sjjeime,*' Lecture I., page 38. 
 
56 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 take for further examination the plume of a more strongly 
 flying bird. I take that of the common seagull,* where, in 
 exquisite gray and dark-brown, the first elements of variega- 
 tion are also shown at the extremity of the plume. ^ 
 
 18. And here the edge of the fret is rippled indeed, but not 
 torn ; the quill tapers with exquisite subtlety ; and another 
 important part of plumage occurs at the root of it. There 
 the shafts of the rays lose their stiffness and breadth ; they 
 become mere threads, on which the barbs become long and 
 fine like hairs ; and the whole plumelet becomes a wavy, wild- 
 wandering thing, each at last entangled with its fluttering 
 neighbors, and forming what we call the 4 down * of the 
 feather, where the bird needs to be kept warm. 
 
 19. When the shafts change into these wandering threads, 
 they will be called filaments ; and the barbs, when they be- 
 come fine detached hairs, will be called cilia. I am very sorry 
 to have all this nomenclature to inflict at once ; but it is abso- 
 lutely needful, all of it ; nor difficult to learn, if you will only 
 keep a feather in your hand as you learn it. A feather always 
 consists of the quill and its rays ; a ray, of the shaft and its 
 barbs. Flexible shafts are filaments ; and flexible barbs, cilia. 
 
 20. In none of the works which I at present possess on or- 
 nithology, is any account given of the general form or nature 
 of any of these parts of a plume ; although of all subjects for 
 scientific investigation, supremely serviceable to youth, this 
 is, one should have thought, the nearest and most tempting, 
 to any person of frank heart. To begin with it, w r e must think 
 of all feathers first as exactly intermediate between the fur 
 of animals and scales of fish. They are fur, made strong, 
 and arranged in scales or plates, partly defensive armor, partly 
 active instruments of motion or action, f And there are defi- 
 
 * Larus Canus, (Linnaeus,) ‘White Seamew.’ St. George’s English 
 name for it. 
 
 f Compare “ Love’s Meinie,” Lecture I., pp. 28, 29 ; hut I find myself 
 now compelled to give more definite analysis of structure by the entirely 
 inconceivable, (till one discovers it,) absence of any such analysis in 
 books on birds. Their writers all go straight at the bones, like hungry 
 dogs ; and spit out the feathers as if they were choked by them. 
 
OF ELEMENTARY ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 
 
 57 
 
 nitely three textures of this strengthened fur, variously pleas- 
 urable to the eye : the first, a dead texture like that of simple 
 silk in its cocoon, or wool ; reeeptant of pattern colors in 
 definite stain, as in the thrush or partridge ; secondly, a text- 
 ure like that of lustrous shot silk, soft, but reflecting different 
 colors and different lights, as in the dove, pheasant, and pea- 
 cock ; thirdly, a quite brilliant texture, flaming like metal — 
 nay, sometimes more brightly than any polished armor ; and 
 this also reflective of different colors in different lights, as in 
 the humming-bird. Between these three typical kinds of 
 lustre, there is every gradation ; the tender lustre of the dove’s 
 plumage being intermediate between the bloomy softness of 
 the partridge, and the more than rainbow iridescence of the 
 peacock ; while the semi- metallic, unctuous, or pitchy lustre of 
 the raven, is midway between the silken and metallic groups. 
 
 21. These different modes of lustre and color depend en- 
 tirely on the structure of the barbs and cilia. I do not often 
 invite my readers to use a microscope ; but for once, and for 
 a little while, we will take the tormenting aid of it. 
 
 In all feathers used for flight, the barbs are many and mi- 
 nute, for the purpose of locking the shafts well together. But 
 in covering and decorative plumes, they themselves become 
 principal, and the shafts subordinate. And, since of flying 
 plumes we have first taken the seagull’s wing feather, of cov- 
 ering plumes we will first take one from the seagull’s breast. 
 
 22. I take one, therefore, from quite the middle of a sea- 
 mew’s breast, where the frets are equal in breadth on each 
 side. You see, first, that the whole plume is bent almost into 
 the shape of a cup ; and that the soft white lustre plays vari- 
 ously on its rounded surface, as you turn it more or less to 
 the light. This is the first condition of all beautiful forms. 
 Until you can express this rounded surface, you need not 
 think you can draw them at all. 
 
 23. But for the present, I only want you to notice the struct- 
 ure and order of its rays. Any single shaft with its lateral 
 barbs, towards the top of the feather, you will find approxi- 
 mately of the form Fig. 11, the central shaft being so fine that 
 towards the extremity it is quite lost sight of ; and the end 
 
58 
 
 THE LAWS OF FES OLE. 
 
 of the rays being not formed by the extremity of the shaft, 
 with barbs tapering to it, but by the forked separation, like 
 the notch of an arrow, of the two ultimate barbs. Which, 
 
 please, observe to be indeed the normal form of all feathers, 
 as opposed to that of leaves ; so that the end of a feather, 
 however finely disguised, is normally as at a, Fig. 12 ; but of 
 a leaf, as at b ; the arrow-like form of the feather being de- 
 veloped into the most lovely duplicated symmetries of outline 
 
 guished from the color designs in minerals, and in merely 
 wood-forming, as opposed to floral, or seed-forming, leaves. 
 
 24. You will observe also, in the detached ray, that the 
 barbs lengthen downwards, and most distinctly from the 
 middle downwards ; and now taking up the wing-feather 
 again, you will see that its frets being constructed by the im- 
 brication, or laying over each other like the tiles of a house 
 of the edges of the successive rays, — ^ * 
 
 on the upper or outer surface of the VK sf J 
 
 plume, the edges are overlaid towards 
 the plume-pomg like breaking waves /fl 
 
 over each other towards shore ; and of 
 course, on the under surface, reversed, 
 and overlaid towards the root of the xL,!/’” 
 
 quill. You may understand this in a FlG * 13 " 
 
 moment by cutting out roughly three little bits of cardboard, 
 of this shape (Fig. 18), and drawing the directions of the 
 
 Feg. 11. 
 
 Fig. 12. 
 
 and pattern, by which, 
 throughout, the color de- 
 signs of feathers, and of 
 floral petals, (which are the 
 sign of the dual or married 
 life in the flower, raising 
 it towards the rank of ani- 
 mal nature,) are distin- 
 
OF ELEMENTARY ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 
 
 59 
 
 barbs on them : I cut their ends square because they are too 
 short to represent the lengths of real rays, but are quite long 
 enough to illustrate their imbrication. Lay first the three of 
 them in this position, (Fig. 14, a,) with their points towards you, 
 one above the other ; then put the edge of the lowest over the 
 edge of that above it, and the edge of that over the third, so 
 as just to show the central shaft, and you will get three edges, 
 with their barbs all vertical, or nearly so : that is the struct- 
 ure of the plume’s upper surface. Then put the edges of the 
 farther off ones over the nearer, and you get three edges with 
 their barbs all transverse, (Fig. 14, b,) which is the structure 
 
 of the plume’s lower surface. There are, of course, endless 
 subtleties and changes of adjustment, but that is the first 
 general law to be understood. 
 
 25. It follows, as a necessary consequence of this arrange- 
 ment, that we may generally speak of the barbs which form 
 the upper surface of the feather as the upper, or longitudinal, 
 barbs, meaning those which lie parallel to the quill, pointing 
 to the end of the feather ; and of those which form the under 
 surface of the feather as the lower, or transverse, barbs,— lying, 
 that is to say, nearly transversely across the feather, at right 
 angles to the quill. And farther, as you see that the quill 
 shows itself clearly projecting from the under surface of the 
 plume, so the shafts show themselves clearly projecting, in a 
 corduroy fashion, on the under surface of the fret, the trans- 
 verse barbs being seen only in the furrows between them. 
 
60 
 
 THE LAWS OF FES OLE. 
 
 26. Now, I should think, in looking carefully at this close 
 structure of quill and shaft, you will be more and more struck 
 by their resemblance to the beams and tiles of a roof. The 
 feather is, in fact, a finely raftered and tiled roof to throw ofl 
 wind and rain ; and in a large family of birds the wing has 
 indeed chiefly a roof’s office, and is not only raftered and 
 tiled, but vaulted , for the roof of the nursery. Of which here- 
 after ; in the meantime, get this clearly into your head, that 
 on the upper surface of the plume the tiles are overlaid from 
 the bird’s head backward — so as to have their edges away 
 from the wind, that it may slide over them as the bird flies ; — 
 and the furrows formed by the barbs lie parallel with the 
 quill, so as to give the least possible friction. The under side 
 of the plume, you may then always no less easily remember, 
 has the transverse barbs ; and tile-edges towards the bird’s 
 head. The beauty and color of the plume, therefore, depend 
 mainly on the formation of the longitudinal barbs, as long as 
 the fret is close and firm. But it is kept close and firm 
 throughout only in the wing feathers ; expanding in the dec- 
 orative ones, under entirely different conditions. 
 
 27. Looking more closely at your seamew’s breast-feather, 
 you will see that the rays lock themselves close only in the 
 middle of it ; and that this close-locked space is limited by a 
 quite definite line, outside of which the rays contract their 
 barbs into a thick and close thread, each such thread de- 
 tached from its neighbors, and forming a snowy fringe of pure 
 white, while the close-locked part is toned, by the shades 
 which show you its structure, into a silver gray. 
 
 Filially, at the root of the feather, not only do its own rays 
 change into down, but underneath, you find a supplementary 
 plume attached, composed of nothing else but down. 
 
 28. I find no account, in any of my books on birds, of the 
 range of these supplementary under-plumes, — the bird’s 
 body-clothing. I find the seagull has them nearly all over 
 its body, neck, breast, and back alike ; the small feathers on 
 the head are nothing else than down. But besides these, or 
 in the place of these, some birds have down covering the skin 
 itself ; with which, however, the painter has nothing to do, 
 
OF ELEMENTARY ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 
 
 61 
 
 nor even with the supplementary plumes : and already indeed 
 I have allowed the pupil, in using the microscope at all, to go 
 beyond the proper limits of artistic investigation. Yet, while 
 we have the lens in our hand, put on for once its full power 
 to look at the separate cilia of the down. They are all jointed 
 like canes ; and have, doubtless, mechanism at the joints 
 which no eye nor lens can trace. The same structure, modi- 
 fied, increases the lustre of the true barbs in colored plumes. 
 
 One of the simplest of these I will now take, from the back 
 of the peacock, for a first study of plume-radiation. 
 
 29. Its general outline is that of the Norman shield payb, 
 Fig. 15 ; but within this outline, the 
 frets are close-woven only within the 
 battledore-shaped space p a v b; and 
 between a a, and b b, they expand their 
 shafts into filaments, and their barbs 
 into cilia, and become ‘down.’ 
 
 We are only able to determine the 
 arrangement of the shafts within this 
 closely-woven space p a v b, which you 
 will find to be typically thus. The 
 shafts remaining parallel most of the 
 way up, towards the top of the plume, 
 gradually throw themselves forward so 
 as to get round without gap. But as, while they are thus 
 getting round, they are not fastened on a central pivot like the 
 rays of a fan, but have still to take, each its ascending place 
 on the sides of the quill, we get a method of radiation which 
 you will find convenient henceforward to call ‘ plume-radia- 
 tion,’ (Fig. 16, b,) which is precisely intermediate between two 
 other great modes of structure — shell radiation, a, and frond° 
 radiation, c. 
 
 30. You may perhaps have thought yourself very hardly 
 treated in being obliged to begin your natural history drawing 
 with so delicate a thing as a feather. But you should rather be 
 very grateful to me, for not having given you, instead, a bit 
 of moss, or a cockle-shell ! The last, which you might per- 
 haps fancy the easiest of the three, is in reality quite hope- 
 
 v. 
 
62 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 lessly difficult, and in its ultimate condition, inimitable hy 
 art. Bewick can engrave feathers to the point of deceptive 
 similitude ; and Hunt can paint a bird’s-nest built of feathers, 
 lichen, and moss. But neither the one nor the other ever at- 
 tempted to render the diverging lines which have their origin 
 in the hinge of the commonest bivalve shell. 
 
 31. These exactly reverse the condition of frond-radiation ; 
 in that, while the frond-branch is thick at the origin, and 
 diminishes to the extremity, the shell flutings, infinitely mi- 
 nute at the origin, expand into vigorous undulation at the 
 edge. But the essential point you have now to observe is, 
 that the shell-radiation is from a central point , and has no 
 
 supporting or continuous stem ; that the plume-radiation is a 
 combination of stem and centre ; and that the frond-radiation 
 has a stem throughout, all the way up. It is to be called 
 frond, not tree, radiation, because trees in great part of their 
 structure are like plumage, whereas the fern-frond is entirely 
 and accurately distinct in its structure. 
 
 32. And now, at last, I draw the entire feather as well as I 
 can in lampblack, for an exercise to you in that material ; 
 putting a copy of the first stage of the work below it, Plate 
 V. This lower figure may be with advantage copied by begin- 
 ners ; with the pencil and rather dry lampblack, over slight 
 lead outline ; the upper one is for advanced practice, though 
 such minute drawing, where the pattern is wrought out with 
 separate lines, is of course only introductory to true painter’s 
 work. But it is the best possible introduction, being exactly 
 intermediate between such execution as Durer’s, of the wing 
 
Decorative Plumage. — I. Peacock. 
 
 Schools of St. George. Elementary Drawing, Plate V. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
Black Sheep’s Trotters. Pen Outline with Single Wash. 
 
OF ELEMENTARY ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 
 
 63 
 
 in tlie greater Fortune, and Turner’s or Holbein’s with the 
 broad pencil, — of which in due time. 
 
 33. Respecting the two exercises in Plate V., observe, the 
 lower figure is not an outline of the feather, to be filled up ; 
 it is the first stage of the drawing completed above it. In or- 
 der to draw the curves of the shafts harmoniously, you must 
 first put in a smaller number of guiding lines, and then fill in 
 between. But in this primary state, the radiant lines cannot 
 but remind you, if you are at all familiar with architecture, of 
 a Greek 4 honey-suckle ’ ornament, the fact being that the said 
 ornament has nothing at all to do with honey-suckles ; but is 
 a general expression of the radiate organic power of natural 
 forms, evermore delightful to human eyes ; and the beauty of 
 it depends on just as subtle care in bringing the curves into 
 harmonious flow, as you will have to use in drawing this 
 plume. 
 
 34 Nevertheless, that students possessing some already 
 practised power may not be left without field for its exercise, 
 I have given in Plate VI. an example of the use of ink and 
 lampblack with the common pen and broad wash. The out- 
 line is to be made with common ink in any ordinary pen — 
 steel or quill does not matter, if not too fine — and, after it is 
 thoroughly dry, the shade put on with a single wash, adding 
 the necessary darks, or taking out light with the dry brush, 
 as the tint dries, but allowing no retouch after it is once dry. 
 The reason of this law 7 is, first, to concentrate the attention on 
 the fullest possible expression of forms by the tint first laid, 
 which is always the pleasantest that can be laid, and, secondly, 
 that the shades may be all necessarily gradated by running 
 into the w 7 et tint, and no edge left to be modified afterwards. 
 The outline, that it may be indelible, is made with common 
 ink ; its slight softening by the subsequent wash being prop- 
 erly calculated on : but it must not be washed twice over. 
 
 35. The exercise in the lower figure of Plate I. is an exam- 
 ple of Durer’s manner ; but I do not care to compel the pupil 
 to go through much of this, because it is always unsatisfactory 
 at its finest, Durer himself has to indicate the sweep of his 
 plume with a current external line ; and even Bewick could 
 
04 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 not have done plume patterns in line, unless he had had the 
 advantage of being able to cut out his white ; but with the 
 pencil, and due patience in the use of it, every thing linear 
 in plumes may be rightly indicated, and the pattern followed 
 all the time. 
 
 The minute moss- like fringe at the edge of the feather in 
 Plate Y. introduces us, however, to another condition of dec- 
 orative plumage, which, though not bearing on our immediate 
 subject of radiation, we may as well notice at once. 
 
 If you examine a fine tail-feather of the peacock, above the 
 eye of it, you will find a transparent space formed by the ces- 
 sation of the barbs along a certain portion of the shaft. On 
 the most scintillanfc of the rays, which have green and golden 
 barbs, and in the lovely blue rays of the breast-plumes, these 
 cessations of the barbs become alternate cuts or jags ; while 
 at the end of the long brown wing-feathers, they comply with 
 the colored pattern : so that, at the end of the clouded plume, 
 its pattern, instead of being constructed of brown and while 
 barbs, is constructed of brown — and no barbs, — but vacant 
 spaces. The decorative use of this transparency consists in 
 letting the color of one plume through that of the other, so 
 that not only every possible artifice is employed to obtain the 
 most lovely play of color on the plume itself ; but, with mys- 
 tery through mystery, the one glows and flushes through the 
 other, like cloud seen through cloud. But now, before we 
 can learn how either glow, or flush, or bloom are to be painted, 
 we must learn our alphabet of color itself. 
 
 CHAPTER VXL 
 
 OF THE TWELVE ZODIACAL COLORS, 
 
 1. In my introductory Oxford lectures you wall find it 
 stated (§ 130) that “ail objects appear to the eye merely as 
 masses of color ; ” and (§§ 134, 175) that shadows are as full in 
 color as lights are, every possible shade being a light to the 
 shades below it, and every possible light, a shade to the lights 
 
OF THE TWELVE ZODIACAL CO LORE. 
 
 05 
 
 above it, till you come to absolute darkness on one side, and 
 to the sun on the other. Therefore, you are to consider all 
 the various pieces either of shaded or lighted color, out of 
 which any scene whatsoever is composed, simply as the 
 patches of a Harlequin’s jacket — of which some are black, 
 some red, some blue, some golden ; but of which you are to 
 imitate every one, by the same methods. 
 
 2. It is of great importance that you should understand 
 how much this statement implies. In almost all the received 
 codes of art-instruction, you will be told that shadows should 
 be transparent, and lights solid. You will find also, when 
 you begin drawing yourselves, that your shadows, whether 
 laid with lead, chalk, or pencil, will for the most part really 
 look like dirt or blotches on the paper, till you cross-hatch or 
 stipple them, so as to give them a look of network ; upon 
 which they instantly become more or less like shade ; or, as it 
 is called, ‘ transparent.’ And you will find a most powerful 
 and attractive school of art founded on the general principle 
 of laying a literally transparent brown all over the picture, 
 for the shade ; and striking the lights upon it with opaque 
 white. 
 
 3. Now the statement I have just made to you (in § 1) im- 
 plies the falseness of all such theories and methods.* And I 
 mean to assert that falsity in the most positive manner. Shad- 
 ows are not more transparent than lights, nor lights than shad- 
 ows ; both are transparent, when they express space ; both are 
 opaque, when they express substance ; and both are to be imi- 
 tated in precisely the same manner, and with the same quality, 
 of pigment. The only technical law which is indeed constant, 
 and which requires to be observed with strictness, is precisely 
 that the method shall be uniform. You may take a white 
 ground, and lay darks on it, leaving the white for lights ; or 
 you may take a dark ground, and lay lights on it, leaving the 
 dark for darks : in either case you must go on as you begin, 
 and not introduce the other method where it suits you. A 
 
 * Essentially, the use of transparent brown by Rubens, (followed by 
 Sir Joshua with asphaltum,) ruined the Netherland schools of color, and 
 has rendered a school of color in England hitherto impossible, 
 
 5 
 
THE LA WS OF Fit SOLE. 
 
 OG 
 
 glass painter must make his whole picture transparent ; and a 
 fresco painter, his whole picture opaque. 
 
 4. Get, then, this plain principle well infixed in your minds. 
 Here is a crocus — there is the sun — here a piece of coal — there, 
 the hollow of the coal-scuttle it came out of. They are every 
 one hut patches of color, — some yellow, some black ; and must 
 be painted in the same manner, with whatever yellow or black 
 paint is handy. 
 
 5. Suppose it, however, admitted that lights and shades 
 are to be produced in the same manner ; we have farther to 
 ask, what that manner may best be ? 
 
 You will continually hear artists disputing about grounds, 
 glazings, vehicles, varnishes, transparencies, opacities, oleagi- 
 nousnesses. All that talk is as idle as the east wind. Get a 
 flat surface that won’t crack, — some colored substance that 
 will stick upon it, and remain always of the color it was when 
 you put it on, — and a pig’s bristle or two, wedged in a stick ; 
 and if you can’t paint, you are no painter ; and had better not 
 talk about the art. 
 
 The one thing you have to learn — the one power truly called 
 that of * painting ’ — is to lay on any colored substance, what- 
 ever its consistence may be, (from mortar to ether,) at once , 
 of the exact tint you want, in the exact form you want, and in 
 the exact quantity you want. That is painting. 
 
 6. Now, you are well aware that to play on the violin well, 
 requires some practice. Painting is playing on a color-violin, 
 seventy-times-seven stringed, and inventing your tune as you 
 play it ! That is the easy, simple, straightforward business 
 you have to learn. Here is your catgut and your mahogany, 
 — better or worse quality of both of course there may be, — 
 Cremona tone, and so on, to be discussed with due care, in 
 due time ; — you cannot paint miniature on the sail of a fish- 
 ing-boat, nor do the fine work with hog’s bristles that you can 
 with camel’s hair : — all these catgut and bristle questions shall 
 have their place ; but, the primary question of all is — can you 
 play ? 
 
 7. Perfectly, you never can, but by birth-gift. The entirely 
 first-rate musicians and painters are born, like Mercury 
 
OF THE TWELVE ZODIACAL COLORS. 
 
 67 
 
 their words are music, and their touch is gold ; sound and 
 color wait on them from their youth ; and no practice will ever 
 enable other human creatures to do any thing like them. The 
 most favorable conditions, the most docile and apt temper, 
 and the unwearied practice of life, will never enable any painter 
 of merely average human capacity to lay a single touch like 
 Gainsborough, Velasquez, Tintoret, or Luini. But to under- 
 stand that the matter must still depend on practice as well as 
 on genius. — that painting is not one whit less, but more, diffi- 
 cult than playing on an instrument, — and that your care as a 
 student, on the whole, is not to be given to the quality of 
 your piano, but of your touch, — this is the great fact which I 
 have to teach you respecting color ; this is the root of ail ex- 
 cellent doing and perceiving. 
 
 And you will be utterly amazed, when once you begin to 
 feel what color means, to find how many qualities which ap- 
 pear to result from, peculiar method and material do indeed 
 depend only on loveliness of execution ; and how divine the 
 law of nature is, which has so connected the immortality of 
 beauty with patience of industry, that by precision and right- 
 ness of laborious art you may at last literally command the 
 rainbow to stay, and forbid the sun to set. 
 
 8. To-day, then, you are to begin to learn your notes — to 
 hammer out, steadily, your first five-finger exercises ; and as 
 in music you have first to play in true time, with stubborn 
 firmness, so in color the first thing you have to learn is to lay 
 it fiat, and well within limits. You shall have it first within 
 linear limits of extreme simplicity, and you must be content 
 to fill spaces so enclosed, again and again and again, till you 
 are perfectly sure of your skill up to that elementary point. 
 
 9. So far, then, of the manner in which you are to lay your 
 color ; — next comes the more debatable question yet, what 
 kind of color you are thus to lay, — sober, or bright. For 
 you are likely often to have heard it said that people of taste 
 like subdued or dull colors, and that only vulgar persons like 
 bright ones. 
 
 But I believe you will find the standard of color I am going 
 to give you, an extremely safe one — the morning sky. Love 
 
68 
 
 THE LAWS OF FE80LE. 
 
 that rightly with all your heart, and soul, and eyes ; and yon 
 are established in foundation-laws of color. The white, 
 blue, purple, gold, scarlet, and ruby of morning clouds, are 
 meant to be entirely delightful to the human creatures whom 
 the ‘ clouds and light * sustain. Be sure you are always ready 
 to see them , the moment they are painted by God for you. 
 
 But you must not rest in these. It is possible to love them 
 intensely, and yet to have no understanding of the modesty or 
 tenderness of color. 
 
 Therefore, next to the crystalline firmament over you, the 
 crystalline earth beneatli your feet is to be your standard. 
 
 Flint, reduced to a natural glass containing about ten per 
 cent of water, forms the opal ; which gives every lower hue 
 of the prism in as true perfection as the clouds ; but not the 
 scarlet or gold, both which are crude and vulgar in opal. 
 Its perfect hues are the green, blue, and purple. Emerald 
 and lapis-lazuli give central green and blue in fulness ; and the 
 natural hues of all true gems, and of the marbles, jaspers, and 
 chalcedonies, are types of intermediate tint : the oxides of iron, 
 especially, of reds. All these earth-colors are curiously pre- 
 pared for right standards : there is no misleading in them. 
 
 10. Not so when we come to the colors of flowers and 
 animals. Some of these are entirely pure and heavenly ; the 
 dove can contend with the opal, the rose with the clouds, and 
 the gentian with the sky ; but many animals and flowers are 
 stained with vulgar, vicious, or discordant colors. But all 
 those intended for the service and companionship of man are 
 typically fair in color ; and therefore especially the fruits 
 and flowers of temperate climates ; — the purple of the grape 
 and plum ; the red of the currant and strawberry, and of the 
 expressed juices of these, — the vane that “ giveth his color in 
 the cup,” and the “ lucent syrup tinct with cinnamon.” With 
 these, in various subordination, are associated the infinitudes 
 of quiet and harmonized color on which the eye is intended 
 to repose ; the softer duns and browns of birds and animals, 
 made quaint by figured patterns ; and the tender green and 
 gray of vegetation and rock. 
 
 11 . No science, but only innocence, gayety of heart, and 
 
OF THE TWELVE ZODIACAL COLORS . 
 
 69 
 
 ordinary health and common sense, are needed, to enable us 
 to enjoy all these natural colors rightly. But the more grave 
 hues, which, in the system of nature, are associated with 
 danger or death, have become, during the later practice of art, 
 pleasing in a mysterious way to the most accomplished artists : 
 so that the greatest masters of the sixteenth century may be 
 recognized chiefly by their power of producing beauty with 
 subdued colors. I cannot enter here into the most subtle 
 and vital question of. the difference between the subdued 
 colors of Velasquez or Tintoret, and the daubed gray and 
 black of the modern French school ;* still less into any 
 analysis of the grotesque inconsistency which makes the 
 foreign modern schools, generally, repaint all sober and 
 
 * One great cause of tlie delay which has taken place in the publica- 
 tion of this book has been my doubt of the proper time and degree in 
 which study in subdued color should be undertaken. For though, on 
 the one hand, the entirely barbarous glare of modern colored illustration 
 would induce me to order practice in subdued color merely for antidote 
 to it ; on the other, the affectation, — or morbid reality, — of delight in 
 subdued color, are among the fatallest errors of semi-artists. The attacks 
 on Turner in his greatest time were grounded in real feeling, on the part 
 of his adversaries, of the solemnity in the subdued tones of the schools of 
 classic landscape. 
 
 To a certain extent, therefore, the manner of study in color required 
 of any student must be left to the discretion of the master, who alone 
 can determine what qualities of color the pupil is least sensible to ; and 
 set before him examples of brightness, if he has become affectedly grave, 
 — and of subdued harmony, if he errs by crudeness and discord. But 
 the general law must be to practise first in pure color, and then, as our 
 sense of what is grave and noble in life and conduct increases, to express 
 what feeling we have of such things in the hues belonging to them, re- 
 membering, however, always, that the instinct for grave color is not at 
 all an index of a grave mind. I have had curious proof of this in my 
 own experience. When I was an entirely frivolous and giddy boy, I 
 was fondest of what seemed to me ‘ sublime’ in gloomy art, just in pro- 
 portion as I was insensible to crudeness and glare in the bright colors 
 which I enjoyed for their own sake : and the first old picture I ever 
 tried to copy was the small Rembrandt in the Louvre, of the Supper at 
 Emmaus. But now, when my inner mind is as sad as it is well possible 
 for any man’s to be, and my thoughts ate for the most part occupied in 
 very earnest manner, and with very grave subjects, my ideal of color is 
 
TO 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE 
 
 tender pictures with glaring colors, and yet reduce the pure 
 colors of landscape to drab and brown. In order to ex- 
 plain any of these phenomena, I should have first to dw r ell on 
 the moral sense which has induced us, in ordinary languages 
 to use the metaphor of c chastity ’ for the virtue of beautifully 
 subdued color ; and then to explain how the chastity of Brit- 
 omart or Perdita differs from the vileness of souls that despise 
 love. But no subtle inquiries or demonstrations can be ad- 
 mitted in writing primal laws ; nor will they ever be needed, 
 by those who obey them. The things which are naturally 
 pleasant to innocence and youth, will be forever pleasant to 
 us, both in this life and in that wdiich is to come ; and the 
 same law which makes the babe delight in its coral, and 
 the girl in the carnelian pebble she gathers from the Tvet and 
 shining beach, will still rule their joy within the walls whose 
 light shall be “ like a stone most precious, even like a jasper 
 stone, clear as crystal.” 
 
 12. These things, then, above named, without any debate, 
 are to be received by you as standards of color : by admira- 
 tion of which you may irrefragably test the rightness of your 
 sense, and by imitation * of which you can form and order all 
 the principles of your practice. The morning sky, primarily, 
 I repeat ; and that from the dawn onwards. There are no 
 grays nor violets which can come near the perfectness of a 
 pure dawn ; no gradations of other shade can be compared 
 
 that which I now assign for the standard of St. George's schools,— the 
 color of sunrise, and of Angelico. 
 
 Why not, then, of the rainbow, simply ? 
 
 Practically, I must use those of the rainbow to begin with. But, for 
 standards, I give the sunrise and Angelico, because the sun and he both 
 use gold for yellow. Which is indeed an infinite gain ; if poor Turner 
 had only been able to use gold for yellow too, we had never heard any 
 vulgar jests about him. But, in cloud-painting, nobody can use gold 
 except the sun himself, — while, on angel’s wings, it can but barely be 
 managed, if you have old Etruscan blood in your fingers, — not here, by 
 English ones, cramped in their clutch of Indian or Californian gold. 
 
 * ‘ Imitation ’ — I use the word advisedly. The last and best lesson 
 I ever had in color was a vain endeavor to estimate the time which An- 
 gelico must have taken to paint a small amethyst on the breast of his 
 St. Laurence. 
 
OF THE TWELVE ZODIACAL COLORS. 
 
 71 
 
 with the tenderness of its transitions. Dawn, with the wan- 
 ing moon, (it is always best so, because the keen gleam of the 
 thin crescent shows the full depth of the relative gray.) de- 
 termines for you all that is lovely in subdued hue and sub- 
 dued light. Then the passages into sunrise determine for you 
 all that is best in the utmost glory of color. Next to these, 
 having constant office in the pleasures of the day, come the 
 colors of the earth, and her fruits and flowers ; the iron 
 ochres being the standards of homely and comfortable red, 
 always ruling the pictures of the greatest masters at Venice, 
 as opposed to the vulgar vermilion of the Dutch ; hence they 
 have taken the general name of Venetian red : then, gold it- 
 self, for standard of lustrous yellow, tempered so wisely with 
 gray in the shades ; silver, of lustrous white, tempered in like 
 manner ; marble and snow, of pure white, glowing into vari- 
 ous amber and rose under sunlight : then the useful blossoms 
 and fruits ; — peach and almond blossom, with the wild rose, 
 of the paler reds ; the Clarissas, of full reds, etc. ; and the 
 fruits, of such hues modified by texture or bloom. Once learn 
 to paint a peach, an apricot, and a greengage, and you have 
 nothing more to know in the modes of color enhanced by 
 texture. Corn is the standard of brown, — moss of green ; 
 and in general, whatever is good for human life is also made 
 beautiful to human sight, not by “ association of ideas,” but 
 by appointment of God that in the bread we rightly break for 
 our lips, we shall best see the power and grace of the Light 
 he gave for our eyes. 
 
 IB. The perfect order of the colors in this gentle glory is, 
 of course, normal in the rainbow, — namely, counting from 
 outside to inside, red, yellow, and blue, with their combina- 
 tions,* — namely, scarlet, formed by yellow with red ; green, 
 formed by blue with yellow ; and purple, formed by red with 
 blue. 
 
 * Strictly speaking, the rainbow is all combination ; the primary 
 colors being only lines of transition, and the bands consisting of scarlet, 
 green, and purple ; the scarlet being not an especially pure or agreeable 
 one in its general resultant hue on cloud-gray. The green and violet 
 are very lovely when seen over white cloud. 
 
72 
 
 THE LA W8 OF FES OLE. 
 
 14. But neither in rainbow, prism, nor opal, are any of 
 these tints seen in separation. They pass into each other by 
 imperceptible gradation, nor can any entirely beautiful color 
 exist without this quality. Between each secondary, there- 
 fore, and the primaries of which it is composed, there are 
 an infinite series of tints ; inclining on one side to one 
 primary, on the other to the other ; thus green passes into 
 blue through a series of bluish greens, which are of great im- 
 portance in the painting of sea and sky ; — and it passes into 
 yellow through a series of golden greens, which are of no less 
 importance in painting earth and flowers. Now it is very 
 tiresome to have to mix names as well as colors, and always 
 say ‘bluish green/ or ‘reddish purple/ instead of having 
 proper special names for these intermediate tints. Practically 
 we have such names for several of them ; ‘ orange/ for in- 
 stance, is the intermediate between scarlet and yellow ; ‘lilac ’ 
 one of the paler tints between purple and red ; and ‘ violet * 
 that between purple and blue. But we must now have our 
 code of names complete ; and that we may manage this more 
 easily, we will put the colors first in their places. 
 
 15. Take your sixpence again ; and, with that simple math- 
 ematical instrument, draw twelve circles of its size, or at least 
 as closely by its edge as you can,* on a piece of Bristol board, 
 so that you may be able to cut them out, and place them va- 
 riously. Then take carmine, cobalt, gamboge, orange vermil- 
 ion, and emerald green ; and, marking the circles with the 
 twelve first letters of the alphabet, color ‘ a 9 with pure gam- 
 boge, ‘6’ with mixed gamboge and emerald green, ‘c’witli 
 emerald green, ‘ d 9 with emerald green and cobalt, ‘ e 9 with 
 cobalt pure, l f 9 with two-thirds cobalt and one-third carmine, 
 e g* with equally mixed cobalt and carmine, ‘ h’ with two- 
 thirds carmine and one-third cobalt, ‘ i 9 with carmine pure, 
 ‘j 9 with carmine and vermilion, ‘ h 9 with vermilion, ‘ l 9 with 
 vermilion and gamboge. 
 
 * It is really in practice better to do this than to take compasses, 
 which are nearly sure to slip or get pinched closer, in a beginner’s 
 hands, before the twelve circles are all done. But if you like to do it 
 accurately, see Fig. 17, p. 77. 
 
OF THE TWELVE ZODIACAL COLORS. To 
 
 16. But liow is all this to be clone smoothly and rightly, and 
 how are the thirds to be measured ? * Well, — for the doing 
 of it, I must assume, that in the present artistic and communi- 
 cative phase of society, the pupil can, at some chance oppor- 
 tunity, see the ordinary process of washing with water-color ; 
 or that the child in more happy circumstances may be allowed 
 so to play with ‘ paints ’ from its earliest years, as to be under 
 no particular difficulty in producing a uniform stain on a 
 piece of pasteboard. The quantity of pigment to be used 
 cannot be yet defined ; — the publication of these opening 
 numbers of Fesole has already been so long delayed that I 
 want now to place them in the student’s hand, with what 
 easily explicable details I can give, as soon as possible ; and 
 the plates requiring care in coloring by hand, which will 
 finally be given as examples, are deferred until I can give my 
 readers some general idea of the system to be adopted. But, 
 for present need, I can explain all that is wanted without the 
 help of plates, by reference to flower-tints ; not that the stu- 
 dent is to be vexed by any comparisons of his work with these, 
 either in respect of brilliancy or texture : if he can bring his 
 sixpenny circles to an approximate resemblance of as many 
 old-fashioned wafers, it is all that is required of him. He 
 
 * I have vainly endeavored to persuade Messrs. Winsor and Newton 
 to prepare for me powder-colors, of which I could direct half or a quar- 
 ter grain to be mixed with a measured quantity of water ; hut I have 
 not given up the notion. In the meantime, the firm have arranged 
 at my request a beginner’s box of drawing materials, — namely, colors, 
 brushes, ruler, and compasses fitted with pencil-point. (As this note 
 may be read by many persons, hurriedly, who have not had time to 
 look at the first number, I allow once more, but for the last time in this 
 book, the vulgar use of the words ‘ pencil’ and ‘ brush.’) The working 
 pencil and penknife should be always in the pocket, with a small 
 sketch-book, which a student of drawing should consider just as Neces- 
 sary a part of his daily equipment as his watch or purse. Then the 
 color-box, thus composed, gives him all he wants more. For the ad- 
 vanced student, I add the palette, with all needful mathematical instru- 
 ments and useful colors. I give Mm colors, of finest quality, — being 
 content, for beginners, with what I find one of the best practical color- 
 ists in England, my very dear friend Professor Westwood, has found 
 serviceable all his life, — children's colors. 
 
74 
 
 THE LAWS OF FE80LE. 
 
 will not be able to do this with one coat of color ; and had 
 better allow himself three or four than permit the tints to be 
 uneven. 
 
 17. The first tint, pure gamboge, should be brought, as 
 near as may be, up to that of the yellow daffodil, — the butter- 
 cup is a little too deep. In fine illumination, and in the best 
 decorative fresco painting, this color is almost exclusively 
 represented by gold, and the student is to give it, habitually, 
 its heraldic name of ‘Or.’ 
 
 The second tint, golden-green, which is continually seen in 
 the most beautiful shies of twilight, and in sunlighted trees 
 and grass, is yet unrepresented by any flower in its fulness ; 
 but an extremely pale hue of it, in the primrose, forms the 
 most exquisite opposition, in spring, to the blue of the wood- 
 hyacinth ; and we will therefore keep the name, ‘Primrose,’ 
 for the hue itself. 
 
 The third tint, pure green, is, in heraldry, £ verd,’ on the 
 shields of commoners, and ‘ Emerald’ on those of nobles. We 
 will take for St. George’s schools the higher nomenclature, 
 which is also the most intelligible and convenient ; and as we 
 complete our color zodiac, w r e shall thus have the primary and 
 secondary colors named from gems, and the tertiary from 
 flowers. 
 
 18. The next following color, how T ever, the tertiary between 
 green and blue, is again not represented distinctly by any 
 flow T er ; but the blue of the Gentiana Verna is so associated 
 with the pure green of Alpine pasture, and the color of Alpine 
 lakes, which is precisely the hue we now want a name for, 
 that I will call this beautiful tertiary ‘ Lucia ; ’ (that being the 
 name given in “Proserpina” to the entire tribe of the gentians,) 
 and especially true to our general conception of luminous 
 powSr or transparency in this color, w r hich the Greeks gave 
 to the eyes of Athena. 
 
 19. The fifth color, the primary blue, heraldic ‘ azure,’ or 
 ‘ sapphire,’ we shall always call * Sapphire ; ’ though, in truth, 
 the sapphire itself never reaches any thing like the intensity 
 of this color, as used by the Venetian painters, who took for 
 its representative pure ultramarine. But it is only seen in 
 
OF THE TWELVE ZODIACAL COLORS. 
 
 75 
 
 perfect beauty in some gradations of the blue glass of the 
 twelfth century. For ordinary purposes, cobalt represents it 
 with sufficient accuracy. 
 
 20. The sixth color, the tertiary between sapphire and 
 purple, is exactly the hue of the Greek sea, and of the small 
 Greek iris, Homer’s lov, commonly translated ‘ violet.’ We 
 will call it ‘ Violet ; ’ our own flower of that name being more 
 or less of the same hue, though paler. I do not know what 
 the ‘syrup of violets’ was, with which Humboldt stained his 
 test-paper, (“Personal Narrative,” i., p. 165,) but I am under 
 the impression that an extract of violets may be obtained 
 wdiich will represent this color beautifully and permanently. 
 Smalt is one of its approximate hues. 
 
 21. The seventh color, the secondary purple, is the deepest 
 of all the pure colors ; it is the heraldic ‘ purpure,’ and 
 ‘jacinth;’ by us ahvays to be called ‘Jacinth.’ It is best 
 given by the dark pansy ; see the notes on that flower in the 
 seventh number of “Proserpina,” which will I hope soon be 
 extant. 
 
 22. The eighth color, the tertiary between purple and red, 
 corresponds accurately to the general hue and tone of bell- 
 heather, and will be called by us therefore ‘Heath.’ In 
 various depths and modifications, of which the original tint 
 cannot be known with exactness, it forms the purple ground 
 of the most stately missals between the seventh and twelfth 
 century, such as the Psalter of Boulogne. It w T as always, 
 however, in these books, I doubt not, a true heath-purple, not 
 a violet. 
 
 23. The ninth color, the primary red, heraldic ‘ gules ’ and 
 ‘ ruby,’ will be called by us always ‘ Ruby.’ It is not repre- 
 sented accurately by any stable pigment ; but crimson lake, 
 or, better, carmine, may be used for it in exercises ; and rose 
 madder in real painting. 
 
 24. The tenth color, the tertiary between red and scarlet, 
 corresponds to the most beautiful dyes of the carnation, and 
 other deeper-stained varieties of the great tribe of the pinks. 
 The mountain pink, indeed, from which they all are in justice 
 named, is of an exquisitely rich, though pale, ruby : but the 
 
76 
 
 THE LA W8 OF FESOLE. 
 
 intense glow of the flower leans towards fiery scarlet in its 
 crimson ; and I shall therefore call this tertiary, ‘ Clarissa,’ the 
 name of the pink tribe in “ Proserpina.” 
 
 25. The eleventh color, the secondary scarlet, heraldic 
 ‘tenny ’ and ‘jasper,’ is accurately represented by the alumi- 
 nous silicas, colored scarlet by iron, and will be by us always 
 called ‘Jasper.’ 
 
 26. The twelfth color, the tertiary between scarlet and gold, 
 is most beautifully represented by the golden crocus, — being 
 the color of the peplus of Athena. We shall call it ‘Crocus 
 thus naming the group of the most luminous colors from the 
 two chief families of spring flowers, with gold (for the sun) 
 between them. 
 
 This, being the brightest, had better be placed uppermost 
 in our circle, and then, taking the rest in the order I have 
 named them, we shall have our complete zodiac thus arranged. 
 (Fig. 17.*) 
 
 27. However rudely the young student may have colored 
 his pieces of cardboard, when he has placed them in contact 
 with each other in this circular order, he will at once see that 
 they form a luminous gradation, in which the uppermost, Or, 
 is the lightest, and the lowest, Jacinth, the darkest hue. 
 
 Every one of the twelve zodiacal colors has thus a pitch of 
 intensity at which its special hue becomes clearly manifest 
 and above which, or below which, it is not clearly recognized, 
 and may, even in ordinary language, be often spoken of as 
 another color. Crimson, for instance, and pink, are only the 
 dark and light powers of the central Clarissa, and ‘ rose ’ the 
 pale power of the central Ruby. A pale jacinth is scarcely 
 ever, in ordinary terms, called purple, but ‘ lilac.’ 
 
 28. Nevertheless, in strictness, each color is to be held as ex- 
 
 * If you choose to construct this figure accurately, draw first the circle 
 x y, of the size of a sixpence, and from its diameter x y, take the 
 angles m a x, n a y, each = the sixth of the quadrant, or fifteen de- 
 grees. Draw the lines a b, a 1, each equal to x y : and 1 and b are the 
 centres of the next circles. Then the perpendiculars from m and n will 
 cut the perpendicular from a in the centre of the large circle. And if 
 you get it all to come right, I wish you joy of it. 
 
OF THE TWELVE ZODIACAL COLORS, 77 
 
 tending in unbroken gradation from white to black, through a 
 series of tints, in some cases recognizable throughout for the 
 same color ; but in all the darker tones of Jasper, Crocus and 
 Or, becoming what we call ‘ brown ; ’ and in the darker tints 
 of Lucia and Primrose passing into greens, to which artists 
 have long given special titles of ‘Sap,’ ‘Olive,’ ‘Prussian,’ and 
 the like. 
 
 Fig. 17 . 
 
 29. After we have studied the modifications of shade itself, 
 in neutral gray, we will take up the gradated scales of each 
 color ; dividing them always into a hundred degrees, between 
 white and black ; of which the typical or representative hue 
 will be, in every one of the zodiacal colors, at a different height 
 
78 
 
 THE LA WS OF FESOLE. 
 
 in the scale — the representative power of Or being approxi* 
 mately 20 ; of Jasper, 30 ; of Ruby, 50 ; and of Jacinth, 70. 
 But, for the present, we must be content with much less precise 
 ideas of hue ; and begin our practice w r ith little more than 
 the hope of arriving at some effective skill in producing the 
 tints we want, and securing some general conclusions about 
 their effects in companionship with, or opposition to, each 
 other ; the principal use of their zodiacal arrangement, above 
 given, being that each color is placed over against its proper 
 opponent ; — Jacinth being the hue which most perfectly relieves 
 Or, and Primrose the most lovely opponent to Heath. The 
 stamens and petals of the sweet-william present the loveliest 
 possible type of the opposition of a subtle and subdued Lucia 
 to dark Clarissa. In central spring on the higher Alps, the 
 pansy, (or, where it is wanting, the purple ophryds,) with the 
 bell gentian, and pale yellow furred anemone, complete the en- 
 tire chord from Or to Jacinth in embroideries as rich as those 
 of an Eastern piece of precious needlework on green silk.* 
 The chord used in the best examples of glass and illumination 
 is Jasper, Jacinth, and Sapphire, on ground of Or : being the 
 scarlet, purple, and blue of the Jewish Tabernacle, wfith its 
 clasps and furniture of gold. 
 
 30. The best Rubrics of ecclesiastical literature are founded 
 on the opposition of Jasper to Sapphire, wdiich was the princi- 
 pal one in the minds of the illuminators of the thirteenth 
 century. I do not know if this choice w r as instinctive, or 
 scientific ; many far more beautiful might have been adopted ; 
 and I continually, and extremely, regret the stern limitation 
 of the lovely penmanship of ail minor lettering, for at least 
 a hundred years through the whole of literary Europe, to 
 these two alternating colors. But the fact is that these do 
 quite centrally and accurately express the main opposition of 
 what artists call, and most people feel to be truly called, warm 
 colors as opposed to cold ; pure blue being the coldest, and 
 pure scarlet the warmest, of abstract hues. 
 
 31. Into the mystery of Heat, however, as affecting color- 
 sensation, I must not permit inyself yet to enter, though I 
 
 * Conf. Lane's “Arabian Kights,” vol. i., p. 480, and vol. ii., p. 395. 
 
OF T1IE RELATION OF COLOR TO OUTLINE. 79 
 
 believe the student of illumination will be enabled at once, 
 by the system given in this chapter, to bring his work under 
 more consistent and helpful law than he has hitherto found 
 written for his use. My students of drawing will find the 
 subject carried on as far as they need follow, in tracing the 
 symbolic meanings of the colors, from the 28th to the 40th 
 paragraph of the seventh chapter of “ Deucalion ; ” (compare 
 also “Eagle’s Nest,” p. 134 ;) and, without requiring, in prac- 
 tice, the adoption of any nomenclature merely fanciful, it may 
 yet be found useful, as an aid to memory for young people, 
 to associate in their minds the order of the zodiacal colors 
 with that of the zodiacal signs. Taking Jacinth for Aries, Or 
 will very fitly be the color of Libra, and blue of Aquarius ; 
 other associations, by a little graceful and careful thought, 
 may be easily instituted between each color and its constella- 
 tion ; and the motion of the Source of Light through th9 
 heavens, registered to the imagination by the beautiful chord 
 of his own divided rays. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 OF THE RELATION OF COLOR TO OUTLINE. 
 
 1. My dear reader, — If you have been obedient, and have 
 hitherto done all that I have told you, I trust it has not been 
 without much subdued remonstrance, and some serious vexa- 
 tion. For I should be sorry if, when you were led by the 
 course of your study to observe closely such things as are 
 beautiful in color, (feathers, and the like, not to say rocks and 
 clouds,*) you had not longed to paint them, and felt considera- 
 ble difficulty in complying with your restriction to the use of 
 black, or blue, or gray. You ought to love color, and to think 
 nothing quite beautiful or perfect without it ; and if you really 
 do love it, for its own sake, and are not merely desirous to 
 
 * The first four paragraphs of this chapter, this connecting paren- 
 thesis excepted, are reprinted from the “ Elements of Drawing.” Read, 
 however, carefully, the modifying notes. 
 
80 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 color because you think painting* a finer thing than drawing, 
 there is some chance you may color well. Nevertheless, you 
 need not hope ever to produce anything more than pleasant 
 helps to memory, or useful and suggestive sketches in color, 
 unless you mean to be wholly an artist. You may, in the 
 time which other vocations leave at your disposal, produce 
 finished, beautiful, and masterly drawings in light and shade. 
 But to color well, requires your life. It cannot be done 
 cheaper. The difficulty of doing right is increased — not two- 
 fold nor threefold, but a thousandfold, and more — by the ad- 
 dition of color to your work. For the chances are more than 
 a thousand to one against your being right both in form and 
 color with a given touch : it is difficult enough to be right in 
 form, if you attend to that only ; but when you have to at- 
 tend, at the same moment, to a much more subtle thing than 
 the form, the difficulty is strangely increased ; — and multi- 
 plied almost to infinity by this great fact, that, while form is 
 absolute, so that you can say at the moment you draw any 
 line that it is either right or wrong, color is (wholly) relative* 
 Every hue throughout your work is altered by every touch 
 that you add in other places ; so that what was warm *j* a min- 
 ute ago, becomes cold when you have put a hotter color in 
 another place ; and what was in harmony when you left it, 
 
 * No, not ‘ wholly ’ by any means. This is one of the over-hasty 
 statements which render it impossible for me to republish, without 
 more correction than they are worth, the books I wrote before the year 
 1860. Color is no less positive than line, considered as a representation 
 of fact*, and you either match a given color, or do not, as you either 
 draw a given ellipse or square, or do not. Nor, on the other hand, are 
 lines, in their grouping, destitute of relative influence ; — they exalt or 
 depress their individual powers by association ; and the necessity for 
 the correction of the above passage in this respect was pointed out to 
 me by Miss Hill, many and many a year ago, when she was using the 
 Elements in teaching design for glass. But the influence of lines on 
 each other is restricted within narrow limits, while the sequences of 
 color are like those of sound, and susceptible of all the complexity and 
 passion of the most accomplished music. 
 
 f J assumed in the “Elements of Drawing” the reader’s acquaintance 
 with this and other ordinary terms of art. But see § 30 of the last 
 chapter. 
 
OF TEE RELATION OF COLOR TO OUTLINE. 81 
 
 becomes discordant as you set other colors beside it : so that 
 every touch must be laid, not with a view to its effect at the 
 time, but its effect in futurity, the result upon it of all that is 
 afterwards to be done being previously considered. You may 
 easily understand that, this being so, nothing but the devotion 
 of life, and great genius besides, can make a colorist. 
 
 2. But though you cannot produce finished colored draw« 
 ings of any value, you may give yourself much pleasure, and 
 be of great use to other people, by occasionally sketching with 
 a view to color only ; and preserving distinct statements of 
 certain color facts — as that the harvest-moon at rising was of 
 such and such a red, and surrounded by clouds of such and 
 such a rosy gray ; that the mountains at evening were, in 
 truth, so deep in purple ; and the waves by the boat’s side 
 were indeed of that incredible green. This only, observe, if 
 you have an eye for color ; but you may presume that you 
 have this, if you enjoy color. 
 
 3. And, though of course you should always give as much 
 form to your subject as your attention to its color will admit 
 of, remember that the whole value of what you are about de- 
 pends, in a colored sketch, on the color merely. If the color 
 is wrong, every thing is wrong : just as, if you are singing, 
 and sing false notes, it does not matter how true the words 
 are. If you sing at all, you must sing sweetly ; and if you 
 color at all, you must color rightly. Give up all the form, 
 rather than the slightest part of the color : just as, if you felt 
 yourself in danger of a false note, you would give up the 
 word and sing a meaningless sound, if you felt that so you 
 could save the note. Never mind though your houses are all 
 tumbling down, — though your clouds are mere blots, and 
 your trees mere knobs, and your sun and moon like crooked 
 sixpences, — so only that trees, clouds, houses, and sun or 
 moon, are of the right colors. 
 
 4. Of course, the collateral discipline to which you are sub- 
 mitting — (if you are) — will soon enable you to hint something 
 of form, even in the fastest sweep of the brush ; but do not 
 let the thought of form hamper you in the least, when you 
 begin to make colored memoranda. If you want the form of 
 
 6 
 
82 
 
 TIIE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 the subject, draw it in black and white. If you want its 
 color, take its color, and be sure you have it ; and not a spu- 
 rious, treacherous, half-measured piece of mutual concession, 
 with the colors all wrong, and the forms still anything but 
 right. It is best to get into the habit of considering the 
 colored work merely as supplementary to your other studies ; 
 making your careful drawings of the subject first, and then a 
 colored memorandum separately, as shapeless as you like, but 
 faithful in hue, and entirely minding its own business. This 
 principle, however, bears chiefly on large and distant sub- 
 jects ; in foregrounds, and near studies, the color cannot be 
 got without a good deal of definition of form. For if you do 
 not shape the mosses on the stones accurately, you will not 
 have the right quantity of color in each bit of moss pattern, 
 and then none of the colors will look right ; but it always 
 simplifies the work much if you are clear as to your point of 
 aim, and satisfied, when necessary, to fail of all but that. 
 
 5. Thus far I have repeated, with modification of two sen- 
 tences only, the words of my old “ Elements of Drawing ; ” — 
 words which I could not change to any good purpose, so far 
 as they are addressed to the modern amateur, whose mind 
 has been relaxed, as in these days of licentious pursuit of 
 pleasurable excitement all our minds must be, more or less, 
 to the point of not being able to endure the stress of whole- 
 some and errorless labor, — (errorless, I mean, of course, only 
 as far as care can prevent fault). But the laws of Fesole ad- 
 dress themselves to no person of such temper ; they are writ- 
 ten only for students who have the fortitude to do their best ; 
 and I am not minded any more, as will be seen in next chap- 
 ter, while they have any store of round sixpences in their 
 pockets, to allow them to draw their Sun, Earth, or Moon 
 like crooked ones. 
 
 6. Yet the foregoing paragraphs are to be understood also 
 in a nobler sense. They are right, and for evermore right, 
 in their clear enunciation of the necessity of being true in 
 color, as in music, note to note ; and therefore also in their 
 implied assertion of the existence of Color-Law, recognizable 
 by all colorists, as harmony is by all musicians ; and capable 
 
OF THE RELATION OF COLOR TO OUTLINE . 83 
 
 of being so unanimously ascertained by accurate obedience to 
 it, that an ill-colored picture could be no more admitted into 
 the gallery of any rightly constituted Academy, or Society of 
 Painters, than a howling dog into a concert. 
 
 7. I say, observe, that Color-Law may be ascertained by 
 accurate obedience to it ; not by theories concerning it. No 
 musical philosophy will ever teach a girl to sing, or a master 
 to compose ; and no color-philosophy will ever teach a man of 
 science to enjoy a picture, or a dull painter to invent one. 
 Nor is it prudent, in early practice, even to allow the mind to 
 be influenced by its preferences and fancies in color, however 
 delicate. The first thing the student has to do is to enable him- 
 self to match any color when he sees it ; and the effort which 
 he must make constantly, for many a day, is simply to match 
 the color of natural objects as nearly as he can. 
 
 And since the mightiest masters in the world cannot match 
 these quite, nor any but the mightiest match them, even nearly ; 
 the young student must be content, for many and many a 
 day, to endure his own deficiencies with resolute patience, and 
 lose no time in hopeless efforts to rival what is admirable in 
 art, or copy what is inimitable in nature. 
 
 8. And especially, he must for a long time abstain from at- 
 taching too much importance to the beautiful mystery by 
 which the blended colors of objects seen at some distance 
 charm the eye inexplicabty. The day before yesterday, as I 
 was resting in the garden, the declining sunshine touched just 
 the points of the withered snapdragons on its wall. They 
 never had been any thing very brilliant in the w^ay of snap- 
 dragons, and were, when one looked at them close, only wasted 
 and much pitiable ruins of snapdragons ; but this Enid-like 
 tenderness of their fading gray, mixed with what remnant of 
 glow they could yet raise into the rosy sunbeams, made them, 
 at a little distance, beautiful beyond all that pencil could ever 
 follow. But you are not to concern yourself with such snap- 
 dragons yet, nor for a long while yet. 
 
 Attempt at first to color nothing but what is well within 
 sight, and approximately copiable but take a group of ob- 
 jects always, not a single one ; outline them with the utmost 
 
84 
 
 TEE LAWS OF FES OLE. 
 
 possible accuracy, with the lead ; and then paint each of its 
 own color, with such light and shade as you can see in it, and 
 produce, in the first wash, as the light and shade is produced 
 in Plate VI., never retouching. This law will compel you to 
 look well what the color is, before you stain the paper with 
 any : it will lead you, through that attention, daily into more 
 precision of eye, and make all your experience gainful and 
 definite. 
 
 9. Unless you are very sure that the shadow is indeed of 
 some different color from the light, shade simply with a deep- 
 er, and if you already know what the word means, a warmer, 
 tone of the color you are using. Darken, for instance, or with 
 crocus, ruby with clarissa, heath with ruby ; and, generally, 
 any color whatever with the one next to it, between it and the 
 jasper. And in all mixed colors make the shade of them 
 slightly more vivid in hue than the light, unless you assuredly 
 see it in nature to be less so. But for a long time, do not 
 trouble yourself much with these more subtle matters ; and 
 attend only to the three vital businesses ; — approximate match- 
 ing of the main color in the light, — perfect limitation of it by 
 the outline, and flat, flawless laying of it over all the space 
 within. 
 
 10. For instance, I have opposite me, by chance, at this 
 moment, a pale brown cane-bottomed chair, set against a pale 
 greenish wall-paper. The front legs of the chair are round ; 
 the back ones, something between round and square ; and the 
 cross-bar of the back, flat in its own section, but bent into a 
 curve. 
 
 To represent these roundings, squarings, and flattenings 
 completely, with all the tints of brown and gray involved in 
 them, would take a forenoon’s work, to little profit. But to 
 outline the entire chair with extreme precision, and then tint 
 it with two well-chosen colors, one for the brown wood, the 
 other for the yellow cane, completing it, part by part, with 
 gradation, such as could be commanded in the wet color ; 
 and then to lay the green of the wall behind, into the spaces 
 left, fitting edge to edge without a flaw or an overlapping, 
 would be progressive exercise of the best possible kind. 
 
OF THE RELATION OF COLOR TO OUTLINE. 85 
 
 Again, on another chair beside me there is a heap of books, 
 as the maid has chanced to leave them, lifting them off the 
 table when she brought my breakfast. It is not by any means 
 a pretty or picturesque group ; but there are no railroad-stall 
 bindings in it, — there are one or two of old vellum, and some 
 sober browns and greens, and a bit of red ; and, altogether, 
 much more variety of color than anybody but an old Venetian 
 could paint rightly. But if you see * any day such a pleas- 
 antly inconsiderate heap of old books, then outline them with 
 perfect precision, and then paint each of its own color at 
 once, to the best of your power, completely finishing that par- 
 ticular book, as far as you mean to finish it,f before you touch 
 the white paper with the slightest tint of the next, — you will 
 have gone much farther than at present you can fancy any 
 idea, towards gaining the power of painting a Lombard tower, 
 or a Savoyard precipice, in the right way also, — that is to say, 
 joint by joint, and tier by tier. 
 
 11. One great advantage of such practice is in the necessity 
 of getting the color quite even, that it may fit with precision, 
 and yet without any hard line, to the piece next laid on. If 
 there has been the least too much in the brush, it of course 
 clogs and curdles at the edge, whereas it ought to be at the 
 edge just what it is at the middle, and to end there, whatever 
 its outline may be, as — Well, as you see it does end, if you 
 look, in the thing you are painting. Hardness, so called, and 
 myriads of other nameless faults, are all traceable, ultimately, 
 to mere want of power or attention in keeping tints quiet at 
 their boundary. 
 
 12. Quiet — and therefore keen ; for with this boundary of 
 them, ultimately, you are to draw, and not with a black-lead 
 outline ; so that the power of the crags on the far-away 
 mountain crest, and the beauty of the fairest saint that stoops 
 from heaven, will depend, for true image of them, utterly on 
 
 * You had better 1 see ’ or find, than construct them ; — else they will 
 always have a constructed look, somehow. 
 
 f The drawing of the lines that show the edges of the leaves, or, in 
 the last example, of the interlacing in the cane of the chair, is entirely 
 a subsequent process, not here contemplated. 
 
THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 80 
 
 the last line that your pencil traces with the edge of its color, 
 true as an arrow, and light as the air. In the meantime, 
 trust me, everything depends on the lead outlines being clear 
 and sufficient. After my own forty years’ experience, I find 
 nearly all difficulties resolve themselves at last into the want 
 of more perfect outline : so that I say to myself — before any 
 beautiful scene, — Alas, if only I had the outline of that, what 
 a lovely thing I would make of it in an hour or two ! But 
 then the outline would take, for the sort of things I want to 
 draw T , not an hour, but a year, or two ! 
 
 IB. Yet you need not fear getting yourself into a like dis- 
 comfort by taking my counsel. This sorrow of mine is be- 
 cause I want to paint Rouen Cathedral, or St. Mark’s, or a 
 whole German town with all the tiles on the roofs, that one 
 might know against what kind of multitude Luther threw his 
 defiance. If you will be moderate in your desires as to sub- 
 ject, you need not fear the oppressiveness of the method ; — 
 fear it, however, as you may, I tell you positively it is the only 
 method by wffiich you can ever force the Fates to grant you 
 good success. 
 
 14. The opposite plate, VII., will give you an idea of the 
 average quantity of lines which Turner used in any landscape 
 sketch in his great middle time, whether he meant to color it 
 or not. He made at least a hundred sketches of this kind for 
 one that he touched with color : nor is it ever possible to dis- 
 tinguish any difference in manner between outlines (on white 
 paper) intended for color, or only for notation : in every case, 
 the outline is as perfect as his time admits ; and in his earlier 
 days, if his leisure does not admit of its perfection, it is not 
 touched with color at all. In later life, when, as he after- 
 wards said of himself, in woful repentance, “he wanted to 
 draw every thing,” both the lead outline and the color dash 
 became slight enough, — but never inattentive ; nor did the 
 lead outline ever lose its governing proportion to all subse- 
 quent work. 
 
 15. And now, of this outline, you must observe three 
 things. First, touching its subject ; that the scene -was 
 worth drawing at all, only for its human interest ; and that 
 
r-M-w -H~ 
 
 Outline with the Lead. 
 
OF THE RELATION OF COLOR TO OUTLINE. SI 
 
 this charm of inhabitation was always first in Turner’s mind. 
 If he had only wanted what vulgar artists think picturesque, 
 he might have found, in such an English valley as this, any 
 quantity of old tree trunks, of young tree-branches, of lilied 
 pools in the brook, and of grouped cattle in the meadows, 
 For no such mere picture material he cares ; his time is given 
 to seize and show the total history and character of the spot, 
 and all that the people of England had made of it, and be- 
 come in it. There is the ruined piece of thirteenth-century 
 abbey ; the rector’s house beside it ; * the gate-posts of the 
 squire’s avenue above ; the steep fourteenth or fifteenth-cen- 
 tury bridge over the stream ; the low-roofed, square-towered 
 village church on the hill ; two or three of the village houses 
 and outhouses traced on the left, omitting, that these may be 
 intelligible, the “ row of old trees,” which, nevertheless, as a 
 part, and a principal part, of the landscape, are noted, by in- 
 scription, below ; and will be assuredly there, if ever he takes 
 up the subject for complete painting ; as also the tall group 
 of ‘ ash ’ on the right, of which he is content at present merely 
 to indicate the place, and the lightness. 
 
 16. Do not carry this principle of looking for signs of hu- 
 man life or character, any more than you carry any other 
 principle, to the point of affectation. Whatever pleases and 
 satisfies you for the present, may be wisely drawn ; but re- 
 member always that the beauty of any natural object is rela- 
 tive to the creatures it has to please ; and that the pleasure 
 of these is in proportion to their reverence and their under- 
 standing. There can be no natural ‘ phenomena ’ without the 
 beings to whom they are * phenomenal ’ (or, in plainer Eng- 
 lish, things cannot be apparent without some one to whoin 
 they may appear), and the final definition of Beauty is, the 
 power in any thing of delighting an intelligent human soul 
 by its appearance — power given to it by the Maker of Souls. 
 The perfect beauty of Man is summed in the Arabian excla- 
 mation, “ Praise be to Him who created thee ! ” and the per- 
 
 * Compare, if by chance you come across the book, the analysis of 
 the design of Turner’s drawing of ‘ Heysliam ’ in my old ‘ Elements of 
 Drawing,’ page 325. 
 
88 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 feet beauty of all natural things summed in the Angel’s prom* 
 ise, “ Goodwill towards men.” 
 
 17. In the second place, observe, in this outline, that no 
 part of it is darker or lighter than any other, except in the 
 moment of ceasing or disappearing. As the edge becomes 
 less and less visible to the eye, Turner’s pencil line fades, and 
 vanishes where also the natural outline vanished. But he 
 does not draw his ash trees in the foreground with a darker 
 line than the woods in the distance. 
 
 This is a great and constant law. "Whether your outline be 
 gray or black, fine or coarse, it is to be equal everywhere. Al- 
 ways conventional, it is to be sustained throughout in the 
 frankness of its conventionalism ; it no more exists in nature 
 as a visible line, at the edge of a rose leaf near, than of a 
 ridge of hills far away. Never try to express more by it than 
 the limitation of forms ; it has nothing to do with their 
 shadows, or their distances. 
 
 18. Lastly, observe of this Turner outline, there are some 
 conditions of rapid grace in it, and others of constructive 
 effect by the mere placing of broken lines in relative groups, 
 which, in the first place, can be but poorly rendered even by 
 the engraver’s most painstaking fac-simile ; and, in the sec- 
 ond, cannot be attained in practice but after many years 
 spent in familiar use of the pencil. I. have therefore given 
 you this plate, not so much for an immediate model, as to 
 show you the importance of outline even to a painter whose 
 chief virtue and skill seemed, in his finished works, to consist 
 in losing it. How little this was so in reality, you can only 
 know by prolonged attention, not only to his drawings, but 
 to the natural forms they represent. 
 
 19. For there were current universally during Turner's 
 lifetime,* and there are still current very commonly, two great 
 
 * I conclude tlie present chapter with the statement given in the cata- 
 logue I prepared to accompany the first exhibition of his works at Marl- 
 borough House, in the year 1857, because it illustrates some points in 
 water-color work, respecting which the student’s mind may advisedly 
 be set at rest before further procedure. I have also left the 17th para- 
 graph without qualification, on account of its great importance ; but tka 
 
Pen Outline with Advanced Shade. 
 
 Schools of St. George. Elementary Drawing, Thate VIIL 
 
 I 
 
 J 
 
OF THE RELATION OF COLOR TO OUTLINE. 89 
 
 errors concerning him ; errors which not merely lose sight of 
 the facts, but which are point-blank contradictory of the facts. 
 It was thought that he painted chiefly from imagination, 
 when his peculiar character, as distinguished from all other 
 artists, was in always drawing from memories of seen fact. 
 And it was commonly thought that he was great only in 
 coloring, and could not draw ; whereas, his eminent distinc- 
 tion above other artists, so far as regards execution, was in 
 his marvellous precision of graphic touch, disciplined by 
 practice of engraving, and by life-long work with the hard 
 lead-pencil point on white paper. 
 
 20. Now there are many truths respecting art which 
 cannot be rightly stated without involving an appearance of 
 contradiction ; and those truths are commonly the most 
 important. There are, indeed, very few truths in any science 
 which can be fully stated without such an expression of 
 their opposite sides, as looks, to a person who has not grasp 
 of the subject enough to take in both the sides at once, like 
 contradiction. This law holds down even to very small mi- 
 nutirn in the physical sciences. For instance, a person igno- 
 rant of chemistry hearing it stated, perhaps consecutively, of 
 hydrogen gas, that it was “ in a high degree combustible,” and 
 “ a non-supporter of combustion,” would probably think the 
 lecturer or writer was a fool ; and when the statement thus 
 made embraces wide fields of difficult investigation on both 
 sides, its final terms invariably appear contradictory to a per- 
 son who has but a narrow acquaintance with the matter in 
 hand. 
 
 Thus, perhaps, no two more apparently contradictory state- 
 ments could be made in brief terms than these, — 
 
 1. The perfections of drawing and coloring are inconsist- 
 
 ent with one another. 
 
 2. The perfections of drawing and coloring are dependent 
 
 upon one another. 
 
 And yet both these statements are true. 
 
 student must "be careful in reading it to distinguish between true out- 
 line, and a linear basis for future shadow, as in Plate VIII., which I put 
 here for immediate reference. 
 
90 
 
 THE LAWS OF FES OLE. 
 
 21. The first is true, because, in order that color may be 
 right, some of the markings necessary to express perfect form 
 must be omitted ; and also because, in order that it may be 
 right, the intellect of the artist must be concentrated on that 
 first, and must in some slight degree fail of the intenseness 
 necessary to reach relative truth of form ; and vice versa. 
 
 The truth of the second proposition is much more com- 
 monly disputed. Observe, it is a two-fold statement. The 
 perfections of drawing and coloring are reciprocally depend- 
 ent upon each other, so that 
 
 a. No person can draw perfectly who is not a colorist. 
 
 b. No person can color perfectly who is not a draughts- 
 
 man. 
 
 22. a. No person can draw perfectly who is not a colorist. 
 For the effect of contour in all surfaces is influenced in nature 
 by gradations of color as much as by gradations of shade ; 
 so that if you have not a true eye for color, you will judge 
 of the shades wrongly. Thus, if you cannot see the changes 
 of hue in red, you cannot draw a cheek or lip rightly ; and if 
 you cannot see the changes of hue in green or blue, you can- 
 not draw a wave. All studies of form made with a despiteful 
 or ignorant neglect of color lead to exaggerations and mis- 
 statements of the form-markings ; that is to say, to bad 
 drawing. 
 
 23. b. No person can color perfectly who is not a draughts- 
 man. For brilliancy of color depends, first of all, on grada- 
 tion ; and gradation, in its subtleties, cannot be given but by 
 a good draughtsman. Brilliancy of color depends next on 
 decision and rapidity in laying it on ; and no person can lay 
 it on decisively, and yet so as to fall into, or approximately 
 fail into, the forms required, without being a thorough 
 draughtsman. And it is always necessary that it should fall 
 into a predeterminate form, not merely that it may represent 
 the intended natural objects, but that it may itself take the 
 shape, as a patch of color, which will fit it properly to the 
 other patches of color round about it. If it touches them 
 more or less than is right, its own color and theirs will both 
 be spoiled 
 
OF THE RELATION OF COLOR TO OUTLINE. 91 
 
 Hence it follows that all very great colorists must be also 
 very great draughtsmen. The possession of the Pisani Vero- 
 nese will happily enable the English public and the English 
 artist to convince themselves how sincerity and simplicity of 
 statements of fact, power of draughtsmanship, and joy in col- 
 or, were associated in a perfect balance in the great workmen 
 of Venice ; while the series of Turner’s studies which are now 
 accessible in the same gallery w 7 ill show them with what in- 
 tensity of labor his power of draughtsmanship had to be 
 maintained by the greatest colorist of the modern centuries. 
 
 24. One point only remains to be generally noticed, — that 
 the command of means which Turner acquired by this per- 
 petual practice, and the decision of purpose resulting from 
 his vast power at once of memory and of design, enabled him 
 nearly always to work straight forward upon his drawings, 
 neither altering them, nor using any of the mechanical expe- 
 dients for softening tints so frequently employed by inferior 
 water-colour painters. Many traditions indeed are afloat in 
 the world of art respecting extraordinary processes through 
 which he carried his work in its earlier stages : and I think 
 it probable that, in some of his elaborately completed draw- 
 ings, textures were prepared, by various mechanical means, 
 over the general surface of the paper, before the drawing of 
 detail was begun. Also, in the large drawings of early date, 
 the usual expedients of sponging and taking out color by fric- 
 tion have often been employed by him ; but it appears only 
 experimentally, and that the final rejection of all such expedi- 
 ents was the result of their trial ; for in all the rest of the 
 national collection the evidence is as clear as it is copious that 
 he went straight to his mark : in early days finishing piece by 
 piece on the white paper ; and, as he advanced in skill, laying 
 the main masses in broad tints, and working the details over 
 these : never effacing or sponging, but taking every advantage 
 of the wetness of the color, when first laid, to bring out soft 
 lights with the point of the brush, or scratch out bright ones 
 with the end of the stick, so driving the wet color in a dark 
 line to the edge of the light, — a very favorite mode of execm 
 f ion with him. for three reasons : that it at once gave a dark 
 
92 
 
 THE LA WS OF FESOLE. 
 
 edge, and therefore full relief, to the piece of light ; secondly, 
 that it admitted of firm and angular drawing of forms ; and, 
 lastly, that as little color was removed from the whole mass 
 (the quantity taken from the light being only driven into the 
 dark), the quantity of hue in the mass itself, as broadly laid, 
 in its first membership with other masses, was not much af- 
 fected by the detailing process. 
 
 25. When these primary modifications of the wet color 
 had been obtained, the drawing was proceeded with, exactly 
 in the manner of William Hunt, of the old Water-color So- 
 ciety, (if worked in transparent hues,) or of John Lewis, if in 
 opaque, — that is to say, with clear, firm, and unalterable 
 touches one over another, or one into the interstices of 
 another ; never disturbing them by any general wash ; using 
 friction only where roughness of surface was locally re- 
 quired to produce effects of granulated stone, mossy ground, 
 and such like ; and rarely even taking out minute lights, 
 but leaving them from the first, and working round and 
 up to them very frequently drawing thin, dark outlines 
 merely by putting a little more water into the wet touches, so 
 as to drive the color to the edge as it dried ; the only differ- 
 ence between his manipulation and William Hunt’s being in 
 his inconceivably varied and dexterous use of expedients of 
 this kind, — such, for instance, as drawing the broken edge 
 of a cloud merely by a modulated dash of the brush, defin- 
 ing the perfect forms with a quiver of his hand ; rounding 
 them by laying a little more color into one part of the dash 
 before it dried, and laying the warm touches of the light after 
 it had dried, outside of the edges. In many cases, the instan- 
 taneous manipulation is quite inexplicable. 
 
 26. It is quite possible, however, that, even in the most ad- 
 vanced stages of some of the finished drawings, they may have 
 been damped, or even fairly put under water, and wetted 
 through ; nay, they may even have been exposed to strong 
 currents of water, so as to remove superfluous color without 
 defiling the tints anywhere ; only most assuredly they never 
 received any friction such as would confuse or destroy the 
 edges and purity of separate tints. And all I can assert is, 
 
OF TEE RELATION OF COLOR TO OUTLINE. 03 
 
 that in the national collection there is no evidence of any such 
 processes. In the plurality of the drawings the evidence is, 
 on the contrary, absolute, that nothing of the kind has taken 
 place ; the greater number being executed on leaves of books, 
 neither stretched nor moistened in any way whatever ; or else 
 on little bits of gray paper, often folded in four, and as often 
 with the colored drawings made on both sides of a leaf. The 
 coarser vignettes are painted on sheets of thin drawing-paper ; 
 the finer ones on smooth cardboard, of course without wash- 
 ing or disturbing the edges, of which the perfect purity is 
 essential to the effect of the vignette. 
 
 27. I insist on this point at greater length, because, so far 
 as the direct copying of Turner’s drawings can be useful to 
 the student (working from nature with Turner’s faithfulness 
 being the essential part of his business), it will be so chiefly as 
 compelling him to a decisive and straightforward execution. 
 I observed that in the former exhibition the students gener- 
 ally selected those drawings for study w r hich could be ap- 
 proximately imitated by the erroneous processes of modern 
 water color ; and which were therefore exactly those that 
 showed them least of Turner’s mind, and taught them least of 
 his methods. 
 
 The best practice, and the most rapid appreciation of Tur- 
 ner, wfill be obtained by accurately copying his sketches in 
 body color on gray paper ; and when once the method is un- 
 derstood, and the resolution made to hold by it, the student 
 will soon find that the advantage gained is in more directions 
 than one. For the sum of work which he can do will be as 
 much greater in proportion to his decision, as it will be in 
 each case better, and, after the first efforts, more easily done. 
 He may have been appalled by the quantity which he sees 
 that Turner accomplished ; but he will be encouraged when 
 he finds how much any one may accomplish who does not 
 hesitate, nor repent. An artist’s nerve and power of mind are 
 lost chiefly in deciding what to do, and in effacing what he 
 has done : it is anxiety, not labor, that fatigues him ; and 
 vacillation, not difficulty that hinders him. And if the stu- 
 dent feels doubt respecting his own decision of mind, and 
 
94 
 
 THE LAWS OF FES OLE. 
 
 questions the possibility of gaining the habit of it, let him be 
 assured that in art, as in life, it depends mainly on simplicity 
 of purpose. Turner’s decision came chiefly of his truthful- 
 ness ; it was because he meant always to be true, that he was 
 able always to be bold. And you will find that you may gain 
 his courage, if you will maintain his fidelity. If you want 
 only to make your drawing fine, or attractive, you may hesi- 
 tate indeed, long and often, to consider whether your faults 
 ■will be forgiven, or your fineries perceived. But if you wxmt 
 to put fair fact into it, you will find the fact shape it fairly for 
 you ; and that in pictures, no less than in human life, they 
 •who have once made up their minds to do right, will have 
 little place for hesitation, and little cause for repentance. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OF MAP DliAWING. 
 
 1. Of all the principles of Art which it has been my en- 
 deavor throughout life to inculcate, none are so important 
 and few so certain, as that which modern artists have chiefly 
 denied, — that Art is only in her right place and office -when 
 she is subordinate to use ; that her duty is always to teach, 
 though to teach pleasantly ; and that she is shamed, not 
 exalted, when she has only graces to display, instead of truths 
 to declare, 
 
 2. I do not know if the Art of Poetry has ever been really 
 advanced by the exercise of youth in writing nonsense verses ; 
 but I know that the Art of Painting will never be so, by the 
 practice of drawing nonsense lines ; and that not only it is 
 easy to make every moment of time spent in the elementary 
 exercises of Art serviceable in other directions ; but also it 
 will be found that the exercises which are directed most 
 clearly to the acquisition of general knowledge, will be swift- 
 est in their discipline of manual skill, and most decisive in 
 their effect on the formation of taste. 
 
 3. It will be seen, in the sequel of the Laws of Fesole, that 
 
OF MAP BRA WING. 
 
 95 
 
 every exercise in the book has the ulterior object of fixing in 
 the student’s mind some piece of accurate knowledge, either 
 in geology, botany, or the natural history of animals. The 
 laws which regulate the delineation of these, are still more 
 stern in their application to the higher branches of the arts 
 concerned with the history of the life, and symbolism of the 
 thoughts, of Man ; but the general student may more easily 
 learn, and at first more profitably obey them, in their gentler 
 authority over inferior subjects. 
 
 4. The beginning of all useful applications of the graphic 
 art is of course in the determination of clear and beautiful 
 forms for letters ; but this beginning has been invested by the 
 illuminator with so many attractions, and permits so danger- 
 ous a liberty to the fancy, that I pass by it, at first, to the 
 graver and stricter work of geography. For our most service- 
 able practice of which, some modifications appear to me de- 
 sirable in existing modes of globe measurement : these I must 
 explain in the outset, and request the student to familiarize- 
 himself with them completely before going farther. 
 
 5. On our ordinary globes the 360 degrees of the equator 
 are divided into twenty-four equal spaces, representing the 
 distance through which any point of the equator passes in an 
 hour of the day : each space therefore consisting of fifteen de- 
 grees. 
 
 This division will be retained in St. George’s schools ; but 
 it appears to me desirable to give the student a more clear and 
 consistent notion of the length of a degree than he is likely to 
 obtain under our present system of instruction. I find, for in- 
 stance, in the Atlas published under the superintendence of 
 the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge,* that, in 
 England and Ireland, a degree contains 69.14 English miles ; 
 in Kussia, 69.15 ; in Scotland, 69.1 ; in Italy, 69 ; in Turkey, 
 68.95 ; and in Lidia 68.8. In Black’s more elaborate Atlas, 
 the degree at the equator is given as 69.6, whether of longi- 
 tude or latitude, with a delicate scale of diminution in the de- 
 
 * The larger Atlas is without date . the selection of maps issued for 
 the use of Harrow School in 1856 is not less liberal in its views respect- 
 ing the length of a degree. 
 
THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 9 6 
 
 grees of latitude to tlie pole, of wliick the first terms would 
 quite fatally confuse themselves in a young student’s mind with 
 the wavering estimates given, as above quoted, in more ele- 
 mentary publications. 
 
 6. Under these circumstances, since in the form of the artifi- 
 cial globe we ignore the polar flatness of it, I shall also ignore 
 it in practical measurement ; and estimate the degrees of longi- 
 tude at the equator, and of latitude everywhere, as always di- 
 vided into Italian miles, one to the minute, sixty to the de- 
 gree. The entire circumference of the earth at the equator 
 will thus be estimated at 21,600 miles ; any place on the equa- 
 tor having diurnal motion at the rate of 900 miles an hour. 
 The reduction, afterwards, of any required distance into Eng- 
 lish miles, or French kilometres, will be easy arithmetic. 
 
 7. The twenty-four meridians drawn on our common globes 
 will be retained on St. George’s ; but numbered consecutively 
 round the globe, 1 to 24, from west to east. The first merid- 
 ian will be that through Fesole, and called Galileo’s line ; the 
 second, that approximately through Troy,* called the Ida line. 
 The sixth, through the eastern edge of India, will be called 
 ‘ the Orient line ; ’ the eighteenth, through the Isthmus of 
 Vera Cruz, ‘the Occident line ;’ and the twenty-fourth, pass- 
 ing nearly with precision, through our English Davenport, and 
 over Dartmoor, ‘the Devon line.’ Its opposite meridian, the 
 twelfth, through mid-Pacific, will be called the Captain’s line. 
 
 8. The meridians on ordinary globes are divided into lengths 
 of ten degrees, by eight circles drawn between the equator 
 and each of the poles. But I think this numeration confusing 
 to the student, by its inconsistency with the divisions of the 
 equator, and its multiplication of lines parallel to the Arctic 
 and Tropic circles. On our St. George’s globes, therefore, the 
 divisions of latitude will be, as those of longitude, each fif- 
 teen degrees, indicated by five circles drawn between each 
 pole and the equator. 
 
 Calling the equator by its own name, the other circles will 
 
 * Accurately, it passes through Tenedos, thus dividing the Ida of Zeus 
 from the Ida of Poseidon in Samothrace. See ‘Eothen,’ Chapter IV.; 
 and Dr. Schliemann’s Troy, Plate IV. 
 
X 
 
 « 
 
 a 
 
 Perspective of First Geometry. 
 
 Schools of St. George. Elementary Drawing-, Plate IX. 
 
OF MAP BRA WING. 
 
 97 
 
 be numbered consecutively north and south ; and called 1st, 
 2nd, etc., to the 5tli, which will be that nearest the Pole. The 
 first north circle will be found to pass through the Cape-de- 
 Verde island of St. Jago ; the second north circle will be the 
 line of latitude on our present globes passing approximately 
 through Cairo ; the third will as nearly run through Venice ; 
 the fourth, almost with precision, through Christiania ; and 
 the fifth through Cape Fern, in Nova Zembla. I wish my stu- 
 dents to call these circles, severally, the St. James’s circle, the 
 Arabian circle, the Venetian circle, the Christian circle, and 
 the Fern circle. On the southern hemisphere, I shall call the 
 first circle St. John’s ; thus enclosing the most glowing space 
 of the tropics between the lines named from the two Sons of 
 Thunder ; the Natal circle will divide intelligibly the eastern 
 coast of Africa, and preserve the title of an entirely true and 
 noble, — therefore necessarily much persecuted, — Christian 
 Bishop ; the St. George’s circle, opposite the Venetian, will 
 mark the mid-quadrant, reminding the student, also, that in 
 far South America there is a Gulf of St. George ; the Thule 
 circle will pass close south of the Southern Thule ; and the 
 Blanche circle (ligne Blanche, for French children), include, 
 with Mounts Erebus and Terror, the supposed glacial space of 
 the great Antarctic continent. 
 
 9. By this division of the meridians, the student, besides 
 obtaining geographical tenure in symmetrical clearness, will 
 be familiarized with the primary division of the circle by its 
 radius into arcs of 60°, and with the subdivisions of such arcs. 
 And he will observe that if he draws his circle representing 
 the wmrld with a radius of two inches, (in Figure 18, that it 
 may come within my type, it is only an inch and a half,) let- 
 tering the Equator q r, the North Pole p, the South Pole s, and 
 the centre of the circle, representing that of the Earth o ; then 
 completing the internal hexagon and dodecagon, and lettering 
 the points through which the Arabian and Christian circles 
 pass, respectively a and c, since the chord q c equals the radius 
 q o, it will also measure two inches, and the arc upon it, qac, 
 somewhat more than two inches, so that the entire circle will 
 be rather more than a foot round. 
 
 7 
 
98 
 
 THE LAWS OF FES OLE. 
 
 10. Now I want some enterprising map-seller * to prepare 
 some school-globes, accurately of such dimension that the 
 twenty -four-sided figure enclosed in their circle may be ex- 
 actly half an inch in the side ; and therefore the twenty-four 
 meridians and eleven circles of latitude drawn on it with ac- 
 curately horizontal intervals of half an inch between each of 
 
 the meridians at the equator, and between the circles every- 
 where. 
 
 And, on this globe, I want the map of the world engraved 
 in firm and simple outline, with the principal mountain 
 
 * I cannot be answerable, at present, for what such enterprise may 
 produce. I will see to it when I have finished my book, if I am spared 
 to do so. 
 
OF MAP DRAWING. 
 
 09 
 
 chains ; but no * rivers, * and no names of any country; and 
 this nameless chart of the world is to be colored, within the 
 Arctic circles, the sea pale sapphire, and the land white ; in 
 the temperate zones, the sea full lucia, and the land pale 
 emerald ; and between the tropics, the sea full violet, and the 
 land pale clarissa. 
 
 These globes I should like to see executed with extreme 
 fineness and beauty of line and color ; and each enclosed in 
 a perfectly strong cubic case, with silk lining. And I hope 
 that the time may come when this little globe may be just as 
 
 * My reason for this refusal is that I want children first to he made 
 to guess the courses and sizes of rivers, from the formation of the land ; 
 and also, that nothing may disturb the eyes or thoughts in fastening on 
 that formation. 
 
100 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLB. 
 
 necessary a gift from the parents to the children, in any gen 
 tleman’s family, as their shoes or bonnets. 
 
 11. In the meantime, the letters by which the circles are 
 distinguished, added, in Figure 19, to the complete series of 
 horizontal lines representing them, will enable the student 
 rapidly to read and learn their names from the equator up 
 and down. “ St. James’s, Arabian, Venetian, Christian, Fern; 
 St. John’s, Natal, St. George’s, Thule, Blanche;” — these 
 names being recognized always as belonging no less to the 
 points in the arcs of the quadrant in any drawing, than to the 
 globe circles ; and thus rendering the specification of forms 
 more easy. In such specification, however, the quadrant 
 must always be conceived as a part of the complete circle ; 
 the lines o q and o r are always to be called 4 basic : ’ the let- 
 ters q p, r p, qs, and r s, are always to be retained, each for 
 their own arc of the quadrant ; and the points of division in 
 the arcs r p and r s distinguished from those in the arcs q p 
 and q s by small, instead of capital, letters. Thus a triangle 
 to be drawn with its base on St. George’s circle, and its apex 
 in the North Pole, will be asked for simply as the triangle 
 g p g ; the hexagon with the long and short sides, c p, pk, 
 may be placed at any of the points by describing it as the hexa- 
 gon q a c, — j v v, or the like; and ultimately the vertical tri- 
 angles on the great divisional lines for bases will need no 
 other definition than the letters, bp, t p, c p, etc. 
 
 The lines Ff vv, etc., taken as the diameters of their re- 
 spective circles, may be conveniently called, in any geometri- 
 cal figure in which they occur, the Fern line, the Venetian 
 line, etc.; and they are magnitudes which will be of great 
 constructive importance to us, for it may be easily seen, by 
 thickening the lines of the included squares, that the square 
 on the Venetian line, the largest that can be included in the 
 circle, is half the square on the equator ; the square on the 
 Christian line, the square of the radius, is again half of that 
 on the Venetian ; and the square on the Fern line, a fifth di- 
 minishing term between the square of the equator and zero. 
 
 12. Next, I wish my pupils each to draw for themselves 
 the miniature hemisphere, Plate IX., Figure 1, with a 
 
OF MAP DBA WING. 
 
 101 
 
 radius of an inch and nine-tenths, which will give them ap- 
 proximately the twenty-four divisions of half an inch each. 
 Then, verticals are to be let fall from the points j, a, etc., 
 numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, as in Figure 19, and then the 
 meridians in red, with the pencil, by hand, through the 
 points 1, 2, etc., of the figure ; observing that each meridian 
 must be an elliptical, not a circular, arc. And now we must 
 return, for a moment, to the fifteenth paragraph of the fourth 
 chapter, where we had to quit our elliptic practice for other 
 compass work. 
 
 13. The ellipse, as the perspective of the circle, is so im- 
 portant a natural line that it is needful to be perfectly familiar 
 with the look of it, and perfectly at ease in the tracing of it, 
 before the student can attempt with success the slightest 
 architectural or landscape outline. Usually, the drawing of 
 the ellipse is left to gather itself gradually out of perspective 
 studies ; but thus under a disadvantage, seldom conquered, 
 that the curve at the narrow extremity, which is the only im- 
 portant part of it, is always confused with the right line en- 
 closing the cylinder or circle to be drawn ; and never there- 
 fore swept with delicacy or facility. I wish the student, there- 
 fore, to conquer all hesitation in elliptic drawing at once, by 
 humbly constructing ellipses, in sufficiently various number, 
 large and small, with two pins’ heads and a thread ; and 
 copying these with the lead, first, very carefully, then fasten- 
 ing the lead line with pencil and color. 
 
 This practice should be especially directed to the extremi- 
 ties of the narrow and long elliptic curves, as the beauty of 
 some of the finest architecture depends on the perspective of 
 this form in tiers of arches ; while those of the shores of lakes, 
 and bending of streams, though often passing into other and 
 more subtle curves, will never be possible at all until the 
 student is at ease in this first and elementary one. 
 
 14. Returning to our globe work, on the assumption that 
 the pupil will prepare for it by this more irksome practice, it 
 is to be noted that, for geographical purposes, we must so far 
 conventionalize our perspective as to surrender the modifica- 
 tions produced by looking at the globe from near points of 
 
102 
 
 THE LAWS OF FJtSOLE. 
 
 sight ; and assume that the perspectives of the meridians are 
 orthographic, as they would be if the globe were seen from 
 an infinite distance ; and become, practically, when it is re- 
 moved to a moderate one. The real perspectives of the me- 
 ridians, drawn on an orange six feet off, would be quite too 
 subtle for any ordinary draughtsmanship ; and there would 
 be no end to the intricacy of our map drawing if we were to 
 attempt them, even on a larger scale. I assume, therefore, 
 for our map work, that the globe may be represented, when 
 the equator is level, with its eleven circles of latitude as hori- 
 zontal lines ; and the eleven visible meridians, as portions of 
 five vertical ellipses, with a central vertical line between the 
 poles. 
 
 15. When the student has completely mastered the draw- 
 ing, and, if it may be so called, the literature, of this element- 
 ary construction, he must advance another, and a great step, 
 by drawing the globe, thus divided, with its poles at any 
 angle, and with any degree of longitude brought above the 
 point o. 
 
 The placing the poles at an angle will at once throw all 
 the circles of latitude into visible perspective, like the merid- 
 ians, and enable us, when it may be desirable, to draw both 
 these and the meridians as on a transparent globe, the arcs 
 of them being traceable in completeness from one side of the 
 equator to the other. 
 
 16. The second figure in Plate IX. represents the globe- 
 lines placed so as to make Jerusalem the central point of its 
 visible hemisphere.* A map thus drawn, whether it include 
 the entire hemisphere or not, will in future be called ‘ Polar ’ 
 to the place brought above the point o ; and the maps which 
 I wish my students to draw of separate countries will always 
 be constructed so as to be polar to some approximately cen- 
 tral point of chief importance in those countries ; generally, 
 if possible, to their highest or historically most important 
 mountain ; — otherwise, to their capital, or their oldest city, or 
 the like. Thus the map of the British Islands will be polar 
 
 * The meridians in this figure are given from that of Fc sole, roughly 
 taking the long, of Jerusalem 35 E,, from Greenwich ; and lat. 32 N. 
 
OF MAP 1)R A WING . 
 
 103 
 
 to Scawfell Pikes, the highest rock in England : Switzerland 
 will be polar to Monte Eosa, Italy to Eome, and Greece to 
 Argos. 
 
 17. This transposition of the poles and meridians must be 
 prepared for the young pupil, and for all unacquainted with 
 the elements of mathematics, by the master : but the class of 
 students for whom this book is chiefly written will be able, I 
 think without difficulty, to understand and apply for them- 
 selves the following principles of construction. 
 
 If p and s, Figure 20, be the poles of the globe in its noi> 
 
 P 
 
 mal position, the line of sight being in the direction of the 
 dotted lines, tangential to the circle at p and s ; and if we 
 then, while the line of sight remains unchanged, move the 
 pole p to any point p, and therefore, (the centre of the globe 
 remaining fixed at o,) the pole s to the opposite extremity of 
 the diameter, s ; and if a b be the diameter of any circle of 
 latitude on the globe thus moved, such diameter being drawn 
 between the highest and lowest points of that circle of lati- 
 tude in its new position, it is evident that on the hemispher- 
 ical surface of the globe commanded by the eye, the declined 
 pole p will be seen at the level of the line p p ; the levels b b, 
 
104 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 a a will be the upper and lower limits of the perspective ar<s 
 of the given circle of latitude ; the centre of that curve will 
 be at the level c c ; and its lateral diameter, however we 
 change the inclination of its vertical one, will be constant.* 
 
 18. On these data, the following construction of a map of 
 the hemisphere to be made polar to a given place, will be, I 
 think, intelligible, — or at the very least, practicable ; which is 
 all that at present we require of it. 
 
 Let p and s, Figure 21, be the original poles ; let the arc 
 
 Through the point o, (which I need not in future letter, it 
 being in our figures always the mid-point between q and r, 
 and theoretically, the centre of the earth,) draw the line ter- 
 minated by the ball and arrow-point, perpendicular to x y. 
 This is to be called the ‘ stellar line ’ of the given place x. In 
 the map made polar to x, this line, if represented, will coin- 
 cide with the meridian of x, but must not be confused with 
 that meridian in the student’s mind. 
 
 19. Place now the figure so as to bring the stellar line ver- 
 tical, indicating it well by its arrow-head and ball, which on 
 
 * Always remembering that the point of sight is at an infinite distance, 
 else the magnitude of this diameter would be affected by the length ol 
 the interval c o. 
 
 p q s be the meridian 
 of the place to which 
 the map is to be made 
 polar ; and let x be 
 the place itself. From 
 x draw the diam- 
 eter x y, which repre- 
 
 & sents a circle to be 
 called the £ equatorial 
 line ’ of the given 
 place ; and which is 
 
 Fig. 21. 
 
 ^ of course inclined to 
 the real equator at an 
 angle measured by 
 the latitude of the 
 place. 
 
OF MAP DBA WING. 
 
 105 
 
 locally polar maps will point north and south for the given 
 place, Figure 22. 
 
 The equatorial line of x, (x y,) now becomes horizontal, q 
 it is the real equator, p and s the real poles, and the given 
 place to which the map is to be made polar is at x. The line 
 of sight remains in the direction of the dotted lines. 
 
 20. As the student reads, let him construct and draw the 
 figures himself care- 
 fully. There is not 
 the smallest hurry 
 about the business, 
 
 (and there must be 
 none in any busi- 
 ness he means to be 
 well done) ; all that 
 we want is clear un- 
 derstanding, and 
 fine drawing. And I 
 multiply my figures, 
 not merely to make 
 myself understood, 
 but as exercises in 
 drawing to be suc- 
 cessively copied. And 
 the firm printing of 
 the letters * is a part of this practice, taking the place of the 
 more irksome exercise recommended in my first ‘ Elements of 
 Drawing,’ p. 20. Be careful, also, that they shall be not only 
 clear and neat, but perfectly upright. You will draw palaces 
 and towers in truer stability after drawing letters uprightly ; 
 and the position of the letter, — as, for instance, in the two last 
 figures, — is often important in the construction of the diagram. 
 
 21. Having fixed the relations of these main lines well in 
 his mind, the student is farther to learn these two definitions. 
 
 Fig. 2‘i. 
 
 * By a mistake of the engraver, the small letters, though all printed 
 by myself in Roman form, have been changed, throughout the figures 
 in this chapter, into italics. But in copying them, let them all be care* 
 fully printed in Roman type. 
 
106 
 
 THE LAWS OF FES OLE. 
 
 I. The ‘ Equatorial line ’ of any place is the complete circle 
 of the circumference of the world passing through that place, 
 in a plane inclined to the plane of the equator at an angle 
 measured by the degrees of the latitude of the place. 
 
 II. The * Stellar line 5 of any place is a line drawn through 
 the centre of the Earth perpendicular to the equatorial line of 
 that place. It is therefore, to any such equatorial line (geo- 
 metrically) what the axis of the Earth is to the equator ; and 
 though it does not point to the Polestar, is always in the ver- 
 tical plane passing through the Polestar and place for which 
 it is drawn.* 
 
 22. It follows from these definitions that if we were able to 
 look down on any place from a point vertically and exactly 
 above it, and its equatorial and stellar lines were then visible 
 to us, drawn, the one round the Earth, and the other through 
 it, they would both appear as right lines, forming a cross, the 
 equatorial line running, at the point of intersection, east and 
 west ; and the stellar, north and south. 
 
 23. Now all the maps which I hope to prepare for St. 
 George’s schools wuli be constructed, not by circles of latitude 
 and meridians, but as squares of ten, twenty, or thirty degrees 
 in the side, quartered into four minor squares of five, ten, or 
 fifteen degrees in the side, by the cross formed by the equa- 
 torial and stellar line of the place to which the map is said to 
 be : polar ; ’ — which place will therefore be at the centre of 
 the square. And since the arc of a degree on the equatorial 
 line is as long as the arc of a degree on the equator, and since 
 the stellar line of a place on a polar map coincides with the 
 meridian of that place, the measurements of distance along 
 each of the four arms of the cross will be similar, and the en- 
 largements of terrestrial distance expressed by them, in equal 
 proportions. 
 
 24. I am obliged to introduce the terms “ at the point of 
 intersection,” in § 22, because, beyond the exact point of in- 
 tersection, the equatorial line does not run east and west, in 
 the ordinary geographical sense. Note therefore the follow*- 
 
 * The Polestar is assumed, throughout all our work, to indicate the 
 true North. 
 
OF MAP DRAWING. 
 
 101 
 
 ing conditions separating this from the usually drawn terres* 
 trial lines. 
 
 If, from the eastern and western gates of a city, two trav- 
 ellers set forth to walk, one due east, and the other due west, 
 they would meet face to face after they had walked each the 
 semicircle of the earth-line in their city’s latitude. 
 
 But if from the eastern and western gates they set forth to 
 walk along their city’s equatorial line, they would only meet 
 face to face after they had each walked the full semicircle of 
 the Earth’s circumference. 
 
 And if, from the eastern and western gates of their city, 
 they were able to set forth, to walk along the lines used as 
 lines of measurement on its polar map, they would meet no 
 more forever. 
 
 For these lines, though coinciding, the one with its merid- 
 ian, and the other w r ith its equatorial line, are conceived 
 always as lines drawn in the air, so as to touch the Earth only 
 at the place itself, as the threads of a common squaring frame 
 would touch the surface of a globe ; that which coincides 
 with the Stellar line being produced infinitely in the vertical 
 plane of the Polestar, and that which coincides with the equa- 
 torial line produced infinitely at right angles to it in the direc- 
 tion of the minor axis of the Earth’s orbit. 
 
 25. In which orbit, calling the point of winter solstice, 
 being that nearest the Polestar, the North point of the orbit, 
 and that of the summer solstice South, the point of vernal 
 equinox will be West, the point of autumnal equinox East ; 
 and the polar map of any place will be in general constructed 
 and shaded with the Earth in vernal equinox, and the place 
 at the time of sunrise to it on Easter Bay, supposing the sun 
 ten degrees above the horizon, and expressing therefore the 
 heights of the mountain chains accurately by the length of 
 their shadows. 
 
 26. Therefore, in now proceeding to draw our polar map 
 for the given place x, Figure 22, we have to bring the two 
 poles, and the place itself, to the meridian which coincides, 
 in our circular construction, with the stellar line. Accord- 
 ingly, having got our construction as in Figure 22, we let 
 
10S 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 fall perpendiculars on the stellar line from all the four points 
 
 p, s, q, and r, Figure 
 23, giving us the four 
 points on the stellar 
 line p, s, q, and r. 
 
 Then, in our polar 
 map, p and s are the 
 new poles correspond- 
 ing to p and s ; q and 
 r the new points of 
 the Equator corre- 
 sponding to q and r ; 
 and the place to which 
 the map is polar, x, 
 will now be in the 
 centre of the map at 
 the point usually let- 
 tered o. 
 
 27. Now this con- 
 struction is entirely 
 general, and the two 
 zigzags, p p s s and r 
 r q q, must always be 
 drawn in the same 
 way for the poles and 
 any given circle of 
 latitude, as well as for 
 the Equator ; — only 
 if the more lightly- 
 drawn zigzag be for 
 a north or south circle 
 of latitude, it w 7 ill not 
 be symmetrical on 
 both sides of the line 
 x y. Therefore, re- 
 moving the (for the 
 moment unnecessary) line x y from the construction, and 
 drawing, instead of the Equator q r, any circle of latitude l m, 
 
OF MAP DRAWING. 
 
 109 
 
 —I and m are the corresponding points of that circle in our 
 polar map, and we get the entirely general construction, 
 Figure 24, in which the place to which the map is polar, being 
 now at the centre of the circle, is lettered x, because it is not 
 now the centre of the earth between q and k, but the point x, 
 on the surface of the earth, brought round to coincide with 
 it. 
 
 28. And now I should like the student to fix the letters at- 
 tached to these constructions in his mind, as belonging, not 
 only to their respective circles, but always to the same points 
 in these circles. Thus the letter x will henceforward, after we 
 have once finished the explanatory construction in the pres- 
 ent chapter, always signify the point to which the map is po- 
 lar, and y its exactly antipodal point on the earth’s surface, half 
 round the equatorial line. If we have to speak in more detail 
 of the equatorial line as a complete circle, it will be lettered 
 x, e, y, w, the letters e and w being at its extreme eastern and 
 western points, in relation to x. And since at these points it 
 intersects the Equator, the Equator will be also lettered q, e, 
 k, w, the points e and w being identical in both circles, and 
 the point q always in the meridian of x. Any circle of lati- 
 tude other than the stated eleven will be lettered at its quar- 
 ters, l, l 1, l 2, l 3, l 4, the point l being that on the merid- 
 ian of x ; and any full meridian circle other than one of the 
 stated twelve will be lettered m n, the point m being that on 
 the Equator nearest x, and n its opposite. 
 
 29. And now r note carefully that in drawing the globe, or 
 any large part of it, the meridian circles and latitude circles 
 are always to be drawn, with the lead, full round, as if the 
 globe were transparent. It is only thus that the truth of 
 their delicate contact with the limiting circle can be reached. 
 Then the visible part of the curve is to be traced with pencil 
 and color, and that on the opposite side of the globe, and 
 therefore invisible, to be either effaced, or indicated by a 
 dotted line. 
 
 Thus, in Figure 25, 1 complete the construction from Figure 
 23 by first producing the lines k r. q q, to meet the circle on 
 both sides, so as to give me a complete feeling of the sym- 
 
110 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 metry of the entire space within which my elliptic curve must 
 be drawn ; and then draw it round in complete sweep, as 
 
 steadily as I can, cor- 
 recting it into a true 
 ellipse by as much 
 measurement as may 
 be needful, and with 
 the best fastidiousness 
 of my sight. Once 
 the perfect ellipse 
 drawn, the question, 
 which half of it is 
 visible, depends on 
 whether we intend the 
 North or South pole 
 to be visible. If the 
 North, the lower half 
 of the ellipse is the 
 perspective of the 
 visible half of the 
 Equator ; and if the 
 South, vice versa, the 
 upper half of the 
 ellipse. 
 
 30. But the draw- 
 ing becomes more 
 difficult and subtle 
 when we deal with 
 the perspective of a 
 line of latitude, as l m 
 (Eigure 24). For on 
 completing this con- 
 struction in the same 
 manner as Figure 23 
 is completed in Fig- 
 ure 25, we shall find 
 the ellipse does not now touch the circle with its extremities, 
 but with some part of its sides. In Figure 26, I remove the 
 
 / Y 
 
 XT? 
 
 
 
 
 
 g\ 
 
 1 
 
 Fig. 
 
 S 
 
 q / 
 
 i 
 
 25. 
 
 m / 
 
 Am 
 
 
 
 T \ 
 
 If 
 
 
 
 Fig. 
 
 26. 
 
OF MAP DRA WING . 
 
 Ill 
 
 constructing lines from Figure 24, and give only the neces- 
 sary limiting ones, m m and l 1, produced : the ellipse being 
 now drawn symmetrically between these, so as to touch 
 the circle, it will be seen that its major axis falls beneath the 
 point of contact, and would have to be carried beyond the 
 ellipse if it were to meet the circle. On the small scale of 
 these figures, and in drawing large circles of latitude, the in- 
 terval seems of little importance ; yet on the beautiful drawl- 
 
 ing of it depends the right expression of all rounded things 
 whose surface is traversed by lines — -from St. Peter’s dome to 
 an acorn cup. In Figure 27 1 give the segment of circle from 
 p to y as large as my page allows, with the semi-ellipse of the 
 semicircle of latitude c m. The point of contact with the 
 circle is at z ; the axis major, drawn through c, terminates at 
 w t , making u w equal to cm; and the pretty meeting of the 
 curves w z and y z like the top of the rudder of a Venetian 
 canal boat (the water being at the level x y), becomes dis- 
 tinctly visible. 
 
112 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 The semi-major axis u w is exactly equal to c m, as in Figure 
 25 the entire major axis is equal to l m in Figure 24. 
 
 31. Lastly, if c m cross the stellar line, as in all figures 
 hitherto given, the ellipse always touches the circle, and the 
 portion of it beyond z is invisible, on the other side of the 
 globe, when we reduce the perspective figure to a drawing. 
 But, as we draw the circles of latitude smaller, the interval 
 between z and w increases, and that between z and m dimin- 
 ishes, until z and m coincide on the stellar line, and the ellipse 
 touches the circle with the extremity of its minor axis. As m 
 
 draws still farther back 
 towards p, the ellipse 
 detaches itself from the 
 circle, and becomes en- 
 tirely visible ; and as 
 we incline the pole 
 more and more to- 
 wards us, the ellipses 
 rise gradually into 
 sight, become rounder 
 and rounder in their 
 curves, and at last pass 
 into five concentric cir- 
 cles encompassed by 
 the Equator as we look 
 vertically down on the 
 pole. The construction 
 of the small circle of 
 latitude l m, when the pole is depressed to p, is given in 
 Figure 28. 
 
 32. All this sounds at first extremely dreadful : but, sup- 
 posing the system of the Laws of Fesole generally approved 
 and adopted, every parish school may soon be furnished with 
 accurate and beautiful drawings of the divided sphere in vari- 
 ous positions ; and the scholars led on gradually in the prac- 
 tice of copying them, having always, for comparison, the solid 
 and engraved artificial globe in their hands. Once intelli- 
 gently masters of this Earth-perspective, there remain no 
 
OF MAP DRAWING. 
 
 113 
 
 more difficulties for them, but those of delicate execution, in 
 the drawing of plates, or cups, or baskets, or crowns,* or any 
 other more or less circularly divided objects ; and gradually 
 they will perceive concurrences and cadences of mightier lines 
 in sea-waves, and mountain promontories, and arcs of breeze- 
 driven cloud. 
 
 33. One bit of hard work more, and we have done with 
 geometry for the present. We have yet to learn howto draw 
 any meridian in true perspective, the poles being given in a 
 vertical line. Let p 
 and s, Figure 29, be 
 the poles, p being the 
 visible one. Then q 
 m k n is the Equator 
 in its perspective rela- 
 tion to them ; p, the 
 pole of the stellar line, 
 which line is here co- Q 
 incident with the me- 
 ridian of the place to 
 which the map is polar. 
 
 It is required to draw 
 another meridian at a 
 given number of de- 
 grees distant from the 
 meridian of the place. 
 
 34. On the arc p q, if the required meridian is to the east 
 of the place, or on the arc p r, if the required meridian is to 
 the west of it, measure an arc of the given number of degrees, 
 
 * There are, of course, other perspective laws, dependent on the ap- 
 proach of the point of sight, introduced in the drawing of ordinary ob- 
 jects ; but none of these laws are ever mathematically carried out by 
 artists, nor can they be : every thing depends on the truth of their eyes 
 and ready obedience of their fingers. All the mathematicians in France 
 and England, with any quantity of time and every instrument in their 
 possession, could not draw a tress of wreathed hair in perspective : but 
 Veronese will do it, to practical sufficiency, with half a dozen consecu- 
 tive touches of his pencil. 
 
 8 
 
114 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE 
 
 p n, Let fall the vertical n n on the Equator, draw the di- 
 agonal m n through o ; and the required meridian will be the 
 visible arc of the ellipse drawn, so as to touch the circle, 
 through the four points pnsm. These four points, however 
 placed, will always be symmetrical, the triangles o p n and o 
 m s, if completed, being always equal and similar, and the 
 points n and m equi-distant from p and s. In Figure 30, 1 
 draw the curve, showing only these points and the stellar- 
 
 line ; and you may, by, a 
 little effort, imagine the 
 figure to represent two 
 cups, or two kettle-drums, 
 brim to brim, or rim to 
 rim. If }-ou suppose them 
 so placed that you can see 
 the inside of the cup on 
 the left, the north pole is 
 visible, and the left-hand 
 half of the ellipse. If you 
 suppose the inside of the 
 cup on the right visible, 
 the north pole is visible, 
 and the right-hand half of 
 the ellipse. 
 
 35. And now, if you have 
 FlG ' 30 ‘ really read and worked 
 
 thus far, with clear understanding, I very gladly congratulate 
 you on having mastered quite the most important elements of 
 perspective in curved surfaces ; a mastership which you will 
 find extremely pleasurable in its consequences, whatever the 
 difficulty of its attainment. And in the meantime you will with- 
 out further trouble understand the construction of the second 
 figure in Plate IX., which gives the perspective of the globe 
 on the line of sight polar to Jerusalem ; assuming the longi- 
 tude of Jerusalem 35° east, from the meridian of Greenwich ; 
 but engraving the St. George’s order of meridians, with the 
 Devon, Captains’, Orient, and Occident in darker line. The 
 student may, with advantage, enlarge this example so as to 
 
OF MAP DP A WING. 
 
 115 
 
 allow an inch to the widest interval of its meridians, and then 
 try for himself to draw the map of the hemisphere accurately 
 on this projection. If he succeed, he will have a true per- 
 spective view of the globe, from the given point of sight, a 
 very different thing from a map of it given on any ordinary 
 projection : for in the common geographical methods, the 
 countries and seas are distorted into shapes, not only actually 
 false, but which under no possible conditions they could ever 
 assume to the eye ; while on this rightly drawn projection, 
 they appear as they do on the artificial globe itself, and can- 
 not therefore involve the student in any kind of misconcep- 
 tion. Maps, properly so called, must include much less than 
 the surface of the hemisphere ; and the mode in which they 
 are to be drawn on this projection will be given in the 
 eleventh chapter. 
 
 36. It remains only to be observed that although in Eng- 
 lish schools the Devon and Captains’ line (meaning, the line 
 of the great Captains) are to be taken for the first divisions in 
 quartering the globe, and the Orient and Occident lines, for 
 us determined by them, the degrees of longitude are to be 
 counted from Galileo’s line, the meridian of Fesole. For if 
 these laws of drawing are ever accepted, as I trust, in other 
 schools than our own, it seems to me that their well-trained 
 sailors may, waiving false pride and vulgar jealousy, one day 
 consent to estimates of distance founded, for all, on the most 
 sacred traditions of the Norman, the Tuscan, and the Argo- 
 naut : founded for the sailors of Marseilles and Venice — of 
 Pisa and Amalfi — of Salamis and the Hellespont,— on the 
 eternal lines which pass through the Flint of Fesole, and the 
 Flowers of Ida, 
 
UG 
 
 THE LA WS OF FESOLE* 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 OF LIGHT AND SHADE. 
 
 1. I do not doubt that you can call into your mind with 
 some distinctness the image of hawthorn blossom ; — whether, 
 at this time of reading, it be May or November, I should like 
 you, if possible, to look at the description of it in Proserpina 
 (III., p. 142) ; but you can certainly remember the general 
 look of it, in w T hite masses among green leaves. And you 
 would never think, if I put a pencil into your hand, and gave 
 you choice of colors to paint it with, of painting any part of 
 it black. 
 
 Your first natural instinct would be to take pure green, 
 and lay that for the leaves ; and then, the brightest white 
 which you could find on the palette, and put that on in bosses 
 for the buds and blossoms. 
 
 2. And although immediate success in representation of 
 hawthorn might possibly not attend these efforts, that first 
 instinctive process would be perfectly right in principle. 
 The general effect of hawthorn is assuredly of masses of 
 white, laid among masses of green : and if, at the instiga- 
 tion of any learned drawing-master, you "were to paint part 
 of every cluster of blossoms coal-black, you would never be 
 able to make the finished work satisfactory either to yourself, 
 or to other simple people, as long as the black blot remained 
 there. 
 
 3. You may perhaps think it unlikely that any drawing- 
 master w T ould recommend you to paint hawthorn blossom half 
 black. Nor, if instead of hawthorn, you had peach or apple 
 blossom to paint, would you expect such recommendation for 
 the better rendering of their rose-color ? Nor, if you had a 
 gentian to paint, though its blue is dark, would you expect to 
 be told to paint half the petals black ? 
 
 If, then, you have human flesh to paint, which, though of 
 much mingled and varied hue, is not, unless sunburnt, darker 
 

Appei/lavitqtje Ltjcem Diem et Tenebras ISToctem* 
 Schools of St. George. Elementary Drawing, Plate X. 
 
OF LIGHT AND SHADE. 
 
 117 
 
 than peach blossom ; — and of which the ideal, according to 
 all poets, is that it should he white, tinted with rose ; — which 
 also, in perfect health and purity, is somewhat translucent, 
 certainly much more so than either hawthorn buds or apple 
 blossom — Would you accept it as a wise first direction towards 
 the rendering of this more living and varying color, to paint 
 one side of a girl’s face black ? You certainly would not, 
 unless you had been previously beguiled into thinking it 
 grand or artistic to paint things under ‘ bold effects.’ 
 
 And yet, you probably have been beguiled, before now, 
 into admiring Raphael’s Transfiguration, in which everybody’s 
 faces and limbs are half black ; and into supposing Rembrandt 
 a master of chiaroscuro, because he can paint a vigorous por- 
 trait with a black dab under the nose ! 
 
 4. Both Raphael and Rembrandt are masters, indeed ; but 
 neither of them masters of light and shade, in treatment of 
 which the first is always false, and the second always vulgar. 
 The only absolute masters of light and shade are those who 
 never make you think of light and shade, more than Nature 
 herself does. 
 
 It will be twenty j r ears, however, at least, before you can so 
 much as see the finer conditions of shadow in masters of that 
 calibre. In the meantime, so please you, w T e will go back to 
 our hawthorn blossom, which you have begun quite rightly 
 by painting white altogether ; but which remains, neverthe- 
 less, incomplete on those conditions. However, if its outline 
 be right, and it detaches itself from the green ground like a 
 Florentine piece of mosaic, with absolutely true contour of 
 clustered petal, and placing of scattered bud, you are already 
 a far way on the road to all you want of it. 
 
 5. What more you exactly want is now the question. If 
 the image of the flower is clear in your mind, you will see it 
 to be made up of buds, which are white balls, like pearls ; and 
 flowers, like little flattish cups, or rather saucers, each com- 
 posed of five hollow petals. 
 
 How do you know, by the look of them, that the balls are 
 convex, and the cups concave ? How do you know, farther, 
 that the balls are not quite round balls, but a little flat at the 
 
118 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 top ? How do you know that the cups are not deep, but as 3 
 said, flattisli, like saucers ? 
 
 You know, because a certain quantity of very delicate pale 
 gray is so diffused over the white as to define to the eye ex- 
 actly the degree in which its surfaces are bent ; and the gra- 
 dations of this gray are determined by the form of surface, 
 just as accurately as the outline is ; and change with the same 
 mathematical precision, at every point of their course. So 
 that, supposing the bud were spherical, which it is not, the 
 gradation of shade would show that it was spherical ; and, . 
 flattened ever so little though it be, the shade becomes differ- 
 ent in that degree, and is recognized by the eye as the 
 shade of a hawthorn blossom, and not of a mere round glob- 
 ule or bead. 
 
 6. But, for globule, globe, or grain, small or great, — as 
 the first laws of line may best be learned in the lines of the 
 Earth, so also the first laws of light may best be learned in 
 the light of the Earth. Not the hawthorn blossom, nor the 
 pearl, nor the grain of mustard or manna, — not the smallest 
 round thing that lies as the hoar-frost on the ground — but 
 around it, and upon it, are illuminated the laws that bade the 
 Evening and the Morning be the first day. 
 
 7. So much of those laws you probably, in this learned cen- 
 tury, know already, as that the heat and light of the sun are 
 both in a fixed proportion to the steepness of his rays, — that 
 they decline as the day, and as the summer declines ; passing 
 softly into the shadows of the Polar, — swiftly into those of the 
 Tropic night. 
 
 But you probably have never enough fastened in your mind 3 
 the fact that, whatever the position of the sun, and whatever 
 the rate of motion of any point on the earth through the 
 minutes, hours, or days of twilight, the meeting of the mar- 
 gins of night and days is always constant in the breadth of 
 its zone of gradually expiring light ; and that in relation to 
 the whole mass of the globe, that passage from ‘glow to 
 gloom ’ is as trenchant and swift as between the crescent of 
 the new moon and the dimness of the “ Auld mune in her 
 airms.” 
 
LIGHT AND SHADE. 
 
 119 
 
 8. The dimness, I say, observe ; — not the blackness. Against 
 the depth of the night — itself (as we see it) not absolute black- 
 ness, — the obscured space of the lunar ball still is relieved in 
 pallor, lighted to that dim degree by the reflection from the 
 Earth. Much more, in all the forms which you will have to 
 study in daylight, the dark side is relieved or effaced, by vari- 
 ously diffused and reflected rays. But the first thing you have 
 to learn and remember, respecting all objects whatever to be 
 drawn in light and shade, is that, by natural light of day, half 
 of them is in light, and half in shadow ; and the beginning of 
 ail light and shade drawing is in the true, stern, and perfect 
 separation of these from each other. 
 
 9. Where you stand, and therefore whence you see the ob- 
 ject to be drawn, is a quite separate matter of inquiry. As 
 you choose, you may determine how much you will see of its 
 dark and how much of its light side : but the first thing to 
 be made sure of is the positive extent of these tw r o great 
 masses : and the mode in which they are involved or invaded 
 at their edges. 
 
 And in determining this at first, you are to cast entirely 
 out of consideration all vestige or interference of modifying 
 reflective light. The arts, and the morality of men, are founded 
 on the same primal order ; you are not to ask, in morals, what 
 is less right and more, or less wrong and more, until in every 
 matter you have learned to recognize what is massively and 
 totally Bight, from what is massively and totally W rong. The 
 beautiful enhancements of passion in virtue, and the subtle 
 redemptions of repentance in sin, are only to be sought, or 
 taken account of, afterwards. And as the strength and facil- 
 ity of human action are undermined alike by the ardor of pride 
 and the cunning of exculpation, the work of the feeblest ar- 
 tists may be known by the vulgar glittering of its light and the 
 far-sought reflection in its shadow. 
 
 10. When the great separation between light and dark has 
 been thus determined, the entire attention of the student is to 
 be first put on the gradation of the luminous surface. 
 
 It is only on that surface that the form of the object i3 
 exactly or consistently shown ; and the just distribution of the 
 
120 
 
 THE LAWS OF FJ&SOLE. 
 
 light, on that alone, will be enough to characterize the subject^ 
 even if the shadow be left wholly untouched. The most per- 
 fectly disciplined and scientific drawings of the Tuscan school 
 consist of pure outlines on tinted paper, with the lights laid 
 on in gradated white, and the darks left undistinguished from 
 the ground. The group of drawings by Turner to which, in 
 the schools of Oxford, I have given the title of the ‘Nine 
 Muses,’ consists, in like manner, of firm pencil outline on pale 
 gray paper ; the expression of form being entirely trusted to 
 lights gradated with the most subtle care. 
 
 11. But in elementary work, the definition of the dark side 
 of the object against the background is to be insisted upon, 
 no less than the rising of the light side of the object out of 
 shadow. For, by this law, accuracy in the outline on both 
 sides will be required, and every tendency to mystification re- 
 pressed ; whereas, if once we allow dark backgrounds to set 
 off luminous masses, the errors of the outline in the shadow 
 may be concealed by a little graceful manipulation ; and the 
 drawing made to bear so much resemblance in manner to a 
 master’s work, that the student is only too likely to flatter him- 
 self, and be praised by others, for what is merely the dissimu- 
 lation of weakness, or the disguise of error. 
 
 12. Farther: it is of extreme importance that no time should 
 be lost by the beginner in imitating the qualities of shade at- 
 tained by great masters, before he has learned where shadow 
 of any quality is to be disposed, or in what proportion it is to 
 be laid. Yet more, it is essential that his eye should not be 
 satisfied, nor his work facilitated, by the more or less pleasant 
 qualities of shade in chalk or charcoal : he should be at once 
 compelled to practise in the media with which he must ulti- 
 mately produce the true effects of light and shade in the 
 noblest painting, — media admitting no tricks of texture, lustre, 
 or transparency. Even sepia is open to some temptation of 
 this kind, and is to be therefore reserved for the days when 
 the young workman may pretend to copy Turner or Holbein. 
 For the beginner, pure and plain lampblack is the safest, aa 
 the most sincere, of materials. 
 
 It has the farther advantage of being extremely difficult to 
 
LIGHT AND SHADE. 
 
 121 
 
 manage in a wasli ; so that, practising first in this medium, 
 you will have no difficulty with more tractable colors. 
 
 13. In order not to waste paper, color, nor time, you must 
 be deliberate and neat in all proceedings : and above all, you 
 must have good paper and good pencils. Three of properly 
 varied size are supplied in your box ; to these you must add 
 a commoner one of the size of the largest, which you are to 
 keep separate, merely for mixing and supplying color. 
 
 Take a piece of thick and smooth paper ; and outline on it 
 accurately a space ten inches high by five wide, and, cutting 
 it off so as to leave some half inch of margin all round, arrange 
 it, the narrow side up, on a book or desk sloping at an angle 
 of not less, nor much more, than 25°. 
 
 Put two small teacup-saucers ; and your two pencils — one 
 for supply, and one to draw with ; a glass of water, your ivory 
 palette-knife, and a teaspoon, comfortably beside you, and 
 don’t have any thing else on the table. 
 
 Being forced to content ourselves for the present, with tube 
 colors, I must ask you to be very careful and neat in their use. 
 The aperture, in tubes of the size you are supplied with, is 
 about the eighth of an inch wide, and with the slightest press- 
 ure (to be applied, remember, always at the bottom of the tube, 
 not the sides), you will push out a little boss or round tower 
 of color, which ought not to be more than the eighth of an 
 inch, or its own width, above the top of the tube. Do not 
 rub this on the saucer, but take it neatly off with the edge of 
 your knife, and so put it in the saucer ; and screw the top of 
 your tube nicely on again, and put it back in its place. 
 
 Now put two spoonfuls of water into one saucer, and stir 
 the color well into it with your supply pencil. Then put the 
 same quantity of pure water into the other saucer, and you 
 are ready to begin. 
 
 14. Take first a pencilful of quite pure water, and lead it 
 along the top of your five-inch space, leaving a little ridge of 
 of w r ater all the way. Then, from your supply saucer, put a 
 pencilful of the mixed color into the pure water ; stir that 
 up well with your pencil, and lead the ridge of pure water 
 down with that delicatest tint, about half an inch, leaving an- 
 
122 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 other ridge all along. Then another pencilful from the 
 supply saucer into the other, mixed always thoroughly for 
 the next half inch. Do not put the supply pencil into the 
 diluted tint, but empty it by pressing on the side of the sau- 
 cer, so that you may not dilute the supply tint, which you are 
 to keep, through the course of each wash, quite evenly mixed. 
 With twenty, or one or two less than twenty, replenisliings, 
 and therefore darkenings, of the tint you are painting with, 
 you will reach the bottom of the ten-inch space ; which 
 ought then already to present a quite visible gradation from 
 white to a very pale gray. 
 
 15. Leaving this to dry thoroughly, pour the diluted 
 tint you have been painting with away ; wash out the saucer ; 
 put in another supply of clear water ; and you are ready to 
 lay the second coat. The process being entirely mechanical, 
 you can read, or do anything else you like, while the suc- 
 cessive coats are drying ; and each will take longer than the 
 last. But don’t go on with other drawings, unless indeed you 
 like to tint two pieces of paper at once, and so waste less color 
 — using the diluted tint of the first for the supply of tint 
 of the second, and so gaining a still more delicate gradation. 
 And whether you do this or not, at every third coat pour the 
 diluted tint back into the supply one, which will else be too 
 soon exhausted. By the time you have laid on ten or twelve 
 tints, you will begin to see such faults and unevenness as may 
 at first be inevitable ; but also you will begin to feel what is 
 meant by gradation, and to what extent the delicacy of it 
 may be carried. Proceed with the work, however, until the 
 color is so far diluted as to be ineffective ; and do not rest 
 satisfied till you are familiar enough with this process to 
 secure a gradated tint of even and pleasant tone. As you feel 
 more command of the pencil, you may use less water with the 
 color, and at last get your result in three or four instead of 
 twenty washes. 
 
 16. Next, divide the entire space into two equal squares, 
 by a delicate lead line across it, placing it upright in the same 
 manner ; and begin your gradation with the same care, but 
 replenishing the tint in the pure water from the dark fint in 
 
OF LIGHT AND SHADE. 
 
 123 
 
 as narrow spaces as you can, till you get down the uppermost 
 square. As soon as you pass the dividing line between the 
 two squares, continue with the same tint, without darkening 
 it, to the bottom, so that the lower square may be all of one 
 tone. Kepeating this operation three or four times, you will 
 have the entire space divided into two equal portions, of 
 which the upper one will be gradated from white into a deli- 
 cate gray, and the lower covered with a consistent shade of 
 that gray in its ultimate strength. This is to be your stand- 
 ard for the first shading of all white objects ; their dark sides 
 being of an uniform tint of delicate gray, and their light sides 
 modelled in tones which are always paler in comparison with it. 
 
 17. Having practised in this cautious manner long enough 
 to obtain some ease in distribution of the tint, and some feel- 
 ing of the delicacy of a true gradation, you may proceed to 
 the more difficult, but wonderfully useful and comprehensive 
 exercise, necessary for the copying of Plate X. 
 
 Draw first, with pencil-compasses, the two circles with 
 inch radius, and in the lower one trace lightly the limit of its 
 crescent of shade, on the 22nd meridian, considering the verti- 
 cal meridian that of Fesole. Then mix your tint of black with 
 two teaspoonfuls of water, very thoroughly, and with that tint 
 wash in at once the whole background and shaded spaces. 
 You need not care for precision on their inner edges, but the 
 tint must be exactly brought up to the circumference of the 
 circles on their light sides. 
 
 18. After the tint is thoroughly dry, begin with the circle 
 divided in half, and taking a very little pure water to begin 
 with, and adding, with a fine pencil, a little of the dark tint 
 as you work down, (putting the light part upwards on your 
 desk), gradate, as you best can, to the shadow edge, over 
 which you are to carry whatever tint you have then in your 
 pencil, flat and unchanged, to the other side of the circle, 
 darkening equally the entire dark side. 
 
 In the lower circle, the point of highest light is at the equa- 
 tor on the 4th meridian. The two balls therefore, as shaded 
 in the plate, represent two views of the revolving earth, with 
 the sun over the equator. The lower figure gives what is 
 
124 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 also the light and shade of the moon in her third quarter. I 
 do not choose to represent the part of the earth under the 
 night as black : the student may suppose it to be in full 
 moonlight if he likes ; but the use of the figure is mainly to 
 show the real, and narrow, extent of resources at his disposal, 
 in a light and shadow drawing executed without acccidental 
 reflected lights, and under no vulgar force of shadow. With 
 no greater depths of tint than those here given, he must hold 
 it his skill to render every character of contour in beautiful 
 forms ; and teach himself to be more interested in them, as 
 displayed by that primal sincerity of light, than when seen 
 under any accidental effects, or violent contrasts. 
 
 19. The tint prepared with two teaspoonfuls of water, 
 though quite as dark as the student will be able at first to 
 manage, (or as any master can manage in complex masses,) 
 will not, when dry, give shadow more than half the depth of 
 that used for the background in the plate. It must there- 
 fore be twice laid ; the skill of the pencil management will be 
 tested by the consistency of the two outlines. At the best, 
 they are sure to need a little retouching ; and where accu- 
 rately coincident, their line will be hard, and never so pleas- 
 ant as that left at the edge of a first wash. I wish the student 
 especially to notice this, for in actual drawing, it is a matter 
 of absolute necessity never to reduplicate a wash at the same 
 edge. All beautiful execution depends on giving the outline 
 truly with the first tint laid as dark as it is required. This is 
 always possible with well-prepared colors in a master’s 
 hand ; yet never without so much haste as must, unless the 
 mastery be indeed consummate, leave something to be for- 
 given, of inaccuracy, or something to be grateful for, in the 
 rewarding chance which always favors a rightness in method. 
 The most distinctive charm of water-color, as opposed to oil, 
 is in the visible merit of this hasty skill, and the entertaining 
 concurrence of accidental felicity. In the more deliberate lay- 
 ing of oil-color, though Fortune always takes her due share, 
 it is not recognizable by the spectator, and is held to the ut- 
 most in control by the resolution of the workman, when hia 
 mind is wise, and his piece complete. 
 
OF LIGHT AND SHADE. 
 
 125 
 
 20. But the student must not be discouraged by the diffi- 
 culty he will find at first in reaching anything like evenness 
 or serenity of effect in such studies. Neither these, nor any 
 other of the exercises in this book, are c elementary,’ in the 
 sense of easy or initial ; but a*s involving the first elements of 
 all graphic Law. And this first study of light and shade in 
 Plate X. does indeed involve one law of quite final impor- 
 tance ; but which may nevertheless be simply expressed, as 
 most essential matters may be, by people who wish it. 
 
 < 
 
 
 
 — * 
 
 <— * 
 
 
 
 4 — — 
 
 21. The gradation which you have produced on your first 
 ten-inch space is, if successful, consistent in its increase of 
 depth, from top to bottom. But you may see that in Plate 
 X. the light is diffused widely and brightly round the foci, 
 and fades with accelerated diminution towards the limit of 
 darkness. By examining the law under which this decrease 
 of light takes place on a spherical (or cylindrical *) surface, 
 we may deduce a general law, regulating the light in impact 
 on any curved surface whatever. 
 
 In all analysis of curved lines it is necessary first to regard 
 them as made up of a series of right lines, afterwards consid- 
 ering these right lines as infinitely short. 
 
 * In the upper figure, the actual gradation is the same as that which 
 would be true for a cylinder. 
 
 P 
 
126 
 
 THE LAWS OF FE80LE. 
 
 22. Let therefore the line a b, Figure 31, represent any 
 plane surface, or an infinitely small portion of any curved 
 surface, on which the light, coming in the direction of the 
 arrows, strikes at a given angle bac. 
 
 Draw from b, bp perpendicular to a c, and make b p equal 
 to A B. 
 
 Then the quantity of light, or number of rays of light, sup- 
 posing each arrow to represent a ray, which the so inclined 
 surface a b can receive, is to the quantity it could receive if it 
 were perpendicular to the light, (at p b,) as the line b c is to 
 
 the line p b, which is 
 equal to the line ab. 
 
 Therefore if we di- 
 vide the line a b, from 
 a to b, into any num- 
 ber of degrees, repre- 
 senting the gradual 
 y diminution of light, 
 uniformly, from any 
 given maximum at a 
 to any given mini* 
 mum at b, and draw 
 the circle c t with the 
 radius b c, cutting a 
 b in t, the point t, on 
 the scale of shade so 
 gradated, will mark the proper tint of shade for the entire 
 surface a b. 
 
 This general law, therefore, determines the tint of shade, in 
 any given scale of shade, for the point of any curved surface 
 to which the line a b is a tangent. 
 
 23. Applying this general law to the light and shade of a 
 sphere, let the light, coming in the direction l v, Figure 32, 
 strike the surface of the quadrant pa at the point v, to which 
 the line x y is a tangent, b being the centre of the sphere* 
 join b v, and from a draw a c parallel to x y, and therefore 
 perpendicular to b v. Produce l v to m, and draw the arc of 
 circle c t, cutting a b in t. 
 
 x 
 
OF LIGHT AFD SHADE. 
 
 127 
 
 Then, by the law last enunciated, if we divide the line a b 
 uniformly into any number of degrees of shade from the 
 maximum of light at a to its minimum at b, the point t will 
 indicate, on that scale, the proper shade for the point of 
 sphere-surface, v. And because b v equals b a, and the angle 
 b v m equals the angle a b c, . \ m v equals b t ; and the degree 
 of shade may at once be indicated for any point on the surface 
 a p by letting fall a vertical from it on the uniformly gradated 
 scale a b. 
 
 24. Dividing that scale into ninety degrees from A to B, 
 we find that, on the globe, when the sun is over the equator, 
 the Christian circle, though in 60 degrees north latitude, re- 
 ceives yet 45 degrees of light, or half the quantity of the 
 equatorial light, and that, approximately,* the losses of the 
 strength of light in the climates of the five circles are,™ 
 
 St James’s, 
 
 Arabian, 
 
 Venetian, 
 
 Christian, 
 
 Fern, 
 
 3 degrees loss, leaving 87 of light 
 12 degrees loss, leaving 78 of light. 
 26 degrees loss, leaving 64 of light 
 45 degrees loss, leaving 45 of light 
 67 degrees loss, leaving 23 of light 
 
 But it is always to be remembered that in the real passing 
 of day into night, the transition from the final degree of 
 shadow on the gradated curvature of the illuminated hemi- 
 sphere, to night itself, is a much greater one than it is our 
 power to express by any scale : so that our 90 measured de- 
 grees do not carry us even into twilight, but only to the point 
 and moment of sunset. They express, however, with approxi- 
 mate accuracy, the relation of the terrestrial climate so far as 
 it depends on solar influences only, and the consequently 
 relative power of light on vegetation and animal life, taking 
 the single numerical expression as a mean for the balanced 
 effect of summer and winter, j 
 
 * Calculated to two places of decimals by Mr. Macdonald, the Master 
 of my Oxford schools, the fractional values are 3.07, 12.06, 26.36, and 
 
 66.71, giving the regulated diminishing intervals 8.99, 4.30, 18.64, 
 
 21.71, and 23.29, or, roughly, 9, 14, 18, 21, 23. 
 
 f The difference in effective heat between rays falling at large os 
 
128 
 
 TEE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 25. Without encumbering himself, in practice, by any at- 
 tempts to apply this, or any similar geometric formulae, during 
 the progress of his work, (in which the eye, memory, and 
 imagination are to be his first, and final, instruments,) the 
 student is yet to test his results severely by the absolute 
 decrees of natural law ; and however these may be prudently 
 relaxed in compliance with the narrowness of his means, or 
 concession to the feebleness of his powers, he is always to re- 
 member that there is indeed a right, and a wrong, attendant 
 on the purpose and act of every touch, firm as the pillars of 
 the earth, measured as the flight of its hours, and lovely as the 
 moral law, from which one jot or tittle shall not pass, till all 
 be fulfilled. 
 
 26. Together with these delicate exercises in neutral tint, 
 the student cannot too early begin practice in laying frank 
 and full touches of every zodiacal color, within stated limits. 
 He may advisably first provide himself with examples of the 
 effects of opposition in color, by drawing the square of the 
 Fern line, measured on his twelve-inch globe, within the 
 square of the Venetian line ; then filling the interior square 
 with any one of the zodiacal colors, and the enclosing space 
 between it and the larger square, with the opponent color : 
 trying also the effect of opposition between dark tints of one 
 color and light tints of the other : each wash to be laid on at 
 once, and resolutely left without retouching. The student 
 will thus gradually gain considerable power of manipulating 
 the pencil, with full color ; recognize more clearly day by 
 day how much he has to gain ; and arrive at many interesting 
 conclusions as to the value and reciprocal power of opposed 
 hues. 
 
 27. All these exercises must, however, be kept in subordi- 
 nation to earnest and uninterrupted practice with the pen- 
 point or the lead ; of which I give two more examples in the 
 present number of Fesole, which, with those already set before 
 the student, Plates V., VI., and VIII., will form a quite suffi- 
 
 small angles, cannot be introduced in this first step of analysis: still less 
 is it necessary to embarrass the young student by any attempt to gen- 
 eralize the courses of the isothermal lines. 
 
1 
 
 Study with the Lead and Single Tint. Leaf of Herb. — Robert. 
 
 Schools of St. George. Elementary Drawing, Plate XI. 
 
OF LIGHT AND SHADE . 
 
 129 
 
 cient code for liis guidance until I can begin the second 
 volume.* 
 
 28. Plate XI. represents, as far as mezzotint easily can, a 
 drawing of the plan and profile of a leaf of wild geranium, 
 made lightly with the lead, and secured by a single washed 
 tint above it. 
 
 Every care is to be given in study of this kind to get the 
 outline as right and as refined as possible. Both shade and 
 color are to be held entirely subordinate ; yet shade is to be 
 easily and swiftly added, in its proper place, and any peculiar 
 local color may be indicated, by way of memorandum, in the 
 guarding tint, without attempting the effect of a colored 
 drawing. Neither is any finish or depth to be sought in the 
 shade. It should rightly indicate the surges or troughs of the 
 leaf, and the course and projection of large ribs, (when the 
 plan drawing is made of the under surface,) but it must not 
 be laboriously completed or pursued. No study of this kind 
 should ever take more than an hour for plan and profile both : 
 but the outline should be accurate to the utmost of the stu- 
 dent’s power, and as delicate as the lead will draw. 
 
 29. Although, in beginning, precise measurements are to 
 be taken of the leafs length and breadth, yet the mistakes in- 
 evitable during execution cannot be easily corrected without 
 some variation in the size ; it is far better to lose the exact 
 measurement than the feeling of the form. Thus my profile 
 is nearly a quarter of an inch too long for the plan, because I 
 could not get the spring of it to my mind in its first propor- 
 tion. The plan may generally be kept to its true scale ; and 
 at all events the measures should be marked for reference 
 within their proper geometrical limits, as in the upper outline, 
 of which I have more to say in another place. 
 
 30. Plate XII. gives example of an equally rapid mode of 
 study when the object is essentially light and shade. Here the 
 ground is a deeply toned gray paper ; the outline is made with 
 stern decision, but without care for subtlety in minor points ; 
 some gradations of shade are rapidly added with the lead, — 
 
 * During the spring I must confine my work wholly to Proserpina. 
 
 9 
 
THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 180 
 
 (BB) ; and finally, the high lights, laid on with extreme care 
 with body-white. Theoretically, the outline, in such a study 
 as this, should always be done first : but practically, I find it 
 needful, with such imperfect skill as I have, to . scrabble in the 
 pencil shadows for some guide to the places of the lights ; 
 and then fasten everything down firmly with the pen outline. 
 Then I complete the shadow as far as needful ; clear the 
 lights with bread first; and then, which is the gist of the 
 whole, lay the high lights with carefullest discipline of their 
 relations. 
 
 Mr. Allen’s very skilful mezzotint ground is more tender 
 and united than the pencil shadow was, in this case ; or usually 
 need be : but the more soft it is the better ; only let no time 
 be lost upon it. 
 
 31. Plate YIII., given in the last number of Fesole, for illus- 
 tration of other matters, represents also the complete methods 
 of wholesome study with the pen and sepia, for advanced ren- 
 dering both of form and chiaroscuro. 
 
 Perfect form never can be given but with color (see above, 
 Chapter YIII. § 22). But the foundational elements of it 
 may be given in a very impressive and useful way by the pen, 
 with any washed tint. In the upper study the pen only is 
 used ; and when the forms are conrplete, no more should be 
 attempted ; for none but a great master can rapidly secure 
 fine form with a tint. But with the pen, thus used, much 
 may be reached by the student in very early stages of his prog- 
 ress. 
 
 32. Observe that in work of this kind, you are not to be 
 careful about the direction or separation of the lines ; but, on 
 the other hand, you are not to slur, scrabble, or endeavor to 
 reach the mysterious qualities of an etching. Use an ordina- 
 rily fine pen-point, well kept down ; and let the gradations be 
 got by the nearness or separation, singleness or crossing of 
 the lines, but not by any faintness in them. 
 
 But if the forms be simple, and there be a variety of local 
 colors which is important in the subject, — as, in the lower 
 study, the paleness of the stamens of the pink in relation to 
 its petals, — use the pen only for fine outline, as in Plate XII.; 
 
Light and Shade with Refusal of Color. 
 
 Scarlet Geranium. 
 
 Petal-yault of 
 
 Schools of St. George. Elementary Drawing, Plate XII. 
 
OF LIGHT AND SHADE. 
 
 131 
 
 and when that is perfectly dry, complete the light and shade 
 with as few washes as possible. 
 
 33. It is also to be noted that a dark background is admis- 
 sible only, in chiaroscuro study, when you intend to refuse all 
 expression of colour, and to consider the object as if it were a 
 piece of sculpture in white marble. To illustrate this point 
 more strongly, I have chosen for the chiaroscuro plate, XII. , 
 a cluster of scarlet geranium ; in which the abstraction of the 
 form from the color brings out conditions of grace and bal- 
 ance in the blossom which the force of the natural color dis- 
 guised. On the other hand, when the rich crimson of the 
 Clarissa flower (Plate VIII.) is to be shown in opposition to 
 the paler green of its stamens, I leave the background pure 
 white. The upper figure in the same plate being studied for 
 form only, admits any darkness of background which may re- 
 lieve the contour on the light side. 
 
 34. The method of study which refuses local color, partly 
 by the apparent dignity and science of it, and partly by the 
 feverish brilliancy of effect induced, in engraving, by leaving 
 ail the lights white, became the preferred method of the 
 schools of the Renaissance, headed by Leonardo : and it was 
 both familiarized and perpetuated by the engravings of Durer 
 and Marc Antonio. It has been extremely mischievous in this 
 supremacy ; but the technical mischief of it is so involved 
 with moral faults proceeding from far other causes, that I must 
 not here attempt its analysis. Every student ought, however, 
 to understand, and sometimes to use, the method ; but all 
 main work is to be with the severest respect to local color, 
 and with pure white background. 
 
 35. Note yet once more. Although for facility of work, 
 wdien form alone is needed, the direction of the pen-stroke is 
 to be disregarded, yet, if texture, or any organic character in 
 the surface of the object, be manifest, the direction or manner 
 of breaking, in the pen touch, may pleasantly comply with 
 such character, and suggest it. The plate of Contorta Pur- 
 purea (VII. in “ Proserpina”) is thus engraved with the double 
 intention of expressing the color of the flower and the texture 
 of the leaf, and may serve for enough example in this particu- 
 
132 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 lar ; but it is always to be remembered that such expedients 
 are only partial and suggestive, and that they must never be 
 allowed to waste time, or distract attention. Perfect rendering 
 of surface can only be given by perfect painting, and in all 
 elementary work the student should hold himself well disen- 
 gaged from serfdom to a particular method. As long as he 
 can get more truths in a given time, by letting his pen-point 
 move one way rather than another, he should let it easily 
 comply with the natural facts, — but let him first be quite 
 sure he sees the facts to be complied with. It is proper to 
 follow the striae of an ophrys leaf with longitudinal touches, 
 but not, as vulgar engravers, to shade a pearl with concentric 
 circles. 
 
 36. Note, finally, that the degree of subtlety in observation 
 and refinement of line which the student gives to these incipi- 
 ent drawings must be regulated in great degree by his own 
 sense and feeling, with due relation to the natural power of 
 his sight : and that his discretion and self-command are to be 
 showm not more in the perseverance of bestowing labor to 
 profit, than in the vigilance for the instant when it should 
 cease, and obedience to the signals for its cessation. The in- 
 creasing pow r er of finish is always a sign of progress ; but the 
 most zealous student must often be content to do little ; and 
 the greatest observe the instant when he can do no more. 
 
 37. The careless and insolent manners of modern art study, 
 (for the most part,) forbid me the dread of over-insistance on 
 minutiae of practice ; but I have not, for such reason, added 
 to the difficulty or delicacy of the exercises given. On the 
 contrary, they are kept, by consistent attention, within the 
 easy reach of healthy youthful hand and sight ; and they are 
 definitely representative of what should properly be done in 
 drawings , as distinguised from the qualities attainable by the 
 consummate line engraver. As an example of wdiat, in that 
 more subtle kind, the human eye and finger can accomplish 
 by severe industry, every town library ought to possess, and 
 make conveniently accessible to its students, the great botani- 
 cal series of the Florae Danicae. The drawings for the num- 
 bers produced before the year 1820 were in better taste, and 
 
OF LIGHT AND SHADE. * 
 
 133 
 
 the engravings more exemplary in manner, than in the sup* 
 plementary numbers lately in course of publication : but the 
 resolute and simple effort for excellence is unfailing through- 
 out ; and for precision and patience of execution, the nine 
 plates, 2744 to 2753, may be safely taken as monumental of 
 the honor, grace, and, in the most solemn sense, majesty, of 
 simple human work,* maintained amidst and against all the 
 bribes, follies, and lasciviousness of the nineteenth century. 
 
 38. Together with these, and other such worthily exe- 
 cuted illustrations of natural history, every public institution 
 should possess several copies of the * Tresor Artistique de la 
 France/ now publishing in Paris. It contains representations, 
 which no mechanical art can be conceived ever likely to 
 excel, of some of the best ornamental designs existing ; with 
 others, (I regret to observe, as yet, much the plurality,) of 
 Renaissance jewellery, by which the foulness and dulness of 
 the most reputed masters of that epoch are illustrated with a 
 force which has not hitherto been possible. The plates, which 
 represent design of the greater ages, more especially those of 
 the Boite d’Evangeliaire of St. Denis, which the brooch and 
 cassette of St. Louis, had better be purchased by those of my 
 students who can afford the cost ; and with these, also, the 
 uncolored plates of the Coffret i\ Bijoux of Anne of Austria, 
 which is exemplary of the best Renaissance wreathen work. 
 The other pieces of sixteenth and seventeenth century toys, 
 given in this publication, are all of them leading examples ot 
 the essential character of Renaissance art, — the pride of Thieves, 
 adorned by the industry of Fools, under the mastership of 
 Satyrs. As accurately representative of these mixtures of betise 
 with abomination, the platter and ewer executed in Germany, 
 as an offering to the Emperor Charles V. on his victory at Tunis, 
 are of very notable value : but a more terrific lesson may be 
 read in the ghastly and senseless Gorgons of the armor of 
 Henry H., if the student of history remember, in relation to 
 
 * With truly noble pride, neither the draughtsman nor the engraver 
 have set their names to the plates. “ We are Men,” they say, “with 
 the hearts and hands of Men. That is all you need know. Our names 
 are nothing to you.” 
 
134 
 
 TEE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 them, the entertainment with which he graced his Queen’s 
 coronation ; and the circumstances of his own death. 
 
 39. The relations between the rich and poor, on which the 
 pomp of this Kenaissance art was founded, may be sufficiently 
 illustrated by two short passages, almost consecutive, in 
 ‘ Evelyn’s Diary ’ : 
 
 “ 11 May (1651). — To the Palace Cardinal, where y e M r . of 
 Ceremonies plac’d me to see y 6 royal masque or opera. The 
 first sceane represented a chariot of singers compos’d of the 
 rarest voices that could be procur’d, representing Cornaro 
 and Temperance ; this was overthrowne by Bacchus and his 
 Kevellers ; the rest consisted of several enteries and pageants 
 of excesse, by all the Elements. A masque representing fire 
 was admirable ; then came a Yenus out of y e clouds. The 
 conclusion was an heaven, whither all ascended. But the 
 glory of the masque was the greate persons performing in it : 
 the French King, his brother the Duke of Anjou, with all the 
 grandees of the Court, the King performing to the admiration 
 of all. The music was 29 violins, vested d Vantiq, but the 
 habits of the masquers were stupendiously rich and glorious. 
 
 * * * * * * * 
 
 “29 January. — I sat out in a coach for Calais, in an exceed- 
 ing hard frost, which had continued some time. We got that 
 night to Beaumont ; 30, to Beauvais ; 31, we found the ways 
 very deepe w th snow, and it was exceeding cold ; din’d at 
 Pois ; lay at Pernee, a miserable cottage of miserable people 
 in a wood, wholly unfurnished, but in a little time we had 
 sorry beds and some provision, w ch they told me, they hid in 
 y e wood for feare of the frontier enemy, the garisons neere 
 them continually plundering what they had. They were often 
 infested with wolves. I cannot remember that I ever saw more 
 miserable creatures.” 
 
 40. It is not, I believe, without the concurrence of the 
 noblest Fors, that I have been compelled, in my reference to 
 this important French series of illustrative art, to lead the 
 student’s attention forward into some of the higher subjects 
 of reflection, which for the most part I reserve for the closing 
 
OF LIGHT AND SHADE. 
 
 135 
 
 volume of the Laws of Fesole. Counting less than most men, 
 what future days may bring or deny to me, I am thankful to 
 be permitted, in the beginning of a New Year of which I once 
 little thought to see the light, to repeat, with all the force of 
 which my mind is yet capable, the lesson I have endeavored 
 to teach through my past life, that this fair Tree Igdrasil of 
 Human Art can only flourish when its dew is Affection ; its 
 air, Devotion ; the rock of its roots, Patience ; and its sub* 
 shine, God. 
 
/ 
 
 ’ 
 
 
 
 
 :! 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
A JOY FOREVER 
 
 (AND ITS PRICE IN THE MARKET) BEING THE SUBSTANCE 
 (WITH ADDITIONS) OF TWO LECTURES ON THE POLITI- 
 CAL ECONOMY OF ART, DELIVERED AT MAN- 
 CHESTER, JULY ioth and 13th, 1857. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The title of this book, — or, more accurately, of its subjects , 
 —for no author was ever less likely than I have lately become, 
 to hope for perennial pleasure to his readers from what has 
 cost himself the most pains, — will be, perhaps, recognised by 
 some as the last clause of the line chosen from Keats by the 
 good folks of Manchester, to be written in letters of gold on 
 the cornice, or Holy rood, of the great Exhibition which in- 
 augurated the career of so many, — since organized, by both 
 foreign governments and our own, to encourage the produc- 
 tion of works of art, which the producing nations, so far 
 from intending to be their “joy for ever,” only hope to sell 
 as soon as possible. Yet the motto was chosen with uncom- 
 prehended felicity : for there never was, nor can be, any es- 
 sential beauty possessed by a work of art, which is not based 
 on the conception of its honoured permanence, and local in- 
 fluence, as a part of appointed and precious furniture, either 
 in the cathedral, the house, or the joyful thoroughfare, of 
 nations which enter their gates with thanksgiving, and their 
 courts with praise. 
 
 “ Their ” courts — or “His” courts; — in the mind of such 
 races, the expressions are synonymous : and the habits of 
 life which recognise the delightfulness, confess also the sa- 
 credness, of homes nested round the seat of a worship un- 
 shaken by insolent theory : themselves founded on an abiding 
 affection for the past, and care for the future ; and approached 
 by paths open only to the activities of honesty, and traversed 
 only by the footsteps of peace. 
 
 The exposition of these truths, to which I have given the 
 chief energy of my own life, will be found in the following 
 
140 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 pages first undertaken systematically and in logical sequence ; 
 and what I have since written on the political influence of the 
 Arts has been little more than the expansion of these first 
 lectures, in the reprint of which not a sentence is omitted or 
 changed. 
 
 The supplementary papers added contain, in briefest form, 
 the aphorisms respecting principles of art-teaching of which 
 the attention I gave to this subject during the continuance 
 of my Professorship at Oxford confirms me in the earnest and 
 contented re-assertion. 
 
 John Buskin. 
 
 Brxntwood, April 29M, 1880, 
 
“A JOY FOR EVER.” 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 THE DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION OF ART, 
 
 A Lecture delivered at Manchester, July 10, 1857. 
 
 Among the various characteristics of the age in which we 
 live, as compared with other ages of this not yet very experi- 
 enced world, one of the most notable appears to me to be the 
 just and wholesome contempt in which we hold poverty. I 
 repeat, the just and wholesome contempt ; though I see that 
 some of my hearers look surprised at the expression. I 
 assure them, I use it in sincerity ; and I should not have ven- 
 tured to ask you to listen to me this evening, unless I had 
 entertained a profound respect for wealth — true wealth, that 
 is to say ; for, of course, we ought to respect neither wealth 
 nor anything else that is false of its kind : and the distinction 
 between real and false wealth is one of the points on which I 
 shall have a few words presently to say to you. But true 
 wealth I hold, as I said, in great honour ; and sympathize, 
 for the most part, with that extraordinary feeling of the pres- 
 ent age which publicly pays this honour to riches. I cannot, 
 however, help noticing how extraordinary it is, and how this 
 epoch of ours differs from all bygone epochs in having no 
 philosophical nor religious worshippers of the ragged godship 
 of poverty. In the classical ages, not only were there people 
 who voluntarily lived in tubs, and who used gravely to main- 
 tain the superiority of tub-life to town-life, but the Greeks 
 and Latins seem to have looked on these eccentric, and I do 
 not scruple to say, absurd people, with as much respect as we 
 
142 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 do upon large capitalists and landed proprietors ; so that 
 really, in those days, no one could be described as purse 
 proud, but only as empty-purse proud. And no less distinct 
 than the honour which those curious Greek people pay to their 
 conceited poor, is the disrespectful manner in which they 
 speak of the rich ; so that one cannot listen long either to 
 
 them, or to the Roman writers who imitated them, without 
 finding oneself entangled in all sorts of plausible absurdities ; 
 hard upon being convinced of the uselessness of collecting that 
 heavy yellow substance which we call gold, and led generally 
 to doubt all the most established maxims of political economy. 
 Nor are matters much better in the middle ages. For the 
 Greeks and Romans contented themselves with mocking at 
 rich people, and constructing merry dialogues between Charon 
 and Diogenes or Menippus, in which the ferrymen and the 
 cynic rejoiced together as they saw kings and rich men com- 
 ing down to the shore of Acheron, in lamenting and lamenta- 
 ble crowds, casting their crowns into the dark waters, and 
 searching, sometimes in vain, for the last coin out of all their 
 treasures that could ever be of use to them. But these Pagan 
 views of the matter were indulgent, compared with those 
 which were held in the middle ages, when wealth seems to 
 have been looked upon by the best of men not only as con- 
 temptible, but as criminal. The purse round the neck is, 
 
 then, one of the principal signs of condemnation in the pic- 
 tured inferno ; and the Spirit of Poverty is reverenced with 
 subjection of heart, and faithfulness of affection, like that of a 
 loyal knight for his lady, or a loyal subject for his queen. 
 And truly, it requires some boldness to quit ourselves of these 
 feelings, and to confess their partiality or their error, which, 
 nevertheless, we are certainly bound to do. For wealth is 
 simply one of the greatest powers which can be entrusted to 
 human hands : a power, not indeed to be envied, because it 
 seldom makes us happy ; but still less to be abdicated or 
 despised ; while, in these days, and in this country, it has 
 become a power all the more notable, in that the possessions of 
 a rich man are not represented, as they used to be, by wedges 
 of gold or coffers of jewels, but by masses of men variously 
 
DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION. 
 
 143 
 
 employed, over whose bodies and minds the wealth, accord- 
 ing to its direction, exercises harmful or helpful influence, and 
 becomes, in that alternative, Mammon either of Unrighteous* 
 ness or of Righteousness. 
 
 Now, it seemed to me that since, in the name you have 
 given to this great gathering of British pictures, you recognise 
 them as Treasures — that is, I suppose, as part and parcel of 
 the real wealth of the country — you might not be uninterested 
 in tracing certain commercial questions connected with this 
 particular form of wealth. Most persons express themselves 
 as surprised at its quantity ; not having known before to what 
 an extent good art had been accumulated in England : and it 
 will, therefore, I should think, be held a worthy subject of 
 consideration, what are the political interests involved in such 
 accumulations ; what kind of labour they represent, and how 
 this labour may in general be applied and economized, so as 
 to produce the richest results. 
 
 Now, you must have patience with me, if in approaching 
 the specialty of this subject, I dw 7 ell a little on certain points 
 of general political science already known or established : for 
 though thus, as I believe, established, some which I shall have 
 occasion to rest arguments on are not yet by any means univer- 
 sally accepted ; and therefore, though I will not lose time in any 
 detailed defence of them, it is necessary that I should distinctly 
 tell you in what form I receive, and wash to argue from them ; 
 and this the more, because there may perhaps be a part of 
 my audience wdio have not interested themselves in political 
 economy, as it bears on ordinary fields of labour, but may yet 
 wish to hear in what way its principles can be applied to Art. 
 I shall, therefore, take leave to trespass on your patience with 
 a few elementary statements in the outset, and with the ex- 
 pression of some general principles, here and there, in the 
 course of our particular inquiry. 
 
 To begin, then, with one of these necessary truisms : all 
 economy, whether of states, households, or individuals, may 
 be defined to be the art of managing labour. The world is 
 so regulated by the laws of Providence, that a man’s labour, 
 well applied, is always amply sufficient to provide him during 
 
144 
 
 A JOT FOR EVER. 
 
 his life with all things needful to him, and not only with those, 
 but with many pleasant objects of luxury ; and yet farther, to 
 procure him large intervals of healthful rest and serviceable 
 leisure. And a nation’s labour, well applied, is in like manner 
 amply sufficient to provide its whole population with good 
 food and comfortable habitation ; and not with those only, 
 but with good education besides, and objects of luxury, 
 art treasures, such as these you have around you noW. But 
 by those same laws of Nature and Providence, if the labour 
 of the nation or of the individual be misapplied, and much 
 more if it be insufficient, — if the nation or man be indolent 
 and unwise, — suffering and want result, exactly in proportion 
 to the indolence and improvidence, — to the refusal of labour, 
 or to the misapplication of it. Wherever you see want, or 
 misery, or degradation, in this world about you, there, be 
 sure, either industry has been wanting, or industry has been 
 in error. It is not accident, it is not Heaven-commanded 
 calamity, it is not the original and inevitable evil of man’s 
 nature, which fill your streets with lamentation, and your 
 graves with prey. It is only that, when there should have 
 been providence, there has been waste ; when there should 
 have been labour, there has been lasciviousness ; and wilful- 
 ness, when there should have been subordination.* 
 
 Now, we have warped the word “ economy ” in our English 
 language into a meaning which it has no business whatever to 
 bear. In our use of it, it constantly signifies merely sparing 
 or saving ; economy of money means saving money — economy 
 of time, sparing time, and so on. But that is a wdiolly bar- 
 barous use of the word — barbarous in a double sense, for it is 
 not English, and it is bad Greek ; barbarous in a treble sense, 
 for it is not English, it is bad Greek, and it is worse sense. 
 Economy no more means saving money than it means spend- 
 ing money. It means, the administration of a house ; its 
 stewardship ; spending or saving that is, whether money or 
 time, or anything else, to the best possible advantage. In 
 the simplest and clearest definition of it, economy, whether 
 
 * Proverbs xiii 23, “ Much food is in the tillage of the poor, but 
 there is that is destroyed for want of judgment,” 
 
DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION. 
 
 145 
 
 public or private, means the wise management of labour ; 
 and it means this mainly in three senses : namely, first, apply - 
 ing your labour rationally ; secondly, preserving its produce 
 carefully ; lastly, distributing its produce seasonably. 
 
 I say first, applying your labour rationally ; that is, so as to 
 obtain the most precious things you can, and the most lasting 
 things, by it : not growing oats in land where you can grow 
 wheat, nor putting fine embroidery on a stuff that will not 
 wear. Secondly, preserving its produce carefully ; that is to 
 say, laying up your wheat wisely in storehouses for the time 
 of famine, and keeping your embroidery watchfully from the 
 moth ; and lastly, distributing its produce seasonably ; that 
 is to say, being able to carry your corn at once to the place 
 where the people are hungry, and your embroideries to the 
 places where they are gay ; so fulfilling in all ways the Wise 
 Man’s description, whether of the queenly housewife or 
 queenly nation : “She risetli while it is yet night, and givetli 
 meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens. She 
 maketh herself coverings of tapestry, her clothing is silk and 
 purple. Strength and honour are in her clothing, and she 
 shall rejoice in time to come.” 
 
 Now, you will observe that in this description of the perfect 
 economist, or mistress of a household, there is a studied ex- 
 pression of the balanced division of her care between the two 
 great objects of utility and splendour ; in her right hand, 
 food and flax, for life and clothing ; in her left hand, the pur- 
 ple and the needlework, for honour and for beauty. All per- 
 fect housewifery or national economy is known by these two 
 divisions ; wherever either is wanting, the economy is imper- 
 fect. If the motive of pomp prevails, and the care of the na- 
 tional economist is directed only to the accumulation of gold, 
 and of pictures, and of silk and marble, you know at once that 
 the time must soon come when all these treasures shall be 
 scattered and blasted in national ruin. If, on the contrary, 
 the element of utility prevails, and the nation disdains to oc- 
 cupy itself in any wise with the arts of beauty or delight, not 
 only a certain quantity of its energy calculated for exercise in 
 those arts alone must be entirely wasted, which is bad econ- 
 
146 
 
 A JOT FOR EVER. 
 
 omy, but also tlae passions connected with the utilities of 
 property become morbidly strong, and a mean lust of accu- 
 mulation, merely for the sake of accumulation, or even of 
 labour, merely for the sake of labour, w 7 ill banish at least the 
 serenity and the morality of life, as completely, and perhaps 
 more ignobly, than even the lavishness of pride, and the light- 
 ness of pleasure. And similarly, and much more visibly, in 
 private and household economy, you may judge always of its 
 perfectness by its fair balance between the use and the pleas- 
 ure of its possessions. You will see the wise cottager’s gar- 
 den trimly divided between its well-set vegetables, and its 
 fragrant flowers ; you will see the good housewife taking 
 pride in her pretty table-cloth, and her glittering shelves, no 
 less than in her well-dressed dish, and her full storeroom ; the 
 care in her countenance will alternate with gaiety ; and though 
 you "will reverence her in her seriousness, you will know her 
 best by her smile. 
 
 Now, as you will have anticipated, I am going to address 
 you, on this and our succeeding evening, chiefly on the sub- 
 ject of that economy which relates rather to the garden than 
 the farm-yard. I shall ask you to consider with me the kind 
 of laws by which we shall best distribute the beds of our na- 
 tional garden, and raise in it the sweetest succession of trees 
 pleasant to the sight, and (in no forbidden sense) to be de- 
 sired to make us wise. But, before proceeding to open this 
 specialty of our subject, let me pause for a few moments to 
 plead w T ith you for the acceptance of that principle of govern- 
 ment or authority which must be at the root of all economy, 
 whether for use or for pleasure. I said, a few minutes ago, 
 that a nation’s labour, well applied, w 7 as amply sufficient to 
 provide its whole population with good food, comfortable 
 clothing, and pleasant luxury. But the good, instant, and 
 constant application is everything. We must not, when our 
 strong hands are thrown out of work, look wildly about for 
 want of something to do with them. If ever we feel that 
 want, it is a sign that all our household is out of order. 
 Fancy a farmer’s wife, to whom one or two of her servants 
 should come at twelve o’clock at noon, crying that they had 
 
DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION. 
 
 147 
 
 got nothing to do ; that they did not know what to do next : 
 and fancy still farther, the said farmer’s wife looking hope- 
 lessly about her rooms and yard, they being all the while con- 
 siderably in disorder, not knowing where to set the spare 
 hand-maidens to work, and at last complaining bitterly that 
 she had been obliged to give them their dinner for nothing. 
 That’s the type of the kind of political economy we practise 
 too often in England. Would you not at once assert of such 
 a mistress that she knew nothing of her duties ? and would 
 you not be certain, if the household were rightly managed, 
 the mistress would be only too glad at any moment to have 
 the help of any number of spare hands ; that she would know 
 in an instant what to set them to ; — in an instant what part 
 of to-morrow’s work might be most serviceably forwarded, 
 what part of next month’s work most wisely provided for, or 
 what new task of some profitable kind undertaken ? and when 
 the evening came, and she dismissed her servants to theii 
 recreation or their rest, or gathered them to the reading 
 round the work-table, under the eaves in the sunset, would 
 you not be sure to find that none of them had been over- 
 tasked by her, just because none had been left idle; that 
 everything had been accomplished because all had been em- 
 ployed ; that the kindness of the mistress had aided her pres- 
 ence of mind, and the slight labour had been entrusted to the 
 weak, and the formidable to the strong ; and that as none 
 had been dishonoured by inactivity, so none had been broken 
 by toil ? 
 
 Now, the precise counterpart of such a household would be 
 seen in a nation in which political economy was rightly under- 
 stood. You complain of the difficulty of finding work for your 
 men. Depend upon it the real difficulty rather is to find men 
 for your work. The serious question for you is not how many 
 you have to feed, but how much you have to do ; it is our in- 
 activity, not our hunger, that ruins us : let us never fear that 
 our servants should have a good appetite — our wealth is in 
 their strength, not in their starvation. Look around this 
 island of yours, and see what you have to do in it. The sea 
 roars against your harbourless cliffs — you have to build the 
 
148 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 breakwater, and dig the port of refuge ; the unclean pestilence 
 ravins in your streets — you have to bring the full stream from 
 the hills, and to send the free winds through the thoroughfare ; 
 the famine blanches your lips and eats away your flesh — you 
 have to dig the moor and dry the marsh, to bid the morass 
 give forth instead of engulphing, and to wring the honey and 
 oil out of the rock. These things, and thousands such, we 
 have to do, and shall have to do constantly, on this great farm 
 of ours ; for do not suppose that it is anything else than that. 
 Precisely the same laws of economy which apply to the culti- 
 vation of a farm or an estate apply to the cultivation of a prov- 
 ince or of an island. Whatever rebuke you would address to 
 the improvident master of an ill-managed patrimony, precisely 
 that rebuke we should address to ourselves, so far as we leave 
 our population in idleness and our country in disorder. What 
 would you say to the lord of an estate who complained to you 
 of his poverty and disabilities, and, when you pointed out to 
 him that his land was half of it overrun with weeds, and that 
 his fences were all in ruin, and that his cattle-sheds were roof- 
 less, and his labourers lying under the hedges faint for want 
 of food, he answered to you that it would ruin him to weed 
 his land or to roof his sheds — that those were too costly oper- 
 ations for him to undertake, and that he knew not how to 
 feed his labourers nor pay them ? Would you not instantly 
 answer, that instead of ruining him to weed his fields, it would 
 save him ; that his inactivity was his destruction, and that to 
 set his labourers to work was to feed them ? Now you may 
 add acre to acre, and estate to estate, as far as you like, but 
 you will never reach a compass of ground which shall escape 
 from the authority of these simple laws. The principles 
 which are right in the administration of a few fields, are right 
 also in the administration of a great country from horizon to 
 horizon : idleness does not cease to be ruinous because it is 
 extensive, nor labour to be productive because it is universal. 
 
 Nay, but you reply, there is one vast difference between the 
 nation’s economy and the private man’s : the farmer has full 
 authority over his labourers ; he can direct them to do what 
 is needed to be done, whether they like it or not ; and he can 
 
DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION. 
 
 149 
 
 turn them away if they refuse to work, or impede others in 
 their working, or are disobedient, or quarrelsome. There is 
 this great difference ; it is precisely this difference on which I 
 wish to fix your attention, for it is precisely this difference 
 which you have to do away with. We know the necessity oi 
 authority in farm, or in fleet, or in army ; but we commonly 
 refuse to admit it in the body of the nation. Let us consider 
 this point a little. 
 
 In the various awkward and unfortunate efforts which the 
 French have made at the development of a social system, 
 they have at least stated one true principle, that of fraternity 
 or brotherhood. Do not be alarmed ; they got all wrong in 
 their experiments, because they quite forgot that this fact of 
 fraternity implied another fact quite as important — that of 
 paternity, or fatherhood. That is to say, if they were to 
 regard the nation as one family, the condition of unity in that 
 family consisted no less in their having a head, or a father, 
 than in their being faithful and affectionate members, or 
 brothers. But we must not forget this, for we have long con- 
 fessed it with our lips, though we refuse to confess it in our 
 lives. For half an hour every Sunday we expect a man in a 
 black gown, supposed to be telling us truth, to address us as 
 brethren, though we should be shocked at the notion of any 
 brotherhood existing among us out of church. And we can 
 hardly read a few sentences on any political subject without 
 running a chance of crossing the phrase “ paternal govern- 
 ment,” though we should be utterly horror-struck at the idea 
 of governments claiming anything like a father’s authority 
 over us. Now, I believe those two formal phrases are in both 
 instances perfectly binding and accurate, and that the image 
 of the farm and its servants which I have hitherto used, as ex- 
 pressing a wholesome national organization, fails only of doing 
 so, not because it is too domestic, but because it is not do- 
 mestic enough ; because the real type of a w T ell-organized 
 nation must be presented, not by a farm cultivated by ser- 
 vants who wrought for hire, and might be turned away if 
 they refused to labour, but by a farm in which the master was 
 a father, and in which all the servants were sons ; which im* 
 
150 
 
 A JOT FOR EVER. 
 
 plied, therefore, in all its regulations, not merely the order of 
 expediency, but the bonds of affection and responsibilities of 
 relationship ; and in which all acts and services were not only 
 to be sweetened by brotherly concord, but to be enforced by 
 fatherly authority.* 
 
 Observe, I do not mean in the least that we ought to place 
 such an authority in the hands of any one person, or of any 
 class, or body of persons. But I do mean to say that as an 
 individual who conducts himself wisely must make laws for 
 himself which at some time or other may appear irksome or 
 injurious, but which, precisely at the time they appear most 
 irksome, it is most necessary he should obey, so a nation 
 which means to conduct itself wisely, must establish authority 
 over itself, vested either in kings, councils, or laws, which it 
 must resolve to obey, even at times when the law or authority 
 appears irksome to the body of the people, or injurious to 
 certain masses of it. And this kind of national law has hitherto 
 been only judicial ; contented, that is, with an endeavour to 
 prevent and punish violence and crime ; but, as we advance 
 in our social knowledge, we shall endeavour to make our 
 government paternal as well as judicial ; that is, to establish 
 such laws and authorities as may at once direct us in our 
 occupations, protect us against our follies, and visit us in our 
 distresses : a government which shall repress dishonesty, as 
 now it punishes theft ; which shall show how the discipline of 
 the masses may be brought to aid the toils of peace, as dis- 
 cipline of the masses has hitherto knit the sinews of battle ; a 
 government which shall have its soldiers of the ploughshare 
 as well as its soldiers of the sword, and which shall distribute 
 more proudly its golden crosses of industry' — golden as the 
 glow of the harvest, than now it grants its bronze crosses of 
 honour — bronzed with the crimson of blood. 
 
 I have not, of course, time to insist on the nature or details 
 of government of this kind ; only I wish to plead for your sev- 
 eral and future consideration of this one truth, that the notion 
 of Discipline and Interference lies at the very root of all hu- 
 man progress or power ; that the “ Let alone ” principle is, in 
 * See note 1st, in Addenda. 
 
DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION, 
 
 151 
 
 all tilings which man has to do with, the principle of death j 
 that it is ruin to him, certain and total, if he lets his land 
 alone — if he lets his fellow-men alone — if he lets his own soul 
 alone. That his whole life, on the contrary, must, if it is 
 healthy life, be continually one of ploughing and pruning, 
 rebuking and helping, governing and punishing ; and that 
 therefore it is only in the concession of some great principle 
 of restraint and interference in national action that he can 
 ever hope to find the secret of protection against national 
 degradation. I believe that the masses have a right to claim 
 education from their government ; but only so far as they ac- 
 knowledge the duty of yielding obedience to their govern- 
 ment. I believe they have a right to claim employment from 
 their governors ; but only so far as they yield to the governor 
 the direction and discipline of their labour ; and it is only so 
 far as they grant to the men whom they may set over them 
 the father’s authority to check the childishness of national 
 fancy, and direct the waywardness of national energy, that 
 they have a right to ask that none of their distresses should 
 be unrelieved, none of their weaknesses unwatclied ; and that 
 no grief, nor nakedness, nor peril should exist for them, 
 against which the father’s hand was not outstretched, or the 
 father’s shield uplifted.* 
 
 Now, I have pressed this upon you at more length than is 
 needful or proportioned to our present purposes of inquiry, 
 
 * Compare Wordsworth’s Essay on the Poor-Law Amendment Bill. I 
 quote one important passage : — “ But, if it be not safe to touch the ab- 
 stract question of man’s right in a social state to help himself even in 
 the last extremity, may we not still contend for the duty of a Christian 
 government, standing in loco parentis towards all its subjects, to make 
 such effectual provision that no one shall be in danger of perishing 
 either through the neglect or harshness of its legislation ? Or, waiving 
 this, is it not indisputable that the claim of the State to the allegiance, 
 involves the protection of the subject ? And, as all rights in one party 
 impose a correlative duty upon another, it follows that the right of the 
 State to require the services of its members, even to the jeoparding of 
 their lives in the common defence, establishes a right in the people (not 
 to be gainsaid by utilitarians and economists) to public support when, 
 from any cause, they may be unable to support themselves.” — (See note 
 2d, in Addenda.) 
 
152 
 
 A JOT FOR EVER. 
 
 because I would not for the first time speak to you on this 
 subject of political economy without clearly stating what I be- 
 lieve to be its first grand principle. But its bearing on the 
 matter in hand is chiefly to prevent you from at once too vio- 
 lentfy dissenting from me when what I may state to you as 
 advisable economy in art appears to imply too much restraint 
 or interference with the freedom of the patron or artist. We 
 are a little apt, though on the whole a prudent nation, to act 
 too immediately on our impulses, even in matters merely com? 
 mercial ; much more in those involving continual appeals to 
 our fancies. How far, therefore, the proposed systems or re- 
 straints may be advisable, it is for you to judge ; only I pray 
 you not to be offended with them merely because they are sys- 
 tems and restraints. Do you at all recollect that interesting 
 passage of Carlyle, in which he compares, in this country and 
 at this day, the understood and commercial value of man and 
 horse ; and in which he wonders that the horse, with its in- 
 ferior brains and its awkward hoofiness, instead of handiness, 
 should be always worth so many tens or scores of pounds in 
 the market, while the man, so far from always commanding 
 his price in the market, would often be thought to confer a 
 service on the community by simply killing himself out of 
 their way ? Well, Carlyle does not answer his own question, 
 because he supposes we shall at once see the answer. The 
 value of the horse consists simply in the fact of your being 
 able to put a bridle on him. The value of the man consists 
 precisely in the same thing. If you can bridle him, or which 
 is better, if he can bridle himself he will be a valuable creat- 
 ure directly. Otherwise, in a commercial point of view, his 
 value is either nothing, or accidental only. Only, of course, 
 the proper bridle of man is not a leathern one ; what kind of 
 texture it is rightly made of, we find from that command, “ Be 
 ye not as the horse or as the mule which have no understand- 
 ing, whose mouths must be held in with bit and bridle. ” You 
 are not to be without the reins, indeed ; but they are to be of 
 another kind ; “I will guide thee with mine Eye.” So the 
 bridle of man is to be the Eye of God ; and if he rejects that 
 guidance, then the next best for him is the horse’s and the 
 
DISCOVERT AND APPLICATION. 
 
 153 
 
 mule’s, which have no understanding ; and if he rejects that, 
 and takes the bit fairly in his teeth, then there is nothing 
 more left for him than the blood that comes out of the city, 
 up to the horsebridles. 
 
 Quitting, however, at last these general and serious laws of 
 government — or rather bringing them down to our own busi* 
 ness in hand — we have to consider three points of discipline 
 in that particular branch of human labour which is concerned, 
 not with procuring of food, but the expression of emotion ; 
 we have to consider respecting art ; first, how to apply our 
 labour to it ; then, how to accumulate or preserve the re- 
 sults of labour ; and then, how to distribute them. But since 
 in art the labour which we have to employ is the labour of a 
 particular class of men — men who have special genius for the 
 business, we have not only to consider how to apply the 
 labour, but first of all how to produce the labourer ; and thus 
 the question in this particular case becomes fourfold : first, 
 how to get your man of genius ; then, how to employ your 
 man of genius ; then, how to accumulate and preserve his 
 ■work in the greatest quantity ; and lastly, how to distribute 
 his w r ork to the best national advantage. Let us take up 
 these questions in succession. 
 
 I. Discovery. — How are we to get our men of genius : that 
 is to say, by what means may we produce among us, at any 
 given time, the greatest quantity of effective art-intellect ? A 
 wide question, you say, involving an account of all the best 
 means of art education. Yes, but I do not mean to go into 
 the consideration of those ; I want only to state the few prin- 
 ciples which lie at the foundation of the matter. Of these, 
 the first is that you have always to find your artist, not to 
 make him ; you can’t manufacture him, an} I. * * * * * 7 more than you 
 
 can manufacture gold. You can find him, and refine him : 
 
 you dig him out as he lies nugget-fashion in the mountain- 
 
 stream ; you bring him home ; and you make him into cur- 
 
 rent coin, or house holdplate, but not one grain of him can 
 
 you originally produce. A certain quantity of art-intellect is 
 
 born annually in every nation, greater or less according to the 
 
154 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 nature and cultivation of the nation, or race of men ; but a 
 perfectly fixed quantity annually, not increasable by one 
 grain. You may lose it, or you may gather it ; you may let 
 it lie loose in the ravine, and buried in the sands, or you may 
 make kings’ thrones of it, and overlay temple gates with it, 
 as you choose ; but the best you can do with it is always 
 merely sifting, melting, hammering, purifying — never creat- 
 ing. And there is another thing notable about this artistical 
 gold ; not only is it limited in quantity, but in use. You 
 need not make thrones or golden gates with it unless you 
 like, but assuredly you can’t do anything else with it. You 
 can’t make knives of it, nor armour, nor railroads. The gold 
 won’t cut you, and it won’t carry you : put it to a mechanical 
 use, and you destroy it at once. It is quite true that in the 
 greatest artists, their proper artistical faculty is united with 
 every other ; and you may make use of the other faculties, 
 and let the artistical one lie dormant. For aught I know 
 there may be two or three Leonardo da Vincis employed at 
 this moment in your harbours and railroads : but you are not 
 employing their Leonardesque or golden faculty there, you 
 are only oppressing and destroying it. And the artistical 
 gift in average men is not joined with others ; your born 
 painter, if you don’t make a painter of him, won’t be a first- 
 rate merchant, or lawyer ; at all events, whatever he turns 
 out, his own special gift is unemployed by you ; and in 
 no wise helps him in that other business. So here you have 
 a certain quantity of a particular sort of intelligence, produced 
 for you annually by providential laws, which you can only 
 make use of by setting it to its own proper work, and which 
 any attempt to use otherwise involves the dead loss of so 
 much human energy. Well then, supposing we wish to em- 
 ploy it, how is it to be best discovered and refined. It is 
 easily enough discovered. To wish to employ it, is to dis- 
 cover it. All that you need is, a school of trial * in every im- 
 portant town, in which those idle farmers’ lads whom their 
 masters never can keep out of mischief, and those stupid 
 tailors’ ’prentices who are always stitching the sleeves in 
 * See note Sd, in Addenda. 
 
DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION 
 
 155 
 
 wrong way upwards, may have a try at this other trade ; 
 only this school of trial must not be entirely regulated 
 by formal laws of art education, but must ultimately be the 
 workshop of a good master painter, who will try the lads with 
 one kind of art and another, till he finds out what they are fit 
 for. Next, after your trial school, you want your easy and 
 secure employment, which is the matter of chief importance. 
 For, even on the present system, the boys who have really in- 
 tense art capacity, generally make painters of themselves ; but 
 then, the best half of their early energy is lost in the battle of 
 life. Before a good painter can get employment, his mind 
 has always been embittered, and his genius distorted. A 
 common mind usually stoops, in plastic chill, to whatever is 
 asked of it, and scrapes or daubs its way complacently into 
 public favour.* But your great men quarrel with you, and 
 you revenge yourselves by starving them for the first half of 
 their lives. Precisely in the degree in which any painter pos- 
 sesses original genius, is at present the increase of moral cer- 
 tainty that during his early years he will have had a hard bat- 
 tle to fight; and that just at the time when his conceptions ought 
 to be full and happy, his temper gentle, and his hopes enthusi- 
 astic — just at that most critical period, his heart is full of 
 anxieties and household cares ; he is chilled by disappoint- 
 ments, and vexed by injustice ; he becomes obstinate in his 
 errors, no less than in his virtues, and the arrows of his aims 
 are blunted, as the reeds of his trust are broken. 
 
 What we mainly want, therefore, is a means of sufficient 
 and unagitated employment : not holding out great prizes for 
 which young painters are to scramble ; but furnishing all with 
 adequate support, and opportunity to display such power as 
 they possess without rejection or mortification. I need not 
 say that the best field of labour of this kind would be pre- 
 sented by the constant progress of public works involving- 
 various decorations ; and we will presently examine what 
 kind of public works may thus, advantageously for the nation, 
 be in constant progress. But a more important matter even 
 than this of steady employment, is the kind of criticism with 
 * See note 4th, in Addenda. 
 
156 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 which you, the public, receive the works of the young men 
 submitted to you. You may do much harm by indiscreet 
 praise and by indiscreet blame ; but remember, the chief 
 harm is always done by blame. It stands to reason that a 
 young man’s work cannot be perfect. It must be more or less 
 ignorant ; it must be more or less feeble ; it is likely that it 
 may be more or less experimental, and if experimental, here 
 and there mistaken. If, therefore, you allow yourself to 
 launch out into sudden barking at the first faults you see, the 
 probability is that you are abusing the youth for some defect 
 naturally and inevitably belonging to that stage of his prog- 
 ress ; and that you might just as rationally find fault with a 
 child for not being as prudent as a privy councillor, or with a 
 kitten for not being as grave as a cat. But there is one fault 
 which you may be quite sure is unnecessary, and therefore a 
 real and blameable fault : that is haste, involving negligence. 
 Whenever you see that a young man’s work is either bold or 
 slovenly, then you may attack it firmly ; sure of being right. 
 If his work is bold, it is insolent ; repress his insolence : if it is 
 slovenly, it is indolent ; repress his indolence. So long as he 
 works in that dashing or impetuous way, the best hope for 
 him is in your contempt : and it is only by the fact of his seem- 
 ing not to seek your approbation that you may conjecture he 
 deserves it. 
 
 But if he does deserve it, be sure that you give it him, else 
 you not only run a chance of driving him from the right road 
 by want of encouragement, but you deprive yourselves of the 
 happiest privilege you will ever have of rewarding his labour. 
 For it is only the young who can receive much reward from 
 men’s praise : the old when they are great, get too far beyond 
 and above you to care what you think of them. You may urge 
 them then with sympathy, and surround them then with ac- 
 clamation ; but they will doubt your pleasure, and despise 
 your praise. You might have cheered them in their race 
 through the asphodel meadows of their youth ; you might 
 have brought the proud, bright scarlet into their faces, if you 
 had but cried once to them “ Well done,” as they dashed up 
 to the first goal of their early ambition. But now, their pleas- 
 
DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION 
 
 157 
 
 ure is in memory, and their ambition is in heaven. They can 
 be kind to you, but you never more can be kind to them. 
 You may be fed with the fruit and fulness of their old age, 
 but you were as the nipping blight to them in their blossom- 
 ing, and your praise is only as the warm winds of autumn to 
 the dying branches. 
 
 There is one thought still, the saddest of all, bearing on this 
 withholding of early help. It is possible, in some noble na- 
 tures, that the warmth and the affections of childhood may re- 
 main unchilled, though unanswered ; and that the old man’s 
 heart may still be capable of gladness, when the long-withheld 
 sympathy is given at last. But in these noble natures it 
 nearly always happens, that the chief motive of early ambition 
 has not been to give delight to themselves, but to their 
 parents. Every noble youth looks back, as to the chief est joy 
 which this world’s honour ever gave him, to the moment when 
 first he saw his father’s eyes flash with pride, and his mother 
 turn away her head, lest he should take her tears for tears of 
 sorrow. Even the lover’s joy, when some worthiness of his is 
 acknowledged before his mistress, is not so great as that, for 
 it is not so pure — the desire to exalt himself in her eyes mixes 
 with that of giving her delight ; but he does not need to 
 exalt himself in his parents’ eyes : it is with the pure hope of 
 giving them pleasure that he comes to tell them what he has 
 done, or what has been said of him ; and therefore he has a 
 purer pleasure of his own. And this purest and best of re- 
 wards you keep from him if you can : you feed him in his 
 tender youth with ashes and dishonour ; and then you come 
 to him, obsequious, but too late, with your sharp laurel crown, 
 the dew all dried from off its leaves ; and you thrust it into 
 his languid hand, and he looks at you wistfully. Wliat shall 
 he do with it ? What can he do, but go and lay it on his 
 mother’s grave? 
 
 Thus, then, you see that you have to provide for your young 
 men : first, the searching or discovering school ; then the calm 
 employment ; then the justice of praise : one thing more you 
 have to do for them in preparing them for full service — namely, 
 to make, in the noble sense of the word, gentlemen of them / 
 
158 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 that is to say, to take care that their minds receive such train- 
 ing, that in all they paint they shall see and feel the noblest 
 things. I am sorry to say, that of all parts of an artist’s edu- 
 cation this is the most neglected among us ; and that even 
 where the natural taste and feeling of the youth have been 
 pure and true, where there was the right stuff in him to make 
 a gentleman of, you may too frequently discern some jarring 
 vents in his mind, and elements of degradation in his treat- 
 ment of subject, owing to want of gentle training, and of the 
 liberal influence of literature. This is quite visible in our 
 greatest artists, even in men like Turner and Gainsborough ; 
 while in the common grade of our second-rate painters the 
 evil attains a pitch which is far too sadly manifest to need my 
 dwelling upon it. Now, no branch of art economy is more 
 important than that of making the intellect at your disposal 
 pure as well as powerful ; so that it may always gather for 
 you the sweetest and fairest things. The same quantity of 
 labour from the same man’s hand, will, according as you have 
 trained him, produce a lovely and useful work, or a base and 
 hurtful one ; and depend upon it, whatever value it may pos- 
 sess, by reason of the painter’s skill, its chief and final value, 
 to any nation, depends upon its being able to exalt and refine, 
 as well as to please ; and that the picture which most truly 
 deserves the name of an art-treasure, is that which has been 
 painted by a good man. 
 
 You cannot but see how far this would lead, if I were to 
 enlarge upon it. I must take it up as a separate subject some 
 other time : only noticing at present that no money could be 
 better spent by a nation than in providing a liberal and disci- 
 plined education for its painters, as they advance into the 
 critical period of their youth ; and that also, a large part of 
 their power during life depends upon the kind of subjects 
 which you, the public, ask them for, and therefore the kind 
 of thoughts with which you require them to be habitually fa- 
 miliar. I shall have more to say on this head when we come 
 to consider what employment they should have in public 
 buildings. 
 
 There are many other points of nearly as much importance 
 
DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION . 
 
 159 
 
 as these, to be explained with reference to the development 
 of genius ; but I should have to ask you to come and hear six 
 lectures instead of tw~o if I were to go into their detail. For 
 instance, I have not spoken of the way in which you ought to 
 look for those artificers in various manual trades, who, with- 
 out possessing the order of genius which you would desire to 
 devote to higher purposes, yet possess wit, and humour, and 
 sense of colour, and fancy for form — all commercially valuable 
 as quantities of intellect, and all more or less expressible in 
 the lower arts of iron-work, pottery, decorative sculpture, and 
 such like. But these details, interesting as they are, I must 
 commend to your own consideration, or leave for some future 
 inquiry. I want just now only to set the bearings of the en- 
 tire subject broadly before you, with enough of detailed illus- 
 tration to make it intelligible ; and therefore I must quit the 
 first head of it here, and pass to the second, namely, how 
 best to employ the genius we discover. A certain quantity 
 of able hands and heads being placed at our disposal, what 
 shall we most advisably set them upon ? 
 
 II. Application. — There are three main points the economist 
 has to attend to in this. 
 
 First, To set his men to various work. 
 
 Secondly, To easy work. 
 
 Thirdly, To lasting work. 
 
 I shall briefly touch on the first two, for I want to arrest 
 your attention on the last. 
 
 I say first, to various work. Supposing you have two men 
 of equal power as landscape painters— and both of them have 
 an hour at your disposal. You w T ould not set them both to 
 paint the same piece of landscape. You would, of course, 
 rather have two subjects than a repetition of one. 
 
 Well, supposing them sculptors, will not the same rule 
 hold? You naturally conclude at once that it will ; but you 
 will have hard work to convince your modern architects of 
 that. They will put twenty men to work, to carve twenty 
 capitals ; and all shall be the same. If I could show you the 
 architects’ yards in England just now, all open at once, per- 
 
160 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 haps you might see a thousand clever men, all employed in 
 carving the same design. Of the degradation and deathful- 
 ness to the art-intellect of the country involved in such a habit, 
 I have more or less been led to speak before now ; but I have 
 not hitherto marked its definite tendency to increase the price 
 of work, as such. When men are employed continually in 
 carving the same ornaments, they get into a monotonous and 
 methodical habit of labour — precisely correspondent to that 
 in which they would break stones, or paint house-walls. Of 
 course, what they do so constantly, they do easily ; and if you 
 excite them temporarily by an increase of wages you may get 
 much work done by them in a little time. But, unless so 
 stimulated, men condemned to a monotonous exertion, work 
 — and always, by the laws of human nature, must work — only 
 at a tranquil rate, not producing by any means a maximum 
 result in a given time. But if you allow them to vary their de- 
 signs, and thus interest their heads and hearts in what they 
 are doing, you will find them become eager, first, to get their 
 ideas expressed, and then to finish the expression of them ; 
 and the moral energy thus brought to bear on the matter 
 quickens, and therefore cheapens, the production in a most 
 important degree. Sir Thomas Dean, the architect of the 
 new Museum at Oxford, told me, as I passed through Oxford 
 on my way here, that he found that, owing to this cause alone, 
 capitals of various design could be executed cheaper than capi- 
 tals of similar design (the amount of hand labour in each being 
 the same) by about 30 per cent. 
 
 Well, that is the first way, then, in which you will employ 
 your intellect well ; and the simple observance of this plain 
 rule of political economy will effect a noble revolution in your 
 architecture, such as you cannot at present so much as con- 
 ceive. Then the second way in which we are to guard against 
 waste is by setting our men to the easiest, and therefore the 
 quickest, work which will answer the purpose. Marble, for 
 instance, lasts quite as long as granite, and is much softer to 
 work ; therefore, when you get hold of a good sculptor, give 
 him marble to carve — not granite. That, you say, is obvious 
 enough. Yes; but it is not so obvious how much of your 
 
DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION. 
 
 161 
 
 workmen’s time you waste annually in making them cut glass, 
 after it has got hard, when you ought to make them mould it 
 while it is soft. It is not so obvious how much expense you 
 waste in cutting diamonds and rubies, which are the hardest 
 things you can find, into shapes that mean nothing, when the 
 same men might be cutting sandstone and freestone into shapes 
 that mean something. It is not so obvious how much of the 
 artists’ time in Italy you waste, by forcing them to make 
 wretched little pictures for you out of crumbs of stone glued 
 together at enormous cost, when the tenth of the time would 
 make good and noble pictures for you out of water-colour. I 
 could go on giving you almost numberless instances of this 
 great commercial mistake ; but I should only weary and con- 
 fuse you. I therefore commend also this head of our subject 
 to your own meditation, and proceed to the last I named — the 
 last I shall task your patience with to-night. You know we 
 are now considering how to apply our genius ; and we were 
 to do it as economists, in three ways 
 To various work ; 
 
 To easy work ; 
 
 To lasting work. 
 
 This lasting of the -work, then, is our final question. 
 
 Many of you may, perhaps, remember that Michael Angelo 
 was once commanded by Pietro di Medici to mould a statue 
 out of snow, and that he obeyed the command.* I am glad, 
 and we have all reason to be glad, that such a fancy ever 
 came into the mind of the unworthy prince, and for this 
 cause : that Pietro di Medici then gave, at the period of one 
 great epoch of consummate power in the arts, the perfect, ac- 
 curate, and intensest possible type of the greatest error which 
 nations and princes can commit, respecting the power of 
 genius entrusted to their guidance. You had there, observe, 
 the strongest genius in the most perfect obedience ; capable 
 of iron independence, yet wholly submissive to the patron’s 
 will ; at once the most highly accomplished and the most 
 original, capable of doing as much as man could do, in any 
 direction that man could ask. And its governor, and guide, 
 * See tlie noble passage on this tradition in “Casa Guidi Windows.” 
 
162 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 and patron sets it to build a statue in snow — to put itself into 
 the service of annihilation — to make a cloud of itself, and pass 
 away from the earth. 
 
 Now this, so precisely and completely done by Pietro di 
 Medici, is what we are all doing, exactly in the degree in 
 which w T e direct the genius under our patronage to work in 
 more or less perishable materials. So far as we induce paint- 
 ers to work in fading colours, or architects to build with im- 
 perfect structure, or in any other way consult only immediate 
 ease and cheapness in the production of what we want, to the 
 exclusion of provident thought as to its permanence and ser- 
 viceableness in after ages ; so far we are forcing our Michael 
 Angelos to carve in snow. The first duty of the economist in 
 art is, to see that no intellect shall thus glitter merely in the 
 manner of hoar-frost ; but that it shall be well vitrified, like a 
 painted window, and shall be set so between shafts of stone 
 and bands of iron, that it shall bear the sunshine upon it, and 
 send the sunshine through it, from generation to generation. 
 
 I can conceive, however, some political economist to interrupt 
 me here, and say, “If you make your art -wear too well, you 
 will soon have too much of it ; you will throw your artists 
 quite out of work. Better allow for a little wholesome evan- 
 escence — beneficent destruction : let each ago provide art for 
 itself, or wo shall soon have so many good pictures that wo 
 shall not know what to do with them.” 
 
 Remember, my dear hearers, who are thus thinking, that 
 political economy, like every other subject, cannot be dealt 
 with effectively if wo try to solve two questions at a time 
 instead of one. It is one question, how to get plenty of a 
 thing ; and another, whether plenty of it will be good for us. 
 Consider these two matters separately ; never confuse your- 
 self by interweaving one with the other. It is one question, 
 how to treat your fields so as to get a good harvest ; another, 
 whether you wish to have a good harvest, or would rather like 
 to keep up the price of corn. It is one question, how to graft 
 your trees so as to grow most apples ; and quite another, 
 whether having such a heap of apples in the storeroom will 
 not make them all rot. 
 
DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION 
 
 163 
 
 Now, therefore, that we are talking only about grafting and 
 growing, pray do not vex yourselves with thinking what you 
 are to do with the pippins. It may be desirable for us to 
 have much art, or little — we will examine that by and by ; 
 but just now, let us keep to the simple consideration how to 
 get plenty of good art if we want it. Perhaps it might be 
 just as well that a man of moderate income should be able to 
 possess a good picture, as that any work of real merit should 
 cost 500/. or 1000/. ; at all events, it is certainly one of the 
 branches of political economy to ascertain how, if we like, we 
 can get things in quantities — plenty of corn, plenty of wine, 
 plenty of gold, or plenty of pictures. 
 
 It has just been said, that the first great secret is to pro- 
 duce work that will last. Now, the conditions of work lasting 
 are twofold : it must not only be in materials that will last, 
 but it must be itself of a quality that will last — it must be 
 good enough to bear the test of time. If it is not good, we 
 shall tire of it quickly, and throw it aside — we shall have no 
 pleasure in the accumulation of it. So that the first question 
 of a good art-economist respecting any work is, Will it lose its 
 flavour by keeping? It may be very amusing now, and look 
 much like a work of genius. But what will be its value a 
 hundred years hence ? 
 
 You cannot always ascertain this. You may get what you 
 fancy to be work of the best quality, and yet find to your as- 
 tonishment that it won’t keep. But of one thing you may be 
 sure, that art which is produced hastily will also perish hastily ; 
 and that what is cheapest to you now, is likely to be dearest 
 in the end. 
 
 I am sorry to say, the great tendency of this age is to ex- 
 pend its genius in perishable art of this kind, as if it were a 
 triumph to burn its thoughts away in bonfires. There is a 
 vast quantity of intellect and of labour consumed annually in 
 our cheap illustrated publications ; you triumph in them ; and 
 you think it so grand a thing to get so many woodcuts for a 
 penny. Why, woodcuts, penny and all, are as much lost to 
 you as if you had invested your money in gossamer. More 
 lost, for the gossamer could only tickle your face, and glitter 
 
164 
 
 A JOT FOR EVER. 
 
 in your eyes ; it could not catch your feet and trip you up ; 
 but the bad art can, and does ; for you can’t like good wood- 
 cuts as long as you look at the bad ones. If we were at this 
 moment to come across a Titian woodcut, or a Durer wood- 
 cut, we should not like it — those of us at least who are accus- 
 tomed to the cheap work of the day. We don’t like, and can’t 
 like, that long ; but when we are tired of one bad cheap thing, 
 we throw it aside and buy another bad cheap thing ; and so 
 keep looking at bad things all our lives. Now, the very men 
 who do all that quick bad work for us are capable of doing 
 perfect work. Only, perfect work can’t be hurried, and there- 
 fore it can’t be cheap beyond a certain point. But suppose you 
 pay twelve times as much as you do now, and you have one 
 woodcut for a shilling instead of twelve ; and the one woodcut 
 for a shilling is as good as art can be, so that you will never 
 tire of looking at it ; and is struck on good paper with good 
 ink, so that you will never wear it out by handling it ; while 
 you are sick of your penny each cuts by the end of the week 
 and have torn them mostly in half too. Isn’t your shilling’s 
 worth the best bargain ? 
 
 It is not, however, only in getting prints or woodcuts of the 
 best kind that you will practise economy. There is a certain 
 quality about an original drawing which you cannot get in a 
 woodcut, and the best part of the genius of any man is only 
 expressible in original work, whether with pen and ink — pen- 
 cil or colours. This is not always the case ; but in general 
 the best men are those who can only express themselves on 
 paper or canvas : and you will, therefore, in the long run, 
 get most for your money by buying original work ; proceed- 
 ing on the principle already laid down, that the best is likely 
 to be the cheapest in the end. Of course, original work can- 
 not be produced under a certain cost. - If you w’ant a man to 
 make you a dravvdng which takes him six days, you must, at 
 all events, keep him for six days in brekd and water, fire and 
 lodging ; that is the lowest price at which he can do it for 
 you, but that is not very dear : and the best bargain which 
 can possibly be made honestly in art — the very ideal of a 
 cheap purchase to the purchaser — is the original work of a 
 
DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION. 
 
 165 
 
 great man fed for as many days as are necessary on bread and 
 water, or perhaps we may say with as many onions as will 
 keep him in good humour. That is the way by which you 
 will always get most for your money ; no mechanical mul- 
 tiplication or ingenuity of commercial arrangements will ever 
 get you a better penny’s worth of art than that. 
 
 Without, however, pushing our calculations quite to this 
 prison-discipline extreme, we may lay it down as a rule in art- 
 economy, that original work is, on the whole, cheapest and 
 best worth having. But precisely in proportion to the value 
 of it as a production, becomes the importance of having it 
 executed in permanent materials. And here w~e come to note 
 the second main error of the day, that we not only ask our 
 workmen for bad art, but we make them put it into bad sub- 
 stance. We have, for example, put a great quantity of genius, 
 within the last twenty years, into water-colour drawing, and 
 we have done this with the most reckless disregard whether 
 either the colours or the paper will stand. In most instances, 
 neither will. By accident, it may happen that the colours in 
 a given drawing have been of good quality, and its paper un- 
 injured by chemical processes. But you take not the least 
 care to ensure these being so ; I have myself seen the most 
 destructive changes take place in water-colour drawings with- 
 in twenty years after they were painted ; and from all I can 
 gather respecting the recklessness of modern paper manufact- 
 ure, my belief is, that though you may still handle an Albert 
 Barer engraving, two hundred years old, fearlessly, not one- 
 liaif of that time will have passed over your modern water- 
 colours, before most of them will be reduced to mere white 
 or brown rags ; and your descendants, Witching them con- 
 temptuously into fragments between finger and thumb, will 
 mutter against you, half- in scorn and half in anger, “ Those 
 wretched nineteenth century people ! they kept vapouring and 
 fuming about the w T orld, doing what they called business, and 
 they couldn’t make a sheet of paper that wasn’t rotten.” And 
 note that this is no unimportant portion of your art economy 
 at this time. Your water-colour painters are becoming every 
 day capable of expressing greater and better things ; and 
 
1 66 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 their material is especially adapted to tlie turn of your best 
 artists’ minds. The value which you could accumulate in 
 work of this kind would soon become a most important item 
 in the national art-wealth, if only you would take the little 
 pains necessary to secure its permanence. I am inclined to 
 think, myself, that water-colour ought not to be used on paper 
 at all, but only on vellum, and then, if properly taken care of, 
 the drawing wouj^l be almost imperishable. Still, paper is a 
 much more convenient material for rapid work ; and it is an 
 infinite absurdity not to secure the goodness of its quality, 
 when we could do so without the slightest trouble. Among 
 the many favours which I am going to ask from our paternal 
 government when w r e get it, will be that it will supply its 
 little boys with good paper. You have nothing to do but to 
 let the government establish a paper manufactory, under the 
 superintendence of any of our leading chemists, who should 
 be answerable for the safety and completeness of all the pro- 
 cesses of the manufacture. The government stamp on the 
 corner of your sheet of drawing-paper, made in the perfect 
 way, should cost you a shilling, which would add something 
 to the revenue ; and when you bought a water-colour drawing 
 for fifty or a hundred guineas, you would have merely to look 
 in the corner for your stamp, and pay your extra shilling for 
 the security that your hundred guineas were given really for 
 a drawing, and not for a coloured rag. There need be no 
 monopoly or restriction in the matter ; let the paper manu- 
 facturers compete with the government, and if people like to 
 save their shilling, and take their chance, let them ; only, the 
 artist and purchaser might then be sure of good material, if 
 they liked, and now they cannot be. 
 
 I should like also to have a government colour manufactory ; 
 though that is not so necessary, as the quality of colour is 
 more within the artist’s power of testing, and I have no doubt 
 that any painter may get permanent colour from the respect- 
 able manufacturers, if he chooses. I will not attempt to fol- 
 low the subject out at all as it respects architecture, and our 
 methods of modern building ; respecting which I have had 
 occasion to speak before now. 
 
DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION. 
 
 167 
 
 But I cannot pass without some brief notice our habit — 
 continually, as it seems to me, gaining strength — of putting 
 a large quantity of thought and work, annually, into things 
 which are either in their nature necessarily perishable, as 
 dress ; or else into compliances with the fashion of the day, 
 into things not necessarily perishable, as plate. I am afraid 
 almost the first idea of a young rich couple setting up house 
 in London, is, that they must have new plate. Their father’s 
 plate may be very handsome, but the fashion is changed, 
 They will have a new service from the leading manufacturer, 
 and the old plate, except a few apostle spoons, and a cup 
 which Charles the Second drank a health in to their pretty an- 
 cestress, is sent to be melted down, and made up with new flour- 
 ishes and fresh lustre. Now, so long as this is the case — so 
 long, observe, as fashion has influence on the manufacture of 
 plate — so long you cannot have a goldsmith's art in this country. 
 Do you suppose any workman worthy the name will put his 
 brains into a cup or an urn, which he knows is to go to the 
 melting pot in half a score years ? He will not ; you don’t 
 ask or expect it of him. You ask of him nothing but a little 
 quick handicraft — a clever twist of a handle here, and a foot 
 there, a convolvulus from the newest school of design, a 
 pheasant from Landseer’s game cards ; a couple of senti- 
 mental figures for supporters, in the style of the signs of in- 
 surance offices, then a clever touch with the burnisher, and 
 there’s your epergue, the admiration of all the footmen at the 
 w T edding-breakfast, and the torment of some unfortunate 
 youth who cannot see the pretty girl opposite to him, through 
 its tyrannous branches. 
 
 But you don’t suppose that that’s goldsmith’s work ? Gold- 
 smith’s work is made to last, and made with the men’s whole 
 heart and soul in it ; true goldsmith’s work, when it exists, is 
 generally the means of education of the greatest painters and 
 sculptors of the day. Francia was a goldsmith ; Francia was 
 not his own name, but that of his master, the jeweller ; and 
 he signed his pictures almost always, “ Francia, the gold- 
 smith,” for love of his master ; Ghirlandajo w^as a goldsmith, 
 and was the master of Michael Angelo ; Verrocchio was a 
 
168 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 goldsmith, and was the master of Leonardo da Vinci. Ghi- 
 berti was a goldsmith, and beat out the bronze gates which 
 Michael Angelo said might serve for gates of Paradise.* But 
 if ever you want work like theirs again, you must keep it, 
 though it should have the misfortune to become old fashioned. 
 You must not break it up, nor melt it any more. There is no 
 economy in that ; you could not easily waste intellect more 
 grievously. Nature may melt her goldsmith’s work at every 
 sunset if she chooses ; and beat it out into chased bars again 
 at every sunrise ; but you must not. The way to have a 
 truly noble service of plate, is to keep adding to it, not melt- 
 ing it. At every marriage, and at every birth, get a new 
 piece of gold or silver if you will, but with noble workman- 
 ship on it, done for all time, and put it among your treas- 
 ures ; that is one of the chief things which gold was made for, 
 and made incorruptible for. When we know a little more of 
 political economy, we shall find that none but partially savage 
 nations need, imperatively, gold for their currency ; f but gold 
 has been given us, among other things, that we might put 
 beautiful work into its imperishable splendour, and that the 
 artists who have the most wilful fancies may have a material 
 which will drag out, and beat out, as their dreams require, and 
 will hold itself together with fantastic tenacity, whatever rare 
 and delicate service they set it upon. 
 
 So here is one branch of decorative art in which rich people 
 may indulge themselves unselfishly ; if they ask for good art 
 in it, they may be sure in buying gold and silver plate that 
 they are enforcing useful education on young artists. But 
 there is another branch of decorative art in which I am sorry 
 
 * Several reasons may account for the fact that goldsmith’s work is so 
 wholesome for young artists ; first, that it gives great firmness of hand 
 to deal for some time with a solid substance ; again, that it induces cau- 
 tion and steadiness — a boy trusted with chalk and paper suffers an im- 
 mediate temptation to scrawl upon it and play with it, but he dares not 
 scrawl on gold, and he cannot play with it ; and, lastly, that it gives 
 great delicacy and precision of touch to work upon minute forms, and 
 to aim at producing richness and finish of design correspondent to the 
 preciousness of the material. 
 
 \ See note in Addenda on the nature of property. 
 
DISCOVERT AND APPLICATION. 
 
 169 
 
 to say we cannot, at least under existing circumstances, in- 
 dulge ourselves, with the hope of doing good to anybody, I 
 mean the great and subtle art of dress. 
 
 And here I must interrupt the pursuit of our subject for a 
 moment or two, in order to state one of the principles of 
 political economy, which, though it is, I believe, now suffi- 
 ciently understood and asserted by the leading masters of the 
 science, is not yet, I grieve to say, acted upon by the plurality 
 of those who have the management of riches. Whenever we 
 spend money, we of course set people to work : that is the 
 meaning of spending money ; we may, indeed, lose it without 
 employing anybody ; but, whenever we spend it, we set a 
 number of people to work, greater or less, of course, accord- 
 ing to the rate of wages, but, in the long run, proportioned 
 to the sum we spend. Well, your shallow people, because 
 they see that however they spend money they are always em- 
 ploying somebody, and, therefore, doing some good, think 
 and say to themselves, that it is all one how they spend it— 
 that all their apparently selfish luxury is, in reality, unselfish, 
 and is doing just as much good as if they gave all their money 
 away, or perhaps more good ; and I have heard foolish people 
 even declare it as a principle of political economy, that who- 
 ever invented a new want * conferred a good on the com- 
 munity. I have not words strong enough — at least I could 
 not, without shocking you, use the words which would be 
 strong enough — to express my estimate of the absurdity and 
 the mischievousness of this popular fallacy. So, putting a 
 great restraint upon myself, and using no hard words, I will 
 simply try to state the nature of it, and the extent of its in- 
 fluence. 
 
 Granted, that whenever we spend money for whatever pur- 
 pose, we set people to work ; and passing by, for the moment, 
 the question whether the work we set them to is all equally 
 healthy and good for them, we will assume that whenever we 
 spend a guinea we provide an equal number of people with 
 healthy maintenance for a given time. But, by the way in 
 which we spend it, we entirely direct the labour of those peo- 
 * See note 5th in Addenda. 
 
170 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 pie during that given time. We become their masters of 
 mistresses, and we compel them to produce, within a certain 
 period, a certain article. Now, that article may be a useful 
 and lasting one, or it may be a useless and perishable one — it 
 may be one useful to the whole community, or useful only to 
 ourselves. And our selfishness and folly, or our virtue and 
 prudence, are shown, not by our spending money, but by our 
 spending it for the wrong or the right thing ; and we are 
 wise and kind, not in maintaining a certain number of people 
 for a given period, but only in requiring them to produce, 
 during that period, the kind of things which shall be useful to 
 society, instead of those which are only useful to ourselves. 
 
 Thus, for instance : if you are a young lady, and employ a 
 certain number of sempstresses for a given time, in making a 
 given number of simple and serviceable dresses, suppose, 
 seven ; of which you can wear one yourself for half the winter, 
 and give six away to poor girls who have none, you are spend- 
 ing your money unselfishly. But if you employ the same 
 number of sempstresses for the same number of days, in 
 making four, or five, or six beautiful flounces for your ow r n 
 ball-dress — flounces which will clothe no one but yourself, 
 and which you will yourself be unable to wear at more than 
 one ball — you are employing your money selfishly. You have 
 maintained, indeed, in each case, the same number of people ; 
 but in the one case you have directed their labour to the ser- 
 vice of the community ; in the other case you have consumed 
 it wholly upon yourself. I don’t say you are never to do so ; 
 I don’t say you ought not sometimes to think of yourselves 
 only, and to make yourselves as pretty as you can ; only do 
 not confuse coquettishness with benevolence, nor cheat your- 
 selves into thinking that all the finery you can wear is so 
 much put into the hungry mouths of those beneath you : it is 
 not so ; it is what you yourselves, whether you wall or no, 
 must sometimes instinctively feel it to be — it is what those 
 who stand shivering in the streets, forming a line to watch 
 you as you step out of your carriages, Jcnoiu it to be ; those 
 fine dresses do not mean that so much has been put into 
 their mouths, but that so much has been taken out of their 
 
DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION 
 
 171 
 
 mouths. The real politico-economical signification of every 
 one of those beautiful toilettes, is just this ; that you have 
 had a certain number of people put for a certain number of 
 days wholly under your authority, by the sternest of slave- 
 masters, — hunger and cold ; and you have said to them, “ I 
 will feed you, indeed, and clothe you, and give you fuel for so 
 many days ; but during those days you shall work for me 
 only : your little brothers need clothes, but you shall make 
 none for them : your sick friend needs clothes, but you shall 
 make none for her : you yourself will soon need another, and 
 a warmer dress ; but you shall make none for yourself. You 
 shall make nothing but lace and roses for me ; for this fort- 
 night to come, you shall work at the patterns and petals, and 
 then I will crush and consume them away in an hour.” You 
 will perhaps answer — “ It may not be particularly benevolent 
 to do this, and we won’t call it so ; but at any rate we do no 
 wrong in taking their labour when we pay them their wages : 
 if we pay for their work we have a right to it.” No ; — a thou- 
 sand times no. The labour which you have paid for, does in- 
 deed become, by the act of purchase, your own labour : you 
 have bought the hands and the time of those workers ; they 
 are, by right and justice, your own hands, your own time. 
 But, have you a right to spend your own time, to work with 
 your own hands, only for your own advantage ? — much more, 
 when, by purchase, you have invested your own person with 
 the strength of others ; and added to your own life, a part of 
 the life of others ? You may, indeed, to a certain extent, use 
 their labour for your delight ; remember, I am making no 
 general assertions against splendour of dress, or pomp of ac- 
 cessories of life ; on the contrary, there are many reasons for 
 thinking that we do not at present attach enough importance 
 to beautiful dress, as one of the means of influencing general 
 taste and character. But I clo say, that you must weigh the 
 value of what you ask these workers to produce for you in its 
 own distinct balance ; that on its own worthiness or desirable- 
 ness rests the question of your kindness, and not merely on 
 the fact of your having employed people in producing it : and 
 I say farther, that as long as there are cold and nakedness in 
 
172 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 the land around you, so long there can be no question at ah 
 but that splendour of dress is a crime. In due time, when 
 we have nothing better to set people to work at, it may be 
 right to let them make lace and cut jewels ; but, as long as 
 there are any who have no blankets for their beds, and no 
 rags for their bodies, so long it is blanket-making and tailor- 
 ing we must set people to w T ork at — not lace. 
 
 And it would be strange, if at any great assembly which, 
 while it dazzled the young and the thoughtless, beguiled the 
 gentler hearts that beat beneath the embroidery, with a placid 
 sensation of luxurious benevolence — as if by all that they wore 
 in waywardness of beauty, comfort had been first given to the 
 distressed, and aid to the indigent ; it would be strange, I say, 
 if, for a moment, the spirits of Truth and of Terror, -which 
 walk invisibly among the masques of the earth, would lift the 
 dimness from our erring thoughts, and show us how — inas- 
 much as the sums exhausted for that magnificence would 
 have given back the failing breath to many an unsheltered 
 outcast on moor and street — they who wear it have literally 
 entered into partnership with Death ; and dressed themselves 
 in his spoils. Yes, if the veil could be lifted not only from 
 your thoughts, but from your human sight, you would see — the 
 angels do see — on those gay white dresses of yours, strange 
 dark spots, and crimson patterns that you knew not of — spots 
 of the inextinguishable red that all the seas cannot wash away ; 
 yes, and among the pleasant flowers that crown your fair heads, 
 and glow on your wreathed hair, you would see that one weed 
 was always twisted which no one thought of — the grass that 
 grows ou graves. 
 
 It was not, however, this last, this clearest and most appal- 
 ling view of our subject, that I intended to ask you to take 
 this evening ; only it is impossible to set any part of the mat- 
 ter in its true light, until we go to the root of it. But the 
 point which it is our special business to consider is, not 
 whether costliness of dress is contrary to charity ; but whether 
 it is not contrary to mere worldly wisdom : whether, even 
 supposing we knew that splendour of dress did not cost suf- 
 fering or hunger, we might not put the splendour better iz? 
 
DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION. 
 
 173 
 
 other things than dress. And, supposing our mode of dress 
 were really graceful or beautiful, this might be a very doubt- 
 ful question ; for I believe true nobleness of dress to be an 
 important means of education, as it certainly is a necessity to 
 any nation which wishes to possess living art, concerned with 
 portraiture of human nature. No good historical painting 
 ever yet existed, or ever can exist, where the dresses of the 
 people of the time are not beautiful : and had it not been for 
 the lovely and fantastic dressing of the 13tli to the 16th cen- 
 turies, neither French, nor Florentine, nor Venetian art could 
 have risen to anything like the rank it reached. Still, even 
 then, the best dressing was never the costliest ; and its effect 
 depended much more on its beautiful and, in early times 
 modest, arrangement, and on the simple and lovely masses of 
 its colour, than on gorgeousness of clasp or embroidery. 
 Whether we can ever return to any of those more perfect 
 types of form is questionable ; but there can be no question, 
 that all the money we spend on the forms of dress at present 
 worn, is, so far as any good purpose is concerned, wholly lost. 
 Mind, in saying this, I reckon among good purposes the pur- 
 pose which young ladies are said sometimes to entertain — of 
 being married ; but they would be married quite as soon 
 (and probably to wiser and better husbands) by dressing 
 quietly as by dressing brilliantly ; and I believe it would only 
 be needed to lay fairly and largely before them the real good 
 which might be effected by the sums they spend in toilettes, 
 to make them trust at once only to their bright eyes and 
 braided hair for all the mischief they have a mind to. I wish 
 we could, for once, get the statistics of a London season. 
 There was much complaining talk in Parliament last week of 
 the vast sum the nation has given for the best Paul Veronese 
 in Venice — £14,000 : I wonder what the nation meanwhile 
 has given for its ball-dresses ! Suppose we could see the 
 London milliners’ bills, simply for unnecessary breadths of 
 slip and flounces, from April to July ; I wonder whether 
 £14,000 would cover them. But the breadths of slip and 
 flounces are by this time as much lost and vanished as last 
 year’s snow ; only they have done less good : but the Paul 
 
174 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 Veronese will last for centuries, if we take care of it ; and yet 
 we grumble at the price given for the jjainting, while no one 
 grumbles at the price of pride. 
 
 Time does not permit me to go into any farther illustration 
 of the various modes in which we build our statue out of snow, 
 and waste our labour on things that vanish. I must leave 
 you to follow out the subject for yourselves, as I said I should, 
 and proceed, in our next lecture, to examine the two other 
 branches of our subject, namely, how to accumulate our art, 
 and how to distribute it. But, in closing, as we have been 
 much on the topic of good government, both of ourselves and 
 others, let me just give you one more illustration of what it 
 means, from that old art of which, next evening, I shall try 
 to convince you that the value, both moral and mercantile, is 
 greater than we usually suppose. 
 
 One of the frescoes by Ambrozio Lorenzetti, in the town- 
 hall of Siena, represents, by means of symbolical figures, the 
 principles of Good Civic Government and of Good Govern- 
 ment in general. The figure representing this noble Civic Gov- 
 ernment is enthroned, and surrounded by figures represent- 
 ing the Virtues, variously supporting or administering its 
 authority. Now, observe what work is given to each of these 
 virtues. Three winged ones — Faith, Hope, and Charity — sur- 
 rounded the head of the figure, not in mere compliance with 
 the common and heraldic laws of precedence among Virtues, 
 such as we moderns observe habitually, but with peculiar 
 purpose on the part of the painter. Faith, as thus repre- 
 sented, ruling the thoughts of the Good Governor, does not 
 mean merely religious faith, understood in those times to be 
 necessary to all persons — governed no less than governors — 
 but it means the faith which enables work to be carried out 
 steadily, in spite of adverse appearances and expediences ; the 
 faith in great principles, by "which a civic ruler looks past all 
 the immediate checks and shadows that "would daunt a com- 
 mon man, knowing that what is rightly done will have a right 
 issue, and holding his way in spite of pullings at his cloak and 
 whisperings in his ear, enduring, as having in him a faith 
 which is evidence of things unseen. And Hope, in like man- 
 
DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION. 
 
 175 
 
 ner, is here not the heavenward hope which ought to ani- 
 mate the hearts of all men ; hut she attends upon Good Gov- 
 ernment, to show that all such government is expectant as well 
 as conservative ; that if it ceases to he hopeful of better things, 
 it ceases to he a wise guardian of present things : that it 
 ought never, as long as the world lasts, to he wholly content 
 with any existing state of institution or possession, but to be 
 hopeful still of more wisdom and powder ; not clutching at it 
 restlessly or hastily, hut feeling that its real life consists in 
 steady ascent from high to higher : conservative, indeed, and 
 jealously conservative of old things, hut conservative of them 
 as pillars not as pinnacles — as aids, hut not as Idols ; and 
 hopeful chiefly, and active, in times of national trial or dis- 
 tress, according to those first and notable words describing 
 the queenly nation. “ She riseth, while it is yet night.” And 
 again, the winged Charity which is attendant on Good Gov- 
 ernment has, in this fresco, a peculiar office. Can you guess 
 w r hat ? If you consider the character of contest which so often 
 takes place among kings for their crowns, and the selfish and 
 tyrannous means they commonly take to aggrandize or secure 
 their povrer, you will, perhaps, he surprised to hear that the 
 office of Charity is to crown the King. And yet, if you think 
 of it a little, you will see the beauty of the thought which sets 
 her in this function : since in the first place, all the authority 
 of a good governor should he desired hv him only for the 
 good of his people, so that it is only Love that makes him ac- 
 cept or guard his crown : in the second place, his chief great- 
 ness consists in the exercise of this love, and he is truly to he 
 revered only so far as his acts and thoughts are those of kind- 
 ness ; so that Love is the light of his crowm, as well as the 
 giver of it : lastly, because his strength depends on the affec- 
 tions of his people, and it is only their love which can securely 
 crown him, and for ever. So that Love is the strength of his 
 crown as well as the light of it. 
 
 Then, surrounding the King, or in various obedience to 
 him, appear the dependent virtues, as Fortitude, Temperance, 
 Truth, and other attendant spirits, of all which I cannot now 
 give account, wishing you only to notice the one to whom are en< 
 
176 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 trusted the guidance and administration of the public revenues. 
 Can you guess which it is likely to be ? Charity, you would 
 have thought, should have something to do with the business ; 
 but not so, for she is too hot to attend carefully to it. Pru- 
 dence, perhaps, you think of in the next place. No, she is 
 too timid, and loses opportunities in making up her mind. 
 Can it be Liberality then ? No : Liberality is entrusted with 
 some small sums ; but she is a bad accountant, and is allowed 
 no important place in the exchequer. But the treasures are 
 given in charge to a virtue of which we hear too little in mod- 
 ern times, as distinct from others ; Magnanimity : largeness 
 of heart : not softness or weakness of heart, mind you — but 
 capacity of heart — the great measuring virtue, which weighs 
 in heavenly balances all that may be given, and all that may 
 be gained ; and sees how to do noblest things in noblest 
 ways : which of two goods comprehends and therefore chooses 
 the greatest ; which of two personal sacrifices dares and ac- 
 cepts the largest : which, out of the avenues of beneficence, 
 treads always that which opens farthest into the blue fields of 
 futurity : that character, in fine, which, in those words taken by 
 us at first for the description of a Queen among the nations, 
 looks less to the present power than to the distant promise ; 
 “ Strength and honour are in her clothing, — and she shall re- 
 joice IN TIME TO COME.” 
 
 LECTUBE II. 
 
 THE ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION OF ART. 
 
 Continuation of the previous Lecture ; delivered July 13, 1857. 
 
 The heads of our subject which remain for our considera- 
 tion this evening are, you will remember, the accumulation 
 and the distribution of works of art. Our complete inquiry 
 fell into four divisions — first, how to get our genius ; then, 
 how to apply our genius ; then, how to accumulate its results \ 
 and lastly, how to distribute them. We considered, last even- 
 
ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION. 
 
 177 
 
 ing, how to discover and apply it ; — we have to-night to ex- 
 amine the modes of its preservation and distribution. 
 
 And now, in the outset, it will be well to face that objection 
 which we put aside a little while ago ; namely, that perhaps 
 it is not well to have a great deal of good art ; and that it 
 should not be made too cheap. 
 
 “ Nay,” I can imagine some of the more generous among 
 you, exclaiming, “ we will not trouble you to disprove that 
 objection ; of course it is a selfish and base one : good art, 
 as well as other good things, ought to be made as cheap as 
 possible, and put as far as we can within the reach of every- 
 body.” 
 
 Pardon me, I am not prepared to admit that. I rather side 
 with the selfish objectors, and believe that art ought not to be 
 made cheap, beyond a certain point ; for the amount of pleas- 
 ure that you can receive from any great work, depends wholly 
 on the quantity of attention and energy of mind you can bring 
 to bear upon it. Now, that attention and energy depend much 
 more on the freshness of the thing than you would at all sup- 
 pose ; unless you very carefully studied the movements of 
 your own minds. If you see things of the same kind and of 
 equal value very frequently, your reverence for them is infalli- 
 bly diminished, your powers of attention get gradually wearied, 
 and your interest and enthusiasm worn out ; and you cannot 
 in that state bring to any given work the energy necessary to 
 enjoy it. If, indeed, the question were only between enjoy- 
 ing a great many pictures each a little, or one picture very 
 much, the sum of enjoyment being in each case the same, you 
 might rationally desire to possess rather the larger quantity, 
 than the small ; both because one work of art always in some 
 sort illustrates another, and because quantity diminishes the 
 chances of destruction. But the question is not a merely 
 arithmetical one of this kind. Your fragments of broken ad- 
 mirations will not, when they are put together, make up one 
 whole admiration ; two and two, in this case, do not make 
 four, nor anything like four. Your good picture, or book, or 
 work of art of any kind, is always in some degree fenced and 
 closed about with difficulty. You may think of it as of a kind 
 
178 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 of cocoa-nut, with very often rather an unseemly shell, but 
 good milk and kernel inside. Now, if you possess twenty 
 cocoa-nuts, and being thirsty, go impatiently from one to the 
 other, giving only a single scratch with the point of your 
 knife to the shell of each, you will get no milk from all the 
 twenty. But if you leave nineteen of them alone, and give 
 twenty cuts to the shell of one, you will get through it, and at 
 the milk of it. And the tendency of the human mind is al- 
 ways to get tired before it has made its twenty cuts ; and to 
 try another nut ; and moreover, even if it has perseverance 
 enough to crack its nuts, it is sure to try to eat too many, 
 and so choke itself. Hence, it is wisely appointed for us that 
 few of the things w T e desire can be had without considerable 
 labour, and at considerable intervals of time. We cannot 
 generally get our dinner without working for it, and that gives 
 us appetite for it ; we cannot get our holiday without waiting 
 for it, and that gives us zest for it ; and we ought not to get 
 our picture without paying for it, and that gives us a mind to 
 look at it. Nay, I will even go so far as to say, that we ought 
 not to get books too cheaply. No book, I believe, is ever worth 
 half so much to its reader as one that has been coveted for a 
 year at a bookstall, and bought out of saved half-pence ; and 
 perhaps a day or two’s fasting. That’s the w T ay to get at the 
 cream of a book. And I should say more on this matter, and 
 protest as energetically as I could against the plague of cheap 
 literature, with which w T e are just now afflicted, but that I fear 
 your calling me to order, as being unpractical, because I don’t 
 quite see my way at present to making everybody fast for their 
 books. But one may see that a thing is desirable and possi- 
 ble, even though one may not at once know the best w r ay to 
 it — and in my island of Barataria, when I get it w r ell into 
 order, I assure you no book shall be sold for less than a pound 
 sterling ; if it can be published cheaper than that, the surplus 
 shall all go into my treasury, and save my subjects taxation in 
 other directions ; only people realty poor, who cannot pay the 
 pound, shall be supplied with the books they w r ant for noth- 
 ing, in a certain limited quantity. I haven’t made up my 
 mind about the number yet, and there are several other points 
 
ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION . 
 
 170 
 
 
 in the system yet unsettled ; when they are all determined, if 
 you will allow me, I will come and give you another lecture, 
 on the political economy of literature.* 
 
 Meantime, returning to our immediate subject, I say to my 
 generous hearers, who want to shower Titians and Turners 
 upon us, like falling leaves, “Pictures ought not to be too 
 cheap ; ” but in much stronger tone I would say to those who 
 want to keep up the prices of pictorial property, that pictures 
 ought not to be too dear, that is to say, not as dear as they 
 are. For, as matters at present stand, it is wholly impossible 
 for any man in the ordinary circumstances of English life to 
 possess himself of a piece of great art. * A modern drawing of 
 average merit, or a first-class engraving may perhaps, not 
 without some self-reproach, be purchased out of his savings 
 by a man of narrow income ; but a satisfactory example of 
 first-rate art — master-hands’ work — is wholly out of his reach. 
 And we are so accustomed to look upon this as the natural 
 course and necessity of things, that we never set ourselves in 
 any wise to diminish the evil ; and yet it is an evil perfectly 
 capable of diminution. It is an evil precisely similar in kind 
 to that which existed in the middle ages, respecting good 
 books, and which everybody then, I suppose, thought as nat- 
 ural as we do now our small supply of good pictures. You 
 could not then study the work of a great historian, or great 
 poet, any more than you can now study that of a great painter, 
 but at heavy cost. If you wanted a book, you had to get it 
 written out for you, or to write it out for yourself. But print- 
 ing came, and the poor man may read his Dante and his 
 Homer ; and Dante and Homer are none the worse for that. 
 But it is only in literature that private persons of moderate 
 fortune can possess and study greatness : they can study at 
 home no greatness in art ; and the object of that accumula- 
 tion which we are at present aiming at, as our third object in 
 political economy, is to bring great art in some degree within 
 the reach of the multitude ; and, both in larger and more 
 numerous galleries than we now possess, and by distribution, 
 according to his wnalth and wish, in each man’s home, to ren* 
 
 * See note 6th in Addenda. 
 
180 
 
 A JOT FOP EVER. 
 
 tier the influence of art somewhat correspondent in extent ta 
 that of literature. Here, then, is the subtle balance which 
 your economist has to strike : to accumulate so much art as to 
 be able to give the whole nation a supply of it, according* to 
 its need, and yet to regulate its distribution so that there shall 
 be no glut of it, nor contempt. 
 
 A difficult balance, indeed, for us to hold, if it were left 
 merely to our skill to poise ; but the just point between pov- 
 erty and profusion has been fixed for us accurately by the wise 
 laws of Providence. If you carefully watch for all the genius 
 you can detect, apply it to good service, and then reverently 
 preserve what it produces, you will never have too little art ; 
 and if, on the other hand, you never force an artist to work 
 hurriedly, for daily bread, nor imperfectly, because you would 
 rather have showy works than complete ones, you will never 
 have too much. Do not force the multiplication of art, and 
 you will not have it too cheap ; do not wantonly destroy it, 
 and you will not have it too dear. 
 
 “ But who wantonly destroys it ? ” you will ask. Why, we 
 all do. Perhaps you thought, when I came to this part of our 
 subject, corresponding to that set forth in our housewife’s 
 economy by the “ keeping her embroidery from the moth/ 5 
 that I was going to tell you only how to take better care of 
 pictures, how to clean them, and varnish them, and where to 
 put them away safely when you went out of town. Ah, not 
 at all. The utmost I have to ask of you is, that you will not 
 pull them to pieces, and trample them under your feet. 
 “ What,” you will say, “ when do we do such things ? Haven’t 
 we built a perfectly beautiful gallery for all the pictures we 
 have to take care of ? ” Yes, you have, for the pictures which 
 are definitely sent to Manchester to be taken care of. But 
 there are quantities of pictures out of Manchester which it is 
 your business, and mine too, to take care of no less than of 
 these, and which we are at this moment employing ourselves 
 in pulling to pieces by deputy. I will tell you what they are, 
 and where they are, in a minute ; only first let me state one 
 more of those main principles of political economy on which 
 the matter hinges. 
 
ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION. 
 
 181 
 
 I must begin a little apparently wide of the mark, and ask 
 you to reflect if there is any way in which we waste money 
 more in England, than in building fine tombs ? Our respect 
 for the dead, when they are j ust dead, is something wonder- 
 ful, and the way we show it more wnnderful still We show 
 it with black feathers and black horses ; we show it with black 
 dresses and bright heraldries ; we show it with costly obelisks 
 and sculptures of sorrow", which spoil half of our most beau- 
 tiful cathedrals. We show it with frightful gratings and 
 vaults, and lids of dismal stone, in the midst of the quiet 
 grass ; and last, not least, we show' it by permitting ourselves 
 to tell any number of lies we think amiable or credible, in the 
 epitaph. This feeling is common to the poor as well as the 
 rich ; and w T e all know how many a poor family will nearly ruin 
 themselves, to testify their respect for some member of it in 
 his coffin, whom they never much cared for w r hen he was out 
 of it ; and how often it happens that a poor old woman will 
 starve herself to death, in order that she may be respectably 
 buried. 
 
 Now", this being one of the most complete and special ways 
 of wasting money ; — no money being less productive of good, 
 or of any percentage whatever, than that which we shake 
 away from the ends of undertakers’ plumes — it is of course 
 the duty of all good economists, and kind persons, to prove 
 and proclaim continually, to the poor as w r ell as the rich, that 
 respect for the dead is not really shown by laying great stones 
 on them to tell us where they are laid ; but by remembering 
 where they are laid without a stone to help us ; trusting them 
 to the sacred grass and saddened flowers ; and still more, that 
 respect and love are shown to them, not by great monuments 
 to them which we build with our hands, but by letting the 
 monuments stand, winch they built with their own. And this 
 is the point now in question. 
 
 Observe, there are tw r o great reciprocal duties concerning 
 industry, constantly to be exchanged between the living and 
 the dead. We, as we live and work, are to be always thinking 
 of those who are to come after us ; that what we do may be 
 serviceable, as far as w r e can make it so, to them, as well as ta 
 
182 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 us. Then, when we die, it is the duty of those who come 
 after us to accept this work of ours with thanks and remem- 
 brance, not thrusting it aside or tearing it down the moment 
 they think they have no use for it. And each generation will 
 only be happy or powerful to the pitch that it ought to be, in 
 fulfilling these two duties to the Past and the Future. Its 
 own work will never be rightly done, even for itself — nevei 1 
 good, or noble, or pleasurable to its own eyes — if it does not 
 prepare it also for the eyes of generations yet to come. And 
 its own possessions will never be enough for it, and its own 
 wisdom never enough for it, unless it avails itself gratefully 
 and tenderly of the treasures and the wisdom bequeathed to it 
 by its ancestors. 
 
 For, be assured, that all the best things and treasures of 
 this world are not to be produced by each generation for it- 
 self ; but we are all intended, not to carve our w r ork in snow 
 that will melt, but each and all of us to be continually rolling 
 a great white gathering snowball, higher and higher — larger 
 and larger — along the Alps of human power. Thus the 
 science of nations is to be accumulative from father to son : 
 each learning a little more and a little more ; each receiving 
 all that w r as known, and adding its own gain : the history and 
 poetry of nations are to be accumulative ; each generation 
 treasuring the history and the songs of its ancestors, adding 
 its own history and its own songs ; and the art of nations is 
 to be accumulative, just as science and history are ; the 'work 
 of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the 
 work of the past. Nearly every great and intellectual race of 
 the world has produced, at every period of its career, an art 
 with some peculiar and precious character about it, wholly 
 unattainable by any other race, and at any other time ; and 
 the intention of Providence concerning that art, is evidently 
 that it should all grow together into one mighty temple ; the 
 rough stones and the smooth all finding their place, and ris- 
 ing, daj^ by day, in richer and higher pinnacles to heaven. 
 
 Now, just fancy what a position the world, considered as 
 one great workroom — one great factory in the form of a globe 
 - — would have been in by this time, if it had in the least un* 
 
ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION. 
 
 183 
 
 fierstood this duty, or been capable of it. Fancy what we 
 should have had around us now, if, instead of quarrelling and 
 fighting over their work, the nations had aided each other in 
 their work, or if even in their conquests, instead of effacing 
 the memorials of those they succeeded and subdued, they had 
 guarded the spoils of their victories. Fancy what Europe 
 would be now, if the delicate statues and temples of the 
 Greeks, — if the broad roads and massy walls of the Romans, — 
 if the noble and pathetic architecture of the middle ages, had 
 not been ground to dust by mere human rage. You talk of 
 the scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time : I tell you Time is 
 scytheless and toothless ; it is we who gnaw like the worm — • 
 we who smite like the scythe. It is ourselves who abolish — 
 ourselves who consume : we are the mildew, and the flame, 
 and the soul of man is to its own work as the moth, that frets 
 when it cannot fly, and as the hidden flame that blasts where 
 it cannot illumine. All these lost treasures of human intellect 
 have been wholly destroyed by human industry of destruction ; 
 the marble would have stood its two thousand years as well in 
 the polished statue as in the Parian cliff ; but we men have 
 ground it to powder, and mixed it with our own ashes. The 
 walls and the ways would have stood — it is we who have left 
 not one stone upon another, and restored its pathlessness to 
 the desert ; the great cathedrals of old religion would have 
 stood — it is we who have dashed down the carved work with 
 axes and hammers, and bid the mountain-grass bloom upon 
 the pavement, and the sea-winds chaunt in the galleries. 
 
 You will perhaps think all this was somehow necessary for 
 the development of the human race. I cannot stay now to 
 dispute that, though I would willingly ; but do you think it 
 is still necessary for that development? Do you think that in 
 this nineteenth century it is still necessary for the European 
 nations to turn all the places where their principal art-treas- 
 ures are into battlefields ? For that is what they are doing 
 even while I speak ; the great firm of the world is managing 
 its business at this moment, just as it has done in past times. 
 Imagine what would be the thriving circumstances of a manu- 
 facturer of some delicate produce— suppose glass, or china — 
 
184 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 in whose workshop and exhibition rooms ail the workmen and 
 clerks began fighting at least once a day, first blowing oft the 
 steam, and breaking all the machinery they could reach ; and 
 then making fortresses of all the cupboards, and attacking 
 and defending the show-tables, the victorious party finally 
 throwing everything they could get hold of out of the window, 
 by way of showing their triumph, and the poor manufacturer 
 picking up and putting away at last a cup here and a handle 
 there. A fine prosperous business that would be, would it 
 not ? and yet that is precisely the way the great manufactur- 
 ing firm of the world carries on its business. 
 
 It has so arranged its political squabbles for the last six or 
 seven hundred years, that no one of them could be fought out 
 but in the midst of its most precious art ; and it so arranges 
 them to this day. For example, if I were asked to lay my 
 finger, in a map of the world, on the spot of the world’s sur- 
 face which contained at this moment the most singular con- 
 centration of art-teaching and art-treasure, I should lay it on 
 the name of the town of Verona. Other cities, indeed, con- 
 tain more works of carriageable art, but none contain so much 
 of the glorious local art, and of the springs and sources of art, 
 which can by no means be made subjects of package or por- 
 terage, nor, I grieve to say, of salvage. Verona possesses, in 
 the first place, not the largest, but the most perfect and intel- 
 ligible Roman amphitheatre that exists, still unbroken in cir- 
 cle of step, and strong in succession of vault and arch : it con- 
 tains minor Roman monuments, gateways, theatres, baths, 
 wrecks of temples, which give the streets of its suburbs a char- 
 acter of antiquity unexampled elsewhere, except in Rome it- 
 self. But it contains, in the next place, what Rome does not 
 contain — perfect examples of the great twelfth-century Lom- 
 bardic architecture, which was the root of all the mediaeval 
 art of Italy, "without "which no Giottos, no Angelicos, no 
 Raphaels would have been possible ; it contains that architect- 
 ure, not in rude forms, but in the most perfect and loveliest 
 types it ever attained — contains those, not in ruins, nor in 
 altered and hardly decipherable fragments, but in churches 
 perfect from porch to apse, with all their carving fresh, their 
 
ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION. 
 
 185 
 
 pillars firm, their joints unloosened. Besides these, it includes 
 examples of the great thirteenth and fourteenth-century Gothic 
 of Italy, not merely perfect, but elsewhere unrivalled. At Borne, 
 the Korean — at Pisa, the Lombard, architecture may be seen in 
 greater or in equal nobleness ; but not at Rome, nor Pisa, nor 
 Florence, nor in any city of the world, is there a great medi- 
 eval Gothic like the Gothic of Verona. Elsewhere, it is either 
 less pure in type or less lovely in completion : only at Verona 
 may you see it in the simplicity of its youthful power, and the 
 tenderness of its accomplished beauty. And Verona possesses, 
 in the last place, the loveliest Renaissance architecture of 
 Italy, not disturbed by pride, nor defiled by luxury, but ris- 
 ing in fair fulfilment of domestic service, serenity of effortless 
 grace, and modesty of home seclusion ; its richest work given 
 to the windows that open on the narrowest streets and most 
 silent gardens. All this she possesses, in the midst of natural 
 scenery such as assuredly exists nowhere else in the habitable 
 globe — a wild Alpine river foaming at her feet, from whose 
 shores the rocks rise in a great crescent, dark with cypress, 
 and misty with olive : inimitably, from before her southern 
 gates, the tufted plains of Italy sweep and fade in golden 
 light ; around her, north and west, the Alps crowd in crested 
 troops, and the winds of Benacus bear to her the coolness of 
 their snows. 
 
 And this is the city — such, and possessing such things as 
 these — at whose gates the decisive battles of Italy are fought 
 continually : three days her towers trembled with the echo 
 of the cannon of Areola ; heaped pebbles of the Mincio divide 
 her fields to this hour with lines of broken rampart, whence 
 the tide of war roiled back to Novara ; and now on that cres- 
 cent of her eastern cliffs, whence the full moon used to rise 
 through the bars of the cypresses in her burning summer 
 twilights, touching with soft increase of silver light the rosy 
 marbles of her balconies, along the ridge of that encompassing 
 rock, other circles are increasing now, white and pale ; walled 
 towers of cruel strength, sable-spotted with cannon-courses. 
 I tell you, I have seen, when the thunderclouds came down 
 on those Italian hills, and all their crags were dipped in the 
 
186 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 dark, terrible purple, as if the winepress of the wrath of God 
 had stained their mountain-raiment — I have seen the hail fall 
 in Italy till the forest branches stood stripped and bare as if 
 blasted by the locust ; but the white hail never fell from those 
 clouds of heaven as the black hail will fall from the clouds of 
 hell, if ever one breath of Italian life stirs again in the streets 
 of Verona. 
 
 Sad as you will feel this to be, I do not say that you can 
 directly prevent it ; you cannot drive the Austrians out of 
 Italy, nor prevent them from building forts where they choose, 
 but I do say,* that you, and I, and all of us, ought to be both 
 * The reader can liardlv hut remember Mrs. Browning’s beautiful ap- 
 peal for Italy, made on the occasion of the first great Exhibition of Art 
 in England : — 
 
 O Magi of the east and of the west, 
 
 Your incense, gold, and myrrh are excellent ! — 
 
 What gifts for Christ, then, bring ye with the rest ? 
 
 Your hands have worked well. Is your courage spent 
 In handwork only ? Have you nothing best, 
 
 Which generous souls may perfect and present, 
 
 And He shall thank the givers for ? no light 
 Of teaching, liberal nations, for the poor, 
 
 Who sit in darkness when it is not night ? 
 
 Ho cure for wicked children ? Christ, — no cure, 
 
 Ho help for women, sobbing out of sight 
 Because men made the laws ? no brothel-lure 
 Burnt out by popular lightnings ? Hast thou found 
 Ho remedy, my England, for such woes ? 
 
 Ho outlet, Austria, for the scourged and bound, 
 
 Ho call back for the exiled ? no repose, 
 
 Russia, for knouted Poles worked under ground. 
 
 And gentle ladies bleached among the snows ? 
 
 Ho mercy for the slave, America? 
 
 Ho hope for Rome, free France, chivalric France ? 
 
 Alas, great nations have great shames, I say. 
 
 Ho pity, O world ! no tender utterance 
 Of benediction, and prayers stretched this way 
 For poor Italia, baffled by mischance ? 
 
 O gracious nations, give some ear to me ! 
 
 You all go to your Fair, and I am one 
 
 Who at the roadside of humanity 
 
 Beseech vpur alms, — God’s justice to be dons. 
 
 Bo prosper j 
 
ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION 
 
 187 
 
 acting and feeling with a full knowledge and understanding 
 of these things, and that, without trying to excite revolutions 
 or weaken governments, we may give our own thoughts and 
 help, so as in a measure to prevent needless destruction. We 
 should do this, if we only realized the thing thoroughly. You 
 drive out day by day through your own pretty suburbs, and 
 you think only of making, with what money you have to 
 spare, your gateways handsomer, and your carriage-drives 
 wider — and your drawing-rooms more splendid, having a 
 vague notion that you are all the while patronizing and ad- 
 vancing art, and you make no effort to conceive the fact, that 
 within a few hours’ journey of you, there are gateways and 
 drawing-rooms which might just as well be yours as these, all 
 built already ; gateways built by the greatest masters of 
 sculpture that ever struck marble ; drawing-rooms painted by 
 Titian and Veronese ; and you won’t accept, nor save these 
 as they are, but you will rather fetch the house-painter from 
 over the way, and let Titian and Veronese house the rats. 
 “Yes,” of course, you answer ; “we want nice houses here, 
 not houses in Verona. What should we do with houses in 
 Verona?” And I answer, do precisely what you do with the 
 most expensive part of your possessions here : take pride in 
 them — only a noble pride. You know well, when you ex- 
 amine your own hearts, that the greater part of the sums you 
 spend on possessions are spent for pride. Why are your car- 
 riages nicely painted and finished outside ? You don’t see the 
 outsides as you sit in them— the outsides are for other peo- 
 ple to see. Why are your exteriors of houses so well finished, 
 your furniture so polished and costly, but for other people to 
 see ? You are just as comfortable yourselves, writing on your 
 old friend of a desk, with the white cloudings in his leather, 
 and using the light of a window which is nothing but a hole 
 in the brick wall. And all that is desirable to be done in this 
 matter, is merely to take pride in preserving great art, instead 
 of in producing mean art ; pride in the possession of precious 
 and enduring things, a little way off, instead of slight and 
 perishing things near at hand. You know, in old English 
 times, our kings liked to have lordships and dukedoms abroad,, 
 
188 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER . 
 
 and why should not you, merchant princes, like to have lord- 
 ships and estates abroad ? Believe me, rightly understood, it 
 would be a prouder, and in the full sense of our English word, 
 more “ respectable ” thing to be lord of a palace at Verona, or 
 of a cloister full of frescos at Florence, than to have a file of 
 servants dressed in the finest liveries that ever tailor stitched, 
 as long as would reach from here to Bolton : — yes, and a 
 prouder thing to send people to travel in Italy, who would 
 have to say every now and then, of some fair piece of art, 
 “ Ah ! this was kept here for us by the good people of Man- 
 chester,” than to bring them travelling all the way here, ex- 
 claiming of your various art treasures, “ These were brought 
 here for us (not altogether without harm) by the good peo- 
 ple of Manchester.” “Ah !” but you say, “ the Art Treasures 
 Exhibition will pay : but Veronese palaces won’t.” Pardon 
 me. They would pay, less directly, but far more richly. Do 
 you suppose it is in the long run good for Manchester, or 
 good for England, that the Continent should be in the state 
 it is ? Do you think the perpetual fear of revolution, or the 
 perpetual repression of thought and energy that clouds and 
 encumbers the nations of Europe, is eventually profitable for 
 us ? Were we any the better of the course of affairs in ’48 ; 
 or has the stabling of the dragoon horses in the great houses 
 of Italy, any distinct effect in the promotion of the cotton- 
 trade ? Not so. But every stake that you could hold in the 
 stability of the Continent, and every effort that you could 
 make to give example of English habits and principles on the 
 Continent, and every kind deed that you could do in reliev- 
 ing distress and preventing despair cn the Continent, would 
 have tenfold reaction on the prosperity of England, and open 
 and urge, in a thousand unforeseen directions, the sluices of 
 commerce and the springs of industry. 
 
 I could press, if I chose, both these motives upon you, of 
 pride and self-interest, with more force, but these are not mo- 
 tives which ought to be urged upon you at all. The only 
 motive that I ought to put before you is simply that it would 
 be right to do this ; that the holding of property abroad, and 
 the personal efforts of Englishmen to redeem the condition 
 
ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION 
 
 189 
 
 of foreign nations, are among the most direct pieces of duty 
 which our wealth renders incumbent upon us. I do not — and 
 in all truth and deliberateness I say this — I do not know any- 
 thing more ludicrous among the self-deceptions of -well-meaning 
 people than their notion of patriotism, as requiring them to 
 limit their efforts to the good of their own country ; — the no- 
 tion that charity is a geographical virtue, and that what it is 
 holy and righteous to do for people on one bank of a river, it 
 is quite improper and unnatural to do for people on the other. 
 
 It will be a wonderful thing, some day or other, for the 
 . Christian world to remember, that it went on thinking for two 
 : thousand years that neighbours were neighbours at Jerusalem, 
 but not at Jericho ; a wonderful thing for us English to re- 
 flect, in after-years, how long it was before we could shake 
 hands with anybody across that shallow salt wash, which the 
 very chalk-dust of its two shores whitens from Folkstone to 
 Ambleteuse. 
 
 Nor ought the motive of gratitude, as well as that of Mercy, 
 to be without its influence on you, who have been the first to 
 ask to see, and the first to show to us, the treasures which 
 this poor lost Italy has given to England. Remember all 
 these things that delight you here were hers — hers either 
 in fact or in teaching ; hers, in fact, are all the most pow- 
 erful and most touching paintings of old time that now 
 glow upon your walls ; hers in teaching are all the best and 
 greatest of descendant souls — your Reynolds and your Gains- 
 borough never could have painted but for Venice ; and the 
 energies which have given the only true life to your existing 
 art were first stirred by voices of the dead, that haunted the 
 . Sacred Field of Pisa. 
 
 Well, all these motives for some definite course of action on 
 our part towards foreign countries rest upon very serious 
 facts ; too serious, perhaps you will think, to be interfered 
 with ; for we are all of us in the habit of leaving great things 
 alone, as if Providence would mind them, and attending our- 
 . selves only to little things which we know, practically, Provi- 
 dence doesn’t mind unless we do. We are ready enough to 
 give care to the growing of pines and lettuces, knowing that 
 
190 
 
 A JOT FOR EVER 
 
 they don’t grow Providentially sweet or large unless we lock 
 after them ; but we don’t give any care to the good of Italy 
 or Germany, because we think that they will grow Providen- 
 tially happy without any of our meddling. 
 
 Let us leave the great things, then, and think of little 
 things ; not of the destruction of whole provinces in war, 
 which it may not be any business of ours to prevent ; but of 
 the destruction of poor little pictures in peace, from which it 
 surely would not be much out of our way to save them. You 
 know I said, just now, we were all of us engaged in pulling pict- 
 ures to pieces by deputy, and you did not believe me. Con- 
 sider, then, this similitude of ourselves. Suppose you saw (as 
 I doubt not you often do see) a prudent and kind young lady 
 sitting at work, in the corner of a quiet room, knitting com- 
 forters for her cousins, and that just outside, in the hall, you 
 saw a cat and her kittens at play among the family pictures ; 
 amusing themselves especially with the best Vandykes, by 
 getting on the tops of the frames, and then scrambling down 
 the canvasses by their claws ; and on some one’s informing the 
 young lady of these proceedings of the cat and kittens, sup- 
 pose she answered that it wasn’t her cat, but her sister’s, and 
 the pictures weren’t hers, but her uncle’s, and she couldn’t 
 leave her work, for she had to make so many pairs of com- 
 forters before dinner. Would you not say that the prudent 
 and kind young lady was, on the Tvhole, answerable for the 
 additional touches of claw on the Vandykes? Now, that is 
 precisely what we prudent and kind English are doing, only 
 on a larger scale. Here we sit in Manchester, hard at work, 
 very properly, making comforters for our cousins all over the 
 world. Just outside there in the hall — that beautiful marble 
 hall of Italy — the cats and kittens and monkeys are at play 
 among the pictures : I assure you, in the course of the fifteen 
 years in which I have been working in those places in which 
 the most precious remnants of European art exist, a sensation, 
 whether I would or no, was gradually made distinct and deep 
 in my mind, that I was living and working in the midst of a 
 den of monkeys ; — sometimes amiable and affectionate mon- 
 keys, with ail manner of winning ways and kind intentions 
 
ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION 
 
 191 
 
 more frequently selfish and malicious monkeys, but, -whatever 
 tlieir disposition, squabbling continually about nuts, and tli8 
 best places on the barren sticks of trees ; and that all this 
 monkeys’ den was filled, by mischance, with precious pictures, 
 and the witty and wilful beasts were always w r rapping them- 
 selves up and going to sleep in pictures, or tearing holes in 
 them to grin through ; or tasting them and spitting them out 
 again, or twisting them up into ropes and making swings of 
 them ; and that sometimes only, by watching one’s oppor- 
 tunity, and bearing a scratch or a bite, one could rescue the 
 corner of a Tintoret, or Paul Veronese, and push it through 
 the bars into a place of safety. Literally, I assure you, this 
 was, and this is, the fixed impression on my mind of the state 
 of matters in Italy. And see how. The professors of art in 
 Italy, having long followed a method of study peculiar to 
 themselves, have at last arrived at a form of art peculiar to 
 themselves ; very different from that which was arrived at by 
 Correggio and Titian. Naturally, the professors like their own 
 form the best ; and, as the old pictures are generally not so 
 startling to the eye as the modern ones, the dukes and counts 
 who possess them, and who like to see their galleries look new 
 and fine (and are persuaded also that a celebrated chef-d’oeuvre 
 ought always to catch the eye at a quarter of a mile off), 
 believe the professors who tell them their sober pictures are 
 quite faded, and good for nothing, and should all be brought 
 bright again ; and accordingly, give the sober pictures to the 
 professors, to be put right by rules of art. Then, the profes- 
 sors repaint the old pictures in all the principal places, leaving 
 perhaps only a bit of background to set off their own work. 
 And thus the professors come to be generally figured in my 
 mind, as the monkeys w T ho tear holes in the pictures, to grin 
 through. Then the picture-dealers, who live by the pictures, 
 cannot sell them to the English in their old and pure state ; 
 all the good work must be covered with new paint, and var- 
 nished so as to look like one of the professorial pictures in 
 the great gallery, before it is saleable. And thus the dealers 
 come to be imaged, in my mind, as the monkeys who make 
 ropes of the pictures, to swing by. Then, every now and then* 
 

 192 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 in some old stable, or wine-cellar, or timber-shed, behind 
 some forgotten vats or faggots, somebody finds a fresco of 
 Perugino’s or Giotto’s, but doesn’t think much of it, and has 
 no idea of having people coming into his cellar, or being 
 obliged to move his faggots ; and so he whitewashes the 
 fresco, and puts the faggots back again ; and these kind of 
 persons, therefore, come generally to be imaged in my mind, 
 as the monkeys who taste the pictures, and spit them out, not 
 finding them nice. While, finally, the squabbling for nuts 
 and apples (called in Italy “ bella liberta ”) goes on all day 
 long. 
 
 Now, all this might soon be put an end to, if we English, who 
 are so fond of travelling in the body, would also travel a little 
 in soul : We think it a great triumph to get our packages and 
 our persons carried at a fast pace, but we never take the 
 slightest trouble to put any pace into our perceptions ; we 
 stay usually at home in thought, or if we ever mentally see 
 the world, it is at the old stage-coach or waggon rate. Do 
 but consider what an odd sight it would be, if it were only 
 quite clear to you how things are really going on — how, here 
 in England, we are making enormous and expensive efforts to 
 produce new art of all kinds, knowing' and confessing all the 
 while that the greater part of it is bad, but struggling still to 
 produce new patterns of wall-papers, and new shapes of tea- 
 pots, and new pictures, and statues, and architecture ; and 
 pluming and cackling if ever a tea-pot or a picture has the 
 least good in it ; — all the while taking no thought whatever 
 of the best possible pictures, and statues, and wall-patterns 
 already in existence, which require nothing but to be taken 
 common care of, and kept from damp and dust : but we let 
 the walls fall that Giotto patterned, and the canvases rot that 
 Tintoret painted, and the architecture be dashed to pieces 
 that St. Louis built, while we are furnishing our drawing- 
 rooms with prize upholstery, and writing accounts of our 
 handsome warehouses to the country papers. Don’t think I 
 use my words vaguely or generally : I speak of literal facta 
 Giotto’s frescos at Assisi are perishing at this moment for 
 want of decent care ; Tintoret’s pictures in San Sebastian at 
 
ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION. 
 
 193 
 
 Venice, are at this instant rotting piecemeal into grey rags ; 
 St. Louis’s chapel, at Carcassonne, is at this moment lying in 
 shattered fragments in the market-place. And here we are 
 5,11 cawing and crowing, poor little half-fledged daws as we 
 are, about the pretty sticks and w T ool in our own nests. 
 There’s hardly a day passes, when I am at home, but I get a 
 letter from some well-meaning country clergyman, deeply 
 anxious about the state of his parish church, and breaking his 
 heart to get money together that he may hold up some 
 wretched remnant of Tudor tracery, with one niche in the 
 corner and no statue — when all the while the mightiest piles 
 of religious architecture and sculpture that ever the world 
 saw are being blasted and withered away, without one glance 
 of pity or regret. The country clergyman does not care for 
 them — he has a sea-sick imagination that cannot cross channel. 
 What is it to him, if the angels of Assisi fade from its vaults, 
 or the queens and kings of Chartres fall from their pedestals? 
 They are not in his parish. 
 
 “ What ! ” you will say, “ are we not to produce any new 
 art, nor take care of our parish churches ? ” No, certainly 
 not, until you have taken proper care of the art you have got 
 already, and of the best churches out of the parish. Your 
 first and proper standing is not as churchwardens and parish 
 overseers, in an English county, but as members of the great 
 Christian community of Europe. And as members of that 
 community (in which alone, observe, pure and precious an- 
 cient art exists, for there is none in America, none in Asia, 
 none in Africa), you conduct yourselves precisely as a manu- 
 facturer would, who attended to his looms, but left his ware- 
 house without a roof. The rain floods your warehouse, the rats 
 frolic in it, the spiders spin in it, the choughs build in it, 
 the wall-plague frets and festers in it, and still you keep 
 weave, weave, weaving at your wretched webs, and thinking 
 you are growing rich, while more is gnawed out of your 
 warehouse in an hour than you can weave in a twelvemonth. 
 
 Even this similitude is not absurd enough to set us rightly 
 forth. The weaver would, or might, at least, hope that his 
 new woof was as stout as the old ones, and that, therefore, in 
 
194 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 spite of rain and ravage, he would have something to wrap 
 himself in when he needed it. But our webs rot as we spin. 
 The very fact that we despise the great art of the past shows 
 that we cannot produce great art now. If we could do it, we 
 should love it when we saw it done — if we really cared for ih 
 we should recognise it and keep it. ; but we don’t care for ih 
 It is not art that we want ; it is amusement, gratification ol 
 pride, present gain — anything in the world but art : let it rot, 
 we shall always have enough to talk about and hang over our 
 sideboards. 
 
 You will (I hope) finally ask me what is the outcome of all 
 this, practicable to-morrow morning by us who are sitting 
 here ? These are the main practical outcomes from it : In the 
 first place, don’t grumble when you hear of a new picture being 
 bought by Government at a large price. There are many pict- 
 ures in Europe now in danger of destruction which are, in 
 the true sense of the word, priceless ; the proper price is 
 simply that which it is necessary to give to get and to save 
 them. If you can get them for fifty pounds, do ; if not for 
 less than a hundred, do ; if not for less than five thousand, 
 do ; if not for less than twenty thousand, do ; never mind be- 
 ing imposed upon ; there is nothing disgraceful in being 
 imposed upon : the only disgrace is in imposing ; and you 
 can’t in general get anything much worth having, in the way 
 of Continental art, but it must be with the help or connivance of 
 numbers of people, who, indeed, ought to have nothing to do 
 with the matter, but who practically have, and always will 
 have, everything to do with it ; and if you don’t choose to 
 submit to be cheated by them out of a ducat here and a 
 zecchin there, you will be cheated by them out of your pict- 
 ure ; and whether you are most imposed upon in losing that, 
 cr the zecchins, I think I may leave you to judge ; though I 
 know there are many political economists, who would rather 
 leave a bag of gold on a garret-table, than give a porter six- 
 pence extra to carry it downstairs. 
 
 That, then, is the first practical outcome of the matter. 
 Never grumble, but be glad when you hear of a new picture 
 being bought at a large price. In the long run, the dearest 
 
ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION. 
 
 195 
 
 pictures are always the best bargains ; and, I repeat (for else 
 you might think I said it in mere hurry of talk, and not de- 
 liberately), there are some pictures which are without price. 
 You should stand, nationally, at the edge of Dover cliffs — • 
 Shakespeare’s — and wave blank cheques in the eyes of the 
 nations on the other side of the sea, freely offered, for such 
 and such canvases of theirs. 
 
 Then the next practical outcome of it is — Never buy a 
 copy of a picture, under any circumstances whatever. All 
 copies are bad ; because no painter who is worth a straw ever 
 will copy. He will make a study of a picture he likes, for his 
 own use, in his own way ; but he won’t and can’t copy ; 
 whenever you buy a copy, you buy so much misunderstand- 
 ing of the original, and encourage a dull person in following 
 a business he is not fit for, besides increasing ultimately 
 chances of mistake and imposture, and farthering, as directly 
 as money can farther, the cause of ignorance in all directions. 
 You may, in fact, consider yourself as having purchased a 
 certain quantity of mistakes ; and, according to your power, 
 being engaged in disseminating them. 
 
 I do not mean, however, that copies should never be made. 
 A certain number of dull persons should always be employed 
 by a Government in making the most accurate copies possible 
 of all good pictures ; these copies, though artistically value- 
 less, would be historically and documentarily valuable, in 
 the event of the destruction of the original picture. The 
 studies also made by great artists for their own use, should be 
 sought after with the greatest eagerness ; they are often to be 
 bought cheap ; and in connection with mechanical copies, 
 would become very precious ; tracings from frescos and 
 other large works are all of great value ; for though a tracing 
 is liable to just as many mistakes as a copy, the mistakes in a 
 tracing are of one kind only, which may be allowed for, but 
 the mistakes of a common copyist are of all conceivable kinds : 
 finally, engravings, in so far as they convey certain facts about 
 the pictures, are often serviceable and valuable. I can’t, of 
 course, enter into details in these matters just now ; only this 
 main piece of advice I can safely give you — never to buy 
 
196 
 
 A JOT FOR EVER. 
 
 copies of pictures (for your private possession) which pretend 
 to give a facsimile that shall be in any wise representative of, 
 or equal to, the original. Whenever you do so, you are onl;? 
 lowering your taste, and wasting your money. And if you 
 are generous and wise, you will be ready rather to subscribe 
 as much as you would have given for a copy of a great pict- 
 ure, towards its purchase, or the purchase of some other like 
 it, by the nation. There ought to be a great National Society 
 instituted for the purchase of pictures ; presenting them 
 to the various galleries in our great cities, and watching there 
 over their safety : but in the meantime, you can always act 
 safely and beneficially by merely allowing your artist friends 
 to buy pictures for you, when they see good ones. Never 
 buy for yourselves, nor go to the foreign dealers ; but let any 
 painter whom you know be entrusted, when he finds a 
 neglected old picture in an old house, to try if he cannot get 
 it for you ; then, if you like it, keep it ; if not, send it to the 
 hammer, and you will find that you do not lose money on 
 pictures so purchased. 
 
 And the third and chief practical outcome of the matter is 
 this general one : Wherever you go, whatever you do, act 
 more for preservation and less for production. I assure you, 
 the world is, generally speaking, in calamitous disorder, and 
 just because you have managed to thrust some of the lumber 
 aside, and get an available corner for yourselves, you think 
 you should do nothing but sit spinning in it all day long — 
 while, as householders and economists, your first thought and 
 effort should be, to set things more square all about you. 
 Try to set the ground floors in order, and get the rottenness 
 out of your granaries. Then sit and spin, but not till then. 
 
 IV. Distribution. — And now, lastly, we come to the fourth 
 great head of our inquiry, the question of the wise distribu- 
 tion of the art we have gathered and preserved. It must be 
 evident to us, at a moment’s thought, that the way in which 
 works of art are on the whole most useful to the nation to 
 which the}'' belong, must be by their collection in public gab 
 leries, supposing those galleries properly managed. But 
 
ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION. 
 
 197 
 
 there is one disadvantage attached necessarily to gallery ex- 
 hibition, namely, the extent of mischief which may be done 
 by one foolish curator. As long as the pictures which form 
 the national wealth are disposed in private collections, the 
 chance is always that the people who buy them will be just 
 the people who are fond of them ; and that the sense of ex- 
 changeable value in the commodity they possess, will induce 
 them, even if they do not esteem it themselves, to take such 
 care of it as will preserve its value undiminished. At all 
 events, so long as w T orks of art are scattered throughout the 
 nation, no universal destruction of them is possible ; a cer- 
 tain average only are lost by accidents from time to time. 
 But when they are once collected in a large public gallery, if 
 the appointment of curator becomes in any way a matter of 
 formality, or the post is so lucrative as to be disputed by 
 place-hunters, let but one foolish or careless person get pos- 
 session of it, and perhaps you may have all your fine pictures 
 repainted, and the national property destroyed, in a month. 
 That is actually the case at this moment in several great for- 
 eign galleries. They are the places of execution of pictures : 
 over their doors you only want the Dantesque inscription, 
 “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi che entrate.” 
 
 Supposing, however, this danger properly guarded against, 
 as it would be always by a nation which either knew the 
 value, or understood the meaning, of painting,* arrangement 
 in a public gallery is the safest, as well as the most serviceable, 
 method of exhibiting pictures ; and it is the only mode in 
 which their historical value can be brought out, and their 
 historical meaning made clear. But great good is also to be 
 done by encouraging the private possession of pictures ; partly 
 as a means of study, (much more being always discovered in 
 any work of art by a person who has it perpetually near him 
 than by one who only sees it from time to time,) and also 
 as a means of refining the habits and touching the hearts of 
 the masses of the nation in their domestic life. 
 
 * It would be a great point gained towards the preservation of pictures 
 it it were made a rule that at every operation they underwent, the exact 
 spots in which they have been re-painted should be recorded in writing. 
 
198 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 For these last purposes the most serviceable art is the living 
 art of the time ; the particular tastes of the people will be 
 best met, and their particular ignorances best corrected, by 
 painters labouring in the midst of them, more or less guided 
 to the knowledge of what is wanted by the degree of sympathy 
 with which their work is received. So then, generally, it should 
 be the object of government, and of all patrons of art, to col- 
 lect, as far as may be, the works of dead masters in public 
 galleries, arranging them so as to illustrate the history of na- 
 tions, and the progress and influence of their arts ; and to 
 encourage the private possession of the works of living mas- 
 ters. And the first and best way in which to encourage such 
 private possession is, of course, to keep down the price of them 
 as far as you can. 
 
 I hope there are not a great many painters in the room ; if 
 there are, I entreat their patience for the next quarter of an 
 hour : if they will bear with me for so long, I hope they will 
 not, finally, be offended by what I am going to say. 
 
 I repeat, trusting to their indulgence in the interim, that 
 the first object of our national economy, as respects the distri- 
 bution of modern art, should be steadily and rationally to 
 limit its prices, since by doing so, you will produce two effects ; 
 you will make the painters produce more pictures, two or three 
 instead of one, if they wish to make money ; and you will, by 
 bringing good pictures within the reach of people of moderate 
 income, excite the general interest of the nation in them, in- 
 crease a thousandfold the demand for the commodity, and 
 therefore its wholesome and natural production. 
 
 I know how many objections must arise in your minds at 
 this moment to what I say ; but you must be aware that it is 
 not possible for me in an hour to explain all the moral and 
 commercial bearings of such a principle as this. Only, believe 
 me, I do not speak lightly ; I think I have considered all the 
 objections which could be rationally brought forward, though 
 I have time at present only to glance at the main one. namely, 
 the idea that the high prices paid for modern pictures are 
 either honourable, or serviceable, to the painter. So far from 
 this being so, I believe one of the principal obstacles to the 
 
ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION. 
 
 199 
 
 progress of modern art to be the high prices given for good 
 modern pictures. For observe first the action of this high re- 
 muneration on the artist's mind. If he “gets on,” as it is 
 called, catches the eye of the public, and especially of the 
 public of the upper classes, there is hardly any limit to the 
 fortune he may acquire ; so that, in his early years, his mind 
 is naturally led to dwell on this worldly and wealthy eminence 
 as the main thing to be reached by his art ; if he finds that 
 he is not gradually rising towards it, he thinks there is some- 
 thing wrong in his work ; or, if he is too proud to think that, 
 still the bribe of wealth and honour warps him from his honest 
 labour into efforts to attract attention ; and he gradually loses 
 both his power of mind and his rectitude of purpose. This, ac- 
 cording to the degree of avarice or ambition which exists in 
 any painter’s mind, is the necessary influence upon him of the 
 hope of great wealth and reputation. But the harm is still 
 greater, in so far as the possibility of attaining fortune of this 
 kind tempts people continually to become painters who have 
 no real gift for the work ; and on whom these motives of mere 
 worldly interest have exclusive influence ; — men who torment 
 and abuse the patient workers, eclipse or thrust aside all deli- 
 cate and good pictures by their own gaudy and coarse ones, 
 corrupt the taste of the public, and do the greatest amount of 
 mischief to the schools of art in their day which it is possible 
 for their capacities to effect ; and it is quite wonderful how 
 much mischief may be done even by small capacity. If you 
 could by any means succeed in keeping the prices of pictures 
 down, you would throw all these disturbers out of the way at 
 once. 
 
 You may perhaps think that this severe treatment would do 
 more harm than good, by withdrawing the wholesome element 
 of emulation, and giving no stimulus to exertion ; but I am 
 sorry to say that artists will always be sufficiently jealous of 
 one another, whether you pay them large or low prices ; and 
 as for stimulus to exertion, believe me, no good work in this 
 world was ever done for money, nor while the slightest 
 thought of money affected the painter’s mind. Whatever 
 idea of pecuniary value enters into his thoughts as he works, 
 
200 
 
 A JOY FOE EYFE. 
 
 will, in proportion to the distinctness of its presence, shorten 
 his power. A real painter will work for you exquisitely, if 
 you give him, as I told you a little while ago, bread and water 
 and salt ; and a bad painter will work badly and hastily, 
 though you give him a palace to live in, and a princedom to 
 live upon. Turner got, in his earlier years, half-a-crown a 
 day and his supper (not bad pay, neither) ; and he learned to 
 paint upon that. And I believe that there is no chance of 
 art’s truly flourishing in any country, until you make it a 
 simple and plain business, providing its masters with an easy 
 competence, but rarely with anything more. And I say this, 
 not because I despise the great painter, but because I honour 
 him ; and I should no more think of adding to his respecta- 
 bility or happiness by giving him riches, than, if Shakespeare 
 or Milton were alive, I should think we added to their re- 
 spectability, or were likely to get better work from them, by 
 making them millionaires. 
 
 But, observe, it is not only the painter himself whom you 
 injure, by giving him too high prices ; you injure all the in- 
 ferior painters of the day. If they are modest, they will be 
 discouraged and depressed by the feeling that their doings 
 are worth so little, comparatively, in your eyes ; — if proud, all 
 their worst passions will be aroused, and the insult or oppro- 
 brium which they will try to cast on their successful rival will 
 not only afflict and wound him, but at last sour and harden 
 him : he cannot pass through such a trial without grievous 
 harm. 
 
 That, then, is the effect you produce on the painter of mark, 
 and on the inferior ones of his own standing. But you do 
 worse than this ; you deprive yourselves, by what you give 
 for the fashionable picture, of the power of helping the 
 younger men who are coming forward. Be it admitted, for 
 argument’s sake, if you are not convinced by what I have said, 
 that you do no harm to the great man by paying him well ; 
 yet certainly you do him no special good. His reputation is 
 established, and his fortune made ; he does not care whether 
 you buy or not : he thinks he is rather doing you a favour 
 than otherwise by letting you have one of his pictures at all. 
 
ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION 
 
 201 
 
 All tlie good you do him is to help him to buy a new pair of 
 carriage horses ; whereas, with that same sum which thus you 
 cast away, you might have relieved the hearts and preserved 
 the health of twenty young painters ; and if among those 
 twenty, you but chanced on one in whom a true latent pow 7 er 
 had been hindered by his poverty, just consider what a far- 
 branching, far-embracing good you have wrought with that 
 lucky expenditure of yours. I say, “ Consider it ” in vain ; 
 you cannot consider it, for you cannot conceive the sickness 
 of the heart with which a young painter of deep feeling toils 
 through his first obscurity ; — his sense of the strong voice 
 within him, which you will not hear ; — his vain, fond, wonder- 
 ing witness to the things you will not see ; — his far away per- 
 ception of things that he could accomplish if he had but peace 
 and time, all unapproachable and vanishing from him, because 
 no one wall leave him peace or grant him time : all his friends 
 falling back from him ; those whom he would most reverently 
 obey rebuking and paralysing him ; and last and w r orst of all, 
 those who believe in him the most faithfully suffering by him 
 the most bitterly ; — the wife’s eyes, in their sweet ambition, 
 shining brighter as the cheek wastes away ; and the little lips 
 at his side parched and pale which one day, he knows, though 
 he may never see it, will quiver so proudly when they name 
 his name, calling him “ our father.” You deprive yourselves, 
 by your large expenditure for pictures of mark, of the power 
 of relieving and redeeming this distress ; you injure the paint- 
 er whom you pay so largely ; — and what, after all, have you 
 done for yourselves, or got for yourselves ? It does not in 
 the least follow that the hurried work of a fashionable painter 
 will contain more for your money than the quiet work of some 
 unknown man. In all probability, you will find, if you rashly 
 purchase what is popular at a high price, that you have got one 
 picture you don’t care for, for a sum which would have bought 
 twenty you would have delighted in. For remember always 
 that the price of a picture by a living artist, never represents, 
 never can represent, the quantity of labour or value .in it. Its 
 price represents, for the most part, the. degree of. desire which 
 the rich people of the country have to possess it. Once get 
 
202 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 tlie wealthy classes to imagine that the possession of pictures 
 by a given artist adds to their “ gentility,” and there is no 
 price which his work may not immediately reach, and for 
 years maintain ; and in buying at that price, you are not get- 
 ting value for your money, but merely disputing for victory 
 in a contest of ostentation. And it is hardly possible to 
 spend your money in a worse or more wasteful way ; for 
 though you may not be doing it for ostentation yourself, you 
 are, by your pertinacity, nourishing the ostentation of others ; 
 you meet them in their game of wealth, and continue it for 
 them ; if they had not found an opposite player, the game 
 would have been done ; for a proud man can find no enjoy- 
 ment in possessing himself of what nobody disputes with 
 him. So that by every farthing you give for a picture beyond 
 its fair price — that is to say, the price which will pay the 
 painter for his time — you are not only cheating yourself and 
 buying vanity, but you are stimulating the vanity of others ; 
 paying, literally, for the cultivation of pride. You may con- 
 sider every pound that you spend above the just price of a 
 work of art, as an investment in a cargo of mental quick-lime 
 or guano, which, being laid on the fields of human nature, is 
 to grow a harvest of pride. You are in fact ploughing and 
 harrowing, in a most valuable part of your land, in order to 
 reap the whirlwind ; you are setting your hand stoutly to 
 Job’s agriculture, “Let thistles grow instead of wheat, and 
 cockle instead of barley.” 
 
 Well, but you will say, there is one advantage in high prices, 
 which more than counterbalances all this mischief, namely, 
 that by great reward we both urge and enable a painter to 
 produce rather one perfect picture than many inferior ones : 
 and one perfect picture (so you tell us, and we believe it) is 
 worth a great number of inferior ones. 
 
 It is so ; but you cannot get it by paying for it. A great 
 work is only done when the painter gets into the humour 
 for it, likes his subject, and determines to paint it as well 
 as he can, whether he is paid for it or not ; but bad wurk, 
 and generally the worst sort of bad work, is done when he 
 is trying to produce a showy picture, or one that shal 
 
ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION 
 
 203 
 
 appear to have as much labour in it as shall be worth a high 
 price.* 
 
 There is, however, another point, and a still more important 
 one, bearing on this matter of purchase, than the keeping 
 down of prices to a rational standard. And that is, that you 
 pay your prices into the hands of living men, and do not pour 
 them into coffins. 
 
 For observe that, as we arrange our payment of pictures at 
 present, no artist’s work is worth half its proper value while 
 he is alive. The moment he dies, his pictures, if they are 
 good, reach double their former value ; but that rise of price 
 represents simply a profit made by the intelligent dealer or 
 purchaser on his past purchases. So that the real facts of the 
 matter are, that the British public, spending a certain sum 
 annually in art, determines that, of every thousand it pays, 
 only five hundred shall go to the painter, or shall be at all 
 concerned in the production of art ; and that the other five 
 hundred shall be paid merely as a testimonial to the intelligent 
 dealer, who knew what to buy. Now, testimonials are very 
 prettjr and proper things, within due limits ; but testimonials 
 to the amount of a hundred per cent, on the total expenditure 
 is not good political economy. Do not, therefore, in general, 
 unless you see it to be necessary for its preservation, buy the 
 picture of a dead artist. If you fear that it may be exposed 
 
 * When this lecture was delivered, I gave here some data for approx- 
 imate estimates of the average value of good modern pictures of differ- 
 ent classes ; but the subject is too complicated to be adequately treated 
 in writing, without introducing more detail than the reader will have 
 patience for. But I may state roughly, that prices above a hundred 
 guineas are in general extravagant for water-colours, and above five 
 hundred for oils. An artist almost always does wrong who puts more 
 work than these prices will remunerate him for into any single canvas 
 —his talent would be better employed in painting two pictures than one 
 so elaborate. The water-colour painters also are getting into the habit 
 of making their drawings too large, and in a measure attaching their 
 price rather to breadth and extent of touch than to thoughtful labour. 
 Of course marked exceptions occur here and there, as in the case of 
 John Lewis, whose drawings are wrought with unfailing precision 
 throughout, whatever their scale. Hardly any price can be remuner 
 tive for such work. 
 
204 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 to contempt or neglect, buy it ; its price will then, probably, 
 not be high : if you want to put it into a public gallery, buy 
 it ; you are sure, then, that you do not spend your money 
 selfishly : or, if you loved the man’s work while he was alive, 
 and bought it then, buy it also now, if you can see no living 
 work equal to it. But if you did not buy it while the man 
 was living, never buy it after he is dead : you are then doing 
 no good to him, and you are doing some shame to yourself. 
 Look around you for pictures that you really like, and by 
 buying which you can help some genius yet unperished — that 
 is the best atonement you can make to the one you have neg- 
 lected — and give to the living and struggling painter at once 
 wages, and testimonial. 
 
 So far then of the motives which should induce us to keep 
 down the prices of modern art, and thus render it, as a private 
 possession, attainable by greater numbers of people than at 
 present. But we should strive to render it accessible to 
 them in other ways also — chiefly by the permanent decora- 
 tion of public buildings ; and it is in this field that I think we 
 may look for the profitable means of providing that constant 
 employment for young painters of which we were speaking 
 last evening. 
 
 The first and most important kind of public buildings which 
 we are always sure to want, are schools : and I would ask you 
 to consider very carefully, whether we may not wisely intro- 
 duce some great changes in the way of school decoration. 
 Hitherto, as far as I know, it has either been so difficult to 
 give all the education w T e wanted to our lads, that we have 
 been obliged to do it, if at all, with cheap furniture in bare 
 walls ; or else w r e have considered that cheap furniture and 
 bare walls are a proper part of the means of education ; and 
 supposed that boys learned best when they sat on hard forms, 
 and had nothing but blank plaster about and above them 
 whereupon to employ their spare attention ; also, that it was 
 as well they should be accustomed to rough and ugly con- 
 ditions of things, partly by way of preparing them for the 
 hardships of life, and partly that there might be the least pos- 
 sible damage done to floors and forms, in the event of tlieii? 
 
ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION. 
 
 20 5 
 
 becoming, during the master’s absence, the fields or instru- 
 ments of battle. All this is so far well and necessary, as it re- 
 lates to the training of country lads, and the first training of 
 boys in general. But there certainly comes a period in the 
 life of a well educated youth, in which one of the principal 
 elements of his education is, or ought to be, to give him re- 
 finement of habits ; and not only to teach him the strong ex- 
 ercises of which his frame is capable, but also to increase his 
 bodily sensibility and refinement, and show him such small 
 matters as the way of handling things properly, and treating 
 them considerately. Not only so, but I believe the notion of 
 fixing the attention by keeping the room empty, is a wholly 
 mistaken one : I think it is just in the emptiest room that the 
 mind wanders most, for it gets restless, like a bird, for want 
 of a perch, and casts about for any possible means of getting 
 out and away. And even if it be fixed, by an effort, on the 
 business in hand, that business becomes itself repulsive, more 
 than it need be, by the vileness of its associations ; and many 
 a study appears dull or painful to a boy, when it is pursued 
 on a blotted deal desk, under a wall with nothing on it but 
 scratches and pegs, which would have been pursued pleasantly 
 enough in a curtained corner of his father’s library, or at the 
 lattice window of his cottage. Nay, my own belief is, that the 
 best study of all is the most beautiful ; and that a quiet glade 
 of forest, or the nook of a lake shore, are worth all the school- 
 rooms in Christendom, when once you are past the multipli- 
 cation table ; but be that as it may, there is no question at all 
 but that a time ought to come in the life of a well trained 
 youth, when he can sit at a writing table without wanting to 
 throw the inkstand at his neighbour ; and when also he will 
 feel more capable of certain efforts of mind with beautiful and 
 refined forms about him than with ugly ones. When that time 
 comes he ought to be advanced into the decorated schools ; 
 and this advance ought to be one of the important and hon- 
 ourable epochs of his life. 
 
 I have not time, however, to insist on the mere serviceable- 
 neSs to our youth of refined architectural decoration, -as such ; 
 for I want you to consider the probable influence of the par- 
 
206 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 ticular kind of decoration which I wish 3 r ou to get for them, 
 namely, historical painting. You know we have hitherto been 
 in the habit of conveying all our historical knowledge, such 
 as it is, by the ear only, never by the eye ; all our notions of 
 things being ostensibly derived from verbal description, not. 
 from sight. Now, I have no doubt that as we grow gradually 
 wiser — and we are doing so every day — we shall discover at 
 last that the eye is a nobler organ than the ear ; and that 
 through the eye we must, in reality, obtain, or put into form, 
 nearly all the useful information we are to have about this 
 world. Even as the matter stands, you will find that the 
 knowledge which a boy is supposed to receive from verbal 
 description is only available to him so far as in any under- 
 hand way he gets a sight of the thing you are talking about. 
 I remember well that, for many years of my life, the only no- 
 tion I had of the look of a Greek knight was complicated be- 
 tween recollection of a small engraving in my pocket Pope’s 
 Homer, and reverent study of the Horse-Guards. And though 
 I believe that most boys collect flieir ideas from more varied 
 sources, and arrange them more carefully than I did ; still, 
 whatever sources they seek must always be ocular : if they are 
 clever boys, they will go and look at the Greek vases and 
 sculptures in the British Museum, and at the weapons in our 
 armouries— -they will see what real armour is like in lustre, 
 and what Greek armour was like in form, and so put a fairly 
 true image together, but still not, in ordinary cases, a very 
 living or interesting one. Now, the use of your decorative 
 painting would be, in myriads of ways, to animate their his- 
 tory for them, and to put the living aspect of past things be- 
 fore their eyes as faithfully as intelligent invention can ; so 
 that the master shall have nothing to do but once, to point to 
 the schoolroom walls, and forever afterwards the meaning of 
 any word would be fixed in a boy’s mind in the best possible 
 way. Is it a question of classical dress — what a tunic was 
 like, or a chlamys, or a peplus? At this day, you have to 
 point to some vile woodcut, in the middle of a dictionary 
 page, representing the thing hung upon a stick ; but then, 
 you would point to a hundred figures, wearing the actual 
 
accumulation and distribution. 
 
 207 
 
 dress, in its fiery colours, in all tlie actions of various stateli- 
 ness or strength ; you would understand at once how it fell 
 round the people’s limbs as they*stood, how it drifted from 
 their shoulders as they went, how it veiled their faces as they 
 wept, how it covered their heads in the day of battle. Now , 
 if you want to see what a weapon is like, you refer, in like 
 manner, to a numbered page, in which there are spear-heads 
 in rows, and sword-hilts in symmetrical groups ; and grad- 
 ually the boy gets a dim mathematical notion how one scymi- 
 tar is hooked to the right and another to the left, and one 
 javelin has a knob to it and another none : while one glance 
 at your good picture would show’ him, — and the first rainy 
 afternoon in the schoolroom would forever fix in his mind, — ■ 
 the look of the sword and spear as they fell or flew ; and how 
 they pierced, or bent, or shattered — how men wielded them, 
 and how men died by them. But far more than all this, is it 
 a question not of clothes or weapons, but of men? how can we 
 sufficiently estimate the effect on the mind of a noble youth, 
 at the time -when the world opens to him, of having faithful 
 and touching representations put before him of the acts and 
 presences of great men — how many a resolution, which would 
 alter and exalt the wdiole course of his after-life, might be 
 formed, when in some dreamy twilight he met, through his 
 own tears, the fixed eyes of those shadows of the great dead, 
 unescapable and calm, piercing to his soul ; or fancied that 
 their lips moved in dread reproof or soundless exhortation. 
 And if but for one out of many this were true — if yet, in a 
 few, you could be sure that such influence had indeed changed 
 their thoughts and destinies, and turned the eager and reck- 
 less youth, who would have cast away his energies on the race- 
 horse or the gambling-table, to that noble life-race, that holy 
 life-hazard, which should win all glory to himself and all good 
 to his country — would not that, to some purpose, be “politi- 
 cal economy of art ? ” 
 
 And observe, there could be no monotony, no exhaustible- 
 ness, in the scenes required to be thus portrayed. Even if 
 there were, and you wanted for every school in the kingdom, 
 one death of Leonidas ; one battle of Marathon ; one death of 
 
208 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 Cleobis and Bito ; there need not therefore be more monotony 
 in your art than there was in the repetition of a given cycle of 
 subjects by the religious pointers of Italy. But we ought not 
 to admit a cycle at all. For though we had as many great 
 schools as we have great cities (one day I hope we shall have), 
 centuries of painting would not exhaust, in all the number of 
 them, the noble and pathetic subjects which might be chosen 
 from the history of even one noble nation. But, beside this, 
 you will not, in a little while, limit your youths’ studies to so 
 narrow fields as you do now. There will come a time — I am 
 sure of it — when it will be found that the same practical re- 
 sults, both in mental discipline, and in political philosophy, 
 are to be attained by the accurate study of mediae val and 
 modern as of ancient history ; and that the facts of mediaeval 
 and modern history are, on the whole, the most important to 
 us. And among these noble groups of constellated schools 
 which I foresee arising in our England, I foresee also that there 
 will be divided fields of thought ; and that while each will give 
 its scholars a great general idea of the world’s history, such as 
 all men should possess — each will also take upon itself, as its 
 own special duty, the closer study of the course of events in 
 some given place or time. It will review the rest of history, 
 but it will exhaust its own special field of it ; and found its 
 moral and political teaching on the most perfect possible analy- 
 sis of the results of human conduct in one place, and at one 
 epoch. And then, the galleries of that school will be painted 
 with the historical scenes belonging to the age which it has 
 chosen for its special study. 
 
 So far, then, of art as you may apply it to that great series of 
 public buildings which you devote to the education of youth. 
 The next large class of public buildings in which we should 
 introduce it, is one which I think a few years more of national 
 progress will render more serviceable to us than they have 
 been lately. I mean, buildings for the meetings of guilds of 
 trades. 
 
 And here, for the last time, I must again interrupt the course 
 of our chief inquiry, in order to state one other principle of 
 political economy, which is perfectly simple and indisputable ; 
 
ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION. 
 
 200 
 
 but which, nevertheless, we continually get into commercial 
 embarrassments for want of understanding ; and not only so, 
 but suffer much hindrance in our commercial discoveries, be- 
 cause many of our business men do not practically admit it. 
 
 Supposing half a dozen or a dozen men were cast ashore 
 from a wreck on an uninhabited island, and left to their own 
 resources, one of course, according to his capacity, would be 
 set to one business and one to another ; the strongest to dig 
 and to cut wood, and to build huts for the rest : the most 
 dexterous to make shoes out of bark and coats out of skins ; 
 the best educated to look for iron or lead in the rocks, and 
 to plan the channels for the irrigation of the fields. But 
 though their labours were thus naturally severed, that small 
 group of shipwrecked men would understand well enough 
 that the speediest progress was to be made by helping each 
 other, — not by opposing each other : and they would know 
 that this help could only be properly given so long as they 
 were frank and open in their relations, and the difficulties 
 which each lay under properly explained to the rest. So that 
 any appearance of secresy or separateness in the actions of any 
 of them would instantly, and justly, be looked upon with sus- 
 picion by the rest, as the sign of some selfish or foolish pro- 
 ceeding on the part of the individual. If, for instance, the 
 scientific man were found to have gone out at night, unknown 
 to the rest, to alter the sluices, the others would think, and in 
 all probability rightly think, that he wanted to get the best 
 supply of water to his own field ; and if the shoemaker re- 
 fused to show them where the bark grew which he made the 
 sandals of, they would naturally think, and in all probability 
 rightly think, that he didn’t want them to see how much there 
 was of it, and that he meant to ask from them more corn and 
 potatoes in exchange for his sandals than the trouble of mak- 
 ing them deserved. And thus, although each man would have 
 a portion of time to himself in which he was allowed to do 
 what he chose without let or inquiry, — so long as he was work- 
 ing in that particular business which he had undertaken for 
 the common benefit, any secresy on his part would be imme- 
 diately supposed to mean mischief ; and would require to be 
 
210 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 accounted for, or put an end to : and this all the more because 
 whatever the work might be, certainly there would be difficul- 
 ties about it which, when once they were well explained, might 
 be more or less done away with by the help of the rest ; so 
 that assuredly every one of them would advance with his la- 
 bour not only more happily, but more profitably and quickly, 
 by having no secrets, and by frankly bestowing, and frankly 
 receiving, such help as lay in his way to get or to give. 
 
 And, just as the best and richest result of wealth and happi- 
 ness to the whole of them, would follow on their perseverance 
 in such a system of frank communication and of helpful la- 
 bour ; — so precisely the worst and poorest result would bo 
 obtained by a system of secresy and of enmity ; and each 
 mans happiness and wealth would assuredly be diminished in 
 proportion to the degree in which jealousy and concealment 
 became their social and economical principles. It would not, 
 in the long run, bring good, but only evil, to the man of sci- 
 ence, if, instead of telling openly where he had found good 
 iron, he carefully concealed every new bed of it, that he might 
 ask, in exchange for the rare ploughshare, more corn from the 
 farmer, or in exchange for the rude needle, more labour from 
 the sempstress : and it would not ultimately bring good, but 
 only evil, to the farmers, if they sought to burn each other’s 
 cornstacks, that they might raise the value of their grain, or 
 if the sempstresses tried to break each other’s needles, that 
 each might get all the stitching to herself. 
 
 Now, these laws of human action are precisely as authorita- 
 tive in their application to the conduct of a million of men, as 
 to that of six or twelve. All enmity, jealousy, opposition, and 
 secresy are wholly, and in all circumstances, destructive in their 
 nature — not productive ; and all kindness, fellowship, and com- 
 municativeness are invariably productive in their operation, — 
 not destructive ; and the evil principles of opposition and ex- 
 clusiveness are not rendered less fatal, but more fatal, by their 
 acceptance among large masses of men ; more fatal, I say, ex- 
 actly in proportion as their influence is more secret. For 
 though the opposition does always its Own simple, necessary, 
 direct quantity of harm, and withdraws always its own simple 5 
 
ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION 
 
 211 
 
 necessary, measurable quantity of wealth from the sum pos- 
 sessed by the community, yet, in proportion to the size of 
 the community, it does another and more refined mischief 
 than this, by concealing* its own fatality under aspects of 
 mercantile complication and expediency, and giving rise to 
 multitudes of false theories based on a mean belief in 
 narrow and immediate appearances of good done here and 
 there by things which have the universal and everlasting nat- 
 ure of evil. So that the time and powers of the nation are 
 wasted, not only in wretched struggling against each other, 
 but in vain complaints, and groundless discouragements, and 
 empty investigations, and useless experiments in laws, and 
 elections, and inventions ; with hope always to pull wisdom 
 through some new-shaped slit in a ballot-box, and to drag 
 prosperity down out of the clouds along some new knot of 
 electric wire ; while all the while Wisdom stands calling at 
 the corners of the streets, and the blessing of heaven waits 
 ready to rain down upon us, deeper than the rivers and 
 broader than the dew, if only we will obey the first plain prin- 
 ciples of humanity, and the first plain precepts of the skies ; 
 “Execute true judgment, and show mercy and compassion, 
 every man to his brother ; and let none of you imagine evil 
 against his brother in your heart.”* 
 
 * It would be well if, instead of preaching continually about the doc- 
 trine of faitli and good works, our clergymen would simply explain to 
 their people a little what good works mean. There is not a chapter in 
 all the book we profess to believe, more specially, and directly written 
 for England, than the second of Kabakkuk, and I never in all my life 
 heard one of its practical texts preached from. I suppose the clergymen 
 are all afraid, and know that their flocks, while they will sit quite po- 
 litely to hear syllogisms out of the epistle to the Romans, would get rest- 
 ive directly if they ever pressed a practical text home to them. But we 
 should have no mercantile catastrophes, and no distressful pauperism, if 
 we only read often, and took to heart, those plain words: “Yea, also, 
 because he is a proud man, neither keepeth at home, who enlargeth his 
 desire as hell, and cannot be satisfied, — Shall not all these take up a 
 parable against him, and a taunting proverb against him, and say, 
 
 ‘ Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his : and to him 
 that ladeth himself with thick day.’” (What a glorious history, in one 
 metaphor, of the life of a man greedy of fortune.) “Woe to him that 
 
212 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 Therefore, I believe most firmly, that as the laws of national 
 prosperity get familiar to us, we shall more and more cast our 
 toil into social and communicative systems ; and that one of 
 the first means of our doing so, will be the re-establishing 
 guilds of every important trade in a vital, not formal, condi- 
 tion ; — that there will be a great council or government house 
 for the members of every trade, built in whatever town of the 
 kingdom occupies itself principally in such trade, with minor 
 council-halls in other cities ; and to each council-hall, officers 
 attached, whose first business may be to examine into the cir- 
 cumstances of every operative, in that trade, who chooses to 
 report himself to them when out of work, and to set him to 
 work, if he is indeed able and willing, at a fixed rate of wages, 
 determined at regular periods in the council-meetings ; and 
 whose next duty may be to bring reports before the council 
 of all improvements made in the business, and means of its 
 extension : not allowing private patents of any kind, but mak- 
 ing all improvements available to every member of the guild, 
 only allotting, after successful trial of them, a certain reward 
 to the inventors. 
 
 For these, and many other such purposes, such halls will 
 be again, I trust, fully established, and then, in the paintings 
 and decorations of them, especial effort ought to be made to 
 express the worthiness and honourableness of the trade for 
 whose members they are founded. For I believe one of the 
 worst symptoms of modern society to be, its notion of great 
 inferiority, and ungentlemanliness, as necessarily belonging 
 to the character of a tradesman. I believe tradesmen may be, 
 ought to be — often are, more gentlemen than idle and useless 
 people : and I believe that art may do noble work by record- 
 ing in the hall of each trade, the services which men belong- 
 
 coveteth an evil covetousness tliat he may set his nest on high. Woe to 
 him that buildeth a town witli blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity. 
 Behold, is it not of the Lord of Hosts that the people shall labour in the 
 very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity?” 
 
 The Americans, who have been sending out ships with sham bolt- 
 heads on their timbers, and only half their bolts, may meditate on 
 that u buildeth a town with blood.” 
 
accumulation and distribution. 
 
 213 
 
 ing to that trade have done for their country, both preserving 
 the portraits, and recording the important incidents in the 
 lives, of those who have made great advances in commerce 
 and civilization. I cannot follow out this subject, it branches 
 too far, and in too many directions ; besides, I have no doubt 
 you will at once see and accept the truth of the main princi- 
 ple, and be able to think it out for yourselves. I would fain 
 also have said something of what might be done, in the same 
 manner, for almshouses and hospitals, and for what, as I shall 
 try to explain in notes to this lecture, we may hope to see, 
 some day, established with a different meaning in their name 
 than that they now bear — workhouses ; but I have detained you 
 too long already, and cannot permit myself to trespass further 
 on your patience except only to recapitulate, in closing, the 
 simple principles respecting wealth, which we have gathered 
 during the course of our inquiry ; principles which are noth- 
 ing more than the literal and practical acceptance of the say- 
 ing, which is in all good men’s mouths ; namely, that they are 
 stewards or ministers of whatever talents are entrusted to 
 them. Only, is it not a strange thing, that while we more or 
 less accept the meaning of that saying, so long as it is con- 
 sidered metaphorical, we never accept its meaning in its ow r n 
 terms ? You know the lesson is given us under the form of a 
 story about money. Money w r as given to the servants to make 
 use of : the unprofitable servant dug in the earth, and hid his 
 Lord’s money. Well, we, in our poetical and spiritual appli- 
 cation of this, say, that of course money doesn’t mean money, 
 it means wit, it means intellect, it means influence in high 
 quarters, it means everything in the world except itself. And 
 do not you see what a pretty and pleasant come-off there is 
 for most of us, in this spiritual application ? Of course, if we 
 had wit, we would use it for the good of our fellow-creatures. 
 But we haven’t wit. Of course, if we had influence with the 
 bishops, we would use it for the good of the Church ; but we 
 haven’t any influence with the bishops. Of course, if we had 
 political power, we would use it for the good of the nation ; 
 but we have no political power ; we have no talents entrusted 
 to us of any sort or kind. It is true we have a little money, 
 
214 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 but the parable can’t possibly mean anything so vulgar aa 
 money ; our money’s our own. 
 
 I believe, if you think seriously of this matter, you will feel 
 that the first and most literal application is just as necessary 
 a one as any other — that the story does very specially mean 
 what it says — plain money ; and that the reason we don’t at 
 once believe it does so, is a sort of tacit idea that while 
 thought, wit, and intellect, and all power of birth and posi- 
 tion, are indeed given to us, and, therefore, to be laid out for 
 the Giver, — our wealth has not been given to us ; but we 
 have worked for it, and have a right to spend it as we choose. 
 I think you will find that is the real substance of our under- 
 standing in this matter. Beauty, we say, is given by God — 
 it is a talent ; strength is given by God — it is a talent ; posi- 
 tion is given by God — it is a talent ; but money is proper 
 wages for our day’s work — it is not a talent, it is a due. We 
 may justly spend it on ourselves, if we have worked for it. 
 
 And there would be some shadow of excuse for this, were 
 it not that the very power of making the money is itself only 
 one of the applications of that intellect or strength which we 
 confess to be talents. Why is one man richer than another ? 
 Because he is more industrious, more persevering, and more 
 sagacious. Well, who made him more persevering and more 
 sagacious than others ? That power of endurance, that quick- 
 ness of apprehension, that calmness of judgment, which en- 
 able him to seize the opportunities that others lose, and per- 
 sist in the lines cf conduct in which others fail — are these not 
 talents ? — are they not in the present state of the world, among 
 the most distinguished and influential of mental gifts ? And 
 is it not wonderful, that while we should be utterly ashamed 
 to use a superiority of body, in order to thrust our weaker 
 companions aside from some place of advantage, we unhesi- 
 tatingly use our superiorities of mind to thrust them back 
 from whatever good that strength of mind can attain. You 
 would be indignant if you saw a strong man walk into a the- 
 atre or a lecture-room, and, calmly choosing the best place, 
 take his feeble neighbour by the shoulder, and turn him out 
 of it into the back seats, or the street. You would be equally 
 
ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION. 
 
 215 
 
 indignant if you saw a stout fellow thrust himself up to a 
 table where some hungry children were being fed, and reach 
 his arm over their heads and take their bread from them. But 
 you are not the least indignant if when a man has stoutness 
 of thought and swiftness of capacity, and, instead of being 
 long-armed only, has the much greater gift of being long- 
 headed — you think it perfectly just that he should use his intel- 
 lect to take the bread out of the mouths of all the other men 
 in the town who are of the same trade with him ; or use his 
 breadth and sweep of sight to gather some branch of the com- 
 merce of the country into one great cobweb, of which he is 
 himself to be the central spider, making every thread vibrate 
 with the points of his claws, and commanding every avenue 
 with the facets of his eyes. You see no injustice in this. 
 
 But there is injustice ; and, let us trust, one of which hon- 
 ourable men will at no very distant period disdain to be 
 guilty. In some degree, however, it is indeed not unjust ; in 
 some degree it is necessary and intended. It is assuredly just 
 that idleness should be surpassed by energy ; that the widest 
 influence should be possessed by those w r ho are best able to 
 wield it ; and that a wise man, at the end of his career, should 
 be better off than a fool. But for that reason, is the fool to 
 be wretched, utterly crushed down, and left in all the suffer- 
 ing which his conduct and capacity naturally inflict ? — Not so. 
 What do you suppose fools were made for ? That you might 
 tread upon them, and starve them, and get the better of them 
 in every possible way ? By no means. They were made that 
 wise people might take care of them. That is the true and 
 plain fact concerning the relations of every strong and wise 
 man to the world about him. He has his strength given him, 
 not that he may crush the weak, but that he may support 
 and guide them. In his own household he is to be the guide 
 and the support of his children ; out of his household he is 
 still to be the father, that is, the guide and support of the 
 weak and the poor ; not merely of the meritoriously w^eak and 
 the innocently poor, but of the guiltily and punishably poor ; 
 of the men who ought to have known better — of the poor who 
 ought to be ashamed of themselves. It is nothing to give pen- 
 
210 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 sion and cottage to the widow who has lost her son ; it is 
 nothing to give food and medicine to the workman who has 
 broken his arm, or the decrepit woman wasting in sickness. 
 But it is something to use your time and strength to war with 
 the waywardness and thoughtlessness of mankind ; to keep 
 the erring workman in your service till you have made him an 
 unerring one ; and to direct your fellow-merchant to the op- 
 portunity which his dulness would have lost. This is much ; 
 but it is yet more, when you have fully achieved the superior- 
 ity which is due to you, and acquired the wealth which is the 
 fitting reward of your sagacity, if you solemnly accept the re- 
 sponsibility of it, as it is the helm and guide of labour far 
 and near. For you who have it in your hands, are in reality 
 the pilots of the power and effort of the State. It is entrusted 
 to you as an authority to be used for good or evil, just as com- 
 pletely as kingly authority was ever given to a prince, or mil- 
 itary command to a captain. And, according to the quantity 
 of it that you have in your hands, you are the arbiters of the 
 will and work of England ; and the Tvhole issue, whether the 
 work of the State shall suffice for the State or not, depends 
 upon you. You may stretch out your sceptre over the heads 
 of the English labourers, and say to them, as they stoop to its 
 waving, “ Subdue this obstacle that has baffled our fathers, 
 put away this plague that consumes our children ; water 
 these dry places, plough these desert ones, carry this food to 
 those who are in hunger ; carry this light to those who are in 
 darkness ; carry this life to those who are in death ; ” or on 
 the other side you may say to her labourers : “Here am I ; 
 this power is in my hand ; come, build a mound here for me 
 to be throned upon, high and wide ; come, make crowns for 
 my head, that men may see them shine from far away ; come, 
 weave tapestries for my feet, that I may tread softly on the 
 silk and purple ; come, dance before me, that I may be gay ; 
 and sing sweetly to me, that I may slumber ; so shall I live in 
 joy, and die in honour.” And better than such an honourable 
 death, it were that the day had perished wherein we were 
 born, and the night in which it was said there is a child con- 
 ceived. 
 
ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION. 
 
 217 
 
 I trust that in a little while, there will be few of our rich 
 men who, through carelessness or covetousness, thus forfeit 
 the glorious office which is intended for their hands. I said, 
 just now, that wealth ill-used was as the net of the spider, en- 
 tangling and destroying : but wealth well used, is as the net 
 of the sacred fisher who gathers souls of men out of the deep. 
 A time will come — I do not think even now it is far from us 
 — when this golden net of the world’s wealth will be spread 
 abroad as the flaming meshes of morning cloud are over the 
 sky ; bearing with them the joy of light and the dew of the 
 morning, as well as the summons to honourable and peaceful 
 toil. What less can we hope from your wealth than this, 
 rich men of England, when once you feel fully how, by the 
 strength of your possessions — not, observe, by the exhaustion, 
 but by the administration of them and the power — you can 
 direct the acts, — command the energies — inform the igno- 
 rance, — prolong the existence, of the whole human race ; and 
 how, even of worldly wisdom, which man employs faithfully, 
 it is true, not only that her ways are pleasantness, but that 
 her paths are peace ; and that, for all the children of men, as 
 well as for those to whom she is given, Length of days are in 
 her right hand, as in her left hand Eiches and Honour ? 
 
. *5 -■ r m 
 
 > 2.M 
 
 * 
 
ADDENDA. 
 
 Note, p. 150 . — “ Fatherly authority” 
 
 This statement could not, of course, be heard without dis- 
 pleasure by a certain class of politicians ; and in one of the 
 notices of these lectures given in the Manchester journals at 
 the time, endeavour was made to get quit of it by referring 
 to the Divine authority, as the only Paternal power with re- 
 spect to which men were truly styled “ brethren.” Of course 
 it is so, and, equally of course, all human government is noth- 
 ing else than the executive expression of this Divine author- 
 ity. The moment government ceases to be the practical en- 
 forcement of Divine law, it is tyranny ; and the meaning which 
 I attach to the words, “ paternal government,” is in more 
 extended terms, simply this — “ The executive fulfilment, by 
 formal methods, of the will of the Father of mankind respect- 
 ing His children.” I could not give such a definition of Gov- 
 ernment as this in a popular lecture ; and even in written 
 form, it will necessarily suggest many objections, of which I 
 must notice and answer the most probable. 
 
 Only 3 in order to avoid the recurrence of such tiresome 
 phrases as “ it maj' be answered in the second place,” and it 
 will be objected in the third place,” &c., I will ask the read- 
 er’s leave to arrange the discussion in the form of simple dia- 
 logue, letting 0. stand for objector, and R. for response. 
 
 0 . — You define your paternal government to be the execu- 
 tive fulfilment, by formal human methods, of the Divine will. 
 But, assuredly, that will cannot stand in need of aid or ex- 
 pression from human laws. It cannot fail of its fulfilment. 
 
 R < — In the final sense it cannot ; and in that sense, men 
 who are committing murder and stealing are fulfilling the will 
 
220 
 
 A JOT FOR EVER. 
 
 of God as much as the best and kindest people in the world. 
 But in the limited and present sense, the only sense with 
 which we have anything to do, God’s will concerning man is 
 fulfilled by some men, and thwarted by others. And those 
 men who either persuade or enforce the doing of it, stand 
 towards those who are rebellious against it exactly in the 
 position of faithful children in a family, who, when the father 
 is out of sight, either compel or persuade the rest to do as 
 their father would have them, were he present ; and in so far 
 as they are expressing and maintaining, for the time, the pa- 
 ternal authority, they exercise, in the exact sense in which I 
 mean the phrase to be understood, paternal government over 
 the rest. 
 
 O. — But, if Providence has left a liberty to man in many 
 things in order to prove him, why should human law abridge 
 that liberty, and take upon itself to compel what the great 
 Lawgiver does not compel? 
 
 R . — It is confessed, in the enactment of any law whatso- 
 ever, that human lawgivers have a right to do this. For, if 
 you have no right to abridge any of the liberty which Provi- 
 dence has left to man, you have no right to punish any one for 
 committing murder or robbery. You ought to leave them to 
 the punishment of God and Nature. But if you think your- 
 self under obligation to punish, as far as human laws can, the 
 violation of the will of God by these great sins, you are cer- 
 tainly under the same obligation to punish, with proportion- 
 ately less punishment, the violation of His will in less sins. 
 
 0 . — No ; you must not attempt to punish less sins by law, 
 because you cannot properly define nor ascertain them. 
 Everybody can determine whether murder has been committed 
 or not, but you cannot determine how far people have been 
 unjust or cruel in minor matters, and therefore cannot make 
 or execute laws concerning minor matters. 
 
 R . — If I propose to you to punish faults which cannot be 
 defined, or to execute laws which cannot be made equitable, 
 reject the laws I propose. But do not generally object to the 
 principle of law. 
 
 0. — Yes ; I generally object to the principle of law as ap- 
 
ADDENDA. 
 
 221 
 
 plied to minor things ; because, if you could succeed (which 
 you cannot) in regulating the entire conduct of men by law 
 in little things as well as great, you would take away from 
 human life all its probationary character, and render many 
 virtues and pleasures impossible. You would reduce virtue 
 to the movement of a machine, instead of the act of a spirit. 
 
 B . — You have just said, parenthetically, and I fully and will- 
 ingly admit it, that it is impossible to regulate all minor mat- 
 ters by law. Is it not probable, therefore, that the degree in 
 which it is possible to regulate them by it, is also the degree 
 in which it is right to regulate them by it ? Or what other 
 means of judgment will you employ, to separate the things 
 which ought to be formally regulated from the things which 
 ought not ? You admit that great sins should be legally re- 
 pressed ; but you say that small sins should not be legally re- 
 pressed. How do you distinguish between great and small 
 sins ; and how do you intend to determine, or do you in prac- 
 tice of daily life determine, on what occasion you should com- 
 pel people to do right, and on what occasion you should leave 
 them the option of doing wrong ? 
 
 0 . — I think you cannot make any accurate or logical dis- 
 tinction in such matters ; but that common sense and instinct 
 have, in all civilized nations, indicated certain crimes of great 
 social harmfulness, such as murder, theft, adultery, slander, 
 and such like, which it is proper to repress legally ; and that 
 common sense and instinct indicate also the kind of crimes 
 which it is proper for laws to let alone, such as miserliness, 
 ill-natured speaking, and many of those commercial dishones- 
 ties which I have a notion you want your paternal government 
 to interfere with. 
 
 U . — Pray do not alarm yourself about what my paternal 
 government is likely to interfere with, but keep to the matter 
 in hand. You say that “ common sense and instinct ” have, 
 in all civilized nations, distinguished between the sins that 
 ought to be legally dealt with and that ought not. Do you 
 mean that the laws of all civilized nations are perfect ? 
 
 0. — No ; certainly not. 
 
 B. — Or that they are perfect at least in their discrimination 
 
222 
 
 A JOT FOR EVER. 
 
 of what crimes they should deal with, and what crimes they 
 should let alone ? 
 
 0. — No ; not exactly. 
 
 R. — What do you mean then? 
 
 0 . — I mean that the general tendency is right in the laws 
 of civilized nations ; and that, in due course of time, natural 
 sense and instinct point out the matters they should be 
 brought to bear upon. And each question of legislation must 
 be made a separate subject of inquiry as it presents itself : 
 you cannot fix any general principles about what should be 
 dealt with legally, and what should not. 
 
 R. — Supposing it to be so, do you think there are any 
 points in which our English legislation is capable of amend- 
 ment, as it bears on commercial and economical matters, in 
 this present time ? 
 
 0 . — Of course I do. 
 
 R. — Well, then, let us discuss these together quietly ; and 
 if the points that I want amended seem to you incapable of 
 amendment, or not in need of amendment, say so : but don’t 
 object, at starting, to the mere proposition of applying law to 
 tliiugs which have not had law applied to them before. You 
 have admitted the fitness of my expression, “paternal govern- 
 ment : ” it only has been, and remains a question between us, 
 how far such government should extend. Perhaps you would 
 like it only to regulate, among the children, the length of their 
 lessons ; and perhaps I should like it also to regulate the 
 hardness of their cricket-balls : but cannot you w r ait quietly 
 till you know what I want it to do, before quarrelling with 
 the thing itself ? 
 
 0 . — No ; I cannot wait quietly : in fact I don’t see any use 
 in beginning such a discussion at all, because I am quite sure 
 from the first, that you want to meddle with things that you 
 have no business with, and to interfere with healthy liberty 
 of action in all sorts of ways ; and I know that you can’t j>ro- 
 pose any law's that would be of real use.* 
 
 * If tlie reader is displeased with me for putting this foolish speech 
 into his mouth, I entreat his pardon ; but he maybe assured that it is a 
 speech which would bs made by many people, and the substance of 
 
ADVENT) A. 
 
 223 
 
 R . — If you indeed know that, you would be wrong to bear 
 me any farther. But if you are only in painful doubt about 
 me, which makes you unwilling to run the risk of wasting 
 your time, I will tell you beforehand what I really do think 
 about this same liberty of action, namely, that whenever we 
 can make a perfectly equitable law about any matter, or even 
 a law securing, on the whole, more just conduct than unjust, 
 •we ought to make that law ; and that there will yet, on these 
 conditions, always remain a number of matters respecting 
 •which legalism and formalism are impossible ; enough, and 
 more than enough, to exercise all human powers of individual 
 judgment, and afford all kinds of scope to individual character. 
 I think this ; but of course it can only be proved by separate 
 examination of the possibilities of formal restraint in each 
 given field of action ; and these two lectures are nothing more 
 than a sketch of such a detailed examination in one field, 
 namely, that of art. You will find, however, one or tw'o other 
 remarks on such possibilities in the next note. 
 
 Note 2d, p. 251. — “ Right to public support” 
 
 It did not appear to me desirable, in the course of the 
 spoken lecture, to enter into details or offer suggestions on 
 the questions of the regulation of labour and distribution of 
 relief, as it would have been impossible to do so without 
 touching on many disputed or disputable points, not easily 
 handled before a general audience. But I must now supply 
 what is wanting to make my general statement clear. 
 
 I believe, in the first place, that no Christian nation has any 
 business to see one of its members in distress without helping 
 him, though, perhaps, at the same time punishing him : help, 
 of course — in nine cases out of ten — meaning guidance, much 
 more than gift, and, therefore, interference wdth liberty. 
 
 which would he tacitly felt by many more, at this point of the discus- 
 sion. I have really tried, up to this point, to make the objector as in- 
 telligent a person as it is possible for an author to imagine anybody to 
 be, who differs with him. 
 
224 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 "When a peasant mother sees one of her careless children fall 
 into a ditch, her first proceeding is to pull him out ; her 
 second, to box his ears ; her third, ordinarily, to lead him 
 carefully a little way by the hand, or send him home for the 
 rest of the day. The child usually cries, and very often would 
 clearly prefer remaining in the ditch ; and if he understood 
 any of the terms of politics, would certainly express resent- 
 ment at the interference with his individual liberty : but the 
 mother has done her duty. Whereas the usual call of the 
 mother nation to any of her children, under such circum- 
 stances, has lately been nothing more than the foxhunter’s, — - 
 “Stay still there ; I shall clear you.” And if we always could 
 clear them, their requests to be left in muddy independence 
 might be sometimes allowed by kind people, or their cries for 
 help disdained by unkind ones. But we can’t clear them. 
 The whole nation is, in fact, bound together, as men are by 
 ropes on a glacier — if one falls, the rest must either lift him 
 or drag him along with them * as dead weight, not without 
 much increase of danger to themselves. And the lav/ of right 
 being manifestly in this, as, whether manifestly or not, it is 
 always, the law of prudence, the only question is, how this 
 wholesome help and interference are to be administered. 
 
 The first interference should be in education. In order that 
 men may be able to support themselves when they are grown, 
 their strength must be properly developed while they are 
 young ; and the state should always see to this — not allowing 
 their health to be broken by too early labour, nor their powers 
 to be wasted for want of knowledge. Some questions con- 
 nected with this matter are noticed farther on under the head 
 “ trial schools : ” one point I must notice here, that I believe 
 all youths of whatever rank, ought to learn some manual trade 
 thoroughly ; for it is quite wonderful how much a man’s views 
 
 * It is very curious to watch the efforts of two shopkeepers to ruin each 
 other, neither having the least idea that his ruined neighbour must 
 eventually be supported at his own expense, with an increase of poor 
 rates ; and that the contest between them is not in reality which shall 
 get everything for himself, but which shall first take upon himself and 
 his customers the gratuitous maintenance of the other’s family. 
 
ADDENDA. 
 
 225 
 
 of life are cleared by the attainment of the capacity of doing 
 any one thing well with his hands and arms. For a long time, 
 what right life there was in the upper classes of Europe de- 
 pended in no small degree on the necessity which each man 
 was under of being able to fence ; at this day, the most use- 
 ful things which boys learn at public schools, are, I believe, 
 riding, rowing, and cricketing. But it would be far better 
 that members of Parliament should be able to plough straight, 
 and make a horseshoe, than only to feather oars neatly or 
 point their toes prettily in stirrups. Then, in literary and 
 scientific teaching, the great point of economy is to give the 
 discipline of it through knowledge which will immediately 
 bear on practical life. Our literary work has long been econom- 
 ically useless to us because too much concerned with dead 
 languages ; and our scientific work will yet, for some time, be 
 a good deal lost, because scientific men are too fond or too 
 vain of their systems, and waste the student’s time in en- 
 deavouring to give him large views, and make him perceive 
 interesting connections of facts ; when there is not one student, 
 no, nor one man, in a thousand, who can feel the beauty of a 
 system, or even take it clearly into his head ; but nearly all 
 men can understand, and most will be interested in, the facts 
 which bear on daily life. Botanists have discovered some 
 wonderful connection between nettles and figs, which a cow- 
 boy who will never see a ripe fig in his life need not be at all 
 troubled about ; but it will be interesting to him to know what 
 effect nettles have on hay, and what taste they will give to por- 
 ridge ; and it will give him nearly a new life if he can be got 
 but once, in a spring-time, to look well at the beautiful circlet 
 of the white nettle blossom, and work out with his school- 
 master the curves of its petals, and the way it is set on its 
 central mast. So, the principle of chemical equivalents, beau- 
 tiful as it is, matters far less to a peasant boy, and even to 
 most sons of gentlemen, than their knowing how to find 
 whether the water is wholesome in the back-kitchen cistern, 
 or whether the seven-acre field wants sand or chalk. 
 
 Having, then, directed the studies of our youth so as to 
 make them practically serviceable men at the time of their 
 
228 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER 
 
 entrance into life, that entrance should always he ready foi 
 them in cases where their private circumstances present no 
 opening. There ought to be government establishments for 
 every trade, in which all youths who desired it should be re- 
 ceived as apprentices on their leaving school ; and men thrown 
 out of work received at ail times. At these government 
 manufactories the discipline should be strict, and the wages 
 steady, not varying at all in proportion to the demand for the 
 article, but only in proportion to the price of food ; the com- 
 modities produced being laid up in store to meet sudden de- 
 mands, and sudden fluctuations in prices prevented : — that 
 gradual and necessary fluctuation only being allowed which is 
 properly consequent on larger or more limited supply of raw 
 material and other natural causes. When there was a visible 
 tendency to produce a glut of any commodity, that tendency 
 should be checked by directing the youth at the government 
 schools into other trades ; and the yearly surplus of com- 
 modities should be the principal means of government pro- 
 vision for the poor. That provision should be large, and not 
 disgraceful to them. At present there are very strange 
 notions in the public mind respecting the 'receiving of alms : 
 most people are willing to take them in the form of a pension 
 from government, but unwilling* to take them in the form of a 
 pension from their parishes. There may be some reason for 
 this singular prejudice, in the fact of the government pension 
 being usually given as a definite acknowledgment of some ser- 
 vice done to the country ; — but the parish pension is, or 
 ought to be, given precisely on the same terms. A labourer 
 serves his country with his spade, just as a man in the middle 
 ranks of life serves it with his sword, pen, or lancet ; if the 
 service is less, and therefore the wages during health less, 
 then the reward, when health is broken, may be less, but not, 
 therefore, less honourable ; and it ought to be quite as natural 
 and straightforward a matter for a labourer to take his pen- 
 sion from his parish, because he has deserved well of his 
 parish, as for a man in higher rank to take his pension from 
 his country, because he has deserved well of his country. If 
 there be any disgrace in coming to the parish, because it may 
 
ADDENDA. 
 
 227 
 
 imply improvidence in early life, much more is there disgrace 
 in coming to the government ; since improvidence is far less 
 justifiable in a highly educated than in an imperfectly edu- 
 cated man ; and far less justifiable in a high rank, where ex- 
 travagance must have been luxury, than in a low rank, where 
 it may only have been comfort. So that the real fact of the 
 matter is, that people will take alms delightedly, consisting of 
 a carriage and footmen, because those do not look like alms 
 to the people in the street ; but they will not take alms con- 
 sisting only of bread and water and coals, because everybody 
 would understand what those meant. Mind, I do not want 
 any one to refuse the carriage who ought to have it ; but 
 neither do I want them to refuse the coals. I should indeed 
 be sorry if any change in our views on these subjects involved 
 the least lessening of self-dependence in the English mind ; 
 but the common shrinking of men from the acceptance of 
 public charity is not self-dependence, but mere base and selfish 
 pride. It is not that they are unwilling to live at their neigh- 
 bours’ expense, but that they are unwilling to confess they 
 do ; it is not dependence they wish to avoid, but gratitude. 
 They will take places in which they know there is nothing to 
 be done — they will borrow money they know they cannot re- 
 pay — they will carry on a losing business with other people’s 
 capital — they will cheat the public in their shops, or sponge 
 on their friends at their houses ; but to say plainly they are 
 poor men, who need the nation’s help, and go into an alms- 
 house — this they loftily repudiate, and virtuously prefer being 
 thieves to being paupers. 
 
 I trust that these deceptive efforts of dishonest men to ap- 
 pear independent, and the agonizing efforts of unfortunate 
 men to remain independent, may both be in some degree 
 checked by a better administration and understanding of 
 laws respecting the poor. But the ordinances for relief and 
 the ordinances for labour must go together ; otherwise distress 
 caused by misfortune will always be confounded, as it is now, 
 with distress caused by idleness, un thrift, and fraud. It is 
 only when the state watches and guides the middle life of 
 men, that it can, without disgrace to them, protect their old 
 
228 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 age, acknowledging in that protection that they have done 
 their duty, or at least some portion of their duty, in better 
 days. 
 
 I know well how strange, fanciful, or impracticable these 
 suggestions will appear to most of the business men of this 
 day ; men who conceive the proper state of the world to be 
 simply that of a vast and disorganized mob, scrambling each 
 for what he can get, trampling down its children and old men 
 in the mire, and doing what work it finds must be done with 
 any irregular squad of labourers it can bribe or inveigle to- 
 gether, and afterwards scatter to starvation. A great deal 
 may, indeed, be done in this way by a nation strong-elbowed 
 and strong-hearted as we are — not easily frightened by push- 
 ing, nor discouraged by falls. But it is still not the right 
 way of doing things, for people who call themselves Chris- 
 tians. Every so named soul of man claims from every other 
 such soul, protection and education in childhood — help or 
 punishment in middle life — reward or relief, if needed, in old 
 age ; all of these should be completely and unstintingly given, 
 and they can only be given by the organization of such a sys- 
 tem as I have described. 
 
 Note 3rd, p. 154 . — “ Trial Schools 
 
 It may be seriously questioned by the reader how much of 
 painting talent we really lose on our present system,* and how 
 much we should gain by the proposed trial schools. For it 
 might be thought, that as matters stand at present, we have 
 
 * It will be observed tliat, in the lecture, it is assumed that works of 
 art are national treasures ; and that it is desirable to withdraw all the 
 hands capable of painting or carving from other employments, in order 
 that they may produce this kind of wealth. I do not, in assuming this, 
 mean that works of art add to the monetary resources of a nation, or 
 form part of its wealth, in the vulgar sense. The result of the sale of 
 a picture in the country itself is merely that a certain sum of money is 
 transferred from the hands of B. the purchaser, to those of A. the pro- 
 ducer ; the sum ultimately to be distributed remaining the same, only 
 A. ultimately spending it instead of B., while the labour of A. has been 
 in th 9 meantime withdrawn from productive channels ; he lias painted 
 
ADDENDA. 
 
 229 
 
 more painters than we ought to have, having so many bad 
 ones, and that ail youths who had true painters’ genius forced 
 their way out of obscurity. 
 
 This is not so. It is difficult to analyse the characters of 
 mind which cause youths to mistake their vocation, and to 
 endeavour to become artists, when they have no true artist’s 
 gift. But the fact is, that multitudes of young men do this, 
 and that by far the greater number of living artists are men 
 who have mistaken their vocation. The peculiar circum- 
 stances of modern life, which exhibit art in almost every form 
 to the sight of the youths in our great cities, have a natural 
 tendency to fill their imaginations with borrowed ideas, and 
 their minds with imperfect science ; the mere dislike of 
 mechanical employments, either felt to be irksome, or be- 
 
 a picture which nobody can live upon, or live in. when he might have 
 grown corn or built houses : when the sale therefore is effected in the 
 country itself, it does not add to, but diminishes, the monetary resources 
 of the country, except only so far as it may appear probably, on other 
 grounds, that A. is likely to spend the sum he receives for his picture 
 more rationally and usefully than B. would have spent it. If, indeed, 
 the picture, or other work of art, be sold in foreign countries, either the 
 money or the useful products of the foreign country being imported in 
 exchange for it, such sale adds to the monetary resources of the selling, 
 and diminishes those of the purchasing nation. But sound political 
 economy, strange as it may at first appear to say so, has nothing what- 
 ever to do with separations between national interests. Political econo- 
 my means the management of the affairs of citizens ; and in either re- 
 gards exclusively the administration of the affairs of one nation, or the 
 administration of the affairs of the world considered as one nation. So 
 when a transaction between individuals which enriches A. impoverishes 
 B. in precisely the same degree, the sound economist considers it an un- 
 productive transaction between the individuals, and if a trade between 
 two nations which enriches one, impoverishes the other in the same de- 
 gree, the sound economist considers it an unproductive trade between 
 the nations It is not a general question of political economy, but only 
 a particular question of local expediency, whether an article in itself 
 valueless, may bear a value of exchange in transactions with some other 
 nation. The economist considers only the actual value of the thins: 
 
 * i ° 
 
 done or produced ; and if he sees a quantity of labour spent, for in- 
 stance. by the Swiss, in producing woodwork for sale to the English, he 
 at once sets the commercial impoverishment of the English purchaser 
 
230 
 
 A JOT FOR EVER. 
 
 lieved to be degrading, urges numbers of young men to be- 
 come painters, in the same temper in which they would enlist 
 or go to sea ; others, the sons of engravers or artists, taught 
 the business of the art by their parents, and having no gift 
 for it themselves, follow it as the means of livelihood, in an 
 ignoble patience ; or, if ambitious, seek to attract regard, or 
 distance rivalry, by fantastic, meretricious, or unprecedented 
 applications of their mechanical skill ; while finally, many 
 men earnest in feeling, and conscientious in principle, mistake 
 their desire to be useful for a love of art, and their quick- 
 ness of emotion for its capacity, and pass their lives in 
 painting moral and instructive pictures, which might almost 
 justify us in thinking nobody could be a painter but a rogue. 
 
 against tlie commercial enrichment of the Swiss seller ; and considers 
 the whole transaction productive only so far as the woodwork itself is a 
 real addition to the wealth of the world. For the arrangement of the 
 laws of a nation, so as to procure the greatest advantages to itself, and 
 leave the smallest advantages to other nations, is not a part of the science 
 of political economy, but merely a broad application of the science of 
 fraud. Considered thus in the abstract, pictures are not an addition to 
 the monetary wealth of the world, except in the amount of pleasure or 
 instruction to be got out of them day by day : but there is a certain pro- 
 tective effect on wealth exercised by works of high art which must al- 
 ways be included in the estimate of their value. Generally speaking, 
 persons who decorate their houses with pictures will not spend so much 
 money in papers, carpets, curtains, or other expensive and perishable 
 luxuries as they would otherwise. Works of good art, like books, exer- 
 cise a conservative effect on the rooms they are kept in ; and the wall 
 of the library or picture gallery remains undisturbed, when those of 
 other rooms are re-papered or re-panelled. Of course this effect is still 
 more definite when the picture is on the walls themselves, either on 
 canvas stretched into fixed shapes on their panels, or in fresco ; involv- 
 ing, of course, the preservation of the building from all unnecessary and 
 capricious alteration. And generally speaking, the occup^fion of a large 
 number of hands in painting or sculpture in any nation may be con- 
 sidered as tending to check the disposition to indulge in perishable lux- 
 ury. I do not, however, in my assumption that works of art are treas- 
 ures, take much into consideration this collateral monetary result. I 
 consider them treasures, merely as a permanent means of pleasure and 
 instruction; and having at other times tried to show the several ways 
 in which they can please and teach, assume here that they are thus use- 
 ful ; and that it is desirable to make as many painters as we can. 
 
ADDENDA , . 
 
 231 
 
 On tlie other hand, I believe that much of the best artistical 
 intellect is daily lost in other avocations. Generally, the 
 temper which would make an admirable artist is humble and 
 observant, capable of taking much interest in little things, 
 and of entertaining itself pleasantly in the dullest circum- 
 stances. Suppose, added to these characters, a steady con- 
 scientiousness which seeks to do its duty wherever it may be 
 placed, and the power, denied to few artistical minds, of 
 ingenious invention in almost any practical department of 
 human skill, and it can hardly be doubted that the very hu- 
 mility and conscientiousness which would have perfected the 
 painter, have in many instances prevented his becoming one ; 
 and that in the quiet life of our steady craftsmen — sagacious 
 manufacturers, and uncomplaining clerks — there may fre- 
 quently be concealed more genius than ever is raised to the 
 direction of our public works, or to be the mark of our public 
 praises. 
 
 It is indeed probable, that intense disposition for art will 
 conquer the most formidable obstacles, if the surrounding 
 circumstances are such as at all to present the idea of such 
 conquest to the mind ; but we have no ground for concluding 
 that Giotto would ever have been more than a shepherd, if 
 Cimabue had not by chance found him drawing ; or that 
 among the shepherds of the Apennines there were no other 
 Giottos, undiscovered by Cimabue. We are too much in the 
 habit of considering happy accidents as what are called “ special 
 Providences ; ” and thinking that when any great work needs 
 to be done, the man who is to do it will certainly be pointed 
 out by Providence, be he shepherd or sea-boy ; and prepared 
 for his work by all kinds of minor providences, in the best 
 possible way. Whereas all the analogies of God’s operations 
 in other matters prove the contrary of this ; we find that “ of 
 thousand seeds, He often brings but one to bear,” often not 
 one ; and the one seed which He appoints to bear is allowed 
 to bear crude or perfect fruit according to the dealings of the 
 husbandman with it. And there cannot be a doubt in the 
 mind of any person accustomed to take broad and logical 
 views of the world’s history, that its events are ruled by 
 
232 
 
 A JOY FOP, EVER. 
 
 Providence in precisely the same manner as its harvests ; that 
 the seeds of good and evil are broadcast among men, just as 
 the seeds of thistles and fruits are ; and that according to the 
 force of our industry, and wisdom of our husbandry, the 
 ground will bring forth to us figs or thistles. So that when 
 it seems needed that a certain work should be done for the 
 world, and no man is there to do it, we have no right to say 
 that God did not wish it to be done ; and therefore sent no 
 man able to do it. The probability (if I wrote my own con- 
 victions, I should say certainty) is, that He sent many men, 
 hundreds of men, able to do it ; and that we have rejected 
 them, or crushed them ; by our previous folly of conduct or 
 of institution, we have rendered it impossible to distinguish, or 
 impossible to reach them ; and when the need for them comes, 
 and we suffer for the want of them, it is not that God refuses 
 to send us deliverers, and especially appoints all our consequent 
 sufferings ; but that He has sent, and we have refused, the 
 deliverers ; and the pain is then wrought out by His eternal 
 law, as surely as famine is wrought out by eternal law for a 
 nation which will neither plough nor sow. No less are we in 
 error in supposing, as we so frequently do, that if a man be 
 found, he is sure to be in all respects fitted for the work to be 
 done, as the key is to the lock : and that every accident which 
 happened in the forging him, only adapted him more truly to 
 the wards. It is pitiful to hear historians beguiling them- 
 selves and their readers, by tracing in the early history of 
 great men, the minor circumstances which fitted them for the 
 work they did, without ever taking notice of the other cir- 
 cumstances which as assuredly unfitted them for it ; so con- 
 cluding that miraculous interposition prepared them in all 
 points for everything, and that they did all that could have 
 been desired or hoped for from them : whereas the certainty 
 of the matter is that, throughout their lives, they were 
 thwarted and corrupted by some things as certainly as they 
 were helped and disciplined by others ; and that, in the kind- 
 liest and most reverent view which can justly be taken of 
 them, they were but poor mistaken creatures, struggling with 
 a world more profoundly mistaken than they ; assuredly 
 
ADDENDA. 
 
 233 
 
 sinned against, or sinning in thousands of ways, and bringing 
 out at last a maimed result — not what tliey might or ought to 
 have done, but all that could be done against the world’s re- 
 sistance, and in spite of their own sorrowful falsehood to 
 themselves. 
 
 And this being so, it is the practical duty of a wise nation, 
 first to withdraw, as far as may be, its youth from destructive 
 influences ; — then to try its material as far as possible, and to 
 lose the use of none that is good. I do not mean by “ with- 
 drawing from destructive influences ” the keeping of youths 
 out of trials ; but the keeping them out of the way of things 
 purely and absolutely mischievous. I do not mean that we 
 should shade our green corn in all heat, and shelter it in all 
 frost, but only that we should dyke out the inundation from 
 it, and drive the fowls away from it. Let your youth labour 
 and suffer ; but do not let it starve, nor steal, nor blaspheme. 
 
 It is not, of course, in my power here to enter into details 
 of schemes of education ; and it will be long before the re- 
 sults of experiments now in progress will give data for the 
 solution of the most difficult questions connected with the 
 subject, of which the principal one is the mode in which the 
 chance of advancement in life is to be extended to all, and 
 yet made compatible with contentment in the pursuit of lower 
 avocations by those whose abilities do not qualify them 
 for the higher. But the general principle of trial schools lies 
 at the root of the matter — of schools, that is to say, in which 
 the knowledge offered and discipline enforced shall be all apart, 
 of a great assay of the human soul, and in which the one shall 
 be increased, the other directed, as the tried heart and brain 
 will best bear, and no otherwise. One thing, however, I must 
 say, that in this trial I believe all emulation to be a false mo- 
 tive, and all giving of prizes a false means. All that you can 
 depend upon in a boy, as significative of true power, likely 
 to issue in good fruit, is his will to work for the work’s sake, 
 not his desire to surpass his school-fellows ; and the aim of 
 the teaching you give him ought to be, to prove to him and 
 strengthen in him his own separate gift, not to puff him into 
 swollen rivalry with those who are everlastingly greater than 
 
234 
 
 A JOT FOR EVER . 
 
 he : still less ought you to hang favours and ribands about 
 the neck of the creature who is the greatest, to make the 
 rest envy him. Try to make them love him and follow him, 
 not struggle with him. 
 
 There must, of course, be examination to ascertain and at- 
 test both progress and relative capacity ; but our aim should 
 be to make the students rather look upon it as a means of as- 
 certaining their own true positions and powers in the world, 
 than as an arena in which to carry away a present victory. I 
 have not, perhaps, in the course of the lecture, insisted 
 enough on the nature of relative capacity and individual char- 
 acter, as the roots of all real value in Art. We are too much 
 in the habit, in these daj's, of acting as if Art worth a price 
 in the market were a commodity which people eould be gen- 
 erally taught to produce, and as if the education of the artist, 
 not his capacity, gave the sterling value to his work. No im- 
 pression can possibly be more absurd or false. Whatever 
 people can teach each other to do, they will estimate, and 
 ought to estimate, only as common industry ; nothing will 
 ever fetch a high price but precisely that which cannot be 
 taught, and which nobody can do but the man from whom it 
 is purchased. No state of society, nor stage of knowledge, 
 ever does away with the natural pre-eminence of one man 
 over another; and it is that pre-eminence, and that only, 
 which will give work high value in the market, or which 
 ought to do so. It is a bad sign of the judgment, and bad 
 omen for the progress, of a nation, if it, supposes itself to 
 possess many artists of equal merit. Noble art is nothing 
 less than the expression of a great soul ; and great souls are 
 not common things. If ever we confound their work with 
 that of others, it is not through liberality, but through blind- 
 ness. 
 
 Note 4th, p. 155 . — “Public favour .” 
 
 There is great difficulty in making any short or general 
 statement of the difference between great and ignoble minda 
 in their behaviour to the “ public.” It is by no means uni - 
 
ADDENDA. 
 
 235 
 
 versaliy the case that a mean mind, as stated in the text, will 
 bend itself to what you ask of it : on the contrary, there is 
 one kind of mind, the meanest of all, which perpetually com- 
 plains of the public, contemplates and proclaims itself as a 
 4 ‘ genius,” refuses all wholesome discipline or humble office, 
 and ends in miserable and revengeful ruin ; also, the greatest 
 minds are marked by nothing more distinctly than an incon- 
 ceivable humility, and acceptance of work or instruction in 
 any form, and from any quarter. They will learn from every- 
 body, and do anything that anybody asks of them, so long as 
 it involves only toil, or what other men would think degrada- 
 tion. But the point of quarrel, nevertheless, assuredly rises 
 some day between the public and them, respecting some mat- 
 ter, not of humiliation, but of Fact. Your great man always 
 at last comes to see something the public don’t see. This 
 something he will assuredly persist in asserting, whether with 
 tongue or pencil, to be as he sees it, not as they see it ; and 
 all the world in a heap on the other side, will not get him to 
 say otherwise. Then, if the world objects to the saying, he 
 may happen to get stoned or burnt for it, but that does not 
 in the least matter to him : if the world has no particular ob- 
 jection to the saying, he may get leave to mutter it to himself 
 till he dies, and be merely taken for an idiot ; that also does 
 not matter to him — mutter it he will, according to what he 
 perceives to be fact, and not at all according to the roaring of 
 the walls of Red sea on the right hand or left of him. Hence 
 the quarrel, sure at some time or other, to be started between 
 the public and him ; while your mean man, though he will 
 spit and scratch spiritedly at the public, while it does not at- 
 tend to him, will bow to it for its clap in any direction, and 
 say anything when he has got its ear, which he thinks will 
 bring him another clap ; and thus, as stated in the text, he 
 and it go on smoothly together. 
 
 There are, however, times when the obstinacy of the mean 
 man looks very like the obstinacy of tbe great one ; but if 
 you look closely into the matter, you will always see that the 
 obstinacy of the first is in the pronunciation of “ I ; ” and of 
 the second, in the pronunciation of “ It.” 
 
28 6 
 
 H JOF AWf EVER. 
 
 Note 5th, p. 169. — “ Invention of new wants.” 
 
 It would have been impossible for political economists long 
 to have endured the error spoken of in the text,* had they 
 not been confused by an idea, in part well founded, that the 
 energies and refinements, as well as the riches of civilized life, 
 arose from imaginary wants. It is quite true, that the savage 
 who knows no needs but those of food, shelter, and sleep, and 
 after he has snared his venison and patched the rents of his 
 hut, passes the rest of his time in animal repose, is in a lower 
 state than the man who labours incessantly that he may pro- 
 cure for himself the luxuries of civilization ; and true also, 
 that the difference between one and another nation in pro- 
 gressive power depends in great part on vain desires ; but 
 these idle motives are merely to be considered as giving exer- 
 cise to the national body and mind ; they are not sources of 
 wealth, except so far as they give the habits of industry and 
 acquisitiveness. If a boy is clumsy and lazy, we shall do 
 
 * I have given the political economists too much credit in saying this. 
 Actually, while these sheets are passing through the press, the blunt, 
 broad, unmitigated fallacy is enunciated, formally and precisely, by the 
 common councilmen of New York, in their report on the present com- 
 mercial crisis. Here is their collective opinion, published in the Times 
 of November 23rd, 1857 : — “ Another erroneous idea is that luxurious 
 living, extravagant dressing, splendid turn-outs and fine houses, are the 
 cause of distress to a nation. No more erroneous impression could ex- 
 ist. Every extravagance that the man of 100,000 or 1,000,000 dollars 
 indulges in adds to the means, the support, the wealth of ten or a hun- 
 dred who had little or nothing else but their labour, their intellect, or 
 their taste. If a man of 1,000,000 dollars spends principal and interest 
 in ten years, and finds himself beggared at the end of that time, lie has 
 actually made a hundred who have catered to his extravagance, employ- 
 ers or employed, so much the richer by the division of his wealth. He 
 may be ruined, but the nation is better off and richer, for one hundred 
 minds and hands, with 10,000 dollars apiece, are far more productive 
 than one with the whole ” 
 
 Yes, gentlemen of the common council ; but what has been doing in the 
 time of the transfer ? The spending of the fortune has taken a certain 
 number of years (suppose ten), and during that time 1,000,000 dollars 
 worth of work has been done by the people, who have been paid that 
 sum for it. Where is the product of that work ? By your own state 
 
ADDENDA. 
 
 237 
 
 good if we can persuade him to carve cherry-stones and fly 
 kites ; and this use of his fingers and limbs may eventually be 
 the cause of his becoming a wealthy and happy man ; but we 
 must not therefore argue that cherry-stones are valuable prop- 
 erty, or that kite-flying is a profitable mode of passing time. 
 In like manner, a nation always wastes its time and labour 
 directly , when it invents a new r want of a frivolous kind, and 
 yet the invention of such a want may be the sign of a healthy 
 activity, and the labour undergone to satisfy the new want 
 may lead, indirectly , to useful discoveries or to noble arts ; so 
 that a nation is not to be discouraged in its fancies when it is 
 either too weak or foolish to be moved to exertion by anything 
 but fancies, or has attended to its serious business first. If a 
 nation will not forge iron, but likes distilling lavender, by all 
 means give it lavender to distil ; only do not let its econo- 
 mists suppose that lavender is as profitable to it as oats, or 
 that it helps poor people to live, any more than the school- 
 boy’s kite provides him his dinner. Luxuries, whether na- 
 tional or personal, must be paid for by labour withdrawn 
 from useful things ; and no nation has a right to indulge in 
 them until all its poor are comfortably housed and fed. 
 
 The enervating influence of luxury, and its tendencies to in- 
 crease vice, are points which I keep entirely out of considera- 
 tion in the present essay : but, so far as they bear on any 
 question discussed, they merely furnish additional evidence on 
 
 ment, wholly consumed ; for the man for whom it has been done is now 
 a beggar. You have given therefore, as a nation. 1,000,000 dollars worth 
 of work, and ten years of time, and you have produced, as ultimate re- 
 sult, one beggar ! Excellent economy, gentlemen ; and sure to conduce, 
 in due sequence, to the production of more than one beggar. Perhaps 
 the matter may be made clearer to you, however, by a more familiar 
 instance. If a schoolboy goes out in the morning with five shillings 
 in his pocket, and comes home at night penniless, having spent his 
 all in tarts, principal and interest are gone, and fruiterer and baker are 
 enriched. So far so good. But suppose the schoolboy, instead, has 
 bought a book and a knife ; principal and interest are gone, and book- 
 seller and cutler are enriched. But the schoolboy is enriched also, and 
 may help his schoolfellows next day with knife and book, instead of 
 lying in bed and incurring a debt to the doctor. 
 
238 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 the side which I have taken. Thus, in the present case, I assume 
 that the luxuries of civilized life are in possession harmless, 
 and in acquirement, serviceable as a motive for exertion ; and 
 even on these favourable terms, we arrive at the conclusion that 
 the nation ought not to indulge in them except under severe 
 limitations. Much less ought it to indulge in them if the 
 temptation consequent on their possession, or fatality incident 
 to their manufacture, more than counterbalances the good 
 done by the effort to obtain them. 
 
 Note 6th, p. 179 . — £< Economy of Literature” 
 
 I have been much impressed lately by one of the results of 
 the quantity of our books ; namely, the stern impossibility of 
 getting anything understood, that required patience to under- 
 stand, I observe always, in the case of my own writings, 
 that if ever I state anything which has cost me any trouble to 
 ascertain, and which, therefore, will probably require a min- 
 ute or two of reflection from the reader before it can be ac- 
 cepted, — that statement will not only be misunderstood, but 
 in all probability taken to mean something very nearly the 
 reverse of what it does mean. Now, whatever faults there 
 may be in my modes of expression, I know that the words I 
 use will always be found, by Johnson’s dictionary, to bear, 
 first of all, the sense I use them in ; and that the sentences, 
 whether awkwardly turned or not, will, by the ordinary rules 
 of grammar, bear no other interpretation than that I mean 
 them to bear ; so that the misunderstanding of them must 
 result, ultimately, from the mere fact that their matter some- 
 times requires a little patience. And I see the same kind of 
 misinterpretation put on the words of other writers, when- 
 ever they require the same kind of thought. 
 
 I was at first a little despondent about this ; but, on the 
 whole, I believe it will have a good effect upon our literature 
 for some time to come ; and then, perhaps, the public may 
 recover its patience again. For certainly it is excellent dis- 
 cipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say 
 
ADDENDA. 
 
 239 
 
 in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them *, 
 and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly 
 misunderstand them. Generally, also, a downright fact may 
 be told in a plain way ; and we want downright facts at present 
 more than anything else. And though I often hear moral peo- 
 ple complaining of the bad effects of want of thought, for my 
 part,* it seems to me that one of the worst diseases to which the 
 human creature is liable is its disease of thinking. If it would 
 only just look * at a thing instead of thinking what it must be 
 like, or do a thing, instead of thinking it cannot be done, we 
 should all get on far better. 
 
 Note 7th, p. 216. — “ Pilots of the State.” 
 
 While, however, undoubtedly, these responsibilities attach 
 to every person possessed of wealth, it is necessary both to 
 avoid any stringency of statement respecting the benevolent 
 inodes of spending money, and to admit and approve so much 
 liberty of spending it for selfish pleasures as may distinctly 
 make wealth a personal reward for toil, and secure in the 
 minds of all men the right of property. For although, with- 
 out doubt, the purest pleasures it can procure are not selfish, 
 it is only as a means of personal gratification that it will be 
 
 * There can be no question, however, of the mischievous tendency of 
 the hurry of the present day, in the way people undertake this very 
 looking. I gave three years’ close and incessant labor to the examina- 
 tion of the chronology of the architecture of Venice ; two long winters 
 being wholly spent in the drawing of details on the spot : and yet I see 
 constantly that architects who pass three or four days in a gondola going 
 up and down the grand canal, think that their first impressions are just 
 as likely to be true as my patiently wrought conclusions. Mr. Street, 
 for instance, glances hastily at the fagade of the Ducal Palace — so has- 
 tily that he does not even see what its pattern is, and misses the alterna- 
 tion of red and black in the centres of its squares — and yet he instantly 
 ventures on an opinion on the chronology of its capitals, which is one of 
 the most complicated and difficult subjects in the whole range of Gothic 
 archaeology. It may, nevertheless, be ascertained with very fair proba- 
 bility of correctness by any person who will give a month's hard work 
 ic it, but it can be ascertained no otherwise. 
 
240 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 desired by a large majority of workers ; and it would be no 
 less false ethics than false policy to check their energy by any 
 forms of public opinion which bore hardly against the wanton 
 expenditure of honestly got wealth. It would be hard if a man 
 who had passed the greater part of his life at the desk or count- 
 er could not at last innocently gratify a caprice ; and all the 
 best and most sacred ends of almsgiving would be at once 
 disappointed, if the idea of a moral claim took the place of 
 affectionate gratitude in the mind of the receiver. 
 
 Some distinction is made by us naturally in this respect 
 between earned and inherited wealth ; that which is inherited 
 appearing to involve the most definite responsibilities, espe- 
 cially when consisting in revenues derived from the soil. The 
 form of taxation which constitutes rental of lands places an- 
 nually a certain portion of the national wealth in the hands of 
 the nobles, or other proprietors of the soil, under conditions 
 peculiarly calculated to induce them to give their best care to 
 its efficient administration. The want of instruction in even 
 the simplest principles of commerce and economy, which 
 hitherto has disgraced our schools and universities, has indeed 
 been the cause of ruin or total inutility of life to multitudes 
 of our men of estate ; but this deficiency in our public educa- 
 tion cannot exist much longer, and it appears to be highly 
 advantageous for the State that a certain number of persons 
 distinguished by race should be permitted to set examples of 
 xvise expenditure, whether in the advancement of science, or 
 in patronage of art and literature ; only they must see to it that 
 they take their right standing more firmly than they have done 
 hitherto for the position of a rich man in relation to those 
 around him is, in our present real life, and is also contemplat- 
 ed generally by political economists as being, 23recisely the 
 reverse of what it ought to be. A rich man ought to be con- 
 tinually examining how he may spend his money for the ad- 
 vantage of others ; at present others are continually plotting 
 how they may beguile him into spending it apparently for his 
 own. The aspect which he presents to the eyes of the world 
 is generally that of a person holding a bag of money with a 
 staunch grasp, and resolved to part with none of it unless he 
 
ADDENDA. 
 
 241 
 
 is forced, and all the people about him are plotting how they 
 may force him ; that is to say, how they may persuade him 
 that he wants this thing or that ; or how they mqy produce 
 things that he will covet and buy. One man tries to persuade 
 him that he wants perfumes ; another that he wants jewellery ; 
 another that he wants sugarplums ; another that he wants roses 
 at Christmas. Anybody who can invent a new want for him is 
 supposed to be a benefactor to society ; and thus the energies 
 of the poorer people about him are continually directed to the 
 production of covetable, instead of serviceable things ; and 
 the rich man has the general aspect of a fool, plotted against 
 by all the world. Whereas the real aspect which he ought to 
 have is that of a person wiser than others, entrusted with the 
 management of a larger quantity of capital, which he admin- 
 isters for the profit of all, directing each man to the labour 
 which is most healthy for him, and most serviceable for the 
 community. 
 
 Note 8th, p. 216. — “ Silk and Purple ” 
 
 In various places throughout these lectures I have had to 
 allude to the distinction between productive and unproduc- 
 tive labour, and between true and false wealth. I shall here 
 endeavour, as clearly as I can, to explain the distinction I 
 mean. 
 
 Property may be divided generally into two kinds ; that 
 which produces life, and that which produces the objects of 
 life. That which produces or maintains life consists of food, 
 in so far as it is nourishing ; of furniture and clothing, in so 
 far as they are protective or cherishing ; of fuel ; and of all 
 land, instruments, or materials, necessary to produce food, 
 houses, clothes, and fuel. It is specially and rightly called 
 useful property. 
 
 The property which produces the objects of life consists of 
 all that gives pleasure or suggests and preserves thought : of 
 food, furniture, and land, in so far as they are pleasing to the 
 appetite or the eye ; of luxurious dress, and all other kinds 
 of luxuries ; of books, pictures, and architecture. But the 
 
242 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 modes of connection of certain minor forms of property with 
 human labour render it desirable to arrange them under more 
 than these two heads. Property may therefore be conve- 
 niently considered as of five kinds. 
 
 1st. Property necessary to life, but not producible by la- 
 bour, and therefore belonging of right, in a due measure, to 
 every human being as soon as he is born, and morally in- 
 alienable. As for instance, his proper share of the atmos- 
 phere, without which he cannot breathe, and of water, which 
 he needs to quench his thirst. As much land as he needs to 
 feed from is also inalienable ; but in well regulated com- 
 munities this quantity of land .may often be represented by 
 other possessions, or its need supplied by wages and privi- 
 leges. 
 
 2. Property necessary to life, but only producible by la- 
 bour, and of which the possession is morally connected with 
 labour, so that no person capable of doing the work necessary 
 for its production has a right to it until he has done that 
 work; — “he that will not work, neither should he eat.” It 
 consists of simple food, clothing, and habitation, with their 
 seeds and materials, or instruments and machinery, and ani- 
 mals used for necessary draught or locomotion, &c. It is to 
 be observed of this kind of property, that its increase cannot 
 usually be carried beyond a certain point, because it depends 
 not on labour only, but on things of which the supply is lim- 
 ited by nature. The possible accumulation of corn depends 
 on the quantity of corn-growing land possessed or commer- 
 cially accessible ; and that of steel, similarly, on the accessible 
 quantity of coal and ironstone. It follows from this natural 
 limitation of supply that the accumulation of property of this 
 kind in large masses at one point, or in one person’s hands, 
 commonly involves, more or less, the scarcity of it at another 
 point and in other persons’ hands ; so that the accidents 
 or energies which may enable one man to procure a great 
 deal of it, may, and in all likelihood will partially prevent 
 other men procuring a sufficiency of it, however willing they 
 may be to work for it ; therefore, the modes of its accumula- 
 tion and distribution need to be in some degree regulated by 
 
ADDENDA. 
 
 243 
 
 law and by national treaties, in order to secure justice to all 
 men. 
 
 Another point requiring ‘notice respecting this sort of prop- 
 erty is, that no work can be wasted in producing it, provided 
 only the kind of it produced be preservable and distributable, 
 since for every grain of such commodities we produce we are 
 rendering so much more life possible on earth.* But though 
 we are sure, thus, that we are employing people well, we can- 
 not be sure we might not have employed them better ; for it 
 is possible to direct labour to the production of life, until lit- 
 tle or none is left for that of the objects of life, and thus to 
 increase population at the expense of civilization, learning, 
 and morality : on the other hand, it is just as possible — and 
 the error is one to which the world is, on the whole, more 
 liable — to direct labour to the objects of life till too little is 
 left for life, and thus to increase luxury or learning at the ex- 
 pense of population. Bight political economy holds its aim 
 poised justly between the two extremes, desiring neither to 
 
 * This point has sometimes "been disputed ; for instance, opening 
 Mill’s Political Economy the other day, I chanced on a passage in which 
 he says that a man who makes a coat, if the person who wears the coat 
 does nothing useful while he wears it, has done no more good to society 
 than the man who has only raised a pine- apple. But this is a fallacy 
 induced by endeavour after too much subtlety. None of us have a right 
 to say that the life of a man is of no use to him, though it may be of no 
 use to us ; and the man who made the coat, and thereby prolonged an- 
 other man’s life, has done a gracious and useful work, whatever may 
 come of the life so prolonged. We may say to the wearer of the coat, 
 “You who are wearing coats, and doing nothing in them, are at present 
 wasting your own life and other people’s ; ” but we have no right to say 
 that his existence, however wasted, is wasted away. It may be just 
 dragging itself on, in its thin golden line, with nothing dependent upon 
 it, to the point where it is to strengthen into good chain cable, and have 
 thousands of other lives dependent on it. Meantime, the simple fact 
 respecting the coat-maker is, that he has given so much life to the creat- 
 ure, the results of which he cannot calculate ; they may be — in all 
 probability will be — infinite results in some way. But the raiser of 
 pines, who has only given a pleasant taste in the mouth to some one, 
 may see with tolerable clearness to the end of the taste in the mouth, 
 and of all conceivable results therefrom. 
 
244 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 crowd its dominions with a race of savages, nor to found 
 courts and colleges in the midst of a desert. 
 
 3. The third kind of property is that which conduces to 
 bodily pleasures and conveniences, without directly tending 
 to sustain life ; perhaps sometimes indirectly tending to de- 
 stroy it. All dainty (as distinguished from nourishing) food, 
 and means of producing it ; all scents not needed for health ; 
 substances valued only for their appearance and rarity (as gold 
 and jewels) ; flowers of difficult culture ; animals used for de- 
 light (as horses for racing), and such like, form property of 
 this class ; to which the term ‘‘luxury, or luxuries,” ought ex- 
 clusively to belong. 
 
 Respecting which w r e have to note, first, that all such prop- 
 erty is of doubtful advantage even to its possessor. Furni- 
 ture tempting to indolence, sweet odours, and luscious food, 
 are more or less injurious to health : while jew T els, liveries, 
 and other such common belongings of wealthy j3eople, cer- 
 tainly convey no pleasure to their owners proportionate to 
 their cost. 
 
 Farther, such property, for the most part, perishes in the 
 using. Jewels form a great exception — but rich food, fine 
 dresses, horses and carriages, are consumed by the owner’s 
 use. It ought much oftener to be brought to the notice of 
 rich men what sums of interest of money they are paying tow- 
 ards the close of their lives, for luxuries consumed in the 
 middle of them. It w r ould be very interesting, for instance, 
 to know the exact sum which the money spent in London for 
 ices, at its desserts and balls, during the last twenty years had 
 it been saved and put out at compound interest, would at this 
 moment have furnished for useful purposes. 
 
 Also, in most cases, the enjoyment of such property is 
 wholly selfish, and limited to its possessor. Splendid dress 
 and equipage, however, when so arranged as to produce real 
 beauty of effect, may often be rather a generous than a selfish 
 channel of expenditure. The}' will, however, necessarily in 
 such case involve some of the arts of design ; and therefore 
 take their place in a higher category than that of luxuries 
 merely. 
 
ADDENDA . 
 
 245 
 
 4. The fourth kind of property is that which bestows inteb 
 lectual or emotional pleasure, consisting of land set apart for 
 purposes of delight more than for agriculture, of books, works 
 of art, and objects of natural history. 
 
 It is, of course, impossible to fix an accurate limit between 
 property of the last class and of this class, since things which 
 are a mere luxury to one person are a means of intellectual 
 occupation to another. Flowers in a London ball-room are a 
 luxury ; in a botanical garden, a delight of the intellect ; and 
 in their native fields, both ; while the most noble works of art 
 are continually made material of vulgar luxury or of criminal 
 pride ; but, when rightly used, property of this fourth class 
 is the only kind which deserves the name of real property ; it 
 is the only kind which a man can truly be said to “ possess.” 
 What a man eats, or drinks, or wears, so long as it is only 
 what is needful for life, can no more be thought of as his pos- 
 session than the air he breathes. The air is as needful to him 
 as the food ; but we do not talk of a man’s wealth of air, and 
 what food or clothing a man possesses more than he himself 
 requires, must be for others to use (and, to him, therefore, 
 not a real property in itself, but only a means of obtaining 
 some real property in exchange for it). Whereas the things 
 that give intellectual or emotional enjoyment may be accu- 
 mulated and do not perish in using ; but continually supply new 
 pleasures and new powders of giving pleasure to others. And 
 these, therefore, are the only things wdiich can rightly be 
 thought of as giving “w r ealth”or “well being.” Food con- 
 duces only to “being,” but these to “ well being.” And there 
 is not any broader general distinction between low^er and 
 higher orders of men than rests on their possession of this 
 real property. The human race may be properly divided by 
 zoologists into “men who have gardens, libraries/, or works of 
 art ; and who have none ; ” and the former class will include 
 all noble persons, except only a few who make the world their 
 garden or museum ; w r hile the people who have not, or, which 
 is the same thing, do not care for gardens or libraries, but 
 care for nothing but money or luxuries, will include none but 
 ignoble persons : only it is necessary to understand that I 
 
24G 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 mean by the term “ garden ” as much the Carthusian’s plot ol 
 ground fifteen feet square between his monastery buttresses, 
 as I do the grounds of Chatsworth or Kew ; and I mean by 
 the term “ art ” as much the old sailor’s print of the Arethusa 
 bearing up to engage the Belle Poule, as I do Raphael’s “Dis- 
 puta,” and even rather more ; for when abundant, beautiful 
 possessions of this kind are almost always associated wfith vul- 
 gar luxury, and become then anything but indicative of noble 
 character in their possessors. The ideal of human life is a 
 union of Spartan simplicity of manners with Athenian sensi- 
 bility and imagination, but in actual results, we are continu- 
 ally mistaking ignorance for simplicity, and sensuality for 
 refinement. 
 
 5. The fifth kind of property is representative property, 
 consisting of documents or money, or rather documents only, 
 for money itself is only a transferable document, current 
 among societies of men, giving claim, at sight, to some defi- 
 nite benefit or advantage, most commonly to a certain share of 
 real property existing in those societies. The money is only 
 genuine when the property it gives claim to is real, or the ad- 
 vantages it gives claim to certain ; otherwise, it is false money, 
 and may be considered as much “ forged ” when issued by a 
 government, or a bank, as when by an individual. Thus, ii 
 a dozen of men, cast ashore on a desert island, pick up a num- 
 ber of stones, put a red spot on each stone, and pass a law 
 that every stone marked with a red spot shall give claim to a 
 peck of wheat ; — so long as no wheat exists, or can exist, on 
 the island, the stones are not money. But the moment so 
 much wheat exists as shall render it possible for the society 
 always to give a peck for every spotted stone, the spotted 
 stones ’would become money, and might be exchanged by 
 their possessors for whatever other commodities they chose, 
 to the value of the peck of wheat which the stones repre- 
 sented. If more stones were issued than the quantity of 
 wheat could answer the demand of, the value of the stone 
 coinage would be depreciated, in proportion to its increase 
 above the quantity needed to answer it. 
 
 Again, supposing a certain number of the men so cast 
 
ADDENDA. 
 
 247 
 
 ashore were set aside by lot, or any other convention, to do 
 the rougher labour necessary for the whole society, they 
 themselves being maintained by the daily allotment of a cer- 
 tain quantity of food, clothing, &c. Then, if it were agreed 
 that the stones spotted with red should be signs of a Govern- 
 ment order for the labour of these men ; and that any person 
 presenting a spotted stone at the office of the labourers, 
 should be entitled to a man’s work for a week or a day, the 
 red stones would be money ; and might — probably would,— 
 immediately pass current in the island for as much food, oi 
 clothing, or iron, or any other article as a man’s work for the 
 period secured by the stone was worth. But if the Govern- 
 ment issued so many spotted stones that it was impossible for 
 the body of men they employed to comply with the orders ; 
 as, suppose, if they only employed twelve men, and issued 
 eighteen spotted stones daily, ordering a day’s work each, 
 then the six extra stones would be forged or false money ; 
 and the effect of this forgery would be the depreciation of the 
 value of the whole coinage by one-third, that being the period 
 of shortcoming which would, on the average, necessarily ensue 
 in the execution of each order. Much occasional work may 
 be done in a state or society, by help of an issue of false 
 money (or false promises) by way of stimulants ; and the fruit 
 of this work, if it comes into the promiser’s hands, may some- 
 times enable the false promises at last to be fulfilled : hence 
 the frequent issue of false money by governments and banks, 
 and the not unfrequent escapes from the natural and proper 
 consequences of such false issues, so as to cause a confused 
 conception in most people’s minds of what money really is. 1 
 am not sure whether some quantity of such false issue may 
 not really be permissible in a nation, accurately proportioned 
 to the minimum average produce of the labour it excites ; 
 but all such procedures are more or less unsound ; and the 
 notion of unlimited issue of currency is simply one of the 
 absurdest and most monstrous that ever came into disjointed 
 human wits. 
 
 The use of objects of real or supposed value for currenc} r , 
 as gold, jewellery, &c. 3 is barbarous ; and it always expresses 
 
248 
 
 A JOT FOR EVER. 
 
 either the measure of the distrust in the society of its owu 
 government, or the proportion of distrustful or barbarous 
 nations with whom it has to deal. A metal not easily cor- 
 roded or imitated, is a desirable medium of currency for the 
 sake of cleanliness and convenience, but were it possible to 
 prevent forgery, the more worthless the metal itself, the 
 better. The use of worthless media, unrestrained by the use 
 of valuable media, has always hitherto involved, and is there* 
 fore supposed to involve necessarily, unlimited, or at least 
 improperly extended, issue ; but we might as well suppose 
 that a man must necessarily issue unlimited promises because 
 his words cost nothing. Intercourse with foreign nations 
 must, indeed, for ages yet to come, at the world’s present 
 rate of progress, be carried oil by valuable currencies ; but 
 such transactions are nothing more than forms of barter. 
 The gold used at present as a currency is not, in point of 
 fact, currency at all, but the real property * which the cur- 
 rency gives claim to, stamped to measure its quantity, and 
 mingling with the real currency occasionally by barter. 
 
 The evils necessarily resulting from the use of baseless cur- 
 rencies have been terribly illustrated while these sheets have 
 been passing through the press ; I have not had time to ex- 
 amine the various conditions of dishonest or absurd trading 
 which have led to the late “ panic” in America and England ; 
 this only I know, that no merchant deserving the name ought 
 to be more liable to “ panic” than a soldier should; for his 
 
 * Or rather, equivalent to such real property, because everybody has 
 been accustomed to look upon it as valuable ; and therefore everybody 
 is willing to give labour or goods for it. But real property does ulti- 
 mately consist only in things that nourish the body or mind ; gold 
 would be useless to us if we could not get mutton or books for it. Ul- 
 timately all commercial mistakes and embarrassments result from peo- 
 ple expecting to get goods without working for them, or wasting them 
 after they have got them. A nation which labours, and takes care of 
 the fruits of labour, would be rich and happy ; though there were no 
 gold in the universe. A nation which is idle, and wastes the produce 
 of what work it does, would be poor and miserable, though all its 
 mountains were of gold, and had glens tilled with diamond instead of 
 glacier. 
 
ADDENDA. 
 
 249 
 
 name should never be on more paper than he can at any in- 
 stant meet the call of, happen what will. I do not say this 
 without feeling at the same time how difficult it is to mark, 
 in existing commerce, the just limits between the spirit of 
 enterprise and of speculation. Something of the same tem- 
 per which makes the English soldier do always all that is pos- 
 sible, and attempt more than is possible, joins its influence 
 with that of mere avarice in tempting the English merchant 
 into risks which he cannot justify, and efforts which he can- 
 not sustain ; and the same passion for adventure which our 
 travellers gratify every summer on perilous snow wreaths, and 
 cloud-encompassed precipices, surrounds with a romantic fas- 
 cination the glittering of a hollow investment, and gilds the 
 clouds that curl round gulfs of ruin. Nay, a higher and a 
 more serious feeling frequently mingles in the motley temp- 
 tation ; and men apply themselves to the task of growing rich, 
 as to a labour of providential appointment, from which they 
 cannot pause without culpability, nor retire without dis- 
 honour. Our large trading cities bear to me very nearly the 
 aspect of monastic establishments in which the roar of the 
 mill-wheel and the crane takes the place of other devotional 
 music : and in which the worship of Mammon and Moloch is 
 conducted with a tender reverence and an exact propriety : 
 the merchant rising to his Mammon matins with the self- 
 denial of an anchorite, and expiating the frivolities into which 
 he may be beguiled in the course of the day by late attend- 
 ance at Mammon vespers. But, with every allowance that 
 can be made for these conscientious and romantic persons, 
 the fact remains the same, that by far the greater number of 
 the transactions which lead to these times of commercial em- 
 barrassment may be ranged simply under two great heads,-— 
 gambling and stealing ; and both of these in their most cul- 
 pable form, namely, gambling with money which is not ours, 
 and stealing from those who trust us. I have sometimes 
 thought a day might come, when the nation would perceive 
 that a well-educated man who steals a hundred thousand 
 pounds, involving the entire means of subsistence of a hun- 
 dred families, deserves, on the whole, as severe a punishment 
 
250 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 as an ill-educated man who steals a purse from a pocket, or a 
 mug from a pantry. But without hoping for this success of 
 clear-sightedness, we may at least labour for a system of 
 greater honesty and kindness in the minor commerce of our 
 daily life ; since the great dishonesty of the great buyers and 
 sellers is nothing more than the natural growth and outcome 
 from the little dishonesty of the little buyers and sellers. 
 Every person who tries to buy an article for less than its 
 proper value, or who tries to sell it at more than its proper 
 value — every consumer who keeps a tradesman waiting for 
 his money, and every tradesman who bribes a consumer to 
 extravagance by credit, is helping forward, according to his 
 own measure of power, a system of baseless and dishonour- 
 able commerce, and forcing his country down into poverty 
 and shame. And people of moderate means*- and average 
 powers of mind would do far more real good by merely car- 
 rying out stem principles of justice and honesty in common 
 matters of trade, than by the most ingenious schemes of ex- 
 tended philanthropy, or vociferous declarations of theological 
 doctrine. There are three weighty matters of the law — jus- 
 tice, mercy and truth ; and of these the Teacher puts truth 
 last, because that cannot be known but by a course of acts of 
 justice and love. But men put, in all their efforts, truth first, 
 because they mean by it their own opinions ; and thus, while 
 the world has many people who would suffer martyrdom in 
 the cause of what they call truth, it has few who will suffer 
 even a little inconvenience in that of justice and mercy. 
 
EDUCATION IN ABT. 
 
 Read for the author before the National Association for the Pro - 
 motion of Social Science in the autumn of 1858 ; and 
 printed in the Transactions of the Society for that year , pp. 
 
 311 '16. 
 
 I will not attempt in this paper to enter into any general 
 consideration of the possible influence of art on the masses of 
 the people. The inquiry is one of great complexity, involved 
 with that into the uses and dangers of luxury ; nor have we 
 as yet data enough to justify us in conjecturing how far the 
 practice of art may be compatible with rude or mechanical 
 employments. But the question, however difficult, lies in the 
 same light as that of the uses of reading or writing ; for draw- 
 ing, so far as it is possible to the multitude, is mainly to be 
 considered as a means of obtaining and communicating knowl- 
 edge. He who can accurately represent the form of an ob- 
 ject, and match its colour, has unquestionably a power of 
 notation and description greater in most instances than that 
 of words ; and this science of notation ought to be simply 
 regarded as that which is concerned with the record of form, 
 just as arithmetic is concerned with the record of number. 
 Of course abuses and dangers attend the acquirement of every 
 power. We have all of us probably known persons who, 
 without being able to read or write, discharged the important 
 duties of life wisely and faithfully 1 ; as we have also without 
 doubt known others able to read and write, whose reading 
 did little good to themselves, and whose writing little good to 
 any one else. But we do not therefore doubt the expediency 
 of acquiring those arts ; neither ought we to doubt the ex- 
 pediency of acquiring the art of drawing, if we admit that it 
 may indeed become practically useful. 
 
 Nor should we long hesitate in admitting this, if we were 
 
252 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 not in the habit of considering instruction in the arts chiefly 
 as a means of promoting what we call “ taste ” or dilettantism, 
 and other habits of mind, which, in their more modern develop- 
 ments in Europe, have certainly not been advantageous to 
 nations, or indicative of worthiness in them. Nevertheless, 
 true taste, or the instantaneous preference of the noble thing 
 to the ignoble, is a necessary accompaniment of high worthi- 
 ness in nations or men ; only it is not to be acquired by seek- 
 ing it as our chief object, since the first question, alike for 
 man and for multitude, is not at all what they are to like, but 
 what they are to do ; and fortunately so, since true taste, so 
 far as it depends on original instinct, is not equally com- 
 municable to all men ; and, so far as it depends on extended 
 comparison, is unattainable by men employed in narrow fields 
 of life. We shall not succeed in making a peasant’s opinion 
 good evidence on the merits of the Elgin and Lycian marbles ; 
 nor is it necessary to dictate to him in his garden the prefer- 
 ence of gillyflower or of rose ; yet I believe we may make art 
 a means of giving him helpful and happy pleasure, and oi 
 gaining for him serviceable knowledge. 
 
 Thus, in our simplest codes of school instruction, I hope 
 some day to see local natural history assume a principal place, 
 so that our peasant children may be taught the nature and 
 uses of the herbs that grow in their meadows, and may take 
 interest in observing and cherishing, rather than in hunting 
 or killing, the harmless animals of tlieir country. Supposing 
 it determined that this local natural history should be taught, 
 drawing ought to be used to fix the attention, and test, while 
 it aided, the memory. “ Draw such and such a flower in out- 
 line, with its bell towards you. Draw it with its side towards 
 you. Paint the spots upon it. Draw a duck’s head — her 
 foot. Now a robin’s, — a thrush’s, — now the spots upon the 
 thrush’s breast.” These are the kind of tasks which it seems 
 to me should be set to the young peasant student. Surely 
 the occupation would no more be thought contemptible which 
 was thus subservient to knowledge and to compassion ; and 
 perhaps we should find in process of time that the Italian 
 connexion of art with dileMo, or delight, was both consistent 
 
EDUCATION IN ART. 
 
 253 
 
 With, and even mainly consequent upon, a pure Greek con- 
 nexion of art with arete , or virtue. 
 
 It may perhaps he thought that the power of representing 
 in any sufficient manner natural objects such a?.' those above 
 instanced would be of too difficult attainment in be aimed at 
 in elementary instruction. But I have had practical proof 
 that it is not so. From workmen who had little time to spare, 
 and that only after they were jaded by the day’s labour, I have 
 obtained, in the course of three or four mont (is from their 
 first taking a pencil in hand, perfectly useful, and in many 
 respects admirable, drawings of natural objects. It is, how- 
 ever, necessary, in order to secure this result, that the stu- 
 dent’s aim should be absolutely restricted to the representation 
 of visible fact. All more varied or elevated practice must be 
 deferred until the powers of true sight and just representation 
 are acquired in simplicity ; nor, in the case of children be- 
 longing to the lower classes, does it seem to me often advis- 
 able to aim at anything more. At all events, their drawing 
 lessons should be made as recreative as possible. Undergoing 
 due discipline of hard labour in other directions, such children 
 should be painlessly initiated into employments calculated for 
 the relief of toil. It is of little consequence that they should 
 know the principles of art, but of much that their attention 
 should be pleasurably excited. In our higher public schools, 
 on the contrary, drawing should be taught rightly ; that is to 
 say, with due succession and security of preliminary steps,— 
 it being here of little consequence whether the student attains 
 great or little skill, but of much that he should perceive dis- 
 tinctly what degree of skill he has attained, reverence that 
 which surpasses it, and know the principles of right in what 
 he has been able to accomplish. It is impossible to make 
 every boy an artist or a connoisseur, but quite possible to 
 make him understand the meaning of art in its rudiments, and 
 to make him modest enough to forbear expressing, in after life, 
 judgments which he has not knowledge enough to render just. 
 
 There is, how r ever, at present this great difficulty in the w r ay 
 of such systematic teaching — that the public do not believe 
 the principles of art are determinable, and in no wise matters 
 
254 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER . 
 
 of opinion. They do not believe that good drawing is good, 
 and bad drawing is bad, whatever any number of persons may 
 think or declare to the contrary — that there is a right or best 
 way of laying colours to produce a given effect, just as there 
 is a right or best way of dyeing cloth of a given colour, and 
 that Titian and Veronese are not merely accidentally admirable 
 but eternally right. 
 
 The public, of course, cannot be convinced of this unity 
 and stability of principle until clear assertion of it is made to 
 them by painters whom they respect ; and the painters whom 
 they respect are generally too modest, and sometimes too 
 proud, to make it. I believe the chief reason for their not 
 having yet declared at least the fundamental laws of labour a3 
 connected with art-study is a kind of feeling on their part 
 that “ cela va sans dire .” Every great painter knows so well 
 the necessity of hard and systematized work, in order to at- 
 tain even the lower degrees of skill, that he naturally supposes 
 if people use no diligence in drawing, they do not care to ac- 
 quire the power of it, and that the toil involved in wholesome 
 study being greater than the mass of people have ever given, 
 is also greater than they would ever be willing to give. Feel- 
 ing, also, as any real painter feels, that his own excellence is 
 a gift, no less than the reward of toil, perhaps slightly dislik- 
 ing to confess the labour it has cost him to perfect it, and 
 wholly despairing of doing any good by the confession, he 
 contemptuously leaves the drawing-master to do the best he 
 can in his twelve lessons, and with courteous unkindness 
 permits the young women of England to remain under the 
 impression that they can learn to draw wdth less pains than 
 they can learn to dance. I have had practical experience 
 enough, however, to convince me that this treatment of the 
 amateur student is unjust. Young girls will work with 
 steadiest perseverance when once they understand the need of 
 labour, and are convinced that drawing is a kind of language 
 which may for ordinary purposes be learned as easily as 
 French and German ; this language, also, having its grammar 
 and its pronunciation, to be conquered or acquired only by 
 persistence in irksome exercise — an error in a form being as 
 
EDUCATION IN ART, 
 
 255 
 
 entirely and simply an error as a mistake in a tense, and an 
 ill-drawn line as reprehensible as a vulgar accent. 
 
 And I attach great importance to the sound education of 
 our younger females in art, thinking that in England the 
 nursery and the drawing-room are perhaps the most influen- 
 tial of academies. We address ourselves in vain to the edu- 
 cation of the artist while the demand for his work is uncer- 
 tain or unintelligent ; nor can art be considered as having any 
 serious influence on a nation while gilded papers form the 
 principal splendour of the reception room, and ill-wrought 
 though costly trinkets the principal entertainment of the 
 boudoir. 
 
 It is surely, therefore, to be regretted, that the art-educa- 
 tion of our Government schools is addressed so definitely to 
 the guidance of the artisan, and is therefore so little acknowl- 
 edged hitherto by the general public, especially by its upper 
 classes. I have not acquaintance enough with the practical 
 working of that system to venture any expression of opinion 
 respecting its general expediency; but it is my conviction 
 that, so far as references are involved in it to the designing 
 of patterns capable of being produced by machinery, such ref- 
 erences must materially diminish its utility considered as a 
 general system of instruction. 
 
 We are still, therefore, driven to the same point, — the need 
 of an authoritative recommendation of some method of study 
 to the public ; a method determined upon by the concurrence 
 of some of our best painters, and avowedly sanctioned by 
 them, so as to leave no room for hesitation in its acceptance. 
 
 Nor need it be thought that, because the ultimate methods 
 of work employed by painters vary according to the particu- 
 lar effects produced by each, there would be any difficulty in 
 obtaining their collective assent to a system of elementary 
 precept. The facts of which it is necessary that the student 
 should be assured in his early efforts, are so simple, so few, 
 and so well known to all able draughtsmen that, as I have 
 just said, it would be rather doubt of the need of stating what 
 seemed to them self-evident, than reluctance to speak authori- 
 tatively on points capable of dispute, that would stand in the 
 
256 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 way of their giving form to a code of general instruction. To 
 take merely two instances : It will perhaps appear hardly 
 credible that among amateur students, however far advanced 
 in more showy accomplishments, there will not be found one 
 in a hundred who can make an accurate drawing* to scale. It 
 is much, if they can copy anything with approximate fidelity 
 of its real size. Now, the inaccuracy of eye which prevents a 
 student from drawing to scale is in fact nothing else than an 
 entire want of appreciation of proportion, and therefore of 
 composition. He who alters the relations of dimensions to 
 each other in his copy, shows that he does not enjoy those re- 
 lations in the original — that is to say, that all appreciation of 
 noble design (which is based on the most exquisite relations 
 of magnitude) is impossible to him. To give him habits of 
 mathematical accuracy in transference of the outline of com- 
 plex form, is therefore, among the first, and even among the 
 most important, means of educating his taste. A student who 
 can fix with precision the cardinal points of a bird’s wing, ex- 
 tended in any fixed position, and can then draw the curves of 
 its individual plumes without measurable error, has advanced 
 further towards a power of understanding the design of the 
 great masters than he could by reading many volumes of crit- 
 icism, or passing many months in undisciplined examination 
 of works of art. 
 
 Again, it will be found that among amateur students there 
 is almost universal deficiency in the power of expressing the 
 roundness of a surface. They frequently draw with consider- 
 able dexterity and vigour, but never attain the slightest sense 
 of those modulations in form which can only be expressed by 
 gradations in shade. They leave sharp edges to their blots of 
 colour, sharp angles in their contours of lines, and conceal 
 from themselves their incapacity of completion by redun- 
 dance of object. The assurance to such persons that no 
 object could be rightly seen or drawn until the draughtsman 
 had acquired the power of modulating surfaces by gradations 
 wrought with some pointed instrument (whether pen, pencil, 
 or chalk), would at once prevent much vain labour, and put 
 an end to many errors of that worst kind which not only re- 
 
EDUCATION IN ART. 
 
 257 
 
 tard the student, but blind him ; which prevent him from either 
 attaining excellence himself, or understanding it in others. 
 
 It would be easy, did time admit it, to give instances of 
 other principles which it is equally essential that the student 
 should know, and certain that all painters of eminence would 
 sanction ; while even those respecting which some doubt may 
 exist in their application of consummate practice, are yet per- 
 fectly determinable, so far as they are needed to guide a be- 
 ginner, It may, for instance, be a question how far local 
 colour should be treated as an element of chiaro-oscuro in a 
 master’s drawing of the human form. But there can be no 
 question that it must be so treated in a boy’s study of a tulip 
 or a trout. 
 
 A still more important point would be gained if authorita- 
 tive testimony of the same kind could be given to the merit 
 and exclusive sufficiency of any series of examples of works of 
 art, such as could at once be put within the reach of masters of 
 schools. For the modern student labours under heavy dis- 
 advantages in what at first sight might appear an assistance 
 to him, namely, the number of examples of many different 
 styles which surround him in galleries or museums. His 
 mind is disturbed by the inconsistencies of various excellences, 
 and by his own predilection for false beauties in second or 
 third-rate works. He is thus prevented from observing any 
 one example long enough to understand its merit, or follow- 
 ing any one method long enough to obtain facility in its prac- 
 tice. It seems, therefore, very desirable that some such stand- 
 ard of art should be fixed for all our schools, — a standard 
 which, it must be remembered, need not necessarily be the 
 highest possible, provided only it is the Tightest possible. It is 
 not to be hoped that the student should imitate works of the 
 most exalted merit, but much to be desired that he should be 
 guided by those which have fewest faults. 
 
 Perhaps, therefore, the most serviceable examples which 
 could be set before youth might be found in the studies or 
 drawings, rather than in the pictures, of first-rate masters ; 
 and the art of photography enables us to put renderings of 
 such studies, which for most practical purposes are as good 
 
258 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 as the originals, on the walls of every school in the kingdom. 
 Supposing (I merely name these as examples of what I mean) 
 the standard of manner in light-and-shade drawing fixed by 
 Leonardo’s study, No. 19, in the collection of photographs 
 lately published from drawings in the Florence Gallery ; 
 the standard of pen drawing with a wash, fixed by Titian’s 
 sketch No. 30 in the same collection ; that of etching, fixed 
 by Rembrandt’s spotted shell ; and that of point work with 
 the pure lines, by Diirer’s crest with the cock ; every effort of 
 the pupil, whatever the instrument in his hands, would infal- 
 libly tend in a right direction, and the perception of the merits 
 of these four works, or of any others like them, once attained 
 thoroughly, by efforts, however distant or despairing, to copy 
 portions of them, would lead securely in due time to the ap- 
 preciation of their modes of excellence. 
 
 I cannot, of course, within the limits of this paper, proceed 
 to any statement of the present requirements of the English 
 operative as regards art education. But I do not regret this, 
 for it seems to me very desirable that our attention should for 
 the present be concentrated on the more immediate object of 
 general instruction. Whatever the public demand the artist 
 will soon produce ; and the best education which the operative 
 can receive is the refusal of bad work and the acknowledg- 
 ment of good. There is no want of genius among us, still 
 less of industry. The least that -we do is laborious, and the 
 •worst is wonderful. Bat there is a want among us, deep and 
 wide, of discretion in directing toil, and of delight in being 
 led by imagination. In past time, though the masses of the 
 nation were less informed than they are now, they were for 
 that very reason simpler judges and happier gazers ; it must 
 be ours to substitute the gracious sympathy of the understand- 
 ing for the bright gratitude of innocence. An artist can al- 
 ways paint w 7 ell for those who are lightly pleased or wdsely 
 displeased, but he cannot paint for those who are dull in ap- 
 plause and false in condemnation. 
 
ART SCHOOL NOTES. 
 
 259 
 
 REMARKS ADDRESSED TO THE MANSFIELD ART 
 NIGHT CLASS, OCTOBER 14, 1873.* 
 
 It is to be remembered that the giving of prizes can only 
 be justified on tbe ground of their being the reward of supe- 
 rior diligence and more obedient attention to the directions of 
 the teacher. They must never be supposed, because practi- 
 cally they never can become, indications of superior genius ; 
 unless in so far as genius is likely to be diligent and obedient, 
 beyond the strength and temper of the dull. 
 
 But it so frequently happens that the stimulus of vanity, 
 acting on minds of inferior calibre, produces for a time an in- 
 dustry surpassing the tranquil and self-possessed exertion of 
 real power, that it may be questioned whether the custom of 
 bestowing prizes at all may not ultimately cease in our higher 
 Schools of Art, unless in the form of substantial assistance 
 given to deserving students who stand in need of it : a kind 
 of prize, the claim to which, in its nature, would depend more 
 on accidental circumstances, and generally good conduct, than 
 on genius. 
 
 But, without any reference to the opinion of others, and 
 without any chance of partiality in your own, there is one test 
 by which you can all determine the rate of your real progre&s. 
 
 Examine, after every period of renewed industry, how far 
 you have enlarged your faculty of admiration. 
 
 Consider how much more you can see to reverence, in the 
 work of masters ; and how much more to love, in the work of 
 nature. 
 
 This is the only constant and infallible test of progress : 
 that you winder more at the work of great men, and that you 
 care more for natural objects. 
 
 You have often been told by your teachers to expect this 
 last result ; but I fear that the tendency of modern thought 
 
 * This address was written for the Art Night Class, Mansfield, but not 
 delivered by me. In my absence — I forget from what cause, but inev- 
 itable — the Imke of St. Albans honoured me by reading it to the meet* 
 
 mg. 
 
260 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 is to reject the idea of that essential difference in rank he« 
 tween one intellect and another, of which increasing rever- 
 ence is the wise acknowledgment. 
 
 You may, at least in early years, test accurately your power 
 of doing anything in the least rightly, by your increasing 
 conviction that you never will be able to do it as well as it has 
 been done by others. 
 
 That is a lesson, I repeat, which differs much, I fear, from 
 the one you are commonly taught. The vulgar and incom- 
 parably false saying of Macaulay’s, that the intellectual giants 
 of one age become the intellectual pigmies of the next, has 
 been the text of too many sermons lately preached to you. 
 
 You think you are going to do better things — each of you — 
 than Titian and Phidias — write better than Virgil — think more 
 wisely than Solomon. 
 
 My good young people, this is the foolishest, quite pre-em- 
 inently — perhaps almost the harmfullest — notion that could 
 possibly be put into your empty little eggshells of heads. 
 There is not one in a million of you who can ever be great in 
 any thing. To be greater than the greatest that have been, is 
 permitted perhaps to one man in Europe in the course of two 
 or three centuries. But because you cannot be Handel and 
 Mozart — is it any reason why you should not learn to sing 
 God save the Queen ” properly, when you have a mind to ? 
 Because a girl cannot be prima donna in the Italian Opera, is 
 it any reason that she should not learn to play a jig for her 
 brothers and sisters in good time, or a soft little tune for her 
 tired mother, or that she should not sing to please herself, 
 among the dew, on a May morning ? Believe me, joy, humil- 
 ity, and usefulness always go together : as insolence with mis- 
 ery, and these both with destructiveness. You may learn with 
 proud teachers how to throw down the Vendome Column, and 
 burn the Louvre, but never how to lay so much as one touch 
 of safe colour, or one layer of steady stone : and if indeed 
 there be among you a youth of true genius, be assured that he 
 will distinguish himself first, not by petulance or by disdain, 
 but by discerning firmly what to admire, and whom to obey. 
 
 It will, I hope, be the result of the interest lately awakened 
 
ART SCHOOL NOTES. 
 
 261 
 
 in art through our provinces, to enable each town of impor- 
 tance to obtain, in permanent possession, a few — and it is de- 
 sirable there should be no more than a few — examples of con- 
 summate and masterful art : an engraving or two by D'rirer — 
 a single portrait by Reynolds — a fifteenth-century Florentine 
 drawing — a thirteenth-century French piece of painted glass, 
 and the like ; and that, in every town occupied in a given 
 manufacture, examples of unquestionable excellence in that 
 manufacture should be made easily accessible in its civic 
 museum. 
 
 I must ask you, however, to observe very carefully that I 
 use the word manufacture in its literal and proper sense. It 
 means the making of things by the hand. It does not mean 
 the making them by machinery. And, while I plead with you 
 for a true humility in rivalship with the works of others, I 
 plead with you also for a just pride in what you really can 
 honestly do yourself. 
 
 You must neither think your work the best ever done by 
 man : — nor, on the other hand, think that the tongs and poker 
 can do better — and that, although you are wiser than Solo- 
 mon, all this wisdom of yours can be outshone by a shovel- 
 ful of coke. 
 
 Let me take, for instance, the manufacture of lace, for 
 which, I believe, your neighbouring town of Nottingham en- 
 joys renown. There is still some distinction between machine- 
 made and hand-made lace. I will suppose that distinction so 
 far done aw T ay with, that, a pattern once invented, you can 
 spin lace as fast as you now do thread. Everybody then 
 might wear, not only lace collars, but lace gowns. Do you 
 think they would be more comfortable in them than they are 
 now in plain stuff — or that, when everybody could wear them, 
 anybody would be proud of wearing one ? A spider may per- 
 haps be rationally proud of his own cobweb, even though all 
 the fields in the morning are covered with the like, for he 
 made it himself — but suppose a machine spun it for him ? 
 
 Suppose all the gossamer were Nottingham-made, would a 
 sensible spider be either prouder, or happier, think 3 r ou ? 
 
 A sensible spider ! You cannot perhaps imagine such a 
 
262 
 
 A JOT FOR EVER. 
 
 creature. Yet surely a spider is clever enough for his own 
 ends? 
 
 You think him an insensible spider, only because he cannot 
 understand yours — and is apt to impede yours. Well, be as- 
 sured of this : sense in human creatures is shown also, not by 
 cleverness in promoting their own ends and interests, but by 
 quickness in understanding other people’s ends and interests, 
 and by putting our own work and keeping our own wishes in 
 harmony with theirs. 
 
 But I return to my point, of cheapness. You don’t think 
 that it would be convenient, or even creditable, for women to 
 wash the doorsteps or dish the dinners in lace gowns ? Nay, 
 even for the most ladylike occupations — reading, or writing, 
 or playing with her children — do you think a lace gown, or 
 even a lace collar, so great an advantage or dignity to a woman ? 
 If you think of it, you will find the whole value of lace, as a 
 possession, depends on the fact of its having a beauty which 
 has been the reward of industry and attention. 
 
 That the thing itself is a prize — a thing which everybody 
 cannot have. That it proves by the look of it, the ability of its 
 maker ; that it proves, by the rarity of it, the dignity of its 
 wearer — either that she has been so industrious as to save 
 money, which can buy, say, a piece of jewellery, of gold tissue, 
 or of fine lace — or else, that she is a noble person, to whom 
 her neighbours concede, as an honour, the privilege of wear- 
 ing finer dress than they. 
 
 If they all choose to have lace too — if it ceases to be a prize 
 — it becomes, does it not, only a cobweb ? 
 
 The real good of a piece of lace, then, you will find, is that 
 it should show, first, that the designer of it had a pretty fancy ; 
 next, that the maker of it had fine fingers ; lastly, that the 
 wearer of it has worthiness or dignity enough to obtain what 
 is difficult to obtain, and common sense enough not to wear 
 it on all occasions. I limit myself, in what farther I have to 
 say, to the question of the manufacture — nay, of one requisite 
 in the manufacture : that which I have just called a pretty 
 fancy. 
 
 What do you suppose I mean by a pretty fancy ? Do you 
 
ART SCHOOL NOTES . 
 
 263 
 
 think that, by learning to draw, and looking at flowers, yon 
 will ever get the ability to design a piece of lace beautifully? 
 By no means. If that were so, everybody would soon learn 
 to draw — everybody would design lace prettily — and then,— 
 nobody would be paid for designing it. To some extent, that 
 will indeed be the result of modern endeavour to teach de- 
 sign. But against all such endeavours, mother-wit, in the end, 
 will hold her own. 
 
 But anybody who has this mother-wit, may make the exercise 
 of it more pleasant to themselves, and more useful to other 
 people, by learning to draw. 
 
 An Indian worker in gold, or a Scandinavian worker in iron, 
 or an old French worker in thread, could produce indeed 
 beautiful designs out of nothing but groups of knots and spi- 
 rals ; but you, when you are rightly educated, may render your 
 knots and spirals infinitely more interesting by making them 
 suggestive of natural forms, and rich in elements of true 
 knowledge. 
 
 You know, for instance, the pattern which for centuries has 
 been the basis of ornament in Indian shawls — the bulging leaf 
 ending in a spiral. The Indian produces beautiful designs 
 with nothing but that spiral. You cannot better his powers 
 of design, but you make them more civil and useful by add- 
 ing knowledge of nature to invention. 
 
 Suppose you learn to draw rightly, and, therefore, to know 
 correctly the spirals of springing ferns — not that you may 
 give ugly names to all the species of them — but that you may 
 understand the grace and vitality of every hour of their exist- 
 ence. Suppose you have sense and cleverness enough to 
 translate the essential character of this beauty into forms ex- 
 pressible by simple lines — therefore expressible by thread— 
 you might then have a series of fern-patterns which would 
 each contain points of distinctive interest and beauty, and of 
 scientific truth, and yet be variable by fancy, with quite as 
 much ease as the meaningless Indian one. Similarly, there is 
 no form of leaf, of flower, or of insect, which might not be- 
 come suggestive to you, and expressible in terms of manufacb 
 ure, so as to be interesting, and useful to others. 
 
264 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 Only don’t think that this kind of study will ever “pay,” iq 
 the vulgar sense. 
 
 It will make you wiser and happier. But do you suppose 
 that it is the law of God, or nature, that people shall be paid 
 in money for becoming wiser and happier ? They are so, by 
 that law, for honest work ; and as all honest work makes peo- 
 ple wiser and happier, they are indeed, in some so£t, paid in 
 money for becoming wise. 
 
 But if you seek wisdom only that you may get money, be- 
 lieve me, you are exactly on the foolisliest of all fools’ errands. 
 “ She is more precious than rubies”™— but do you think that 
 is only because she will help you to buy rubies ? 
 
 “ All the things thou canst desire are not to be compared 
 to her.” Do you think that is only because she will enable 
 you to get all the things you desire ? She is offered to you 
 as a blessing in herself. She is the reward of kindness, of 
 modesty, of industry. She is the Prize of Prizes — and alike 
 in poverty or in riches — the strength of your Life now, the 
 earnest of whatever Life is to come. 
 
 SOCIAL POLICY. 
 
 BASED ON NATURAL SELECTION. 
 
 Paper read before the Metaphysical Society , May 1 P7i, 1875.* 
 
 It has always seemed to me that Societies like this of ours, 
 happy in including members not a little diverse in thought 
 and various in knowledge, might be more useful to the pub- 
 lic than perhaps they can fairly be said to have approved 
 themselves hitherto, by using their variety of power rather to 
 support intellectual conclusions by concentric props, than to 
 shake them with rotatory stones of wit ; and modestly en- 
 deavouring to initiate the building of walls for the Bridal city 
 of Science, in which no man will care to identify the particular 
 
 * I trust that the Society will not consider its privileges violated by 
 the publication of an essay, which, for such audience, I wrote with more 
 than ordinary care. 
 
THE BASIS OF SOCIAL POLICY. 
 
 265 
 
 stones he lays, rather than complying farther with the exist- 
 ing picturesque, but wasteful, practice of every knight to 
 throw up a feudal tower of his own opinions, tenable only by 
 the most active pugnacity, and pierced rather with arrow- 
 slits from which to annoy his neighbours, than windows to 
 admit light or air. 
 
 The paper read at our last meeting was unquestionably, 
 within the limits its writer has prescribed to himself, so logi- 
 cally sound, that (encouraged also by the suggestion of some 
 of our most influential members), I shall endeavour to make 
 the matter of our to-night’s debate consequent upon it, and 
 suggestive of possibly further advantageous deductions. 
 
 It will be remembered that, in reference to the statement 
 in the Bishop of Peterborough’s Paper, of the moral indiffer- 
 ence of certain courses of conduct on the postulate of the ex- 
 istence only of a Mechanical base of Morals, it was observed 
 by Dr. Adam Clarke that, even on such mechanical basis, the 
 w r ord “ moral ” might still be applied specially to any course 
 of action which tended to the development of the human 
 race. Whereupon I ventured myself to inquire, in what di- 
 rection such development was to be understood as taking- 
 place ; and the discussion of this j3oint being then dropped 
 for want of time, I would ask the Society’s permission to 
 bring it again before them this evening in a somewhat more 
 extended form ; for in reality the question respecting the de- 
 velopment of men is twofold, — first, namely, — in what direc- 
 tion ; and secondly, in what social relations, it is to be sought. 
 
 I would therefore at present ask more deliberately than I 
 could at our last meeting, — first, in what direction it is de- 
 sirable that the development of humanity should take place ? 
 Should it, for instance, as in Greece, be of physical beauty, 
 — emulation, (Hesiod’s second Eris), — pugnacity and patriot- 
 ism ? or, as in modern England, of physical ugliness, — envy, 
 (Hesiod’s first Eris), — cowardice, and selfishness? or, as by 
 a conceivably humane but hitherto unexampled — education 
 might be attempted, of physical beauty, humility, courage, 
 and affection, which should make all the world one native 
 land, and iraaa yrj ra<£os? 
 
266 
 
 A JOY FOR EVER. 
 
 I do not doubt but that the first automatic impulse of all 
 our automatic friends here present, on hearing this sentence, 
 will be strenuously to deny the accuracy of my definition of 
 the aims of modern English education. Without attempting 
 to defend it, I would only observe that this automatic develop- 
 ment of solar caloric in scientific minds must be grounded on 
 an automatic sensation of injustice done to the members of 
 the School Board, as well as to many other automatically well- 
 meaning and ingenious persons ; and that this sense of the in- 
 juriousness and offensiveness of my definition cannot possibly 
 have any other basis (if I may be permitted to continue my 
 professional similitudes) than the fallen remnants and goodly 
 stones, not one now left on another, but still forming an un- 
 removable cumulus of ruin, and eternal Birs Nimroud, as it 
 were, on the site of the old belfry of Christian morality, whose 
 top looked once so like touching Heaven. 
 
 For no offence could be taken at my definition, unless trace- 
 able to adamantine conviction, — that ugliness, however inde- 
 finable, envy, however natural, and cowardice, however com- 
 mercially profitable, are nevertheless eternally disgraceful ; 
 contrary, that is to say, to the grace of our Lord Christ, if 
 there be among us any Christ ; to the grace of the King’s 
 Majesty, if there be among us any King ; and to the grace 
 even of Christless and Kingless Manhood, if there be among 
 us any Manhood. 
 
 To this fixed conception of a difference between Better and 
 Worse, or, when carried to the extreme, between good and 
 evil, in conduct, we all, it seems to me, instinctively and there- 
 fore rightly, attach the term of Moral sense ; — the sense, for 
 instance, that it would be better if the members of this Society 
 who are usually automatically absent were, instead, automati- 
 cally present ; or better, that this Paper, if (which is, perhaps, 
 too likely) it be thought automatically impertinent, had been 
 made, by the molecular action of my cerebral particles, pertinent. 
 
 Trusting, therefore, without more ado, to the strength of 
 rampart in this Old Sarum of the Moral sense, however sub- 
 dued into vague banks under the modern steam-plough, I wifi 
 venture to suppose the first of my two questions to have been 
 
THE BASIS OF SOCIAL POLICY. 
 
 267 
 
 answered by the choice on the part at least of a majority of 
 our Council, of the third direction of development, above 
 specified as being the properly called “ moral ” one ; and will 
 go on to the second subject of inquiry, both more difficult and 
 of great practical importance in the political crisis through 
 which Europe is passing, — namely, what relations between 
 men are to be desired, or with resignation allowed, in the 
 course of their Moral Development ? i 
 
 Whether, that is to say, we should try to make some men 
 beautiful at the cost of ugliness in others, and some men vir- 
 tuous at the cost of vice in others, — or rather, all men beau- 
 tiful and virtuous in the degree possible to each under a 
 system of equitable education ? And evidently our first busi- 
 ness is to consider in what terms the choice is put to us by 
 Nature. What can we do, if we would ? What must we do, 
 whether we will or not ? How r high can w r e raise the level of 
 a diffused Learning and Morality? and how far shall we be 
 compelled, if we limit, to exaggerate the advantages and 
 injuries of our system? And are we prepared, if the ex- 
 tremity be inevitable, to push to their utmost the relations 
 implied when we take off our hats to each other, and triple 
 the tiara of the Saint in Heaven, while we leave the sinner 
 bareheaded in Cocytus ? 
 
 It is well, perhaps, that I should at once confess myself to 
 hold the principle of limitation in its utmost extent ; and to 
 entertain no doubt of the rightness of my ideal, but only of 
 its feasibility. I am ill at ease, for instance, in my uncer- 
 tainty whether our greatly regretted Chairman wdll ever be 
 Pope, or whether some people whom I could mention, (not, 
 of course, members of our society,) will ever be in Cocytus. 
 
 But there is no need, if we would be candid, to debate the 
 principle in the violences of operation, any more than the 
 proper methods of distributing food, on the supposition that 
 the difference between a Paris dinner and a platter of Scotch 
 porridge must imply that one-half of mankind are to die of 
 eating, and the rest of having nothing to eat. I will, therefore, 
 take for example a case in which the discrimination is less 
 conclusive. 
 
2G8 
 
 A JOY FOR AVER. 
 
 When I stop writing metaphysics this morning, it will be 
 to arrange some drawings for a young lady to copy. They 
 are leaves of the best illuminated MSS. I have, and I am going 
 to spend my whole afternoon in explaining to her what she is 
 to aim at in copying them. 
 
 Now, I would not lend these leaves to any other young 
 lady that I know of ; nor give up my afternoon to, perhaps, 
 more than two or three other young ladies that I know of. 
 But to keep to the first-instanced one, I lend her my books, 
 and give her, for what they are worth, my time and most 
 careful teaching, because she at present paints butterflies bet- 
 ter than any other girl I know, and has a peculiar capacity for 
 the softening of plumes and finessing of antennae. Grant me 
 to be a good teacher, and grant her disposition to be such as I 
 suppose, and the result will be what might at first appear an 
 indefensible iniquity, namely, that this girl, who has already 
 excellent gifts, having also excellent teaching, will become 
 perhaps the best butterfly-painter in England ; while myriads 
 of other girls, having originally inferior powers, and attract- 
 ing no attention from the Slade Professor, will utterly lose 
 their at present cultivable faculties of entomological art, and 
 sink into the vulgar career of wives and mothers, to which we 
 have Mr. Mill’s authority for holding it a grievous injustice 
 that any girl should be irrevocably condemned. 
 
 There is no need that I should be careful in enumerating 
 the various modes, analogous to this, in which the Natural 
 selection of which we have lately heard, perhaps, somewhat 
 more than enough, provokes and approves the Professional 
 selection which I am so bold as to defend ; and if the auto- 
 matic instincts of equity in us, which revolt against the great 
 ordinance of Nature and practice of Man that “to him that 
 hath, shall more be given,” are to be listened to when the 
 possessions in question are only of wisdom and virtue, let 
 them at least prove their sincerity by correcting, first, the in- 
 justice which has established itself respecting more tangible 
 and more esteemed property ; and terminating the singular 
 arrangement prevalent in commercial Europe, that to every 
 man with a hundred pounds in his pocket there shall annually 
 
THE BASIS OF SOCIAL POLICY. 269 
 
 be given three, to every man with a thousand thirty, and to 
 every man with nothing, none. 
 
 I am content here to leave under the scrutiny of the even- 
 ing my general statement that as human development, when 
 moral, is with special effort in a given direction, so, -when 
 moral, it is with special effort in favour of a limited class ; 
 but I yet trespass for a few moments on your patience in 
 order to note that the acceptance of this second principle still 
 leaves it to what point the disfavour of the reprobate class, or 
 the privileges of the elect, may advisably extend. For I can- 
 not but feel for my own part, as if the daily bread of moral 
 instruction might at least be so widely broken among the 
 multitudes as to preserve them from utter destitution and 
 pauperism in virtue ; and that even the simplest and lowest of 
 the rabble should not be so absolutely sons of perdition, but 
 that each might say for himself, — “ For my part — no offence 
 to the General, or any man of quality — I hope to be saved.” 
 Whereas it is, on the contrary, implied by the habitual ex- 
 pressions of the wisest aristocrats, that the completely devel- 
 oped persons whose Justice and Fortitude — poles to the 
 Cardinal points of virtue— are marked as their sufficient char- 
 acteristics by the great Roman moralist in his phrase, “ Justus, 
 et tenax propositi,” will in the course of nature be opposed 
 by a civic ardour, not merely of the innocent and ignorant, 
 but of persons developed in a contrary direction to that 
 which I have ventured to call “moral,” and therefore not 
 merely incapable of desiring or applauding what is right, but 
 in an evil harmony, pram jubentium, clamorously demanding 
 what is wrong. 
 
 The point to which both Natural and Divine Selection 
 would permit us to advance in severity towards this profane 
 class, to which the enduring “Ecce Homo,” or manifestation 
 of any properly human sentiment or person, must always be 
 instinctively abominable, seem to be conclusively indicated by 
 the order following on the parable of the Talents, — “Those 
 mine enemies, bring hither, and slay them before me.” Not 
 does it seem reasonable, on the other hand, to set the limits 
 of favouritism more narrowly. For even if, among fallible 
 
270 
 
 A JOT FOR EVER . 
 
 mortals, there may frequently be ground for the hesitation of 
 just men to award the punishment of death to their enemies, 
 the most beautiful story, to my present knowledge, of all an- 
 tiquity, that of Cleobis and Bito, might suggest to them the 
 fitness, on some occasions, of distributing without any hesita- 
 tion the reward of death to their friends. For sure the logi- 
 cal conclusion of the Bishop of Peterborough, respecting the 
 treatment due to old women who have nothing supernatural 
 about them, holds with still greater force when applied to the 
 case of old women w r ho have everything supernatural about 
 them ; and while it might remain questionable to some of us, 
 whether we had any right to deprive an invalid who had no 
 soul of w T hat might still remain to her of even painful earthly 
 existence, it would surely on the most religious grounds be 
 both our privilege and our duty, at once to dismiss any troub- 
 lesome sufferer who had a soul to the distant and inoffensive 
 felicities of heaven. 
 
 But I believe my hearers will approve me in again declin- 
 ing to disturb the serene confidence of daily action by these 
 speculations in extreme ; the really useful conclusion, which it 
 seems to me, cannot be evaded, is that without going so far 
 as the exile of the inconveniently wicked, and translation of 
 the inconveniently sick, to their proper spiritual mansions, 
 we should at least be certain that we do not waste care in 
 protracting disease which might have been spent in preserv- 
 ing health ; that we do not appease in the splendour of our 
 turreted hospitals the feelings of compassion which, rightly 
 directed, might have prevented the need of them ; nor pride 
 ourselves on the peculiar form of Christian benevolence which 
 leaves the cottage roofless to model the prison, and spends it- 
 self with zealous preference where, in the keen words of Car- 
 lyle, if you desire the material on which maximum expendi- 
 ture of means and effort will produce the minimum result, 
 “ here you accurately have it.” 
 
 I cannot but, in conclusion, most respectfully, but most ear- 
 nestly, express my hope that measures may be soon taken by 
 the Lords Spiritual of England to assure her doubting mind 
 of the real existence of that supernatural revelation of the 
 
THE BASIS OF SOCIAL POLICY. 
 
 271 
 
 basis of morals to which the Bishop of Peterborough referred 
 in the close of his paper ; or at least to explain to her bewil- 
 dered populace the real meaning of the force of the Ten Com- 
 mandments, whether written originally by the finger of God 
 or Man. To me, personally, I own, as one of that bewildered 
 populace, that the essay by one of our most distinguished 
 members on the Creed of Christendom seems to stand in 
 need of explicit answer from our Divines ; but if not, and the 
 common application of the terms “ Word of God ” to the 
 books of Scripture be against all questions tenable, it becomes 
 yet more imperative on the interpreters of that Scripture 
 to see that they are not made void by our traditions , 1 and 
 that the Mortal sins of Covetousness, Fraud, Usury, and Con- 
 tention be not the essence of a National life orally pro- 
 fessing submission to the laws of Christ, and satisfaction in 
 His Love. 
 
 J. Buskin. 
 
 1 “ Thou shalt not covet ; but tradition 
 Approves all forms of Competition. ” 
 
 Arthur Clough. 
 
 TSB 
 

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 • : • - • 
 
 O': - 
 
 ' 
 
 . 
 
 - 
 
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 V - «fF 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US 
 
 SKETCHES OF THE HISTORY OF CHRISTENDOM FOR BOYS AND 
 GIRLS WHO HAVE BEEN HELD AT ITS FONTS 
 
 l 
 

PREFACE. 
 
 The long abandoned purpose, of which the following pages 
 begin some attempt at fulfilment, has been resumed at the re- 
 quest of a young English governess, that I would write some 
 pieces of history which her pupils could gather some good 
 out of ; — the fruit of historical documents placed by modern 
 educational systems at her disposal, being to them labour 
 only, and sorrow. 
 
 What else may be said for the book, if it ever become one, 
 it must say for itself : preface, more than this, I do not care 
 to write : and the less, because some passages of British his- 
 tory, at this hour under record, call for instant, though brief, 
 comment. 
 
 I am told that the Queens Guards have gone to Ireland ; 
 playing “ God save the Queen.” And being, (as I have de- 
 clared myself in the course of some letters to which public 
 attention has been lately more than enough directed,) to the 
 best of my knowledge, the staunchest Conservative in Eng- 
 land, I am disposed gravely to question the propriety of the 
 mission of the Queen’s Guards on the employment commanded 
 them. My own Conservative notion of the function of the 
 Guards is that they should guard the Queen’s throne and life, 
 when threatened either by domestic or foreign enemy : but 
 not that they should become a substitute for her inefficient 
 police force, in the execution of her domiciliary laws. 
 
 And still less so, if the domiciliary laws which they are sent 
 to execute, playing “ God save the Queen,” be perchance pre- 
 cisely contrary to that God the Saviour’s law ; and therefore, 
 such as, in the long run, no quantity either of Queens, or 
 Queen’s men, could execute. Which is a question I have for 
 
276 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 these ten years been endeavouring to get the British public 
 to consider — vainly enough hitherto ; and will not at present 
 add to my own many words on the matter. But a book has 
 just been published by a British officer, who, if he had not 
 been otherwise and more actively employed, could not only 
 have written all my books about landscape and picture, but is 
 very singularly also of one mind with me, (God knows of how 
 few Englishmen I can now say so,) on matters regarding the 
 Queen’s safety, and the Nation’s honour. Of whose book 
 (“Far out : Rovings retold”), since various passages will be 
 given in my subsequent terminal notes, I will content myself 
 with quoting for the end of my Preface the memorable words 
 which Colonel Butler himself quotes, as spoken to the British 
 Parliament by its last Conservative leader, a British officer 
 who had also served with honour and success. 
 
 The Duke of Wellington said : “It is already well known 
 to your Lordships that of the troops which our gracious Sov- 
 ereign did me the honour to entrust to my command at vari- 
 ous periods during the war — a war undertaken for the ex- 
 press purpose of securing the happy institutions and inde- 
 pendence of the country — at least one half were Roman 
 Catholics. My Lords, when I call your recollection to this 
 fact, I am sure all further eulogy is unnecessary. Your Lord- 
 ships are well aware for what length of period and under 
 what difficult circumstances they maintained the Empire 
 buoyant upon the flood which overwhelmed the thrones and 
 wrecked the institutions of every other people ; — how they 
 kept alive the only spark of freedom which was left unextin- 
 guished in Europe. . . . My Lords, it is mainly to the Irish 
 Catholics that we ail owe our proud predominance in our 
 military career, and that I personally am indebted for the 
 laurels with which you have been pleased to decorate my 
 brow. . . . We must confess, my Lords, that without Catho- 
 lic blood and Catholic valour no victory could ever have been 
 obtained, and the first military talents might have been ex- 
 erted in vain.” 
 
 Let these noble words of tender Justice be the first exam- 
 ple to my young readers of what all History ought to be. It 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 277 
 
 has been told them, in the Laws of Fe3ole, that all great Art 
 is Praise. So is all faithful History, and all high Philosophy. 
 For these three, Art, History, and Philosophy, are each but 
 one part of the Heavenly Wisdom, which sees not as man 
 seeth, but with Eternal Charity ; and because she rejoices not 
 in Iniquity, therefore rejoices in the Truth. 
 
 For true knowledge is of Virtues only : of poisons and vices, 
 it is Hecate who teaches, not Athena. And of all wisdom, 
 chiefly the Politician’s must consist in this divine Prudence ; 
 it is not, indeed, always necessary for men to know the vir- 
 tues of their friends, or their masters ; since the friend will 
 still manifest, and the master use. But woe to the Nation 
 which is too cruel to cherish the virtue of its subjects, and 
 too cowardly to recognize that of its enemies ! 
 
' 
 
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PLATE I. — THE DYNASTIES OF FRANCE. — To the close of the Tenth Century, 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BY THE RIVERS OF WATERS. 
 
 The inteiligent English traveller, in this fortunate age for 
 him, is aware that, half-way between Boulogne and Paris, 
 there is a complex railway-station, into which his train, in its 
 relaxing speed, rolls him with many more than the average 
 number of bangs and bumps prepared, in the access of every 
 important French gare, to startle the drowsy or distrait pas- 
 senger into a sense of his situation. 
 
 He probably also remembers that at this halting-place in 
 mid-journey there is a well-served buffet, at which he has 
 the privilege of “ Dix minutes d’arret.” 
 
 He is not, however, always so distinctly conscious that 
 these ten minutes of arrest are granted to him within not so 
 many minutes’ walk of the central square of a city which was 
 once the Venice of France. 
 
 Putting the lagoon islands out of question, the French 
 Biver-Queen was nearly as large in compass as Venice her- 
 self ; and divided, not by slow currents of ebbing and return- 
 ing tide, but by eleven beautiful trc ut-streams, of which some 
 four or five are as large, each separately, as our Surrey Wan- 
 dle, or as Isaac Walton’s Dove ; and which, branching out of 
 one strong current above the city, and uniting again after 
 they have eddied through its streets, are bordered, as they 
 flow down, (fordless except where the two Edwards rode 
 them, the day before Crecy,) to the sands of St. Valery, by 
 groves of aspen, and glades of poplar, whose grace and glad- 
 
280 
 
 “OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US. 
 
 ness seem to spring in every stately avenue instinct with the 
 image of the just man’s life, — “ Erit tanquam lignum quod 
 plantatum est secus decursus aquarum.” 
 
 But the Venice of Picardy owed her name, not to the 
 beauty of her streams merely, but to their burden. She was 
 a worker, like the Adriatic princess, in gold and glass, in 
 stone, wood, and ivory ; she was skilled like an Egyptian in 
 the weaving of fine linen ; dainty as the maids of Judah 
 in divers colours of needlework. And of these, the fruits 
 of her hands, praising her in her own gates, she sent also 
 portions to stranger nations, and her fame went out into all 
 lands. 
 
 “ Un reglement de l’echevinage, du 12 rae avril 1566, fait 
 voir qu’on fabriquait a cette epoque, des velours de toutes 
 couleurs pour meubles, des colombettes a grands et petits 
 carreaux, des burailles croises, qu’on exp^diait en Allemagne 
 — en Espagne, en Turquie, et en Barbarie ! ” * 
 
 All-coloured velvets, pearl-iridescent colombettes ! (I won- 
 der what they may be ?) and sent to vie with the variegated 
 carpet of the Turk, and glow upon the arabesque towers of 
 Barbary ! f Was not this a phase of provincial Picard life 
 which an intelligent English traveller might do well to inquire 
 into ? Why should this fountain of rainbows leap up suddenly 
 here by Somme ; and a little Frankish maid write herself 
 the sister of Venice, and the servant of Carthage and of 
 Tyre ? 
 
 And if she, why not others also of our northern villages ? 
 Has the intelligent traveller discerned anything, in the coun- 
 try, or in its shores, on his way from the gate of Calais to the 
 gave of Amiens, of special advantage for artistic design, or for 
 commercial enterprise? He has seen league after league of 
 sandy dunes. We also, we, have our sands by Severn, by 
 Lune, by Solway. He has seen extensive plains of useful and 
 not unfragrant peat, — an article sufficiently accessible also to 
 
 * M. H. Dusevel, Histoire de la Ville d’ Amiens. Amiens, Caron et 
 Lambert, 1848 ; p. 805. 
 
 f Carpaccio trusts for the chief splendour of any festa in cities to the 
 patterns of the draperies hung out of windows. 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 281 
 
 our Scotch and Irish industries. He has seen many a broad 
 down and jutting cliff of purest chalk ; but, opposite, the per- 
 fide Albion gleams no whit less blanche beyond the blue. 
 Pure waters he has seen, issuing out of the snowy rock ; but 
 are ours less bright at Croydon, at Guilford, or at Winchester ? 
 And yet one never heard of treasures sent from Solway sands 
 to African ; nor that the builders at Romsey could give lessons 
 in colour to the builders at Granada ? What can it be, in the 
 air or the earth — in her stars or in her sunlight — that fires the 
 heart and quickens the eyes of the little white-capped Amien- 
 oise soubrette, till she can match herself against Penelope ? 
 
 The intelligent English traveller has of course no time to 
 waste on any of these questions. But if he has bought his 
 ham-sandwich, and he is ready for the “En voiture, mes- 
 sieurs,” he may perhaps condescend for an instant to hear 
 what a lounger about the place, neither wasteful of his time, 
 nor sparing of it, can suggest as worth looking at, when his 
 train glides out of the station. 
 
 He will see first, and doubtless with the respectful admira- 
 tion which an Englishman is bound to bestow upon such ob- 
 jects, the coal-sheds and carriage- sheds of the station itself; 
 extending in their ashy and oily splendours for about a quarter 
 of a mile out of the town ; and then, just as the train gets 
 into speed, under a large chimney tower, which he cannot see 
 to nearly the top of, but will feel overcast by the shadow of 
 its smoke, he may see, if he will trust his intelligent head out 
 of the window, and look back, fifty or fifty-one (I am not sure 
 of my count to a unit) similar chimneys, all similarly smoking, 
 all with similar works attached, oblongs of brown brick wail, 
 with portholes numberless of black square window. But in 
 the midst of these fifty tall things that smoke, he will see one, 
 a little taller than any, and more delicate, that does not 
 smoke ; and in the midst of these fifty masses of blank wall, 
 enclosing ‘ works ’ — and doubtless producing works profitable 
 and honourable to France and the world — he will see one mass 
 of wall — not blank, but strangely wrought by the hands of 
 foolish men of long ago, for the purpose of enclosing or pro- 
 ducing no manner of profitable w 7 ork whatsoever, but one — 
 
282 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD TO” 
 
 “ This is the work of God ; that ye should believe on Him 
 whom He hath sent ! ” 
 
 Leaving the intelligent traveller now to fulfil his vow of 
 pilgrimage to Paris, — or wherever else God may be sending 
 him, — I will suppose that an intelligent Eton boy or two, or 
 thoughtful English girl, may care quietly to walk with me as 
 far as this same spot of commanding view, and to consider 
 what the workless — shall we also say worthless ? — building, 
 and its unshadowed minaret, may perhaps farther mean. 
 
 Minaret I have called it, for want of better English word. 
 Fleche — arrow — is its proper name ; vanishing into the air 
 you know not where, by the mere fineness of it. Flameless — 
 motionless — hurtless — the fine arrow ; unplumed, unpoisoned 
 and unbarbed ; aimless — shall we say also, readers young and 
 old, travelling or abiding ? It, and the walls it rises from — 
 what have they once meant ? What meaning have they left 
 in them yet, for you, or for the people that live round them, 
 and never look up as they pass by ? 
 
 Suppose we set ourselves first to learn how they came there. 
 
 At the birth of Christ, all this hillside, and the brightly- 
 watered plain below, with the corn-yellow champaign above, 
 were inhabited by a Druid-taught race, wild enough in 
 thoughts and ways, but under Roman government, and grad- 
 ually becoming accustomed to hear the names, and partly to 
 confess the power, of Roman gods. For three hundred years 
 after the birth of Christ they heard the name of no other 
 God. 
 
 Three hundred years ! and neither apostles nor inheritors of 
 apostleship had yet gone into all the world and preached the 
 gospel to every creature. Here, on their peaty ground, the 
 wild people, still trusting in Pomona for apples, in Silvanus 
 for acorns, in Ceres for bread, and in Proserpina for rest, 
 hoped but the season’s blessing from the Gods of Harvest, 
 and feared no eternal anger from the Queen of Death. 
 
 But at last, three hundred years being past and gone, in 
 the year of Christ 301, there came to this hillside of Amiens, 
 on the sixth day of the Ides of October, the Messenger of a 
 new Life. 
 
THE BIBLE GF AMIENS. 
 
 283 
 
 His name, Firminius (I suppose) in Latin, Firmin in French, 
 
 - — so to be remembered here in Picardy. Firmin, not Fir- 
 minius ; as Denis, not Dionysius ; coming out of space — no one 
 tells what part of space. But received by the pagan Amienois 
 with surprised welcome, and seen of them — Forty days — 
 many days, we may read — preaching acceptably, and binding 
 with baptismal vows even persons in good society : and that 
 in such numbers, that at last he is accused to the Roman gov- 
 ernor, by the priests of Jupiter and Mercury, as one turning 
 the world upside-down. And in the last day of the Forty — 
 or of the indefinite many meant by Forty — he is beheaded, as 
 martyrs ought to be, and his ministrations in a mortal body 
 ended. 
 
 The old, old story, you say ? Be it so ; you will the more 
 easily remember it. The Amienois remembered it so care- 
 fully, that, twelve hundred years afterwards, in the sixteenth 
 century, they thought good to carve and paint the four stone 
 pictures, Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4 of our first photograph, (see pref- 
 atory references). Scene 1st, St. Firmin arriving ; scene 2nd, 
 St. Firmin preaching ; scene 3rd, St. Firmin baptizing ; and 
 scene 4th, St. Firmin beheaded, by an executioner with very 
 red legs, and an attendant dog of the character of the dog in 
 4 Faust,’ of whom we may have more to say presently. 
 
 Following in the meantime the tale of St. Firmin, as of old 
 time known, his body was received, and buried, by a Roman 
 senator, his disciple, (a kind of Joseph of Arimathea to St. 
 Firmin,) in the Roman senator’s own garden. Who also 
 built a little oratory over his grave. The Roman senator’s 
 son built a church to replace the oratory, dedicated it to Our 
 Lady of Martyrs, and established it as an episcopal seat — the 
 first of the French nation’s. A very notable spot for the 
 French nation, surely? One deserving, perhaps, some little 
 memory or monument, — cross, tablet, or the like? Where, 
 therefore, do you suppose this first cathedral of French Chris- 
 tianity stood, and with what monument has it been honoured ? 
 
 It stood where we now stand, companion mine, whoever you 
 may be ; and the monument wherewith it has been honoured 
 is this — chimney, whose gonfalon of smoke overshadows us— 
 
284 
 
 “OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US.' 1 
 
 the latest effort of modern art in Amiens, the chimney of St 
 Acheul. 
 
 The first cathedral, you observe, of the French nation ; more 
 accurately, the first germ of cathedral for the French nation — 
 who are not yet here ; only this grave of a martyr is here, and 
 this church of Our Lady of Martyrs, abiding on the hillside, 
 till the Eoman power pass away. 
 
 Failing together with it, and trampled down by savage 
 tribes, alike the city and the shrine ; the grave forgotten, — when 
 at last the Franks themselves pour from the north, and the 
 utmost wave of them, lapping along these downs of Somme, 
 is here stayed, and the Frankish standard planted, and the 
 French kingdom throned. 
 
 Here their first capital, here the first footsteps * of the 
 Frank in his France ! Think of it. All over the south are 
 Gauls, Burgundians, Bretons, heavier-hearted nations of sullen 
 mind : — at their utmost brim and border, here at last are the 
 Franks, the source of all Franchise, for this our Europe. You 
 have heard the word in England, before now, but English 
 word for it is none ! Honesty we have of our own : but 
 Frankness we must learn of these : nay, all the western na- 
 tions of us are in a few centuries more to be known by this 
 name of Frank. Franks, of Paris that is to be, in time to 
 come ; but French of Paris is in year of grace 500 an unknown 
 tongue in Paris, as much as in Stratford-att-ye-Bowe. French 
 of Amiens is the kingly and courtly form of Christian speech, 
 Paris lying yet in Lutetian clay, to develop into tile-field, 
 perhaps, in due time. Here, by soft-glittering Somme, reign 
 Clovis and his Clotilde. 
 
 And by St. Firmin’s grave speaks now another gentle evan- 
 gelist, and the first Frank king’s prayer to the King of kings 
 is made to Him, known only as “ the God of Clotilde.” 
 
 I must ask the reader’s patience now with a date or two. 
 and stern facts — two — three — or more. 
 
 Clodion, the leader of the first Franks who reach irrevocably 
 
 * The first fixed and set-down footsteps ; wandering tribes called o£ 
 Franks, had overswept the country, and recoiled, again and again. 
 But this invasion of the so-called Salian Franks, never retreats again. 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 285 
 
 beyond the Rhine, fights his way through desultory Roman 
 cohorts as far as Amiens, and takes it, in 445.* 
 
 Two years afterwards, at his death, the scarcely asserted 
 throne is seized — perhaps inevitably — by the tutor of his 
 children, Merovee, whose dynasty is founded on the defeat of 
 Attila at Chalons. 
 
 He died in 457. His Son Childeric, giving himself up to 
 the love of women, and scorned by the Frank soldiery, is 
 driven into exile, the Franks choosing rather to live under the 
 law of Rome than under a base chief of their own. He re- 
 ceives asylum at the court of the king of Thuringia, and 
 abides there. His chief officer in Amiens, at his departure, 
 breaks a ring in two, and, giving him the half of it, tells him, 
 when the other half is sent, to return. 
 
 And, after many days, the half of the broken ring is sent, 
 and he returns, and is accepted king by his Franks. 
 
 The Thuringian queen follows him, (I cannot find if her 
 husband is first dead — still less, if dead, how dying,) and of- 
 fers herself to him for his wife. 
 
 “I have known thy usefulness, and that thou art very 
 strong ; and I have come to live with thee. Had I known, in 
 parts beyond sea, any one more useful than thou, I should 
 have sought to live with him.” 
 
 He took her for his wife, and their son is Clovis. 
 
 A wonderful story ; how far in literalness true is of no man- 
 ner of moment to us ; the myth, and power of it, do manifest 
 the nature of the French kingdom, and prophesy its future 
 destiny. Personal valour, personal beauty, loyalty to kings, 
 love of women, disdain of unloving marriage, note all these 
 things for true, and that in the corruption of these will be 
 the last death of the Frank, as in their force was his first 
 glory. 
 
 Personal valour, worth. Utilitas , the keystone of all. Birth 
 nothing, except as gifting with valour ; — Law of primogeniture 
 unknown ; — Propriety of conduct, it appears, for the present, 
 also nowhere ! (but we are all pagans yet, remember). 
 
 * See note at end of chapter, as also for the allusions in p. 14, to the 
 battle of Soissons. 
 
286 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HA VE TOLD US." 
 
 Let us get our dates and our geography, at any rate, gath- 
 ered out of the great ‘ nowhere ’ of confused memory, and set 
 well together, thus far. 
 
 457. Merovee dies. The useful Childeric, counting his 
 exile, and reign in Amiens, together, is King altogether 
 twenty-four years, 457 to 481, and during his reign Odoacer 
 ends the Roman empire in Italy, 476. 
 
 481. Clovis is only fifteen when he succeeds his father, as 
 King of the Franks in Amiens. At this time a fragment of 
 Roman power remains isolated in central France, while four 
 strong and partly savage nations form a cross round this dying 
 centre : the Frank on the north, the Breton on the west, the 
 Burgundian on the east, the Visigoth strongest of all and gen- 
 tlest, in the south, from Loire to the sea. 
 
 Sketch for yourself, first, a map of France, as large as you 
 like, as in Plate L, fig. 1, marking only the courses of the five 
 rivers, Somme, Seine, Loire, Saone, Rhone ; then, rudely, you 
 find it was divided at the time thus, fig. 2 : Fleur-de-lysee 
 part, Frank ; Breton ; /// Burgundian ; —— Visi- 
 
 goth. I am not sure how far these last reached across Rhone 
 into Provence, but I think best to indicate Provence as semee 
 with roses. 
 
 Now, under Clovis, the Franks fight three great battles. 
 The first, with the Romans, near Soissons, which they win- 
 and become masters of France as far as the Loire. Copy the 
 rough map fig. 2, and put the fieur-de-iys all over the middle 
 of it, extinguishing the Romans (fig. 3). This battle was won 
 by Clovis, I believe, before he married Clo tilde. He wins his 
 princess by it : cannot get his pretty vase, however, to present 
 to her. Keep that story well in your mind, and the battle of 
 Soissons, as winning mid-France for the French, and ending 
 the Romans there for ever. Secondly, after he marries Clo- 
 tilde, the wild Germans attack him from the north, and he has 
 to fight for life and throne at Tolbiac. This is the battle in 
 which he prays to the God of Clotilde, and quits himself of 
 the Germans by His help. Whereupon he is crowned in 
 Rheiras by St. Remy. 
 
 And now, in the new strength of his Christianity and his 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 287 
 
 twin victory over Rome and Germany, and his love for his 
 queen, and his ambition for his people, he looks south on that 
 vast Yisigothic power, between Loire and the snowy mount- 
 ains. Shall Christ, and the Franks, not be stronger than 
 villainous Visigoths ‘ who are Arians also ’ ? All his Franks 
 are with him, in that opinion. So he marches against the 
 Visigoths, meets them and their Alarie at Poitiers, ends their 
 Alaric and their Arianism, and carries his faithful Franks to 
 the Pic du Midi. 
 
 And so now you must draw the map of France once more, 
 and put the fleur-de-lys all over its central mass from Calais 
 to the Pyrenees : only Brittany still on the west, Burgundy in 
 the east, and the white Provence rose beyond Rhone. And 
 now poor little Amiens has become a mere border town like 
 our Durham, and Somme a border streamlet like our Tyne. 
 Loire and Seine have become the great French rivers, and 
 men will be minded to build cities by these ; where the well- 
 watered plains, not of peat, but richest pasture, may repose 
 under the guard of saucy castles on the crags and moated 
 towers on the islands. But now let us think a little more 
 closely wdiat our changed symbols in the map may mean— five 
 fleur-de-lys for level bar. 
 
 They don’t mean, certainly that all the Goths are gone, and 
 nobody but Franks in France ? The Franks have not massa- 
 cred Yisigothic man, woman, and child, from Loire to Garonne. 
 Nay, where their own throne is still set by the Somme, the 
 peat-bred people whom they found there, live there still, 
 though subdued. Frank, or Goth, or Roman may fluctuate 
 hither and thither, in chasing or flying troops : but, unchanged 
 through all the gusts of war, the rural people whose huts 
 they pillage, whose farms they ravage, and over whose arts 
 they reign, must still be diligently, silently, and with no time 
 for lamentation, ploughing, sowing, cattle-breeding ! 
 
 Else how could Frank or Hun, Visigoth or Roman, live for 
 a month, or fight for a day ? 
 
 Whatever the name, or the manners, of their masters, the 
 ground delvers must be the same ; and the goatherd of the 
 Pyrenees, and the vine-dresser of Garonne, and the milkmaid 
 
28 S 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD USA 
 
 of Picardy, give them what lords you may, abide in their land 
 always, blossoming as the trees of the field, and enduring as 
 the crags of the desert. And these, the warp and first sub- 
 stance of the nation, are divided, not by dynasties, but by 
 climates ; and are strong here, and helpless there, by privi- 
 leges which no invading tyrants can abolish, and through faults 
 which no preaching hermit can repress. Now, therefore, 
 please let us leave our history a minute or two, and read the 
 lessons of constant earth and sky. 
 
 In old times, when one posted from Calais to Paris, there 
 was about half an hour’s trot on the level, from the gate of 
 Calais to the long chalk hill, which had to be climbed before 
 arriving at the first post-house in the village of Marquise. 
 
 That chalk rise, virtually, is the front of France ; that last bit 
 of level north of it, virtually the last of Flanders ; south of it, 
 stretches now a district of chalk and fine building limestone, — 
 (if you keep your eyes open, you may see a great quarry of it on 
 the west of the railway, half-way between Calais and Boulogne, 
 where once was a blessed little craggy dingle opening into velvet 
 lawns ;) — this high, but never mountainous, calcareous tract, 
 sweeping round the chalk basin of Paris away to Caen on one 
 side, and Nancy on the other, and south as far as Bourges, and 
 the Limousin. This limestone tract, with its keen fresh air, 
 everywhere arable surface, and everywhere quarriable banks 
 above well-watered meadow, is the real country of the French. 
 Here only are their arts clearly developed. Farther south they 
 are Gascons, or Limousins, or Auvergnats, or the like. West- 
 ward, grim-granitic Bretons ; eastward, Alpine-bearish Burgun- 
 dians : here only, on the chalk and finely-knit marble, between, 
 say, Amiens and Chartres one way, and between Caen and 
 Rheims on the other, have you real France . 
 
 Of which, before w r e carry on the farther vital history, I 
 must ask the reader to consider with me, a little, how history, 
 so called, has been for the most part written, and of what 
 particulars it usually consists. 
 
 Suppose that the tale of King Lear were a true one ; and 
 that a modern historian were giving the abstract of it in a 
 school manual, purporting to contain all essential facts in 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 289 
 
 British history valuable to British youth in competitive exam- 
 ination. The story would be related somewhat after this 
 manner : — 
 
 “The reign of the last king of the seventy-ninth dynasty 
 closed in a series of events with the record of which it is pain- 
 ful to pollute the pages of history. The weak old man wished 
 to divide his kingdom into dowries for his three daughters ; 
 but on proposing this arrangement to them, finding it re- 
 ceived by the youngest with coldness and reserve, he drove 
 her from his court, and divided the kingdom between his two 
 elder children. 
 
 “ The youngest found refuge at the court of France, where 
 ultimately the prince royal married her. But the two elder 
 daughters, having obtained absolute power, treated their father 
 at first with disrespect, and soon with contumely. Refused 
 at last even the comforts necessary to his declining years, the 
 old king, in a transport of rage, left the palace, with, it is 
 said, only the court fool for an attendant, and wandered, fran- 
 tic and half naked, during the storms of winter, in the woods 
 of Britain. 
 
 “ Hearing of these events, his youngest daughter hastily 
 collected an army, and invaded the territory of her ungrateful 
 sisters, with the object of restoring her father to his throne : 
 but, being met by a well disciplined force, under the com- 
 mand of her eldest sister’s paramour, Edmund, bastard son of 
 the Earl of Gloucester, was herself defeated, thrown into 
 prison, and soon afterwards strangled by the adulterer’s or- 
 der. The old king expired on receiving the news of her 
 death ; and the participators in these crimes soon after re- 
 ceived their reward ; for the two wicked queens being rivals 
 for the affections of the bastard, the one of them who was re- 
 garded by him with less favour poisoned the other, and after- 
 wards killed herself. Edmund afterwards met his death at 
 the hand of his brother, the legitimate son of Gloucester, 
 under whose rule, with that of the Earl of Kent, the kingdom 
 remained for several succeeding years.” 
 
 Imagine this succinctly graceful recital of what the histo- 
 rian conceived to be the facts, adorned with violently black 
 
290 
 
 “OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD VST 
 
 and white woodcuts, representing the blinding of Gloucester^ 
 the phrenzy of Lear, the strangling of Cordelia, and the suicide 
 of Goneril, and you have a type of popular history in the nine- 
 teenth century ; which is, you inay perceive after a little re- 
 flection, about as profitable reading for a young person (so far 
 as regards the general colour and purity of their thoughts) as 
 the Newgate Calendar would be ; with this farther condition 
 of incalculably greater evil, that, while the calendar of prison- 
 dime would teach a thoughtful youth the dangers of low life 
 and evil company, the calendar of kingly crime overthrows 
 his respect for any manner of government, and his faith in the 
 ordinances of Providence itself. 
 
 Books of loftier pretence, written by bankers, members of 
 Parliament, or orthodox clergymen, are of course not 'want- 
 ing ; and show that the progress of civilization consists in the 
 victory of usury over ecclesiastical prejudice, or in the estab- 
 lishment of the Parliamentary privileges of the borough of 
 Puddlecorabe, or in the extinction of the benighted supersti- 
 tions of the Papacy by the glorious light of Reformation, 
 Finally, you have the broadly philosophical history, which 
 proves to you that there is no evidence whatever of any over- 
 ruling Providence in human affairs ; that all virtuous actions 
 have selfish motives ; and that a scientific selfishness, wfith 
 proper telegraphic communications, and perfect knowledge of 
 all the species of Bacteria, will entirely secure the future well 
 being of the upper classes of society, and the dutiful resigna- 
 tion of those beneath them. 
 
 Meantime, the two ignored pow-ers — the Providence of 
 Heaven, and the virtue of men — have ruled, and rule, the 
 world, not invisibly ; and they are the only powders of which 
 history has ever to tell any profitable truth. Under all sor- 
 rows there is the force of virtue ; over all ruin, the restoring 
 charity of God. To these alone w r e have to look ; in these 
 alone we may understand the past, and predict the future, 
 destiny of the ages. 
 
 I return to the story of Clovis, king now of all central 
 France. Fix the year 500 in your minds as the approximate 
 date of his baptism at Pdieims, and of St. Remy’s sermon to 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 291 
 
 him, telling him of the sufferings and passion of Christ, till 
 Clovis sprang from his throne, grasping his spear, and crying, 
 “ Had I been there with my brave Franks, I would have 
 avenged His wrongs.” 
 
 “There is little doubt,” proceeds the cockney historian, 
 “ that the conversion of Clovis was as much a matter of policy 
 as of faith,” But the cockney historian had better limit his 
 remarks on the characters and faiths of men to those of the 
 curates who have recently taken orders in his fashionable 
 neighbourhood, or the bishops who have lately preached to 
 the population of its manufacturing suburbs. Frankish kings 
 were made of other clay. 
 
 The Christianity of Clovis does not indeed produce any 
 fruits of the kind usually looked for in a modern convert We 
 do not hear of his repenting ever so little of any of his sins, 
 nor resolving to lead a new life in any the smallest particular. 
 He had not been impressed with convictions of sin at the bat- 
 tle of Tolbiac ; nor, in asking for the help of the God of Clo- 
 tilde, had he felt or professed the remotest intention of chang- 
 ing his character, or abandoning his projects. What he was, 
 before he believed in his queen’s God, he only more intensely 
 afterwards became, in the confidence of that before unknown 
 God’s supernatural help. His natural gratitute to the Deliv- 
 ering Power, and pride in its protection, added only fierceness 
 to his soldiership, and deepened his political enmities with the 
 rancour of religious indignation. No more dangerous snare 
 is set by the fiends for human frailty than the belief that our 
 own enemies are also the enemies of God ; and it is perfectly 
 conceivable to me that the conduct of Clovis might have been 
 the more unscrupulous, precisely in the measure that his faith 
 was more sincere. 
 
 Had either Clovis or Clotilde fully understood the precepts 
 of their Master, the following history of France, and of Eu- 
 rope, would have been other than it is. What they could un- 
 derstand, or in any wise were taught, you will find that they 
 obeyed, and were blessed in obeying. But their histor}^ is 
 complicated with that of several other persons, respecting 
 whom we must note now a few too much forgotten particulars. 
 
292 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLU US l” 
 
 If from beneath the apse of Amiens Cathedral we take the 
 street leading due south, leaving the railroad station on the 
 left, it brings us to the foot of a gradually ascending hill, 
 some half a mile long — a pleasant and quiet walk enough, ter- 
 minating on the level of the highest land near Amiens ; 
 whence, looking back, the Cathedral is seen beneath us, all 
 but the fleche, our gained hill-top being on a level with its 
 roof-ridge : and, to the south, the plain of France. 
 
 Somewhere about this spot, or in the line between it and 
 St. Acheul, stood the ancient Roman gate of the Twins, where- 
 on were carved Romulus and Remus being suckled by the 
 wolf ; and out of which, one bitter winter’s day, a hundred 
 and seventy years ago when Clovis was baptized — had ridden 
 a Roman soldier, wrapped in his horseman’s cloak,* on the 
 causeway which was part of the great Roman road from Lyons 
 to Boulogne. 
 
 And it is well worth your while also, some frosty autumn or 
 winter day when the east wind is high, to feel the sweep of it 
 at this spot, remembering what chanced here, memorable to 
 all men, and serviceable, in that winter of the year 332, when 
 men were dying for cold in Ameins streets : — namely, that the 
 Roman horseman, scarce gone out of the city gate, was met 
 by a naked beggar, shivering with cold ; and that, seeing no 
 other way of shelter for him, he drew his sword, divided his 
 own cloak in two, and gave him half of it. 
 
 No ruinous gift, nor even enthusiastically generous : Syd- 
 ney’s cup of cold water needed more self-denial ; and I am 
 well assured that many a Christian child of our day, himself 
 well warmed and clad, meeting one naked and cold, would be 
 ready enough to give the whole cloak off his own shoulders to 
 the necessitous one, if his better-advised nurse, or mamma, 
 ■would let him. But this Roman soldier was no Christian, and 
 did his serene charity in simplicity, yet with prudence. 
 
 Nevertheless, that same night, he beheld in a dream the 
 Lord Jesus, who stood before him in the midst of angels. 
 
 * More properly, his knight’s cloak : in all likelihood the trabea, with 
 purple and white stripes, dedicate to the kings of Rome, and chiefly to 
 Romulus, 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 293 
 
 having on his shoulders the half of the cloa,k he had bestowed 
 on the beggar. 
 
 And Jesus said to the angels that were around him, “Know 
 ye who hath thus arrayed me ? My servant Martin, though 
 yet unbaptized, has done this.” And Martin after this vision 
 hastened to receive baptism, being then in his twenty-third 
 year.* 
 
 Whether these things ever were so, or how far so, credulous 
 or incredulous reader, is no business whatever of yours or 
 mine. What is, and shall be, everlastingly, so, — namely, the 
 infallible truth of the lesson herein taught, and the actual ef- 
 fect of the life of St. Martin on the mind of Christendom, — is, 
 very absolutely, the business of every rational being in any 
 Christian realm. 
 
 You are to understand, then, first of all, that the especial 
 character of St. Martin is a serene and meek charity to all 
 creatures. He is not a preaching saint — still less a persecut- 
 ing one : not even an anxious one. Of his prayers we hear 
 little— of his wishes, nothing. What he does always, is merely 
 the right thing at the right moment ; — rightness and kindness 
 being in his mind one : an extremely exemplary saint, to my 
 notion. 
 
 Converted and baptized — and conscious of having seen 
 Christ- — he nevertheless gives his officers no trouble whatever 
 — does not try to make proselytes in his cohort. “It is 
 Christ’s business, surely ! — if He wants them, He may appear 
 to them as He has to me,” seems the feeling of his first bap- 
 tized days. He remains seventeen years in the army on those 
 tranquil terms. 
 
 At the end of that time, thinking it might be well to take 
 other service, he asks for his dismissal from the Emperor 
 Julian, — who, accusing him of faintheartedness, Martin offers, 
 unarmed, to lead his cohort into battle, bearing only the sign 
 of the cross. Julian takes him at his word, — keeps him in 
 ward till time of battle comes ; but, the day before he counts 
 on putting him to that war ordeal, the barbarian enemy sends 
 embassy with irrefusable offers of submission and peace. 
 
 * Mrs. Jameson, Legendary Art, Vol. II., p. 721, 
 
294 
 
 OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US” 
 
 The story is not often dwelt upon : how far literally true, 
 again observe, does not in the least matter ; — here is the les- 
 son for ever given of the way in which a Christian soldier 
 should meet his enemies. Which, had John Bunyan’s Mr. 
 Greatheart understood, the Celestial gates had opened by this 
 time to many a pilgrim who has failed to hew his path up to 
 them with the sword of sharpness. 
 
 But true in some practical and effectual way the story is ; 
 for after a w r hile, without any oratorizing, anathematizing, or 
 any manner of disturbance, we find the Roman Knight made 
 Bishop of Tours, and becoming an influence of unmixed good 
 to all mankind, then, and afterwards. And virtually the same 
 story is repeated of his bishop’s robe as of his knight’s cloak 
 — not to be rejected because so probable an invention ; for it 
 is just as probable an act. 
 
 Going, in his full robes, to say prayers in church, with one 
 of his deacons, he came across some unhappily robeless person 
 by the wayside ; for whom he forthwith orders his deacon to 
 provide some manner of coat, or gown. 
 
 The deacon objecting that no apparel of that profane nature 
 is under his hand, St. Martin, with his customary serenity, 
 takes off his own episcopal stole, or whatsoever flowing state- 
 liness it might be, throws it on the destitute shoulders, and 
 passes on to perform indecorous public service in his waist- 
 coat, or such mediaeval nether attire as remained to him. 
 
 But, as he stood at the altar, a globe of light appeared 
 above his head ; and when he raised his bare arms with the 
 Host — the angels w T ere seen round him, hanging golden chains 
 upon them, and jewels, not of the earth. 
 
 Incredible to you in the nature of things, wise reader, and 
 too palpably a gloss of monkish folly on the older story ? 
 
 Be it so : yet in this fable of monkish folly, understood 
 with the heart, would have been the chastisement and check 
 of every form of the church’s pride and sensuality, which in 
 our day have literally sunk the service of God and His poor 
 into the service of the clergyman and his rich ; and changed 
 what was once the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, 
 into the spangling of Pantaloons in an ecclesiastical Masquerade. 
 
THE BIBLE OF AM1ENF 
 
 295 
 
 But one more legend, — and we liave enough to show us the 
 roots of this saint’s strange and universal power over Chris- 
 tendom. 
 
 “ What peculiarly distinguished St. Martin was his sweet, 
 serious, unfailing serenity ; no one had ever seen him angry, 
 or sad, or gay ; there was nothing in his heart but piety to 
 God and pity for men. The Devil, who was particularly envi- 
 ous of his virtues, detested above all his exceeding charity, 
 because it was the most inimical to his own power, and one day 
 reproached him mockingly that he so soon received into fa- 
 vour the fallen and the repentant. But St. Martin answered 
 him sorrowfully, saying, ‘ Oh most miserable that thou art I 
 if thou also couldst cease to persecute and seduce wretched 
 men, if thou also couldst repent, thou also shouldst find mercy 
 and forgiveness through Jesus Christ.’ ” * 
 
 In this gentleness was his strength ; and the issue of it is 
 best to be estimated by comparing its scope with that of the 
 work of St. Firmin. The impatient missionary riots and rants 
 about Amiens’ streets — insults, exhorts, persuades, baptizes, 
 — turns everything, as aforesaid, upside down for forty days • 
 then gets his head cut off, and is never more named, out of 
 Amiens. St. Martin teases nobody, spends not a breath in 
 unpleasant exhortation, understands, by Christ’s first lesson 
 to himself, that undipped people may be as good as dipped if 
 their hearts are clean ; helps, forgives, and cheers, (compan- 
 ionable even to the loving-cup,) as readily the clown as the 
 king ; he is the patron of honest drinking ; the stuffing of your 
 Martinmas goose is fragrant in his nostrils, and sacred to him 
 the last kindly rays of departing summer. And somehow — 
 the idols totter before him far and near — the Pagan gods 
 fade, his Christ becomes all men’s Christ — his name is named 
 over new shrines innumerable in all lands ; high on the Boman 
 hills, lowly in English fields; — St. Augustine baptized his 
 first English converts in St. Martin’s church at Canterbury ; 
 and the Charing Cross station itself has not yet effaced wholly 
 from London minds his memory or his name. 
 
 That story of the Episcopal Robe is the last of St. Martin re- 
 * Mrs. Jameson, Yol. II., p. 722. 
 
296 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HA VE TOLD l r S” 
 
 specting which I venture to tell you that it is wiser to suppose 
 it literally true, than a mere myth ; myth, however, of the deep- 
 est value and beauty it remains assuredly : and this really last 
 story I have to tell, which I admit you will be wiser in think- 
 ing a fable than exactly true, nevertheless had assuredly at 
 its root some grain of fact (sprouting a hundred-fold) cast on 
 good ground by a visible and unforgetable piece of St. Martins 
 actual behaviour in high company ; while, as a myth, it is 
 every whit and for ever valuable and comprehensive. 
 
 St. Martin, then, as the tale will have it, was dining one 
 day at the highest of tables in the terrestrial globe — namely, 
 with the Emperor and Empress of Germany ! You need not 
 inquire what Emperor, or which of the Emperor’s wives ! 
 The Emperor of Germany is, in all early myths, the expression 
 for the highest sacred power of the State, as the Pope is the 
 highest sacred power of the Church. St. Martin was dining 
 then, as aforesaid, with the Emperor, of course sitting next 
 him on his left — Empress opposite on his right : everything 
 orthodox. St. Martin much enjoying his dinner, and making 
 himself generally agreeable to the company : not in the least 
 a John Baptist sort of a saint. You are aware also that in 
 Royal feasts in those days persons of much inferior rank in 
 society were allowed in the hall : got behind people’s chairs, 
 and saw and heard what was going on, while they unobtru- 
 sively picked up crumbs, and licked trenchers. 
 
 When the dinner was a little forward, and time for wine 
 came, the Emperor fills his own cup — fills the Empress’s — 
 fills St. Martin’s, — affectionately hobnobs with St. Martin. 
 The equally loving, and yet more truly believing, Empress, 
 looks across the table, humbly, but also royally, expecting St. 
 Martin, of course, next to hobnob with her. St. Martin looks 
 round, first, deliberately ; — becomes aware of a tatterdemalion 
 and thirsty-looking soul of a beggar at his chair side, who has 
 managed to get his cup filled somehow, also — by a charitable 
 lacquey. 
 
 St. Martin turns his back on the Empress, and hobnobs 
 with him ! 
 
 For which charity — mythic if you like, but evermore exem- 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 297 
 
 plary— - lie remains, as aforesaid, the patron of good-Christian 
 topers to this hour. 
 
 As gathering years told upon him, he seems to have felt 
 that he had carried weight of crozier long enough — that busy 
 Tours must now find a busier Bishop — that, for himself, he 
 might innocently henceforward take his pleasure and his rest 
 where the vine grew and the lark sang. For his episcopal 
 palace, he takes a little cave in the chalk cliffs of the up- 
 country river : arranges all matters therein, for bed and 
 board, at small cost. Night by night the stream murmurs 
 to him, day by day the vine-leaves give their shade ; and, 
 daily by the horizon’s breadth so much nearer Heaven, the 
 fore-running sun goes down for him beyond the glowing 
 water ; — there, where now the peasant woman trots home- 
 wards between her panniers, and the saw rests in the half- 
 cleft wood, and the village spire rises grey against the farthest 
 light, in Turners * Loireside.’ * 
 
 All which things, though not themselves wdthout profit, my 
 special reason for telling you now, has been that you might 
 understand the significance of what chanced first on Clovis’ 
 march south against the Visigoths. 
 
 “Having passed the Loire at Tours, he traversed the lands 
 of the abbey of St. Martin, which he declared inviolate, and 
 refused permission to his soldiers to touch anything, save 
 w 7 ater and grass for their horses. So rigid were his orders, 
 and the obedience he exacted in this respect, that a Frankish 
 soldier having taken, without the consent of the owner, some 
 hay, which belonged to a poor man, saying in raillery “ that 
 it was but grass,” he caused the aggressor to be put to death, 
 exclaiming that “ Victory could not be expected, if St. Martin 
 should be offended.” 
 
 Now, mark you w r ell, this passage of the Loire at Tours is 
 virtually the fulfilment of the proper bounds of the French 
 kingdom, and the sign of its approved and securely set power 
 is “ Honour to the poor ! ” Even a little grass is not to be 
 stolen from a poor man, on pain of Death. So wfills the Chris- 
 tian knight of Homan armies ; throned now high with God. 
 
 * Modern Painters, Plate 73. 
 
298 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD VST 
 
 So wills the first Christian king of far victorious Franks . 
 here baptized to God in Jordan of his goodly land, as he goes 
 over to possess it. 
 
 How long ? 
 
 Until that same Sign should be read backwards from a 
 degenerate throne ; — until, message being brought that the 
 poor of the French people had no bread to eat, answer should 
 be returned to them “ They may eat grass.” Whereupon — 
 by St. Martin’s faubourg, and St. Martin’s gate — there go, 
 forth commands from the Poor Man’s Knight against the 
 King — which end his Feasting. 
 
 And be this much remembered by you, of the power over 
 French souls, past and to come, of St. Martin of Tours. 
 
NOTES TO CHAPTER I. 
 
 The reader will please observe that notes immediately necessary to 
 the understanding of the text will be given, with numbered references, 
 under the text itself ; while questions of disputing authorities, or quo- 
 tations of supporting documents will have lettered references, and be 
 thrown together at the end of each chapter. One good of this method 
 will be that, after the numbered notes are all right, if I see need of far- 
 ther explanation, as I revise the press, I can insert a letter referring to 
 a final note without confusion of the standing types. There will be 
 some use also in the final notes, in summing the chapters, or saying 
 what is to be more carefully remembered of them. Thus just now it is 
 of no consequence to remember that the first taking of Amiens was in 
 445, because that is not the founding of the Merovingian dynasty ; 
 neither that Merovseus seized the throne in 447 and died ten years 
 later. The real date to be remembered is 481, when Clovis himself 
 comes to the throne, a boy of fifteen ; and the three battles of Clovis’ 
 reign to be remembered are Soissons, Tolbiac, and Poitiers — remember- 
 ing also that this was the first of the three great battles of Poitiers ; — 
 how the Poitiers district came to have such importance as a battle-posi- 
 tion, we must afterwards discover if we can. Of Queen Clotilde and 
 her flight from Burgundy to her Frank lover we must hear more in 
 next chapter, — the story of the vase at Soissons is given in “ The Pic- 
 torial History of France,” but must be deferred also, with such comment 
 as it needs, to next chapter ; for I wish the reader’s mind, in the close 
 of this first number, to be left fixed on two descriptions of the modern 
 ‘ Frank’ (taking that word in its Saracen sense), as distinguished from 
 the modern Saracen. The first description is by Colonel Butler, entire- 
 ly true and admirable, except in the implied extension of the contrast 
 to olden time : for the Saxon soul under Alfred, the Teutonic under 
 Charlemagne, and the Frank under St. Louis, were quite as religious 
 as any Asiatic’s, though more practical ; it is only the modern mob of 
 kingless miscreants in the West, who have sunk themselves by gam- 
 bling, swindling, machine-making, and gluttony, into the scurviest louts 
 that have ever fouled the Earth with the carcasses she lent them. 
 
 “ Of the features of English character brought to light by the spread 
 of British dominion in Asia, there is nothing more observable than the 
 
300 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 contrast between the religious bias of Eastern thought and the innate 
 absence of religion in the Anglo-Saxon mind. Turk and Greek, Buddh- 
 ist and Armenian, Copt and Parsee, all manifest in a hundred ways 
 of daily life the great fact of their belief in a God. In their vices as 
 well as in their virtues the recognition of Deity is dominant. 
 
 “ With the Western, on the contrary, the outward form of practising 
 belief in a God is a thing to be lialf-ashamed of — something to hide. A 
 procession of priests in the Strada Reale would probable cause an aver- 
 age Briton to regard it with less tolerant eye than he would cast upon a 
 Juggernaut festival in Orissa: but to each alike would he display the 
 same iconoclasm of creed, the same idea, not the less fixed because it is 
 seldom expressed in words : “ You pray ; therefore I do not think much 
 of you.” But there is a deeper difference between East and West lying 
 beneath this incompatibility of temper on the part of modern English- 
 men to accept the religious habit of thought in the East. All Eastern 
 peoples possess this habit of thought. It is the one tie which links to- 
 gether their widely differing races. Let us give an illustration of our 
 meaning. On an Austrian Lloyd’s steamboat in the Levant a traveller 
 from Bey rout will frequently see strange groups of men crowded to- 
 gether on the quarter-deck. In the morning the missal books of the 
 Greek Church will be laid along the bulwarks of the ship, and a couple 
 of Russian priests, coming from Jerusalem, will be busy muttering 
 mass. A yard to right or left a Turkish pilgrim, returning from Mecca, 
 sits a respectful observer of the scene. It is prayer, and therefore it is 
 holy in his sight. So, too, when the evening hour has come, and the 
 Turk spreads out his bit of carpet for the sunset prayers and obeisance 
 towards Mecca, the Greek looks on in silence, without trace of scorn in 
 his face, for it is again the worship of the Creator by the created. They 
 are both fulfilling the first law of the East — prayer to God ; and whether 
 the shrine be Jerusalem, Mecca, or Lliassa, the sanctity of worship sur- 
 rounds the votary, and protects the pilgrim. 
 
 “Into this life comes the Englishman, frequently destitute of one 
 touch of sympathy with, the prayers of any people, or the faith of any 
 creed ; hence our rule in the East has ever rested, and will ever rest, 
 upon the bayonet. We have never yet got beyond the stage of con- 
 quest ; never assimilated a people to our ways, never even civilised a 
 single tribe around the wide dominion of our empire. It is curious 
 how frequently a well-meaning Briton will speak of a foreign church or 
 temple as though it had presented itself to his mind in the same light 
 in which the City of London appeared to Blucher — as something to 
 loot. The other idea, that a priest was a person to hang, is one which is 
 also often observable in the British brain. On one occasion, when we were 
 endeavouring to enlighten our minds on the Greek question, as it had 
 presented itself to a naval officer whose vessel had been stationed in 
 Greek and Adriatic waters during our occupation of Corfu and the other 
 
NOTES. 
 
 301 
 
 Ionian Isles, we could only elicit from our informant the fact that one 
 morning before breakfast he had hanged seventeen priests.” 
 
 The second passage which I store in these notes for future use, is the 
 supremely magnificent one, out of a book full of magnificence, — if 
 truth be counted as having in it the strength of deed : Alphonse Krrr’s 
 “Grains de Bon Sens.” I cannot praise either this or his more recent 
 “ Bourdonnements ” to my own hearts content, simply because they 
 are by a man utterly after my own heart, who has been saying in 
 France, this many a year, what I also, this many a year, have been 
 saying in England, neither of us knowing of the other, and both of us 
 vainly. (See pages 11 and 12 of “Bourdonnements.”) The passage 
 here given is the sixty-third clause in “ Grains de Bon Sens.” 
 
 “ Et tout cela, monsieur, vient de ce qu’il n’y a plus de croyances — 
 de ce qu’on ne croit plus a rien. 
 
 “ Ah ! saperlipopette, monsieur, vous me la baillez belle ! Vous dites 
 qn’on ne croit plus a rien ! Mais jamais, a aucune epoque, on n’a cru 
 a tant de billevesees, de bourdes, de mensonges, de sottises, d absurdites 
 qu’aujourd’hui. 
 
 “ D'abord, on croit a l’incredulite— lincredulite est une croyance, une 
 religion tres exigeante, qui a ses dogmes, sa liturgie, ses pratiques, ses 
 rites! . . . son intolerance, ses superstitions. Nous avons des incredules 
 et des impies jesuites, et des incredules et des impies jansenistes ; des 
 impies molinistes, et des impies quietistes; ’des impies pratiquants, et 
 non pratiquants ; des impies indifferents et des impies fanatiques; des 
 incredules cagots et des impies hypocrites et tartuffes. — La religion de 
 l’incredulite ne se refuse meme pas le luxe des heresies. 
 
 “On ne croit plus a la bible, je le veux bien, mais on croit aux 
 ‘ ecritures ’ des journaux, on croit an ‘ sacerdoce ’ des gazettes et carrt's 
 de papier, et a leurs ‘oracles’ quotidiens. 
 
 “On croit au ‘bapteme’de la police eorrectionnelle , et de la cour 
 d’assises — on appelle ‘ martyrs’ et ‘ confesseurs ’ les ‘ absents ’ a Noumea 
 et les ‘freres’ de Suisse, d’Angleterre et de Belgique— et, quand on 
 parle des ‘ martyrs de la Commune ’ 5 a ne s’entend pas des assassines, 
 mais des assassins. 
 
 “ On se fait entei'rer ‘ civilement,’ on ne veut plus sur son cercueil 
 des pricres de l'Eglise, on ne veut ni cierges, ni chants religieux, — mais 
 on veut un cortege portant derriere la biere des immortelles rouges; — 
 on veut une ‘oraison/ une ‘predication’ de Victor Hugo, qui a ajoutc 
 cette speciality a ses autres specialites, si bien qu’un de ces jours derniers, 
 comme il suivait un convoi en amateur, un croque-mort s’approcha de 
 iui, le poussa du coude, et lui dit en souriant: ‘Est-ce que nous n'au- 
 rons pas quelque chose de vous, aujourd’liui ?’ — Et cette predication il 
 la lit ou la recite— on, s’il ne juge pas a propos ‘ d’officier ’ lui-meme, 
 13 'il s’agit d’un mort de plus, il envoie pour la psalmodier M. Meurice 
 
302 
 
 NOTES . 
 
 ou tout autre ‘ pretre ’ ou ‘ enfant de coeur ’ du 1 Dieu.’ — A defaut de M. 
 Hugo, s’il s’agit d’un citoyen obscur, on se contente d une horn .'lie im- 
 provisee pour la dixieme fois par n'importe quel depute intransigeant 
 — et le Miserere est remplace par les cris de ‘ Vive la Republique ! ’ 
 pousses dans le cimetiere. 
 
 “ On n’entre plus dans les eglises, mais on frequente les brasseries et 
 les cabarets ; on y officie, on y celebre les mystcres, on y chante les 
 louanges d une prctendue republique sacro-sainte , une, indivisible, 
 democratique, sociale, athenienne, intransigeante, despotique, invisible 
 quoique etant partout. On y communie sous differentes especes ; le 
 matin (matines) on ‘tue le ver ’ avec le vin blanc, — il y a plus tard les 
 vepres de 1’ absinthe, auxquelles on se ferait un crime de manquer 
 d assiduite. 
 
 “On lie croit plus en Dieu, mais on croit pieusement en M. Gam- 
 betta, en MM. Marcou, Naquet, Barodet, Tartempion, etc., et en toute 
 une longue litanie de saints et de (Hi minores tels que Goutte-Noire, 
 Polosse, Boriasse et Silibat, le heros lyonnais. 
 
 “On croit a ‘ limmuabilite ’ de M. Thiers, qui a dit avec aplomb ‘ Je 
 ne change jamais,’ et qui aujourd liui est a la fois le protectenr et le 
 protege de ceux qu'il a passe une partie de sa vie a fusilier, et qu’il 
 fusillait encore hier. 
 
 “ On croit an republicanisme ‘ immacule ' de l’avocat de Caliors qui a 
 jete par-dessus bord tons les principes republicans, — qui est a la fois 
 de son cote le protecteur et le protege de M. Thiers, qui hier l’appelait 
 ‘fou furieux,’ deportait et fusillait ses amis. 
 
 “ Tous deux, il est vrai, en m©me temps protecteurs hypocrites, et 
 protegi s dupes. 
 
 “On ne croit plus anx miracles anciens, mais on croit a des miracles 
 nouveaux. 
 
 “ On croit a une republique sans le respect religieux et presque fana- 
 tique des lois. 
 
 “ On croit qu’on peut s’enricliir en restant imprevoyants, insouciants 
 et paresseux, et autrement que par le travail et Teconomie. 
 
 “ On se croit libre en obSissant aveuglement et betement a deux ou 
 trois coteries. 
 
 “On se croit independant parce qu’on a tue ou chasse un lion, et 
 qu’on l’a remplace par deux douzaines de caniches teints en jaune. 
 
 “On croit avoir conquis le ‘suffrage universel ’ en votant par des 
 mots d’ordre qui en font le contraire du suffrage universel, — mene au 
 vote comme on mene un troupeau au paturage, avec cette difference 
 que qa ne nourrit pas. — D’ailleurs, par ce suffrage universel qu’on croit 
 avoir et qu’on n’a pas, — il faudrait croire que les soldats doivent com- 
 mander au general, les clievaux mener le cocher ; — croire que deux 
 radis valent mieux qu’une truffe, deux cailloux mieux qu’un diamant, 
 deux crottins mieux qu'une rose. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 303 
 
 “ On se croit en Re'publique, parce que quelques demi-quarterons de 
 farceurs occupent les memes places, emargent les memes appointments, 
 pratiquent les memes abus, que ceux qu’on a renverses a leur benefice. 
 
 “ On se croit un people opprime, heroique, que brise ses fers, et n'est 
 qu’un domestique capricieux qui aime a changer de maitres. 
 
 “ On croit au genie d avocats de sixieme ordre, qui lie se sont jetcs 
 dans la politique et naspirent au gouvernement despotique de la Franca 
 que faute d’avoir pu gagner lionaetement, sans grand travail, dans 
 1 exercice d’une profession correcte, une vie obscure humectee de cliopes. 
 
 “ On croit que des hommes devoyes, declasses, decaves, fruits secs, 
 etc., qui n’ont etudie que le ‘ domino a quatre ’ et le ‘ bezigue en quinze 
 cents,’ se reveillent un matin, — apres un sommeil alourdi par le tabac 
 et la biere — possedant la science de la politique, et l’art de ia guerre ; et 
 aptes a etre dictateurs, generaux, ministres, prefets, sous-prefets, etc. 
 
 “ Et les soi-disant conservateiirs eux-memes croient que la France 
 peut se relever et vivre tant qu’on n'aura pas fait justice de ce pretendu 
 suiirage universel qui est le contraire du suffrage universel. 
 
 “ Les croyances ont subi le sort de ce serpent de la fable— coupe, 
 hache par morceaux, dont cliaque troiifon devenait un serpent. 
 
 “ Les croyances se sont changees en monnaie — en billon de credulites. 
 
 tf Et pour finir la liste bien incomplete des croyances et des credulites 
 — vous croyez , vous, qu on ne croit a rien ! ” 
 
304 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 UNDER THE DRACHENFELS. 
 
 1. Without ignobly trusting the devices of artificial mem- 
 ory — far less slighting the pleasure and power of resolute and 
 thoughtful memory — my younger readers will find it ex- 
 tremely useful to note any coincidences or links of number 
 which may serve to secure in their minds what may be called 
 Dates of Anchorage, round which others, less important, may 
 swing at various cables’ lengths. 
 
 Thus, it will be found primarily a most simple and conven- 
 ient arrangement of the years since the birth of Christ, to 
 divide them by fives of centuries, — that is to say, by the 
 marked periods of the fifth, tenth, fifteenth, and, now fast 
 nearing us, twentieth centuries. 
 
 And this — at first seemingly formal and arithmetical — divi- 
 sion, will be found, as we use it, very singularly emphasized 
 by signs of most notable change in the knowledge, disciplines, 
 and morals of the human race. 
 
 2. All dates, it must farther be remembered, falling within 
 the fifth century, begin with the number 4 (401, 402, etc.) ; 
 and all dates in the tenth century with the number 9 (901, 
 902, etc.) ; and all dates in the fifteenth century with the num- 
 ber 14 (1401, 1402, etc.). 
 
 In our immediate subject of study, we are concerned with 
 the first of these marked centuries — the fifth — of which I will 
 therefore ask you to observe two very interesting divisions. 
 
 All dates of years in that century, we said, must begin with 
 the number 4. 
 
 If you halve it for the second figure, you get 42. 
 
 And if you double it for the second figure, you get 48. 
 
 Add 1, for the third figure, to each of these numbers, and 
 you get 421 and 481, which two dates you will please fasten 
 well down, and let there be no drifting about of them in your 
 heads. 
 
 For the first is the date of the birth of Venice herself, and 
 
Plate II. — The Bible of Amiens. 
 Northern Porch before Restoration. 
 

 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 305 
 
 her dukedom, (see c St. Mark’s Rest,’ Part L, p. 30) ; and the 
 second is the date of birth of the French Venice, and her 
 kingdom ; Clovis being in that year crowned in Amiens. 
 
 3. These are the great Birthdays- — Birthdates — in the fifth 
 century, of Nations. Its Deathdays we will count, at another 
 time. 
 
 Since, not for dark Rialto’s dukedom, nor for fair France’s 
 kingdom, only, are these two years to be remembered above 
 all others in the wild fifth century ; but because they are also 
 the birth-years of a great Lady, and greater Lord, of all future 
 Christendom — St. Genevieve, and St. Benedict. 
 
 Genevieve, the £ white wave ’ (Laughing water) — the purest 
 of all the maids that have been named from the sea-foam or 
 the rivulet’s ripple, unsullied, — not the troubled and troubling 
 Aphrodite, but the Leucothea of Ulysses, the guiding wave of 
 deliverance. 
 
 White wave on the blue — whether of pure lake or sunny 
 sea — (thenceforth the colours of France, blue field with white 
 lilies), she is always the type of purity, in active brightness of 
 the entire soul and life — (so distinguished from the quieter 
 and restricted innocence of St. Agnes), — and all the traditions 
 of sorrow in the trial or failure of noble womanhood are con- 
 nected with her name ; Ginevra, in Italian, passing into 
 Shakespeare’s Imogen ; and Guinevere, the torrent wave of 
 the British mountain streams, of whose pollution your mod- 
 ern sentimental minstrels chant and moan to you, lugubri- 
 ously useless ; — but none tell you, that I hear of the victory 
 and might of this white wave of France. 
 
 4. A shepherd maid she was — -a, tiny thing, barefooted, bare- 
 headed — such as you may see running wild and innocent, less 
 cared for now than their sheep, over many a hillside of France 
 and Italy. Tiny enough ; — seven years old, all told, when 
 first one hears of her : cc Seven times one are seven, (I am 
 old, you may trust me, linnet, linnet*),” and all around her — 
 fierce as the Furies, and wild as the winds of heaven — the 
 thunder of the Gothic armies reverberated over the ruins of 
 the world. 
 
 * Miss Ingelow. 
 
306 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US” 
 
 5. Two leagues from Paris, ( Roman Paris, soon to pass away 
 with Rome herself,) the little thing keeps her flock, not even 
 her own, nor her father’s flock, like David ; she is the hired 
 servant of a richer farmer of Nanterre. Who can tell me any- 
 thing about Nanterre? — which of our pilgrims of this omni- 
 speculant, omni-nescient age has thought of visiting what 
 shrine may be there ? I don’t know even on what side of 
 Paris it lies,* nor under which heap of railway cinders and 
 iron one is to conceive the sheep-walks and blossomed fields 
 of fairy Saint Phyllis. There were such left, even in my time, 
 between Paris and St. Denis, (see the prettiest chapter in all 
 the c£ Mysteries of Paris,” where Fleur de Marie runs wild in 
 them for the first time), but now, I suppose, Saint Phyllis’s 
 native earth is all thrown up into bastion and glacis, (profit- 
 able and blessed of all saints, and her, as these have since 
 proved themselves !), or else are covered with manufactories 
 and cabarets. Seven years old she was, then, when on Ins 
 way to England from Auxerre, St. Germain passed a night in 
 her village, and among the children who brought him on his 
 way in the morning in more kindly manner than Elisha’s con- 
 voy, noticed this one — wider-eyed in reverence than the rest ; 
 drew her to him, questioned her, and was sweetly answered 
 That she would fain be Christ’s handmaid. And he hung 
 round her neck a small copper coin, marked with the cross. 
 Thenceforward Genevieve held herself as “separated from 
 the world.” 
 
 6. It did not turn out so, however. Far the contrary. You 
 must think of her, instead, as the first of the Parisiennes. 
 Queen of Vanity Fair, that was to be, sedately poor St. Phyllis, 
 with her copper-crossed farthing about her neck ! More than 
 Nitocris was to Egypt, more than Semiramis to Nineveh, more 
 than Zenobia to the city of palm trees — this seven-years-old 
 shepherd maiden became to Paris and her France. You have 
 not heard of her in that kind ? — No : how should you ? — for 
 she did not lead armies, but stayed them, and all her power 
 was in peace. 
 
 7. There are, however, some seven or eight and twenty lives 
 * On inquiry, I find in the flat between Paris and Sevres. 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 307 
 
 of her, I believe ; into the literature of which I cannot enter, 
 nor need, all having been ineffective in producing any clear 
 picture of her to the modern French or English mind ; and 
 leaving one’s own poor sagacities and fancy to gather and 
 shape the sanctity of her into an intelligible, I do not say a 
 credible , form ; for there is no question here about belief, — 
 the creature is as real as Joan of Arc, and far more powerful ; 
 — she is separated, just as St. Martin is, by his patience, from 
 too provocative prelates — by her quietness of force, from the 
 pitiable crowd of feminine martyr saints. 
 
 There are thousands of religious girls who have never got 
 themselves into any calendars, but have wasted and wearied 
 away their lives — heaven knows why, for we cannot ; but here 
 is one, at any rate, who neither scolds herself to martyrdom, 
 nor frets herself into consumption, but becomes a tower of the 
 Flock, and builder of folds for them all her days. 
 
 8. The first thing, then, you have to note of her, is that 
 she is a pure native Gaul. She does not come as a missionary 
 out of Hungary, or Illyria, or Egypt, or ineffable space ; but 
 grows at Nanterre, like a marguerite in the dew, the first 
 “ Heine Blanche ” of Gaul. 
 
 I have not used this ugly word c Gaul ’ before, and we must 
 be quite sure what it means, at once, though it will cost us a 
 long parenthesis. 
 
 9. During all the years of the rising power of Home, her 
 people called everybody a Gaul who lived north of the sources 
 of Tiber. If you are not content with that general statement, 
 you may read the article “ Gallia ” in Smith’s dictionary, 
 which consists of seventy-one columns of close print, contain- 
 ing each as much as three of my pages ; and tells you at the 
 end of it, that “ though long, it is not complete.” You may, 
 however, gather from it, after an attentive perusal, as much 
 as I have above told you. 
 
 But, as early as the second century after Christ, and much 
 more distinctly in the time with which we are ourselves con • 
 cemed — the fifth — the wild nations opposed to Rome, and 
 partially subdued, or held at bay by her, had resolved them- 
 selves into two distinct masses, belonging to two distinct lati- 
 
308 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US.” 
 
 tilde*. One, fixed in habitation of the pleasant temperate zone 
 of Europe — England with her western mountains, the healthy 
 limestone plateaux and granite mounts of France, the German 
 labyrinths of w r oody hill and winding thal, from the Tyrol to 
 the Hartz, and all the vast enclosed basin and branching val- 
 leys of the Carpathians. Think of these four districts, briefly 
 and clearly, as ‘Britain,’ ‘Gaul,’ ‘Germany,’ and ‘Dacia.’ 
 
 10. North of these rudely but patiently resident races, pos- 
 sessing fields and orchards, quiet herds, homes of a sort, 
 moralities and memories not ignoble, dwelt, or rather drift- 
 ed, and shook, a shattered chain of gloomier tribes, piratical 
 mainly, and predatory, nomade essentially ; homeless, of ne- 
 cessity, finding no stay nor comfort in earth, or bitter sky : 
 desperately wandering along the waste sands and drenched 
 morasses of the flat country stretching from the mouths of the 
 Rhine, to those of the Vistula, and beyond Vistula nobody 
 knows where, nor needs to know. Waste sands and rootless 
 bogs their portion, ice-fastened and cloud-shadowed, for many 
 a day of the rigorous year : shallow pools and oozings and 
 windings of retarded streams, black decay of neglected woods, 
 scarcely habitable, never loveable ; to this day the inner main- 
 lands little changed for good * — and their inhabitants now 
 fallen even on sadder times. 
 
 11. For in the fifth century they had herds of cattle f to 
 drive and kill, unpreserved hunting-grounds full of game and 
 wild deer, tameable reindeer also then, even so far in the 
 south ; spirited hogs, good for practice of fight as in Melea- 
 ger’s time, and afterwards for bacon ; furry creatures innu- 
 merable, all good for meat or skin. Fish of the infinite sea 
 breaking their bark-fibre nets ; fowl innumerable, migrant 
 in the skies, for their flint-headed arrows ; bred horses for 
 
 * See generally any description that Carlyle has had occasion to give 
 of Prussian or Polish ground, or edge of Baltic shore. 
 
 f Gigantic — and not yet fossilized ! See Gibbon’s note on the death of 
 T’heodebert : “ The King pointed his spear — the Bull overturned a tree 
 on his head , — he died the same day.” — vii. 255. The Horn of Uri and 
 her shield, with the chiefly towering crests of the German helm, attest 
 the terror of these Aurochs herds. 
 
TIIE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 309 
 
 their own riding ; ships of no mean size, and of all sorts, fiat- 
 bottomed for the oozy puddles, keeled and decked for 
 strong Elbe stream and furious Baltic on the one side, — for 
 mountain-cleaving Danube and the black lake of Colehos on 
 the south. 
 
 12. And they were, to all outward aspect, and in all felt 
 force, the living powers of the world, in that long hour of its 
 transfiguration. All else known once for awful, had become 
 formalism, folly, or shame : — the Roman armies, a mere 
 sworded mechanism, fast falling confused, every sword against 
 its fellow ; — the Roman civil multitude, mixed of slaves, slave- 
 masters, and harlots ; the East, cut off from Europe by the 
 intervening weakness of the Greek. These starving troops of 
 the Black forests and White seas, themselves half wolf, half 
 drift-wood, (as we once called ourselves Lion-hearts, and Oak- 
 hearts, so they), merciless as the herded hound, enduring as 
 the wild birch- tree and pine. You will hear of few beside 
 them for five centuries yet to come : Visigoths, west of Vis- 
 tula ; — Ostrogoths, east of Vistula ; radiant round little Holy 
 Island (Heligoland), our own Saxons, and Hamlet the Dane, 
 and his foe the sledded Polack on the ice, — all these south of 
 Baltic ; and, pouring across Baltic, constantly, her mountain - 
 ministered strength, Scandinavia, until at last she for a time 
 rules all, and the Norman name is of disputeless dominion, 
 from the North Cape to Jerusalem. 
 
 13. This is the apparent, this the only recognised world 
 history, as I have said, for five centuries to come. And yet 
 the real history is underneath all this. The wandering armies 
 are, in the heart of them, only living hail, and thunder, and 
 fire along the ground. But the Suffering* Life, the rooted 
 heart of native humanity, growing up in eternal gentleness, 
 howsoever wasted, forgotten, or spoiled, — itself neither wast- 
 ing, nor wandering, nor slaying, but unconquerable by grief 
 or death, became the seed ground of all love, that was to be 
 born in due time ; giving, then, to mortality, what hope, joy, 
 or genius it could receive ; and — if there be immortality — 
 rendering out of the grave to the Church her fostering Saints, 
 and to Heaven her helpful angels. 
 
310 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US.” 
 
 14. Of this low-nestling, speechless, harmless, infinitely 
 submissive, infinitely serviceable order of being, no Historian 
 ever takes the smallest notice, except when it is robbed, or 
 slain. I can give you no picture of it, bring to your ears no 
 murmur of it, nor cry. I can only show you the absolute 
 4 must have been ’ of its unrewarded past, and the way in 
 which all we have thought of, or been told, is founded on the 
 deeper facts in its history, untliought of, and untold. 
 
 15. The main mass of this innocent and invincible peasant 
 life is, as I have above told you, grouped in the fruitful and 
 temperate districts of (relatively) mountainous Europe, — 
 reaching, west to east, from the Cornish Land’s End to the 
 mouth of the Danube. Already, in the times we are now 
 dealing with, it was full of native passion — generosity — and 
 intelligence capable of all things. Dacia gave to Rome the 
 four last of her great Emperors, * — Britain to Christianity the 
 first deeds, and the final legends, of her chivalry, — Germany, 
 to all manhood, the truth and the fire of the Frank, — Gaul, to 
 all womanhood, the patience and strength of St. Genevieve. 
 
 16. The truth , and the fire, of the Frank, — I must repeat 
 with insistance, — for my younger readers have probably been 
 in the habit of thinking that the French were more polite 
 than true. They will find, if they examine into the matter, 
 that only Truth can be polished : and that all we recognize of 
 beautiful, subtle, or constructive, in the manners, the lan- 
 guage, or the architecture of the French, comes of a pure 
 veracity in their nature, which you will soon feel in the living 
 creatures themselves if you love them : if you understand 
 even their worst rightly, their very Revolution was a revolt 
 
 * Claudius, Aurelian, Probus, Constantins ; and after the division of 
 the empire, to the East, Justinian. 44 The emperor Justinian was bom 
 of an obscure race of Barbarians, the inhabitants of a wild and desolate 
 country, to which the names of Dardania, of Dacia, and of Bulgaria 
 have been successively applied. The names of these Dardanian peas- 
 ants are Gothic, and almost English. Justinian is a translation of 
 Uprauder (upright) ; his father, Sabatius, — in Grseco barbarous lan- 
 guage, Stipes — was styled in his village ‘ Istock ’ (Stock).” — Gibbon, 
 beginning of chap. xl. and note. 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 311 
 
 against lies ; and against the betrayal of Love. No people 
 had ever been so loyal in vain. 
 
 17. That they were originally Germans, they themselves I 
 suppose would now gladly forget ; but how they shook the 
 dust of Germany off their feet — and gave themselves a new 
 name — is the first of the phenomena which we have now atten- 
 tively to observe respecting them. 
 
 “The most rational critics,” says Mr. Gibbon in his tenth 
 chapter, “ suppose that about the year 240 ” ( suppose then, we, 
 for our greater comfort, say about the year 250, half-w r ay to 
 end of fifth century, where we are, — ten years less or more, in 
 cases of ‘ supposing about,’ do not much matter, but some 
 floating buoy of a date wall be handy here.) 
 
 ‘About’ a.d. 250, then, “a new confederacy was formed 
 under the name of Franks, by the old inhabitants of the lower 
 Rhine and the Weser.” 
 
 18. My own impression, concerning the old inhabitants of 
 the lower Rhine and the Weser, would have been that they 
 consisted mostly of fish, with superficial frogs and ducks ; but 
 Mr. Gibbon’s note on the passage informs us that the new 
 confederation composed itself of human creatures, in these 
 items following. 
 
 1. The Chauci, who lived we are not told where. 
 
 2. The Sicambri 
 
 3. The Attuarii 
 4 The Bructeri 
 
 5. The Chamavii 
 
 6. The Catti 
 
 in the Principality of Waldeck. 
 in the Duchy of Berg, 
 on the banks of the Lippe. 
 in the country of the Bructeri. 
 in Hessia. 
 
 All this I believe you will be rather easier in your minds if 
 you forget than if you remember ; but if it please you to read, 
 or re-read, (or best of all, get read to you by some real Miss 
 Isabella Wardour,) the story of Martin Waldeck in the ‘ An- 
 tiquary,’ you will gain from it a sufficient notion of the central 
 character of “ the Principality of Waldeck ” connected securely 
 with that important German word; ‘woody’ — or 'wood ish,' 
 I suppose ? — descriptive of rock and half -grown forest ; to* 
 
312 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US. 
 
 gether with some wholesome reverence for Scott’s instinct- 
 ively deep foundations of nomenclature. 
 
 19. But for our present purpose we must also take seriously 
 to our maps again, and get things within linear limits of space. 
 
 All the maps of Germany which I have myself the privilege 
 of possessing, diffuse themselves, just north of Frankfort, into 
 the likeness of a painted window broken small by Puritan 
 malice, and put together again by ingenious churchwardens 
 with every bit of it wrong side upwards ; — this curious vitrerie 
 purporting to represent the sixty, seventy, eighty, or ninety 
 dukedoms, marquisates, counties, baronies, electorates, and 
 the like, into which hereditary Alemannia cracked itself in 
 that latitude. But under the mottling colours, and through 
 the jotted and jumbled alphabets of distracted dignities — be- 
 sides a chain-mail of black railroads over all, the chains of it 
 not in links, but bristling with legs, like centipedes, — a hard 
 forenoon’s work with good magnifying-glass enables one ap- 
 proximately to make out the course of the Weser, and the 
 names of certain towns near its sources, deservedly memo- 
 rable. 
 
 20. In case you have not a forenoon to spare, nor eyesight 
 to waste, this much of merely necessary abstract must serve 
 you, — that from the Draclienfels and its six brother felsen, 
 eastward, trending to the north, there runs and spreads a 
 straggling company of gnarled and mysterious craglets, 
 jutting and scowling above glens fringed by coppice, and 
 fretful or musical with stream : the crags, in pious ages, 
 mostly castled, for distantly or fancifully Christian purposes ; 
 — the glens, resonant of woodmen, or burrowed at the sides 
 by miners, and invisibly tenanted farther, underground, by 
 gnomes, and above by forest and other demons. The entire 
 district, clasping crag to crag, and guiding dell to dell, some 
 hundred and fifty miles (with intervals) between the Dragon 
 mountain above Rhine, and the Rosin mountain, ‘ Hartz ’ 
 shadowy still to the south of the riding grounds of Black 
 Brunswickers of indisputable bodily presence ; — shadowy an- 
 ciently with ‘ Hercynian ’ (hedge, or fence) forest, corrupted 
 or coinciding into Hartz, or Rosin forest, haunted by ob- 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 313 
 
 scurely apparent foresters of at least resinous, not to say sul- 
 phurous, extraction. 
 
 21. A hundred and fifty miles east to west, say half as 
 much north to south — about a thousand square miles in whole 
 — of metalliferous, coniferous, and Ghostiferous mountain, 
 fluent, and diffluent for us, both in mediaeval and recent 
 times, with the most Essential oil of Turpentine, and Myrrh 
 or Frankincense of temper and imagination, which may be 
 typified by it, producible in Germany ; — especially if we think 
 how the more delicate uses of Rosin, as indispensable to the 
 Fiddle-bow, have developed themselves, from the days of St. 
 Elizabeth of Marburg to those of St. Mephistopheles of 
 Weimar. 
 
 22. As far as I know, this cluster of wayward cliff and 
 dingle has no common name as a group of hills ; and it is 
 quite impossible to make out the diverse branching of it in 
 any maps I can lay hand on : but we may remember easily, 
 and usefully, that it is all north of the Maine, — that it rests 
 on the Drachenfels at one end, and tosses itself away to the 
 morning light with a concave swoop, up to the Hartz, (Brocken 
 summit, 3700 feet above sea, nothing higher) : with one nota- 
 ble interval for Weser stream, of which presently. 
 
 23. We will call this, in future, the chain, or company, of 
 the Enchanted mountains ; and then we shall all the more 
 easily join on the Giant mountains, Riesen-Gebirge, when we 
 want them : but these are altogether higher, sterner, and not 
 yet to be invaded ; the nearer ones, through which our road 
 lies, we might perhaps more patly call the Goblin mountains ; 
 but that would be scarcely reverent to St. Elizabeth, nor to 
 the numberless pretty chatelaines of towers, and princesses 
 of park and glen, who have made German domestic manners 
 sweet and exemplary, and have led their lightly rippling and 
 translucent lives down the glens of ages, until enchantment 
 becomes, perhaps, too canonical, in the Almanach de Gotha. 
 
 We will call them therefore the Enchanted Mountains, not 
 the Goblin ; perceiving gratefully also that the Rock spirits of 
 them have really much more of the temper of fairy physicians 
 than of gnomes : each — as it were with sensitive hazel wand 
 
314 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US” 
 
 instead of smiting rod — beckoning, out of sparry caves, effer* 
 vescent Brunnen, beneficently salt and warm. 
 
 24. At the very heart of this Enchanted chain, then — (and 
 the beneficentest, if one use it and guide it rightly, of all the 
 Brunnen there,) sprang the fountain of the earliest Frank race ; 
 “ in the principality of Waldeck,” — you can trace their current 
 to no farther source ; there it rises out of the earth. 
 
 ‘ Frankenberg ’ (Burg), on right bank of the Ecler, nineteen 
 miles north of Marburg, you may find marked clearly in the 
 map No. 18 of Black’s General Atlas, wherein the cluster of 
 surrounding bewitched mountains, and the valley of Eder- 
 stream otherwise (as the village higher up the dell still calls 
 itself) “Engel-Bach,” “ Angel Brook,” joining that of the 
 Fulda, just above Cassel, are also delineated in a way intelli- 
 gible to attentive mortal eyes. I should be plagued with the 
 names in trying a woodcut ; but a few careful pen-strokes, or 
 wriggles, of your own off-hand touching, would give you the 
 concurrence of the actual sources of Weser in a comfortably 
 extricated form, with the memorable towns on them, or just 
 south of them, on the other slope of the watershed, towards 
 Maine. Frankenberg and Waldeck on Eder, Fulda and Cas- 
 sel on Fulda, Eisenbach on Werra, who accentuates himself 
 into Weser after taking Fulda for bride, as Tees the Greta, by 
 Eisenach, under the Wartzburg, (of which you have heard as a 
 castle employed on Christian mission and Bible Society pur-, 
 poses), town-streets below hard paved with basalt — name of if, 
 Iron-ach, significant of Tliuringian armouries in the old time, 
 — it is active with mills for many things yet. 
 
 25. The rocks all the way from Rhine, thus far, are jets and 
 spurts of basalt through irony sandstone, with a strip of coal 
 or tw r o northward, by the grace of God not worth digging for ; 
 at Frankenberg even a gold mine ; also, by Heaven’s mercy, 
 poor of its ore ; but wood and iron always to be had for the 
 due trouble ; and, of softer wealth above ground, —game, corn, 
 fruit, flax, wine, wool, and hemp ! Monastic care over all, in 
 Fulda’s and Walter’s houses — which I find marked by a cross 
 as built by some pious Walter, Knight of Meiningen on the 
 Roden-w 7 asser, Bottom water, as of water having found its way 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 315 
 
 well down at last : so “ Boden-See,” of Rhine well got down 
 out of Via Mala. 
 
 26. And thus, having got your springs of Weser clear from 
 the rock ; and, as it were, gathered up the reins of your river, 
 you can draw for yourself, easily enough, the course of its far- 
 ther stream, flowing virtually straight north, to the North Sea. 
 And mark it strongly on your sketched map of Europe, next 
 to the border Vistula, leaving out Elbe yet for a time. For 
 now r , you may take the whole space between Weser and Vistula 
 (north of the mountains), as wild barbarian (Saxon or Goth) ; 
 but, piercing the source of the Franks at Waldeck, you w r ill 
 find them gradually, but swiftly, filling all the space between 
 Weser and the mouths of Rhine, passing from mountain foam 
 into calmer diffusion over the Netherland, where their stray- 
 ing forest and pastoral life has at last to embank itself into 
 muddy agriculture, and in bleak-flying sea mist, forget the sun- 
 shine on its basalt crags. 
 
 27. Whereupon, ive must also pause, to embank ourselves 
 somewhat ; and before other things, try what we can under- 
 stand in this name of Frank, concerning which Gibbon tells 
 us, in his sweetest tones of satisfied moral serenity — “ The love 
 of liberty was the ruling passion of these Germans. They de- 
 served, they assumed, they maintained, the honourable epithet 
 of Franks, or Freemen/’ He does not, however, tell us in 
 what language of the time— Chau cian, Sicambrian, Chama- 
 vian, or Cattian, — ‘ Frank ’ ever meant Free : nor can I find out 
 myself what tongue of any time it first belongs to ; but I doubt 
 not that Miss Yonge (‘ History of Christian Names,’ Articles 
 on Frey and Frank), gives the true root, in what she calls the 
 High German “ Frang,” Free Lord. Not by any means a Free 
 Commoner , or anything of the sort ! But a person whose nat- 
 ure and name implied the existence around him, and beneath, 
 of a considerable number of other persons who were by no 
 means ‘ Frang,’ nor Frangs. His title is one of the proudest 
 then maintainable ; — ratified at last by the dignity of age 
 added to that of valour, into the Seigneur, or Monseigneur, 
 not even yet in the last cockney form of it, * Mossoo,’ wholly 
 understood as a republican term ! 
 
316 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US” 
 
 28. So that, accurately thought of, the quality of Frankness 
 glances only with the flat side of it into any meaning 'of 
 ‘ Libre,’ but with all its cutting edge, determinedly, and to all 
 time, it signifies Brave, strong, and honest, above other men.* 
 The old woodland race were never in any wolfish sense * free,’ 
 but in a most human sense Frank, outspoken, meaning what 
 they had said, and standing to it, when they had got it out. 
 Quick and clear in word and act, fearless utterly and restless 
 always ; — but idly lawless, or weakly lavish, neither in deed 
 nor word. Their frankness, if you read it as a scholar and a 
 Christian, and not like a modern half-bred, half-brained infi- 
 del, knowing no tongue of all the world but in the slang of it, 
 is really opposed, not to Servitude, — but to Shyness ! f It is 
 to this day the note of the sweetest and Frenchest of French 
 
 * Gibbon touches the facts more closely in a sentence of his 22nd chap- 
 ter. “ The independent warriors of Germany, who considered truth as the 
 noblest of their virtues , and freedom as the most valuable of their posses- 
 sions.” He is speaking especially of the Frankish tribe of the Actuarii, 
 against whom the Emperor Julian had to re-fortify the Rhine from 
 Cleves to Basle : but the first letters of the Emperor Jovian, after Julian’s 
 death, “ delegated the military command of Gaul and Illyrium (wliat 
 a vast one it was, we shall see hereafter), to Malaricli, a brave and faith- 
 fid officer of the nation of the Franks and they remain the loyal allies 
 of Rome in her last struggle with Alanc. Apparently for the sake only 
 of an interesting variety of language, — and at all events without intima- 
 tion of any causes of so great a change in the national character, — we 
 find Mr. Gibbon in his next volume suddenly adopting the abusive epi- 
 thets of Procopius, and calling the Franks “ a light and perfidious na- 
 tion ” (vii. 251). The only traceable grounds for this unexpected de- 
 scription of them are that they refuse to be bribed either into friendship 
 or activity, by Rome or Ravenna ; and that in his invasion of Italy, the 
 grandson of Clovis did not previously send exact warning of his pro- 
 posed route, nor even entirely signify his intentions till he had secured 
 the bridge of the Po at Pavia ; afterwards declaring his mind with suf- 
 ficient distinctness by “assaulting, almost at the same instant, the hostile 
 camps of the Goths and Romans, who, instead of uniting their arms, 
 fled with equal precipitation.” 
 
 f For detailed illustration of the word, see ‘ Val d’Arno,’ Lecture VIII. : 
 4 Fors Clavigera,’ Letters XLVI. , Vol. III. 276, LXXVII., Vol.IV. 25; and 
 Chaucer; ‘ Romaunt of Rose,’ 1212 — “ Xext him ” (the knight sibbe to Ar- 
 thur) ‘ daunced dame F ranchiss ’—the English lines are quoted and com- 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS . 
 
 317 
 
 character, that it makes simply perfect Servants , Unwearied 
 in protective friendship, in meekly dextrous omnificence, in 
 latent tutorship ; the lovingly availablest of valets, — the men- 
 tally and personally bonniest of bonnes. But in no capacity 
 shy of you ! Though you be the Duke or Duchess of Mon- 
 taltissimo, you will not find them abashed at your altitude. 
 They will speak ‘ up 5 to you, when they have a mind. 
 
 29. Best of servants : best of subjects , also, when they have 
 an equally frank King, or Count, or Captal, to lead them ; of 
 which we shall see proof enough in due time ; — but, instantly, 
 note this farther, that, whatever side-gleam of the thing they 
 afterwards called Liberty may be meant by the Frank name, 
 you must at once now, and always in future, guard yourself 
 from confusing their Liberties with their Activities. What 
 the temper of the army may be towards its chief, is one 
 question — whether either chief or army can be kept six 
 months quiet, — another, and a totally different one. That 
 they must either be fighting somebody or going somewhere, else, 
 their life isn’t worth living to them ; the activity and mer- 
 curial flashing and flickering hither and thither, which in the 
 soul of it is set neither on war nor rapine, but only on change 
 of place, mood — tense, and tension ; — which never needs to 
 see its spurs in the dish, but has them always bright, and on, 
 and would ever choose rather to ride fasting than sit feasting, 
 — this childlike dread of being put in a corner, and continual 
 
 mented on in tlie first lecture of ‘ Ariadne Florentina ’ ; I give the 
 French here : — 
 
 “ Apres tons ceulx estoifc Franchise 
 Que ne fut no brune ne brise. 
 
 Ains fut com me la neige blanche 
 Courloyse estoit, joytuze , et franche. 
 
 Le nez avoit long et tretis, 
 
 Yeulx vers, riants ; sourcilz faitis ; 
 
 Les cheveulx eut tres-blons et longs 
 Simple fut comme les coulous 
 Le coeur eut doulx et debonnaire. 
 
 ELle n'osait dire ne faire 
 
 Nui c riens que faire ne deust .' 1 ' 1 . 
 
 And I hope my girl readers will never more confuse Franchise with 
 1 Liberty.’ 
 
318 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US. 
 
 want of something to do, is to be watched by us with wonder* 
 ing sympathy in all its sometimes splendid, but too often un- 
 lucky or disastrous consequences to the nation itself as well as 
 to its neigbours. 
 
 30. And this activity, which we stolid beef-eaters, before 
 we had been taught by modern science that we were no better 
 than baboons ourselves, were wont discourteously to liken to 
 that of the livelier tribes of Monkey, did in fact so much im- 
 press the Hollanders, when first the irriguous Franks gave 
 motion and current to their marshes, that the earliest her- 
 aldry in which we find the Frank power blazoned seems to be 
 founded on a Dutch endeavour to give some distantly satirical 
 presentment of it. “ For,” says a most ingenious historian, 
 Mons. Andre Favine, — ‘Parisian, and Advocate in the High 
 Court of the French Parliament in the year 1620’ — “those 
 people who bordered on the river Sala, called ‘ Salts,’ by the Al- 
 lemaignes, were on their descent into Dutch lands called by the 
 Romans “Franci Salici” — (whence ‘ Salique ’ law to come, 
 you observe) “ and by abridgment ‘Salii,’ as if of the verb 
 ‘ salire,’ that is to say ‘ saulter,’ to leap” — (and in future there* 
 fore — duly also to dance — in an incomparable manner) — “ to 
 be quicke and nimble of foot, to leap and mount w 7 ell, a qual- 
 ity most notably requisite for such as dwell in watrie and 
 marshy places ; So that while such of the French as dwelt on 
 the great course of the river ” (Rhine) “ were called ‘ Nageurs,’ 
 Swimmers, they of the marshes were called ‘Saulteurs,’ 
 Leapers, so that it was a nickname given to the French in re- 
 gard both of their natural disposition and of their dwelling ; 
 as, yet to this day, their enemies call them French Toades, 
 (or Frogs, more properly) from whence grew the fable that 
 their ancient Kings carried such creatures in their Armes,” 
 
 31. Without entering at present into debate whether fable 
 or not, you will easily remember the epithet ‘ Salian ’ of these 
 fosse-leaping and river-swimming folk, (so that, as aforesaid, 
 all the length of Rhine must be refortified against them) — 
 epithet however, it appears, in its origin delicately Saline, 
 so that we may with good discretion, as we call our seasoned 
 mariners, ‘ old Salts,’ think of these more brightly sparkling 
 
THE BIBLE OF AHIEHS. 
 
 319 
 
 Franks as £ Young Salts,’ — but this equivocated presently by 
 the Romans, with natural respect to their martial fire and 
 ‘elan,’ into ‘Salii’ — exsultantes,* — such as their own armed 
 priests of war : and by us now with some little farther, 
 but slight equivocation, into useful meaning, to be thought of 
 as here first Salient, as a beaked promontory, towards the 
 France we know of ; and evermore, in brilliant elasticities of 
 temper, a salient or out-sallying nation ; lending to us Eng- 
 lish presently — for this much of heraldry we may at once 
 glance on to — their ‘ Leopard,’ not as a spotted or blotted 
 creature, but as an inevitably springing and pouncing one, for 
 our own kingly and princely shields. 
 
 Thus much, of their ‘ Salian ’ epithet may be enough ; but 
 from the interpretation of the Frankish one we are still as far 
 as ever, and must be content, in the meantime, to stay so, 
 noting however, two ideas afterwards entangled with the 
 name, which are of much descriptive importance to us, 
 
 32. “ The French poet in the first book of his Franciades/ 
 (says Mons, Favine ; but what poet I know not, nor can en- 
 quire) “ encounters ” (in the sense of en-quarters, or depicts as 
 a herald) “certain fables on the name of the French by the 
 adoption and composure of two Gaulish words joyned together, 
 Phere-En cos which signifieih £ Bear e-Launce,’ ( — Shake-Lance, 
 
 * Their first mischievous exsultation into Alsace being invited by the 
 Homans themselves, (or at least by Constantins in his jealousy o l 
 Julian,) — with “ presents and promises, — the hopes of spoil, and a per- 
 petual grant of all the territories they were able to subdue. ” Gibbon, 
 chap. xix. (3, 208). By any other historian than Gibbon, who has real- 
 ly no fixed opinion on any character, or question, but, safe in the gen- 
 eral truism that the worst men sometimes do right, and the best often do 
 wrong, praises when he wants to round a sentence, and blames when he 
 cannot otherwise edge one) — it might have startled us to be here told of 
 the nation which “deserved, assumed, and maintained the honourable 
 name of freemen,” that “ these undisciplined robbers treated as their natu- 
 ral enemies all the subjects of the empire who possessed any property 
 which they were desirous of acquiring.” The first campaign of Julian, 
 which throws both Franks and Alemanni back across the Khine, but 
 grants the Salian Franks, under solemn oath, their established territory 
 in the Netherlands, must be traced at another time. 
 
320 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US.” 
 
 we might perhaps venture to translate,) a lighter weapon than 
 the Spear beginning here to quiver in the hand of its chivalry 
 — and Fere-encos then passing swiftly on the tongue into 
 Francos ; ” — a derivation not to be adopted, but the idea of 
 the weapon most carefully, — together with this following — 
 that among the arms of the ancient French, over and beside 
 the Launce, was the Battaile-Axe, which they called Auction , 
 and moreover, yet to this day, in many Provinces of France, it 
 is termed an Action , wherewith they served themselves in 
 warre, by throwing it a farre off at joyning with the enemy, 
 onely to discover the man and to cleave his shield. Because this 
 Action was darted with such violence, as it would cleave the 
 Shield, and eompell the Maister thereof to hold down his arm, 
 and being so discovered, as naked or unarmed ; it made w r ay 
 for the sooner surprizing of him. It seemeth, that this 
 weapon was proper and particuler to the French Souldior, as 
 well him on foote, as on liorsebacke. For this cause they 
 called it Franciscus. Francisca, securis oblonga , quam Fraud 
 librabant in Ilostes. For the Horseman, beside his shield and 
 Francisca (Armes common, as wee have said, to the Footman), 
 had also the Lance, which being broken, and serving to no 
 further effect, he laid hand on his Francisca, as we learn the 
 use of that w T eapon in the Archbishop of Tours, his second 
 book, and twenty-seventh chapter.” 
 
 33. It is satisfactory to find how respectfully these lessons 
 of the Archbishop of Tours were received by the French 
 knights ; and curious to see the preferred use of the Francisca 
 by all the best of them — down, not only to Coeur de Lion's 
 time, but even to the day of Poitiers. In the last wrestle of 
 the battle at Poitiers gate, “ La, fit le Roy Jehan de sa main, 
 merveilles d’armes, et tenoit une hache de guerre dont bien se 
 deffendoit et combattoit, — si la quartre partie de ses gens 
 luy eussent ressemble, la journee eust ete pour eux.” Still 
 more notably, in the episode of fight which Froissart stops to 
 tell just before, between the Sire de Verclef, (on Severn) and 
 the Picard squire Jean de Helennes : the Englishman, losing 
 his sword, dismounts to recover it, on which Helennes casts 
 his own at him with such aim and force “qu’il acconsuit 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 321 
 
 1’Anglois es cuisses, tellement que l'espee entra dedans et la 
 cousit tout parmi, jusqu’au bans.” 
 
 On this the knight rendering himself, the squire binds his 
 wound, and nurses him, staying fifteen days ‘ pour l’amour de 
 lui ’ at Chasteleraut, while his life was in danger ; and after- 
 wards carrying him in a litter all the way to his own chastel in 
 Picardy. His ransom however is 6000 nobles — I suppose 
 about 25,000 pounds, of our present estimate ; and you may 
 set down for one of the fatallest signs that the days of chivalry 
 are near their darkening, how “ devint celuy Escuyer, Cheva- 
 lier, pour le grand profit qn’il eut du Seigneur de Verclef.” 
 
 I return gladly to the dawn of chivalry, when, every hour 
 and year, men were becoming more gentle and more wise ; 
 while, even through their worst cruelty and error, native 
 qualities of noblest cast may be seen asserting themselves for 
 primal motive, and submitting themselves for future training. 
 
 34. We have hitherto got no farther in our notion of a 
 Salian Frank than a glimpse of his two principal weapons, — 
 the shadow of him, however, begins to shape itself to us on 
 the mist of the Brocken, bearing the lance light, passing into 
 the javelin,— but the axe, his woodman’s weapon, lieavj r ; — for 
 economical reasons, in scarcity of iron, preferablest of all 
 weapons, giving the fullest swung and weight of blow with 
 least quantity of actual metal, and roughest forging. Gibbon 
 gives them also a ‘ weighty ’ sword, suspended from a ‘ broad ’ 
 belt : but Gibbon’s epithets are always gratis, and the belted 
 sword, whatever its measure, was probably for the leaders 
 only ; the belt, itself of gold, the distinction of the Homan 
 Counts, and doubtless adopted from them by the allied Frank 
 leaders, afterwards taking the Pauline mythic meaning of the 
 girdle of Truth — and so finally ; the chief mark of Belted 
 Knighthood. 
 
 35. The Shield, for all, w r as round, wielded like a High- 
 lander’s target : — armour, presumably, nothing but hard- 
 tanned leather, or patiently close knitted hemp ; “ Their close 
 apparel,” says Mr. Gibbon, “ accurately expressed the figure 
 of their limbs,” but ‘apparel’ is only Miltonic-Gibbonian for 
 ‘ nobody knows what.’ He is more intelligible of their per-* 
 
822 
 
 “OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US.” 
 
 sons. “ The lofty stature of the Franks, and their blue eye^ 
 denoted a Germanic origin ; the warlike barbarians were 
 trained from their earliest youth to run, to leap, to swim, to 
 dart the javelin and battle-axe with unerring aim, to advance 
 without hesitation against a superior enemy, and to maintain 
 either in life or death, the invincible reputation of their an- 
 cestors ” (vi. 95). For the first time, in 358, appalled by the 
 Emperor Julian’s victory at Strasburg, and besieged by him 
 upon the Meuse, a body of six hundred Franks “ dispensed 
 with the ancient law which commanded them to conquer or 
 die.” “Although they were strongly actuated by the allure- 
 ments of rapine, they professed a disinterested love of war, 
 which they considered as the supreme honour and felicity of 
 human nature ; and their minds and bodies were so hardened 
 by perpetual action that, according to the lively expression of 
 an orator, the snows of winter were as pleasant to them as thr 
 flowers of spring ” (iii. 220). 
 
 36. These mental and bodily virtues, or indurations, were 
 probably universal in the military rank of the nation : but we 
 learn presently, with surprise, of so remarkably * free ’ a 
 people, that nobody but the King and royal family might wear 
 their hair to their own liking. The kings wore theirs in flow- 
 ing ringlets on the back and shoulders, — the Queens, in 
 tresses rippling to their feet, — but all the rest of the nation 
 “ were obliged, either by law or custom, to shave the hinder 
 part of their head, to comb their short hair over their fore- 
 head, and to content themselves with the ornament of two 
 small whiskers.” 
 
 37. Moustaches, — Mr. Gibbon means, I imagine : and I 
 take leave also to suppose that the nobles, and noble ladies, 
 might wear such tress and ringlet as became them. But 
 again, we receive unexpectedly embarrassing light on the 
 democratic institutions of the Franks, in being told that “ the 
 various trades, the labours of agriculture, and the arts of 
 hunting and fishing, were exercised by servile hands for the 
 emolument of the Sovereign.” 
 
 ‘ Servile * and * Emolument,’ however, though at first they 
 l&ound very dreadful and very wrong, are only Miltonic-Gil> 
 
III. — Amiens. 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 323 
 
 bonian expressions of the general fact that the Frankish 
 Kings had ploughmen in their fields, employed weavers and 
 smiths to make their robes and swords, hunted with hunts- 
 men, hawked with falconers, and were in other respects 
 tyrannical to the ordinary extent that an English Master of 
 Hounds may be. “The mansion of the long-haired Kings 
 was surrounded with convenient yards and stables for poultry 
 and cattle ; the garden was planted with useful vegetables ; 
 the magazines filled with corn and wine either for sale or con- 
 sumption ; and the whole administration conducted by the 
 strictest rules of private economy.” 
 
 38. I have collected these imperfect, and not always ex- 
 tremely consistent, notices of the aspect and temper of the 
 Franks out of Mr. Gibbon’s casual references to them during 
 a period of more than two centuries, — and the last passage 
 quoted, which he accompanies with the statement that “ one 
 hundred and sixty of these rural palaces were scattered through 
 the provinces of their kingdom,” without telling us what king- 
 dom, or at what period, must I think be held descriptive of 
 the general manner and system of their monarchy after the 
 victories of Clovis. But, from the first hour you hear of him, 
 the Frank, closely considered, is always an extremely ingen- 
 ious, well meaning, and industrious personage ; — if eagerly 
 acquisitive, also intelligently conservative and constructive ; 
 an element of order and crystalline edification, which is to 
 consummate itself one day, in the aisles of Amiens ; and things 
 generally insuperable and impregnable, if the inhabitants of 
 them had been as sound-hearted as their builders, for many a 
 day beyond. 
 
 39. But for the present, we must retrace our ground a lit- 
 tle ; for indeed I have lately observed with compunction, in 
 re-reading some of my books for revised issue, that if ever I 
 promise, in one number or chapter, careful consideration of 
 any particular point in the next, the next never does touch 
 upon the promised point at all, but is sure to fix itself pas- 
 sionately on some antithetic, antipathic, or antipodic, point 
 in the opposite hemisphere. This manner of conducting a 
 treatise I find indeed extremely conducive to impartiality 
 
324 
 
 “OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US.** 
 
 and largeness of view ; but can conceive it to be — to the gen* 
 eral reader — not only disappointing, (if indeed I may flatter 
 myself that I ever interest enough to disappoint), but even 
 liable to confirm in his mind some of the fallacious and ex- 
 tremely absurd insinuations of adverse critics respecting my 
 inconsistency, vacillation, and liability to be affected by changes 
 of the weather in my principles or opinions. I purpose, there- 
 fore, in these historical sketches, at least to watch, and I hope 
 partly to correct myself in this fault of promise breaking, and 
 at whatever sacrifice of my variously fluent or re-fluent hu- 
 mour, to tell in each successive chapter in some measure what 
 the reader justifiably expects to be told. 
 
 40. I left, merely glanced at, i:i my opening chapter, the 
 story of the vase of Soissons. It may be found (and it is very 
 nearly the only thing that is to be found respecting the per- 
 sonal life or character of the first Louis) in every cheap popu- 
 lar history of France ; with cheap popular moralities engrafted 
 thereon. Had I time to trace it to its first sources, perhaps 
 it might take another aspect. But I give it as you may any- 
 where find it — asking you only to consider whether even as so 
 read — it may not properly bear a somewhat different moral. 
 
 41. The story is, then, that after the battle of Soissons, in 
 the division of Roman, or Gallic spoil, the king wished to have 
 a beautifully wrought silver vase for — ‘ himself, I was going 
 to write — and in my last chapter did mistakenly infer that he 
 wanted it for his better self, — his Queen. But he wanted it 
 for neither ; — it was restore to St. Be my, that it might remain 
 among the consecrated treasures of Rheims. That is the first 
 point on which the popular histories do not insist, and which 
 one of his warriors claiming equal division of treasure, chose 
 also to ignore. The vase was asked by the King in addition 
 to his own portion, and the Frank knights, while they rendered 
 true obedience to their king as a leader, had not the smallest 
 notion of allowing him what more recent kings call ‘ Royalties * 
 — taxes on everything they touch. And one of these Frank 
 knights or Counts — a little franker than the rest — and as in- 
 credulous of St. Remy’s saintsliip as a Protestant Bishop, or 
 Positivist Philosopher — took upon him to dispute the King's 
 
THh BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 325 
 
 and ilie Church’s claim, in the manner, suppose, of a Liberal 
 opposition in the House of Commons ; and disputed it with 
 such security of support by the public opinion of the fifth 
 century, that — the king persisting in his request — the fearless 
 soldier dashed the vase to pieces with his war-axe, exclaiming 
 “ Thou shalt have no more than thy portion by lot.” 
 
 42. It is the first clear assertion of French £ Liberte, Fra- 
 ternite and Egalite,’ supported, then, as now, by the destruc- 
 tion, which is the only possible active operation of “ free ” 
 personages, on the art they cannot produce. 
 
 The king did not continue the quarrel. Cowards will think 
 that he paused in cowardice, and malicious persons, that he 
 paused in malignity. He did pause in anger assuredly ; but 
 biding its time, which the anger of a strong man always can, 
 and burn hotter for the waiting, which is one of the chief rea- 
 sons for Christians being told not to let the sun go down upon 
 it. Precept which Christians now-a-days are perfectly ready to 
 obey, if it is somebody else who has been injured ; and indeed, 
 the difficulty in such cases is usually to get them to think of 
 the injury even while the Sun rises on their wrath.* 
 
 43. The sequel is very shocking indeed — to modern sensi- 
 bility. I give it in the, if not polished, at least delicately var- 
 nished, language of the Pictorial History. 
 
 “ About a year afterwards, on reviewing his troops, Jhe went 
 to the man who had struck the vase, and examining his arms , 
 complained that they were in bad condition ! ” (Italics mine) 
 £< and threw them ” (What ? shield and sword ?) on the ground. 
 The soldier stooped to recover them ; and at that moment 
 the King struck him on the head with his battle-axe, crying 
 ‘ Thus didst thou to the vase at Soissons.’ ” The Moral mod- 
 ern historian proceeds to reflect that “ this — as an evidence of 
 the condition of the Franks, and of the ties by which they 
 were united, gives but the idea of a band of Robbers and their 
 chief.” Which is, indeed, so far as I can myself look into 
 and decipher the nature of things, the Primary idea to be en- 
 tertained respecting most of the kingly and military organiza- 
 tions in this world, down to our own day ; and, (unless per* 
 * Read Mr, Plimsoll’s article on coal mines for instance. 
 
32G 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US." 
 
 chance it be the Afghans and Zulus who are stealing our lands 
 in England — instead of we theirs, in their several countries.) 
 But concerning the manner * of this piece of military execution, 
 I must for the present leave the reader to consider with him- 
 self, whether it indeed be les3 Kingly, or more savage, to 
 strike an uncivil soldier on the head with one’s own battle- 
 axe, than, for instance, to strike a person like Sir Thomas 
 More on the neck with an executioner’s, — using for the mech- 
 anism, and as it were guillotine bar and rope to the blow — 
 the manageable forms of National Law, and the gracefully 
 twined intervention of a polite group of noblemen and 
 bishops. 
 
 44 Far darker things have to be told of him than this, as 
 his proud life draws towards the close, — things which, if any 
 of us could see clear through darkness, you should be told in 
 all the truth of them. But we never can know the truth of 
 Sin ; for its nature is to deceive alike on the one side the 
 Sinner, on the other the Judge. Diabolic — betraying whether 
 we yield to it, or condemn : Here is Gibbon’s sneer — if you 
 care for it ; but I gather first from the confused paragraphs 
 which conduct to it, the sentences of praise, less niggard than 
 the Sage of Lausanne usually grants to any hero who has 
 confessed the influence of Christianity. 
 
 45. “ Clovis, when he was no more than fifteen years of age, 
 succeeded, by his father’s death, to the command of the 
 Salian tribe. The narrow limits of his kingdom were confined 
 to the island of the Batoerans, with the ancient dioceses of 
 Tournay and Arras ; and at the baptism of Clovis, the number 
 of his warriors could not exceed five thousand. The kindred 
 tribes of the Franks who had seated themselves along the 
 Scheldt, the Meuse, the Moselle, and the Rhine, were gov- 
 erned by their independent kings, of the Merovingian race, 
 the equals, the allies, and sometimes the enemies of the Salic 
 Prince. Y7hen he first took the field he had neither gold nor 
 silver in his coffers, nor wine and corn in his magazines ; but 
 he imitated the example of Csesar, who in the same country 
 had acquired wealth by the sword, and purchased soldiers 
 with the fruits of conquest. The untamed spirit of tli9 Bar- 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 327 
 
 barians was tauglit to acknowledge the advantages of regular 
 discipline. At the annual review of the month of March, 
 their arms were diligently inspected ; and when they traversed 
 a peaceful territory they were prohibited from touching a 
 blade of grass. The justice of Clovis was inexorable ; and his 
 careless or disobedient soldiers were punished with instant 
 death. It would be superfluous to praise the valour of a 
 Frank ; but the valour of Clovis was directed by cool and con- 
 summate prudence. In all his transactions with mankind he 
 calculated the weight of interest, of passion, and of opinion ; 
 and his measures were sometimes adapted to the sanguinary 
 manners of the Germans, and sometimes moderated by the 
 milder genius of Rome, and Christianity. 
 
 46. “ But the savage conqueror of Gaul was incapable of 
 examining the proofs of a religion, which depends on the 
 laborious investigation of historic evidence, and speculative 
 theology. He was still more incapable of feeling the mild in- 
 fluence of the Gospel, which persuades and purifies the heart 
 of a genuine convert. His ambitious reign was a perpetual 
 violation of moral and Christian duties : his hands were 
 stained with blood, in peace as well as in war ; and, as soon 
 as Clovis had dismissed a synod of the Gallican Church, he 
 calmly assassinated all the princes of the Merovingian race/' 
 
 47. It is too true ; but rhetorically put, in the first place — - 
 for we ought to be told how many ‘ all ’ the princes were ; — 
 in the second place, we must note that, supposing Clovis had 
 in any degree “ searched the Scriptures ” as presented to the 
 Western world by St. Jerome, he was likely, as a soldier-king, 
 to have thought more of the mission of Joshua* and Jehu 
 than of the patience of Christ, whose sufferings he thought 
 
 * The likeness was afterwards taken up by legend, and the walls of 
 Angouleme, after the battle of Poitiers, are said to have fallen at the 
 sound of the trumpets of Clovis. “A miracle,” says Gibbon, “which 
 may be reduced to the supposition that some clerical engineer had se- 
 cretly undermined the foundations of the rampart.” I cannot too often 
 warn my honest readers against the modern habit of “reducing” all 
 history whatever to * the supposition that 5 . . . etc., etc. The legend is 
 of course the natural and easy expansion of a metaphor. 
 
328 
 
 “ OUIl FATHERS HAVE TOLD US. 
 
 rather of avenging than imitating : and the question whether 
 the other Kings of the Franks should either succeed him, or 
 in envy of his enlarged kingdom, attack and dethrone, was 
 easily in his mind convertible from a personal danger into the 
 chance of the return of the whole nation to idolatry. And, in 
 the last place, his faith in the Divine protection of his cause 
 had been shaken by his defeat before Arles by the Ostro- 
 goths ; and the Frank leopard had not so wholly changed his 
 spots as to surrender to an enemy the opportunity of a first 
 spring. 
 
 48. Finally, and beyond all these personal questions, the 
 forms of cruelty and subtlety — the former, observe, arising 
 much out of a scorn of pain which was a condition of honour 
 in their women as well as men, are in these savage races all 
 founded on their love of glory in war, which can only be un- 
 derstood by comparing what remains of the same temper in 
 the higher castes of the North American Indians ; and, before 
 tracing in final clearness the actual events of the reign of 
 Clovis to their end, the reader will do well to learn this list of 
 the personages of the great Drama, taking to heart the mean- 
 ing of the name of each, both in its probable effect on the 
 mind of its bearer, and in its fateful expression of the course 
 of their acts, and the consequences of it to future genera- 
 tions. 
 
 1. Clovis. Frank form, Hluodoveh. c Glorious Holiness,’ or 
 
 consecration. Latin Chlodovisus, when baptized by St. 
 Remy, softening afterwards through the centuries into 
 Lhodovisus, Ludovicus, Louis. 
 
 2. Albofleda. ‘ White household fairy ’ ? His youngest sis. 
 
 ter ; married Theodorie (Theutreich, ‘ People’s ruler ’), 
 the great King of the Ostrogoths. 
 
 3. Clotilde. Hlod-hilda. £ Glorious Battle-maid.’ His wife. 
 
 * Hilda ’ first meaning Battle, pure ; and then passing 
 into Queen or Maid of Battle. Christianized to Ste 
 Clotilde in France, and Ste Hilda of Whitby cliff. 
 
 3. Clotilde. His only daughter. Died for the Catholic faith, 
 under Arian persecution. 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 % Childebert. His eldest son by Clotilde, the first Frank 
 King in Paris. £ Battle Splendour,’ softening intoHil- 
 debert, and then Hildebrandt, as in the Nibelung. 
 
 5. Chlodomir. £ Glorious Fame.’ His second son by Clo- 
 tilde. 
 
 6 Clotaire. His youngest son by Clotilde ; virtually the de- 
 stroyer of his father’s house. ‘ Glorious Warrior.’ 
 
 7. Chlodowald. Youngest son of Chlodomir. * Glorious 
 Power,’ afterwards ‘ St. Cloud.’ 
 
 49. I will now follow straight, through their light and 
 shadow, the course of Clovis’ reign and deeds. 
 
 a.d. 481. Crowned, when he was only fifteen. Five years 
 afterwards, he challenges, “ in the spirit, and almost in the 
 language of chivalry,” the Homan governor Syagrius, hold- 
 ing the district of Rheims and Soissons. “ Campum sibi 
 piveparari jussit — he commanded his antagonist to prepare 
 him a battle field ” — see Gibbon’s note and reference, chap, 
 xxxviii. (6,297). The Benedictine abbey of Nogent was after- 
 wards built on the field, marked by a circle of Pagan sepul- 
 chres. ‘‘Clovis bestowed the adjacent lands of Leuilly and 
 Coucy on the church of Rheims.” * 
 
 a.d. 485. The Battle of Soissons. Not dated by Gibbon : 
 the subsequent death of Syagrius at the court of (the younger) 
 Alaric, was in 486 — take 485 for the battle. 
 
 50. a.d. 493. I cannot find any account of the relations be- 
 tween Clovis and the King of Burgundy, the uncle of Clotilde, 
 which preceded his betrothal to the orphan princess. Her 
 uncle, according to the common history, had killed both her 
 father and mother, and compelled her sister to take the veil — 
 motives none assigned, nor authorities. Clotilde herself was 
 pursued on her way to France, f and the litter in which she 
 
 * When ? — for this tradition, as well as that of the vase, points to a 
 friendship between Clovis and St. Remy, and a singular respect on the 
 King’s side for the Christians of Gaul, though he was not yet himself 
 converted. 
 
 f It is a curious proof of the want in vulgar historians of- the slightest 
 sense of the vital interest of anything they tell, that neither in Gibbon, 
 nor in Messrs. Bussey and Gaspey, nor in the elaborate ‘ Histoire de$ 
 
330 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US” 
 
 travelled captured, with part of her marriage portion. But 
 the princess herself mounted on horseback, and rode, with 
 part of her escort, forward into France, “ ordering her attend' 
 ants to set fire to everything that pertained to her uncle and 
 his subjects which they might meet with on the way.” 
 
 51. The fact is not chronicled, usually, among the sayings 
 or doings of the Saints : but the punishment of Kings by de- 
 stroying the property of their subjects, is too well recognized 
 a method of modern Christian warfare to allow our indigna- 
 tion to burn hot against Clotilde ; driven, as she was, hard by 
 grief and wrath. The years of her youth are not counted to 
 us ; Clovis was already twenty-seven, and for three years main- 
 tained the faith of his ancestral religion against all the influ- 
 ence of his queen. 
 
 52. a.d. 496. I did not in the opening chapter attach nearly 
 
 Villes de France,’ can I find, with the best research my winter's morn- 
 ing allows, what city was at this time the capital of Burgundy, or at 
 least in which of its four nominal capitals, — Dijon, Besancon, Geneva, 
 and Vienne, — Clotilde was brought up. The evidence seems to me in 
 favour of Vienne — (called always by Messrs. B. and G., * Vienna,’ with 
 what effect on the minds of their dimly geographical readers I cannot 
 say) — the rather that Clotilde’s mother is said to have been “thrown 
 into the Rhone with a stone round her neck.” The author of the intro- 
 duction to ‘ Bourgogne ’ in the ‘ Histoire des Villes ’ is so eager to get 
 his little spiteful snarl at anything like religion anywhere, that he en- 
 tirely forgets the existence of the first queen of France,— never names 
 her, nor, as such, the place of her birth, — but contributes only to the 
 knowledge of the young student this beneficial quota, that Gondeband, 
 “ plus politique quo guerrier, trouva au milieu de ses controverses 
 th ologiques avec Avitus, eveque de Vienne , le temps de faire mourir 
 ses trois freres et de recueillir leur heritage. ” 
 
 The one broad fact which my own readers will find it well to remem- 
 ber is that Burgundy, at this time, by whatever king or victor tribe its 
 inhabitants may be subdued, does practically include the whole of 
 French Switzerland, and even of the German, as far east as Vindonissa : 
 — the Peuss, from Vindonissa through Lucerne to the St. Gotliard being 
 its effective eastern boundary ; that westward— it meant all Jura, and 
 the plains of the Saone ; and southward, included all Savoy and Dau* 
 phine. According to the author of ‘ La Suisse Kistorique ’ Clotilde was 
 first addressed by Clovis’s herald disguised as a beggar, while she distrib- 
 uted alms at the gate of St. Pierre at Geneva ; and her departure and 
 pursued flight into France were from Dijon. 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 331 
 
 enough importance to the battle of Tolbiac, thinking of it as 
 merely compelling the Alemanni to recross the Rhine, and 
 establishing the Frank power on its western bank. But in- 
 finitely wider results are indicated in the short sentence with 
 which Gibbon closes his account of the battle. '‘After the 
 conquest of the western provinces, the Franks alone retained 
 their ancient possessions beyond the Rhine. They gradually 
 subdued and civilized the exhausted countries as far as the 
 Elbe and the mountains of Bohemia ; and the peace of Europe 
 was secured by the obedience of Germany.” 
 
 53. For, in the south, Theodor ic had already “ sheathed the 
 sword in the pride of victory and the vigour of his age — and 
 his farther reign of three and thirty years was consecrated to 
 the duties of civil government.” Even when his son-in-law, 
 Alaric, fell by Clovis’ hand in the battle of Poitiers, Theodoric 
 was content to check the Frank power at Arles, without pur- 
 suing his success, and to protect his infant grandchild, correct- 
 ing at the same time some abuses in the civil government of 
 Spain. So that the healing sovereignty of the great Goth 
 was established from Sicily to the Danube — and from Sirmium 
 to the Atlantic ocean. 
 
 54. Thus, then, at the close of the fifth century, you have 
 Europe divided simply by her watershed ; and two Christian 
 kings reigning, with entirely beneficent and healthy power — 
 one in the north — one in the south — the mightiest and wor- 
 thiest of them married to the other’s youngest sister : a saint 
 queen in the north — and a devoted and earnest Catholic 
 woman, queen mother in the south. It is a conjunction of 
 things memorable enough in the Earth’s history, — much to 
 be thought of, oh fast whirling reader, if ever, out of the 
 crowd of pent up cattle driven across Rhine, or Adige, you 
 can extricate yourself for an hour, to walk peacefully out of 
 the south gate of Cologne, or across Fra Giocondo’s bridge 
 at Yerona — and so pausing look through the clear air across 
 the battlefield of Tolbiac to the blue Drachenfels, or across 
 the plain of St. Ambrogio to the mountains of Garda. For 
 there were fought — if you will think closely — the two victor- 
 battles of the Christian world. Constantine’s only gave 
 
332 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS RAVE TOLD US” 
 
 changed form and dying colour to the falling wails of Rome ; 
 but the Frank and Gothic races, thus conquering and thus 
 ruled, founded the arts and established the laws which gave 
 to all future Europe her joy, and her virtue. And it is lovely 
 to see how, even thus early, the Feudal chivalry depended for 
 its life on the nobleness of its womanhood. There was no 
 vision seen, or alleged, at Tolbiac. The King prayed simply 
 to the God of Clotilde. On the morning of the battle of 
 Verona, Theodoric visited the tent of his mother and his 
 sister, “ and requested that on the most illustrious festival of 
 his life, they would adorn him with the rich garments which 
 they had worked with their own hands.” 
 
 55. But over Clovis, there was extended yet another influ- 
 ence — greater than his queen’s. When his kingdom w*as first 
 extended to the Loire, the shepherdess of Nanterre was 
 already aged, — no torcli-bearing maid of battle, like Clotilde, 
 no knightly leader of deliverance like Jeanne, but grey in 
 meekness of wisdom, and now “ filling more and more with 
 crystal light.” Clovis’s father had known her ; he himself 
 made her his friend, and when he left Paris on the campaign 
 of Poitiers, vowed that if victorious, he would build a Chris- 
 tian church on the hills of Seine. He returned in victory and 
 with St. Genevieve at his side, stood on the site of the ruined 
 Roman Thermse, just above the “ Isle ” of Paris, to fulfil his 
 vow : and to design the limits of the foundations of the first 
 metropolitan church of Frankish Christendom. 
 
 The King “ gave his battle-axe the swing,” and tossed it 
 with his full force. 
 
 Measuring with its flight also, the place of his own grave, 
 and of Clotilde’s, and St. Genevieve’s. 
 
 There they rested, and rest, — in soul, — together. “La 
 Colline tout entiere porte encore le nom de la patronne de 
 Paris une petite rue obscure a garde celui du Roi Conquerant.” 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS . 
 
 333 
 
 CHAPTER IK. 
 
 TH E LION TAMER. 
 
 1. It has been often of late announced as a new discovery, 
 that man is a creature of circumstances ; and the fact has been 
 pressed upon our notice, in the hope, which appears to some 
 people so pleasing, of being able at last to resolve into a suc- 
 cession of splashes in mud, or whirlwinds in air, the circum- 
 stances answerable for his creation. Rut the more important 
 fact, that his nature is not levelled, like a mosquito’s, to the 
 mists of a marsh, nor reduced, like a mole’s, beneath the 
 Grumblings of a burrow ; but has been endowed with sense to 
 discern, and instinct to adopt, the conditions which will make 
 of it the best that can be, is very necessarily ignored by phi- 
 losophers who propose, as a beautiful fulfilment of human des- 
 tinies, a life entertained by scientific gossip, in a cellar lighted 
 by electric sparks, warmed by tubular inflation, drained by 
 buried rivers, and fed, by the ministry of less learned and 
 better provisioned races, with extract of beef, and potted 
 crocodile. 
 
 2. From these chemically analytic conceptions of a Paradise 
 in catacombs, undisturbed in its alkaline or acid virtues by 
 the dread of Deity, or hope of futurity, I know not how far 
 the modern reader may willingly withdraw himself for a 
 little time, to hear of men who, in their darkest and most 
 foolish day, sought by their labour to make the desert as the 
 garden of the Lord, and by their love to become worthy of 
 permission to live with Him for ever. It has nevertheless been 
 only by such toil, and in such hope, that, hitherto, the happi- 
 ness, skill, or virtue of man have been possible : and even on 
 the verge of the new dispensation, and promised Canaan, rich 
 in beatitudes of iron, steam, and fire, there are some of us, 
 here and there, who may pause in filial piety to look back 
 towards that wilderness of Sinai in which their fathers wor- 
 shipped and died. 
 
334 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US.” 
 
 3. Admitting then, for the moment, that the main streets of 
 Manchester, the district immediately surrounding the Bank in 
 London, and the Bourse and Boulevards of Paris, are already 
 part of the future kingdom of Heaven, when Earth shall be 
 all Bourse and Boulevard, — the world of which our fathers 
 tell us was divided to them, as you already know, partly by 
 climates, partly by races, partly by times ; and the 4 circum- 
 stances ’ under which a man’s soul was given to him, had to be 
 considered under these three heads : — In what climate is he ? 
 Of what race ? At what time ? 
 
 He can only be what these conditions permit. With appeal 
 to these, he is to be heard ; — understood, if it may be ; — 
 judged, by our love, first — by our pity, if he need it — by our 
 humility, finally and always. 
 
 4. To this end, it is needful evidently that we should have 
 truthful maps of the world to begin with, and truthful maps 
 of our own hearts to end with ; neither of these maps being 
 easily drawn at any time, and perhaps least of all now — when 
 the use of a map is chiefly to exhibit hotels and railroads ; and 
 humility is held the disagreeblest and meanest of the Seven 
 mortal Sins. 
 
 5. Thus, in the beginning of Sir Edward Creasy’s History 
 of England, you find a map purporting to exhibit the posses- 
 sions of the British Nation — illustrating the extremely wise 
 and courteous behaviour of Mr. Fox to a Frenchman of Napo- 
 leon’s suite, in “ advancing to a terrestrial globe of unusual 
 magnitude and distinctness, spreading his arms round it, over 
 both the oceans and both the Indies,” and observing, in this 
 impressive attitude, that “ while Englishmen live, they over- 
 spread the whole world, and clasp it in the circle of their 
 power. ” 
 
 6. Fired by Mr. Fox’s enthusiasm, the — otherwise seldom 
 fiery — Sir Edward, proceeds to tell us that “ our island home 
 is the favourite domicile of freedom, empire and glory,” with- 
 out troubling himself, or his readers, to consider how long the 
 nations over whom our freedom is imperious, and in whose 
 shame is our glory, may be satisfied in that arrangement of 
 the globe and its affairs ; or may be, even at present convinced 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 335 
 
 cf their degraded position in it by his method of its deline- 
 ation. 
 
 For, the map being drawn on Mercator’s projection, repre- 
 sents therefore the British dominions in North America as 
 twice the size of the States, and considerably larger than all 
 South America put together : while the brilliant crimson with 
 which all our landed property is coloured cannot but impress 
 the innocent reader with the idea of a universal flush of free- 
 dom and glory throughout all those acres and latitudes. So 
 that he is scarcely likely to cavil at results so marvellous by 
 inquiring into the nature and completeness of our government 
 at any particular place, — for instance in Ireland, in the Heb- 
 rides, or at the (Jape. 
 
 7. In the closing chapter of the first volume of 4 The Laws 
 of Fesole ’ I have laid down the mathematical principles of 
 rightly drawing maps ; — principles which for many reasons it 
 is well that my young readers should leam ; the fundamental 
 one being that you cannot flatten the skin of an orange with- 
 out splitting it, and must not, if you draw countries on the 
 unsplit skin, stretch them afterwards to fill the gaps. 
 
 The British pride of wealth which does not deny itself the 
 magnificent convenience of penny Walter Scotts and penny 
 Shakespeares, may assuredly, in its future greatness, possess 
 itself also of penny universes, conveniently spinnable on their 
 axes. I shall therefore assume that my readers can look at a 
 round globe, while I am talking of the world ; and at a prop- 
 erly reduced drawing of its surfaces, when I am talking of a 
 country. 
 
 8. Which, if my reader can at present do— -or at least refer 
 to a fairly drawn double-circle map of the globe with converg- 
 ing meridians— I will pray him next to observe, that, although 
 the old division of the world into four quarters is now nearly 
 effaced by emigration and Atlantic cable, yet the great his- 
 toric question about the globe is not how it is divided, here and 
 there, by ins and outs of land or sea ; but how it is divided 
 into zones all round, by irresistible law's of light and air. It is 
 often a matter of very minor interest to know wdiether a man 
 is an American or African, a European or an Asiatic. But it 
 
336 
 
 “OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US” 
 
 is a matter of extreme ancl final interest to know if he be a 
 Brazilian or a Patagonian, a Japanese or a Samoyede. 
 
 9. In the course of tlie last chapter, I asked the reader to 
 hold firmly the conception of the great division of climate, 
 which separated the wandering races of Norway and Siberia 
 from the calmly resident nations of Britain, Gaul, Germany, 
 and Dacia. 
 
 Fasten now that division well home in your mind, by draw- 
 ing, however rudely, the course of the two rivers, little 
 thought of by common geographers, but of quite unspeakable 
 importance in human history, the Vistula and the Dniester. 
 
 10. They rise within thirty miles of each other,* and each 
 runs, not counting ins and outs, its clear three hundred miles, 
 — the Vistula to the north-east, the Dniester to the south- 
 west : the two of them together cut Europe straight across, at 
 the broad neck of it, — and, more deeply looking at the thing, 
 they divide Europe, properly so called— Europa’s own, and 
 Jove’s, — the small education able, civilizable, and more or 
 less mentally rational fragment of the globe, from the great 
 Siberian Wilderness, Cis-Ural and Trans-Ural ; the inconceiv- 
 able chaotic space, occupied datelessly by Scythians, Tartars, 
 Huns, Cossacks, Bears, Ermines, and Mammoths, in various 
 thickness of hide, frost of brain, and woe of abode — or of un- 
 abiding. Nobody’s history worth making out, has anything 
 to do with them ; for the force of Scandinavia never came 
 round by Finland at all, but always sailed or paddled itself 
 across the Baltic, or down the rocky west coast ; and the 
 Siberian and Russian ice-pressure merely drives the really 
 memorable races into greater concentration, and kneads them 
 up in fiercer and more necessitous exploring masses. But by 
 those exploring masses, of true European birth, our own 
 history was fashioned for ever ; and, therefore, these two 
 truncating and guarding rivers are to be marked on your map 
 of Europe with supreme clearness : the Vistula, with Warsaw 
 astride of it half way down, and embouchure in Baltic, — the 
 Dneister, in Euxine, flowing each of them, measured arrow- 
 straight, as far as from Edinburgh to London, — with wind- 
 
 * Taking tlie ‘ San : branch of Upper Vistula. 
 
TEE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 33 
 
 iligs,* tlie Vistula six hundred miles, and the Dniester five— 
 count them together for a thousand miles of moat , between 
 Europe and the Desert, reaching from Dantzic to Odessa. 
 
 11. Having got your Europe moated off into this manage- 
 able and comprehensible space, you are next to fix the limits 
 which divide the four Gothic countries, Britain, Gaul, Ger- 
 many, and Dacia, from the four Classic countries, Spain, Italy, 
 Greece, and Lydia. 
 
 There is no other generally opponent term to ‘ Gothic ’ but 
 ‘ Classic ’ : and I am content to use it, for the sake of practi- 
 cal breadth and clearness, though its precise meaning for a 
 little while remain unascertained. Only get the geography 
 well into your mind, and the nomenclature will settle itself at 
 its leisure. 
 
 12. Broadly, then, you have sea between Britain and Spain 
 — Pyrenees between Gaul and Spain — Alps between Ger- 
 many and Italy — Danube between Dacia and Greece. You 
 must consider everything south of the Danube as Greek, vari- 
 ously influenced from Athens on one side, Byzantium on 
 the other : then, across the iEgean, you have the great 
 country absurdly called Asia Minor, (for we might just as 
 -well call Greece, Europe Minor, or Cornwall, England Minor,) 
 but which is properly to be remembered as ‘Lydia,’ the 
 country which infects with passion, and tempts with wealth ; 
 which taught the Lydian measure in music, and softened the 
 Greek language on its border into Ionic ; which gave to an- 
 cient history the tale of Troy, and to Christian history, the 
 glow, and the decline, of the Seven Churches. 
 
 13. Opposite to these four countries in the south, but sep- 
 arated from them either by sea or desert, are other four, as 
 easily remembered — -Morocco, Libya, Egypt, and Arabia. 
 
 Morocco, virtually consisting of the chain of Atlas and the 
 coasts depending on it, may be most conveniently thought of 
 as including the modern Morocco and Algeria, with the Cana- 
 ries as a dependent group of islands. 
 
 * Note, however, generally that the strength of a river, cseteris pari- ' 
 bus, is to be estimated by its straight course, windings being almost 
 always caused by fiats in which it can receive no tributaries. 
 
J38 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US. 
 
 Libya, in like manner, will include the modern Tunis and 
 Tripoli : it will begin on the west with St. Augustine’s town 
 of Hippo ; and its coast is colonized from Tyre and Greece, 
 dividing it into the two districts of Carthage and Cyrene. 
 Egypt, the country of the River, and Arabia, the country of no 
 River, are to be thought of as the two great southern powers 
 of separate Religion. 
 
 14. You have thus, easily and clearly memorable, twelve 
 countries, distinct evermore by natural laws, and forming 
 three zones from north to south, all healthily habitable — but 
 the races of the northernmost, disciplined in endurance of 
 cold ; those of the central zone, perfected by the enjoyable 
 suns alike of summer and winter ; those of the southern zone, 
 trained to endurance of heat. Writing them now in tabular 
 view, 
 
 Britain Gaul Germany Dacia 
 
 Spain Italy Greece Lydia 
 
 Morocco Libya Egypt Arabia, 
 
 you have the ground of all useful profane history mapped out 
 in the simplest terms ; and then, as the fount of inspiration, 
 for all these countries, with the strength which every soul that 
 lias possessed, has held sacred and supernatural, you have 
 last to conceive perfectly the small hill district of the Holy 
 Land, with Philistia and Syria on its flanks, both of them 
 chastising forces ; but Syria, in the beginning, herself the ori- 
 gin of the chosen race — “A Syrian ready to perish was my 
 father 55 — and the Syrian Rachel being thought of always as 
 the true mother of Israel. 
 
 15. And remember, in all future study of the relations of 
 these countries, you must never allow your mind to be dis- 
 turbed by the accidental changes of political limit. No mat- 
 ter who rules a country, no matter what it is officially called, 
 or how it is formally divided, eternal bars and doors are set 
 to it by the mountains and seas, eternal laws enforced over it 
 by the clouds and stars. The people that are born on it are 
 Us people, be they a thousand times again and again con- 
 quered, exiled, or captive. The stranger cannot be its king. 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 839 
 
 the invader cannot be its possessor ; and, although just laws, 
 maintained whether by the people or their conquerors, have 
 always the appointed good and strength of justice, nothing is 
 permanently helpful to any race or condition of men but the 
 spirit that is in their own hearts, kindled by the love of their 
 native land. 
 
 16. Of course, in saying that the invader cannot be the pos- 
 sessor of any country, I speak only of invasion such as that 
 by the Vandals of Libya, or by ourselves of India ; where the 
 conquering race does not become permanently inhabitant. 
 You are not to call Libya Vandalia, nor India England, be- 
 cause these countries are temporarily under the rule of Van- 
 dals and English ; neither Italy Gothland under Ostrogoths, 
 nor England Denmark under Canute. National character 
 varies as it fades under invasion or in corruption ; but if ever 
 it glows again into a new life, that life must be tempered by 
 the earth and sky of the country itself. Of the twelve names 
 of countries now given in their order, only one will be changed 
 as we advance in our history ; — Gaul will properly become 
 France when the Franks become her abiding inhabitants. 
 The other eleven primary names wall serve us to the end. 
 
 17. With a moment’s more patience, therefore, glancing to 
 the far East, we shall have laid the foundations of all our own 
 needful geography. As the northern kingdoms are moated 
 from the Scythian desert by the Vistula, so the southern are 
 moated from the dynasties properly called ‘ Oriental ’ by the 
 Euphrates ; which, “ partly sunk beneath the Persian Gulf, 
 reaches from the shores of Beloocliistan and Oman to the 
 mountains of Armenia, and forms a huge hot-air funnel, the 
 base ” (or mouth) “ of which is on the tropics, while its ex- 
 tremity reaches thirty-seven degrees of northern latitude. 
 Hence it comes that the Semoom itself (the specific and gas- 
 eous Semoom) pays occasional visits to Mosoul and Djezeerat 
 Omer, while the thermometer at Bagdad attains in summer 
 an elevation capable of staggering the belief of even an old 
 Indian.” * 
 
 * Sir F. Palgrave, ‘ Arabia,’ vol ii. , p. 155. I gratefully adopt in th« 
 next paragraph his division of Asiatic nations, p. 160. 
 
340 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US.” 
 
 18. This valley in ancient days formed the kingdom of 
 Assyria, as the vally of the Nile formed that of Egypt. In the 
 work now before us, we have nothing to do with its people, 
 who were to the Jews merely a hostile power of captivity, in- 
 exorable as the clay of their walls, or the stones of their stat- 
 ues ; and, after the birth of Christ, the marshy valley is no 
 more than a field of battle between West and East. Beyond 
 the great river, — Persia, India, and China, form the southern 
 ‘ Oriens.’ Persia is properly to be conceived as reaching from 
 the Persian Gulf to the mountain chains which flank and feed 
 the Indus ; and is the true vital power of the East in the days 
 of Marathon : but it has no influence on Christian history ex- 
 cept through Arabia ; while, of the northern Asiatic tribes, 
 Mede, Bactrian, Parthian, and Scythian, changing into Turk 
 and Tartar, we need take no heed until they invade us in our 
 own historic territory. 
 
 19. Using therefore the terms ‘Gothic’ and ‘Classic’ for 
 broad distinction of the northern and central zones of this our 
 own territory, we may conveniently also use the word ‘ Arab ’ * 
 for the whole southern zone. The influence of Egypt vanishes 
 soon after the fourth century, while that of Arabia, powerful 
 from the beginning, rises in the sixth into an empire whose 
 end we have not seen. And you may most rightly conceive 
 the religious principle which is the base of that empire, by 
 remembering, that while the Jews forfeited their prophetic 
 power by taking up the profession of usury over the whole 
 earth, the Arabs returned to the simplicity of prophecy in its 
 beginning by the well of Hagar, and are not opponents to 
 Christianity ; but only to the faults or follies of Christians. 
 They keep still their faith in the one God who spoke to Abra- 
 
 * Gibbon’s fifty-sixth chapter begins with a sentence which may be 
 taken as the epitome of the entire history we have to investigate : “The 
 three great nations of the world, the Greeks, the Saracens, and the 
 Franks, encountered each other on the theatre of Italy.” I use the 
 more general word, Goths, instead of Franks ; and the more accurate 
 word, Arab, for Saracen ; but otherwise, the reader will observe that 
 the division is the same as mine. Gibbon does not recognize the Ro« 
 man people as a nation — but only the Roman power as an empire- 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 341 
 
 ham their Father ; and are His children in that simplicity, far 
 more truly than the nominal Christians who lived, and live, 
 only to dispute in vociferous council, or in frantic schism, the 
 relations of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, 
 
 20. Trusting* my reader then in future to retain in his mind 
 without confusion the idea of the three zones, Gothic, Classic, 
 and Arab, each divided into four countries, clearly recogniz- 
 able through all ages of remote or recent history ; — I must 
 farther, at once, simplify for him the idea of the Koman Em- 
 pire, (see note to last paragraph,) in the manner of its affect- 
 ing them. Its nominal extent, temporary conquests, civil 
 dissensions, or internal vices, are scarcely of any historical 
 moment at all ; the real Empire is effectual only as an expo- 
 nent of just law, military order, and mechanical art, to un- 
 trained races, and as a translation of Greek thought into less 
 diffused and more tenable scheme for them. The Classic 
 zone, from the beginning to the end of its visible authority, 
 is composed of these two elements — Greek imagination, with 
 Koman order : and the divisions or dislocations of the third 
 and fourth century are merely the natural apparitions of their 
 differences, when the political system which concealed them 
 was tested by Christianity. It seems almost wholly lost sight 
 of by ordinary historians, that, in the wars of the last Komans 
 with the Goths, the great Gothic captains were all Christians ; 
 and that the vigorous and naive form which the dawning faith 
 took in their minds is a more important subject of investiga- 
 tion, by far, than the inevitable wars which followed the re- 
 tirement of Diocletian, or the confused schisms and crimes of 
 the lascivious court of Constantine. I am compelled, how- 
 ever, to notice the terms in which the last arbitrary dissolu* 
 tions of the empire took place, that they may illustrate, in- 
 stead of confusing, the arrangement of the nations which I 
 would fasten in your memory. 
 
 21. In the middle of the fourth century you have, politically, 
 what Gibbon calls “ the final division of the Eastern and West- 
 ern Empires.” This really means only that the Emperor 
 Yalentinian, yielding, though not without hesitation, to the 
 feeling now confirmed in the legions that the Empire was too 
 
342 
 
 ‘ OU.lt FATHERS HAVE TOLL US” 
 
 vast to be held by a single person, takes bis brother for his 
 colleague, and divides, not, truly speaking, their authority, 
 but their attention, between the east and the west. To his 
 brother Yalens he assigns the extremely vague “ Prefecture 
 of the East, from the lower Danube to the confines of Persia,” 
 while for his own immediate government he reserves the 
 “ warlike prefectures of Illyricum, Italy, and Gaul, from the 
 extremity of Greece to the Caledonian rampart, and from the 
 rampart of Caledonia to the foot of Mount Atlas.” That is to 
 say, in less poetical cadence, (Gibbon had better have put his 
 history into hexameters at once,) Yalentinian kept under his 
 own watch the whole of Roman Eurojoe and Africa, and left 
 Lydia and Caucasus to his brother. Lydia and Caucasus never 
 did, and never could, form an Eastern Empire, — they were 
 merely outside dependencies, useful for taxation in peace, 
 dangerous by their multitudes in war. There never w r as, from 
 the seventh century before Christ to the seventh after Christ, 
 but one Roman Empire, which meant, the power over human- 
 ity of such men as Cincinnatus and Agricola ; it expires as 
 the race and temper of these expire ; the nominal extent of it, 
 or brilliancy at any moment, is no more than the reflection, 
 farther or nearer upon the clouds, of the flames of an altar 
 whose fuel was of noble souls. There is no true date for its 
 division ; there is none for its destruction. Whether Dacian 
 Probus or Noric Odoacer be on the throne of it, the force of 
 its living principle alone is to be watched — remaining, in arts, 
 in laws, and in habits of thought, dominant still in Europe 
 down to the twelfth century ; — in language and example, 
 dominant over all educated men to this hour. 
 
 22. Rut in the nominal division of it by Yalentinian, let 
 us note Gibbon’s definition (I assume it to be his, not the 
 Emperor’s) of European Roman Empire into Illyricum, Italy, 
 and Gaul. I have already said you must hold everything 
 south of the Danube for Greek. The two chief districts im- 
 mediately south of the stream are upper and lower Moesia, 
 consisting of the slope of the Thracian mountains northward 
 to the river, with the plains between it and them. This dis- 
 trict you must notice for its importance in forming the Moeso- 
 
TIIE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 343 
 
 Gothic alphabet, in which “ the Greek is by far the principal 
 element,”* giving sixteen letters out of the twenty-four. The 
 Gothic invasion under the reign of Yalens is the first that 
 establishes a Teutonic nation within the frontier of the em- 
 pire ; but they only thereby bring themselves more directly 
 under its spiritual power. Their bishop, XJlphilas, adopts 
 this Moesian alphabet, two-thirds Greek, for his translation of 
 the Bible, and it is universally disseminated and perpetuated 
 by that' translation, until the extinction or absorption of the 
 Gothic race. 
 
 23. South of the Thracian mountains you have Thrace 
 herself, and the countries confusedly called Dalmatia and 
 Illyria, forming the coast of the Adriatic, and reaching in- 
 wards and eastwards to the mountain watershed. I have 
 never been able to form a clear notion myself of the real 
 character of the people of these districts, in any given period ; 
 but they are all to be massed together as northern Greek, 
 having more or less of Greek blood and dialect according to 
 their nearness to Greece proper ; though neither sharing in 
 her philosophy, nor submitting to her discipline. But it is 
 of course far more accurate, in broad terms, to speak of these 
 Illyrian, Moesian, and Macedonian districts as all Greek, than 
 with Gibbon or Valentinian to speak of Greece and Macedonia 
 as all Illyrian . \ 
 
 24. In the same imperial or poetical generalization, we find 
 England massed with France under the term Gaul, and 
 bounded by the “ Caledonian rampart.” Whereas in our own 
 division, Caledonia, Hibernia, and Wales, are from the first 
 considered as essential parts of Britain, J and the link with 
 
 * Milman, ‘Hist, of Christianity,’ vol. iii. p. 36. 
 
 f I find the same generalization expressed to the modern student 
 under the term * Balkan Peninsula,’ extinguishing every ray and trace 
 of past history at once. 
 
 \ Gibbon’s more deliberate statement is clear enough. “From the 
 coast or the extremity of Caithness and Ulster, the memory of Celtic 
 origin was distinctly preserved in the perpetual resemblance of lan- 
 guages, religion, and manners, and the peculiar character of the British 
 tribes might be naturally ascribed to the influence of accidental and 
 local circumstances.” The Lowland Scots, “wheat-eaters’’ or Wan- 
 
344 
 
 “ OUR FATRERS HAVE TOLD US.” 
 
 the continent is to be conceived as formed by the settlement 
 of Britons in Britany, and not at all by Koman authority be- 
 yond the Humber. 
 
 25. Thus, .then, once more reviewing our order of countries, 
 and noting only that the British Islands, though for the most 
 part thrown by measured degree much north of the rest of 
 the north zone, are brought by the influence of the Gulf stream 
 into the same climate ; — you have, at the time when our his- 
 tory of Christianity begins, the Gothic zone yet unconverted, 
 and having not yet even heard of the new faith. You have 
 the Classic zone variously and increasingly conscious of it, 
 disputing with it, striving to extinguish it — and your Arab 
 zone, the ground and sustenance of it, encompassing the Holy 
 Land with the warmth of its own wings, and cherishing 
 there — embers of phoenix fire over all the earth, — the hope of 
 Resurrection. 
 
 26. What would have been the course, or issue, of Chris- 
 tianity, had it been orally preached only, and unsupported by 
 its poetical literature, might be the subject of deeply instruc- 
 tive speculation — if a historian’s duty were to reflect instead 
 of record. The power of the Christian faith was however, in 
 the fact of it, always founded on the written prophecies and 
 histories of the Bible ; and on the interpretations of their 
 meaning, given by the example, far more than by the precept, 
 of the great monastic orders. The poetry and history of the 
 Syrian Testaments were put within their reach by St. Jerome, 
 while the virtue and efficiency of monastic life are all express- 
 ed, and for the most part summed, in the rule of St. Bene- 
 
 derers, and the Irish, are very positively identified by Gibbon at the 
 time onr own history begins. “It is certain” (italics his, not mine) 
 “that in the declining age of the Roman Empire, Caledonia, Ireland, 
 and the Isle of Mau, were inhabited by the Scots.” — Chap. 25, vol. iv., 
 p. 279. 
 
 The higher civilization and feebler courage of the Lowland English 
 rendered them either the victims of Scotland, or the grateful subjects of 
 Rome, The mountaineers, Piet among the Grampians, or of their own 
 colour in Cornwall and Wales, have never been either instructed or 
 subdued, and remain to this day the artless and fearless strength of 
 the British race. 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 345 
 
 diet. To understand the relation of the work of these two 
 men to the general order of the Church, is quite the first re- 
 quirement for its farther intelligible history. 
 
 26. Gibbon’s thirty-seventh chapter professes to give an ac- 
 count of the 4 Institution of the Monastic Life 5 in the third 
 century. But the monastic life had been instituted somewhat 
 earlier, and by many prophets and kings. By Jacob, when he 
 laid the stone for his pillow ; by Moses, when he drew aside to 
 see the burning bush ; by David, before he had left “ those few 
 sheep in the wilderness ; ” and by the prophet who 44 was in the 
 desert till the time of his showing unto Israel.” Its primary 
 4C institution,” for Europe, was Numa’s, in that of the Yestal 
 Virgins, and College of Augurs ; founded on the originally 
 Etrurian and derived Roman conception of pure life dedicate 
 to the service of God, and practical wisdom dependent on His 
 guidance.* 
 
 The form which the monastic spirit took in later times 
 depended far more on the corruption of the common world, 
 from which it was forced to recoil either in indignation or 
 terror, than on any change brought about by Christianity in 
 the ideal of human virtue and happiness. 
 
 27. 44 Egypt ” (Mr. Gibbon thus begins to account for the 
 new institution !), 44 the fruitful parent of superstition, af- 
 forded the first example of monastic life.” Egypt had her 
 superstitions, like other countries ; but was so little the 
 parent of superstition that perhaps no faith among the imagi- 
 native races of the world has been so feebly missionary as 
 hers. She never prevailed on even the nearest of her neigh- 
 bours to worship cats or cobras with her ; and I am alone, to 
 my belief, among recent scholars, in maintaining Herodotus’ 
 statement of her influence on the archaic theology of Greece. 
 
 * I should myself mark as the fatallest instant in the decline of the 
 Roman Empire, Julian’s rejection of the counsel of the Augurs. “For 
 the last time, the Etruscan Haruspices accompanied a Roman Emperor, 
 hut by a singular fatality their adverse interpretation by the signs of 
 heaven was disdained, and Julian followed the advice of the phi- 
 losophers, who coloured their predictions with the bright hues of the 
 Emperor’s ambition.” (Milmaiu Hist, of Christianity, chap, vi.) 
 
346 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD USD 
 
 But tliat influence, if any, was formative and delineative ; not 
 ritual : so that in no case, and in no country, was Egypt the 
 parent of Superstition ; while she was beyond all dispute, for 
 all people and to all time, the parent of Geometry, Astronomy, 
 Architecture, and Chivalry. She was, in its material and 
 technic elements, the mistress of Literature, showing authors 
 who before could only scratch on wax and wood, how to 
 weave paper and engrave porphyry. She was the first ex- 
 ponent of the law of Judgment after Death for Sin. She was 
 the Tutrees of Moses ; and the Hostess of Christ. 
 
 28. It is both probable and natural that, in such a country, 
 the disciples of any new spiritual doctrine should bring it to 
 closer trial than was possible among the illiterate warriors, or 
 in the storm-vexed solitudes of the North ; yet it is a thought- 
 less error to deduce the subsequent power of cloistered frater- 
 nity from the lonely passions of Egyptian monachism. The 
 anchorites of the first three centuries vanish like feverish 
 spectres, when the rational, merciful, and laborious laws of 
 Christian societies are established ; and the clearly recog- 
 nizable rewards of heavenly solitude are granted to those 
 only who seek the Desert for its redemption. 
 
 29. ‘ The clearly recognizable rewards,’ I repeat, and with 
 cautious emphasis. No man has any data for estimating, far 
 less right of judging, the results of a life of resolute self- 
 denial, until he has had the courage to try it himself, at 
 least for a time : but I believe no reasonable person will 
 wish, and no honest person dare, to deny the benefits he has 
 occasionally felt both in mind and body, during periods of 
 accidental privation from luxury, or exposure to danger. The 
 extreme vanity of the modern Englishman in making a mo- 
 mentary Stylites of himself on the top of a Horn or an 
 Aiguille, and his occasional confession of a charm in the 
 solitude of the rocks, of which he modifies nevertheless the 
 poignancy with his pocket newspaper, and from the prolonga- 
 tion of which he thankfully escapes to the nearest table-d’hote, 
 ought to make us less scornful of the pride, and more intel- 
 ligent of the passion, in which the mountain anchorites of 
 Arabia and Palestine condemned themselves to lives of seclu- 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 347 
 
 sion and suffering, which were comforted only by supernatural 
 vision, or celestial hope. That phases of mental disease are 
 the necessary consequence of exaggerated and independent 
 emotion of any kind must, of course, be remembered in read- 
 ing the legends of the wilderness ; but neither physicians nor 
 moralists have yet attempted to distinguish the morbid states 
 of intellect* which are extremities of noble passion, from 
 those which are the punishments of ambition, avarice, or las- 
 civiousness. 
 
 30. Setting all questions of this nature aside for the mo- 
 ment, my younger readers need only hold the broad fact that 
 during the whole of the fourth century, multitudes of self- 
 devoted men led lives of extreme misery and poverty in the 
 effort to obtain some closer knowledge of the Being and Will 
 of God. We know, in any available clearness, neither what 
 they suffered, nor what they learned. We cannot estimate 
 the solemnizing or reproving power of their examples on the 
 less zealous Christian world ; and only God knows how far 
 their prayers for it w r ere heard, or their persons accepted. 
 This only we may observe with reverence, that among all their 
 
 * Gibbon’s hypothetical conclusion respecting the effects of self- 
 mortification, and his following historical statement, must be noted 
 as in themselves containing the entire views of the modern philos- 
 ophies and policies which have since changed the monasteries of Italy 
 into barracks, and the churches of France into magazines. “ This volun- 
 tary martyrdom must have gradually destroyed the sensibility, both of 
 mind and body; nor can it be presumed that the fanatics who torment 
 themselves, are capable of any lively affection for the rest of mankind. 
 A cruel unfeeling temper has characterized the monks of every age and 
 country 
 
 How much of penetration, or judgment, this sentence exhibits, I hope 
 will become manifest to the reader as I unfold before him the actual 
 history of his faith ; but being, I suppose, myself one of the last 
 surviving witnesses of the character of recluse life as it still existed 
 in the beginning of this century, I can point to the portraiture of it 
 given by Scott in the introduction to ‘The Monastery’ as one perfect 
 and trustworthy, to the letter and to the spirit ; and for myself can say, 
 that the most gentle, refined, and in the deepest sense amiable, phases 
 of character I have ever known, have been either those of monks, or of 
 servants trained in the Catholic Faith. 
 
348 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD USE 
 
 numbers, none seem to have repented their chosen manner of 
 existence ; none perish by melancholy or suicide ; their self- 
 adjudged sufferings are never inflicted in the hope of shorten- 
 ing the lives they embitter or purify ; and the hours of dream 
 or meditation, on mountain or in cave, appear seldom to have 
 dragged so heavily as those which, without either vision or 
 reflection, we pass ourselves, on the embankment and in the 
 tunnel. 
 
 31. But whatever may be alleged, after ultimate and honest 
 scrutiny, of the follies or virtues of anchorite life, we are un- 
 just to Jerome if we think of him as its introducer into the 
 West of Europe. He passed through it himself as a phase of 
 spiritual discipline ; but he represents, in his total nature and 
 final work, not the vexed inactivity of the Eremite, but the 
 eager industry of a benevolent tutor and pastor. His heart 
 is in continual fervor of admiration or of hope — remaining to 
 the last as impetuous as a child’s, but as affectionate ; and the 
 discrepancies of Protestant objection by which his character 
 has been confused, or concealed, may be gathered in some 
 dim picture of his real self when once we comprehend the 
 simplicity of his faith, and sympathise a little with the eager 
 charity which can so easily be wounded into indignation, and 
 is never repressed by policy. 
 
 32. The slight trust which can be placed in modern read- 
 ings of him, as they now stand, may be at once proved by 
 comparing the two passages in which Milman has variously 
 guessed at the leading principles of his political conduct. 
 “ Jerome began (!) and ended his career as a monk of Pales- 
 tine ; he attained, he aspired to, no dignity in the Church. 
 Though ordained a presbyter against his will, he escaped the 
 episcopal dignity which was forced upon his distinguished 
 contemporaries.” ( ‘ History of Christianity,’ Book III.) 
 
 “Jerome cherished the secret hope, if it was not the avowed 
 object of his ambition, to succeed Damasus as Bishop of 
 Rome. Is the rejection of an aspirant so singularly unfit for 
 the station, from his violent passions, his insolent treatment 
 of his adversaries his utter want of self-command, his almost 
 unrivalled faculty of awakening hatred, to be attributed to the 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 349 
 
 sagacious and intuitive wisdom of Borne ?” ( £ History of Latin 
 Christianity,’ Book I., chap, ii.) 
 
 33. You may observe, as an almost unexceptional character 
 in the 44 sagacious wisdom ” of the Protestant clerical mind, 
 that it instinctively assumes the desire of power and place not 
 only to be universal in Priesthood, but to be always purely 
 selfish in the ground of it. The idea that power might possi- 
 bly be desired for the sake of its benevolent use, so far as I 
 remember, does not once occur in the pages of any ecclesias- 
 tical historian of recent date. In our own reading of past 
 ages we will, with the reader’s permission, very calmly put out 
 of court all accounts of “hopes cherished in secret ” ; and pay 
 very small attention to the reasons for medkeval conduct 
 which appear logical to the rationalist, and probable to the 
 politician.* We concern ourselves only with what these sin- 
 gular and fantastic Christians of the past really said, and 
 assuredly did. 
 
 34. Jerome’s life by no means 44 began as a monk of Pales- 
 tine.” Dean Milman has not explained to us how any man’s 
 could ; but Jerome’s childhood, at any rate, was extremely 
 other than recluse, or precociously religious. He was born 
 of rich parents living on their own estate, the name of his na- 
 tive town in North Illyria, Stridon, perhaps now softened into 
 Strigi, near Aquileia. In Venetian climate, at all events, and 
 in sight of Alps and sea. He had a brother and sister, a kind 
 grandfather, and a disagreeable private tutor, and was a youth 
 still studying grammar at Julian’s death in 363. 
 
 * The habit of assuming, for the conduct of men of sense and feeling, 
 motives intelligible to the foolish, and probable to the base, gains upon 
 every vulgar historian, partly in the ease of it, partly in the pride ; and 
 it is horrible to contemplate the quantity of false witness against their 
 neighbours which commonplace writers commit, in the mere rounding 
 and enforcing of their shallow sentences. “Jerome admits, indeed, 
 with specious but doubtful humility , the inferiority of the unordained 
 monk to the ordained priest,” says Dean Milman in his eleventh chapter, 
 following up his gratuitous doubt of Jerome’s humility with no less 
 gratuitous asseveration of the ambition of his opponents. “The clergy, 
 no doubt , had the sagacity to foresee the dangerous rival as to influence 
 and authority, which was rising up in Christian society ’’ 
 
350 
 
 ts OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US.” 
 
 35. A youth of eighteen, and well begun in all institutes of 
 the classic schools ; but, so far from being a monk, not yet a 
 Christian ; — nor at all disposed towards the severer offices 
 even of Roman life ! or contemplating with aversion the splen- 
 dours, either worldly or sacred, which shone on him in the 
 college days spent in its Capital city. 
 
 For the “power and majesty of Paganism were still concen- 
 trated at Rome ; the deities of the ancient faith found their 
 last refuge in the capital of the empire. To the stranger, 
 Rome still offered the appearance of a Pagan city. It con- 
 tained one hundred and fifty-two temples, and one hundred 
 and eighty smaller chapels or shrines, still sacred to their tu- 
 telary God, and used for public worship. Christianity had 
 neither ventured to usurp those few buildings which might be 
 converted to her use, still less had she the power to destroy 
 them. The religious edifices were under the protection of 
 the prsefect of the city, and the prsefect was usually a Pagan ; 
 at all events he would not permit any breach of the public 
 peace, or violation of public property. Above all still towered 
 the Capitol, in its unassailed and awful majesty, with its fifty 
 temples or shrines, bearing the most sacred names in the re- 
 ligious and civil annals of Rome, those of Jove, of Mars, of 
 Janus, of Romulus, of Caesar, of Victory. Some years after 
 the accession of Theodosius to the Eastern empire, the sacri- 
 fices were still performed as national rites at the public cost, 
 — the pontiffs made their offerings in the name of the whole hu- 
 man race. The Pagan orator ventures to assert that the Em- 
 peror dared not to endanger the safety of the empire by their 
 abolition. The Emperor still bore the title and insignia of 
 the Supreme Pontiff ; the Consuls, before they entered upon 
 their functions, ascended the Capitol ; the religious proces- 
 sions passed along the crotvded streets, and the people 
 thronged to the festivals and theatres which still formed part 
 of the Pagan worship.” * 
 
 36. Here, Jerome must have heard of what by all the Chris- 
 tian sects w 7 as held the judgment of God, between them and 
 
 * Mil man, ‘History of Christianity,’ vol. iii. p, 162. Note the sen- 
 tence in italics, for it relates the true origin of the Papacy. 
 
TEE BIBLE OF AMIENS, 
 
 351 
 
 their chief enemy — the Death of the Emperor Julian. But I 
 have no means of tracing, and will not conjecture, the course 
 of his own thoughts, until the tenor of all his life was changed 
 at his baptism. The candour which lies at the basis of his 
 character has given us one sentence of his own, respecting 
 that change, which is worth some volumes of ordinary con- 
 fessions. “I left, not only parents and kindred, but the ac- 
 customed luxuries of delicate life.” The w r ords throw full 
 light on what, to our less courageous temper, seems the exag- 
 gerated reading by the early converts of Christ’s words to 
 them — “ He that loveth father or mother more than me, is 
 not worthy of me.” We are content to leave, for much lower 
 interests, either father or mother, and do not see the necessity 
 of any farther sacrifice : we should know more of ourselves and 
 of Christianity if we oftener sustained what St. Jerome found 
 the most searching trial. I find scattered indications of con-, 
 tempt among his biographers, because he could not resign 
 one indulgence — that of scholarship ; and the usual sneers at 
 monkish ignorance and indolence are in his case transferred 
 to the weakness of a pilgrim who carried his library in his 
 wallet. It is a singular question (putting, as it is the modern 
 fashion to do, the idea of Providence wholly aside), whether, 
 but for the literary enthusiasm, which was partly a weakness, 
 of this old man’s character, the Bible would ever have become 
 the library of Europe. 
 
 37. For that, observe, is the real meaning, in its first pow- 
 er, of the word Bible. Not book, merely ; but c Bibliotheca,’ 
 Treasury of Books : and it is, I repeat, a singular question, 
 how far, if Jerome, at the very moment when Rome, his tu- 
 tress, ceased from her material power, had not made her lan- 
 guage the oracle of Hebrew prophecy, a literature of their 
 own, and a religion unshadowed by the terrors of the Mosaic 
 law, might have developed itself in the hearts of the Goth, 
 the Frank, and the Saxon, under Theodoric, Clovis, and Al- 
 fred. 
 
 38. Fate had otherwise determined, and Jerome was so 
 passive an instrument in her hands that he began the study 
 of Hebrew as a discipline only, and without any conception of 
 
352 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLI) USA 
 
 the task he was to fulfil, still less of the scope of its fulfil 
 ment. I could joyfully believe that the words of Christ, “If 
 they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be 
 persuaded though one rose from the dead,” had haunted the 
 spirit of the recluse, until he resolved that the voices of im- 
 mortal appeal should be made audible to the Churches of all 
 the earth. But so far as we have evidence, there was no such 
 will or hope to exalt the quiet instincts of his natural indus- 
 try ; and partly as a scholar’s exercise, partly as an old man’s 
 recreation, the severity of the Latin language was softened, 
 like Venetian crystal, by the variable fire of Hebrew thought, 
 and the “Book of Books” took the abiding form of which all 
 the future art of the Western nations was to be an hourly ex- 
 panding interpretation. 
 
 39. And in this matter you have to note that the gist of it 
 lies, not in the translation of the Hebrew and Greek Script- 
 ures into an easier and a common language, but in their pres- 
 entation to the Church as of common authority. The earlier 
 Gentile Christians had naturally a tendency to carry out in 
 various oral exaggeration or corruption, the teaching of the 
 Apostle of the Gentiles, until their freedom from the bondage 
 of the Jewish law passed into doubt of its inspiration ; and, 
 after the fall of Jerusalem, even into horror-stricken interdic- 
 tion of its observance. So that, only a few years after the 
 remnant of exiled Jews in Pella had elected the Gentile Mar- 
 cus for their Bishop, and obtained leave to return to the iElia 
 Capitolina built by Hadrian on Mount Zion, “ it became a 
 matter of doubt and controversy whether a man who sincerely 
 acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, but who still continued 
 to observe the law of Moses, could possibly hope for salva- 
 tion ! ” * While, on the other hand, the most learned and the 
 most wealthy of the Christian name, under the generally rec- 
 ognised title of “knowing” (Gnostic), had more insidiously 
 effaced the authority of the Evangelists by dividing themselves, 
 during the course of the third century, “ into more than fifty 
 numerably distinct sects, and producing a multitude of his- 
 
 Gibbon, chap. xv. (II. 277). 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS , . 
 
 353 
 
 tories, in which the actions and discourses of Christ and His 
 Apostles were adapted to their several tenets. ” * 
 
 40. It would be a task of great, and in nowise profitable 
 difficulty to determine in what measure the consent of the 
 general Church, and in what measure the act and authority 
 of Jerome, contributed to fix in their ever since undisturbed 
 harmony and majesty, the canons of Mosaic and Apostolic 
 Scripture. Ail that the young reader need know is, that 
 when Jerome died at Bethlehem, this great deed was virtually 
 accomplished : and the series of historic and didactic books 
 which form our present Bible, (including the Apocrypha) 
 were established in and above the nascent thought of the 
 noblest races of men living on the terrestrial globe, as a direct 
 message to them from its Maker, containing whatever it was 
 necessary for them to learn of His purposes towards them, 
 and commanding, or advising, with divine authority and in- 
 fallible wisdom, all that w r as best for them to do, and happiest 
 to desire. 
 
 41. And it is only for those who have obeyed the law sin- 
 cerely, to say how far the hope held out to them by the law- 
 giver has been fulfilled. The worst “ children of disobedi- 
 ence” are those wdio accept, of the Word, what they like, and 
 refuse what they hate : nor is this perversit}’- in them always 
 conscious, for the greater part of the sins of the Church have 
 been brought on it by enthusiasm which, in passionate con- 
 templation and advocacy of parts of the Scripture easily 
 grasped, neglected the study, and at last betrayed the bal- 
 ance, of the rest. What forms and methods of self-will are 
 concerned in the wresting of the Scriptures to a man’s de- 
 struction, is for the keepers of consciences to examine, not for 
 us. The history we have to learn must be wholly cleared of such 
 debate, and the influence of the Bible watched exclusively on 
 the persons who receive the Word with joy, and obey it in truth. 
 
 * Ibid. , II. 283. His expression ‘ £ the most learned and most wealthy ,f 
 should be remembered in confirmation of the evermore recurring fact 
 of Christianity, that minds modest in attainment, and lives careless of 
 gain, are fittest for the reception of every constant, — i.e. not local or ac^ 
 cidental, — Christian principle. 
 
as4 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US , > 
 
 42. There has, however, been always a farther difficulty in 
 examining the power of the Bible, than that of distinguishing 
 honest from dishonest readers. The hold of Christianity on 
 the souls of men must be examined, when we come to close 
 dealing with it, under these three several heads : there is first, 
 the power of the Cross itself, and of the theory of salvation, 
 upon the heart, — then, the operation of the Jewish and Greek 
 Scriptures on the intellect, — then, the influence on morals of 
 the teaching and example of the living' hierarchy. And in the 
 comparison of men as they are and as they might have been, 
 there are these three questions to be separately kept in mind, 
 — first, what would have been the temper of Europe without 
 the charity and labour meant by ‘bearing the Cross’ ; then, 
 secondly, what would the intellect of Europe have become 
 without Biblical literature ; and lastly, what would the social 
 order of Europe have become without its hierarchy. 
 
 43. You see I have connected the -words ‘ charity ’ and 
 ‘labour’ under the general term of ‘bearing the cross.’ “If 
 any man -will come after me, let him deny himself, (for charity) 
 and take up his eross (of pain) and follow me.” 
 
 The idea has been exactly reversed by modem Protestant- 
 ism, which sees, in the cross, not a furca to which it is to be 
 nailed ; but a raft on which it, and all its valuable properties,^ 
 are to be floated into Paradise. 
 
 44. Only, therefore, in days when the Cross was received 
 with courage, the Scripture searched with honesty, and the 
 Pastor heard in faith, can the pure word of God, and the 
 bright sword of the Spirit, be recognised in the heart and 
 hand of Christianity. The effect of Biblical poetry and legend 
 on its intellect, must be traced farther, through decadent ages, 
 and in unfenced fields; — producing ‘Paradise Lost’ for us, 
 no less than the ‘ Divina Commedia ’ ; — Goethe’s ‘ Faust,’ and 
 Byron’s ‘Cain,’ no less than the ‘Imitatio Christi.’ 
 
 45. Much more, must the scholar, who would comprehend 
 in any degree approaching to completeness, the influence of 
 
 * Quite one of the most curious colours of modern Evangelical thought 
 is its pleasing connection of Gospel truth with the extension of lucrative 
 commerce ! See farther the note at p. 88. 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 355 
 
 the Bible on mankind, be able to read the interpretations of 
 it which rose into the great arts of Europe at their culmina- 
 tion. In every province of Christendom, according to the 
 degree of art-power it possessed, a series of illustrations of 
 the Bible were produced as time went on ; beginning with 
 vignetted illustrations of manuscript, advancing into life-size 
 sculpture, and concluding in perfect power of realistic paint- 
 ing. These teachings and preachings of the Church, by means 
 of art, are not only a most important part of the general 
 Apostolic Acts of Christianity ; but their study is a necessary 
 part of Biblical scholarship, so that no man can in any large 
 sense understand the Bible itself until he has learned also to 
 read these national commentaries upon it, and been made 
 aware of their collective weight. The Protestant reader, who 
 most imagines himself independent in his thought, and pri- 
 vate in his stud} 7 , of Scripture, is nevertheless usually at the 
 mercy of the nearest preacher who has a pleasant voice and 
 ingenious fancy ; receiving from him thankfully, and often 
 reverently, whatever interpretation of texts the agreeable 
 voice or ready wit may recommend : while, in the meantime, 
 he remains entirely ignorant of, and if left to his own will, 
 invariably destroys as injurious, the deeply meditated inter- 
 pretations of Scripture which, in their matter, have been 
 sanctioned by the consent of all the Christian Church for a 
 thousand years ; and in their treatment, have been exalted by 
 the trained skill and inspired imagination of the noblest souls 
 ever enclosed in mortal clay. 
 
 46. There are few of the fathers of the Christian Church 
 whose commentaries on the Bible, or personal theories of its 
 gospel, have not been, to the constant exultation of the ene- 
 mies of the Church, fretted and disgraced by angers of con- 
 troversy, or weakened and distracted by irreconcilable heresy. 
 On the contrary, the scriptural teaching, through their art, of 
 such men as Orcagna, Giotto, Angelico, Luca della Robbia, 
 and Luini, is, literally, free from all earthly taint of momen- 
 tary passion ; its patience, meekness, and quietness are inca- 
 pable of error through either fear or anger ; they are able, 
 without offence, to say all that they wish , they are bound by 
 
356 
 
 * l OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US” 
 
 tradition into a brotherhood which represents unperverted 
 doctrines by unchanging scenes ; and they are compelled by 
 the nature of their work to a deliberation and order of method 
 which result in the purest state and frankest use of all intel- 
 lectual power. 
 
 47. I may at once, and without need of returning to this 
 question, illustrate the difference in dignity and safety be- 
 tween the mental actions of literature and art, by referring 
 to a passage, otherwise beautifully illustrative of St. Jerome’s 
 sweetness and simplicity of character, though quoted, in the 
 place where we find it, with no such favouring intention, — 
 namely, in the pretty letter of Queen Sophie Charlotte, (father’s 
 mother of Frederick the Great,) to the Jesuit Yota, given in 
 part by Carlyle in his first volume, ch. iv. 
 
 “ ‘ How can St. Jerome, for example, be a key to Scripture ? ’ 
 she insinuates ; citing from Jerome this remarkable avowal of 
 his method of composing books ; — especially of his method in 
 that book, Commentary on the Galatians, where he accuses both 
 Peter and Paul of simulation, and even of hypocrisy. The 
 great St. Augustine has been charging him with this sad fact, 
 (says her Majesty, who gives chapter and verse,) and Jerome 
 answers, * I followed the commentaries of Origen, of ’ — five 
 or six different persons, who turned out mostly to be heretics 
 before Jerome had quite done with them, in coming years, 
 4 And to confess the honest truth to you,’ continues Jerome, 
 c I read all that, and after having crammed my head with a 
 great many things, I sent for my amanuensis, and dictated to 
 him, now my own thoughts, now those of others, without 
 much recollecting the order, nor sometimes the words, nor 
 even the sense’ ! In another place, (in the book itself further 
 on *) he says, 4 1 do not myself write ; I have an amanuensis, 
 and I dictate to him what comes into my mouth. If I wish 
 to reflect a little, or to say the thing better, or a better thing, 
 he knits his brows, and the whole look of him tells me suf- 
 ficiently that he cannot endure to wait.’ Here is a sacred old 
 gentleman whom it is not safe to depend upon for interpreting 
 the Scriptures, — thinks her Majesty, but does not say so,-~ 
 * 4 Commentary on the Galatians,’ Chap. iii. 
 
TEE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 357 
 
 leaving Father Yota to his reflections.” Alas, no, Queen 
 Sophie, neither old St. Jerome’s, nor any other human lips 
 nor mind, may be depended upon in that function ; but only 
 the Eternal Sophia, the Power of God and the Wisdom of 
 God : yet this you may see of your old interpreter, that he 
 is wholly open, iunocent, and true, and that, through such a 
 person, whether forgetful of his author, or hurried by his 
 scribe, it is more than probable you may hear what Heaven 
 knows to be best for you ; and extremely improbable you 
 should take the least harm, — while by a careful and cunning 
 master in the literary art, reticent of his doubts, and dexterous 
 in his sayings, any number of prejudices or errors might be 
 proposed to you acceptably, or even fastened in you fatally, 
 though all the while you were not the least required to con- 
 fide in his inspiration. 
 
 48. For indeed, the only confidence, and the only safety 
 w hich in such matters we can either hold or hope, are in our 
 own desire to be rightly guided, and willingness to follow r in 
 simplicity the guidance granted. But all our conceptions and 
 reasonings on the subject of inspiration have been disordered 
 by our habit, first of distinguishing falsely — or at least need- 
 lessly — between inspiration of words and of acts ; and sec- 
 ondly by our attribution of inspired strength or wisdom to 
 some persons or some writers only, instead of to the whole 
 body of believers, in so far as they are partakers of the Grace 
 of Christ, the Love of God, and the Fellowship of the Holy 
 Ghost. In the degree in which every Christian receives, or re- 
 fuses, the several gifts expressed by that general benediction, 
 he enters or is cast out from the inheritance of the saints,— in 
 the exact degree in which he denies the Christ, angers the 
 Father, and grieves the Holy Spirit, he becomes uninspired 
 or unholy, — and in the measure in which he trusts Christ, 
 obeys the Father, and consents with the Spirit, he becomes 
 inspired in feeling, act, word, and reception of word, accord- 
 ing to the capacities of his nature. He is not gifted with 
 higher ability, nor called into new offices, but enabled to 
 use his granted natural powers, in their appointed place, 
 to the best purpose. A child is inspired as a child, and 
 
358 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US” 
 
 a maiden as a maiden ; the weak, even in their weakness, 
 and the wise, only in their hour. 
 
 That is the simply determinable theory of the inspiration 
 of all true members of the Church ; its truth can only be 
 known by proving it in trial : but I believe there is no record 
 of any man’s having tried and declared it vain.* 
 
 49. Beyond this theory of general inspiration, there is that 
 
 * Compare the closing paragraph in p. 45 of 1 The Shrine of the Slaves * 
 Strangely, as I revise this page for press, a slip is sent me from ‘ The 
 Christian’ newspaper, in which the comment of the orthodox evangeli- 
 cal editor may he hereafter representative to us of the heresy of his 
 sect ; in its last audacity, actually opposing the power of the Spirit to 
 the work of Christ. (I only wish I had been at Matlock, and heard the 
 kind physician’s sermon.) 
 
 “An interesting and somewhat unusual sight was seen in Derbyshire 
 oil Saturday last— two old-fashioned Friends, dressed in the original 
 garb of the Quakers, preaching on the roadside to a large and attentive 
 audience in Matlock. One of them, who is a doctor in good practice in 
 the county, by name Dr. Charles A. Fox, made a powerful and effect- 
 ive appeal to his audience to see to it that each one was living in obedi- 
 ence to the light of the Holy Spirit within. Christ within was the hope 
 of glory, and it was as He was followed in the ministry of the Spirit 
 that we were saved by Him, who became thus to each the author and 
 finisher of faith. He cautioned his hearers against building their house 
 on the sand by believing in the free and easy Gospel so commonly 
 preached to the wayside hearers, as if we were saved by ‘ believing ’ 
 this or that. Nothing short of the work of the Holy Ghost in the soul 
 of each one could save us, and to preach anything short of this was 
 simply to delude the simple and unwary in the most terrible form. 
 
 “ [It would be unfair to criticise an address from so brief an abstract, 
 but we must express our conviction that the obedience of Christ unto 
 death, the death of the Cross, rather than the woi’k of the Spirit in us, 
 is the good tidings for sinful men. — Ed.] ” 
 
 In juxtaposition with this editoral piece of modern British press 
 theology, I will simply place the 4th, 6th, and 13th verses of Homans 
 viii., italicising the expressions which are of deepest import, and al- 
 ways neglected. “That the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled 
 in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. . . . For to be 
 carnally minded , is death, but to be spiritually minded, is life, and 
 peace. . . . For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die ; but if ye 
 through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” 
 
 It would be well for Christendom if the Baptismal service explained 
 what it professes to abjure. 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 359 
 
 of especial call and command, with actual dictation of the 
 deeds to be done or words to be said. I will enter at present 
 into no examination of the evidences of such separating influ- 
 ence ; it is not claimed by the Fathers of the Church, either for 
 themselves, or even for the entire body of the Sacred writers, 
 but only ascribed to certain passages dictated at certain times 
 for special needs : and there is no possibility of attaching 
 the idea of infallible truth to any form of human language in 
 which even these exceptional passages have been delivered 
 to us. Bat this is demonstrably true of the entire volume of 
 them, as we have it, and read, — each of us as it may be ren- 
 dered in his native tongue ; that, however mingled with mys- 
 tery which we are not required to unravel, or difficulties which 
 we should be insolent in desiring to solve, it contains plain 
 teaching for men of every rank of soul and state in life, which 
 so far as they honestly and implicitly obey, they will be happy 
 and innocent to the utmost powers of their nature, and capa- 
 ble of victory over all adversities, whether of temptation or 
 pain. 
 
 50. Indeed, the Psalter alone, which practically was the 
 service book of the Church for many ages, contains merely in 
 the first half of it the sum of personal and social wisdom. 
 The 1st, 8th, 12th, 14th, 15th, 19th, 23rd, and 24th psalms, 
 well learned and believed, are enough for all personal guid- 
 ance ; the 48th, 72nd, and 75th, have in them the law and 
 the prophecy of all righteous government ; and ever} 7 real tri- 
 umph of natural science is anticipated in the 104th. 
 
 51 For the contents of the entire volume, consider what 
 other group of historic and didactic literature has a range 
 comparable with it. There are — 
 
 L The stories of the Fall and of the Flood, the grandest 
 human traditions founded on a true horror of sin. 
 
 II. The story of the Patriarchs, of which the effective truth 
 is visible to this day in the polity of the Jewish and Arab 
 races. 
 
 III. The story of Moses, with the results of that tradition 
 in the moral law of all the civilized world. 
 
 IV. The story of the Kings — virtually that of all Kingkood, 
 
360 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US. 
 
 in David, and of all Philosoph}', in Solomon : culminating in 
 the Psalms and Proverbs, with the still more close and prac- 
 tical wisdom of Ecclesiasticus and the Son of Sirach. 
 
 V. The story of the Prophets —virtually that of the deepest 
 mystery, tragedy, and permanent fate, of national existence. 
 
 VI. The story of Christ. 
 
 VII. The moral law of St. John, and his closing Apocalypse 
 of its fulfilment. 
 
 Think, if you can match that table of contents in any other 
 — I do not say ‘book ’ but ‘ literature.’ Think, so far as it is 
 possible for any of us — either adversary or defender of the 
 faith — to extricate his intelligence from the habit and the 
 association of moral sentiment based upon the Bible, what 
 literature could have taken its place, or fulfilled its function, 
 though every library in the world had remained unravaged, 
 and every teacher’s truest words had been written down? 
 
 52. I am no despiser of profane literature. So far from it, 
 that I believe no interpretations of Greek religion have ever 
 been so affectionate, none of Roman religion so reverent, as 
 those which will be found at the base of my art teaching, and 
 current through the entire body of my works. But it was 
 from the Bible that I learned the symbols of Homer, and the 
 faith of Horace : the duty enforced upon me in early youth 
 of reading every word of the gospels and prophecies as if 
 written by the hand of God, gave me the habit of awed atten- 
 tion which afterwards made many passages of the profane 
 writers, frivolous to an irreligious reader, deeply grave to me. 
 How far my mind has been paralysed by the faults and sorrow 
 of life, — how far short its knowledge may be of what 1 might 
 have known, had I more faithfully walked in the light I had, 
 is beyond my conjecture or confession : but as I never wrote 
 for my own pleasure or self-proclaiming, I have been guarded, 
 as men who so write always will be, from errors dangerous to 
 others ; and the fragmentary expressions of feeling or state- 
 ments of doctrine, which from time to time I have been able 
 to give, will be found now by an attentive reader to bind 
 themselves together into a general system of interpretation 
 of Sacred literature, — both classic and Christian, which will 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 3G1 
 
 enable him without injustice to sympathize in the faiths of 
 candid and generous souls, of every age and every clime. 
 
 53. That there is a Sacred classic literature, running parallel 
 with that of the Hebrews, and coalescing iu the symbolic 
 legends of medissval Christendom, is shown in the most ten- 
 der and impressive way by the independent, yet similar, in- 
 fluence of Virgil upon Dante, and upon Bishop Gawaine 
 Douglas. At earlier dates, the teaching of every master 
 trained in the Eastern schools was necessarily grafted on the 
 wisdom of the Greek mythology ; and thus the story of the 
 Nemean Lion, with the aid of Athena in its conquest, is the 
 real root-stock of the legend of St. Jerome’s companion, con- 
 queried by the healing gentleness of the Spirit of Life. 
 
 54. I call it a legend only. Whether Heracles ever slew, or 
 St. Jerome ever cherished, the wild or wounded creature, is 
 of no moment to us in learning what the Greeks meant by 
 their vase-outlines of the great contest, or the Christian 
 painters by their fond insistance on the constancy of the 
 Lion-friend. Former tradition, in the story of Samson, — of 
 the disobedient Prophet, — of David’s first inspired victory, 
 and finally of the miracle wrought in the defence of the most 
 favoured and most faithful of the greater Prophets, runs al- 
 ways parallel in symbolism with the Dorian fable : but the 
 legend of St. Jerome takes up the prophecy of the Millen- 
 nium, and foretells, with the Cumsean Sibyl, and with. Isaiah, 
 a day when the Fear of Man shall be laid in benediction, not 
 enmity, on inferior beings, — when they shall not hurt nor 
 destroy in all the holy Mountain, and the Peace of the Earth 
 shall be as far removed from its present sorrow, as the present 
 gloriously animate universe from the nascent desert, whose 
 deeps were the place of dragons, and its mountains, domes 
 of fire. 
 
 Of that day knoweth no man ; but the Kingdom of God is 
 already come to those who have tamed in their own hearts 
 what w r as rampant of the lower nature, and have learned to 
 cherish what is lovely and human, in the wandering children 
 of the clouds and fields. 
 
 Avallon, 28 th August , 1882. 
 
362 
 
 64 OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD VS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 1. It is the admitted privilege of a eustode who loves his 
 cathedral to depreciate, in its comparison, all the other cathe- 
 drals of his country that resemble, and all the edifices on the 
 globe that differ from it. But I love too many cathedrals — - 
 though I have never had the happiness of becoming the cus- 
 tode of even one — to permit myself the easy and faithful ex- 
 ercise of the privilege in question ; and I must vindicate my 
 candour, and my judgment, in the outset, by confessing that 
 the cathedral of Amiens has nothing to boast of in the way of 
 towers, — that its central fleche is merely the pretty caprice of 
 a village carpenter, — that the total structure is in dignity in- 
 ferior to Chartres, in sublimity to Beauvais, in decorative 
 splendour to Rheims, and in loveliness of figure-sculpture to 
 Bourges. It has nothing like the artful pointing and mould- 
 ing of the arcades of Salisbury — nothing of the might of Dur- 
 ham ; — no Daedalian inlaying like Florence, no glow of mythic 
 fantasy like Verona. And yet, in all, and more than these, 
 ways, outshone or overpowered, the cathedral of Amiens de- 
 serves the name given it by M. Viollet le Due — 
 
 “ The Parthenon of Gothic Architecture.” * 
 
 2. Of Gothic, mind you ; Gothic clear of Roman tradition, 
 and of Arabian taint ; Gothic pure, authoritative, unsurpass- 
 able, and unaccusable ; its proper principles of structure being 
 once understood and admitted. 
 
 No well-educated traveller is now without some conscious- 
 ness of the meaning of what is commonly and rightly called 
 44 purity of style,” in the modes of art which have been prac- 
 tised by civilized nations ; and few are unaware of the dis- 
 tinctive aims and character of Gothic. The purpose of a good 
 
 * Of French Architecture, accurately, in the place quoted, “Diction- 
 ary of Architecture,” vol. i. p. 71 ; but in the article “ Cathedrale,” it 
 is called (vol. ii. p. 330) “ IMglise ogivale par excellence.” 
 
TEE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 Gothic builder was to raise, with the native stone of the place 
 he had to build in, an edifice as high and as spacious as he 
 could, with calculable and visible security, in no protracted 
 and wearisome time, and with no monstrous or oppressive 
 compulsion of human labour. 
 
 He did not wish to exhaust in the pride of a single city the 
 energies of a generation, or the resources of a kingdom ; he 
 built for Amiens with the strength and the exchequer of 
 Amiens ; with chalk from the cliffs of the Somme,* and under 
 the orders of two successive bishops, one of whom directed 
 the foundations of the edifice, and the other gave thanks in it 
 for its completion. His object, as a designer, in common 
 with all the sacred builders of his time in the North, was to 
 admit as much light into the building as was consistent with 
 the comfort of it ; to make its structure intelligibly admirable, 
 but not curious or confusing ; and to enrich and enforce the 
 understood structure with ornament sufficient for its beauty, 
 yet yielding to no wanton enthusiasm in expenditure, nor in- 
 solent in giddy or selfish ostentation of skill ; and finally, to 
 make the external sculpture of its walls and gates at once an 
 alphabet and epitome of the religion, by the knowledge and 
 inspiration of which an acceptable worship might be rendered, 
 within those gates, to the Lord whose Fear was in His Holy 
 Temple, and whose seat was in Heaven. 
 
 3. It is not easy for the citizen of the modern aggregate of 
 bad building, and ill-living held in check by constables, which 
 ice call a town, — of which the widest streets are devoted by 
 
 * It was a universal principle witli the French builders of the great 
 ages to use the stones of their quarries as they lay in the bed ; if the 
 beds were thick, the stones were used of their full thickness — if thin, 
 of their necessary thinness, adjusting them with beautiful care to direc- 
 tions of thrust and weight. The natural blocks were never sawn, only 
 squared into fitting, the whole native strength and crystallization of the 
 stone being thus kept unflawed — “ ne declouUant jamais une pierre, 
 Cette methode est excell elite, elle conserve a, la pierre toute sa force 
 naturelle, — tous ses moyens de resistance.” See M. Violist le Due, 
 Article “Construction” (Materiaux), vol. iv. p. 129. He adds the 
 very notable fact that, to this day } in seventy departments of France , the. 
 use of the stone-mo is unknown. 
 
364 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US. 
 
 consent to the encouragement of vice, ancl the narrow ones ta 
 the concealment of misery, — not easy, I say, for the citizen of 
 any such mean city to understand the feeling of a burgher of 
 the Christian ages to his cathedral. For him, the quite simply 
 and frankly-believed text, “ Where two or three are gathered 
 in My name, there am I in the midst of them,” was expanded 
 into the wider promise to many honest and industrious per- 
 sons gathered in His name — “ They shall be my people and I 
 will be their God ; ” — deepened in his reading of it, by some 
 lovely local and simply affectionate faith that Christ, as he was 
 a Jew among Jews, and a Galilean among Galileans, was also, 
 in his nearness to any — even the poorest — group of disciples, 
 as one of their nation ; and that their own “ Beau Christ 
 d’ Amiens ” was as true a compatriot to them as if He had been 
 born of a Picard maiden. 
 
 4. It is to be remembered, however — and this is a theologi- 
 cal point on which depended much of the structural develop- 
 ment of the northern basilicas — that the part of the building 
 in which the Divine presence was believed to be constant, as 
 in the Jewish Holy of Holies, was only the enclosed choir ; 
 in front of which the aisles and transepts might become the 
 King’s Hall of Justice, as in the presence-chamber of Christ ; 
 and whose high altar was guarded always from the surround- 
 ing eastern aisles by a screen of the most finished workman- 
 ship ; while from those surrounding aisles branched off a 
 series of radiating chapels or cells, each dedicated to some 
 separate saint. This conception of the company of Christ 
 with His saints, (the eastern chapel of all being the Virgin’s,) 
 was at the root of the entire disposition of the apse with its 
 supporting and dividing buttresses and piers ; and the archi- 
 tectural form can never be well delighted in, unless in some 
 sympathy with the spiritual imagination out of which it rose. 
 We talk foolishly and feebly of symbols and types : in old 
 Christian architecture, every part is literal : the cathedral is 
 for its builders the House of God ; — it is surrounded, like an 
 earthly king’s, with minor lodgings for the servants ; and the 
 glorious carvings of the exterior walls and interior wood of 
 the choir, which an English rector would almost instinctively 
 
TIIE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 365 
 
 thick of as done for the glorification of the canons, was indeed 
 the Amienois carpenter’s way of making his Master-carpenter 
 comfortable,* — nor less of showing his own native and insu* 
 perable virtue of carpenter, before God and man. 
 
 5. Whatever you wish to see, or are forced to leave unseen, 
 at Amiens, if the overwhelming responsibilities of your exist- 
 ence, and the inevitable necessities of precipitate locomotion 
 in their fulfilment, have left you so much as one quarter of 
 an hour, not out of breath — for the contemplation of the 
 capital of Picardy, give it wholly to the cathedral choir. Aisles 
 and porches, lancet windows and roses, you can see elsewhere 
 as well as here — but such carpenter’s work, you cannot. It 
 is late, — fully developed flamboyant just past the fifteenth 
 century — and has some Flemish stolidity mixed with the 
 playing French fire of it ; but wood-carving was the Picard’s 
 joy from his youth up, and, so far as I know, there is nothing 
 else so beautiful cut out of the goodly trees of the world. 
 
 Sweet and young-grained wood it is : oak, trained and 
 chosen for such work, sound now as four hundred years since. 
 Under the carver’s hand it seems to cut like clay, to fold like 
 silk, to grow like living branches, to leap like living flame. 
 Canopy crowning canopy, pinnacle piercing pinnacle — it shoots 
 and wreaths itself into an enchanted glade, inextricable, im- 
 perishable, fuller of leafage than any forest, and fuller of 
 story than any book. 4 - 
 
 * The philosophic reader is quite welcome to ‘detect’ and ‘expose’ 
 as many carnal motives as he pleases, besides the good ones, — competi- 
 tion with neighbour Beauvais — comfort to sleepy heads — solace to fat. 
 sides, and the like. He will find at last that no quantity of competition 
 or comfort seeking will do anything the like of this carving now; — still 
 less his own philosophy, whatever its species : and that it was indeed 
 the little mustard-seed of faith in the heart, with a very notable quan- 
 tity of honesty besides in the habit and disposition, that made all the 
 rest grow together for good. 
 
 f Arnold Boulin, master-joiner (menuisier) at Amiens, solicited the 
 enterprise, and obtained it in the first months of the year 1508. A con- 
 tract was drawn and an agreement made with him for the construction 
 of one hundred and twenty stalls with historical subjects, high back- 
 ings, crownings and pyramidal canopies. It was agreed that the principal 
 
366 
 
 " OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US." 
 
 6. I Lave never been able to make up my mind which was 
 really the best way of approaching the cathedral for the first 
 time. If you have plenty of leisure and the day is fine, and 
 you are not afraid of an hour’s walk, the really right thing to 
 do is to walk down the main street of the old town, and across 
 
 executor should have seven sons of Tournay (a little less than the sou of 
 France) a day, for himself and his apprentice, (threepence a day the 
 two — say a shilling a week the master, and sixpence a week the man,) 
 and for the superintendence of the whole work, twelve crowns a year, 
 at the rate of twenty-four sous the crown ; (i i.e ., twelve shillings a year). 
 The salary of the simple workman was only to be three sous a day. 
 For the sculptures and histories of the seats, the bargain was made 
 separately with Antoine Avernier, image-cutter, residing at Amiens, at 
 the rate of thirty -two sous (sixteen pence) the piece. Most of the wood 
 came from Clermont en Beauvoisis, near Amiens ; the finest, for the 
 bas-reliefs, from Holland, by St. Valery and Abbeville. The Chapter 
 appointed four of its own members to superintend the work : Jean Du- 
 mas, Jean Fabres, Pierre Vuaille, and Jean Lenglaclie, to whom my 
 authors (canons both) attribute the choice of subjects, the placing of 
 them, and the initiation of the workmen ‘ au sens veritable et plus 
 eleve de la Bible ou des legendes, et portant quelque fois ie simple 
 savoir-faire de Pouvrier jusqu’a la hauteur du genie du theologien.’ 
 
 Without pretending to apportion the credit of savoir-faire and theol- 
 ogy in the business, we have only to observe that the whole company, 
 master, apprentices, workmen, image-cutter, and four canons, got well 
 into traces, and set to work on the 3rd of July, 1508, in the great hall 
 of the evecbe, which was to be the workshop and studio during the 
 whole time of the business. In the following year, another menuisier, 
 Alexander Huet, was associated with the body, to carry on the stalls on 
 the right hand of the choir, while Arnold Boulin went on with those 
 on the left. Arnold, leaving his new associate in command for a time, 
 went to Beauvais and St. Biquier, to see the woodwork there ; and in 
 July of 1511 both the masters went to Rouen together, ‘pour etudier 
 les chaires de la cathedrale.’ The year before, also, two Franciscans, 
 monks of Abbeville, ‘ expert and renowned in working in wood,’ had 
 been called by the Amiens chapter to give their opinion on things in 
 progress, and had each twenty sous for his opinion, and travelling ex- 
 penses. 
 
 In 1516, another and an important name appears on the accounts,— 
 that of Jean Trupin, ‘ a simple workman at the wages of three sous a 
 day,’ but doubtless a good and spirited carver, whose true portrait it is 
 without doubt, and by his own hand, that forms the elbow-rest of the 
 85th stall (right baud, nearest apse), beneath which is cut his name 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 367 
 
 the river, and quite out to the chalk hill * out of which the 
 citadel is half quarried — half walled ; — and walk to the top of 
 that, and look down into the citadel’s dry * ditch,’ — or, more 
 truly, dry valley of death, which is about as deep as a glen in 
 Derbyshire, (or, more precisely, the upper part of the ‘ Happy 
 Valley ’ at Oxford, above Lower Hincksey,) and thence across 
 to the cathedral and ascending slopes of the city ; so, you will 
 
 JHAN TRUPIN, and again under tlie 92nd stall, with the added wish, 
 4 Jan Trupin, God take care of thee ’ ( Dieu te pourvoie). 
 
 The entire work was ended on St. John’s Day, 1522, without (so far 
 as we hear) any manner of interruption by dissension, death, dishonesty, 
 or incapacity, among its fellow-workmen, master or servant. And the 
 accounts being audited by four members of the Chapter, it was found 
 that the total expense was 9,488 livres, 11 sous, and 3 obols (decimes), 
 or 474 napoleons, 11 sous, 3 decimes of modern French money, or 
 roughly four hundred sterling English pounds. 
 
 For which sum, you perceive, a company of probably six or eight 
 good workmen, old and young, had been kept merry and busy for 
 fourteen years ; and this that you see — left for substantial result and 
 gift to you. 
 
 I have not examined the carvings so as to assign, with any decision, 
 the several masters’ work; but in general the flower and leaf design in 
 the traceries will be by the two head menuisiers, and their apprentices • 
 the elaborate Scripture histories by Avernier, with variously completing 
 incidental grotesque by Trupin ; and the joining and fitting by the com- 
 mon workmen. No nails are used, — all is morticed, and so beautifully 
 that the joints have not moved to this day, and are still almost imper- 
 ceptible. The four terminal pyramids ‘ you might take for giant pines 
 forgotten for six centuries on the soil where the church was built ; they 
 might be looked on at first as a wild luxury of sculpture and hollow 
 traceries — but examined in analysis they are marvels of order and sys- 
 tem in construction, uniting all the lightness, strength, and grace of the 
 most renowned spires in the last epoch of the Middle ages.’ 
 
 The above particulars are all extracted — or simply translated, out of 
 the excellent description of the “Stalles et les Clotures du Choeur'’ of 
 the Cathedral of Amiens, by MM. les Chanoines Jourdain et Duval 
 (Amiens Yv. Alfred Caron, 1867). The accompanying lithographic out- 
 lines are exceedingly good, and the reader will find the entire series of 
 subjects indicated with precision and brevity, both for the woodwork 
 and the external veil of the choir, of which 1 have no room to speak in 
 this traveller’s summary. 
 
 * The strongest and finally to be defended part of the earliest city 
 was on this height. 
 
868 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US . ” 
 
 understand tlie real height and relation of tower and town : — ■ 
 then, returning, find your way to the Mount Zion of it by 
 any narrow cross streets and chance bridges you can — the 
 more winding and dirty the streets, the better ; and whether 
 you come first on west front or apse, you will think them 
 worth all the trouble you have had to reach them. 
 
 7. But if the day be dismal, as it may sometimes be, even 
 in France, of late years, — or if you cannot or will not walk, 
 which may also chance, for all our athletics and lawn-tennis, 
 — or if you must really go to Paris this afternoon, and only 
 mean to see all you can in an hour or two, — then, supposing 
 that, notwithstanding these weaknesses, you are still a nice 
 sort of person, for whom it is of some consequence which way 
 you come at a pretty thing, or begin to look at it — I thirds 
 the best way is to walk from the Hotel de France or the 
 Place de Perigord, up the Street of Three Pebbles, towards 
 the railway station — stopping a little as you go, so as to get 
 into a cheerful temper, and buying some bonbons or tarts for 
 the children in one of the charming patissiers’ shops on the 
 left. Just pass them, ask for the theatre ; and just past that, 
 you will find, also on the left, three open arches, through which 
 you can turn, passing the Palais de Justice, and go straight 
 up to the south transept, which has really something about it 
 to please everybody. It is simple and severe at the bottom, 
 and daintily traceried and pinnacled at the top, and yet seems 
 all of a piece — though it isn’t — and everybody must like the 
 taper and transparent fretwork of the fleche above, which 
 seems to bend to the west wind, — though it doesn’t — at least, 
 the bending is a long habit, gradually yielded into, with gain- 
 ing grace and submissiveness, during the last three hundred 
 years. And, coming quite up to the porch, everybody must 
 like the pretty French Madonna in the middle of it, with her 
 head a little aside, and her nimbus switched a little aside too, 
 like a becoming bonnet. A Madonna in decadence she is, 
 though, for all, or rather by reason of all, her prettiness, and 
 her gay soubrette’s smile ; and she has no business there, 
 neither, for ibis is St. Honore’s porch, not hers ; and grim and 
 grey St. Honore used to stand there to receive you, — he is 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 369 
 
 banished now to the north porch, where nobody ever goes in. 
 This was done long ago, in the fourteenth-century days, when 
 the people first began to find Christianity too serious, and de- 
 vised a merrier faith for France, and would have bright- 
 glancing, soubrette Madonnas everywhere — letting their own 
 dark-eyed Joan of Arc be burnt for a witch. And thencefor- 
 ward, things went their merry way, straight on, 4 9a allait, 9a 
 ira,’ to the merriest days of the guillotine. 
 
 But they could still carve, in the fourteenth century, and 
 the Madonna and her hawthorn-blossom lintel are worth your 
 looking at, — much more the field above, of sculpture as deli- 
 cate and more calm, which tells St. Honore’s own story, little 
 talked of now in his Parisian faubourg. 
 
 8. I will not keep you just now to tell St. Honore’s story — - 
 (only too glad to leave you a little curious about it, if it were 
 possible) * — for certainly you will be impatient to go into the 
 church ; and cannot enter it to better advantage than by this 
 door. For all cathedrals of any mark have nearly the same 
 effect when you enter at the west door ; but I know no other 
 wdiicli shows so much of its nobleness from the south interior 
 transept ; the opposite rose being of exquisite fineness in tra- 
 cery, and lovely in lustre ; and the shafts of the transept aisles 
 forming wonderful groups with those of the choir and nave ; 
 also, the apse shows its height better, as it opens to you when 
 you advance from the transept into the mid-nave, than when 
 it is seen at once from the west end of the nave ; where it is 
 just possible for an irreverent person rather to think the nave 
 narrow, than the apse high. Therefore, if you let me guide 
 you, go in at this south transept door, (and put a sou into 
 every beggar’s box who asks it there, — it is none of your busi- 
 ness whether they should be there or not, nor whether they 
 deserve to have the sou, — be sure only that you yourself de- 
 serve to have it to give ; and give it prettily, and not as if it 
 burnt your fingers). Then, being once inside, take what first 
 sensation and general glimpse of it pleases you — promising 
 the custode to come back to see it properly ; (only then, mind 
 
 *See, however, pages 32 and 130 (§§ 36, 112-114) of the octavo edi- 
 tion of ‘The Two Paths,’ 
 
370 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US" 
 
 you keep the promise), and in this first quarter of an hour, 
 seeing only what fancy bid you — but at least, as I said, the 
 apse from mid-nave, and all the traverses of the building, from 
 its centre. Then you will know, when you go outside again, 
 what the architect "was working for, and what his buttresses 
 and traceries mean. For the outside of a French cathedral, 
 except for its sculpture, is always to be thought of as the 
 wrong side of the stuff, in which you find how the threads go 
 that produce the inside or right-side pattern. And if you 
 have no wonder in you for that choir and its encompassing 
 circlet of light, when you look up into it from the cross-cen- 
 tre, you need not travel farther in search of cathedrals, for 
 the waiting-room of any station is a better place for you ; — 
 but, if it amaze you and delight you at first, then, the more 
 you know of it, the more it will amaze. For it is not possible 
 for imagination and mathematics together, to do anything 
 nobler or stronger than that procession of window, with ma- 
 terial of glass and stone — nor anything which shall look loftier, 
 with so temperate and prudent measure of actual loftiness. 
 
 9. From the pavement to the keystone of its vault is but 
 132 French feet — about 150 English. Think only — you who 
 have been in Switzerland, — the Staubbacli fails nine hundred ! 
 Nay, Dover cliff under the castle, just at the end of the Ma- 
 rine Parade, is twice as high ; and the little cockneys parad- 
 ing to military polka on the asphalt below, think themselves 
 about as tall as it, I suppose, — nay, what with their little 
 lodgings and stodgings and podgings about it, they have 
 managed to make it look no bigger than a moderate-sized 
 limekiln. Yet it is twice the height of Amiens’ apse ! — and 
 it takes good building, with only such bits of chalk as one 
 can quarry beside Somme, to make your work stand half that 
 height, for six hundred years. 
 
 10. It takes good building, I say, and you may even aver 
 the best — that ever was, or is again likely for many a day to 
 be, on the unquaking and fruitful earth, where one could cal- 
 culate on a pillar’s standing fast, once well set up ; and where 
 aisles of aspen, and orchards of apple, and clusters of vine, 
 gave type of what might be most beautifully made sacred in 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 371 
 
 the constancy of sculptured stone. From the unhewn block 
 set on end in the Druid’s Bethel, to this Lord’s House and 
 blue-vitrailed gate of Heaven, you have the entire course and 
 consummation of the Northern Religious Builder’s passion 
 and art. 
 
 11. But, note further — and earnestly, — this apse of Amiens 
 is not only the best, but the very first thing done perfectly in 
 its manner, by Northern Christendom. In pages 323 and 
 327 of the sixth volume of M. Vioilet le Due, you will find 
 the exact history of the development of these traceries through 
 which the eastern light shines on you as you stand, from the 
 less perfect and tentative forms of Rheims : and so momentary 
 was the culmination of the exact rightness, that here, from 
 nave to transept — built only ten years later, — there is a little 
 change, not towards decline, but to a not quite necessary pre- 
 cision. Where decline begins, one cannot, among the lovely 
 fantasies that succeeded, exactly say — -but exactly, and indis- 
 putably, we know that this apse of Amiens is the first virgin 
 perfect work, — Parthenon also in that sense, — of Gothic Archi- 
 tecture. 
 
 12. Who built it, shall we ask? God, and Man, — is the 
 first and most true answer. The stars in their courses built 
 it, and the Nations. Greek Athena labours here — and Roman 
 Father Jove, and Guardian Mars. The Gaul labours here, 
 and the Frank : knightly Norman, — mighty Ostrogoth, — and 
 'wasted anchorite of Idumea. 
 
 The actual Man who built it scarcely cared to tell you he 
 did so ; nor do the historians brag of him. Any quantity of 
 heraldries of knaves and faineants you may find in what they 
 call their ‘ history ’ : but this is probably the first time you 
 ever read the name of Robert of Luzarches. I say he 
 1 scarcely cared ’ — we are not sure that he cared at all. He 
 signed, his name nowhere, that I can hear of. You may per- 
 haps find some recent initials cut by English remarkable visit- 
 ors desirous of immortality, here and there about the edifice, 
 but Robert the builder — or at least the Master of building, 
 cut his on no stone of it. Only when, after his death, the 
 
372 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US.” 
 
 headstone had been brought forth with shouting, Grace unto 
 it, this following legend was written, recording all who had 
 part or lot in the labour, within the middle of the labyrinth 
 then inlaid in the pavement of the nave. You must read it 
 trippingly on the tongue : it was rhymed gaily for you by 
 pure French gaiety, not the least like that of the Theatre de 
 Folies. 
 
 “ En l’an de Grace mil deux cent 
 Et vingt, fu l’ceuvre de cheens 
 Premierement encomenchie. 
 
 A done y ert de clieste evesquie 
 Evrart, eveque benis ; 
 
 Et, Roy de France, Loys 
 
 Qui fut tils Phelippe le Sage. 
 
 Qui maistre y ert de 1’ oeuvre 
 Maistre Robert estoit nomes 
 Et de Luzarclies surnomes. 
 
 Maistre Thomas fu aprks lui 
 De Cormont. Et apres, son filz 
 Maistre Regnault, qui mestre 
 Fist a chest point chi clieste lectre 
 Que l’incarnation valoit 
 Treize cent, moins douze, en faloit.” 
 
 13. I have written the numerals in letters, else the metre 
 would not have come clear ; they were really in figures, thus, 
 “n c. et xx,” xiii c. moins xn.” I quote the inscription from 
 M. l’Abbe Roze’s admirable little book, “Visite a la Catlie- 
 drale d’Amiens,” — Sup. Lib. de Mgr. 1’Eveque d’Amiens, 
 1877, — which every grateful traveller should buy, for I’m 
 only going to steal a little bit of it here and there. I only 
 wish there had been a translation of the legend to steal, too ; 
 for there are one or two points, both of idea and chronology, 
 in it, that I should have liked the Abbe’s opinion of. 
 
 The main purport of the rhyme, however, we perceive to 
 be, line for line, as follows : — 
 
 “ In the year of Grace, Twelve Hundred 
 And twenty, the work, then falling to ruin, 
 
 Was first begun again. 
 
 Then was, of this Bishopric 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 070 
 
 *J i o 
 
 Everard the blessed Bishop. 
 
 And King of France, Louis, 
 
 Who was son to Philip the Wise. 
 
 He who was Master of the Work 
 Was called Master Robert, 
 
 And called, beyond that, of Luzarches. 
 
 Master Thomas was after him, 
 
 Of Cormont. And after him, his son, 
 
 Master Reginald, who to be put 
 Made — at this point— this reading. 
 
 When the Incarnation was of account 
 
 Thirteen hundred less twelve, which it failed of.” 
 
 In which legend, while yon stand where once it was written 
 (it was removed — to make the old pavement more polite — in 
 the year, I sorrowfully observe, of my own earliest tour on 
 the Continent, 1825, when I had not yet turned my attention 
 to Ecclesiastical Architecture), these points are noticeable — if 
 you have still a little patience. 
 
 14. 4 The w r ork ’ — i.e., the Work of Amiens in especial, her 
 cathedral, was ‘decheant,’ falling to ruin for the — I cannot at 
 once say — fourth, fifth, or what time, — in the year 1220. For 
 it was a wonderfully difficult matter for little Amiens to get 
 this piece of business fairly done, so hard did the Devil pull 
 against her. She built her first Bishop's church (scarcely 
 more than St. Firmin’s tomb-chapel) about the year 850, just 
 outside the railway station on the road to Paris ; * then, 
 after being nearly herself destroyed, chapel and all, by 
 the Frank invasion, having recovered, and converted her 
 Franks, she built another and a properly called cathedral, 
 where this one stands now, under Bishop St. Save, (St. Sauve, 
 or Salve). But even this proper cathedral was only of wood, 
 and the Normans burnt it in 881. Rebuilt, it stood for 200 
 years ; but was in great part destroyed by lightning in 1019. 
 Rebuilt again, it and the town were more or less burnt to- 
 gether by lightning, in 1107, — my authority says calmly “ un 
 incendie provoque par la meme cause detruisit la mile et une 
 
 * At St. Acheul. See the first chapter of this book, and the “Descrip- 
 tion Historique de la CathMrale d’Amiens,’’ by A. P. M. Gilbert, 8vo, 
 Amiens, 1833, pp. 5-7. 
 
374 
 
 4i OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD USD 
 
 partie de la cathedrale.” The ‘ partie ’ being rebuilt once 
 more, the whole was again reduced to ashes, “reduite en 
 cendre par le feu de ciel en 1218, ainsi que tous les titres, 
 les martyrologies, les calendriers, et les Archives de l’Evecho 
 et du Chapitre.” 
 
 15. It was the fifth cathedral, I count, then, that lay in 
 ‘ashes,’ according to Mons. Gilbert— in ruin certainly — dr- 
 cheant; — and ruin of a very discouraging completeness it 
 would have been, to less lively townspeople — in 1218. But it 
 was rather of a stimulating completeness to Bishop Everard 
 and his people — the ground well cleared for them, as it 
 were ; and lightning (feu de l’enfer, not du ciel, recognized 
 for a diabolic plague, as in Egypt), w r as to be defied to the 
 pit. They only took two years, you see, to pull themselves 
 together ; and to work they went, in 1220, they, and their 
 bishop, and their king, and their Bobert of Luzarches. And 
 this, that roofs you, was what their hands found to do with 
 their might. 
 
 16. Their king was ‘a-donc,’ ‘at that time,’ Louis Yffl., 
 who is especially further called the son of Philip of August, 
 or Philip the Wise, because his father was not dead in 
 1220 ; but must have resigned the practical kingdom to his 
 son, as his own father had done to him ; the old and wise king 
 retiring to his chamber, and thence silently guiding his son’s 
 hands, very gloriously, yet for three years. 
 
 But, farther — and this is the point on which chiefly I 
 would have desired the Abbe’s judgment — Louis VIII. died 
 of fever at Montpensier in 1226. And the entire conduct of 
 the main labour of the cathedral, and the chief glory of its 
 service, as we shall hear presently, was Saint Louis’s ; for a 
 time of forty-four years. And the inscription was put “k ce 
 point ci” by the last architect, six years after St. Louis’s 
 death. How is it that the great and holy king is not named ? 
 
 17. I must not, in this traveller’s brief, lose time in con- 
 jectural answers to the questions which every step here will 
 raise from the ravaged shrine. But this is a very solemn one • 
 and must be kept in our hearts, till we may perhaps get clue 
 to it. One thing only we are sure of, — that at least the due 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 375 
 
 honour — alike by the sons of Kings and sons of Craftsmen — 
 is given always to their fathers ; and that apparently the chief 
 honour of all is given here to Philip the Wise. From whose 
 house, not of parliament but of peace, came, in the years when 
 this temple was first in building, an edict indeed of peace- 
 making : “ That it should be criminal for any man to take 
 vengeance for an insult or injury till forty days after the com- 
 mission of the offence — and then only with the approbation 
 of the Bishop of the Diocese.” Which was perhaps a wiser 
 effort to end the Feudal system in its Saxon sense,* than any 
 of our recent projects for ending it in the Norman one. 
 
 18. “A ce point ci.” The point, namely, of the labyrinth 
 inlaid in the Cathedral floor ; a recognized emblem of many 
 things to the people, who knew that the ground they stood on 
 was holy, as the roof over their head. Chiefly, to them, it was 
 an emblem of noble human life, strait-gated, narrow-walled, 
 with infinite darknesses and the “ inextricabilis error ” on either 
 hand — and in the depth of it, the brutal nature to be con- 
 quered. 
 
 19. This meaning, from the proudest heroic, and purest 
 legislative, days of Greece, the symbol had borne for all men 
 skilled in her traditions : to the schools of craftsmen the sign 
 meant further their craft’s noblesse, and pure descent from the 
 divinely-terrestrial skill of Daedalus, the labyrinth-builder, 
 and the first sculptor of imagery pathetic f with human life 
 and death. 
 
 20. Quite the most beautiful sign of the power of time 
 Christian-Catholic faith is this continual acknowledgment by 
 
 * Feud, Saxon faedh, low Latin Faida (Scottish ‘ fae,’ English ‘foe,* 
 derivative), Johnson. Remember also that the root of Feud, in its Nor- 
 man sense of land-allotment, is foL not fee, which Johnson, old Tory as 
 he was, did not observe — neither in general does the modern Antifeu- 
 dalist. 
 
 t “Tu quoque, magnam 
 
 Partem opere in tanto, sineret dolor, Icare, haberes, 
 
 Bis conatus erat casus effingere in auro, — 
 
 Bis patrise cecidere manus.” 
 
 There is, advisedly, no pathos allowed in primary sculpture, Its heroes 
 conquer without exultation, and die without sorrow. 
 
376 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD VST 
 
 it of the brotherhood — nay, more, the fatherhood, of the eldei 
 nations who had not seen Christ ; but had been filled with the 
 Spirit of God ; and obeyed, according to their knowledge, His 
 unwritten law. The pure charity and humility of this temper 
 are seen in all Christian art, according to its strength and 
 purity of race ; but best, to the full, seen and interpreted by 
 the three great Christian -Heathen poets, Dante, Douglas of 
 Dunkeld,* and George Chapman. The prayer with which the 
 last ends his life’s work is, so far as I know, the perfectest and 
 deepest expression of Natural Religion given us in literature ; 
 and if you can, pray it here — standing on the spot where the 
 builder once wrote the history of the Parthenon of Christian- 
 ity. 
 
 21. “ I pray thee, Lord, the father, and the Guide of our 
 reason, that we may remember the nobleness with which Thou 
 hast adorned us ; and that Thou would’st be always on our 
 right hand and on our left,f in the motion of our own Wills: 
 that so w r e may be purged from the contagion of the Body 
 and the Affections of the Brute, and overcome them and rule ; 
 and use, as it becomes men to use them, ’for instruments. And 
 then, that Thou would’st be in Fellowship with us for the 
 careful correction of our reason, and for its conjunction by 
 the light of truth with the things that truly are. 
 
 “ And in the third place, I pray to Thee the Saviour, that 
 Thou would’st utterly cleanse av T ay the closing gloom from 
 the eyes of our souls, that we may know well who is to be 
 held for God, and who for Mortal. Amen.” £ 
 
 * See ‘Fors Clavigera,’ Letter LXI., vol. iii. p. 110. 
 
 f Thus, the command to the children of Israel “that they go for- 
 ward ” is to their own wills. They obeying, the sea retreats, but not be- 
 fore they dare to advance into it. Then , the waters are a wall unto them, 
 on their right hand and their left. 
 
 \ The original is written in Latin only. “ Supplico tibi, Domine, 
 Pater et Dux rationis nostrae, ut nostrae Nobilitatis recordemur, qua tu 
 nos ornasti : et ut tu nobis presto sis, ut iis qui per sese moventur; ut et 
 a Corporis contagio, Brutorumque affectuum repurgemur, eosque supere- 
 nius, atque regamus; et, sicut decet, pro instrumentis iis utamur. Deinte, 
 ut nobis adjuncto sis; ad accuratam rationis nostrae correctionem, et 
 eonjunctionem cum iis qui verc sunt, per lucern veritatis. Et tertium, 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 377 
 
 22. And having prayed this prayer, or at least, read it with 
 honest wishing, (which if you cannot, there is no hope of your 
 at present taking pleasure in any human work of large faculty, 
 whether poetry, painting, or sculpture,) we may walk a little 
 farther westwards down the nave, where, in the middle of it, 
 but only a few yards from its end, two flat stones (the custode 
 will show you them), one a little farther back than the other, 
 are laid over the graves of the two great bishops, all whose 
 strength of life was given, with the builder’s, to raise this 
 temple. Their actual graves have not been disturbed ; but 
 the tombs raised over them, once and again removed, are now 
 set on your right and left hand as you look back to the apse, 
 under the third arch between the nave and aisles. 
 
 23. Both are of bronze, cast at one flow — and with insu- 
 perable, in some respects inimitable, skill in the caster’s art. 
 
 “ Chef-d’ceuvres de fonte, — le tout fondu d’un seul jet, et 
 admirablement.” * There are only two other such tombs left 
 in France, those of the children of St. Louis. All others of 
 their kind — and they were many in every great cathedral of 
 France — were first torn from the graves they covered, to de- 
 stroy the memory of France’s dead ; and then melted down 
 into sous and centimes, to buy gunpowder and absinthe with 
 for her living, — by the Progressive Mind of Civilization in 
 her first blaze of enthusiasm and new light, from 1789 to 
 1800. 
 
 The children’s tombs, one on each side of the altar of St. 
 Denis, are much smaller than these, though wrought more 
 beautifully. These beside you are the only two Bronze tombs 
 of her Men of the great ages , left in France ! 
 
 Salvatori supplex oro, ut ab oculis animorum nostrorum caliginem 
 prorsus abstergas ; ut norimus bene, qui Deus, aut Mortalis habendus. 
 Amen.’’ 
 
 * Viollet le Due, vol. viii , p. 256. He adds: “ L’une d’elles est 
 eomme art ” (meaning general art of sculpture), “un monument du 
 premier ordre ; ” but this is only partially true — also I find a note in M. 
 Gilbert’s account of them, p. 126: “Lesdeux doigts qui manquent, a 
 la main droite de l’4veque Gaudefroi paraissent etre un defaut survenu 
 a la fonte.” See further, on these monuments, and those of St. Louis’ 
 children, Viollet le Due, vol. ix. , pp. 61, 62. 
 
378 
 
 “067? FATHERS HAVE TOLD US. 
 
 24. And they are the tombs of the pastors of her people, 
 who built for her the first perfect temple to her God. The 
 Bishop Everard’s is on your right, and has engraved round 
 the border of it this inscription : *■ — 
 
 “ Who fed the people, who laid the foundations of this 
 Structure, to whose care the City was given, 
 
 Here, in ever-breathing balm of fame, rests Everard. 
 
 A man compassionate to the afflicted, the widow’s protector, the or- 
 phan's 
 
 Guardian. Whom he could, he recreated with gifts. 
 
 To words of men, 
 
 If gentle, a lamb ; if violent, a lion ; if proud, biting steel.” 
 
 * I steal again from the Abbe Roze the two inscriptions, — with his 
 introductory notice of the evilly-inspired interference with them. 
 
 “La tombe d’Evrard de Fouilloy, (died 1222), coulee en bronze en 
 plein-relief, etait supportee des le principe, par des monstres engages 
 dans une mac^onnerie remplissant le dessous du monument, pour indi- 
 quer que cet eveque avait pose les fondements de la Catliedrale. Un 
 architecte malheureusement inspire a os 6 arracher la mayonnerie, pour 
 qu’on ne vit plus la main du prelat fondateur, a la base de 1 edifice. 
 
 “ On lit, sur la bordure, l’inscription suivante en beaux caracteresdu 
 XIII* siccle : 
 
 “ 4 Qui populum pavit, qui fundameta locavit 
 Huius structure, cuius fuit urbs data euro 
 Hie rcdolens nardus, 1'amii requiescit E ward us, 
 
 Vir pius ahfiictis, vidvis tuteia, relictis 
 Custos, quos poterat recreabat munere ; vbis, 
 
 Mitib agnus erat, tumidis leo, lima supbis.’ 
 
 “Geofiroy d’Eu (died 1237) est represente comme son predecesseur 
 en habits episcopaux, mais le dessous du bronze supporte par des 
 eliimeres est evide, ce prelat ayant eleve l’edifice jusqu'aux vofites. 
 Voici la legende gravee sur la bordure : 
 
 “ ‘Ecce premunt huniile Gaufridi membra cubile. 
 
 Seu minus aut simile nobis parat omnibus ille ; 
 
 Quern laurus gemina decoi averat, in medicina 
 Lege qu divina, decueruet cornua bina , 
 
 Clare vir Augensis, quo sedes Ambianensis 
 Crevit in imensis ; in cceliR auctus, Amen, sis.’ 
 
 Tout est a etudier dans ces deux monuments ; tout y est d’un haut in- 
 teret, quant au dessin, a la sculpture, a l’agencement des ornements et 
 des draperies.” 
 
 In saying above that Geoff roy of Eu returned thanks in the Cathedral 
 for its completion, I meant only that he had brought at least the choir 
 into condition for service : “ Jusqu’aux vofites ” may or may not mean 
 that the vaulting was closed. 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 379 
 
 English, at its best, in Elizabethan days, is a nobler lan- 
 guage then ever Latin was ; but its virtue is in colour and 
 tone, not in what may be called metallic or crystalline con- 
 densation. And it is impossible to translate the last line of 
 this inscription in as few English words. Note in it first 
 that the Bishop’s friends and enemies are spoken of as in 
 word, not act ; because the swelling, or mocking, or flatter- 
 ing, words of men are indeed what the meek of the earth 
 must know how to bear and to welcome ; — their deeds, it is 
 for kings and knights to deal with : not but that the Bishops 
 often took deeds in hand also ; and in actual battle they were 
 permitted to strike with the mace, but not with sword or 
 lance — i.e., not to “ shed blood” ! For it was supposed that 
 a man might always recover from a mace-blow ; (which, how- 
 ever, would much depend on the bishop’s mind who gave it). 
 The battle of Bouvines, quite one of the most important in 
 mediaeval history, was won against the English, and against 
 odds besides of Germans, under their Emperor Otho, by two 
 French bishops (Senlis and Bayeux) — who both generalled 
 the French King’s line, and led its charges. Our Earl of Salis- 
 bury surrendered to the Bishop of Bayeux in person. 
 
 25. Note farther, that quite one of the deadliest and most 
 diabolic powers of evil words, or, rightly so called, blasphemy, 
 has been developed in modern days in the effect of some- 
 times quite innocently meant and enjoyed ‘slang.’ There are 
 two kinds of slang, in the essence of it : one ‘ Thieves’ Latin * 
 —the special language of rascals, used for concealment ; the 
 other, one might perhaps best call Louts’ Latin ! — the lower- 
 ing or insulting words invented by vile persons to bring good 
 things, in their own estimates, to their own level, or beneath 
 it. The really worst power of this kind of blasphemy is in its 
 often making it impossible to use plain words without a de- 
 grading or ludicrous attached sense : — thus I could not end 
 my translation of this epitaph, as the old Latinist could, with 
 the exactly accurate image : “to the proud, a file ” — because 
 of the abuse of the word in lower English, retaining, 
 however, quite shrewdly, the thirteenth-century idea. But 
 the exact force of the symbol here is in its allusion to 
 
380 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US” 
 
 jewellers’ work, filing down facets. A proud man is often 
 also a precious one : and may be made brighter in surface, 
 and the purity of his inner self shown, by good filing. 
 
 26. Take it all in all, the perfect duty of a Bishop is ex- 
 pressed in these six Latin lines,— au mieuxmieux — beginning 
 with his pastoral office— Feed my sheep— qui pavit populum. 
 And be assured, good reader, these ages never could have told 
 you what a Bishop’s, or any other man’s, duty was, unless 
 they had each man in his place both done it well- — and seen it 
 well done. The Bishop Geoflroy’s tomb is on your left, and 
 its inscription is : 
 
 1 1 Behold, the limbs of Godfrey press their lowly bed, 
 
 Whether He is preparing for us all one less than, or like it. 
 
 Whom the twin laurels adorned, in medicine 
 And in divine law, the dual crests became him. 
 
 Bright-shining man of Eu, by whom the throne of Amiens 
 Rose into immensity, be thou increased in Heaven.’’ 
 
 Amen. 
 
 And now at last — this reverence done and thanks paid — we 
 will turn from these tombs, and go out at one of the western 
 doors — and so see gradually rising above us the immensity of 
 the three porches, and of the thoughts engraved in them. 
 
 27. What disgrace or change has come upon them, I will 
 not tell you to-day — except only the ‘ immeasurable ’ loss of 
 the great old foundation-steps, open, sweeping broad from side 
 to side for all who came ; unwalled, undivided, sunned all 
 along by the westering day, lighted only by the moon and 
 the stars at night ; falling steep and many down the hillside 
 — ceasing one by one, at last wide and few towards the level 
 — and worn by pilgrim feet, for six hundred years. So I once 
 saw them, and twice, — such things can now be never seen - 
 more. 
 
 Nor even of the west front itself, above, is much of the old 
 masonry left : but in the porches, nearly all, — except the actual 
 outside facing, with its rose moulding, of which only a few 
 flowers have been spared here and there.* But the sculpture 
 
 * The horizontal lowest part of the moulding between the northern 
 and central porch is old Compare its roses with the new oues running 
 round the arches above and you will know what ‘ Restoration means. 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS . 
 
 381 
 
 lias been carefully and honourably kept and restored to its 
 place — pedestals or niches restored here and there with clay ; 
 or some which you see white and crude, re-carved entirely ; 
 nevertheless the impression you may receive from the whole is 
 still what the builder meant ; and I will tell you the order of 
 its theology without further notices of its decay. 
 
 28. You will find it always well, in looking at any cathedral, 
 to make your quarters of the compass sure, in the beginning ; 
 and to remember that, as you enter it, you are looking and 
 advancing eastward ; and that if it has three entrance porches, 
 that on your left in entering is the northern, that on your 
 right the southern. I shall endeavour in all my future writ- 
 ing of architecture, to observe the simple law of always calling 
 the door of the north transept the north door ; and that on 
 the same side of the west front, the northern door, and so of 
 their opposites. This will save, in the end, much printing 
 and much confusion, for a Gothic cathedral has, almost always, 
 these five great entrances ; which may be easily, if at first at- 
 tentively, recognized under the titles of the Central door (or 
 porch), the Northern door, the Southern door, North door, 
 and the South door. 
 
 But when we use the terms right and left, we ought always 
 to use them as in going vut of the cathedral, or walking down 
 the nave, — the entire north side and aisles of the building being 
 its right side, and the south, its left, — these terms being only 
 used well and authoritatively, when they have reference either 
 to the image of Christ in the apse or on the rood, or else to the 
 central statue, whether of Christ, the Virgin, or a saint, in the 
 west front. At Amiens, this central statue, on the ‘ trumeau 5 or 
 supporting and dividing pillar of the central porch, is of Christ 
 Immanuel, — God with us. On His right hand and His left, 
 occupying the entire walls of the central porch, are the apostles 
 and the four greater prophets. The twelve minor prophets 
 stand side by side on the front, three on each of its great piers.* 
 
 The northern porch is dedicated to St. Firmin, the first 
 Christian missionary to Amiens. 
 
 The southern porch, to the Virgin. 
 
 * See now the plan at the end of this chapter 
 
382 
 
 11 OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US." 
 
 Bito these are both treated as withdrawn behind the great 
 foundation of Christ and the Prophets ; and their narrow re- 
 cesses partly conceal their sculpture, until you enter them. 
 What you have first to think of, and read, is the scripture of 
 the great central porch, and the fayade itself. 
 
 29. You have then in the centre of the front, the image of 
 Christ Himself, receiving you : “lam the Way, the truth and 
 the life. ” And the order of the attendant powers may be best 
 understood by thinking of them as placed on Christ’s right 
 and left hand : this being also the order which the builder 
 adopts in his Scripture history on the fa£ade — so that it is to 
 be read from left to right — i.e. from Christ’s left to Christ’s 
 right, as He sees it. Thus, therefore, following the order of 
 the great statues : first in the central porch, there are six 
 apostles on Christ’s right hand, and six on His left. On His 
 left hand, next Him, Peter ; then in receding order, Andrew, 
 James, John, Matthew, Simon ; on His right hand, next Him, 
 Paul; and in receding order, James the Bishop, Philip, Bar- 
 tholomew, Thomas, and Jude. These opposite ranks of the 
 Apostles occupy what may be called the apse or curved bay 
 of the porch, and form a nearly semicircular group, clearly 
 visible as we approach. But on the sides of the porch, out- 
 side the lines of apostles, and not .seen clearly till we enter 
 the porch, are the four greater prophets. On Christ’s left, 
 Isaiah and Jeremiah, on His right, Ezekiel and Daniel. 
 
 80. Then in front, along the whole fagade — read in order 
 from Christ’s left to His right — come the series of the twelve 
 minor prophets, three to each of the four piers of the temple, 
 beginning at the south angle with Hosea, and ending with 
 Malachi. 
 
 As you look full at the fayade in front, the statues which 
 fill the minor porches are either obscured in their narrower 
 recesses or withdrawn behind each other so as to be unseen. 
 And the entire mass of the front is seen, literally, as built on 
 the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ 
 Himself being the chief corner-stone. Literally that ; for the 
 receding Porch is a deep 4 angulus,’ and its mid-pillar is the 
 ‘Head of the Corner.’ . 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS . 
 
 383 
 
 Built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, that 
 is to say of the Prophets who foretold Christ, and the Apostles 
 who declared Him. Though Moses was an Apostle, of God, 
 he is not here — though Elijah was a Prophet, of God, he is 
 not here. The voice of the entire building is that of the 
 Heaven at the Transfiguration, 44 This is my beloved Son, hear 
 ye Him.” 
 
 31. There is yet another and a greater prophet still, who, 
 as it seems at first, is not here. Shall the people enter the 
 gates of the temple, singing 44 Hosanna to the Son of David ” ; 
 and see no image of His father, then ? — Christ Himself de- 
 clare “I am the root and the offspring of David ” ; and yet 
 the Root have no sign near it of its Earth ? 
 
 Not so. David and his son are together. David is the 
 pedestal of the Christ. 
 
 32. We will begin our examination of the Temple front, 
 therefore, with this its goodly pedestal stone. The statue of 
 David is only two-thirds life-size, occupying the niche in front 
 of the pedestal He holds his sceptre in his right hand, the 
 scroll in his left. King and Prophet, type of all Divinely 
 right doing, and right claiming, and right proclaiming, king- 
 hood, for ever. 
 
 The pedestal of which this statue forms the fronting or 
 western sculpture, is square, and on the two sides of it are tw r o 
 dowers in vases, on its north side the lily, and on its south the 
 rose. And the entire monolith is one of the noblest pieces of 
 Christian sculpture in the world. 
 
 Above this pedestal comes a minor one, bearing in front of 
 it a tendril of vine which completes the floral symbolism of 
 the whole. The plant which I have called a lily is not the 
 Eleur de Lys, nor the Madonna’s, but an ideal one with bells 
 like the crown Imperial (Shakespeare’s type of 4 lilies of all 
 kinds ’), representing the mode of growth of the lily of the 
 valley, which could not be sculptured so large in its literal 
 form without appearing monstrous, and is exactly expressed 
 in this tablet — as it fulfils, together with the rose and vine, 
 its companions, the triple saying of Christ, 44 1 am the Rose of 
 Sharon, and the Lily of the Valley.” 44 1 am the true Vine.” 
 
3S4 
 
 “ OITR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US. 
 
 33. On the side of the upper stone are supporters of a dif- 
 ferent character. Supporters, not captives nor victims ; the 
 Cockatrice and Adder. ^Representing the most active evil 
 principles of the earth, as in their utmost malignity ; still, 
 Pedestals of Christ, and even in their deadly life, accomplish- 
 ing His final will. 
 
 Both creatures are represented accurately in the mediaeval 
 traditional form, the cockatrice half dragon, half cock ; the 
 deaf adder laying one ear against the ground and stopping 
 the other with her tail. 
 
 The first represents the infidelity of Pride. The cockatrice 
 — king serpent or highest serpent — saying that he is God, 
 and ivill be God. 
 
 The second, the infidelity of Death. The adder (nieder or 
 nether snake) saying that he is mud, and will be mud. 
 
 34. Lastly, and above all, set under the feet of the statue 
 of Christ Himself, are the lion and dragon ; the images of 
 Carnal sin, or Human sin, as distinguished from the Spiritual 
 and Intellectual sin of Pride, by which the angels also fell. 
 
 To desire kingship rather than servantship — the Cocka- 
 trice’s sin, or deaf Death rather than hearkening Life — the 
 Adder’s sin, — these are both possible to all the intelligences 
 of the universe. But the distinctively Human sins, anger and 
 lust, seeds in our race of their perpetual sorrow — Christ in 
 His own humanity, conquered ; and conquers in His disciples. 
 Therefore his foot is on the heads of these ; and the prophecy, 
 “ Xneulcabis super Leonem et Aspidem,” is recognized always 
 as fulfilled in Him, and in all His true servants, according to 
 the height of their authority, and the truth of their power. 
 
 35. In this mystic sense, Alexander HI. used the words, in 
 restoring peace to Italy, and giving forgiveness to her deadli- 
 est enemy, under the porch of St. Mark’s.* But the meaning 
 of every act, as of every art, of the Christian ages, lost now 
 for three hundred years, cannot but be in our own times read 
 reversed, if at all, through the counter-spirit which we now 
 
 * See my abstract of the history of Barbarossa and Alexander, in 
 ‘Fiction, Fair and Foul,’ ‘ Nineteenth Century November, 1880, pp. 
 *?53 seq. 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS . 
 
 885 
 
 nave reached ; glorifying Pride and Avarice as the virtues by 
 which all things move and have their being — walking after 
 our own lusts as our sole guides to salvation, and foaming out 
 our own shame for the sole earthly product of our hands and 
 lips. 
 
 36. Of the statue of Christ, itself, I will not speak here at 
 any length, as no sculpture would satisfy, or ought to satisfy, 
 the hope of any loving soul that has learned to trust in Him ; 
 but at the time, it was beyond what till then had been 
 reached in sculptured tenderness ; and was known far and 
 near as the “Beau Dieu d’ Amiens. ” * Yet understood, ob- 
 serve, just as clearly to be no more than a symbol of the 
 Heavenly Presence, as the poor coiling worms below were no 
 more than symbols of the demoniac ones. No idol, in our 
 sense of the word — only a letter, or sign of the Living Spirit, 
 - — which, however, was indeed conceived by every worshipper 
 as here meeting him at the temple gate : the Word of Life, 
 the King of Glory, and the Lord of Hosts. 
 
 “ Dominus Virtutum,” “Lord of Virtues,” f is the best sin- 
 gle rendering of the idea conveyed to a well-taught disciple in 
 the thirteenth century by the words of the twenty-fourth 
 Psalm. 
 
 37. Under the feet of His apostles, therefore, in the quatre- 
 foil medallions of the foundation, are represented the virtues 
 which each Apostle taught, or in his life manifested ; — it may 
 have been, sore tried, and failing in the very strength of the 
 character whieh he afterwards perfected. Thus St. Peter 
 denying in fear, is afterwards the Apostle of courage ; and 
 St. John, who, with his brother, -would have burnt the inhospi- 
 
 * See account, and careful drawing of it, in Viollet le Due — article 
 “Christ,” Diet, of Architecture, iii. 245. 
 
 f See the circle of the Powers of the Heavens in the Byzantine 
 rendering. I. Wisdom ; II. Thrones ; III. Dominations ; IY. Angels ; 
 Y. Archangels ; YI. Virtues ; VII. Potentates ; VIII. Princes ; IX. Sera- 
 phim. In the Gregorian order, (Dante, Par. xxviii., Cary’s note,) the 
 Angels and Archangels are separated, giving altogether nine orders, but 
 not ranks. Note that in the Byzantine circle the cherubim are first, and 
 that it is the strength of the Virtues which calls on the dead to rise 
 (‘St. Mark’s Rest,’ p. 80, and pp. 132-133), 
 
386 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HA VE TOLU USE 
 
 table village, is afterwards the Apostle of love. Understanding 
 this, you see that in the sides of the porch, the apostles with 
 their special virtues stand thus in opposite ranks. 
 
 St. Paul, Faith. Courage, St. Peter. 
 
 St. James the Bishop, Hope. Patience, St. Andrew, i 
 
 I 
 
 St. Philip, Charity. Gentillesse, St. James. 
 
 St. Bartholomew, Chastity. Love, St. John. 
 
 St. Thomas, Wisdom. Obedience, St. Matthew. 
 
 St. Jude, Humility. Perseverance, St. Simon. 
 
 Now you see how these virtues answer to each other in 
 their opposite ranks. Remember the left-hand side is always 
 the first, and see how the left-hand virtues lead to the right 
 hand - 
 
 Courage 
 
 Patience 
 
 Gentillesse 
 
 Love 
 
 Obedience 
 
 Perseverance 
 
 to Faith, 
 to Hope, 
 to Charity, 
 to Chastity, 
 to Wisdom, 
 to Humility. 
 
 38. Note farther that the Apostles are all tranquil, nearly 
 all with books, some with crosses, but all with the same mes- 
 sage, — “ Peace be to this house. And if the Son of Peace be 
 there,” etc.* 
 
 But the Prophets — all seeking, or wistful, or tormented, or 
 wondering, or praying, except only Daniel. The most tor- 
 mented is Isaiah ; spiritually sawn asunder. No scene of his 
 martyrdom below, but his seeing the Lord in His temple, and 
 yet feeling he had unclean lips. Jeremiah also carries his 
 cross— but more serenely. 
 
 *The modern slang name for a priest, among the mob of France, is 
 & ‘Pax Yobiscum,’ or shortly, a Vobiscum. 
 
* 
 
 THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 387 
 
 39. And now, I give in clear succession, the order of the 
 statues of the whole front, with the subjects of the quatrefoils 
 beneath each of them, marking the upper quatrefoil a, the lower 
 b. The six prophets who stand at the angles of the porches, 
 Amos, Obadiah, Micah, Nahum, Zephaniah, and Haggai, have 
 each of them four quatrefoils, marked a and c the upper ones, 
 b and d the lower. 
 
 Beginning, then, on the left-hand side of the central porch, 
 and reading outwards, you have — 
 
 f • St. Peter. 
 
 a. Courage. 
 
 b. Cowardice. 
 
 St. Andrew. 
 
 a. Patience. 
 
 b. Anger. 
 
 3. St. James. 
 
 a. Gentillesse. 
 
 b. Churlishness. 
 
 4*. St. John. 
 
 a. Love. 
 
 b. Discord. 
 
 §i St. Matthew. 
 
 a. Obedience. 
 
 b. Rebellion. 
 
 © a St. Simon. 
 
 a. Perseverance. 
 
 b. xitheism. 
 
 Now, right-hand side of porch, reading outwards : 
 
 7. St. Paul. 
 
 a. Faith. 
 
 b. Idolatry. 
 
 8> St. James, Bishop. 
 
 a. Hope. 
 
 b. Despair. 
 
 9. St. Philip. 
 
 a. Charity. 
 
 3 . Avarice. 
 
388 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US.” 
 
 I O. St. Bartholomew. 
 
 a. Chastity. 
 
 b. Lust. 
 
 SI. St. Thomas. 
 
 a. Wisdom. 
 
 b. Folly. 
 
 1 2. St. Jude. 
 
 a. Humility. 
 
 b. Pride. 
 
 Now, left-hand side again — the two outermost statues : 
 S3. Isaiah. 
 
 a. “I saw the Lord sitting upon a 
 
 throne.” vi. L 
 
 b. “Lo, this hath touched thy lips.” ^ vi. 7, 
 
 I 4. Jeremiah. 
 
 a. The Burial of the Girdle. xiii. 4, 5. 
 
 b. The Breaking of the Yoke. xxviii. 10. 
 
 Bight-hand side : 
 i 5. Ezekiel. 
 
 a. Wheel within Wheel. i. 16. 
 
 b. “Son of man, set thy face toward 
 
 Jerusalem.” xxi. 2. 
 
 S 6. Daniel. 
 
 a. “ He hath shut the lions’ mouths.” vi. 22. 
 
 b. “ In the same hour came forth fin- 
 
 gers of a man’s hand.” v. *5. 
 
 40. Now, beginning on the left-hand side (southern side} 
 of the entire fagade, and reading it straight across, not turn- 
 ing into the porches at all except for the paired quatrefoils : 
 
 I 7 • Hosea. 
 
 A. 
 
 “ So I bought her to me with 
 
 
 
 fifteen pieces of silver.” 
 
 iii. 2. 
 
 B. 
 
 “ So will I also be for thee.” 
 
 iii. 3. 
 
 A. 
 
 The Sun and Moon lightless. 
 
 ii. 10. 
 
 B. 
 
 The Fig-tree and Vine leafless. 
 
 i. 7. 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 389 
 
 S 9. Amos. 
 
 To the 
 front 
 
 Inside ( 
 porch i 
 
 a. “ The Lord will cry from Zion.” 
 
 b. “The habitations of the shep- 
 
 herds shall mourn.” 
 
 c. The Lord with the mason’s line. 
 
 d. The place where it rained not. 
 
 20. Obadiah. 
 
 Inside j a. “I hid them in a cave.” 2 Kings 
 porch ( b. He fell on his face. 
 
 To the f c. The captain of fifty, 
 front \ d. The messenger. 
 
 2 1 . Jonah. 
 
 a. Escaped from the sea. 
 
 b. Under the gourd. 
 
 22. Micah. 
 
 To the (- JW_ Th e Tower of the Flock, 
 front 1 B * -^ ac ^ res tj and “none shall 
 v. make them afraid.” 
 
 Inside j c. Swords into ploughshares, 
 porch ( d. Spears into pruning-hooks. 
 
 28. Nahum. 
 
 Inside ( a. None shall look back, 
 porch ( b. The burden of Nineveh. 
 
 To the j c. Thy princes and thy great ones, 
 front ( d. Untimely figs. 
 
 24. Habakkuk. 
 
 a. “I will watch to see what 
 
 he will say.” 
 
 b. The ministry to Daniel. 
 
 25. Zephaniah. 
 
 To the j a. The Lord strikes Ethiopia, 
 front ( b. The Beasts in Nineveh. 
 
 Inside j c. The Lord visits Jerusalem, 
 porch ( r>. The Hedgehog and Bittern.* 
 
 i. 2. 
 
 i. 2. 
 vii. 8. 
 iv. 7. 
 
 xviii. 13. 
 xviii. 7. 
 
 iv. 8. 
 
 iv. 4 
 iv. 3. 
 iv. 3. 
 
 ii. 8. 
 i. 1. 
 iii. 17. 
 
 iii. 12. 
 
 ii. 1. 
 
 ii. 12. 
 ii. 15. 
 
 i. 12. 
 
 ii. 14. 
 
 * See tlie Septuagint version. 
 
390 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US” 
 
 26* Hag gai. 
 
 Inside 
 
 porch 
 
 To the 
 front 
 
 ( a. The houses of the princes, 
 
 -j ornees de lambris. 
 
 ( b. The heaven is stayed from dew. 
 
 ( c. The Lord’s temple desolate. 
 
 ( d. “ Thus saith the Lord of Hosts.” 
 
 i. 4 
 i. 10. 
 i. 4. 
 i. 7. 
 
 #27 B Zechariah. 
 
 a. The lifting up of iniquity. v. 6 — 9. 
 
 b. The angel that spake to me. iv. 1. 
 
 2# 9 Malachi. 
 
 a. “ Ye have wounded the Lord.” ii. 17. 
 
 b. This commandment is to you . ii. 1. 
 
 41. Having thus put the sequence of the statues and their 
 quatrefoils briefly before the spectator — (in case the railway 
 time presses, it may be a kindness to him to note that if he 
 walks from the east end of the cathedral down the street to 
 the south, Rue St. Denis, it takes him by the shortest line to 
 the station) — I will begin again with St. Peter, and interpret 
 the sculptures in the quatrefoils a little more fully. Keep- 
 ing the fixed numerals for indication of the statues, St. Peter’s 
 quartrefoils will be 1 a and 1 b, and Malachi’s 28 a. and 28 b. 
 fi 9 a. Courage, with a leopard on his shield ; the French and 
 English agreeing in the reading of that symbol, down 
 to the time of the Black Prince’s leopard coinage in 
 Aquitaine.* 
 
 t 9 b. Cowardice, a man frightened at an animal darting out 
 of a thicket, while a bird sings on. The coward has 
 not the heart of a thrush. 
 
 2; a. Patience, holding a shield with a bull on it (never giv- 
 ing back).f 
 
 * For a list of the photographs of the quatrefoils described in this 
 chapter, see the appendices at the end of this volume. 
 
 f In the cathedral of Laon there is a pretty compliment paid to the 
 oxen who carried the stones of its tower to the hill-top it stands on. 
 The tradition is that they harnessed themselves, — but tradition does not 
 gay how an ox can harness himself even if he had a mind. Probably 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS . . 
 
 391 
 
 2 , b. Anger, a woman stabbing a man with a sword. Anger 
 is essentially a feminine vice — a man, worth calling so, 
 may be driven to fury or insanity by indignation , 
 (compare the Black Prince at Limoges), but not by 
 anger. Fiendish enough often so— “ Incensed with 
 indignation, Satan stood, unterrified — ” but in that 
 last word is the difference, there is as much fear in 
 Anger, as there is in Hatred. 
 
 a. Gentillesse, bearing shield with a lamb. 
 
 3 f b. Churlishness, again a woman, kicking over her cup- 
 bearer. The final forms of ultimate French churlish- 
 ness being in the feminine gestures of the Cancan. 
 See the favourite prints in shops of Paris. 
 
 4 , a. Love ; the Divine, not human love : “ I in them, and 
 Thou in me.” Her shield bears a tree with many 
 branches grafted into its cut-off stem : “In those 
 days shall Messiah be cut off, but not for Himself.” 
 4 , b. Discord, a wife and husband quarrelling. She has 
 dropped her distaff (Amiens wool manufacture, see 
 farther on — 9, a.) 
 
 5 9 a. Obedience, bears shield with camel. Actually the 
 most disobedient and ill-tempered of all serviceable 
 beasts, — yet passing his life in the most painful ser- 
 vice. I do not know how far his character was under- 
 stood by the northern sculptor ; but I believe he is 
 taken as a type of burden-bearing, without joy or 
 sympathy, such as the horse has, and without power 
 of offence, such as the ox has. His bite is bad enough, 
 (see Mr. Palgrave’s account of him,) but presumably 
 little known of at Amiens, even by Crusaders, who 
 would always ride their own war-horses, or nothing. 
 
 b. Rebellion, a man snapping his fingers at his Bishop. 
 
 (As Henry the Eighth at the Pope, — and the modern 
 French and English cockney at all priests whatever.) 
 
 the first form of the story was only that they went joyfully, “ lowing as 
 they went.” But at all events their statues are carved on the height of 
 the tower, eight, colossal, looking from its galleries across the plains of 
 France. See drawing in V telle t le Due, under article “Clocher.” 
 
892 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOIJ) USE 
 
 6, a. Perseverance, the grandest spiritual form of the virtue 
 
 commonly called ‘Fortitude.’ Usually, overcom- 
 ing or tearing a lion ; here, caressing one, and hold - 
 ing her crown. “Hold fast that which thou hast, 
 that no man take thy crown.” 
 
 0, b. Atheism, leaving his shoes at the church door. The 
 infidel fool is always represented in twelfth and 
 thirteenth century MS. as barefoot — the Christian 
 having “his feet shod with the preparation of the 
 Gospel of Peace.” Compare “How beautiful are 
 thy feet with shoes, oh Prince’s Daughter ! ” 
 
 7, a. Faith, holding cup with cross above it, her accepted 
 
 symbol throughout ancient Europe. It is also an 
 enduring one, for, all differences of Church put 
 aside, the words, “ Except ye eat the flesh of the 
 Son of Man and Drink His blood, ye have no life 
 in you,” remain in their mystery, to be understood 
 only by those who have learned the sacredness of 
 food, in all times and places, and the laws of life 
 and spirit, dependent on its acceptance, refusal, 
 and distribution. 
 
 7, b. Idolatry, kneeling to a monster. The contrary of 
 Faith — not want of Faith. Idolatry is faith in the 
 wrong thing, and quite distinct from Faith in No 
 thing (6, b), the “Dixit Insipiens.” Very wise men 
 may be idolaters, but they cannot be atheists. 
 
 S, a. Hope, with Gonfalon Standard and distant crown ; as 
 opposed to the constant crown of Fortitude (6, a). 
 
 The Gonfalon (Gund, war, falir, standard, accord- 
 to Poitevin’s dictionary), is the pointed ensign of 
 forward battle ; essentially sacred ; hence the con- 
 stant name “ Gonfaloniere ” of the battle standard- 
 bearers of the Italian republics. 
 
 Hope has it, because she fights forward always to 
 her aim, or at least has the joy of seeing it draw 
 nearer. Faith and Fortitude wait, as St. John in 
 prison, but un offended. Hope is, however, put 
 under St. James, because of the 7th and 8th verses 
 
TIIE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 393 
 
 of his last chapter, ending “Stablish your hearts, 
 for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.” It is 
 he who examines Dante on the nature of Hope. 
 ‘Par.,’ c. xxv., and compare Cary’s notes. 
 
 S, b. Despair, stabbing herself. Suicide not thought heroic 
 or sentimental in the 13 th century ; and no Gothic 
 Morgue built beside Somme. 
 
 9, a. Charity, bearing shield with woolly ram, and giving 
 a mantle to a naked beggar. The old wool manu- 
 facture of Amiens having this notion of its purpose 
 — namely, to clothe the poor first, the rich after- 
 wards. No nonsense talked in those days about 
 the evil consequences, of indiscriminate charity. 
 
 9, b. Avarice, with coffer and money. The modern, alike 
 
 English and Amienois, notion of the Divine con- 
 summation of the wool manufacture. 
 
 1 0, a. Chastity, shield with the Phoenix.* 
 
 1 0, b. Lust, a too violent kiss. 
 
 S \ ? a. Wisdom : shield with, I think, an eatable root ; mean- 
 ing temperance, as the beginning of wisdom. 
 
 I I , b. Folly, the ordinary type used in all early Psalters, of 
 a glutton, armed with a club. Both this vice and 
 virtue are the earthly wisdom and folly, completing 
 the spiritual wisdom and folly opposite under St. 
 Matthew’. Temperance, the complement of Obedi- 
 ence, and Covetousness, with violence, that of 
 Atheism. 
 
 a. Humility, shield wdth dove. 
 
 I b. Pride, falling from his horse. 
 
 * For the sake of comparing the pollution, and reversal of its once 
 glorious religion, in the modern French mind, it is worth the reader's 
 while to ask at M. Goyer’s (Place St. Denis) for the ‘Journal de St. 
 Nicholas’ for 1880, and look at the ‘ Plienix,’ as drawn on p. 610. 
 The story is meant to he moral, and the Phoenix there represents Ava- 
 rice, but the entire destruction of all sacred and poetical tradition in a 
 child’s mind by such a picture is an immorality which would neutralize 
 a year’s preaching. To make it worth M. Goyer’s while to show you 
 the number, buy the one with ‘les conclusions de Jeanie ’ in it, p. 887 : 
 the church scene (with dialogue) in the text is.lovely. 
 
“ OUR FATHERS. HAVE TOLD US.” 
 
 394 
 
 42. All these quatrefoils are rather symbolic than represen-, 
 tative ; and, since their purpose was answered enough if their 
 sign was understood, they have been entrusted to a much in- 
 ferior workman than the one who carved the now sequent 
 series under the Prophets. Most of these subjects represent 
 an historical fact, or a scene spoken of by the prophet as a 
 real vision ; and they have in general been executed by the 
 ablest hands at the architect’s command. 
 
 With the interpretation of these, I have given again the 
 name of the prophet whose life or prophecy they illustrate. 
 
 t 3. Isaiah. 
 
 1 3, a. “I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne ” (vi. 1). 
 
 The vision of the throne “ high and lifted up * 
 between seraphim. 
 
 1 3, b. “ Lo, this hath touched thy lips ” (vi. 7). 
 
 The Angel stands before the prophet, and holds, 
 or rather held, the coal with tongs, which have 
 been finely undercut, but are now broken away, 
 only a fragment remaining in his hand. 
 
 I 4. Jeremiah. 
 
 \ 4, a. The burial of the girdle (xiii. 4, 5). 
 
 The prophet is digging by the shore of Eu- 
 phrates, represented by vertically winding furrows 
 down the middle of the tablet. Note, the transla- 
 tion should be “ hole in the ground,” not “ rock.” 
 I 4 f b. The breaking of the yoke (xxviii. 10). 
 
 From the prophet Jeremiah’s neck ; it is here 
 represented as a doubled and redoubled chain. 
 
 fi 5. Ezekiel. 
 
 SB, a. Wheel within wheel (i. 16). 
 
 The prophet sitting ; before him two wheels of 
 equal size, one involved in the ring of the other. 
 
 1 5, b. “ Son of man, set thy face toward Jerusalem ” (xxi. 2). 
 
 The prophet before the gate of Jerusalem. 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 395 
 
 I 0. Daniel. 
 
 1 0, a. “ He hath shut the lions’ mouths ” (vi. 22). 
 
 Daniel holding a book, the lions treated as her- 
 aldic supporters. The subject is given with more 
 animation farther on in the series (24 b). 
 
 16, b. “In the same hour came forth fingers of a Man’s 
 
 hand” (v. 5). 
 
 Belshazzar’s feast represented by the king alone, 
 seated at a small oblong table. Beside him the 
 youth Daniel, looking only fifteen or sixteen, grace- 
 ful and gentle, interprets. At the side of the qua- 
 trefoil, out of a small wreath of cloud, comes a 
 small bent hand, writing, as if with a pen upside 
 down on a piece of Gothic wall.* 
 
 For modern bombast as opposed to old simplic- 
 ity, compare the Belshazzar’s feast of John Martin ! 
 
 43. The next subject begins the series of the minor prophets. 
 
 8 7 . Hosea. 
 
 17, a. “ So I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver and 
 
 an homer of barley ” (iii. 2). 
 
 The prophet pouring the grain and the silver into 
 the lap of the woman, “beloved of her friend.” 
 The carved coins are each wrought with the cross, 
 and, I believe, legend of the French contemporary 
 coin. 
 
 17, b. “Bo will I also be for thee ” (iii. 3). 
 
 He puts a ring on her finger. 
 
 ! 8. Joel. 
 
 18, a. The sun and moon lightless (ii. 10). 
 
 The sun and moon as two small flat pellets, up 
 in the external moulding. 
 
 18, b. The barked fig-tree and waste vine (i. 7). 
 
 Note the continual insistance on the blight of 
 vegetation as a Divine punishment, 19 d. 
 
 * I fear this hand has been broken since I described it ; at all events, 
 
 it is indistinguishable shapeless in the photograph (No. 10 of the series . ) 
 
396 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US.” 
 
 I 9. Amos. 
 
 To the front. 
 
 1 9, a. “The Lord will cry from Zion ” (i. 2). 
 
 Christ appears with crossletted nimbus. 
 
 I 0, b. “ The habitations of the shepherds shall mourn ” (i. 2). 
 
 Amos with the shepherd’s hooked or knotted 
 staff, and wicker-worked bottle, before his tent. 
 (Architecture in right hand foil restored.) 
 
 Inside Porch. 
 
 19, c. The Lord with the mason’s line (vii. 8). 
 
 Christ, again here, and henceforward always, 
 with crosslet nimbus, has a large trowel in His 
 hand, which He lays on the top of a half-built wall. 
 There seems a line twisted round the handle. 
 
 19, d. The place where it rained not (iv. 7). 
 
 Amos is gathering the leaves of the fruitless vine, 
 to feed the sheep, who find no grass. One of the 
 finest of the reliefs. 
 
 20- Obadiah. 
 
 Inside Porch. 
 
 20, a. “ I hid them in a cave ” (2 Kings xviii. 13). 
 
 Three prophets at the mouth of a well, to whom 
 Obadiah brings loaves. 
 
 20, b. “ He fell on his face ” (xviii. 7 ). 
 
 He kneels before Elijah, who wears his rough 
 mantle. 
 
 To the front. 
 
 20, c. The captain of fifty. 
 
 Elijah (?) speaking to an armed man under a 
 tree. 
 
 20, d. The Messenger. 
 
 A messenger on his knees before a king. I can- 
 not interpret these two scenes (20 c and 20 d). 
 The uppermost may mean the dialogue of Elijah 
 with the captains, (2 Kings i. 2), and the lower one, 
 the return of the messengers (2 Kings i. 5). 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 397 
 
 2 1 b Jonah. 
 
 2l y a. Escaped from the sea. 
 
 21, b. Under the gourd. A small grasshopper-like beast 
 
 gnawing the gourd stem. I should like to know 
 what insects do attack the Amiens gourds. This may 
 be an entomological study, for aught we know. 
 
 22. Micah. 
 
 To the front . 
 
 22 , a. The Tower of the Flock (iv. 8). 
 
 The tower is wrapped in clouds, God appearing 
 above it. 
 
 22, b. Each shall rest and “ none shall make them afraid ” 
 (iv. 4). 
 
 A man and his wife “under his vine and fig-tree.” 
 Inside Porch. 
 
 22, c. “ Swords into ploughshares ” (iv. 3). 
 
 Nevertheless, two hundred years after these medal- 
 lions were cut, the sword manufacture had become a 
 staple in Amiens ! Not to her advantage. 
 
 22, d. “ Spears into pruning-hooks ” (iv. 3). 
 
 23. Nahum. 
 
 Inside Porch . 
 
 23, a. “ None shall look back ” (ii. 8). 
 
 23, b. The Burden of Nineveh (i. 1) * 
 
 * The statue of the prophet, above, is the grandest of the entire 
 series; and note especially the “diadema” of his own luxuriant hair 
 plaited like a maiden's, indicating the Achillean force of this most ter- 
 rible of the prophets. (Compare ‘ Fors Clavigera,’ Letter LXV., vol. iii. p. 
 203.) For the rest, this long flowing hair was always one of the insignia 
 of the Frankish kings, and their way of dressing both hair and beard 
 may be seen more nearly and definitely in the angle-sculptures of the 
 long font in the north transept, the most interesting piece of work in 
 the whole cathedral, in an antiquarian sense, and of much artistic value 
 also. (See ante chap. ii. p. 50.) 
 
398 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US. 
 
 To the front. 
 
 23, c. “ Thy Princes and thy great ones ” (iii. 17). 
 
 23. a, b, and c, are all incapable of sure interpretation. The 
 prophet in a is pointing down to a little hill, said by 
 the Pere Boze to be covered with grasshoppers. I 
 can only copy what he says of them. 
 
 23, d. “ Untimely figs ” (iii. 12). 
 
 Three people beneath a fig-tree catch its falling 
 fruit in their mouths. 
 
 24. Habakkuk. 
 
 24, a. “I will watch to see what he will say unto me ” 
 
 (ii. 1). 
 
 The prophet is writing on his tablet to Christ’s 
 dictation. 
 
 24, b. The ministry to Daniel. 
 
 The traditional visit to Daniel. An angel carries 
 Habakkuk by the hair of his head ; the prophet has 
 a loaf of bread in each hand. They break through 
 the roof of the cave. Daniel is stroking one young 
 lion on the back ; the head of another is thrust care- 
 lessly under his arm. Two more are gnawing bones 
 in the bottom of the cave. 
 
 25. Zephaniah. 
 
 To the front. 
 
 25, a. The Lord strikes Ethiopia (ii. 12). 
 
 Christ striking a city with a sword. Note that all 
 violent actions are in these bas-reliefs feebly or 
 ludicrously expressed ; quiet ones always right. 
 
 25, b. The beasts in Nineveh (ii. 15). 
 
 Very fine. All kinds of crawling things among the 
 tottering walls, and peeping out of their rents and 
 crannies. A monkey sitting squat, developing into 
 a demon, reverses the Darwinian theory. 
 
TEE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 399 
 
 Inside Porch. 
 
 25, c. The Lord visits Jerusalem (i. 12). 
 
 Christ passing through the streets of Jerusalem, 
 with a lantern in each hand. 
 
 25, d . The Hedgehog and Bittern* (ii. 14). 
 
 With a singing bird in a cage in the window. 
 
 28. Haggai. 
 
 Inside Porch. 
 
 20, a. The houses of the princes, omees de lambris (i. 4). 
 
 A perfectly built house of square stones gloomily 
 strong, the grating (of a prison ?) in front of founda- 
 tion. 
 
 20, b. The Heaven is stayed from dew (i. 10). 
 
 The heavens as a projecting mass, with stars, sun, 
 and moon on surface. Underneath, two withered 
 trees. 
 
 To the front. 
 
 26, c. The Lord’s temple desolate (i. 4). 
 
 The falling of the temple, “not one stone left on 
 another,” grandly loose. Square stones again. Ex- 
 amine the text (i. 6). 
 
 26, d. “Thus saith the Lord of Hosts” (i. 7). 
 
 Christ pointing up to His ruined temple. 
 
 27. Zechariah. 
 
 27 , a. The lifting up of Iniquity (v. 6 to 9). 
 
 Wickedness in the Ephah. 
 
 27, b. “The angel that spake to me ” (iv. 1). 
 
 The prophet almost reclining, a glorious winged 
 angel hovering out of cloud. 
 
 28. Malachi. 
 
 28 , a. “Ye have wounded the Lord ” (ii. 17). 
 
 The priests are thrusting Christ through with a 
 barbed lance, whose point comes out at His back. 
 
 *See ante p. 117, note. 
 
400 
 
 “OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US.” 
 
 2S ? b. “ This commandment is to you ” (ii. 1). 
 
 In these panels, the undermost is often introduc- 
 tory to the one above, an illustration of it. It is 
 perhaps chapter i. verse 6, that is meant to be 
 spoken here by the sitting figure of Christ, to the 
 indignant priests. 
 
 44. With this bas-relief terminates the series of sculpture 
 in illustration of Apostolic and Prophetic teaching, which con- 
 stitutes what I mean by the “ Bible ” of Amiens. But the 
 two lateral porches contain supplementary subjects necessary 
 for completion of the pastoral and traditional teaching ad- 
 dressed to her people in that day. 
 
 The Northern Porch, dedicated to her first missionary St. 
 Firmin, has on its central pier his statue ; above, on the flat 
 field of the back of the arch, the story of the finding of his 
 body ; on the sides of the porch, companion saints and angels 
 in the following order : — 
 
 CENTRAL STATUE. 
 
 St. Firmin. 
 
 Southern (left) side. 
 
 41. St. Firmin the Confessor. 
 
 42. St. Domice. 
 
 43. St. Honore. 
 
 44. St. Salve. 
 
 40. St. Quentin. 
 
 46. St. Gentian. 
 
 Northern (right) side. 
 
 47 . St. Geoftroy. 
 
 48 . An angel. 
 
 49 . St. Fuscien, martyr. 
 
 60. St. Victoric, martyr. 
 
 51. An angel. 
 
 52, St. Ulpha. 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 401 
 
 45. Of these saints, excepting St. Firmin and St. Honors, 
 of whom I have already spoken,* St. Geoffroy is more real for 
 us than the rest ; he was born in the year of the battle of 
 Hastings, at Molincourt, in the Soissonais, and was Bishop of 
 Amiens from 1104 to 1150. A man of entirely simple, pure, 
 and right life : one of the severest of ascetics, but without gloom 
 — always gentle and merciful. Many miracles are recorded 
 of him, but all indicating a tenour of life which was chiefly 
 miraculous by its justice and peace. Consecrated at Rlieims, 
 and attended by a train of other bishops and nobles to his 
 diocese, he dismounts from his horse at St. Acheul, the 
 place of St. Firmin’s first tomb, and walks barefoot to his ca- 
 thedral, along the causeway now so defaced : at another time 
 he walks barefoot from Amiens to Picquigny to ask from the 
 Vidame of Amiens the freedom of the Chatelain Adam. He 
 maintained the privileges of the citizens, with the help of 
 Louis le Gros, against the Count of Amiens, defeated him, and 
 razed his castle ; nevertheless, the people not enough obeying 
 him in the order of their life, he blames his own weakness, 
 rather than theirs, and retires to the Grande Chartreuse, 
 holding himself unfit to be their bishop. The Carthusian su- 
 perior questioning him on his reasons for retirement, and ask- 
 ing if he had ever sold the offices of the Church, the Bishop 
 answered, “ My father, my hands are pure of simony, but I 
 have a thousand times allowed myself to be seduced by 
 praise.” 
 
 46 St. Firmin the Confessor was the son of the Roman 
 senator who received St. Firmin himself. He preserved the 
 tomb of the martyr in his father’s garden, and at last built a 
 church over it, dedicated to our Lady of martyrs, which was 
 the first episcopal seat of Amiens, at St. Acheul, spoken of 
 above. St. Ulpha was an Amienoise girl, who lived in a chalk 
 cave above the marshes of the Somme ; if ever Mr. Murray 
 provides you with a comic guide to Amiens, no doubt the en- 
 lightened composer of it will count much on your enjoyment 
 of the story of her being greatly disturbed at her devotions 
 
 * See ante Chap. I., p. 11, for the history of St. Firmin, and for 
 St. Honore p. 97, § 8 of this chapter, with the reference there given. 
 
402 
 
 “OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US." 
 
 by the frogs, and praying them silent. You are now, oi 
 course, wholly superior to such follies, and are sure that God 
 cannot, or will not, so much as shut a frog’s mouth for you. 
 Kemember, therefore, that as He also now leaves open the 
 mouth of the liar, blasphemer, and betrayer, you must shut 
 your own ears against their voices as you can. 
 
 Of her name, St. Wolf — or Guelph — see again Miss Yonge’s 
 Christian names. Our tower of Wolf’s stone, Ulverstone, and 
 Kirk of Ulpha, are, I believe, unconscious of Picard relatives. 
 
 47. The other saints in this porch are all in like manner 
 provincial, and, as it were, personal friends of the Amienois ; 
 and under them, the quatrefoils represent the pleasant order 
 of the guarded and hallowed year — the zodiacal signs above, 
 and labours of the months below ; little differing from the 
 constant representations of them — except in the May : see 
 below. The Libra also is a little unusual in the female figure 
 holding the scales ; the lion especially good-tempered — and 
 the * reaping ’ one of the most beautiful figures in the whole 
 series of sculptures ; several of the others peculiarly refined and 
 far-wrought. In Mr. Kaltenbacher’s photographs, as I have 
 arranged them, the bas-reliefs may be studied nearly as well 
 as in the porch itself. Their order is as follows, beginning 
 with December, in the left-hand inner corner of the porch : — 
 
 4 I . December. — Killing and scalding swine. Above, Capri- 
 corn with quickly diminishing tail ; I cannot make 
 out the accessories. 
 
 42* January. — Twin-headed, obsequiously served. Aquarius 
 feebler than most of the series. 
 
 43* February. — Very fine ; warming his feet and putting 
 coals on fire. Fish above, elaborate but uninterest- 
 ing. 
 
 44* March. — At work in vine-furrows. Aries careful, but 
 rather stupid. 
 
 45. April. — Feeding his hawk — very pretty. Taurus above 
 
 with charming leaves to eat. 
 
 46 . May. — Very singularly, a middle-aged man sitting under 
 
 the trees to hear the birds sing ; and Gemini above, 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 403 
 
 a bridegroom and bride. This quatrefoil joins the 
 interior angle ones of Zephaniah. 
 
 52. June. — Opposite, joining the interior angle ones of 
 Haggai. Mowing. Note the lovely flowers sculpt- 
 ured all through the grass. Cancer above, with his 
 shell superbly modelled. 
 
 3 1 , July. — Reaping. Extremely beautiful. The smiling 
 lion completes the evidence that all the seasons 
 and signs are regarded as alike blessing and provi- 
 dentially kind. 
 
 50. August. — Threshing. Virgo above, holding a flower, 
 her drapery very modern and confused for thirteenth- 
 century work. 
 
 49. September. — I am not sure of his action, whether prun- 
 ing, or in some way gathering fruit from the full- 
 leaved tree. Libra above ; charming. 
 
 48a October. — Treading grapes. Scorpio, a very traditional 
 and gentle form — forked in the tail indeed, but 
 stingless. 
 
 47, November. — Sowing, with Sagittarius, half concealed 
 when this photograph was taken by the beautiful 
 arrangements always now going on for some job or 
 other in Erench cathedrals they never can let 
 them alone for ten minutes. 
 
 48. And now, last of all, if you care to see it, we will go 
 into the Madonna’s porch — only, if you come at all, good 
 Protestant feminine reader — come civilly : and be pleased to 
 recollect, if you have, in known history, material for recollec- 
 tion, this (or if you cannot recollect — be you very solemnly 
 assured of this) : that neither Madonna-worship, nor Lady- 
 worship of any sort, whether of dead ladies or living ones, ever 
 did any human creature any harm, — but that Money worship, 
 Wig worship, Cocked-Hat-and-Feather worship, Plate wor- 
 ship, Pot worship and Pipe worship, have done, and are 
 doing, a great deal, — and that any of these, and all, are quite 
 million-fold more offensive to the God of Heaven and Earth 
 and the Stars, than all the absurdest and lovingest mistakes 
 
404 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD ITS. 
 
 made by any generations of His simple children, about what 
 the Virgin-mother could, or would, or might do, or feel for 
 them. 
 
 49. And next, please observe this broad historical fact 
 about the three sorts of Madonnas. 
 
 There is first the Madonna Dolorosa ; the Byzantine type ? 
 and Cimabue’s. It is the noblest of all ; and the earliest; in 
 distinct popular influence.* 
 
 Secondly. The Mad one Heine, who is essentially the Frank 
 and Norman one ; crowned, calm, and full of power and gen- 
 tleness. She is the one represented in this porch. 
 
 Thirdly. The Madone Nourrice, who is the Raphaelesque and 
 generally late and decadence one. She is seen here in a good 
 French type in the south transept porch, as before noticed. 
 
 An admirable comparison will be found instituted by M. 
 Viollet le Due (the article ‘ Vierge,’ in his dictionary, is alto- 
 gether deserving of the most attentive study) between this 
 statue of the Queen-Madonna of the southern porch and the 
 Nurse-Madonna of the transept. I may perhaps be able to 
 get a photograph made of his two drawings, side by side : 
 but, if I can, the reader will please observe that he has a little 
 flattered the Queen, and a little vulgarized the Nurse, winch 
 is not fair. The statue in this porch is in thirteenth-century 
 style, extremely good : but there is no reason for making any 
 fuss about it — the earlier Byzantine types being far grander. 
 
 50. The Madonna’s story, in its main incidents, is told in 
 the series of statues round the porch, and in the quatrefoils 
 below — several of which refer, however, to a legend about 
 the Magi to which I have not had access, and I am not sure 
 of their interpretation. 
 
 The large statues are on the left* hand, reading outwards as 
 usual. 
 
 *£9* The Angel Gabriel. 
 
 39» Virgin Annunciate. 
 
 3 1 ■ Virgin Visitant. 
 
 St. Elizabeth. 
 
 * See the description of the Madonna of Murano, in second volume 
 of ‘ Stones of Venice.’ 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS, 
 
 4015 
 
 33m Virgin in Presentation. 
 
 34. St. Simeon. 
 
 On tlie right hand, reading outward, 
 
 35, 36, 37 , The three Kings. 
 
 33. Herod. 
 
 39. Solomon. 
 
 40. The Queen of Sheba. 
 
 51. I am not sure of rightly interpreting the introduction 
 of these two last statues : but I believe the idea of the de- 
 signer was that virtually the Queen Mary visited Herod when 
 she sent, or had sent for her, the Magi to tell him of her 
 presence at Bethlehem : and the contrast between Solomon’s 
 reception of the Queen of Sheba, and Herod’s driving out the 
 Madonna into Egypt, is dwelt on throughout this side of the 
 porch, with their several consequences to the two Kings and 
 to the world. 
 
 The quatrefoils underneath the great statues run as follows : 
 Q&m Under Gabriel — 
 
 a. Daniel seeing the stone cut out without hands. 
 
 b. Moses and the burning bush. 
 
 30. Under Virgin Annunciate — 
 
 a. Gideon and the dew on the fleece. 
 
 b. Moses with written law, retiring ; Aaron, domi- 
 
 nant, points to his budding rod. 
 
 3 1 . Under Virgin Visitant — 
 
 a. The message to Zacharias : “ Fear not, for thy 
 
 prayer is heard.” 
 
 b. The dream of Joseph : “ Fear not to take unto 
 
 thee Mary thy wife.” (?) 
 
 32. Under St. Elizabeth — 
 
 a. The silence of Zacharias : “ They perceived that 
 
 he had seen a vision in the temple.” 
 
 b. “ There is none of thy kindred that is called by this 
 
 name.” “ He wrote saying, His name is John.” 
 
406 
 
 “ OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD JJ8” 
 
 33. Under Virgin in presentation — 
 
 a. Flight into Egypt. 
 
 b. Christ with the Doctors. 
 
 34 . Under St. Simeon — 
 
 a. Fall of the idols in Egypt. 
 
 b. The return to Nazareth. 
 
 These two last quatrefoils join the beautiful c and d of 
 Amos. 
 
 Then on the opposite side, under the Queen of Sheba, 
 and joining the a and b of Obadiah — 
 
 40 . a. Solomon entertains the Queen of Sheba. The 
 Grace cup. 
 
 b. Solomon teaches the Queen of Sheba. “ God is 
 above. ” 
 
 39 a Under Solomon — 
 
 a. Solomon on his throne of judgment. 
 
 b. Solomon praying before his temple-gate. 
 
 SB: Under Herod — 
 
 A. Massacre of Innocents. 
 
 b. Herod orders the ship of the Kings to be burned. 
 B7 0 Under the third King — 
 
 a. Herod inquires of the Kings. 
 
 b. Burning of the ship. 
 
 38. Under the second King — 
 
 a. Adoration in Bethlehem ? — not certain. 
 
 b. The voyage of the Kings. 
 
 35. Under the first King — 
 
 a. The Star in the East. 
 
 b. “Being warned in a dream that they should not 
 
 return to Herod.” 
 
 I have no doubt of finding out in time the real sequence of 
 these subjects : but it is of little import — this group of quatre- 
 foils being of less interest than the rest, and that of the Mas- 
 sacre of the Innocents curiously illustrative of the incapability 
 of the sculptor to give strong action or passion. 
 
 But into questions respecting the art of these bas-reliefs I 
 do not here attempt to enter. They were never intended to 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 407 
 
 serve as more than signs, or guides to thought. And if the 
 reader follows this guidance quietly, he may create for him- 
 self better pictures in his heart ; and at all events may recog- 
 nize these following general truths, as their united message. 
 
 52. First, that throughout the Sermon on this Amiens 
 Mount, Christ never appears, or is for a moment thought of, 
 as the Crucified, nor as the Dead : but as the Incarnate Word 
 — as the present Friend — as the Prince of Peace on Earth, — 
 and as the Everlasting King in Heaven. What His life is, 
 what His commands are, and what His judgment will be, are 
 the things here taught : not what He once did, nor what He 
 once suffered, but what He is now doing — and what He re- 
 quires us to do. That is the pure, joyful, beautiful lesson of 
 Christianity ; and the fall from that faith, and all the corrup- 
 tions of its abortive practice, may be summed briefly as the 
 habitual contemplation of Christ’s death instead of his Life, 
 and the substitution of His past suffering for our present 
 duty. 
 
 53. Then, secondly, though Christ bears not His cross, 
 the mourning prophets, — the persecuted apostles — and the 
 martyred disciples do bear theirs. For just as it is well for 
 you to remember what your undying Creator is doing for you 
 — it is well for you to remember what your dying fellow- 
 creatures hare done : the Creator you may at your pleasure 
 deny or defy — the Martyr you can only forget ; deny, you can- 
 not. Every stone of this building is cemented with his blood, 
 and there is no furrow of its pillars that was not ploughed by 
 Iris pain. 
 
 54. Keeping, then, these things in your heart, look back 
 now to the central statue of Christ, and hear His message 
 with understanding. He holds the Book of the Eternal Law 
 in His left hand ; with His right He blesses, — but blesses on 
 condition. “This do, and thou shalt live;” nay, in stricter 
 and more piercing sense, This be, and thou shalt live : to show 
 Mercy is nothing — thy soul must be full of mercy ; to be pure 
 in act is nothing — thou shalt be pure in heart also. 
 
 And with this further word of the unabolished law — “ This 
 if thou do not, this if thou art not, thou shalt die.” 
 
408 
 
 u OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US” 
 
 55. Die (whatever Death means) — totally and irrevocably. 
 There is no word in thirteenth-century Theology of the pardon 
 (in our modern sense) of sins ; and there is none of the Pur- 
 gatory of them. Above that image of Christ with us, our 
 Friend, is set the image of Christ over us, our Judge. For 
 this present life — here is His helpful Presence. After this 
 life — there is His coming to take account of our deeds, and of 
 our desires in them ; and the parting asunder of the Obedient 
 from the Disobedient, of the Loving from the Unkind, with 
 no hope given to the last of recall or reconciliation. I do not 
 know what commenting or softening doctrines were written 
 in frightened minuscule by the Fathers, or hinted in hesitat- 
 ing whispers by the prelates of the early Church. But I 
 know that the language of every graven stone and every glow- 
 ing window, — of things daily seen and universally understood 
 by the people, was absolutely and alone, this teaching of 
 Moses from Sinai in the beginning, and of St. John from 
 Patmos in the end, of the Revelation of God to Israel. 
 
 This it was, simply — sternly — and continually, for the great 
 three hundred years of Christianity in her strength (eleventh, 
 twelfth, and thirteenth centuries), and over the whole breadth 
 and depth of her dominion, from Iona to Cyrene, — and from 
 Calpe to Jerusalem. At what time the doctrine of Purgatory 
 was openly accepted by Catholic Doctors, I neither know nor 
 care to know. It was first formalized by Dante, but never 
 accepted for an instant by the sacred artist teachers of his 
 time — or by those of any great school or time whatsoever.* 
 
 * Tlie most authentic foundations of the Purgatorial scheme in art 
 teaching are in the renderings, subsequent to the thirteenth century, 
 of the verse “ by which also He went and preached unto the spirits in 
 prison,” forming gradually into the idea of the deliverance of the wait- 
 ing saints from the power of the grave. 
 
 In literature and tradition, the idea is originally, I believe, Platonic ; 
 certainly not Homeric. Egyptian possibly — but I have read nothing yet 
 of the recent discoveries in Egypt. Not, however, quite liking to leave 
 the matter in the complete emptiness of my own resources, I have ap- 
 pealed to my general investigator, Mr. Anderson (James R.), who writes 
 as follows : — 
 
 ‘ * There is no possible question about the doctrine and universal in- 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS, 
 
 409 
 
 56. Neither do I know nor care to know — at what time the 
 notion of Justification by Faith, in the modern sense, first got 
 itself distinctively fixed in the minds of the heretical sects and 
 schools of the North. Practically its strength was founded by 
 its first authors on an asceticism which differed from monastic 
 rule in being only able to destroy, never to build ; and in en- 
 deavouring to force what severity it thought proper for itself 
 on everybody else also ; and so striving to make one artless, 
 letterless, and merciless monastery of all the world. Its viru- 
 lent effort broke down amidst furies of reactionary dissolute- 
 
 culcation of it, ages before Dante. Curiously enough, though, the state- 
 ment of it in the Summa Theologise as we have it is a later insertion ; 
 but I find by references that St. Thomas teaches it elsewhere. Albertus 
 Magnus develops it at length. If you refer to the ‘ Golden Legend ’ 
 under All Souls’ Day, you will see how the idea is assumed as a common- 
 place in a work meant for popular use in the thirteenth century. St. 
 Gregory (the Pope) argues for it (Dial. iv. 38) on two scriptural quota- 
 tions : (1), the sin that is forgiven neither in hoc sseculo nor in that which 
 is to come , and (2), the fire which shall try every man’s work. I think 
 Platonic philosophy and the Greek mysteries must have had a good deal 
 to do with introducing the idea originally ; but with them — as to Virgil 
 — it was part of the Eastern vision of a circling stream of life from which 
 only a few drops were at intervals tossed to a definitely permanent Ely- 
 sium or a definitely permanent Hell. It suits that scheme better than 
 it does the Christian one, which attaches ultimately in all cases infinite 
 importance to the results of life in hoc sseculo. 
 
 “ Do you know any representation of Heaven or Hell unconnected 
 with the Last Judgment ? I don’t remember any, and as Purgatory is 
 by that time past, this would account for the absence of pictures of it. 
 
 “Besides, Purgatory precedes the Resurrection — there is continual 
 question among divines what manner of purgatorial fire it may be that 
 affects spirits separate from the body — perhaps Heaven and Hell, as op- 
 posed to Purgatory, were felt to be picturable because not only spirits, 
 but the risen bodies too are conceived in them. 
 
 “ Bede’s account of the Ayrshire seer’s vision gives Purgatory in words 
 very like Dante's description of the second stormy circle in Hell ; and 
 the angel which ultimately saves the Scotchman from the fiends comes 
 through hell, ‘quasi fulgor Stellas micantis inter tenebras ’ — 4 qual sul 
 presso del mattino Per g'li grossi vapor Marte rosseggia.’ Bede’s name 
 was great in the middle ages. Dante meets him in Heaven, and. I like 
 to hope, may have been helped by the vision of my fellow-countryman 
 more than six hundred years before.” 
 
410 
 
 “OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US. 
 
 ness and disbelief, and remains now the basest of popular sol- 
 ders and plasters for every condition of broken law and bruised 
 conscience which interest can provoke, or hypocrisy disguise. 
 
 57. With the subsequent quarrels between the two great- 
 sects of the corrupted church, about prayers for the Dead, 
 Indulgences to the Living, Papal supremacies, or Popular lib- 
 erties, no man, woman, or child need trouble themselves in 
 studying the history of Christianity ; they are nothing but the 
 squabbles of men, and laughter of fiends among its ruins. The 
 Life, and Gospel, and Power of it, are all written in the mighty 
 works of its true believers : in Normandy and Sicily, on river 
 islets of France and in the river glens of England, on the rocks 
 of Orvieto, and by the sands of Arno. But of all, the sim- 
 plest, completest, and most authoritative in its lessons to the 
 active mind of North Europe, is this on the foundation stones 
 of Amiens. 
 
 58. Believe it or not, reader, as you will : understand only 
 how thoroughly it was once believed ; and that all beautiful 
 things were made, and all brave deeds done in the strength 
 of it — until what we may call ‘ this present time/ in which it 
 is gravely asked whether Religion has any effect on morals, by 
 persons who have essentially no idea whatever of the meaning 
 of either Religion or Morality. 
 
 Concerning which dispute, this much perhaps you may 
 have the patience finally to read, as the Fleche of Amiens 
 fades in the distance, and your carriage rushes towards the 
 Isle of France, which now exhibits the most admired patterns 
 of European Art, intelligence, and behaviour. 
 
 59. All human creatures, in all ages and places of the 
 world, who have had warm affections, common sense and 
 self-command, have been, and are, Naturally Moral. Human 
 nature in its fulness is necessarily Moral, — without Love, it is 
 inhuman, without sense,* inhuman, — without discipline, in- 
 human. 
 
 In the exact proportion in which men are bred capable of 
 these things, and are educated to love, to think, and to en- 
 
 I don’t mean aestliesis,— but wn, if you must talk in Greek slang. 
 
THE BIBLE OF AMIENS. 
 
 411 
 
 dure, they become noble, — live happily — die calmly : are re- 
 membered with perpetual honour by their race, and for the 
 perpetual good of it. All wise men know and have known 
 these things since the form of man was separated from the 
 dust. The knowledge and enforcement of them have nothing 
 to do with religion : a good and w T ise man differs from a bad 
 and idiotic one, simply as a good dog from a cur, and as any 
 manner of dog from a wolf or a weasel. And if you are to be- 
 lieve in, or preach without half believing in, a spiritual world 
 or law — only in the hope that whatever you do, or anybody 
 else does, that is foolish or beastly, may be in them and by 
 them mended and patched and pardoned and worked up 
 again as good as new — the less you believe in — and most 
 solemnly, the less you talk about — a spiritual word, the 
 better. 
 
 60. But if, loving well the creatures that are like yourself, 
 you feel that you would love still more dearly, creatures 
 better than yourself — were they revealed to you ; — if striving 
 with all your might to mend what is evil, near you and 
 around, you would fain look for a day when some Judge of 
 all the Earth shall wholly do right, and the little hills rejoice 
 on every side ; if, parting with the companions that have 
 given you all the best joy you had on Earth, you desire ever 
 to meet their eyes again and clasp their hands,- — where eyes 
 shall no more be dim, nor hands fail ; — if, preparing your- 
 selves to lie down beneath the grass in silence and loneliness, 
 seeing no more beauty, and feeling no more gladness — you 
 would care for the promise to you of a time when you should 
 see God’s light again, and know the things you have longed 
 to know, and walk in the peace of everlasting Love — then , the 
 Hope of these things to you is religion, the Substance of 
 them in your life is Faith. And in the power of them, it is 
 promised us, that the kingdoms of this world shall yet be- 
 come the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. 
 
412 
 
 “OUR FATHERS HAVE TOLD US. 
 
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INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE 
 
 CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL OF ART, 
 
 OCTOBER 29th, 1858. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 10 f\ I 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 _ 
 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE 
 
 CAMBBIDGrE SCHOOL OF ABT, 
 
 OCTOBER 29th, 1858. 
 
 I suppose the persons interested in establishing a School of 
 Art for workmen may in the main be divided into two classes, 
 namely, first, those who chiefly desire to make the men them- 
 selves happier, wiser, and better ; and secondly, those who 
 desire to enable them to produce better and more valuable 
 work. These two objects may, of course, be kept both in 
 view at the same time ; nevertheless, there is a wide differ- 
 ence in the spirit with which we shall approach our task, ac- 
 cording to the motives of these two which weighs most with 
 us — a difference great enough to divide, as I have said, the 
 promoters of any such scheme into two distinct classes ; one 
 philanthropic in the gist of its aim, and the other commercial 
 in the gist of its aim ; one desiring the workman to be better 
 informed chiefly for his own sake, and the other chiefly that 
 he may be enabled to produce for us commodities precious in 
 themselves, and which shall successfully compete with those 
 of other countries. 
 
 And this separation in motives must lead also to a distinc- 
 tion in the machinery of the work. The philanthropists ad- 
 dress themselves, not to the artisan merely, but to the la- 
 bourer in general, desiring in any possible way to refine the 
 habits or increase the happiness of our whole working popu- 
 lation, by giving them new recreations or new thoughts : and 
 the principles of Art-education adopted in a school which has 
 this wide but somewhat indeterminate aim, are, or should be, 
 
416 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT THE 
 
 very different from those adopted in a school meant for the 
 special instruction of the artisan in his own business. I do 
 not think this distinction is yet firmly enough fixed in our 
 minds, or calculated upon in our plans of operation. We have 
 hitherto acted, it seems to me, under a vague impression that 
 the arts of drawing and painting might be, up to a certain 
 point, taught in a general way to every one, and would do 
 every one equal good ; and that each class of operatives might 
 afterwards bring this general knowledge into use in their own 
 trade, according to its requirements. Now, that is not so. 
 A wood-carver needs for his business to learn drawing in quite 
 a different way from a china-painter, and a jew 7 eller from a 
 worker in iron. They must be led to study quite different 
 characters in the natural forms they introduce in their various 
 manufacture. It is of no use to teach an iron-worker to observe 
 the down on a peach, and of none to teach laws of atmos- 
 pheric effect to a carver in wood. So far as their business is 
 concerned, their brains would be vainly occupied by such 
 things, and they would be prevented from pursuing, with 
 enough distinctness or intensity, the qualities of Art which 
 can alone be expressed in the materials with which they each 
 have to do. 
 
 Now, I believe it to be wholly impossible to teach special 
 application of Art principles to various trades in a single 
 school. That special application can be only learned rightly 
 by the experience of years in the particular work required. 
 The power of each material, and the difficulties connected 
 with its treatment, are not so much to be taught as to be felt ; 
 it is only by repeated touch and continued trial beside the 
 forge or the furnace, that the goldsmith can find out how to 
 govern his gold, or the glass-worker his crystal ; and it is 
 only by watching and assisting the actual practice of a master 
 in the business, that the apprentice can learn the efficient 
 secrets of manipulation, or perceive the true limits of the in- 
 volved conditions of design. It seems to me, therefore, that 
 all idea of reference to definite businesses should be aban- 
 doned in such schools as that just established : we can have 
 neither the materials, the conveniences, nor the empirical skill 
 
CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL OF ART, \ 
 
 417 
 
 in the master, necessary to make suck teaching useful. All 
 specific Art-teacliing must be given in schools established by 
 each trade for itself : and when our operatives are a little 
 more enlightened on these matters, there will be found, as I 
 have already stated in my lectures on the political economy 
 of Art, absolute necessity for the establishment of guilds of 
 trades in an active and practical form, for the purposes of as- 
 certaining the principles of Art proper to their business, and 
 instructing their apprentices in them, as well as making ex- 
 periments on materials, and on newly-invented methods of 
 procedure ; besides many other functions which I cannot 
 now enter into account of. All this for the present, and in 
 a school such as this, I repeat, we cannot hope for : we shall 
 obtain no satisfactory result, unless we give up such hope, 
 and set ourselves to teaching the operative, however em- 
 ployed— be he farmer’s labourer, or manufacturer’s ; be he 
 mechanic, artificer, shopman, sailor, or ploughman— teaching, 
 I say, as far as we can, one and the same thing to all ; namely, 
 Sight. 
 
 Not a slight thing to teach, this : perhaps, on the whole, 
 the most important thing to be taught in the whole range of 
 teaching. To be taught to read — what is the use of that, if 
 you know not whether what you read is false or true? To be 
 taught to write or to speak — but what is the use of speaking, 
 if } t ou have nothing to say ? To be taught to think — nay, 
 what is the use of being able to think, if you have nothing to 
 think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and 
 thought at once, and both true. There is a vague acknowl- 
 edgment of this in the way people are continually expressing 
 their longings for light, until all the common language of our 
 prayers and hymns has sunk into little more than one monot- 
 onous metaphor, dimly twisted into alternate languages, — 
 asking first in Latin to be illuminated ; and then in English 
 to be enlightened ; and then in Latin again to be delivered 
 out of obscurity ; and then in English to be delivered out of 
 darkness ; and then for beams, and rays, and suns, and stars, 
 and lamps, until sometimes one wishes that, at least for relig- 
 ious purposes, there were no such words as light or darkness 
 
418 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT THE 
 
 in existence. Still, the main instinct which makes people 
 endure this perpetuity of repetition is a true one ; only the 
 main thing they want and ought to ask for is, not light, but 
 Sight. It doesn’t matter how much light you have if you 
 don’t know how to use it. It may very possibly put out your 
 eyes, instead of helping them. Besides, we want, in this 
 world of ours, very often to be able to see in the dark — that’s 
 the great gift of all ; — but at any rate to see ; no matter by 
 what light, so only we can see things as they are. On my 
 word, we should soon make it a different world, if we could 
 get but a little — ever so little — of the dervish’s ointment in 
 the Arabian Nights, not to show us the treasures of the earth, 
 but the facts of it. 
 
 However, whether these things be generally true or not, at 
 all events it is certain that our immediate business, in such a 
 school as this, will prosper more by attending to eyes than to 
 hands ; w 7 e shall always do most good by simply endeavouring 
 to enable the student to see natural objects clearly and truly. 
 We ought not even to try too strenuously to give him the 
 power of representing them. That power may be acquired, 
 more or less, by exercises which are no wise conducive to 
 accuracy of sight : and, vice versd , accuracy of sight may be 
 gained by exercises which in no wise conduce to ease of rep- 
 resentation. For instance, it very much assists the pow 7 er of 
 drawing to spend many hours in the practice of washing in 
 flat tints ; but all this manual practice does not in the least 
 increase the student’s power of determining what the tint of a 
 given object actually is. He w 7 ould be more advanced in the 
 knowledge of the facts by a single hour of well-directed and 
 well-corrected effort, rubbing out and putting in again, lighten- 
 ing, and darkening, and scratching, and blotching, in patient 
 endeavours to obtain concordance with fact, issuing perhaps, 
 after all, in total destruction or unpresen tability of the draw- 
 ing ; but also in acute perception of the things he has been 
 attempting to copy in it. Of course, there is always a vast 
 temptation, felt both by the master and student, to struggle 
 towards visible results, and obtain something beautiful, credit- 
 able, or saleable, in way of actual drawing : but the more I 
 
CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL OF ART. 
 
 419 
 
 see of schools, the more reason I see to look with doubt upon 
 those which produce too many showy and complete works by 
 the pupils. A showy work will always be found, on stern 
 examination of it, to have been done by some conventional 
 rule ; — some servile compliance with directions which the 
 student does not see the reason for ; and representation of 
 truths which he has not himself perceived : the execution of 
 such drawings will be found monotonous and lifeless ; their 
 light and shade specious and formal, but false. A drawing 
 which the pupil has learned much in doing, is nearly always 
 full of blunders and mishaps, and it is highly necessary for the 
 formation of a truly public or universal school of Art, that the 
 masters should not try to conceal or anticipate such blunders, 
 but only seek to employ the pupil’s time so as to get the most 
 precious results for his understanding and his heart, not for 
 liis hand. 
 
 For, observe, the best that you can do in the production of 
 drawing, or of draughtsmanship, must always be nothing in 
 itself, unless the whole life be given to it. An amateur’s 
 drawing, or a workman’s drawing — anybody’s drawing but an 
 artist’s, is always valueless in itself. It may be, as you have 
 just heard Mr. Redgrave tell you, most precious as a memo- 
 rial, or as a gift, or as a means of noting useful facts ; but as 
 Art , an amateur’s drawing is always wholly worthless ; and it 
 ought to be one of our great objects to make the pupil under- 
 stand and feel that, and prevent his trying to make his value- 
 less work look, in some superficial, hypocritical, eye-catching, 
 penny-catching way, like work that is really good. 
 
 If, therefore, we have to do with pupils belonging to the 
 higher ranks of life, our main duty will be to make them good 
 judges of Art, rather than artists ; for though I had a month 
 to speak to you, instead of an hour, time would fail me if I 
 tried to trace the various ways in which we suffer, nationally, 
 for want of powers of enlightened judgment of Art in our 
 upper and middle classes. Not that this judgment can ever 
 be obtained without discipline of the hand : no man ever was 
 a thorough judge of painting who could not draw ; but the 
 drawing should only be thought of as a means of fixing his 
 
420 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT TEE 
 
 attention upon tlie subtleties of the Art put before him, or of 
 enabling him to record such natural facts as are necessary for 
 comparison with it. I should also attach the greatest import- 
 ance to severe limitation of choice in the examples submitted 
 to him. To study one good master till you understand him 
 will teach you more than a superficial acquaintance with a 
 thousand : power of criticism does not consist in knowing the 
 names or the manner of many painters, but in discerning the 
 excellence of a few. 
 
 If, on the contrary, our teaching is addressed more defi- 
 nitely to the operative, we need not endeavour to render his 
 powers of criticism very acute. About many forms of exist- 
 ing Art, the less he knows the better. His sensibilities are 
 to be cultivated with respect to nature chiefly ; and his imagi- 
 nation, if possible, to be developed, even though somewhat to 
 the disadvantage of his judgment. It is better that his work 
 should be bold, than faultless ; and better that it should be 
 delightful, than discreet. 
 
 And this leads me to the second, or commercial, question ; 
 namely, how to get from the workman, after we have trained 
 him, the best and most precious work, so as to enable our- 
 selves to compete with foreign countries, or develop new 
 branches of commerce in our own. 
 
 Many of us, perhaps, are under the impression that plenty 
 of schooling will do this ; that plenty of lecturing will do it ; 
 that sending abroad for patterns will do it ; or that patience, 
 time, and money, and goodwill may do it. And, alas, none 
 of these things, nor all of them put together, will do it. If 
 you want really good work, such as will be acknowledged by 
 all the world, there is but one way of getting it, and that is a 
 difficult one. You may offer any premium you choose for it 
 - — but you will find it can’t be done for premiums. You may 
 send for patterns to the antipodes — but you will find it can’t 
 be done upon patterns. You may lecture on the principles of 
 Art to every school in the kingdom — and you will find it can’t 
 be done upon principles. You may wait patiently for the 
 progress of the age — and you will find your Art is unpro- 
 gressive. Or you may set yourselves impatiently to urge it 
 
CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL OF ART. 
 
 421 
 
 by the inventions of the age — and you will find your chariot 
 of Art entirely immovable either by screw or paddle. There’s 
 no way of getting good Art, I repeat, but one — at once the 
 simplest and most difficult — namely, to enjoy it. Examine 
 the history of nations, and you will find this great fact clear 
 and unmistakable on the front of it — that good Art has only 
 been produced by nations who rejoiced in it ; fed themselves 
 with it, as if it w T ere bread ; basked in it, as if it were sun- 
 shine ; shouted at the sight of it ; danced with the delight of 
 it ; quarrelled for it ; fought for it ; starved for it ; did, in 
 fact, precisely the opposite with it of what we want to do with 
 it — they made it to keep, and we to sell. 
 
 And truly this is a serious difficulty for us as a commercial 
 nation. The very primary motive with which we set about 
 the business, makes the business impossible. The first and 
 absolute condition of the thing’s ever becoming saleable is, 
 that we shall make it without wanting to sell it ; nay, rather 
 with a determination not to sell it at any price, if once we get 
 hold of it. Try to make your Art popular, cheap — a fair art- 
 icle for your foreign market ; and the foreign market will al- 
 ways show something better. But make it only to please 
 yourselves, and even be resolved that you won’t let anybody 
 else have any ; and forthwith you will find everybody else 
 wants it. And observe, the insuperable difficulty is this mak- 
 ing it to please ourselves, while we are incapable of pleasure. 
 Take, for instance, the simplest example, which we can all 
 understand, in the art of dress. We have made a great fuss 
 about the patterns of silk lately ; wanting to vie with Lyons, 
 and make a Paris of London. Well, we may try for ever : so 
 long as we don’t really enjoy silk patterns, we shall never get 
 any. And we don’t enjoy them. Of course, all ladies like 
 their dresses to sit well, and be becoming ; but of real enjoy- 
 ment of the beauty of the silk, for the silk’s own sake, I find 
 none ; for the test of that enjoyment is, that they would like 
 it also to sit well, and look well, on somebody else. The 
 pleasure of being well dressed, or even of seeing well-dressed 
 people — for I will suppose in my fair hearers that degree of 
 unselfishness — be that pleasure great or small, is quite a dif« 
 
422 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT TEE 
 
 ferent thing from delight in the beauty and play of the silken 
 folds and colours themselves, for their own gorgeousness or 
 grace. 
 
 I have just had a remarkable proof of the total want of this 
 feeling in the modern mind. I was staying part of this sum- 
 mer in Turin, for the purpose of studying one of the Paul 
 Veroneses there — the presentation of the Queen of Sheba to 
 Solomon. Well, one of the most notable characters in this 
 picture is the splendour of its silken dresses : and, in par- 
 ticular, there was a piece of white brocade, with designs upon 
 it in gold, which it was one of my chief objects in stopping at 
 Turin to copy. You may, perhaps, be surprised at this ; but 
 I must just note in passing, that I share this weakness of en- 
 joying dress patterns with all good students and all good 
 painters. It doesn’t matter what school they belong to — Fra 
 Angelico, Perugino, John Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoret, 
 Veronese, Leonardo da Vinci — no matter how they differ in 
 other respects, all of them like dress patterns ; and what is 
 more, the nobler the painter is, the surer he is to do his pat- 
 terns well. 
 
 I stayed then, as I say, to make a study of this white bro- 
 cade. It generally happens in public galleries that the best 
 pictures are the worst placed : and this Veronese is not only 
 hung at considerable height above the eye, but over a door, 
 through which, however, as all the visitors to the gallery must 
 pass, they cannot easily overlook the picture, though they 
 would find great difficulty in examining it. Beside this door, 
 I had a stage erected for my work, which being of some 
 height and rather in a corner, enabled me to observe, without 
 being observed myself, the impression made by the picture on 
 the various visitors. It seemed to me that if ever a work of 
 Art caught popular attention, this ought to do so. It was of 
 very large size ; of brilliant colour, and of agreeable subject. 
 There are about twenty figures in it, the principal ones being 
 life size : that of Solomon, though in the shade, is by far the 
 most perfect conception of the young king in his pride of 
 wisdom and beauty which I know in the range of Italian art ; 
 the queen is one of the loveliest of Veronese’s female figures j 
 
CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL OF ART. 
 
 423 
 
 all the accessories are full of grace and imagination ; and the 
 finish of the whole so perfect that one day I was upwards of 
 two hours vainly trying to render, with perfect accuracy, the 
 curves of two leaves of the brocaded silk. The English 
 travellers used to walk through the room in considerable 
 numbers ; and were invariably directed to the picture by their 
 laquais de place, if they missed seeing it themselves. And to 
 this painting — in which it took me six weeks to examine 
 rightly two figures — I found that on an average, the English 
 traveller who was doing Italy conscientiously, and seeing 
 everything as he thought he ought, gave about half or three 
 quarters of a minute ; but the flying or fashionable traveller, 
 who came to do as much as he could in a given time, never 
 gave more than a single glance, most of such people turning 
 aside instantly to a bad landscape hung on the right, contain- 
 ing a vigorously painted white wall, and an opaque green 
 moat. What especially impressed me, however, was that none 
 of the ladies ever stopped to look at the dresses in the Vero- 
 nese. Certainly they were far more beautiful than any in the 
 shops in the great square, yet no one ever noticed them. 
 Sometimes when any nice, sharp-looking, bright-eyed girl 
 came into the room, I used to watch her all the way, think- 
 ing — “ Come, at least you'll see what the Queen of Sheba has 
 got on.” But no — on she would come carelessly, with a little 
 toss of the head, apparently signifying “ nothing in this room 
 worth looking at — except myself,” and so trip through the 
 door, and away. 
 
 The fact is, we don’t care for pictures : in very deed we 
 don’t. The Academy exhibition is a thing to talk of and 
 to amuse vacant hours ; those who are rich amongst us 
 buy a painting or two, for mixed reasons, sometimes to fill 
 the corner of a passage — sometimes to help the drawing-room 
 talk before dinner — sometimes because the painter is fashion- 
 able — occasionally because he is poor — not unfrequently that 
 we may have a collection of specimens of painting, as we have 
 specimens of minerals or butterflies — and in the best and 
 rarest case of all, because we have realty, as we call it, taken 
 a fancy to the picture ; meaning the same sort of fancy which 
 
424 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT THE 
 
 one would take to a pretty arm-chair or a newly shaped 
 decanter. But as for real love of the picture, and joy of it 
 when we have got it, I do not believe it is felt by one in a 
 thousand. 
 
 I am afraid this apathy of ours will not be easily con- 
 quered ; but even supposing it should, and that we should 
 begin to enjoy pictures property, and that the supply of good 
 ones increased as in that case it would increase — then comes 
 another question. Perhaps some of my hearers this evening 
 may occasionally have heard it stated of me that I am rather 
 apt to contradict myself. I hope I am exceedingly apt to do 
 so. I never met with a question yet, of any importance, 
 which did not need, for the right solution of it, at least one 
 positive and one negative answer, like an equation of the second 
 degree. Mostly, matters of any consequence are three-sided, 
 or four-sided, or polygonal ; and the trotting round a polygon is 
 severe work for people any way stiff in their opinions. For 
 myself, I am never satisfied that I have handled a subject prop- 
 erty till I have contradicted myself at least three times : but 
 once must do for this evening. I have just said that there is 
 no chance of our getting good Art unless we delight in it : 
 next I say, and just as positively, that there is no chance of 
 our getting good Art unless we resist our delight in it. We 
 must love it first, and restrain our love for it afterwards. 
 
 This sounds strange ; and yet I assure you it is true. In 
 fact, whenever anything does not sound strange, you may gen- 
 erally doubt its being true ; for all truth is wonderful. But 
 take an instance in physical matters, of the same kind of con- 
 tradiction. Suppose you were explaining to a young student 
 in astronomy how the earth was kept steady in its orbit ; you 
 would have to state to him — would you not ? — that the earth 
 always had a tendency to fall to the sun ; and that also it 
 always had a tendency to fly away from the sun. These are 
 two precisely contrary statements for him to digest at his 
 leisure, before he can understand how the earth moves. Now, 
 in like manner, when Art is set in its true and serviceable 
 course, it moves under the luminous attraction of pleasure on 
 the one side, and with a stout moral purpose of going about 
 
CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL OF ART. 
 
 425 
 
 some useful business on the other. If the artist works with- 
 out delight, he passes away into space, and perishes of cold : 
 if he works only for delight, he falls into the sun, and extin- 
 guishes himself in ashes. On the whole, this last is the fate, 
 I do not say the most to be feared, but which Art has gener- 
 ally hitherto suffered, and which the great nations of the earth 
 have suffered with it. 
 
 For, while most distinctly you may perceive in past history 
 that Art has never been produced, except by nations who 
 took pleasure in it, just as assuredly, and even more plainly, 
 you may perceive that Art has always destroyed the power 
 and life of those who pursued it for pleasure only. Surely 
 this fact must have struck you as you glanced at the career of 
 the great nations of the earth : surely it must have occurred 
 to you as a point for serious questioning, how far, even in our 
 days, we were wise in promoting the advancement of pleas- 
 ures which appeared as yet only to have corrupted the souls 
 and numbed the strength of those who attained to them. I 
 have been complaining of England that she despises the Arts ; 
 but I might, with still more appearance of justice, complain 
 that she does not rather dread them than despise. For, what 
 has been the source of the ruin of nations since the world be- 
 gan ? Has it been plague, or famine, earthquake-shock or 
 volcano-flame ? Non^gr these ever prevailed against a great 
 people, so as to make their name pass from the earth. In 
 every period and place of national decline, you will find other 
 causes than these at work to bring it about, namely, luxury, 
 effeminacy, love of pleasure, fineness in Art, ingenuity in en- 
 joyment. What is the main lesson which, as far as we seek 
 any in our classical reading, we gather for our youth from 
 ancient history? Surely this — that simplicity of life, of lan- 
 guage, and of manners gives strength to a nation ; and that 
 luxuriousness of life, subtlety of language, and smoothness of 
 manners bring weakness and destruction on a nation. While 
 men possess little and desire less, they remain brave and no- 
 ble : while they are scornful of all the arts of luxury, and are 
 in the sight of other nations as barbarians, their swords are 
 irresistible and their sway illimitable : but let them become 
 
426 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT THE 
 
 sensitive to the refinements of taste, and quick in the capac- 
 ities of pleasure, and that instant the fingers that had grasped 
 the iron rod, fail from the golden sceptre. You cannot charge 
 me with any exaggeration in this matter ; it is impossible to 
 state the truth too strongly, or as too universal. For ever you 
 will see the rude and simple nation at once more virtuous and 
 more victorious than one practised in the arts. Watch how 
 the Lydian is overthrown by the Persian ; the Persian by the 
 Athenian : the Athenian by the Spartan ; then the whole of 
 polished Greece by the rougher Roman ; the Roman, in his 
 turn refined, only to be crushed by the Goth : and at the 
 turning point of the middle ages, the liberty of Europe first 
 asserted, the virtues of Christianity best practised, and its 
 doctrines best attested, by a handful of mountain shepherds, 
 without art, without literature, almost without a language, 
 yet remaining unconquered in the midst of the Teutonic 
 chivalry, and uncorrupted amidst the hierarchies of Rome.* 
 
 I was strangely struck by this great fact during the course 
 of a journey last summer among the northern vales of Switzer- 
 land. My mind had been turned to the subject of the ulti- 
 mate effects of Art on national mind before I left England, 
 and I went straight to the chief fields of Swiss history : first 
 to the centre of her feudal power, Hapsburg, the hawk’s nest 
 from which the Swiss Rodolph rose to found the Austrian 
 empire ; and then to the heart of her republicanism, that little 
 glen of Morgarten, where first in the history of Europe the 
 shepherd’s staff prevailed over the soldier’s spear. And it 
 was somewhat depressing to me to find, as day by s day I found 
 more certainly, that this people which first asserted the liber- 
 ties of Europe, and first conceived the idea of equitable laws, 
 was in all the — shall I call them the slighter, or the higher ? — 
 
 * I ought perhaps to remind the reader that this statement refers to 
 two different societies among the Alps ; the Waldenses in the 13th, and 
 the people of the Forest Cantons in the 14th and following centuries. 
 Protestants are perhaps apt sometimes to forget that the virtues of these 
 mountaineers were shown in connection with vital forms of opposing 
 religions; and that the patriots of Schwytz and Uri were as zealous 
 Boman Catholics as they were good soldiers. We have to lay to their 
 charge the death of Zuinglius as well as of Gessler, 
 
CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL OF ART \ 
 
 427 
 
 sensibilities of the human mind, utterly deficient ; and not 
 only had remained from its earliest ages till now, without 
 poetry, without Art, and without music, except a mere modu- 
 lated cry ; but, as far as I could judge from the rude efforts 
 of their early monuments, would have been, at the time of 
 their greatest national probity and power, incapable of pro- 
 ducing good poetry or Art under any circumstances of educa- 
 tion. 
 
 I say, this was a sad thing for me to find. And then, to 
 mend the matter, I went straight over into Italy, and came at 
 once upon a curious instance of the patronage of Art, of the 
 character that usually inclines most to such patronage, and of 
 the consequences thereof. 
 
 From Morgarten and Grutli, I intended to have crossed to 
 the Yaudois Valleys, to examine the shepherd character there ; 
 but on the way I had to pass through Turin, where unexpectedly 
 I found the Paul Veroneses, one of which, as I told you just 
 now, stayed me at once for six weeks. Naturally enough, one 
 asked how these beautiful Veroneses came there : and found 
 they had been commissioned by Cardinal Maurice of Savoy. 
 Worthy Cardinal, 1 thought : that’s what Cardinals were made 
 for. However, goihgii little farther in the gallery, one comes 
 upon four very graceful pictures by Albani— these also com- 
 missioned by the Cardinal, and commissioned with special 
 directions, according to the Cardinal’s fancy, Four pictures, 
 to be illustrative of the four elements. 
 
 One of the most curious things in the mind of the people 
 of that century is their delight in these four elements, and in 
 the four seasons. They had hardly any other idea of decorat- 
 ing a room, or of choosing a subject for a picture, than by 
 some renewed reference to fire and water, or summer and 
 winter ; nor were ever tired of hearing that summer came 
 after spring, and that air was not earth, until these interesting- 
 pieces of information got finally and poetically expressed iii 
 that well-known piece of elegant English conversation about 
 the weather, Thomson’s “ Seasons.” So the Cardinal, not ap- 
 pearing to have any better idea than the popular one, orders 
 the four elements ; but thinking that the elements pure would 
 
428 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT THE 
 
 be slightly dull, lie orders them, in one way or another, to be 
 mixed up with Cupids ; to have, in his own words, “ una co- 
 piosa quantita di Amorim.” Albani supplied the Cardinal ac- 
 cordingly with Cupids in clusters ; they hang in the sky like 
 bunches of cherries ; and leap out of the sea like flying fish ; 
 grow out of the earth in fairy rings ; and explode out the fire 
 like squibs. No work whatsoever is done in any of the four 
 elements, but by the Cardinal’s Cupids. They are ploughing 
 the earth with their arrows ; fishing in the sea with their bow- 
 strings ; driving the clouds with their breath ; and fanning 
 the fire with their wings. A few beautiful nymphs are assist- 
 ing them here and there in pearl-fishing, flower-gathering, and 
 other such branches of graceful industry ; the moral of the 
 whole being, that the sea was made for its pearls, the earth 
 for its flowers, and all the world for pleasure. 
 
 Well, the Cardinal, this great encourager of the arts, having 
 these industrial and social theories, carried them out in prac- 
 tice, as you may perhaps remember, by obtaining a dispensa- 
 tion from the Pope to marry his own niece, and building a 
 villa for her on one of the slopes of the pretty hills which rise 
 to the east of the city. The villa which he built is now one of 
 the principal objects of interest to the traveller as an example 
 of Italian domestic architecture : to me, during my stay in the 
 city, it was much more than an object of interest ; for its de- 
 serted gardens were by much the pleasantest place I could 
 find for walking of thinking in, in the hot summer afternoons. 
 
 I say thinking, for these gardens often gave me a good deal 
 to think about. They are, as I told you, on the slope of the 
 hill above the city, to the east ; commanding, therefore, the 
 view over it and beyond it, westward — a view which, perhaps, 
 of all those that can be obtained north of the Apennines, gives 
 the most comprehensive idea of the nature of Italy, considered 
 as one great country. If you glance at the map, you will ob- 
 serve that Turin is placed in the centre of the crescent which 
 the Alps form round the basin of Piedmont ; it is within ten 
 miles of the foot of the mountains at the nearest point ; and 
 from that point the chain extends half round the city in one 
 unbroken Moorish crescent, forming three-fourths of a circle 
 
CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL OF ART. 
 
 429 
 
 from the Col de Tende to the St. Gothard ; that is to say, just 
 two hundred miles of Alps, as the bird flies. I don’t speak 
 rhetorically or carelessly ; I speak as I ought to speak here — 
 with mathematical precision. Take the scale on your map ; 
 measure fifty miles of it accurately ; try that measure from the 
 Col de Tende to the St. Gothard, and you will find that four 
 chords of fifty miles will not quite reach to the two extremi- 
 ties of the curve. 
 
 You see, then, from this spot, the plain of Piedmont, on the 
 north and south, literally as far as the eye can reach ; so that 
 the plain terminates as the sea does, with a level blue line, 
 only tufted with woods instead of waves, and crowded with 
 towers of cities instead of ships. Then, in the luminous air 
 beyond and behind this blue horizon-line, stand, as it were, 
 the shadows of mountains, they themselves dark, for the south- 
 ern slopes of the Alps of the Lago Maggiore and Bellinzona 
 are all without snow ; but the light of the unseen snowfields, 
 lying level behind the visible peaks, is sent up with strange 
 reflection upon the clouds ; an everlasting light of calm Aurora 
 in the north. Then, higher and higher around the approach- 
 ing darkness of the plain, rise the central chains, not as on 
 the Switzer’s side, a recognizable group and following of suc- 
 cessive and separate hills, but a wilderness of jagged peaks, 
 cast in passionate and fierce profusion along the circumference 
 of heaven : precipice behind precipice, and gulf beyond gulf, 
 filled with the flaming of the sunset, and forming mighty 
 channels for the flowings of the clouds, which roll up against 
 them out of the vast Italian plain, forced together by the nar- 
 rowing crescent, and breaking up at last against the Alpine 
 wall in towers of spectral spray ; or sweeping up its ravines 
 with long moans of complaining thunder. Out from between 
 the cloudy pillars, as they pass, emerge for ever the great bah 
 tlements of the memorable and perpetual hills : Yiso, with her 
 shepherd-witnesses to ancient faith ; Rocca-Melone, the high- 
 est place of Alpine pilgrimage ; * Iseran, who shed her burial 
 
 * The summit of Rocca-Melone is the sharp peak seen from Turin on 
 the right hand of the gorge of the Cenis, dominant over the low pro- 
 jecting pyramid of the hill called by De Saussure Montague de Musinet. 
 
430 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT THE 
 
 sheets of snow about the march of Hannibal ; Cenis, who shone 
 with her glacier light on the descent of Charlemagne ; Para- 
 diso, who watched with her opposite crest the stoop of the 
 French eagle to Marengo ; and underneath all these, lying in 
 her soft languor, this tender Italy, lapped in dews of sleep, or 
 more than sleep — one knows not if it is trance, from which 
 morning shall yet roll the blinding mists away, or if the fair 
 shadows of her quietude are indeed the shades of purple 
 death. And, lifted a little above this solemn plain, and look- 
 ing beyond it to its snowy ramparts, vainly guardian, stands 
 this palace dedicate to pleasure, the whole legend of Italy’s 
 past history written before it by the finger of God, written as 
 with an iron pen upon the rock forever, on all those fronting 
 walls of reproachful Alp ; blazoned in gold of lightning upon 
 the clouds that still open and close their unsealed scrolls in 
 heaven ; painted in purple and scarlet upon the mighty mis- 
 sal pages of sunset after sunset, spread vainly before a nation’s 
 eyes for a nation’s prayer. So stands this palace of pleasure ; 
 desolate as it deserves — desolate in smooth corridor and 
 glittering chamber — desolate in pleached walk and planted 
 bower — desolate in that worst and bitterest abandonment 
 which leaves no light of memory. No ruins are here of walls 
 rent by war, and falling above their defenders into mounds 
 of graves : no remnants are here of chapel-altar, or temple- 
 porch, left shattered or silent by the power of some purer 
 worship : no vestiges are here of sacred hearth and sweet 
 homestead, left lonely through vicissitudes of fate, and heaven- 
 sent sorrow. Nothing is here but the vain apparellings of 
 
 Rocca-Melone rises to a height of 11,000 feet above the sea, and its peak 
 is a place of pilgrimage to this day, though it seems temporarily to have 
 ceased to be so in the time of De Saussure, who thus speaks of it: 
 
 “ II y a eu pendant long-terns sur cette cime, une petite chapelle avec 
 une image de Notre Dame qui etoit en grande veneration dansle pays, 
 et oh nn grand n ombre de gens alloient au mois d’aouten procession, de 
 Suze et des environs ; mais le sentier qni conduit a cette chapelle est si 
 ctroit et si scabreux qu’il n’y avoit presque pas d’annees qu’il n’y perit 
 du monde ; la fatigue et la rarete de Pair saisissoient cenx qui avoient 
 plutdt consulte leur devotion que leurs forces : ils tomberent en de- 
 laillance, et de la dans le precipice. ” 
 
CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL OF ART. 
 
 431 
 
 pride sunk into dishonour, and vain appanages of delight 
 now no more delightsome. The hill-waters, that once flowed 
 and plashed in the garden fountains, now trickle sadly 
 through the weeds that encumber their basins, with a sound 
 as of tears : the creeping, insidious, neglected flowers weave 
 their burning nets about the white marble of the balustrades, 
 and rend them slowly, block from block, and stone from 
 stone : the thin, sweet-scented leaves tremble along the old 
 masonry joints as if with palsy at every breeze ; and the dark 
 lichens, golden and grey, make -the foot-fall silent in the path’s 
 centre. 
 
 And day by day as I walked there, the same sentence seemed 
 whispered by every shaking leaf, and every dying echo, of 
 garden and chamber. 
 
 “Thus end all the arts of life, only in death; and thus 
 issue all the gifts of man, only in his dishonour, when they 
 are pursued or possessed in the service of pleasure only.” 
 
 This then is the great enigma of Art History, — you must 
 not follow Art without pleasure, nor must you follow it for the 
 sake of pleasure. And the solution of that enigma, is simply 
 this fact ; that wherever Art has been followed only for the 
 sake of luxury or delight, it has contributed, and largely con- 
 tributed, to bring about the destruction of the nation practis- 
 ing it : but wherever Art has been used also to teach any truth, 
 or supposed truth — religious, moral, or natural — there it has 
 elevated the nation practising it, and itself with the nation. 
 
 Thus the Art of Greece rose, and did service to the people, 
 so long as it was to them the earnest interpreter of a religion 
 they believed in : the Arts of northern sculpture and architect- 
 ure rose, as interpreters of Christian legend and doctrine : 
 the Art of painting in Italy, not only as religious, but also 
 mainly as expressive of truths of moral philosophy, and pow- 
 erful in pure human portraiture. The only great painters in 
 our schools of painting in England have either been of portrait 
 — Reynolds and Gainsborough ; of the philosophy of social 
 life — Hogarth ; or of the facts of nature in landscape— -Wilson 
 and Turner. In all these cases, if I had time, I could shov/ 
 you that the success of the painter .depended on his desire to 
 
432 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT THE 
 
 convey a truth, rather than to produce a merely beautiful 
 picture ; that is to say, to get a likeness of a man, or of a 
 place ; to get some moral principle rightly stated, or some 
 historical character rightly described, rather than merely to 
 give pleasure to the eyes. Compare the feeling with which a 
 Moorish architect decorated an arch of the Alhambra, with that 
 of Hogarth painting the “Marriage a la Mode,” or of Wilkie 
 painting the “ Chelsea Pensioners,” and you will at once feel 
 the difference between Art pursued for pleasure only, and 
 for the sake of some useful principle or impression. 
 
 But what you might not so easily discern is, that even when 
 painting does appear to have been pursued for pleasure only, 
 if ever you find it rise to any noble level, you will also find 
 that a stern search after truth has been at the root of its no- 
 bleness. You may fancy, perhaps, that Titian, Veronese, and 
 Tintoret were painters for the sake of pleasure only : but in 
 reality they were the only painters who ever sought entirely 
 to master, and who did entirely master, the truths of light 
 and shade as associated with colour, in the noblest of all 
 physical created things, the human form. They were the 
 only men who ever painted the human body ; all other paint- 
 ers of the great schools are mere anatomical draughtsmen com- 
 pared to them ; rather makers of maps of the body, than 
 painters of it. The Venetians alone, by a toil almost super- 
 human, succeeded at last in obtaining a power almost super- 
 human ; and were able finally to paint the highest visible work 
 of God with unexaggerated structure, undegraded colour, and 
 unaffected gesture. It seems little to say this ; but I assure 
 you it is much to have done this — so much, that no other men 
 but the Venetians ever did it: none of them ever painted the 
 human body without in some degree caricaturing the anatomy, 
 forcing the action, or degrading the hue. 
 
 Now, therefore, the sum of all is, that you who wish to en- 
 courage Art in England have to do two things with it : you 
 must delight in it, in the first place ; and you must get it to 
 serve some serious work, in the second place. I don’t mean 
 by serious, necessarily moral ; all that I mean by serious is in 
 some way or other useful, not merely selfish, careless, or in- 
 
CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL OF ART. 
 
 433 
 
 clolent. I had, indeed, intended before closing my address, 
 to have traced out a few of the directions in which, as it 
 seems to me, Art may be seriously and practically serviceable 
 to us in the career of civilization. I had hoped to show you 
 how many of the great phenomena of nature still remained 
 unrecorded by it, for us to record ; how many of the historical 
 monuments of Europe were perishing without memorial, for 
 the want of a little honest, simple, laborious, loving draughts- 
 manship ; how many of the most impressive historical events 
 of the day failed of teaching us half of what they were meant 
 to teach, for want of painters to represent them faithfully, in- 
 stead of fancifully, and with historical truth for their aim, 
 instead of national self-glorification. I had hoped to show 
 you how many-ef. the best impulses of the heart were lost in 
 frivolity or sensuality, for want of purer beauty to contem- 
 plate, and of noble thoughts to associate with the fervour of 
 hallowed human passion ; how, finally, a great part of the 
 vital power of our religious faith was lost in us, for want of 
 such art as would realise in some rational, probable, believ- 
 able way, those events of sacred history which, as they visibly 
 and intelligibly occurred, may also be visibly and intelligibly 
 represented. But all this I dare not do yet. I felt, as I 
 thought over these things, that the time was not yet come for 
 their declaration : the time will come for it, and I believe 
 soon ; but as yet, the man would only lay himself open to the 
 charge of vanity, of imagination, and of idle fondness of hope, 
 who should venture to trace in words the course of the higher 
 blessings which the Arts may have yet in store for mankind. 
 As yet there is no need to do so : all that we have to plead 
 for is an earnest and straightforward exertion in those 
 courses of study which are opened to us day by day, believ- 
 ing only that they are to be followed gravely and for grave 
 purposes, as by men, and not by children. I appeal, finally, 
 to all those who are to become the pupils of these schools, to 
 keep clear of the notion of following Art as dilettantism : 
 it ought to delight you, as your reading delights you — but you 
 never think of your reading as dilettantism. It ought to de- 
 light you as your studies of physical-science delight you — but 
 
434 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT THE 
 
 you don’t call physical science dilettantism. If you are deter- 
 mined only to think of Art as a play or a pleasure, give it up 
 at once : you will do no good to yourselves, and you will de- 
 grade the pursuit in the sight of others. Better, infinitely 
 better, that you should never enter a picture gallery, than 
 that you should enter only to saunter and to smile : better, 
 infinitely better, that you should never handle a pencil at all, 
 than handle it only for the sake of complacency in your 
 small dexterity : better, infinitely better, that you should be 
 wholly uninterested in pictures, and uninformed respecting 
 them, than that you should just know enough to detect blem- 
 ishes in great works, — to give a colour of reasonableness to 
 presumption, and an appearance of acuteness to misunder- 
 standing. Above all, I would plead for this so far as the 
 teaching of these schools may be addressed to the junior 
 Members of the University. Men employed in any kind of 
 manual labour, by which they must live, are not likely to take 
 up the notion that they can learn any other art for amuse- 
 ment only ; but amateurs are : and it is of the highest im- 
 portance, najr, it is just the one thing of all importance, to 
 show them what drawing really means ; and not so much to 
 teach them to produce a good work themselves, as to know it 
 when they see it done by others. Good work, in the stern 
 sense of the word, as I before said, no mere amateur can do ; 
 and good work, in any sense, that is to say, profitable work 
 for himself or for any one else, he can only do by being 
 made in the beginning to see what is possible for him, and 
 what not ; — what is accessible, and what not ; and by having 
 the majesty and sternness of the everlasting laws of fact set 
 before him in their infinitude. It is no matter for appalling 
 him : the man is great already who is made well capable of 
 being appalled ; nor do we ever wisely hope, nor truly under- 
 stand, till we are humiliated by our hope, and awestruck by 
 our understanding. Nay, I will go farther than this, and say 
 boldly, that what you may have mainly to teach the young 
 men here is, not so much what they can do, as what they can- 
 not ; — to make them see how much there is in nature which 
 cannot be imitated, and how much in man which cannot be 
 
CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL OF ART \ 
 
 435 
 
 emulated. He only can be truly said to be educated in Art to 
 whom all his work is only a feeble sign of glories which he can- 
 not convey, and a feeble means of measuring, with ever- 
 enlarging admiration, the great and untraversable gulf which 
 God has set between the great and the common intelligences 
 of mankind : and all the triumphs of Art which man can 
 commonly achieve are only truly crowned by pure delight in 
 natural scenes themselves, and by the sacred and self-forgetful 
 veneration which can be nobly abashed, and tremblingly ex< 
 alted, in the presence of a human spirit greater than his own* 
 

 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
MODERN PAINTERS 
 
 VOLUME THE FIRST 
 
 OF GENERAL PRINCIPLES AND OF TRUT 
 

THE LANDSCAPE 
 
 Zo 
 
 ARTISTS OF ENGLAND 
 
 THIS WORK 
 
 IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 
 BY THEIR SINCERE ADMIRER 
 
 The Author 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 
 
 The work now laid before the public originated in in- 
 dignation at the shallow and false criticism of the peri- 
 odicals of the day on the works of the great living artist 
 to whom it principally refers. It was intended to be a 
 short pamphlet, reprobating the matter and style of 
 those critiques, and pointing out their perilous ten- 
 dency, as guides of public feeling. But, as point after 
 point presented itself for demonstration, I found myself 
 compelled to amplify what was at first a letter to the 
 Editor of a Xteview, into something very like a treatise 
 on art, to which I was obliged to give the more consist- 
 ency and completeness, because it advocated opinions 
 which, to the ordinary connoisseur, will sound heretical. 
 I now scarcely know whether I should announce it is an 
 Essay on Landscape Painting, and apologize for its fre- 
 quent reference to the works of a particular master ; or, 
 announcing it as a critique on particular works, apologize 
 for its lengthy discussion of general principles. But of 
 whatever character the work may be considered, the mo- 
 tives which led me to undertake it must not be mis- 
 taken. No zeal for the reputation of any individual, no 
 personal feeling of any kind, has the slightest weight or 
 influence with me.. The reputation of the great artist to 
 whose works I have chiefly referred, is established on 
 too legitimate grounds among all whose admiration is 
 honorable, to be in any way affected by the ignorant sar- 
 
6 
 
 PREFACE TO TEE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 casms of pretension and affectation. But when public 
 taste seems plunging deeper and deeper into degrada- 
 tion day by day, and when the press universally exerts 
 such power as it possesses to direct the feeling of the 
 nation more completely to all that is theatrical, affected, 
 and false in art ; while it vents its ribald buffooneries on 
 the most exalted truth, and the highest ideal of land- 
 scape, that this or any other age has ever witnessed, it 
 becomes the imperative duty of all who have any per- 
 ception or knowledge of what is really great in art, and 
 any desire for its advancement in England, to come fear- 
 lessly forward, regardless of such individual interests as 
 are likely to be injured by the knowledge of what is 
 good and right, to declare and demonstrate, wherever 
 they exist, the essence and the authority of the Beautiful 
 and the True. 
 
 Whatever may seem invidious or partial in the execu- 
 tion of my task is dependent not so much on the tenor 
 of the work, as on its incompleteness. I have not en- 
 tered into systematic criticism of all the painters of 
 the present day ; but I have illustrated each particular 
 excellence and truth of art by the works in which it ex- 
 ists in the highest degree, resting satisfied that if it be 
 once rightly felt and enjoyed in these, it will be discov- 
 ered and appreciated wherever it exists in others. And 
 although I have never suppressed any conviction of the 
 superiority of one artist over another, which I believed 
 to be grounded on truth, and necessary to the under- 
 standing of truth, I have been cautious never to under- 
 mine positive rank, while I disputed relative rank. My 
 uniform desire and aim have been, not that the present 
 favorite should be admired less, but that the neglected 
 master should be admired more. And I know that an 
 increased perception and sense of truth and beauty, 
 though it may interfere with our estimate of the com- 
 parative rank of painters, will invariably tend to in- 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION . 
 
 7 
 
 crease our admiration of all who are really great ; and 
 he who now places Stanfield and Callcott above Turner, 
 will admire Stanfield and Callcott more than he does 
 now, when he has learned to place Turner far above 
 them both. 
 
 In three instances only have I spoken in direct depre- 
 ciation of the works of living artists, and these are all 
 cases in which the reputation is so firm and extended, 
 as to suffer little injury from the opinion of an individ- 
 ual, and where the blame has been warranted and de- 
 served by the desecration of the highest powers. 
 
 Of the old masters I have spoken with far greater 
 freedom ; but let it be remembered that only a portion 
 of the work is now presented to the public, and it must 
 not be supposed, because in that particular portion, and 
 with reference to particular excellencies, I have spoken 
 in constant depreciation, that I have no feeling of other 
 excellencies of which cognizance can only be taken in 
 future parts of the work. Let me not be understood to 
 mean more than I have said, nor be made responsible 
 for conclusions^when I have only stated facts. I have 
 said that the old masters did not give the truth of Nat- 
 ure; if the reader chooses, thence, to infer that they 
 were not masters at all, it is his conclusion, not mine. 
 
 Whatever I have asserted throughout the work, I have 
 endeavored to ground altogether on demonstrations 
 which must stand or fall by their own strength, and 
 which ought to involve no more reference to authority 
 or character than a demonstration in Euclid. Yet it is 
 proper for the public to know, that the writer is no 
 mere theorist, but has been devoted from his youth to 
 the laborious study of practical art. 
 
 Whatever has been generally affirmed of the old 
 schools of landscape-painting is founded on familiar 
 acquaintance with every important work of art, from 
 Antwerp to Naples. But it would be useless, where 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 close and immediate comparison with works in our own 
 Academy is desirable, to refer to the details of pictures 
 at Eome or Munich; and it would be impossible to 
 speak at once with just feeling-, as regarded the pos- 
 sessor, and just freedom, as regarded the public, of pict- 
 ures in private galleries. Whatever particular refer- 
 ences have been made for illustration, have been there- 
 fore confined, as far as was in my power, to works in the 
 National and Dulwich Galleries. 
 
 Finally, I have to apologize for the imperfection of a 
 work which I could have wished not to have executed, 
 but with years of reflection and revisal. It is owing to 
 my sense of the necessity of such revisal, that only a 
 portion of the work is now presented to the public ; but 
 that portion is both complete in itself, and is more pe- 
 culiarly directed against the crying evil which called 
 for instant remedy. Whether I ever completely fulfil 
 my intention, will partly depend upon the spirit in 
 which the present volume is received. If it be attrib- 
 uted to an invidious spirit, or a desire for the advance- 
 ment of individual interests, I could hope to effect little 
 good by farther effort. If, on the contrary, its real feel- 
 ing and intention be understood, I shall shrink from no 
 labor in the execution of a task which may tend, how- 
 ever feebly, to the advancement of the cause of real art 
 in England, and to the honor of those great living Mas- 
 ters whom we now neglect or malign, to pour our flat- 
 tery into the ear of Death, and exalt, with vain acclama- 
 tion, the names of those who neither demand our praise, 
 nor regard our gratitude. 
 
 The Author. 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 It is allowed by the most able writers on naval and 
 military tactics, that although the attack by successive 
 divisions absolutely requires in the attacking party such 
 an inherent superiority in quality of force, and such con- 
 sciousness of that superiority, as may enable his front 
 columns, or his leading ships, to support themselves for 
 a considerable period against overwhelming numbers ; it 
 yet insures, if maintained with constancy, the most total 
 ruin of the opposing force. Convinced of the truth, and 
 therefore assured of the ultimate prevalence and victory 
 of the principles which I have advocated, and equally 
 confident that the strength of the cause must give weight 
 to the strokes of even the weakest of its defenders, I 
 permitted myself to yield to a somewhat hasty and hot- 
 headed desire of being, at whatever risk, in the thick of 
 the fire, and began the contest with a part, and that the 
 weakest and least considerable part, of the forces at my 
 disposal. And I now find the volume thus boldly laid 
 before the public in a position much resembling that of 
 the Royal Sovereign at Trafalgar, receiving, unsup- 
 ported, the broadsides of half the enemy’s fleet, while 
 unforeseen circumstances have hitherto prevented, and 
 must yet for a time prevent, my heavier ships of the line 
 from taking any part in the action. I watched the first 
 moments of the struggle with some anxiety for the soli- 
 tary vessel. — an anxiety which I have now ceased to feel, 
 
10 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 — for the flag of truth waves brightly through the smoke 
 of the battle, and my antagonists, wholly intent on the 
 destruction of the leading ship, have lost their position 
 and exposed themselves in defenceless disorder to the 
 attack of the following columns. 
 
 If, however, I have had no reason to regret my hasty 
 advance, as far as regards the ultimate issue of the strug- 
 gle, I have yet found it to occasion much misconception 
 of the character, and some diminution of the influence, 
 of the present essay. For though the work has been re- 
 ceived as only in sanguine moments I had ventured to 
 hope, though I have had the pleasure of knowing that 
 in many instances its principles have carried with them 
 a strength of conviction amounting to a demonstration 
 of their truth, and that, even where it has had no other 
 influence, it has excited interest, suggested inquiry, and 
 prompted to a just and frank comparison of Art with 
 Nature ; yet this effect would have been greater still, 
 had net the work been supposed, as it seems to have 
 been by many readers, a completed treatise, containing a 
 systematized statement of the whole of my views on the 
 subject of modern art. Considered as such, it surprises 
 me that the book should have received the slightest 
 attention. For what respect could be due to a writer 
 who pretended to criticise and classify the works of the 
 great painters of landscape, without developing, or even 
 alluding to, one single principle of the beautiful or sub- 
 lime % So far from being a completed essay, it is little 
 more than the introduction to the mass of evidence and 
 illustration which I have yet to bring forward ; it treats 
 of nothing but the initiatory steps of art, states nothing 
 but the elementary rules of criticism, touches only on 
 merits attainable by accuracy of eye and fidelity of hand, 
 and leaves for future consideration every one of the 
 eclectic qualities of pictures, all of good that is prompted 
 by feeling, and of great that is guided by judgment; 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 11 
 
 and its function and scope should the less have been 
 mistaken, because I have not only most carefully ar- 
 ranged the subject in its commencement, but have given 
 frequent references throughout to the essays by which 
 it is intended to be succeeded, in which I shall endeavor 
 to point out the signification and the value of those phe- 
 nomena of external nature which I have been hitherto 
 compelled to describe without reference either to their 
 inherent beauty, or to the lessons which may be derived 
 from them. 
 
 Yet, to prevent such misconception in future, I may 
 perhaps be excused for occupying the reader’s time with 
 a fuller statement of the feelings with which the work 
 was undertaken, of its general plan, and of the conclu- 
 sions and positions which I hope to be able finally to 
 deduce and maintain. 
 
 Nothing, perhaps, bears on the face of it more appear- 
 ance of folly, ignorance, and impertinence, than any at- 
 tempt to diminish the honor of those to whom the assent 
 of many generations has assigned a throne ; for the truly 
 great of later times have, almost without exception, 
 fostered in others the veneration of departed power 
 which they felt themselves, satisfied in all humility to 
 take their seat at the feet of those whose honor is bright- 
 ened by the hoariness of time, and to wait for the period 
 when the lustre of many departed days may accumulate 
 on their own heads, in the radiance which culminates 
 as it recedes. The envious and incompetent have usu- 
 ally been the leaders of attack, content if, like the foul- 
 ness of the earth, they may attract to themselves notice 
 by their noisomeness, or, like its insects, exalt them- 
 selves by virulence into visibility. While, however, the 
 envy of the vicious, and the insolence of the ignorant, 
 are occasionally shown in their nakedness by futile efforts 
 to degrade the dead, it is worthy of consideration whether 
 they may not more frequently escape detection in sue - 
 
12 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION . 
 
 cessful efforts to degrade the living, — whether the very 
 same malice may not be gratified, the very same incom- 
 petence demonstrated in the unjust lowering of present 
 greatness, and the unjust exaltation of a perished power, 
 as, if exerted and manifested in a less safe direction, 
 would have classed the critic with Nero and Caligula, 
 Avith Zoilus and Perrault. Be it remembered, that the 
 spirit of detraction is detected only when unsuccessful, 
 and receives least punishment where it effects the great- 
 est injury ; and it cannot but be felt that there is as 
 much danger that the rising of new stars should be con- 
 cealed by the mists which are unseen, as that those 
 throned in heaven should be darkened by the clouds 
 which are visible. 
 
 There is, I fear, so much malice in the hearts of most 
 men, that they are chiefly jealous of that praise which 
 can give the greatest pleasure, and are then most liberal 
 of eulogium when it can no longer be enjoyed. They 
 grudge not the whiteness of the sepulchre, because by 
 no honor they can bestow upon it can the senseless 
 corpse be rendered an object of envy ; but they are nig- 
 gardly of the reputation which contributes to happiness, 
 or advances to fortune. They are glad to obtain credit 
 for generosity and humility by exalting those who are 
 beyond the reach of praise, and thus to escape the more 
 painful necessity of doing homage to a living rival. 
 They are rejoiced to set up a standard of imaginary ex- 
 cellence, which may enable them, by insisting on the 
 inferiority of a contemporary work to the things that 
 have been, to withdraw the attention from its superiority 
 to the things that are. The same undercurrent of jeal- 
 ousy operates in our reception of animadversion. Men 
 have commonly more pleasure in the criticism which 
 hurts than in that which is innocuous, and are more tol- 
 erant of the severity which breaks hearts and ruins for- 
 tunes, than of that which falls impotently on the grave. 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. lo 
 
 And thus well says the good and deep -minded Richard 
 Hooker : “ To the best and wisest, while they live, the 
 world is continually a froward opposite ; and a curious 
 observer of their defects and imperfections, their virtues 
 afterwards it as much admireth. And for this cause, 
 many times that which deserveth admiration w 7 ould 
 hardly be able to find favor, if they w r hich propose it 
 were not content to profess themselves therein scholars 
 and followers of the ancient. For the world will not 
 endure to hear that we are wiser than any have been 
 which went before.” — Book v. ch. vii. 3. He, therefore, 
 who would maintain the cause of contemporary excel- 
 lence against that of elder time, must have almost every 
 class of men arrayed against him. The generous, be- 
 cause they would not find matter of accusation against 
 established dignities ; the envious, because they like not 
 the sound of a living man’s praise ; the wise, because 
 they 7 prefer the opinion of centuries to that of days ; and 
 the foolish, because they are incapable of forming an 
 opinion of their own. Obloquy so universal is not 
 lightly to be risked, and the few who make an effort to 
 stem the torrent, as it is made commonly in favor of 
 their own works, deserve the contempt which is their 
 only reward. Nor is this to be regretted, in its influence 
 on the progress and preservation of things technical and 
 communicable. Respect for the ancients is the salvation 
 of art, though it sometimes blinds us to its ends. It in- 
 creases the power of the painter, though it diminishes 
 his liberty ; and if it be sometimes an encumbrance to 
 the essays of invention, it is oftener a protection from 
 the consequences of audacity. The whole system and 
 discipline of art, the collected results of the experience 
 of ages, might, but for the fixed authority of antiquity, be 
 swept away by the rage of fashion, or lost in the glare of 
 novelty ; and the knowledge which it had taken centuries 
 to accumulate, the principles which mighty minds had ar- 
 
14 
 
 PREFACE TO TIIE SECOND EDITION 
 
 rived at only in dying 1 , might be overthrown by the fren- 
 zy of a faction, and abandoned in the insolence of an hour. 
 
 Neither, in its general application, is the persuasion 
 of the superiority of former works less just than useful. 
 The greater number of them are, and must be, immeas- 
 urably nobler than any of the results of present effort, 
 because that which is best of the productions of four 
 thousand years must necessarily be, in its accumulation, 
 beyond all rivalry from the works of any given genera- 
 tion ; but it should always be remembered that it is im- 
 probable that many, and impossible that all, of such 
 works, though the greatest yet produced, should ap- 
 proach abstract perfection ; that there is certainly some- 
 thing left for us to carry farther, or complete ; that any 
 given generation has just the same chance of producing 
 some individual mind of first-rate calibre, as any of its 
 predecessors ; and that if such a mind should arise, the 
 chances are, that with the assistance of experience and 
 example, it would, in its particular and chosen path, do 
 greater things than had been before done. 
 
 We must therefore be cautious not to lose sight of the 
 real use of what has been left us by antiquity, nor to 
 take that for a model of perfection which is, in many 
 cases, only a guide to it. The picture which is looked to 
 for an interpretation of nature is invaluable, but the 
 picture which is taken as a substitute for nature, had 
 better be burned ; and the young artist, while he should 
 shrink with horror from the iconoclast who would tear 
 from him every landmark and light which has been be- 
 queathed him by the ancients, and leave him in a liber- 
 ated childhood, may be equally certain of being be- 
 trayed by those who would give him the power and the 
 knowledge of past time, and then fetter his strength 
 from all advance, and bend his eyes backward on a beaten 
 path — who would thrust canvass between him and the 
 sky, and tradition between him and God. 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 15 
 
 And such conventional teaching is the more to bo 
 dreaded, because all that is highest in art, all that is crea- 
 tive and imaginative, is formed and created by every 
 great master for himself, and cannot be repeated or imi- 
 tated by others. We judge of the excellence of a rising 
 writer, not so much by the resemblance of his works to 
 what has been done before, as by their difference from it ; 
 and while we advise him, in his first trials of strength, to set 
 certain models before him with respect to inferior points, 
 — one for versification, another for arrangement, another 
 for treatment, — we yet admit not his greatness until he 
 has broken away from all his models, and struck forth 
 versification, arrangement, and treatment of his own. 
 
 Three points, therefore, I would especially insist upon 
 as necessary to be kept in mind in all criticism, of mod- 
 ern art. First, that there are few, very few of even the 
 best productions of antiquity, which are not visibly and 
 palpably imperfect in some kind or way, and conceivably 
 improvable by farther study; that every nation, perhaps 
 every generation, has in all probability some peculiar 
 gift, some particular character of mind, enabling it to do 
 something different from, or something in some sort 
 better than what has been before done ; and that there- 
 fore, unless art be a trick, or a manufacture, of which the 
 secrets are lost, the greatest minds of. existing nations, 
 if exerted with the same industry, passion, and honest 
 aim as those of past time, have a chance in their partic- 
 ular walk of doing something as great, or, taking the 
 advantage of former example into account, even greater 
 and better. It is difficult to conceive by what laws of 
 logic some of the reviewers of the following Essay have 
 construed its first sentence into a denial of this prin- 
 ciple, — a denial such as their own conventional and 
 shallow criticism of modern works invariably implies. I 
 have said that “ nothing has been for centuries conse- 
 crated by public admiration without possessing in a 
 
16 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 high degree some species of sterling excellence.” Does 
 it thence follow that it possesses in the highest degree 
 every species of sterling excellence * “ Yet thus,” says 
 
 the sapient reviewer, “ he admits the fact against which 
 he mainly argues, — namely, the superiority of these time- 
 honored productions.” As if the possession of an ab- 
 stract excellence of some kind necessarily implied the 
 possession of an incomparable excellence of every kind! 
 There are few works of man so perfect as to admit of no 
 conception of their being excelled,* — there are thousands 
 which have been for centuries, and will be for centuries 
 more, consecrated by public admiration, which are yet 
 imperfect in many respects, and have been excelled, 
 and may be excelled again. Do my opponents mean to 
 assert that nothing good can ever be bettered, and that 
 what is best of past time is necessarily best of all time ? 
 Perugino, I suppose, |Dossessed some species of sterling 
 excellence, but Perugino was excelled by Paffaelle ; and 
 so, Claude possesses some species of sterling excellence, 
 but it follows not that he may not be excelled by Turner. 
 
 The second point on which I would insist is that if a 
 mind were to arise of such power as to be capable of 
 equalling or excelling some of the greatest works of past 
 ages, the productions of such a mind would, in all prob- 
 ability, be totally different in manner and matter from 
 all former XDroductions ; for the more powerful the intel- 
 lect, the less will its works resemble those of other men, 
 whether predecessors or contemporaries. Instead of 
 reasoning, therefore, as we commonly do, in matters of 
 art, that because such and such a work does not resemble 
 that which has hitherto been a canon, therefore it must 
 
 * One or two fragments of Greek sculpture, the works of Michael 
 Angelo, considered with reference to their general conception and 
 power, and the Madonna di St. Sisto, are all that I should myself put 
 into such a category, not that even these are without defect, but their 
 defects are such as mortality could never hope to rectify. 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION . 
 
 17 
 
 be inferior and wrong in principle ; let us rather admit 
 that there is in its very dissimilarity an increased chance 
 of its being itself a new, and perhaps, a higher canon. If 
 any production of modern art can be shown to have the 
 authority of nature on its side, and to be based on eter- 
 nal truths, it is ail so much more in its favor, so much 
 farther proof of its power, that it is totally different from 
 all that have been before seen.* 
 
 The third point on which I would insist, is that if such 
 a mind were to arise, it would necessarily divide the 
 world of criticism into two factions ; the one, necessarily 
 the largest and loudest, composed of men incapable of 
 judging* except by precedent, ignorant of general truth, 
 and acquainted only with such particular truths as may 
 have been illustrated or pointed out to them by former 
 works, which class would of course be violent in vituper- 
 ation, and increase in animosity as the master departed 
 farther from their particular and preconceived canons of 
 right, — thus wounding their vanity by impugning their 
 judgment ; the other, necessarily narrow of number, com- 
 posed of men of general knowledge and unbiassed habits 
 of thought, who would recognize in the work of the dar- 
 ing innovator a record and illustration of facts before un- 
 seized, who would justly and candidly estimate the value 
 of the truths so rendered, and would increase in fervor 
 
 * This principle is dangerous, but not the less true, and necessary to 
 be kept in mind. There is scarcely any truth which does not admit of 
 being wrested to purposes of evil, and we must not deny the desirable- 
 ness of originality, because men may err in seeking for it, or because a 
 pretence to it may be made, by presumption, a cloak for its incompe- 
 tence, Nevertheless, originality is never to be sought for its own sake 
 — otherwise it will be mere aberration — it should arise naturally out 
 of hard, independent study of nature ; and it should be rejpembered 
 that in many things technical, it is impossible to alter without being 
 inferior, for therein, as says Spencer, “ Truth is one, and right is ever 
 one but wrongs are various and multitudinous. “ Vice,” says By- 
 ron, in Marino Faliero, “ must have variety ; but Virtue stands like 
 the sun, and all which rolls around drinks life from her aspect.” 
 
 2 
 
13 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 of admiration as tlie master strode farther and deeper, and 
 more daringly into dominions before unsearched or un- 
 known ; yet diminishing in multitude as they increased 
 in enthusiasm : for by how much their leader became 
 more impatient in his step — more impetuous in his suc- 
 cess — more exalting in his research, by so much must 
 the number capable of following him become narrower, 
 until at last, supposing him never to pause in his ad- 
 vance, he might be left in the very culminating moment 
 of his consummate achievement, with but a faithful few 
 by his side, his former disciples fallen away, his former 
 enemies doubled in numbers and virulence, and the evi- 
 dence of his supremacy only to be wrought out by the 
 devotion of men’s lives to the earnest study of the new 
 truths he had discovered and recorded. 
 
 Such a mind has arisen in our days. It has gone on 
 from strength to strength, laying open fields of conquest 
 peculiar to itself. It has occasioned such schism in the 
 schools of criticism as was beforehand to be expected, and 
 it is now at the zenith of its power, and, consequently, in 
 the last phase of declining popularity. 
 
 Tliis I know, and can prove. No man, says Southey, 
 was ever yet convinced of any momentous truth without 
 feeling in himself the power, as well as the desire of 
 communicating it. In asserting and demonstrating the 
 supremacy of this great master, I shall both do immedi- 
 ate service to the cause of right art, and shall be able to 
 illustrate many principles of landscape painting which 
 are of general application, and have hitherto been .unac- 
 knowledged. 
 
 For anything like immediate effect on the public mind, 
 I do not hope. “We mistake men’s diseases,” says 
 Richard Baxter, “ when we think there needeth nothing 
 to cure them of their errors but the evidence of truth. 
 Alas ! there are many distempers of mind to be removed 
 before they receive that evidence.” Nevertheless, when 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 19 
 
 it is fully laid before them, my duty will be done. Con- 
 viction will follow in due time. 
 
 I do not consider myself as in any way addressing, 
 or having to do with, the ordinary critics of the press. 
 Their writings are not the guide, but the expression, of 
 public opinion. A writer for a newspaper naturally and 
 necessarily endeavors to meet, as nearly as he can, the 
 feelings of the majority of his readers; his bread de- 
 pends on his doing so. Precluded by the nature of his 
 occupations from gaining any knowledge of art, he is 
 sure that he can gain credit for it by expressing the 
 opinions of his readers. He mocks the picture which 
 the public pass, and bespatters with praise the canvas 
 which a crowd concealed from him. 
 
 Writers like the present critic of Blackwood’s Maga- 
 azine * deserve more respect — the respect due to honest, 
 hopeless, helpless imbecility. There is something ex- 
 alted in the innocence of their feeble-mindedness : one 
 cannot suspect them of partiality, for it implies feeling ; 
 nor of prejudice, for it implies some previous ac- 
 quaintance with their subject. I do not know that even 
 in this age of charlatanry, I could point to a more 
 barefaced instance of imposture on the simplicity of the 
 public, than the insertion of these pieces of criticism in a 
 respectable periodical. We are not insulted with opin- 
 
 *It is with regret that, in a work of this nature, I take notice of 
 criticisms, which, after all, are merely intended to amuse the careless 
 reader, and be forgotten as soon as read ; but I do so in compliance 
 with wishes expressed to me since the publication of this work, by per- 
 sons who have the interests of art deeply at heart, and who, I find, 
 attach more importance to the matter than I should have been dis- 
 posed to do. I have, therefore, marked two or three passages which 
 may enable the public to judge for themselves of the quality of these 
 critiques ; and this I think a matter of justice to those who might 
 otherwise have been led astray by them — more than this I cannot con* 
 sent to do. I should have but a hound’s office if I had to tear the ta- 
 bard from every Rouge Sanglier of the arts — with bell and bauble to 
 back him. 
 
20 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOXI) EDIT10X. 
 
 ions on music from persons ignorant of its notes: nor 
 with treatises on philology by persons unacquainted 
 with the alphabet ; but here is page after page of criti- 
 cism, which one may read from end to end, looking for 
 something which the writer knows, and finding nothing. 
 Not his own language, for he has to look in his diction- 
 ary, by his own confession, for a word * occurring in one 
 of the most important chapters of his Bible; not the 
 commonest traditions of the schools, for he does not know 
 why Poussin was called “ learned ; ” f not the most sim- 
 ple canons of art, for he prefers Lee to Gainsborough ; % 
 
 * Chrysoprase (Vide No. for October, 1842, p. 502). 
 
 f Every scliool-boy knows that this epithet was given to Poussin in 
 allusion to the profound classical knowledge of the painter. The re- 
 viewer, however (September, 1841), informs us that the expression 
 refers to his skill in “ Composition.” 
 
 X Critique on Royal Academy, 1842. “He” (Mr. Lee) “ often re- 
 minds us of Gainsborough’s best manner; but lie is superior to him 
 always in subject, composition, and variety.” — Shade of Gainsborough! 
 — deep-thouglited, solemn Gainsborough — forgive us for re-writing 
 this sentence ; we do so to gibbet its perpetrator forever, — and leave 
 him swinging in the winds of the Fool’s Paradise. It is with great pain 
 that I ever speak with severity of the works of living masters, espe- 
 cially when, like Mr. Lee’s, they are well-intentioned, simple, free 
 from affectation or imitation, and evidently painted with constant 
 reference to nature. But I believe that these qualities will always se- 
 cure him that admiration which he deserves— that there will be many 
 unsophisticated and honest minds always ready to follow his guid- 
 ance, and answ r er his efforts with delight ; and therefore, that I need 
 not fear to point out in him the w*ant of those technical qualities 
 which are more especially the object of an artist’s admiration. 
 Gainsborough’s powder of color (it is mentioned by Sir Joshua as his 
 peculiar gift) is capable of taking rank beside that of Rubens ; he is 
 the purest colorist — Sir Joshua himself not excepted — of the whole 
 English school ; with him, in fact, the art of painting did in great 
 part die, and exists not now in Europe. Evidence enough will be 
 seen in the following pages of my devoted admiration of Turner ; but 
 I hesitate not to say, that in management and quality of single and 
 particular tint, in the purely technical part of painting, Turner is a 
 child of Gainsborough. Now, Mr. Lee never aims at color ; he does 
 not make it his object in the slightest degree — the spring green of 
 
PREFACE TO TEE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 21 
 
 not the most ordinary facts of nature, for we find him 
 puzzled by the epithet “ silver,” as applied to the orange 
 blossom, — evidently never having seen anything silvery 
 about an orange in his life, except a spoon. Nay, he 
 leaves us not to conjecture his calibre from internal evi- 
 dence ; he candidly tells us (Oct. 1842) that he has been 
 studying trees only for the last week, and bases his criti- 
 cal remarks chiefly on his practical experience of birch. 
 More disinterested than our friend Sancho, he would 
 disenchant the public from the magic of Turner by vir- 
 tue of his own flagellation ; Xanthias-like, he would rob 
 
 vegetation is all that he desires ; and it would be about as rational to 
 compare his works with studied pieces of coloring, as the modulation 
 of the Calabrian pipe to the harmony of a full orchestra. Gainsbor- 
 ough’s hand is as light as the sweep of a cloud — as swift as the flash 
 of a sunbeam ; Lee’s execution is feeble and spotty. Gainsborough’s 
 masses are as broad as the first division in heaven of light from dark- 
 ness ; Lee’s (perhaps necessarily, considering the effects of flickering 
 sunlight at which he aims) are as fragmentary as his leaves, and as 
 numerous. Gainsborough’s forms are grand, simple, and ideal ; Lee’s 
 are small, confused, and unselected. Gainsborough never loses sight 
 of his picture as a whole ; Lee is but too apt to be shackled by its 
 parts. In a word, Gainsborough is an immortal painter ; and Lee, 
 though on the right road, is yet in the early stages of his art ; and the 
 man who could imagine any resemblance or point of comparison be- 
 tween them, is not only a novice in art, but has not capacity ever 
 to be anything more. He may be pardoned for not comprehending 
 Turner, for long preparation and discipline are necessary before the 
 abstract and profound philosophy of that artist can be met ; but Gains- 
 borough’s excellence is based on principles of art long acknowledged, 
 and facts of nature universally apparent ; and I insist more particu- 
 larly on the reviewer’s want of feeling for his works, because it 
 proves a truth of which the public ought especially to be assured that 
 those who lavish abuse on the great men of modern times, are equally 
 incapable of perceiving the real excellence of established canons, are 
 ignorant of the commonest and most acknowledged principia of the 
 art, blind to the most palpable and comprehensible of its beauties, in- 
 capable of distinguishing, if left to themselves, a master’s work from 
 the vilest school copy, and founding their applause, of those great 
 works which they praise, either in pure hypocrisy, or in admiration 
 of their defects. 
 
22 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 liis master of immortality by his own powers of endur- 
 ance. What is Christopher North about ? Does he re- 
 ceive his critiques from Eton or Harrow — based on 
 the experience of a week’s birds’-nesting and its conse- 
 quences ? How low must art and its interests sink, when 
 the public mind is inadequate to the detection of this 
 effrontery of incapacity ! In all kindness to Maga, we 
 warn her, that, though the nature of this work precludes 
 us from devoting space to the exposure, there may come 
 a time when the public shall be themselves able to dis- 
 tinguish ribaldry from reasoning, and may require some 
 better and higher qualifications in their critics of art, 
 than the experience of a school-boy, and the capacities 
 of a buffoon. 
 
 It is not, however, merely to vindicate the reputation 
 of those whom writers like these defame, which would 
 but be to anticipate by a few years the natural and in- 
 evitable reaction of the public mind, that I am devoting 
 years of labor to the development of the principles on 
 which the great productions of recent art are based. I 
 have a higher end in view — one which may, I think, 
 justify me, not only in the sacrifice of my own time, but 
 in calling on my readers to follow me through an inves- 
 tigation far more laborious than could be adequately re- 
 warded by mere insight into the merits of a particular 
 master, or the spirit of a particular age. 
 
 It is a question which, in spite of the claims of Paint- 
 ing to be called the Sister of Poetry, appears to me to 
 admit of considerable doubt, whether art has ever, exceiDt 
 in its earliest and rudest stages, possessed anything like 
 efficient moral influence on mankind. Better the state of 
 Borne when ££ magnorum artificum frangebat pocula 
 miles, ut phaleris gauderet equus,” than when her walls 
 flashed with the marble and the gold, ££ nec cessabat 
 luxuria id agere, ut quam plurimum incendiis perdat.” 
 Better the state of religion in Italy, before Giotto had 
 
PREFACE TO TEE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 23 
 
 broken on one barbarism of the Byzantine schools, than 
 when the painter of the Last Judgment, and the sculptor 
 of the Perseus, sat re Yelling side by side. It appears to 
 me that a rude symbol is oftener more efficient than a 
 refined one in touching the heart, and that as pictures 
 rise in rank as works of art, they are regarded with less 
 devotion and more curiosity. 
 
 But, however this may be, and whatever influence we 
 may be disposed to admit in the great works of sacred 
 art, no doubt can, I think, be reasonably entertained as 
 to the utter inutility of all that has been hitherto accom- 
 plished by the painters of landscape. No moral end has 
 been answered, no permanent good effected, by any of 
 fcheir works. They may have amused the intellect, or 
 exercised the ingenuity, but they never have spoken to 
 the heart. Landscape art has never taught us one deep 
 or holy lesson ; it has not recorded that which is fleet- 
 ing, nor penetrated that which was hidden, nor inter- 
 preted that which was obscure ; it has never made us feel 
 the wonder, nor the power, nor the glory, of the universe ; 
 it has not prompted to devotion, nor touched with awe ; 
 its power to move and exalt the heart has been fatally 
 abused, and perished in the abusing. That which ought 
 to have been a witness to the omnipotence of God, has 
 become an exhibition of the dexterity of man, and that 
 which should have lifted our thoughts to the throne of 
 the Deity, has encumbered them with the inventions of 
 his creatures. 
 
 If we stand for a little time before any of the more 
 celebrated works of landscape, listening to the comments 
 of the passers-by, we shall hear numberless expressions 
 relating to the skill of the artist, but very few relating 
 to the perfection of nature. Hundreds will be voluble 
 in admiration, for one who will be silent in delight. 
 Multitudes will laud the composition, and depart with 
 the praise of Claude on their lips, — not one will feel as if 
 
24 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 it were no composition, and depart witli the praise of 
 God in his heart. 
 
 These are the signs of a debased, mistaken, and false 
 school of painting*. The skill of the artist, and the per- 
 fection of his art, are never proved until both are forgot- 
 ten. The artist has done nothing till he has concealed 
 himself, — the art is imperfect which is visible, — the feel- 
 ings are but feebly touched, if they permit us to reason 
 on the methods of their excitement. In the reading of 
 a great poem, in the hearing of a noble oration, it is the 
 subject of the writer, and not his skill, — his passion, not 
 his power, on which our minds are fixed. We see as he 
 sees, but we see not him. We become part of him, feel 
 with him, judge, behold with him ; but we think of him 
 as little as of ourselves. Do we think of iEschylus while 
 we wait on the silence of Cassandra,* or of Shakspeare, 
 while we listen to the wailing of Lear ? Not so. The 
 power of the masters is shown by their self-annihilation. 
 It is commensurate with the degree in which they them- 
 selves appear not in their work. The harp of the 
 minstrel is untruly touched, if his own glory is all that it 
 records. Every great writer may be at once known by 
 his guiding the mind far from himself, to the beauty 
 which is not of his creation, and the knowledge which is 
 past his finding out. 
 
 And must it ever be otherwise with painting, for other- 
 wise it has ever been. Her subjects have been regarded 
 
 * There is a fine touch in the Progs in Aristophanes, alluding 
 probably to this part of the Agamemnon. “ "Eyh S’ ex ai P 0V T V Kal 
 
 r otr' ercpireu ovk ?j ttov i] vvv bi a aXovvTesP The same remark might 
 be well applied to the seemingly vacant or incomprehensible portions 
 of Turner’s canvas. In their mysterious and intense fire, there is 
 much correspondence between the mind of ^Eschylus and that of our 
 great painter. They share at least one thing in common — unpopular- 
 ity. ‘O drjfjLOS avefiba Kpifftv ttolciv HA. b roov rravovpy<av ; AT. vij A i. ovpaviov 
 y* ttcrov. HA. fxer AlffxvAov 5’ ovk ftaav erepoi avup.axot AI. oKiyov rb 
 
 XPf]<Tr6v 6TT iV. 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 25 
 
 as mere themes on which the artist’s power is to be dis- 
 played ; and that power, be it of imitation, composition, 
 idealization, or of whatever other kind, is the chief object 
 of the spectator’s observation. It is man and his fancies, 
 man and his trickeries, man and his inventions, — poor, 
 paltry, weak, self-sighted man, — which the connoisseur 
 forever seeks and worships. Among potsherds and dung- 
 hills, among drunken boors and withered beldames, 
 through every scene of debauchery and degradation, we 
 follow the erring artist, not to receive one wholesome 
 lesson, not to be touched with pity, nor moved with in- 
 dignation, but to watch the dexterity of the pencil, and 
 gloat over the glittering of the hue. 
 
 I speak not only of the works of the Flemish 
 school — I wage no war with their admirers; they 
 may be left in peace to count the spiculse of hay- 
 stacks and the hairs of donkeys — it is also of works of 
 real mind that X speak, — works in which there are evi- 
 dences of genius and workings of power, — works which 
 have been held up as containing all of the beautiful that 
 art can reach or man conceive. And I assert with sorrow, 
 that all hitherto done in landscape, by those commonly 
 conceived its masters, has never prompted one holy 
 thought in the minds of nations. It has begun and ended 
 in exhibiting the dexterities of individuals, and conven- 
 tionalities of systems. Filling the world with the honor 
 of Claude and Salvator, it has never once tended to the 
 honor of God. 
 
 Does the reader start in reading these last words, as if 
 they were those of wild enthusiasm, — as if I were lower- 
 ing the dignity of religion by supposing that its cause 
 could be advanced by such means ? His surprise proves 
 my position. It does sound like wild, like absurd en- 
 thusiasm, to expect any definite moral agency in the paint- 
 ers of landscape; but ought it so to sound? Are the 
 gorgeousness of the visible hue, the glory of the real- 
 
26 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 ized form, instruments in the artist’s hand so ineffective, 
 that they can answer no nobler purpose than the amuse- 
 ment of curiosity, or the engagement of idleness ? Must 
 it not be owing to gross neglect or misapplication of the 
 means at his command, that while words and tones (means 
 of representing nature surely less powerful than lines and 
 colors) can kindle and purify the very inmost souls of 
 men, the painter can only hope to entertain by his efforts 
 at expression, and must remain forever brooding over 
 his incommunicable thoughts ? 
 
 The cause of the evil lies, I believe, deep-seated in the 
 system of ancient landscape art ; it consists, in a word, 
 in the painter’s taking upon him to modify God’s works 
 at his pleasure, casting the shadow of himself on all he 
 sees, constituting himself arbiter where it is honor to be 
 a disciple, and exhibiting his ingenuity by the attain- 
 ment of combinations whose highest praise is that they 
 are impossible. We shall not pass through a single 
 gallery of old art, without hearing this topic of praise 
 confidently advanced. The sense of artificialness, the 
 absence of all appearance of reality, the clumsiness of 
 combination by which the meddling of man is made 
 evident, and the feebleness of his hand branded on the 
 inorganization of his monstrous creature, is advanced as 
 a proof of inventive power, as an evidence of abstracted 
 conception ; — nay, the violation of specific form, the utter 
 abandonment of all organic and individual character of 
 object, (numberless examples of which from the works 
 of the old masters are given in the following pages,) is 
 constantly held up by the unthinking critic as the foun- 
 dation of the grand or historical style, and the first step 
 to the attainment of a pure ideal. Now, there is but one 
 grand style, in the treatment of all subjects whatsoever, 
 and that style is based on the perfect knowledge, and 
 consists in the simple, unencumbered rendering, of the 
 specific characters of the given object, be it man, beast, 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 27 
 
 or flower. Every change, caricature, or abandonment of 
 such specific character, is as destructive of grandeur as it 
 is of truth, of beauty as of propriety. Every alteration 
 of the features of nature has its origin either in power- 
 less indolence or blind audacity, in the folly which for- 
 gets, or the insolence which desecrates, works which it is 
 the pride of angels to know, and their privilege to love. 
 
 We sometimes hear such infringement of universal 
 laws justified on the plea, that the frequent introduction 
 of mythological abstractions into ancient landscape re- 
 quires an imaginary character of form in the material 
 objects with which they are associated. Something of 
 this kind is hinted in Reynolds’s 14th Discourse ; but 
 nothing can be more false than such reasoning. If there 
 be any truth or beauty in the original conception of the 
 spiritual being so introduced, there must be a true and 
 real connection between that abstract idea* and the feat- 
 ures of nature as she was and is. The woods and waters 
 which were peopled by the Greek with typical life were 
 not different from those which now wave and murmur by 
 the ruins of his shrines. With their visible and actual 
 forms was his imagination filled, and the beauty of its 
 
 * I do not know any passage in ancient literature in which this con- 
 nection is more exquisitely illustrated than in the lines, burlesque 
 though they be, descriptive of the approach of the chorus in the Clouds 
 of Aristophanes — a writer, by the way, who, I believe, knew and 
 felt more of the noble landscape character of his country than any 
 whose w 7 orks have come down to us except Homer. The individuality 
 and distinctness of conception — the visible cloud character which 
 every word of this particular passage brings out into more dewy and 
 bright existence, are to me as refreshing as the real breathing of 
 mountain winds. The line “ dia r&v koIXuv kclI r&v 5ct<reW, TrActyjai,’' 
 could have been written by none but an ardent lover of hill scenery — ■ 
 one who had watched, hour after hour, the peculiar oblique, side- 
 long action of descending clouds, as they form along the hollows and 
 ravines of the hills. There are no lumpish solidities — no pillowy 
 protuberances here. All is melting, drifting, evanescent — full of air, 
 and light, and dew. 
 
28 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 incarnate creatures can only be understood among tlie 
 pure realities which originally modelled their concep- 
 tion. If divinity be stamped upon the features, or ap- 
 parent in the form of the spiritual creature, the mind will 
 not be shocked by its ajjpearing to ride upon the whirl- 
 wind, and trample on the storm ; but if mortality, no vio- 
 lation of the characters of the earth will forge one single 
 link to bind it to the heaven. 
 
 Is there then no such thing as elevated ideal charac- 
 ter of landscape ? Undoubtedly ; and Sir Joshua, with 
 the great master of this character, Nicolo Poussin, pres- 
 ent to his thoughts, ought to have arrived at more true 
 conclusions respecting its essence than, as we shall pres- 
 ently see, are deducible from his works. The true ideal 
 of landscape is precisely the same as that of the human 
 form ; it is the expression of the specific — not the indi- 
 vidual, but the specific — characters of every object, in 
 their perfection ; there is an ideal form of every herb, 
 flower, and tree : it is that form to which every individ- 
 ual of the species has a tendency to arrive, freed from 
 the influence of accident or disease. Every landscape 
 painter should know the specific characters of every ob- 
 ject he has to represent, rock, flower, or cloud ; and in 
 his highest ideal works, all their distinctions will be 
 perfectly expressed, broadly or delicately, slightly or 
 completely, according to the nature of the subject, and 
 the degree of attention which is to be drawn to the par- 
 ticular object by the part it plays in the composition. 
 'Where the sublime is aimed at, such distinctions will be 
 indicated with severe simplicity, as the muscular mark- 
 ings in a colossal statue ; where beauty is the object, 
 they must be expressed with the utmost refinement of 
 which the hand is capable. 
 
 This may sound like a contradiction of principles ad- 
 vanced by the highest authorities ; but it is only a con- 
 tradiction of a particular and most mistaken application 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 29 
 
 of them. Much evil has been done to art by the remarks 
 of historical painters on landscape. Accustomed them- 
 selves to treat their backgrounds slightly and boldly, 
 and feeling (though, as I shall presently show, only in 
 consequence of their own deficient powers) that any ap- 
 proach to completeness of detail therein, injures their 
 picture by interfering with its principal subject, they 
 naturally lose sight of the peculiar and intrinsic beauties 
 of things which to them are injurious, unless subordinate. 
 Hence the frequent advice given by Reynolds and others, 
 to neglect specific form in landscape, and treat its mate- 
 rials in large masses, aiming only at general truths, — the 
 flexibility of foliage, but not its kind ; the rigidity of 
 rock, but not its mineral character. In the passage more 
 especially bearing on this subject (in the eleventh lecture 
 of Sir J. Reynolds), we are told that “ the landscape 
 painter works not for the virtuoso or the naturalist, but 
 for the general observer of life and nature.” This is true, 
 in precisely the same sense that the sculptor does not 
 work for the anatomist, but for the common observer of 
 life and nature. Yet the sculptor is not, for this reason, 
 permitted to be wanting either in knowledge or expres- 
 sion of anatomical detail ; and the more refined that ex- 
 pression can be rendered, the more perfect is his work. 
 That which, to the anatomist, is the end, — is, to the sculp- 
 tor, the means. The former desires details, for their own 
 sake ; the latter, that by means of them, he may kindle 
 his work with life, and stamp it with beauty. And so in 
 landscape ; — botanical or geological details are not to be 
 given as matter of curiosity or subject of search, but as 
 the ultimate elements of every species of expression and 
 order of loveliness. 
 
 In his observations on the foreground of the St. Pietro 
 Martire, Sir Joshua advances, as matter of praise, that 
 the plants are discriminated “ just as much as was neces- 
 sary for variety, and no more.” Had this foreground 
 
30 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 been occupied by a group of animals, we should have 
 been surprised to be told that the lion, the serpent, and 
 the dove, or whatever other creatures might have been 
 introduced, were distinguished from each other just as 
 much as was necessary for variety, and no more. Yet is 
 it to be supposed that the distinctions of the vegetable 
 world are less complete, less essential, or less divine in 
 origin, than those of the animal ? If the distinctive forms 
 of animal life are meant for our reverent observance, is it 
 likely that those of vegetable life are made merely to bo 
 swept away ? The latter are indeed less obvious and less 
 obtrusive; for which very reason there is less excuse 
 for omitting them, because there is less danger of their 
 disturbing the attention or engaging the fancy. 
 
 But Sir Joshua is as inaccurate in fact, as false in prin- 
 ciple. He himself furnishes a most singular instance of 
 the very error of which he accuses Yaseni, — the seeing 
 what he expects ; or, rather, in the present case, not see- 
 ing what he does not expect. The great masters of Italy, 
 almost without exception, and Titian perhaps more than 
 any (for he had the highest knowledge of landscape), are 
 in the constant habit of rendering every detail of their 
 foregrounds with the most laborious botanical fidelity : 
 witness the “ Bacchus and Ariadne,” in which the fore- 
 ground is occupied by the common blue iris, the aquile- 
 gia, and the wild rose ; every stamen of which latter is 
 given, while the blossoms and leaves of the columbine 
 (a difficult flower to draw) have been studied with the 
 most exquisite accuracy. The foregrounds of Baffaelle’s 
 two cartoons — “ The Miraculous Draught of Fishes ” and 
 “ The Charge to Peter ” — are covered with plants of the 
 common sea colewort {crambe maritima), of which the 
 sinuated leaves and clustered blossoms would have ex- 
 hausted the patience of any other artist ; but have ap- 
 peared worthy of prolonged and thoughtful labor to the 
 great mind of Baffaeile. 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 31 
 
 It appears then, not only from natural principles, but 
 from the highest of all authority, that thorough knowl- 
 edge of the lowest details is necessary and full expression 
 of them right, even in the highest class of historical 
 painting ; that it will not take away from, nor interfere 
 with, the interest of the figures ; but, rightly managed, 
 must add to and elucidate it ; and, if further proof be 
 wanting, I would desire the reader to compare the back- 
 ground of Sir Joshua’s “Holy Family,” in the National 
 Gallery, with that of Nicolo Poussin’s “ Nursing of Ju- 
 piter,” in the Dulwich Gallery. The first, owing to the 
 utter neglect of all botanical detail, has lost every atom 
 of ideal character, and reminds us of nothing but an 
 English fashionable flower garden ; — the formal pedestal 
 adding considerably to the effect. Poussin’s, in which 
 every vine leaf is drawn with consummate skill and untir- 
 ing diligence, produces not only a tree group of the 
 most perfect grace and beauty, but one which, in its pure 
 and simple truth, belongs to every age of nature, and 
 adapts itself to the history of all time. If, then, such 
 entire rendering of specific character be necessary to the 
 historical painter, in cases where these lower details are 
 entirely subordinate to his human subject, how much 
 more must it be necessary in landscape, where they 
 themselves constitute the subject, and where the undi- 
 vided attention is to be drawn to them. 
 
 There is a singular sense in which the child may pe- 
 culiarly be said to be father of the man. In many arts 
 and attainments, the first and last stages of progress — 
 the infancy and the consummation — have many features 
 in common ; while the intermediate stages are wholly 
 unlike either, and are farthest from the right. Thus it 
 is in the progress of a painter’s handling. We see the 
 perfect child, — the absolute beginner, using of necessity 
 a broken, imperfect, inadequate line, which, as he ad- 
 vances, becomes gradually firm, severe, and decided. Yet 
 
90 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 before he becomes a perfect artist, this severity and de- 
 cision will again be exchanged for a light and careless 
 stroke, which in many points will far more resemble that 
 of his childhood than of his middle age — differing from 
 it only by the consummate effect wrought out by the 
 apparently inadequate means. So it is in many matters 
 of opinion. Our first and last coincide, though on dif- 
 ferent grounds ; it is the middle stage which is farthest 
 from the truth. Childhood often holds a truth with its 
 feeble fingers, which the grasp of manhood cannot re- 
 tain, — which it is the pride of utmost age to recover. 
 
 Perhaps this is in no instance more remarkable than 
 in the opinion we form upon the subject of detail in 
 works of art. Infants in judgment, we look for specific 
 character, and complete finish — we delight in the faith- 
 ful plumage of the well-known bird — in the finely drawn 
 leafage of the discriminated flower. As we advance in 
 judgment, we scorn such detail altogether; we look for 
 impetuosity of execution, and breadth of effect. But, 
 perfected in judgment, we return in a great measure to 
 our early feelings, and thank Raffaelle for the shells upon 
 his sacred beach, and for the delicate stamens of the 
 herbage beside his inspired St. Catherine.* 
 
 Of those who take interest in art, nay, even of artists 
 themselves, there are an hundred in the middle stage of 
 judgment, for one who is in the last ; and this not be- 
 cause they are destitute of the power to discover or the 
 sensibility to enjoy the truth, but because the truth 
 bears so much semblance of error — the last stage of the 
 journey to the first, — that every feeling which guides to 
 it is checked in its origin. The rapid and powerful ar- 
 tist necessarily looks with such contempt on those who 
 
 * Let not this principle be confused with Fuseli’s, “love for what 
 is called deception in painting marks either the infancy or decrepi- 
 tude of a nation’s taste.” Realization to the mind necessitates not de- 
 ception of the eye. 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION . 
 
 seek minutiae of detail rather than grandeur of impres- 
 sion, that it is almost impossible for him to conceive of 
 the great last step in art, by which both become compat- 
 ible. He has so often to dash the delicacy out of the 
 pupil’s work, and to blot the details from his encum- 
 bered canvas ; so frequently to lament the loss of breadth 
 and unity, and so seldom to reprehend the imperfection 
 of minutiae, that he necessarily looks upon complete parts 
 as the very sign of error, weakness and ignorance. Thus, 
 frequently to the latest period of his life, he separates, 
 like Sir Joshua, as chief enemies, the details and the 
 whole, which an artist cannot be great unless he recon- 
 ciles ; and because details alone, and unreferred to a final 
 purpose, are the sign of a tyro’s work, he loses sight of 
 the remoter truth, that details perfect in unity, and con- 
 tributing to a final purpose, are the sign of the produc- 
 tion of a consummate master. 
 
 It is not, therefore, detail sought for its own sake, — 
 not the calculable bricks of the Dutch house-painters, nor 
 the numbered hairs and mapped wrinkles of Denner, 
 which constitute great art,— they are the lowest and 
 most contemptible art ; but it is detail referred to a great 
 end, — sought for the sake of the inestimable beauty 
 which exists in the slightest and least of God’s works, 
 and treated in a manly, broad and impressive manner. 
 There may be as much greatness of mind, as much no- 
 bility of manner in a master’s treatment of the smallest 
 features, as in his management of the most vast; and 
 this greatness of manner chiefly consists in seizing the 
 specific character of the object, together with all the 
 great qualities of beauty which if has in common with 
 higher orders of existence,* while he utterly rejects the 
 
 * I shall show, in a future portion of the work, that there are prin- 
 ciples of universal beauty common to all the creatures of God ; and 
 that it is by the greater or less share of these that one form becomes 
 nobler or meaner than another. 
 
34 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 meaner beauties which are accidentally peculiar to the 
 object, and yet not specifically characteristic of it. I 
 cannot give a better instance than the painting’ of the 
 flowers in Titian’s picture above mentioned. While 
 every stamen of the rose is given, because this was nec- 
 essary to mark the flower, and while the curves and large 
 characters of the leaves are rendered with exquisite 
 fidelity, there is no vestige of particular texture, of moss, 
 bloom, moisture, or any other accident — no dew-drops, 
 nor flies, nor trickeries of any kind ; nothing beyond the 
 simple forms and hues of the flowers, — even those hues 
 themselves being simplified and broadly rendered. The 
 varieties of aquilegia have, in reality, a grayish and un- 
 certain tone of color ; and, I believe, never attain the 
 intense purity of blue with which Titian has gifted his 
 flower. But the master does not aim at the particular 
 color of individual blossoms; he seizes the type of all, 
 and gives it with the utmost purity and simplicity of 
 which color is capable. 
 
 These laws being observed, it will not only be in the 
 power, it will be the duty, — the imperative duty, — of 
 the landscape painter, to descend to the lowest details 
 v/ith undiminished attention. Every herb and flower of 
 the field has its specific, distinct, and perfect beauty; 
 it has its peculiar habitation, expression and function. 
 The highest art is that which seizes this specific charac- 
 ter, which develops and illustrates it, which assigns to 
 it its proper position in the landscape, and wdiich, by 
 means of it, enhances and enforces the great impression 
 which the picture is intended to convey. Nor is it of 
 herbs and flowers alone that such scientific representa- 
 tion is required. Every class of rock, every kind of 
 earth, every form of cloud, must be studied with equal 
 industry, and rendered with equal precision. And thus 
 we find ourselves unavoidably led to a conclusion directly 
 opposed to that constantly enunciated dogma of the 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 35 
 
 parrot-critic, that the features of nature must be “ gen- 
 eralized,” — a dogma whose inherent and broad absurdity 
 would long ago have been detected, if it had not con- 
 tained in its convenient falsehood an apology for indo- 
 lence, and a disguise for incapacity. Generalized ! As 
 if it were possible to generalize things genericaily differ- 
 ent. Of such common cant of criticism I extract a 
 characteristic passage from one of the reviews of this 
 work, that in this year’s Athenaeum for February 10th : 
 “ He (the author) would have geological landscape paint- 
 ers, dendrologic, meteorologic, and doubtless entomo- 
 logic, ichthyologic, every kind of physiologic painter 
 united in the same person ; yet, alas, for true poetic art 
 among all these learned Thebans ! No ; landscape paint- 
 ing must not be reduced to mere portraiture of inani- 
 mate substances, Denner-like portraiture of the earth’s 
 face. ***** Ancient landscapists took a broader, 
 deeper, higher view of their art ; they neglected particu- 
 lar traits, and gave only general features. Thus they 
 attained mass and force, harmonious union and simple 
 effect, the elements of grandeur and beauty.” 
 
 To all such criticism as this (and I notice it only be- 
 cause it expresses the feelings into which many sensible 
 and thoughtful minds have been fashioned by infection) 
 the answer is simple and straightforward. It is just as 
 impossible to generalize granite and slate, as it is to 
 generalize a man and a cow. An animal must be either 
 one animal or another animal; it cannot be a general 
 animal, or it is no animal ; and so a rock must be either 
 one rock or another rock ; it cannot be a general rock, or 
 it is no rock. If there were a creature in the foreground 
 of a picture, of which he could not decide whether it 
 were a pony or a pig, the Athenseum critic would per- 
 haps affirm it to be a generalization of pony and pig, and 
 consequently a high example of “ harmonious union and 
 simple effect.” But I should call it simple bad drawing. 
 
36 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 And so when there are things in the foreground of Sal- 
 vator of which I cannot pronounce whether they be 
 granite or slate, or tufa, I affirm that there is in them 
 neither harmonious union nor simple effect, but simple 
 monstrosity. There is no grandeur, no beauty of any sort 
 or kind; nothing but destruction, disorganization, and 
 ruin, to be obtained by the violation of natural distinc- 
 tions. The elements of brutes can only mix in corrup- 
 tion, the elements of inorganic nature only in annihi- 
 lation. We may, if we choose, put together centaur 
 monsters ; but they must still be half man, half horse ; 
 they cannot be both man and horse, nor either man or 
 horse. And so, if landscape painters choose, they may 
 give us rocks which shall be half granite and half slate ; 
 but they cannot give us rocks which shall be either 
 granite or slate, nor which shall be both granite and slate. 
 Every attempt to produce that which shall be any rock, 
 ends in the production of that which is no rock. 
 
 It is true that the distinctions of rocks and plants and 
 clouds are less conspicuous, and less constantly subjects 
 of observation than those of the animal creation ; but 
 the difficulty of observing them proves not the merit of 
 overlooking them. It only accounts for the singular 
 fact, that the world has never yet seen anything like a 
 perfect school of landscape. For just as the highest 
 historical painting is based on perfect knowledge of the 
 workings of the human form and human mind, so must 
 the highest landscape painting be based on perfect cog- 
 nizance of the form, functions, and system of every or- 
 ganic or definitely structured existence which it has to 
 represent. This proposition is self-evident to every 
 thinking mind ; and every principle which appears to 
 contradict it is either misstated or misunderstood. For 
 instance, the Athenaeum critic calls the right statement 
 of generic difference “Denner-\\k.e portraiture.” If he 
 can find anything like Denner in what I have advanced 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 ST 
 
 as the utmost perfection of landscape art — the recent 
 works of Turner— he is welcome to his discovery and 
 his theory. No ; Denner-like portraiture would be the 
 endeavor to paint the separate crystals of quartz and fel- 
 spar in the granite, and the separate flakes of mica in 
 the mica-slate, — an attempt just as far removed from 
 what I assert to be great art, (the bold rendering of the 
 generic characters of form in both rocks,) as modern 
 sculpture of lace and button-holes is from the Elgin 
 marbles. Martin has attempted this Denner-like por- 
 traiture of sea-foam with the assistance of an acre of 
 canvas — with what success, I believe the critics of his 
 last year’s Canute had, for once, sense enough to decide. 
 
 Again, it does not follow that because such accurate 
 knowledge is necessary to the painter, that it should 
 constitute the painter, nor that such knowledge is valu- 
 able in itself, and without reference to high ends. Every 
 kind of knowledge may be sought from ignoble motives, 
 and for ignoble ends ; and in those who so possess it, it 
 is ignoble knowledge ; while the very same knowledge 
 is in another mind an attainment of the highest dignity, 
 and conveying the greatest blessing. This is the differ- 
 ence between the mere botanist’s knowledge of plants, 
 and the great poet’s or painter’s knowledge of them. 
 The one notes their distinctions for the sake of swell- 
 ing his herbarium, the other, that he may render them 
 vehicles of expression and emotion. The one counts the 
 stamens, and affixes a name, and is content ; the other 
 observes every character of the plant’s color and form ; 
 considering each of its attributes as an element of ex- 
 pression, he seizes on its lines of grace or energy, 
 rigidity or repose; notes the feebleness or the vigor, 
 the serenity or tremulousness of its hues ; observes its 
 local habits, its love or fear of peculiar places, its 
 nourishment or destruction by particular influences ; he 
 associates it in his mind with all the features of the 
 
38 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION . 
 
 situations it inhabits, and the ministering agencies 
 necessary to its support. Thenceforward the flower is 
 to him a living creature, with histories written on its 
 leaves, and passions breathing in its motion. Its occur- 
 rence in his picture is no mere point of color, no mean- 
 ingless spark of light. It is a voice rising from the 
 earth, — a new chord of the mind’s music, — a necessary 
 note in the harmony of his picture, contributing alike to 
 its tenderness and its dignity, nor less to its loveliness 
 than its truth. 
 
 The particularization of flowers by Shakspeare and 
 Shelley affords us the most frequent examples of the ex- 
 alted use of these inferior details. It is true that the 
 painter has not the same power of expressing the 
 thoughts with which his symbols are connected ; he is 
 dependent in some degree on the knowledge and feeling 
 of the spectator ; but, by the destruction of such details, 
 his foreground is not rendered more intelligible to the 
 ignorant, although it ceases to have interest for the in- 
 formed. It is no excuse for illegible writing that there 
 are persons who could not have read it had it been 
 plain. 
 
 I repeat, then, generalization, as the word is com- 
 monly understood, is the act of a vulgar, incapable, and 
 unthinking mind. To see in all mountains nothing but 
 similar heaps of earth ; in all rocks, nothing but similar 
 concretions of solid matter; in all trees, nothing but 
 similar accumulations of leaves, is no sign of high feel- 
 ing or extended thought. The more we know, and the 
 more we feel, the more we separate ; we separate to ob- 
 tain a more perfect unity. Stones, in the thoughts of 
 the peasant, lie as they do on his field, one is like an- 
 other, and there is no connection between any of them. 
 The geologist distinguishes, and in distinguishing con- 
 nects them. Each becomes different from its fellow, 
 but in differing from, assumes a relation to its fellow 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 39 
 
 they are no more each the repetition of the other,— they 
 are parts of a system, and each implies and is connected 
 with the existence of the rest. That generalization then 
 is right, true, and noble, which is based on the knowl- 
 edge of the distinctions and observance of the relations 
 of individual kinds. That generalization is wrong, false, 
 and contemptible, which is based on ignorance of the 
 one, and disturbance of the other. It is indeed no gen- 
 eralization, but confusion and chaos ; it is the general- 
 ization of a defeated army into indistinguishable im- 
 potence — the generalization of the elements of a dead 
 carcass into dust. 
 
 Let us, then, without farther notice of the dogmata of 
 the schools of art, follow forth those conclusions to 
 which we are led by observance of the laws of nature. 
 
 I have just said that every class of rock, earth and 
 cloud, must be known by the painter, with geologic and 
 meteorologic accuracy.* Nor is this merely for the sake 
 of obtaining the character of these minor features them- 
 selves, but more especially for the sake of reaching that 
 simple, earnest, and consistent character which is visible 
 in the whole effect of every natural landscape. Every 
 geological formation has features entirely peculiar to 
 itself ; definite lines of fracture, giving rise to fixed re- 
 sultant forms of rock and earth ; peculiar vegetable prod- 
 
 * Is not this — it may be asked — demanding more from him than 
 life can accomplish ? Not one whit. Nothing more than knowledge 
 of external characteristics is absolutely required ; and even if, which 
 were more desirable, thorough scientific knowledge had to be at- 
 tained, the time which our artists spend in multiplying crude sketches, 
 or finishing their unintelligent embryos of the study, would render 
 them masters of every science that modern investigations have organ- 
 ized, and familiar with every form that Nature manifests. Martin, if 
 the time which he must have spent on the abortive bubbles of his 
 Canute had been passed in working on the seashore, might have 
 learned enough to enable him to produce, with a few strokes, a pict- 
 ure which would have smote like the sound of the sea, upon men’s 
 hearts forever. 
 
40 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 nets, among which still farther distinctions are wrought 
 out by variations of climate and elevation. From such 
 modifying circumstances arise the infinite varieties of 
 the orders of landscape, of which each one shows per- 
 fect harmony among its several features, and possesses 
 an ideal beauty of its own ; a beauty not distinguished 
 merely by such peculiarities as are wrought on the hu- 
 man form by change of climate, but by generic differ- 
 ences the most marked and essential ; so that its classes 
 cannot be generalized or amalgamated by any expedi- 
 ents whatsoever. The level marshes and rich meadows 
 of the tertiary, the rounded swells and short pastures of 
 the chalk, the square-built cliffs and cloven dells of the 
 lower limestone, the soaring peaks and ridgy precipices 
 of the primaries, having nothing in common among 
 them— -nothing which is not distinctive and incommu- 
 nicable. Their very atmospheres are different — their 
 clouds are different — their humors of storm and sunshine 
 are different — their flowers, animals, and forests are dif- 
 ferent. By each order of landscape — and its orders, I 
 repeat, are infinite in number, corresponding not only 
 to the several species of rock, but to the particular cir- 
 cumstances of the rocks’ deposition or after treatment, 
 and to the incalculable varieties of climate, aspect, and 
 human interference : — by each order of landscape, I say, 
 peculiar lessons are intended to be taught, and distinct 
 pleasures to be conveyed ; and it is as utterly futile to 
 talk of generalizing their impressions into an ideal 
 landscape, as to talk of amalgamating all nourishment 
 into one ideal food, gathering all music into one ideal 
 movement, or confounding all thought into one ideal 
 idea. 
 
 There is, however, such a thing as composition of dif- 
 ferent orders of landscape, though there can be no gen- 
 eralization of them. Nature herself perpetually brings 
 together elements of various expression. Her barren 
 
PREFACE TO TEE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 41 
 
 rocks stoop through wooded promontories to the plain ; 
 and the wreaths of the vine show through their green 
 shadows the wan light of unperishing snow. 
 
 The painter, therefore, has the choice of either work- 
 ing out the isolated character of some one distinct class 
 of scene, or of bringing together a multitude of different 
 elements, which may adorn each other by contrast. 
 
 r I believe that the simple and uncombined landscape, 
 if wrought out with due attention to the ideal beauty of 
 the features it includes, will always be the most power- 
 ful in its appeal to the heart. Contrast increases the 
 splendor of beauty, but it disturbs its influence ; it adds 
 to its attractiveness, but diminishes its power. On this 
 subject I shall have much to say hereafter; at present I 
 merely wish to suggest the possibility, that the single- 
 minded painter, who is working out on broad and simple 
 principles, a piece of unbroken, harmonious landscape 
 character, may be reaching an end in art quite as high 
 as the more ambitious student who is always “ Avithin 
 five minutes’ walk of everywhere,” making the ends of 
 the earth contribute to his pictorial guazzetto ; * and 
 the certainty, that unless the composition of the latter 
 be regulated by severe judgment, and its members con- 
 nected by natural links, it must become more contempt- 
 ible in its motley, than an honest study of road-side 
 weeds. 
 
 Let me, at the risk of tediously repeating what is uni- 
 versally known, refer to the common principles of his- 
 torical composition, in order that I may show their ap- 
 plication to that of landscape. The merest tyro in art 
 knows that every figure which is unnecessary to his pict- 
 ure, is an encumbrance to it, and that every figure which 
 
 * “ A green field is a sight which makes us pardon 
 The absence of that more sublime construction 
 Which mixes up vines, olive, precipices, 
 
 Glaciers, volcanoes, oranges, and ices .” — Don Juan. 
 
42 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION . 
 
 does not sympathize with the action, interrupts it. H© 
 that gathereth not with me, scattereth, — is, or ought to 
 be, the ruling principle of his plan : and the power and 
 grandeur of his result will be exactly proportioned to 
 the unity of feeling manifested in its several parts, and 
 to the propriety and simplicity of the relations in which 
 they stand to each other. 
 
 All this is equally applicable to the materials of in- 
 animate nature. Impressiveness is destroyed by a mul- 
 titude of contradictory facts, and the accumulation, 
 which is not harmonious, is discordant. He who en- 
 deavors to unite simplicity with magnificence, to guide 
 from solitude to festivity, and to contrast melancholy 
 with mirth, must end by the production of confused in- 
 anity. There is a peculiar spirit possessed by every 
 kind of scene; and although a point of contrast may 
 sometimes enhance and exhibit this particular feeling 
 more intensely, it must be only a point, not an equalized 
 opposition. Every introduction of new and different 
 feeling weakens the force of what has already been im- 
 pressed, and the mingling of all emotions must conclude 
 in apathy, as the mingling of all colors in white. 
 
 Let us test by these simple rules one of the “ ideal ” 
 landscape compositions of Claude, that known to the 
 Italians as “ II Mulino.” 
 
 The foreground is a piece of very lovely and perfect 
 forest scenery, with a dance of peasants by a brookside ; 
 quite enough subject to form, in the hands of a master, 
 an impressive and complete picture. On the other side 
 of the brook, however, we have a piece of pastoral life, a 
 man with some bulls and goats tumbling headforemost 
 into the water, owing to some sudden paralytic affection 
 of all their legs. Even this group is one too many ; the 
 shepherd had no business to drive his flock so near the 
 dancers, and the dancers will certainly frighten the cattle. 
 But when we look farther into the picture, our feelings 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 43 
 
 receive a sudden and violent shock, by the unexpected 
 appearance, amidst things pastoral and musical, of the 
 military: a number of Boman soldiers riding in on 
 hobby-horses, with a leader on foot, apparently encour- 
 aging them to make an immediate and decisive charge 
 on the musicians. Beyond the soldiers is a circular 
 temple, in exceedingly bad repair, and close beside it, 
 built against its very walls, a neat water-mill in full work. 
 By the mill flows a large river, with a weir all across it. 
 The weir has not been made for the mill, (for that re- 
 ceives its water from the hills by a trough carried over 
 the temple,) but it is particularly ugly and monotonous 
 in its line of fall, and the water below forms a dead-look- 
 ing pond, on which some people are fishing in punts. 
 The banks of this river resemble in contour the later 
 geological formations around London, constituted chiefly 
 of broken pots and oyster-shells. At an inconvenient 
 distance from the water-side stands a city, composed of 
 twenty -five round towers and a pyramid. Beyond the 
 city is a handsome bridge ; beyond the bridge, part of 
 the Campagna, with fragments of aqueducts; beyond 
 the Campagna, the chain of the Alps ; on the left, the 
 cascades of Tivoli. 
 
 This is, I believe, a fair example of what is commonly 
 called an “ideal landscape,” i.e., a group of the artist’s 
 studies from nature, individually spoiled, selected with 
 such opposition of character as may insure their neutral- 
 izing each other’s effect, and united with sufficient un- 
 naturalness and violence of association to insure their 
 producing a general sensation of the impossible. Let us 
 analyze the separate subjects a little in this ideal work 
 of Claude’s. 
 
 Perhaps there is no more impressive scene on earth 
 than the solitary extent of the Campagna of Borne under 
 evening light. Let the reader imagine himself for a 
 moment withdrawn from the sounds and motion of the 
 
44 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 living world, and sent forth alone into this wild and 
 wasted plain. The earth yields and crumbles beneath 
 his foot, tread he never so lightly, for its substance is 
 white, hollow, and carious, like the dusty wreck of the 
 bones of men.* The long knotted grass waves and tosses 
 feebly in the evening wind, and the shadows of its motion 
 shake feverishly along the banks of ruin that lift them- 
 selves to the sunlight. Hillocks of mouldering earth 
 heave around him, as if the dead beneath were struggling 
 in their sleep; scattered blocks of black stone, four- 
 square, remnants of mighty edifices, not one left upon 
 another, lie upon them to keep them down. A dull 
 purple, poisonous haze stretches level along the desert, 
 veiling its spectral wrecks of massy ruins, on whose rents 
 the red light rests like dying fire on defiled altars. The 
 blue ridge of the Alban mount lifts itself against a 
 solemn space of green, clear, quiet sky. Watch-towers 
 of dark clouds stand steadfastly along the promontories 
 of the Apennines. From the plain to the mountains, 
 the shattered aqueducts, pier beyond pier, melt into the 
 darkness, like shadowy and countless troops of funeral 
 mourners, passing from a nation’s grave. 
 
 Let us, with Claude, make a few “ ideal ” alterations in 
 this landscape. First, we will reduce the multitudinous 
 precipices of the Apennines to four sugar-loaves. Sec- 
 ondly, we will remove the Alban mount, and put a large 
 dust-heap in its stead. Next, we will knock down the 
 greater part of the aqueducts, and leave only an arch or 
 two, that their infinity of length may no longer be pain- 
 ful from its monotony. For the purple mist and declin- 
 ing sun we will substitute a bright blue sky, with round 
 white clouds. Finally, we will get rid of the unpleasant 
 ruins in the foreground ; we will plant some handsome 
 
 * The vegetable soil of the Campagna is chiefly formed by decom- 
 posed lavas, and under it lies a bed of white pumice, exactly resem- 
 bling remnants of bones. 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 45 
 
 trees therein, we will send for some fiddlers, and get up 
 a dance, and a picnic party. 
 
 It will be found, throughout the picture, that the 
 same species of improvement is made on the materials 
 which Claude had ready to his hand. The descending 
 slopes of the city of Home, towards the pyramid of Caius 
 Cestius, supply not only lines of the most exquisite 
 variety and beauty, but matter for contemplation and 
 reflection in every fragment of their buildings. This 
 passage has been idealized by Claude into a set of similar 
 round towers, respecting which no idea can be formed 
 but that they are uninhabitable, and to which no interest 
 can be attached, beyond the difficulty of conjecturing 
 what they could have been built for. The ruins of the 
 temple are rendered unimpressive by the juxtaposition 
 of the water-mill, and inexplicable by the introduction of 
 the Homan soldiers. The glide of the muddy streams of 
 the melancholy Tiber and Anio through the Campagna 
 is impressive in itself, but altogether ceases to be so, 
 when we disturb their stillness of motion by a weir, adorn 
 their neglected flow with a handsome bridge, and cover 
 their solitary surface with punts, nets, and fishermen. 
 
 It cannot, I think, be expected, that landscapes like 
 this should have any effect on the human heart, except 
 to harden or to degrade it ; to lead it from the love of 
 what is simple, earnest, and pure, to what is as sophisti- 
 cated and corrupt in arrangement as erring and imper- 
 fect in detail. So long as such works are held up for 
 imitation, landscape painting must be a manufacture, its 
 productions must be toys, and its patrons must be chil- 
 dren. 
 
 My purpose then, in the present work, is to demon- 
 strate the utter falseness both of the facts and principles ; 
 the imperfection of material, and error of arrangement, 
 on which works such as these are based ; and to insist 
 on the necessity, as well as the dignity, of an earnest, 
 
4G 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION , 
 
 faithful, loving, study of nature as she is, rejecting with 
 abhorrence all that man has done to alter and modify 
 her. And the praise which, in this first portion of the 
 work, is given to many English artists, would be justifi- 
 able on this ground only, that although frequently with 
 little power and desultory effort, they have yet, in an 
 honest and good heart, received the word of God from 
 clouds, and leaves, and waves, and kept it,* and en- 
 deavored in humility to render to the world that purity 
 of impression which can alone render the result of art an 
 instrument of good, or its labor deserving of gratitude. 
 
 * The feelings of Constable with respect to his art might he almost 
 a model for the young student, were it not that they err a little on the 
 other side, and are perhaps in need of chastening and guiding from 
 the works of his fellow-men. We should use pictures not as authori- 
 ties, hut as comments on nature, just as we use divines, not as authori- 
 ties, but as comments on the Bible. Constable, in his dread of saint- 
 worsliip, excommunicates himself from all benefit of the Church, and 
 deprives himself of much instruction from the Scripture to which he 
 holds, because he will not accept aid in the reading of it from the 
 learning of other men. Sir George Beaumont, on the contrary, fur- 
 nishes, in the anecdotes given of him in Constable’s life, a melancholy 
 instance of the degradation into wdiich the human mind may fall, when 
 it suffers human works to interfere between it and its Master. The 
 recommending the color of an old Cremona fiddle for the prevailing 
 tone of everything, and the vapid inquiry of the conventionalist, 
 “ Where do you put your brown tree ? ** show a prostration of intellect 
 so laughable and lamentable that they are at once, on all, and to all, 
 students of the gallery, a satire and a warning. Art so followed is the 
 most servile indolence in which life can be wasted. There are then 
 two dangerous extremes to be shunned — forgetfulness of the Scripture, 
 and scorn of the divine — slavery on the one hand, free-thinking on the 
 other. The mean is nearly as difficult to determine or keep in art as 
 in religion, but the great danger is on the side of superstition. He 
 who walks humbly with Mature will seldom be in danger of losing sight 
 of Art. He will commonly find in all that is truly great of man’s 
 works, something of their original, for which he will regard them with 
 gratitude, and sometimes follow them with respect ; while he who 
 takes Art for his authority may entirely lose sight of all that it inter- 
 prets, and sink at once into the sin of an idolater, and the degradation 
 of a slave. 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 47 
 
 If, however, I shall have frequent occasion to insist on 
 the necessity of this heartfelt love of, and unqualified 
 submission to, the teaching* of nature, it will be no less 
 incumbent upon me to reprobate the careless rendering 
 of casual impression, and the mechanical copyism of un- 
 important subject, which are too frequently visible in 
 our modern school* Their lightness and desultoriness 
 of intention, their meaningless multiplication of unstud- 
 ied composition, and their want of definiteness and lofti- 
 
 * I should have insisted more on this fault (for it is a fatal one) in 
 the following Essay, but the cause of it rests rather with the public 
 than with the artist, and in the necessities of the public as much as in 
 their will. Such pictures as artists themselves would wish to paint, 
 could not be executed under very high prices ; and it must always be 
 easier, in the present state of society, to find ten purchasers of ten- 
 guinea sketches, than one purchaser for a hundred-guinea picture. 
 Still, I have been often both surprised and grieved to see that any 
 effort on the part of our artists to rise above manufacture — any strug- 
 gle to something like completed conception — was left by the public to 
 be its own reward. In the water-color exhibition of last year there 
 was a noble work of David Cox’s, ideal in the right sense — a forest hol- 
 low with a few sheep crushing down through its deep fern, and a sol- 
 emn opening of evening sky above its dark masses of distance. It was 
 worth all his little bits on the walls put together. Yet the public 
 picked up ail the little bits — blots and splashes, ducks, chickweed, 
 ears of corn — all that was clever and petite ; and the real picture — the 
 full development of the artist’s mind — was left on liis hands. How 
 can I, or anyone else, with a conscience, advise him after this to aim 
 at anything more than may be struck out by the cleverness of a quar- 
 ter of an hour. Cattermole, I believe, is earthed and shackled in the 
 same manner. He began his career with finished and studied pictures, 
 which, I believe, never paid him — he now prostitutes his fine talent to 
 the superficialness of public taste, and blots his way to emolument and 
 oblivion. There is commonly, however, fault on both sides ; in the 
 artist for exhibiting his dexterity by mountebank tricks of the brush, 
 until chaste finish, requiring ten times the knowledge and labor, ap- 
 pears insipid to the diseased taste which he has himself formed in his 
 patrons, as the roaring and ranting of a common actor will oftentimes 
 render apparently vapid the finished touches of perfect nature ; and in 
 the public, for taking less real pains to become acquainted with, and 
 discriminate, the various powers of a great artist, than they would to 
 estimate the excellence of a cook or develop the dexterity of a dancer. 
 
48 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 ness of aim, bring* discredit on their whole system of 
 study, and encourage in the critic the unhappy preju- 
 dice that the field and the hiil-side are less fit places of 
 study than the gallery and the garret. Not every cas- 
 ual idea caught from the flight of a shower or the fall of 
 a sunbeam, not every glowing fragment of harvest light, 
 nor every flickering dream of copse wood coolness, is to 
 be given to the world as it came, unconsidered, incom- 
 plete, and forgotten by the artist as soon as it has left 
 his easel. That only should be considered a picture, in 
 which the spirit, (not the materials, observe,) but the ani- 
 mating emotion of many such studies is concentrated, 
 and exhibited by the aid of long-studied, painfully- 
 chosen forms ; idealized in the right sense of the word, 
 not by audacious liberty of that faculty of degrading 
 God’s works which man calls his “ imagination,” but by 
 perfect assertion of entire knowledge of every part and 
 character and function of the object, and in which the 
 details are completed to the last line compatible with 
 the dignity and simplicity of the whole, wrought out 
 with that noblest industry which concentrates profusion 
 into point, and transforms accumulation into structure ; 
 neither must this labor be bestowed on every subject 
 which appears to afford a capability of good, but on 
 chosen subjects in which nature has prepared to the ar- 
 tist’s hand the purest sources of the impression he would 
 convey. These may be humble in their order, but they 
 must be perfect of their kind. There is a perfection of 
 the hedgerow and cottage, as well as of the forest and 
 the palace, and more ideality in a great artist’s selection 
 and treatment of roadside weeds and brook-worn peb- 
 bles, than in all the struggling caricature of the meaner 
 mind which heaps its foreground with colossal columns, 
 and heaves impossible mountains into the encumbered 
 sky. Finally, these chosen subjects must not be in any 
 way repetitions of one another, but each founded on a 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 49 
 
 new idea, and developing a totally distinct train of 
 thought ; so that the work of the artist’s life should 
 form a consistent series of essays, rising through the 
 scale of creation from the humblest scenery to the most 
 exalted ; each picture being a necessary link in the 
 chain, based on what preceded, introducing to what is to 
 follow, and all, in their lovely system, exhibiting and 
 drawing closer the bonds of nature to the human heart. 
 
 Since, then, I shall have to reprobate the absence of 
 study in the moderns nearly as much as its false direc- 
 tion in the ancients, my task will naturally divide itself 
 into three portions. In the first, I shall endeavor to in- 
 vestigate and arrange the facts of nature with scientific 
 accuracy ; showing as I proceed, by what total neglect 
 of the very first base and groundwork of their art the 
 idealities of some among the old masters are produced. 
 This foundation once securely laid, I shall proceed, in 
 the second portion of the work, to analyze and demon- 
 strate the nature of the emotions of the Beautiful and 
 Sublime ; to examine the particular characters of every 
 kind of scenery, and to bring to light, as far as may be 
 in my power, that faultless, ceaseless, inconceivable, in- 
 exhaustible loveliness, which God has stamped upon all 
 things, if man will only receive them as He gives them. 
 Finally, I shall endeavor to trace the operation of all 
 this on the hearts and minds of men ; to exhibit the 
 moral function and end of art, to prove the share which 
 it ought to have in the thoughts, and influence on the 
 lives of all of us ; to attach to the artist the responsibil- 
 ity of a preacher, and to kindle in the general mind that 
 regard which such an office must demand. 
 
 It must be evident that the first portion of this task, 
 which is all that I have yet been enabled to offer to the 
 reader, cannot but be the least interesting and the most 
 laborious, especially because it is necessary that it 
 should be executed without reference to any principles 
 & 
 
50 
 
 PBEFAGE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 of beauty or influences of emotion. It is the hard, 
 straightforward classification of material things, not the 
 study of thought or passion ; and therefore let me not be 
 accused of the feelings which I choose to repress. The 
 consideration of the high qualities of art must not be in- 
 terrupted by the work of the hammer and the eudiometer. 
 
 Again, I would request that the frequent passages of 
 reference to the great masters of the Italian school may 
 not be looked upon as mere modes of conventional ex- 
 pression. I think there is enough in the following 
 pages to prove that I am not likely to be carried away 
 by the celebrity of a name ; and therefore that the de- 
 voted love which I profess for the works of the great 
 historical and sacred painters is sincere and well- 
 grounded. And indeed every principle of art which I 
 may advocate, I shall be able to illustrate by reference 
 to the works of men universally allowed to be the mas- 
 ters of masters ; and the public, so long as my teaching 
 leads them to higher understanding and love of the 
 works of Buonaroti, Leonardo, Raffaelle, Titian, and 
 Cagliari, may surely concede to me without fear, the 
 right of striking such blows as I may deem necessary to 
 the establishment of my principles, at Gasper Poussin, 
 or Vandevelde. 
 
 Indeed, I believe there is nearly as much occasion, at 
 the present day, for advocacy of Michael Angelo against 
 the pettiness of the moderns, as there is for support of 
 Turner against the conventionalities of the ancients. 
 For, though the names of the fathers of sacred art are on 
 all our lips, our faith in them is much like that of the 
 great world in its religion — nominal, but dead. In vain 
 our lecturers sound the name of Baffaelle in the ears of 
 their pupils, while their own works are visibly at vari- 
 ance with every principle deducible from his. In vain 
 is the young student compelled to produce a certain 
 number of school copies of Michael Angelo, when his 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 51 
 
 bread must depend on the number of gewgaws he can 
 crowd into his canvas. And I could with as much zeal 
 exert myself against the modern system of English his- 
 torical art, as I have in favor of our school of landscape, 
 but that it is an ungrateful and painful task to attack 
 the works of living painters, struggling with adverse 
 circumstances of every kind, and especially with the 
 false taste of a nation which regards matters of art 
 either with the ticklishness of an infant, or the stolidity 
 of a Megatherium. 
 
 I have been accused, in the execution of this first por- 
 tion of my work, of irreverent and scurrile expression 
 towards the works which I have depreciated. Possibly I 
 may have been in some degree infected by reading those 
 criticisms of our periodicals, which consist of nothing 
 else ; but I believe in general that my words will be 
 found to have sufficient truth in them to excuse their 
 familiarity ; and that no other weapons could have been 
 used to pierce the superstitious prejudice with which 
 the works of certain painters are shielded from the attacks 
 of reason. My answer is that given long ago to a similar 
 complaint, uttered under the same circumstances by the 
 foiled Sophist : — (“ S’ ecrnv 0 av6pu>7ro<? ’ d>s aTratSevTo? ns, 
 os oviui <f> avXa 6vo/xa to. oj/o/xa£eir roX/xa iv ae/xvio yrpay/xari.) 
 Toioutos ns, w Imrca, ouSev aXXo (£povn£wr rj to aX^cs.” 
 
 It is with more surprise that I have heard myself ac- 
 cused of thoughtless severity with respect to the works 
 of contemporary painters, for I fully believe that when- 
 ever I attack them, I give myself far more pain than I 
 can possibly inflict ; and, in many instances, I have with- 
 held reprobation which I considered necessary to the 
 full understanding of my work, in the fear of grieving or 
 injuring men of whose feelings and circumstances I was 
 ignorant. Indeed, the apparently false and exaggerated 
 bias of the whole book in favor of modern art, is in 
 great degree dependent on my withholding the animad- 
 
52 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 versions which would have given it balance, and keeping 
 silence where I cannot praise. But I had rather be a 
 year or two longer in effecting my purposes, than reach 
 them by trampling on men’s hearts and hearths ? and I 
 have permitted myself to express unfavorable opinions 
 only where the popularity and favor of the artist are so 
 great as to render the opinion of an individual a matter 
 of indifference to him. 
 
 And now — but one word more. For many a year we 
 have heard nothing with respect to the works of Turner 
 but accusations of their want of truth. To every obser- 
 vation on their power, sublimity, or beauty, there has 
 been but one reply : They are not like nature. I there- 
 fore took my-opponents on their own ground, and demon- 
 strated, by thorough investigation of actual facts, that 
 Turner is like nature, and paints more of nature than any 
 man who ever lived. I expected this proposition (the 
 foundation of all my future efforts) would have been dis- 
 puted with desperate struggles, and that I should have 
 had to fight my way to my position inch by inch. Not 
 at all. My opponents yield me the field at once. One 
 (the writer for the Athenaeum) has no other resource than 
 the assertion, that “ he disapproves the natural style in 
 painting. If people want to see nature, let them go and 
 look at herself. Why should they see her at second-hand 
 on a piece of canvas ? ” The other, (Blackwood,) still 
 more utterly discomfited, is reduced to a still more re- 
 markable line of defence. “ It is not,” he says, “ what 
 things in all respects really are, but how they are con- 
 vertible by the mind into what they are not, that we have 
 to consider.” (October, 1843, p. 485.) I leave therefore 
 the reader to choose whether, with Blackwood and his 
 fellows, he will proceed to consider how things are con- 
 vertible by the mind into what they are not, or whether, 
 with me, he will undergo the harder, but perhaps on the 
 whole more useful, labor of ascertaining — What they are. 
 
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 
 
 It is with much regret, and partly against my own 
 judgment, that I republish the following chapters in 
 their present form. The particular circumstances (stated 
 in the first preface) under which they were origin- 
 ally written, have rendered them so unfit for the posi- 
 tion they now hold as introductory to a serious exami- 
 nation of the general functions of art, that I should have 
 wished first to complete the succeeding portions of the 
 essay, and then to write another introduction of more 
 fitting character. But as it may be long before I am 
 able to do this, and as I believe what I have already 
 written may still be of some limited and partial service, 
 I have suffered it to reappear, trusting to the kindness 
 of the reader to look to its intention rather than its 
 temper, and forgive its inconsideration in its earnestness. 
 
 Thinking it of too little substance to bear mending’, 
 wherever I have found a passage which I thought re- 
 quired modification or explanation, I have cut it out ; 
 what I have left, however imperfect, cannot I think be 
 dangerously misunderstood: something I have added, 
 not under the idea of rendering the work in any wise 
 systematic or complete, but to supply gross omissions, 
 answer inevitable objections, and give some substance 
 to passages of mere declamation. 
 
 Whatever inadequacy or error there may be, through- 
 out, in materials or modes of demonstration, I have no 
 doubt of the truth and necessity of the main result ; and 
 though the reader may, perhaps, find me frequently here- 
 after showing other and better grounds for what is here 
 
54 
 
 PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDIT l OH. 
 
 affirmed, yet the point and bearing of the book, its deter- 
 mined depreciation of Claude, Salvator, Gaspar, and Ca- 
 naletto, and its equally determined support of Turner as 
 the greatest of all landscape painters, and of Turner’s 
 recent works as his finest, are good and right ; and if the 
 prevalence throughout of attack and eulogium be found 
 irksome or offensive, let it be remembered that my object 
 thus far has not been either the establishment or the 
 teaching of any principles of art, but the vindication, 
 most necessary to the prosperity of our present schools, 
 of the uncomprehended rank of their greatest artist, and 
 the diminution, equally necessary as I think to the pros- 
 perity of our schools, of the unadvised admiration of the 
 landscape of the seventeenth century. For I believe 
 it to be almost impossible to state in terms sufficiently 
 serious and severe the depth a,nd extent of the evil which 
 has resulted (and that not in art alone, but in all other 
 matters with which the contemplative faculties are con- 
 cerned) from the works of those elder men. On the con- 
 tinent all landscape art has been utterly annihilated by 
 them, and with it all sense of the power of nature. We 
 in England have only done better because our artists 
 have had strength of mind enough to form a school with- 
 drawn from their influence. 
 
 These points are somewhat farther developed in the 
 general sketch of ancient and modern landscape, which I 
 have added to the first section of the second part. Some 
 important additions have also been made to the chapters 
 on the painting of sea. Throughout the rest of the text, 
 though something is withdrawn, little is changed ; and 
 the reader may rest assured that if I were now to bestow 
 on this feeble essay the careful revision which it much 
 needs, but little deserves, it would not be to alter its 
 tendencies, or modify its conclusions, but to prevent in- 
 dignation from appearing virulence on the one side, and 
 enthusiasm partisanship on the other. 
 
PREFACE TO NEW EDITION (1873). 
 
 I have been lately so often asked by friends on whose 
 judgment I can rely, to permit the publication of another 
 edition of “ Modern Painters ” in its original form, that I 
 have at last yielded, though with some violence to my 
 own feelings ; for many parts of the first and second vol- 
 umes are written in a narrow enthusiasm, and the sub- 
 stance of their metaphysical and religious speculation 
 is only justifiable on the ground of its absolute honesty. 
 Of the third, fourth, and fifth volumes I indeed mean 
 eventually to rearrange what I think of permanent in- 
 terest, for the complete edition of my works, but with 
 fewer and less elaborate illustrations : nor have I any se- 
 rious grounds for refusing to allow the book once more 
 to appear in the irregular form which it took as it was 
 written, since of the art-teaching and landscape descrip- 
 tion it contains I have little to retrench, and nothing to 
 retract. 
 
 This final edition must, however, be limited to a thou- 
 sand copies, for some of the more delicate plates are al- 
 ready worn, that of the Mill Stream in the fifth volume, 
 and of the Loire Side very injuriously ; while that of the 
 Shores of Wharfe had to be retouched by an engraver 
 after the removal of the mezzotint for reprinting. But 
 Mr. Armytage’s, Mr. Cousen’s, and Mr. Cuffs magnifi- 
 cent plates are still in good state, and my own etchings, 
 though injured, are still good enough to answer their 
 purpose. 
 
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 OF GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 
 
 SECTION L 
 
 OF THE NATURE OF THE IDEAS CONVEYABLE BY ART. 
 CHAPTER I. — Introductory. 
 
 PAG B 
 
 § 1. Public opinion no criterion of excellence, except after 
 
 long periods of time 71 
 
 § 2. And therefore obstinate when once formed 74 
 
 § 8. The author’s reasons for opposing it in particular in- 
 stances 75 
 
 § 4. But only on points capable of demonstration 76 
 
 § 5. The author’s partiality to modern works excusable 77 
 
 CHAPTER II. — Definition of Greatness in Art. 
 
 § 1. Distinction between the painter’s intellectual power and 
 
 technical knowledge 79 
 
 § 2. Painting, as such, is nothing more than language 79 
 
 § 3. “ Painter,” a term corresponding to " versifier” 80 
 
 § 4. Example in a painting of E. Landseer’s 80 
 
 § 5. Difficulty of fixing an exact limit between language and 
 
 thought 81 
 
 § 6. Distinction between decorative and expressive language 81 
 
 § 7. Instance in the Dutch and early Italian schools 82 
 
 § 8. Yet there are certain ideas belonging to language itself. . 83 
 
 §9. The definition . 83 
 
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. 57 
 
 CHAPTER III.— Of Ideas of Power. 
 
 ’ PAGE 
 
 § 1. What classes of ideas are conveyable by art 85 
 
 § 2. Ideas of power vary much in relative dignity 85 
 
 § 3. But are received from whatever has been the subject of 
 
 power. The meaning of the word “excellence”... 86 
 §4. What is necessary to the distinguishing of excellence. . 88 
 
 § 5. The pleasure attendant on conquering difficulties is right 88 
 
 CHAPTER IV.— Of Ideas of Imitation. 
 
 § 1. False use of the term “ imitation ” by many writers of art 90 
 
 § 2. Real meaning of the term 91 
 
 § 3. What is requisite to the sense of imitation 91 
 
 § 4. The pleasure resulting from imitation the most con- 
 temptible that can be derived from art 93 
 
 § 5. Imitation is only of contemptible subjects 93 
 
 § 6. Imitation is contemptible because it is easy 93 
 
 § 7. Recapitulation 94 
 
 CHAPTER V.— Of Ideas of Truth. 
 
 § 1. Meaning of the word “ truth” as applied to art 95 
 
 § 2. First difference between truth and imitation 95 
 
 § 3. Second difference 95 
 
 § 4. Third difference 96 
 
 § 5. No accurate truths necessary to imitation 96 
 
 § 6. Ideas of truth are inconsistent with ideas of imitation . 98 
 
 CHAPTER VI.— Of Ideas of Beauty. 
 
 § 1. Definition of the term “beautiful” 100 
 
 § 2. Definition of the term “ taste” 101 
 
 § 3. Distinction between taste and judgment 101 
 
 § 4. How far beauty may become intellectual 101 
 
 § 5. The high rank and function of ideas of beauty 102 
 
 § 6. Meaning of the term “ ideal beauty” 102 
 
 CHAPTER VII.— Of Ideas of Relation. 
 
 § 1. General meaning of the term 104 
 
 § 2. What ideas are to be comprehended under it 104 
 
 § 3. The exceeding nobility of these ideas 105 
 
 § 4 . Why no subdivision of so extensive a class is necessary, 106 
 
58 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS . 
 
 SECTION IL 
 
 OF POWER. 
 
 CHAPTER I.— General Principles respecting Ideas op 
 Power. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 § 1. No necessity for detailed study of ideas of imitation. A 107 
 
 § 2. ' Nor for separate study of ideas of power 107 
 
 § 3. Except under one particular form i . . 108 
 
 § 4. There are two modes of receiving ideas of power, com- 
 monly inconsistent 108 
 
 § 5. First reason of the inconsistency 109 
 
 § 6. Second reason for the inconsistency 109 
 
 § 7. The sensation of power ought not to be sought in im- 
 perfect art 110 
 
 § 8. Instances in pictures of modern artists 110 
 
 § 9. Connection between ideas of power and modes of execu- 
 tion Ill 
 
 CHAPTER II. — Of Ideas of Power, as they are depend- 
 ent upon Execution. 
 
 § 
 
 § 
 
 § 
 
 § 
 
 § 
 
 § 
 
 § 
 
 § 
 
 § 
 
 § 
 
 1. Meaning of the term “execution” 112 
 
 2. The first quality of execution is truth 112 
 
 3. The second, simplicity 113 
 
 4. The third, mystery 113 
 
 5. The fourth, inadequacy ; and the fifth, decision. ..... 113 
 
 6. The sixth, velocity 113 
 
 7. Strangeness an illegitimate source of pleasure in execu- 
 
 tion 114 
 
 8. Yet even the legitimate sources of pleasure in execu- 
 
 tion are inconsistent with each other 115 
 
 9. And fondness for ideas of power leads to the adoption 
 
 of the lowest 116 
 
 10. Therefore perilous 117 
 
 11. Recapitulation 117 
 
 CHAPTER III.— Of the Sublime. 
 
 § 1. Sublimity is the effect upon the mind of anything above it 118 
 § 2. Burke’s theory of the nature of the sublime incorrect, 
 
 and why 118 
 
 § 3. Danger is sublime, but not the fear of it 119 
 
 § 4. The highest beauty is sublime 119 
 
 §5. And generally whatever elevates the mind 119 
 
 § 6. The former division of the subject is therefore sufficient 120 
 
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS . 
 
 59 
 
 PART II. 
 
 OP TRUTH. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 GENERAL PRINCIPLES RESPECTING IDEAS OF TRUTH. 
 'CHAPTER I. — Of Ideas of Truth m their connection 
 
 WITH THOSE OF BEAUTY AND RELATION. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 § 1. The two great ends of landscape painting are the rep- 
 resentation of facts and thoughts 121 
 
 § 2. They induce a different choice of material subjects. . . 122 
 
 § 3. The first mode of selection apt to produce sameness 
 
 and repetition 122 
 
 § 4. The second necessitating variety 123 
 
 § 5. Yet the first is delightful to all 123 
 
 § 6. The second only to a few 123 
 
 § 7. The first necessary to the second 124 
 
 § 8. The exceeding importance of truth 125 
 
 § 9. Coldness or want of beauty no sign of truth 126 
 
 § 10. How truth may be considered a just criterion of all art 126 
 
 CHAPTER II. — That the Truth of Nature is not to be 
 
 DISCERNED BY THE UNEDUCATED SENSES. 
 
 § 1. The common self-deception of men with respect to 
 
 their pow r er of discerning truth 128 
 
 § 2. Men usually see little of what is before their eyes 129 
 
 § 3. But more or less in proportion to their natural sensibility 
 
 to what is beautiful 130 
 
 § 4. Connected with a perfect state of moral feeling 131 
 
 § 5. And of the intellectual powers 132 
 
 § 6. How sight depends upon previous knowledge 133 
 
 § 7. The difficulty increased by the variety of truths in nature 134 
 § 8. We recognize objects by their least important attri- 
 butes. Compare Part I., Sect. L, Chap. 4 135 
 
 CHAPTER III. — Of the Relative Importance of Truths : 
 
 — First, that Particular Truths are more im- 
 portant than General Ones. 
 
 § 1. Necessity of determining the relative importance of 
 
60 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 §2. Misapplication of the aphorism: “General truths are 
 
 more important than particular ones ” 138 
 
 § 3. Falseness of this maxim taken without explanation . . . 139 
 
 § 4. Generality important in the subject, particularity in the 
 
 predicate 140 
 
 § 5. The importance of truths of species is not owing to 
 
 their generality 140 
 
 § 6. All truths valuable as they are characteristic 141 
 
 § 7. Otherwise truths of species are valuable, because beau- 
 tiful 142 
 
 § 8. And many truths, valuable if separate, may be objec- 
 tionable in connection with others 143 
 
 § 9. Recapitulation 144 
 
 CHAPTER IV.— Of the Relative Importance of Truths : 
 — Secondly, that Rare Truths are more im» 
 
 PORTANT THAN FREQUENT ONES. 
 
 § 1. No accidental violation of nature’s principles should be 
 
 represented 145 
 
 § 2. But the cases in which those principles have been strik- 
 ingly exemplified 146 
 
 §3. Which are comparatively rare 146 
 
 § 4. All repetition is blamable 146 
 
 § 5. The duty of the painter is the same as that of a preacher 147 
 
 CHAPTER V. — Of the Relative Importance of Truths : 
 — Thirdly, that Truths of Color are the 
 
 least important of all Truths. 
 
 § 1. Difference between primary and secondary qualities in 
 
 bodies 148 
 
 § 2. The first are fully characteristic, the second imperfectly 
 
 so 148 
 
 § 3. Color is a secondary quality, therefore less important 
 
 than form 149 
 
 § 4. Color no distinction between objects of the same species 150 
 
 § 5. And different in association from what it is alone 150 
 
 § 6. It is not certain whether any two people see the same 
 
 colors in things 150 
 
 § 7. Form, considered as an element of landscape, includes 
 
 light and shade 151 
 
 § 8. Importance of light and shade in expressing the char- 
 acter of bodies, and unimportance of color 152 
 
 § 9, Recapitulation 153 
 
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. 
 
 61 
 
 CHAPTER VI.— Recapitulation. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 § 1. The importance of historical truths 154 
 
 § 2. Form, as explained by light and shade, the first of all 
 
 truths. Tone, light, and color are secondary 155 
 
 § 3. And deceptive chiaroscuro the lowest of all 155 
 
 CHAPTER VII. — General Application of the Foregoing 
 Principles. 
 
 § 1. The different selection of facts consequent on the sev- 
 
 . eral aims at imitation or at truth 156 
 
 § 2. The old masters, as a body, aim only at imitation 156 
 
 § 3. What truths they gave 157 
 
 § 4. The principles of selection adopted by modern artists 159 
 § 5. General feeling of Claude, Salvator, and G. Poussin, 
 
 contrasted with the freedom and vastness of nature 159 
 § 6. Inadequacy of the landscape of Titian and Tintoret . . 160 
 
 § 7. Causes of its want of influence on subsequent schools 162 
 § 8. The value of inferior works of art, how to be estimated 163 
 § 9. Religious landscape of Italy. The admirableness of 
 
 its completion 165 
 
 § 10. Finish, and the want of it, how right and how wrong 166 
 § 11. The open skies of the religious schools, how valuable. 
 Mountain drawing of Masaccio. Landscape of the 
 
 Bellinis and Giorgione 169 
 
 § 12. Landscape of Titian and Tintoret 171 
 
 § 13. Schools of Florence, Milan, and Bologna 173 
 
 § 14. Claude, Salvator, and the Poussins 174 
 
 § 15. German and Flemish landscape ... 175 
 
 § 16. The lower Dutch schools 177 
 
 § 17. English school, Wilson and Gainsborough 178 
 
 § 18. Constable, Calcott 180 
 
 § 19. Peculiar tendency of recent landscape 181 
 
 § 20. G. Robson, D. Cox. False use of the term “ style ”. . 182 
 
 § 21. Copley Fielding. Phenomena of distant color 185 
 
 § 22. Beauty of mountain foreground 186 
 
 § 23. De Wint 189 
 
 § 24. Influence of Engraving. J. D. Harding 189 
 
 § 25. Samuel Prout. Early painting of architecture, how 
 
 deficient 191 
 
 § 26. Effects of age upon buildings, how far desirable 192 
 
 § 27. Effects of light, how necessary to the understanding 
 
 of detail 195 
 
 § 28. Architectural painting of Gentile Bellini and Vittor 
 
 Carpaccio 197 
 
62 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 § 29. And of the Venetians generally. 198 
 
 § 30. Fresco painting of the Venetian exteriors. Canaletto 199 
 § 81. Expression of the effects of age on Architecture by S. 
 
 Prout 203 
 
 § 32. His excellent composition and color 205 
 
 § 33. Modern architectural painting generally. G. Catter- 
 
 mole 206 
 
 § 34. The evil in an archaeological point of view of misap- 
 plied invention in architectural subject 208 
 
 §35. Works of David Roberts : their fidelity and grace 209 
 
 § 36. Clarkson Stanfield 213 
 
 § 37. J. M. W. Turner. Force of national feeling in all 
 
 great painters 215 
 
 § 38. Influence of this feeling on the choice of Landscape 
 
 subject 218 
 
 § 39. Its peculiar manifestation in Turner 219 
 
 § 40. The domestic subjects of the Liber Studiorum 221 
 
 § 41. Turner’s painting of French and Swiss landscape. 
 
 The latter deficient 223 
 
 § 42. His rendering of Italian character still less successful. 
 
 His large compositions how failing 224 
 
 § 43. His views of Italy destroyed by brilliancy and redun- 
 dant quantity 226 
 
 § 44. Changes introduced by him in the received system of 
 
 art 228 
 
 § 45. Difficulties of his later manner. Resultant deficiencies 230 
 
 § 46. Reflection of his very recent works 233 
 
 § 47. Difficulty of demonstration in such subjects 235 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 OF GENERAL TRUTHS. 
 
 CHAPTER I.— Of Truth of Tone. 
 
 § 1. Meaning of the word “ tone : ” First, the right relation 
 
 of objects in shadow to the principal light 237 
 
 § 2. Secondly, the quality of color by which it is felt to owe 
 
 part of its brightness to the hue of light upon it. . . . 237 
 
 § 3. Difference between tone in its first sense and aerial per- 
 spective 238 
 
 § 4. The pictures of the old masters perfect in relation of 
 
 middle tints to light . . . ■ 238 
 
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. 
 
 63 
 
 PAGE 
 
 § 5. And consequently totally false in relation of middle 
 
 tints to darkness 239 
 
 § 6. General falsehood of such a system 240 
 
 § 7. The principle of Turner in this respect 241 
 
 § 8. Comparison of N. Poussin’s “Phocion” 242 
 
 § 9. With Turner’s “ Mercury and Argus” 243 
 
 § 10. And with the “ Datur Hora Quieti ” 243 
 
 § 11. The second sense of the word “ tone ” 244 
 
 § 12. Remarkable difference in this respect between the 
 
 paintings and drawings of Turner 244 
 
 § 13. Not owing to want of power over the material 245 
 
 § 14. The two distinct qualities of light to be considered. . . 240 
 
 § 15. Falsehoods by which Titian attains the appearance of 
 
 quality in light 246 
 
 § 16. Turner will not use such means. 247 
 
 §17. But gains in essential truth by the sacrifice 248 
 
 § 18. The second quality of light 248 
 
 § 19. The perfection of Cuyp in this respect interfered with 
 
 by numerous solecisms 249 
 
 § 20. Turner is not so perfect in parts — far more so in the 
 
 whole. . 250 
 
 § 21. The power in Turner of uniting a number of tones. . . 251 
 
 § 22. Recapitulation 253 
 
 CHAPTER II.— Of Truth of Color. 
 
 § 1. Observations on the color of G. Poussin’s La Riccia. . 
 
 § 2. As compared with the actual scene 
 
 § 3. Turner himself is inferior in brilliancy to nature 
 
 § 4. Impossible colors of Salvator, Titian 
 
 § 5. Poussin, and Claude 
 
 § 6. Turner’s translation of colors 
 
 § 7. Notice of effects in which no brilliancy of art can even 
 
 approach that of reality 
 
 § 8. Reasons for the usual incredulity of the observer with 
 
 respect to their representation 
 
 § 9. Color of the Napoleon 
 
 § 10. Necessary discrepancy between the attainable brillian- 
 cy of color and light 
 
 § 11. This discrepancy less in Turner than in other colorists 
 § 12. Its great extent in a landscape attributed to Rubens . . 
 
 § 13. Turner scarcely ever uses pure or vivid color 
 
 § 14. The basis of gray, under all his vivid hues 
 
 § 15. The variety and fulness even of his most simple tones 
 
 255 
 
 256 
 
 257 
 
 258 
 
 259 
 261 
 
 262 
 
 263 
 
 265 
 
 266 
 267 
 
 267 
 
 268 
 270 
 270 
 
64 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAG* 
 
 § 16. Following the infinite and unapproachable variety of 
 
 nature 271 
 
 § 17. His dislike of purple, and fondness for the opposition 
 of yellow and black. The principles of nature in 
 
 this respect 272 
 
 § 18. His early works are false in color 274 
 
 § 19. His drawings invariably perfect 274 
 
 § 20. The subjection of his system of color to that of chi- 
 aroscuro 275 
 
 CHAPTER III. — Op Truth of Chiaroscuro. 
 
 § 1. We are not at present to examine particular effects of 
 
 light 278 
 
 § 2. And therefore the distinctness of shadows is the chief 
 
 means of expressing vividness of light 279 
 
 § 3. Total absence of such distinctness in the works of the 
 
 Italian school 280 
 
 § 4. And partial absence in the Dutch 280 
 
 § 5. The perfection of Turner’s works in this respect 281 
 
 § 6. The effect of his shadows upon the light 283 
 
 § 7. The distinction holds good between almost all the 
 
 works of the ancient and modern schools 284 
 
 § 8. Second great principle of chiaroscuro. Both high 
 light and deep shadow are used in equal quantity, 
 
 and only in points 285 
 
 § 9. Neglect or contradiction of this principle by writers 
 
 on art 286 
 
 § 10. And consequent misguiding of the student 286 
 
 § 11. The great value of a simple chiaroscuro 287 
 
 § 12. The sharp separation of nature’s lights from her mid- 
 dle tint 288 
 
 § 13. The truth of Turner 289 
 
 CHAPTER IV.— Of Truth of Space First, as Depend- 
 ent ON THE Focus OF THE EYE. 
 
 § 1. Space is more clearly indicated by the drawing of ob- 
 jects than by their hue 291 
 
 § 2. It is impossible to see objects at unequal distances dis- 
 tinctly at one moment 292 
 
 § 3. Especially such as are both comparatively near 293 
 
 § 4. In painting, therefore, either the foreground or distance 
 
 must be partially sacrificed 293 
 
 § 5. Which not being done by the old masters, they could 
 
 not express space 294 
 
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. 
 
 65 
 
 PAG ft 
 
 § 6. But modern artists have succeeded in fully carrying out 
 
 this principle . 294 
 
 § 7. Especially of Turner 296 
 
 § 8. Justification of the want of drawing in Turner’s figures 296 
 
 CHAPTER Y. — Of Truth of Space : — Secondly, as its Ap- 
 pearance is Dependent on the Power of the 
 Eye. 
 
 § 1. The peculiar indistinctness dependent on the retire- 
 ment of objects from the eye 298 
 
 § 2. Causes confusion, but not annihilation of details 299 
 
 § 3. Instances in various objects 299 
 
 § 4. Two great resultant truths ; that nature is never dis- 
 tinct, and never vacant 300 
 
 § 5. Complete violation of both those principles by the old 
 
 masters. They are either distinct or vacant 301 
 
 § 6. Instances from Nicholas Poussin 301 
 
 § 7. From Claude 302 
 
 § 8. And G. Poussin 303 
 
 § 9. The imperative necessity, in landscape painting, of 
 
 fulness and finish 304 
 
 § 10. Breadth is not vacancy. 305 
 
 §11. The fulness and mystery of Turner’s distances 307 
 
 § 12. Farther illustrations in architectural drawing 307 
 
 § 13. In near objects as well as distances 308 
 
 § 14. Vacancy and falsehood of Canaletto 309 
 
 § 15. Still greater fulness and finish in landscape foregrounds 309 
 
 § 16. Space and size are destroyed alike by distinctness and 
 
 by vacancy - 311 
 
 § 17. Swift execution best secures perfection of details .... 311 
 
 § 18. Finish is far more necessary in landscape than in his- 
 torical subjects 312 
 
 § 19. Recapitulation of the section 313 
 
 SECTION in. 
 
 OF TRUTH OF SKIES. 
 
 CHAPTER I.— Of the Open Sky. 
 
 § 1. The peculiar adaptation of the sky to the pleasing and 
 
 teaching of man 314 
 
 § 2. The carelessness with which its lessons are received. . 315 
 
 § 3. The most essential of these lessons are the gentlest. . . 316 
 5 
 
66 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 § 4. Many of our ideas of sky altogether conventional 816 
 
 § 5. Nature and essential qualities of the open blue 317 
 
 § 6. Its connection with clouds 317 
 
 § 7. Its exceeding depth 318 
 
 § 8. These qualities are especially given by modern masters 318 
 
 § 9. And by Claude 319 
 
 § 10. Total absence of them in Poussin. Physical errors in 
 
 his general treatment of open sky 319 
 
 § 11. Errors of Cuyp in graduation of color 320 
 
 § 12. The exceeding value of the skies of the early Italian 
 and Dutch schools. Their qualities are unattainable 
 
 in modern times 322 
 
 § 13. Phenomena of visible sunbeams. Their nature and 
 
 cause 322 
 
 § 14. They are only illuminated mist, and cannot appear 
 when the sky is free from vapor, nor when it is 
 
 without clouds 323 
 
 § 15. Erroneous tendency in the representation of such 
 
 phenomena by the old masters. 324 
 
 §16. The ray which appears in the dazzled eye should not 
 
 be represented 325 
 
 § 17. The practice of Turner. His keen perception of the 
 
 more delicate phenomena of rays 325 
 
 § 18. The total absence of any evidence of such perception 
 
 in the works of the old masters 326 
 
 § 19. Truth of the skies of modern drawings 327 
 
 § 20. Recapitulation. The best skies of the ancients are, in 
 quality , inimitable, but in rendering of various 
 truth, childish 327 
 
 CHAPTER II. — Of Truth of Clouds : — First, of the Re- 
 gion of the Cirrus. 
 
 § 1. Difficulty of ascertaining wherein the truth of clouds 
 
 consists 
 
 § 2. Variation of their character at different elevations. 
 The three regions to which they may conveniently 
 
 be considered as belonging 
 
 § 3. Extent of the upper region 
 
 § 4. The symmetrical arrangement of its clouds 
 
 § 5. Their exceeding delicacy 
 
 § 6. Their number 
 
 § 7. Causes of their peculiarly delicate coloring 
 
 § 8. Their variety of form 
 
 328 
 
 329 
 
 329 
 
 329 
 
 330 
 
 331 
 
 332 
 332 
 
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS . 
 
 67 
 
 PAGE 
 
 § 9. Total absence of even the slightest effort at their rep- 
 
 resentation, in ancient landscape 333 
 
 § 10. The intense and constant study of them by Turner. . . 334 
 
 §11. His vignette, Sunrise on the Sea 335 
 
 § 12. His use of the cirrus in expressing mist 336 
 
 § 13. His consistency in every minor feature 337 
 
 § 14. The color of the upper clouds . . . . 338 
 
 § 15. Recapitulation 339 
 
 CHAPTER III. — Of Truth of Clouds Secondly, of the 
 Central Cloud Region. 
 
 § 1. Extent and typical character of the central cloud region 341 
 § 2. Its characteristic clouds, requiring no attention nor 
 
 thought for their representation, are therefore favor- 
 ite subjects with the old masters 342 
 
 § 3. The clouds of Salvator and Poussin 342 
 
 § 4. Their essential characters 343 
 
 § 5. Their angular forms and general decision of outline. . 344 
 
 § 6. The composition of their minor curves 345 
 
 § 7. Their characters, as given by S. Rosa 345 
 
 § 8. Monotony and falsehood of the clouds of the Italian 
 
 school generally 346 
 
 § 9. Vast size of congregated masses of cloud 347 
 
 § 10. Demonstrable by comparison with mountain ranges.. 348 
 § 11. And consequent divisions and varieties of feature.. . . 348 
 
 § 12. Not lightly to be omitted 349 
 
 § 13. Imperfect conceptions of this size and extent in ancient 
 
 landscape 350 
 
 § 14. Total w r ant of transparency and evanescence in the 
 
 clouds of ancient landscape 351 
 
 § 15. Farther proof of their deficiency in space 352 
 
 § 16. Instance of perfect truth in the sky of Turner’s Babylon 353 
 
 § 17. And in his Pools of Solomon 354 
 
 § 18. Truths of outline and character in his Como 355 
 
 § 19. Association of the cirrostratus with the cumulus 355 
 
 § 20. The deep-based knowledge of the Alps in Turner’s 
 
 Lake of Geneva 356 
 
 § 21. Further principles of cloud form exemplified in his 
 
 Amalfi 356 
 
 § 22. Reasons for insisting on the infinity of Turner’s works. 
 
 Infinity is almost an unerring test of all truth 357 
 
 § 23. Instances of the total want of it in the works of Salva- 
 tor 358 
 
68 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 § 24. And of the universal presence of it in those of Turner. 
 
 The conclusions which may be arrived at from it . . 359 
 § 35. The multiplication of objects, or increase of their size, 
 will not give the impression of infinity, but is the 
 
 resource of novices 359 
 
 § 36. Farther instances of infinity in the gray skies of Turner 360 
 
 § 37. The excellence of the cloud-drawing of Stanfield 361 
 
 § 38. The average standing of the English school 361 
 
 CHAPTER IY. — Of Truth of Clouds: — Thirdly, of the 
 Region of the Rain-Cloud. 
 
 § 1. The apparent difference in character between the lower 
 
 and central clouds is dependent chiefly on proximity 363 
 
 § 3. Their marked difference in color 363 
 
 § 3. And in definiteness of form 364 
 
 § 4. They are subject to precisely the same great laws 365 
 
 § 5. Value, to the painter, of the rain-cloud 366 
 
 § 6. The old masters have not left a single instance of the 
 painting of the rain-cloud, and very few efforts at 
 
 it. Gaspar Poussin’s storms 367 
 
 § 7. The great power of the moderns in this respect 368 
 
 § 8. Works of Copley Fielding 368 
 
 § 9. His peculiar truth 368 
 
 § 10. His weakness and its probable cause 369 
 
 § 11. Impossibility of reasoning on the rain-clouds of Tur- 
 ner from engravings 370 
 
 § 13. His rendering of Fielding’s particular moment in the 
 
 Jumieges 371 
 
 § 13. Illustration of the nature of clouds in the opposed 
 
 forms of smoke and steam 371 
 
 § 14. Moment of retiring rain in the Llanthony 373 
 
 § 15. And of commencing, chosen with peculiar meaning 
 
 for Loch Coriskin 373 
 
 § 16. The drawing of transparent vapor in the Land’s End 374 
 
 § 17. The individual character of its parts 375 
 
 § 18. Deep studied form of swift rain-cloud in the Coventry 375 
 
 § 19. Compared with forms given by Salvator 376 
 
 § 30. Entire expression of tempest by minute touches and 
 
 circumstances in the Coventry 376 
 
 § 31. Especially by contrast with a passage of extreme repose 377 
 § 23. The truth of this particular passage. Perfectly pure 
 
 blue sky only seen after rain, and how seen 377 
 
 § 23. Absence of this effect in the works of the old masters 378 
 
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS . 
 
 69 
 
 PAGE 
 
 § 24. Success of our water-color artists in its rendering. 
 
 Use of it by Turner 379 
 
 § 25. Expression of near rain-cloud in the Gosport, and other 
 
 works 379 
 
 § 28. Contrasted with Gaspar Poussin’s rain-cloud in the 
 
 Dido and iEneas . . ... 380 
 
 § 27. Turner’s power of rendering mist 380 
 
 § 28. His effects of mist so perfect, that if not at once un- 
 derstood, they can no more be explained or reasoned 
 
 ' on than nature herself 381 
 
 § 29. Various instances 382 
 
 § 30. Turner’s more violent effects of tempest are never ren- 
 dered by engravers 382 
 
 § 31. General system of landscape engraving 382 
 
 § 32. The storm in the Stonehenge 383 
 
 § 33. General character of such effects as given by Turner. 
 
 His expression of falling rain 384 
 
 § 34. Recapitulation of the section 384 
 
 § 35. Sketch of a few of the skies of nature, taken as a 
 whole, compared with the works of Turner and of 
 
 the old masters. Morning on the plains . . 385 
 
 § 36. Noon with gathering storms 386 
 
 § 37. Sunset in tempest. Serene midnight 387 
 
 § 38. And sunrise on the Alps 388 
 
 CHAPTER V. — Effects of Light rendered by Modern 
 Art. 
 
 § 1. Reasons for merely, at present, naming, without exam- 
 ining the particular effects of light rendered by Tur- 
 ner 389 
 
 | 2. Hopes of the author for assistance in the future investi- 
 gation of them 389 
 

 V: 
 
 i7 
 
 '• 
 
 2 
 
 t 
 
 
MODERN PAINTERS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 OF GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 OF THE NATURE OF THE IDEAS CONVEYABLE BY ART. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 If it be true, and it can scarcely be disputed, that 
 nothing has been for centuries consecrated by public 
 admiration, without possessing in a high degree some 
 kind of sterling excellence, it is not because the average 
 intellect and feeling of the majority of the public are 
 competent in any way to distinguish what 
 
 11 i i i i n §L Public opm- 
 
 is really excellent, but because all errone- ion no criterion of 
 
 . . . . i n excellence, except 
 
 ous opinion is inconsistent, and ail un- aaer^iong periods 
 
 grounded opinion transitory ; so that while 
 the fancies and feelings which deny deserved honor and 
 award what is undue have neither root nor strength suf- 
 ficient to maintain consistent testimony for a length of 
 time, the opinions formed on right grounds by those few 
 who are in reality competent judges, being necessarily 
 stable, communicate themselves gradually from mind to 
 
?2 
 
 INTRODUCTORY . 
 
 mind, descending lower as they extend wider, until they 
 leaven the whole lump, and rule by absolute authority, 
 even where the grounds and reasons for them cannot be 
 understood. On this gradual victory of what is consist- 
 ent over what is vacillating, depends the reputation of 
 all that is highest in art and literature. For it is an in- 
 sult to what is really great in either, to suppose that it 
 in any way addresses itself to mean or uncultivated fac- 
 ulties. It is a matter of the simplest demonstration, that 
 no man can be really appreciated but by his equal or su- 
 perior. His inferior may over-estimate him in enthusi- 
 asm ; or, as is more commonly the case, degrade him, in 
 ignorance ; but he cannot form a grounded and just esti- 
 mate. Without proving this, however — which it would 
 take more space to do than I can spare — it is sufficiently 
 evident that there is no process of amalgamation by 
 which opinions, wrong individually, can become right 
 merely by their multitude.* 
 
 If I stand by a picture in the Academy, and hear 
 twenty persons in succession admiring some paltry piece 
 of mechanism or imitation in the lining of a cloak, or the 
 satin of a slipper, it is absurd to tell me that they repro- 
 bate collectively what they admire individually: or, if 
 they pa,ss with apathy by a piece of the most noble con- 
 ception or most perfect truth, because it has in it no 
 tricks of the brush nor grimace of expression, it is ab- 
 surd to tell me that they collectively respect what they 
 separately scorn, or that the feelings and knowledge of 
 such judges, by any length of time or comparison of 
 ideas, could come to any right conclusion with respect 
 to what is really high in art. The question is not de- 
 
 * The opinion of a majority is right only when it is more probable 
 with each individual that he should be right than that he should be 
 wrong, as in the case of a jury. Where it is more probable, with re- 
 spect to each individual, that he should be wrong than right, the 
 opinion of the minority is the true one. Thus it is in art. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 73 
 
 cided by them, but for them ; — decided at first by few : 
 by fewer in proportion as the merits of the work are of a 
 higher order. From these few the decision is communi- 
 cated to the number next below them in rank of mind, 
 and by these again to a wider and lower circle ; each 
 rank being so far cognizant of the superiority of that 
 above it, as to receive its decision with respect ; until, in 
 process of time, the right and consistent opinion is com- 
 municated to all, and held by all as a matter of faith, the 
 more positively in proportion as the grounds of it are 
 less perceived.* 
 
 * There are, however, a thousand modifying circumstances which 
 render this process sometimes unnecessary,— sometimes rapid and cer- 
 tain — sometimes impossible. It is unnecessary in rhetoric and the 
 drama, because the multitude is the only proper judge of those arts 
 whose end is to move the multitude (though more is necessary to a 
 fine play than is essentially dramatic, and it is only of the dramatic 
 part that the multitude are cognizant). It is unnecessary, when, unit- 
 ed with the higher qualities of a work, there are appeals to universal 
 passion, to all the faculties and feelings which are general in man as 
 an animal: The popularity is then as sudden as it is well grounded, 
 
 — it is hearty and honest in every mind, but it is based in every mind 
 on a different species of excellence. Such will often be the case with 
 the noblest works of literature. Take Don Quixote for example. The 
 lowest mind would find in it perpetual and brutal amusement in the 
 misfortunes of the knight, and perpetual pleasure in sympathy with 
 the squire. A mind of average feeling would perceive the satirical 
 meaning and force of the book, would appreciate its wit, its elegance, 
 and its truth. But only elevated and peculiar minds discover, in addi- 
 tion to all this, the full moral beauty of the love and truth which are 
 the constant associates of all that is even most weak and erring in the 
 character of its hero, and pass over the rude adventure and scurrile 
 jest in haste — perhaps in pain, to penetrate beneath the rusty corselet, 
 and catch from the wandering glance the evidence and expression of 
 fortitude, self-devotion, and universal love. So, again with the works 
 of Scott and Byron ; popularity was as instant as it was deserved, be- 
 cause there is in them an appeal to those passions which are universal 
 in all men, as well as an expression of such thoughts as can be re- 
 ceived only by the few. But they are admired by the majority of their 
 advocates for the weakest parts of their works, as a popular preachei 
 by the majority of his congregation for the worst part of his sermon 
 
74 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 But when this process has taken place, and the work 
 has become sanctified by time in the minds of men, it is 
 impossible that any new work of equal merit can be im- 
 partially compared with it, except by minds not only 
 educated and generally capable of appre- 
 
 § 2. And therefore ... J L . , V, 
 
 obstinate when dating merit, but strong enough to shake 
 off the weight of prejudice and association, 
 which invariably incline them to the older favorite. It 
 is much easier, says Barry, to repeat the character 
 
 The process is rapid and certain, when, though there may be little 
 to catch the multitude at once, there is much which they can enjoy when 
 their attention is authoritatively directed to it. So rests the reputa- 
 tion of Sliakspeare. No ordinary mind can comprehend wherein 
 his undisputed superiority consists, but there is yet quite as much 
 to amuse, thrill, or excite, — quite as much of what is, in the strict 
 sense of the word, dramatic in his works as in any one else’s. They 
 were received, therefore, when first written, with average approval, as 
 works of common merit ; but when the high decision was made, and 
 the circle spread, the public took up the hue and cry conscientiously 
 enough. Let them have daggers, ghosts, clowns, and kings, and with 
 such real and definite sources of enjoyment, they will take the addi- 
 tional trouble to learn half a dozen quotations, without understanding 
 them, and admit the superiority of Shakspeare without further de- 
 mur. Nothing, perhaps, can more completely demonstrate the total 
 ignorance of the public of all that is great or valuable in Shakspeare 
 than their universal admiration of Maclise’s Hamlet. 
 
 The process is impossible when there is in the work nothing to at- 
 tract and something to disgust the vulgar mind. Neither their intrin- 
 sic excellence, nor the authority of those who can judge of it, will ever 
 make the poems of Wordsworth or George Herbert popular, iu the 
 sense in which Scott and Byron are popular, because it is to the vul- 
 gar a labor instead of a pleasure to read them ; and there are parts in 
 them which to such judges cannot but be vapid or ridiculous. Most 
 works of the highest art, — those of Raffaelle, M. Angelo, or Da Yinci, 
 — stand as Shakspeare does, — that which is commonplace and feeble 
 in their excellence being taken for its essence by the uneducated, im- 
 agination assisting the impression, (for we readily fancy that we feel, 
 when feeling is a matter of pride or conscience,) and affectation and 
 pretension increasing the noise of the rapture, if not its degree. Giotto, 
 Orgagna, Angelico, Perugino. stand, like George Herbert, only with 
 the few. Wilkie becomes popular, like Scott, because he touches pas- 
 sions which all feel, and expresses truths which all can recognize. 
 
INTRODUCTORY . 
 
 75 
 
 recorded of Pliidias, than to investigate the merits of 
 Agasias. And when, as peculiarly in the case of paint- 
 ing, much knowledge of what is technical and practical 
 is necessary to a right judgment, so that those alone are 
 competent to pronounce a true verdict who are them- 
 selves the persons to be judged, and who therefore can 
 give no opinion, centuries may elapse before fair com- 
 parison can be made between two artists of different 
 ages ; while the patriarchal excellence exercises during 
 the interval a tyrannical— perhaps, even a blighting, 
 influence over the minds, both of the public and of those 
 to whom, properly understood, it should serve for a 
 guide and example. In no city of Europe where art is a 
 subject of attention, are its prospects so hopeless, or its 
 pursuits so resultless, as in Rome ; because there, among’ 
 all students, the authority of their predecessors in art is 
 supreme and without appeal, and the mindless copyist 
 studies Raffaelle, but not what Raffaelle studied. It 
 thus becomes the duty of every one capable of demon- 
 strating any definite points of superiority in modem art, 
 and who is in a position in which his doing so will not 
 be ungraceful, to encounter without hesitation whatever 
 opprobrium may fall upon him from the § 3 The author , s 
 necessary prejudice even of the most can- 
 did minds, and from the far more virulent mstances - 
 opposition of those who have no hope of maintaining 
 their own reputation for discernment but in the support 
 of that kind of consecrated merit which may be ap- 
 plauded without an inconvenient necessity for rea- 
 sons. It is my purpose, therefore, believing that there 
 are certain points of superiority in modem artists, and 
 especially in one or two of their number, which have not 
 yet been fully understood, except by those who are 
 scarcely in a position admitting the declaration of their 
 conviction, to institute a close comparison between the 
 great works of ancient and modern landscape art, to 
 
76 
 
 INTRODUCTORY . 
 
 raise, as far as possible, the deceptive veil of imaginary 
 light through which we are accustomed to gaze upon 
 the patriarchal work, and to show the real relations, 
 whether favorable or otherwise, subsisting between it 
 and our own. I am fully aware that this is not to be 
 done lightly or rashly ; that it is the part of every one 
 proposing to undertake such a task strictly to examine, 
 with prolonged doubt and severe trial, every opinion in 
 any way contrary to the sacred verdict of time, and to 
 advance nothing which does not, at least in his own con- 
 viction, rest on surer ground than mere feeling or taste. 
 I have accordingly advanced nothing in the following 
 pages but with accompanying demonstration, which 
 
 § 4 B it oni on ma y i nc ^ eec ^ ke true or taise — complete or 
 points capable °c3 conditional, but which can only be met on 
 
 demonstration. . _ 
 
 its own grounds, and can m no way be 
 borne down or affected by mere authority of great names. 
 Yet even thus I should scarcely have ventured to speak 
 so decidedly as I have, but for my full conviction that 
 we ought not to class the historical painters of the fif- 
 teenth, and landscape painters of the seventeenth, cen- 
 turies, together, under the general title of “old mas- 
 ters,” as if they possessed anything like corresponding 
 rank in their respective walks of art. I feel assured 
 that the principles on which they worked are totally 
 opposed, and that the landscape painters have been hon- 
 ored only because they exhibited in mechanical and 
 technical qualities some semblance of the manner of 
 the nobler historical painters, whose principles of con- 
 ception and composition they entirely reversed. The 
 course of study which has led me reverently to the feet 
 of Michael Angelo and Da Yinci, has alienated me grad- 
 ually from Claude and Gaspar — I cannot at the same 
 time do homage to power and pettiness — to the truth of 
 consummate science, and the mannerism of undisciplined 
 imagination. And let it be understood that whenever 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 77 
 
 hereafter I speak depreciatingly of the old masters as 
 a body, I refer to none of the historical painters, for 
 whom I entertain a veneration, which though I hope 
 reasonable in its grounds, is almost superstitious in 
 degree. Neither, unless he be particularly mentioned, do 
 I intend to include Nicholas Poussin, whose landscapes 
 have a separate and elevated character, which renders 
 it necessary to consider them apart from all others. 
 Speaking generally of the older masters, I refer only to 
 Claude, Gaspar, Poussin, Salvator Rosa, Cuyp, Berghem, 
 Both, Ruysdael, Hobbima, Teniers, (in his landscapes,) 
 P. Potter, Canaletti, and the various Yan somethings, 
 and Back somethings, more especially and malignantly 
 those who have libelled the sea. 
 
 It will of course be necessary for me, in the commence- 
 ment of the work to state briefly those principles on 
 which I conceive all right judgment of art must be 
 founded. These introductory chapters I should wish 
 to be read carefully, because all criticism must be use- 
 less when the terms or grounds of it are in any degree 
 ambiguous ; and the ordinary language of connoisseurs 
 and critics, granting that they understand it themselves, 
 is usually mere jargon to others, from their custom of 
 using technical terms, by which everything is meant, 
 and nothing is expressed. 
 
 And if, in the application of these principles, in spite 
 of my endeavor to render it impartial, the feeling and 
 fondness which I have for some works of § 5> The author , g 
 modem art escape me sometimes where ffworks^eSus- 
 it should not, let it be pardoned as little able - 
 more than a fair counterbalance to that peculiar venera- 
 tion with which the work of the older master, associated 
 as it has ever been in our ears with the expression of 
 whatever is great or perfect, must be usually regarded 
 by the reader. I do not say that this veneration is 
 wrong, nor that we should be less attentive to the re- 
 
78 
 
 INTRODUCTORY . 
 
 peated words of time : but let us not forget, that if honor 
 be for the dead, gratitude can only be for the living. 
 He who has once stood beside the grave, to look back 
 upon the companionship which has been forever closed, 
 feeling how impotent there are the wild love, or the keen 
 sorrow, to give one instant’s pleasure to the pulseless 
 heart, or atone in the lowest measure to the departed 
 spirit for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the 
 future incur that debt to the heart, which can only be 
 discharged to the dust. But the lesson which men re- 
 ceive as individuals, they do not learn as nations. Again 
 and again they have seen their noblest descend into the 
 grave, and have thought it enough to garland the tomb- 
 stone when they had not crowned the brow, and to pay 
 the honor to the ashes which they had denied to the spirit. 
 Let it not displease them that they are bidden, amidst 
 the tumult and the dazzle of their busy life, to listen for 
 the few voices, and watch for the few lamps, which God 
 has toned and lighted to charm and to guide them, that 
 they may not learn their sweetness by their silence, nor 
 their light by their decay. 
 
CHAPTEE n. 
 
 DEFINITION OF GREATNESS IN ART. 
 
 In the 15th Lecture of Sir Joshua Eeynolds, inciden- 
 tal notice is taken of the distinction between those excel- 
 lences in the painter which belong to him as such , and 
 those which belong to him in common ^ , 
 
 § 1. Distinction be- 
 
 with all men of intellect, the general and tween .the pain- 
 
 j intellectual 
 
 exalted powers of which art is the evi- power and tech- 
 
 t , . . . , i • i nical knowledge. 
 
 dence and expression, not the subject. 
 
 But the distinction is not there dwelt upon as it should 
 be, for it is owing to the slight attention ordinarily paid 
 to it, that criticism is open to every form of coxcombry, 
 and liable to every phase of error. It is a distinction on 
 which depend ail sound judgment of the rank of the 
 artist, and all just appreciation of the dignity of art. 
 
 Painting, or art generally, as such, with all its tech- 
 nicalities, difficulties, and particular ends, is nothing but 
 a noble and expressive language, invalu- g2 . painting, as 
 able as the vehicle of thought, but by ^ ^han^iSS 
 itself nothing. He who has learned what guage - 
 is commonly considered the whole art of painting, that 
 is, the art of representing any natural object faithfully, 
 has as yet only learned the language by which his 
 thoughts are to be expressed. He has done just as much 
 toward being that which we ought to respect as a great 
 painter, as a man who has learned how to express himself 
 grammatically and melodiously has towards being a 
 great poet. The language is, indeed, more difficult of 
 acquirement in the one case than in the other, and pos- 
 
80 
 
 DEFINITION OF GREATNESS IN ART. 
 
 sesses more power of delighting the sense, while it 
 speaks to the intellect, but it is, nevertheless, nothing 
 more than language, and all those excellences which are 
 peculiar to the painter as such, are merely what rhythm, 
 melody, precision and force are in the words of the 
 orator and the poet, necessary to their greatness, but not 
 the test of their greatness. It is not by the mode of 
 representing and saying, but by what is represented and 
 said, that the respective greatness either of the painter 
 or the writer is to be finally determined. 
 
 Speaking with strict propriety, therefore, we should 
 call a man a great painter only as he excelled in pre- 
 cision and force in the language of lines, 
 
 § 3. “Painter ” a ~ ~ 5 
 
 term correspond- and a great versifier, as he excelled in pre- 
 
 mg to “ versifier.” . . . , , , j* t * 
 
 cision or force m the language of words. A 
 great poet would then be a term strictly, and in precisely 
 the same sense applicable to both, if warranted by the 
 character of the images or thoughts which each in their 
 respective languages convey. 
 
 Take, for instance, one of the most perfect poems or 
 pictures (I use the words as synonymous) which modern 
 times have seen : — the “ Old Shepherd’s 
 
 § 4. Example m TT . , ... 
 
 i andseepf ° f E * kmief -mourner. Here the exquisite exe- 
 
 cution of the glossy and crisp hair of the 
 dog, the bright, sharp touching of the green bough be- 
 side it, the clear painting of the wood of the coffin and 
 the folds of the blanket, are language — language clear 
 and expressive in the highest degree. But the close 
 pressure of the dog’s breast against the wood, the con- 
 vulsive clinging of the paws, which has dragged the 
 blanket off the trestle, the total powerlessness of the 
 head laid, close and motionless, upon its folds, the fixed 
 and tearful fall of the eye in its utter hopelessness, the 
 rigidity of repose which marks that there has been no 
 motion nor change in the trance of agony since the last 
 blow was struck on the coffin-lid, the quietness and 
 
DEFINITION OF GREATNESS IN ART. 
 
 81 
 
 gloom of tlie chamber, the spectacles marking the place 
 where the Bible was last closed, indicating how lonely 
 has been the life — how nn watched the departure of him 
 who is now laid solitary in his sleep ; — these are all 
 thoughts — thoughts by which the picture is separated at 
 once from hundreds of equal merit, as far as mere paint- 
 ing goes, by which it ranks as a work of high art, and 
 stamps its author, not as the neat imitator of the texture 
 of a skin, or the fold of a drapery, but as the Man of 
 Mind. 
 
 It is not, however, always easy, either in painting or 
 literature, to determine where the influence of language 
 stops, and where that of thought begins. Many thoughts 
 are so dependent upon the language in §6 Difficulty of 
 which they are clothed, that they would gjjjs between 
 lose half their beauty if otherwise ex- Jhoulht age and 
 pressed. But the highest thoughts are 
 those which are least dependent on language, and the 
 dignity of any composition and praise to which it is en- 
 titled, are in exact proportion to its independency of 
 language or expression. A composition is indeed usu- 
 ally most perfect, when to such intrinsic dignity is 
 added all that expression can do to attract and adorn ; 
 but in every case of supreme excellence this all becomes 
 as nothing. We are more gratified by the simplest lines 
 or words which can suggest the idea in its own naked 
 beauty, than by the robe or the gem which conceal while 
 they decorate; we are better pleased to feel by their 
 absence how little they could bestow, than by their pres- 
 ence how much they can destroy. 
 
 There is therefore a distinction to be made between 
 ■what is ornamental in language and what is expressive. 
 That part of it which is necessary to the § 6 Distillcti0I1 
 embodying and conveying the thought ^ we ®“ d elp?c a - 
 is worthy of respect and attention as Bive laaguage. 
 necessary to excellence, though not the test of it. But 
 6 
 
82 
 
 DEFINITION OF GREATNESS IN ART. 
 
 that part of it which is decorative has little more to do 
 with the intrinsic excellence of the picture than the 
 frame or the varnishing of it. And this caution in dis- 
 tinguishing between the ornamental and the expressive 
 is peculiarly necessary in painting ; for in the language 
 of words it is nearly impossible for that which is not 
 expressive to be beautiful, except by mere rhythm or 
 melody, any sacrifice to which is immediately stigma- 
 tized as error. But the beauty of mere language in 
 painting is not only very attractive and entertaining to 
 the spectator, but requires for its attainment no small 
 exertion of mind and devotion of time by the artist. 
 Hence, in art, men have frequently fancied that they 
 were becoming rhetoricians and poets when they were 
 only learning to speak melodiously, and the judge has 
 over and over again advanced to the honor of authors 
 those who were never more than ornamental writing- 
 masters. 
 
 Most pictures of the Dutch school, for instance, ex- 
 cepting always those of Rubens, Vandyke, and Rem- 
 g 7. instance in b ran dt, are ostentatious exhibitions of the 
 ?c, e ri? u t c t h aii a a n 2 artist’s power of speech, the clear and vig- 
 schooiS. orous elocution of useless and senseless 
 
 words: while the early efforts of Cimabue and Giotto 
 are the burning messages of prophecy, delivered by the 
 stammering lips of infants. It is not by ranking the 
 former as more than mechanics, or the latter as less than 
 artists, that the taste of the multitude, always awake to 
 the lowest pleasures which art can bestow, and blunt to 
 the highest, is to be formed or elevated. It must be the 
 part of the judicious critic carefully to distinguish what 
 is language, and what is thought, and to rank and praise 
 pictures chiefly for the latter, considering the former as 
 a totally inferior excellence, and one which cannot be 
 compared with nor weighed against thought in any way 
 nor in any degree whatsoever. The picture which has 
 
DEFINITION OF GREATNESS IN ART . 
 
 83 
 
 the nobler and more numerous ideas, however awkwardly 
 expressed, is a greater and a better picture than that 
 which has the less noble and less numerous ideas, how- 
 ever beautifully expressed. No weight, nor mass, nor 
 beauty of execution can outweigh one grain or fragment 
 of thought. Three penstrokes of Bafiaelle are a greater 
 and a better picture than the most finished work that 
 ever Carlo Dolci polished into inanity. A finished work 
 of a great artist is only better than its sketch, if the 
 sources of pleasure belonging to color and realization — 
 valuable in themselves, — are so employed as to increase 
 the impressiveness of the thought. But if one atom of 
 thought has vanished, all color, all finish, all execution, all 
 ornament, are too dearly bought. Nothing but thought 
 can pay for thought, and the instant that the increasing 
 refinement or finish of the picture begins to be paid for 
 by the loss of the faintest shadow of an idea, that instant 
 all refinement or finish is an excrescence and a deformity. 
 
 Yet although in all our speculations on art, language 
 is thus to be distinguished from, and held subordinate 
 to, that which it conveys, we must still remember that 
 there are certain ideas inherent in language itself, and 
 that strictly speaking, every pleasure con- § 8 . Y et there are 
 nected with art has in it some reference to \ongSg 1 to^iaS 
 the intellect. The mere sensual pleasure guage iteeif • 
 of the eye, received from the most brilliant piece of col- 
 oring, is as nothing to that which it receives from a 
 crystal prism, except as it depends on our perception of 
 a certain meaning and intended arrangement of color, 
 which has been the subject of intellect. Nay, the term 
 idea, according to Locke’s definition of it, will extend 
 even to the sensual impressions themselves as far as 
 they are “ things which the mind occupies § 9 The dedai _ 
 itself about in thinking,” that is, not as tion - 
 they are felt by the eye only, but as they are received 
 by the mind through the eye. So that, if I say that 
 
84 
 
 DEFINITION OF GREATNESS IN ART. 
 
 the greatest picture is that which conveys to the mind 
 of the spectator the greatest number of the greatest 
 ideas, I have a definition which will include as subjects 
 of comparison every pleasure which art is capable of 
 conveying. If I were to say, on the contrary, that the 
 best picture was that which most closely imitated nature, 
 I should assume that art could only please by imitating 
 nature, and I should cast out of the pale of criticism those 
 parts of works of art which are not imitative, that is to 
 say, intrinsic beauties of color and form, and those works 
 of art wholly, which, like the arabesques of Baffaelle in 
 the Loggias, are not imitative at all. Now I want a 
 definition of art wide enough to include all its varieties 
 of aim ; I do not say therefore that the art is greatest' 
 which gives most pleasure, because perhaps there is 
 some art whose end is to teach, and not to please. I do 
 not say that the art is greatest which teaches us most, 
 because perhaps there is some art whose end is to 
 please, and not to teach. I do not say that the art is 
 greatest which imitates best, because perhaps there is 
 some art whose end is to create, and not to imitate. But 
 I say that the art is greatest, which conveys to the mind 
 of the spectator, by any means whatsoever, the greatest 
 number of the greatest ideas, and I call an idea great in 
 proportion as it is received by a higher faculty of the 
 mind, and as it more fully occupies, and in occupying, 
 exercises and exalts, the faculty by which it is received. 
 
 If this then be the definition of great art, that of a 
 great artist naturally follows. He is the greatest artist 
 who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest 
 number of the greatest ideas. 
 
CHAPTER HI. 
 
 OF IDEAS OF POWEB. 
 
 of ideas are con- 
 veyable by art. 
 
 The definition of art which I have just given, requires 
 me to determine what kinds of ideas can be received from 
 works of art, and which of these are the greatest, before 
 proceeding to any practical application of g a What claggeg 
 the test. 
 
 I think that all the sources of pleasure, 
 or any other good, to be derived from works of art, may 
 be referred to five distinct heads. 
 
 I. Ideas of Power. — The perception or conception 
 of the mental or bodily powers by which the 
 work has been produced. 
 
 II. Ideas of Imitation. — The perception that the thing 
 produced resembles something else. 
 
 III. Ideas of Truth. — The perception of faithfulness in 
 a statement of facts by the thing produced. 
 
 IY. Ideas of Beauty. — The perception of beauty, either 
 in the thing produced, or in what it suggests 
 or resembles. 
 
 Y. Ideas of Relation. — The perception of intellectual 
 relations, in the thing produced, or in what it 
 suggests or resembles. 
 
 I shall briefly distinguish the nature and effects of 
 each of these classes of ideas. 
 
 I. Ideas of Power. — These are the simple perception of 
 the mental or bodily powers exerted in the production 
 of any work of art. According to the dig- 
 
 •j -a i n . § 2. Ideas of pow- 
 
 nity and degree ol the power perceived is er vary much in 
 the dignity of the idea ; but the whole class relatiYe dlgnity ‘ 
 
86 
 
 OF IDEAS OF POWER . 
 
 of ideas is received by the intellect, and they excite the 
 best of the moral feelings, veneration, and the desire of 
 exertion. As a species, therefore, they are one of the 
 noblest connected with art ; but the differences in degree 
 of dignity among themselves are infinite, being corre- 
 spondent with every order of power, — from that of the 
 fingers to that of the most exalted intellect. Thus, when 
 we see an Indian’s paddle carved from the handle to the 
 blade, we have a conception of prolonged manual labor, 
 and are gratified in proportion to the supposed expendi- 
 ture of time and exertion. These are, indeed, powers of 
 a low order, yet the pleasure arising from the conception 
 of them enters very largely indeed into our admiration 
 of all elaborate ornament, architectural decoration, etc. 
 The delight with which we look on the fretted front of 
 Itouen Cathedral depends in no small degree on the sim- 
 ple perception of time employed and labor expended in its 
 production. But it is a right, that is, an ennobling pleas- 
 ure even in this its lowest phase ; and even the pleasure 
 felt by those persons who praise a drawing for its “finish,” 
 or its “ work,” which is one precisely of the same kind, 
 would be right, if it did not imply a want of perception 
 of the higher powers which render work unnecessary. If 
 to the evidence of labor be added that of strength or 
 dexterity, the sensation of power is yet increased ; if to 
 strength and dexterity be added that of ingenuity and 
 judgment, it is multiplied tenfold, and so on, through 
 all the subjects of action of body or mind, we receive 
 the more exalted pleasure from the more exalted power. 
 
 So far the nature and effects of ideas of 
 el 'fr(m a what C ever power cannot but be admitted by all. But 
 ject of power. The the circumstance which I wish especially 
 ex c ei- to insist upon, with respect to them, is one 
 which may not, perhaps, be so readily al- 
 lowed, namely, that they are independent of the nature 
 or worthiness of the object from which they are received, 
 
OF IDEAS OF POWER . 
 
 87 
 
 and that whatever has been the subject of a great power, 
 whether there be intrinsic and apparent worthiness in 
 itself or not, bears with it the evidence of having* been 
 so, and is capable of giving the ideas of power, and the 
 consequent pleasures, in their full degree. For observe, 
 that a thing is not properly said to have been the result 
 of a great power, on which only some part of that power 
 has been expended. A nut may be cracked by a steam 
 engine, but it has not, in being so, been the subject of 
 the power of the engine. And thus it is falsely said 
 of great men, that they waste their lofty powers on un- 
 worthy objects: the object may be dangerous or useless, 
 but, as far as the phrase has reference to difficulty of 
 performance, it cannot be unworthy of the power which 
 it brings into exertion, because nothing can become a 
 subject of action to a greater power which can be accom- 
 plished by a less, any more than bodily strength can be 
 exerted where there is nothing to resist it. 
 
 So then, men may let their great powers lie dormant, 
 while they employ their mean and petty powers on 
 mean and petty objects ; but it is physically impossible 
 to employ a great power, except on a great object. Con- 
 sequently, wherever power of any kind or degree has 
 been exerted, the marks and evidence of it are stamped 
 upon its results : it is impossible that it should be lost 
 or wasted, or without record, even in the “ estimation of 
 a hair : ” and therefore, whatever has been the subject of 
 a great power bears about with it the image of that 
 which created it, and is what is commonly called “ excel- 
 lent.” And this is the true meaning of the word excel- 
 lent, as distinguished from the terms “beautiful,” “use- 
 ful,” “ good,” etc. ; and we shall always, in future, use the 
 word excellent, as signifying that the thing to which it 
 is applied required a great power for its production.* 
 
 * Of course the word “excellent” is primarily a mere synonym 
 with “surpassing,” and when applied to persons, has the general 
 
88 
 
 OF IDEAS OF POWER . 
 
 The faculty of perceiving what powers are required 
 for the production of a thing, is the faculty of perceiving 
 § 4 . what is excellence. It is this faculty in which men, 
 dfs C tin S Shir^ even of the most cultivated taste, must al- 
 
 exceiience. ways be wanting, unless they have added 
 
 practice to reflection; because none can estimate the 
 power manifested in victory, unless they have personally 
 measured the strength to be overcome. Though, there- 
 fore, it is possible, by the cultivation of sensibility and 
 judgment, to become capable of distinguishing what is 
 beautiful, it is totally impossible, without practice and 
 knowledge, to distinguish or feel what is excellent. The 
 beauty or the truth of Titian’s flesh-tint may be appre- 
 ciated by all ; but it is only to the artist, whose multi- 
 plied hours of toil have not reached the slightest resem- 
 blance of one of its tones, that its excellence is manifest. 
 
 Wherever, then, difficulty has been overcome, there is 
 excellence : and therefore, in order to prove a work ex- 
 § 5. The pleasure cellent, w e have only to prove the difficulty 
 queSng D diffici5t£s hs production : whether it be useful or 
 is right. beautiful is another question; its excel- 
 
 lence depends on its difficulty alone. Nor is it a false or 
 diseased taste which looks for the overcoming of difficul- 
 ties, and has pleasure in it, even without any view to re- 
 sultant good. It has been made part of our moral nature 
 that we should have a pleasure in encountering and con- 
 
 meaning given by Johnson — “the state of abounding in any good 
 quality.” But when applied to things it has always reference to the 
 power by which they are produced. We talk of excellent music or 
 poetry, because it is difficult to compose or write such, but never of 
 excellent flowers, because all flowers being the result of the same 
 power, must be equally excellent. We distinguish them only as beau- 
 tiful or useful, and therefore, as there is no other one word to signify 
 that quality of a thing produced by which it pleases us merely as the 
 result of power, and as the term “ excellent” is more frequently used 
 in this sense than in any other, I choose to limit it at once to this sense, 
 and I wish it, when I use it in future, to be so understood. 
 
OF IDEAS OF POWER. 
 
 89 
 
 quering opposition, for the sake of the struggle and the 
 victory, not for the sake of any after result ; and not only 
 our own victory, but the perception of that of another, is 
 in all cases the source of pure and ennobling pleasure. 
 And if we often hear it said, and truly said, that an artist 
 has erred by seeking rather to show his skill in overcom- 
 ing technical difficulties, than to reach a great end, be it 
 ♦observed that he is only blamed because he has sought 
 to conquer an inferior difficulty rather than a great one ; 
 for it is much easier to overcome technical difficulties 
 than to reach a great end. "Whenever the visible vic- 
 tory over difficulties is found painful or in false taste, it 
 is owing to the preference of an inferior to a great diffi- 
 culty, or to the false estimate of what is difficult and 
 what is not. It is far more difficult to be simple than to 
 be complicated ; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and 
 cease exertion in the proper place, than to expend both 
 indiscriminately. We shall find, in the course of our in- 
 vestigation, that beauty and difficulty go together ; and 
 that they are only mean and paltry difficulties which it 
 is wrong or contemptible to wrestle with. Be it remem- 
 bered then — Power is never wasted. Whatever power 
 has been employed, produces excellence in proportion 
 to its own dignity and exertion ; and the faculty of per- 
 ceiving this exertion, and appreciating this dignity, is 
 the faculty of perceiving excellence. 
 
CHAPTER IY. 
 
 OF IDEAS OF IMITATION. 
 
 Fuseli, in his lectures, and many other persons of 
 equally just and accurate habits of thought, (among 
 § i. False use of others, S. T. Coleridge,) make a distinc- 
 Uon^y'many ^ on between imitation and copying, rep- 
 wnters of art. resenting the first as the legitimate func- 
 
 tion of art — the latter as its corruption ; but as such a 
 distinction is by no means warranted, or explained by 
 the common meaning of the words themselves, it is not 
 easy to comprehend exactly in what sense they are used 
 by those writers. And though, reasoning from the con- 
 text, I can understand what ideas those words stand for 
 in their minds, I cannot allow the terms to be properly 
 used as symbols of those ideas, which (especially in the 
 case of the word Imitation) are exceedingly complex, 
 and totally different from what most people would un- 
 derstand by the term. And by men of less accurate 
 thought, the word is used still more vaguely or falsely. 
 For instance, Burke (“ Treatise on the Sublime,” part i. 
 sect. 16) says, “When the object represented in poetry 
 or painting is such as we could have no desire of seeing* 
 in the reality, then we may be sure that its power in 
 poetry or painting is owing to the power of imitation” 
 In which case the real pleasure may be in what we have 
 been just speaking of, the dexterity of the artist’s hand ; 
 or it may be in a beautiful or singular arrangement of 
 colors, or a thoughtful chiaroscuro, or in the pure beauty 
 of certain forms which art forces on our notice, though 
 
OF IDEAS OF IMITATION. 
 
 91 
 
 we should not have observed them in the reality ; and I 
 conceive that none of these sources of pleasure are in 
 any way expressed or intimated by the term “imita- 
 tion.” 
 
 But there is one source of pleasure in works of art 
 totally different from all these, which I conceive to be 
 properly and accurately expressed by the word “ imita- 
 tion : ” one which, though constantly confused in reason- 
 ing, because it is always associated in fact, with other 
 means of pleasure, is totally separated from them in its 
 nature, and is the real basis of whatever complicated or 
 various meaning may be afterward attached to the word 
 in the minds of men. 
 
 I wish to point out this distinct source of pleasure 
 clearly at once, and only to use the word “ imitation ” in 
 reference to it. 
 
 Whenever anything looks like what it is not, the re- 
 semblance being so great as nearly to deceive, we feel a 
 kind of pleasurable surprise, an agreeable § 2 . Rea i meaning 
 excitement of mind, exactly the same in oftheterm - 
 its nature as that which we receive from juggling'. 
 Whenever we perceive this in something produced by 
 art, that is to say, whenever the work is seen to resemble 
 something which we know it is not, we receive what I 
 call an idea of imitation. Why such ideas are pleasing, 
 it would be out of our present purpose to inquire ; we 
 only know that there is no man who does not feel pleasure 
 in his animal nature from gentle surprise, and that such 
 surprise can be excited in no more distinct manner than 
 by the evidence that a thing is not what it appears to 
 be.* Now two things are requisite to our 
 
 I * -i , , . . § 3. What is req- 
 
 complete and more pleasurable perception mate to ae sense 
 of this: first, that the resemblance be so of inutati<ra - 
 perfect as to amount to a deception ; secondly, that there 
 
 * ov\\oyi&/ivs eTTry, on tovto e/ceivo . — Al’ist. Rliet. 1, 11, 23. 
 
92 
 
 OF IDEAS OF IMITATION. 
 
 be some means of proving at the same moment that it 
 is a deception. The most perfect ideas and pleasures of 
 imitation are, therefore, when one sense is contradicted 
 by another, both bearing as positive evidence on the 
 subject as each is capable of alone; as when the eye 
 says a thing is round, and the finger says it is flat ; they 
 are, therefore, never felt in so high a degree as in paint- 
 ing, where appearance of projection, roughness, hair, 
 velvet, etc., are given with a smooth surface, or in wax- 
 work, where the first evidence of the senses is perpetually 
 contradicted by their experience; but the moment we 
 come to marble, our definition checks us, for a marble 
 figure does not look like what it is not : it looks like 
 marble, and like the form of a man, but then it is marble, 
 and it is the form of a man. It does not look like a man, 
 which it is not, but like the form of a man, which it is. 
 Form is form, bona fide and actual, whether in marble or 
 in flesh — not an imitation or resemblance of form, but 
 real form. The chalk outline of the bough of a tree on 
 £japer, is not an imitation ; it looks like chalk and paper 
 — not like wood, and that which it suggests to the mind 
 is not properly said to be like the form of a bough, it is 
 the form of a bough. Now, then, we see the limits of an 
 idea of imitation ; it extends only to the sensation of 
 trickery and deception occasioned by a thing’s intention- 
 ally seeming different from what it is ; and the degree of 
 the pleasure depends on the degree of difference and the 
 perfection of the resemblance, not on the nature of the 
 thing resembled. The simple pleasure in the imitation 
 would be precisely of the same degree, (if the accuracy 
 could be equal,) whether the subject of it were the hero 
 or his horse. There are other collateral sources of pleas- 
 ure, which are necessarily associated with this, but that 
 part of the pleasure which depends on the imitation is 
 the same in both. 
 
 Ideas of imitation, then, act by producing the simple 
 
OF IDEAS OF IMITATION . 
 
 93 
 
 contemptible that 
 can be derived 
 from art. 
 
 pleasure of surprise, and that not of surprise in its high- 
 est sense and function, but of the mean and paltry sur- 
 prise which is felt in jugglery. These § 4. The pleasure 
 ideas and pleasures are the most contempt- So^tS^no^t 
 iGle which can be received from art ; first, 
 because it is necessary to their enjoyment 
 that the mind should reject the impression and address of 
 the thing represented, and fix itself only upon the reflec- 
 tion that it is not what it seems to be. All high or noble 
 emotion or thought are thus rendered physically impos- 
 sible, while the mind exults in what is very like a strictly 
 sensual pleasure. We may consider tears as a result of 
 agony or of art, whichever we please, but not of both at 
 the same moment. If we are surprised by them as an 
 attainment of the one, it is impossible we can be moved 
 by them as a sign of the other. 
 
 Ideas of imitation are contemptible in the second 
 place, because not only do they preclude the spectator 
 from enjoying inherent beauty in the sub- 
 
 . , -i 1 p. 6 -I -I J „ §5. Imitation is 
 
 iect, but tiiey can only be received from only of contempt- 
 J ’ T l i i • i. i • • ible subjects. 
 
 mean and paltry subjects, because it is im- 
 possible to imitate anything really great. We can 
 “ paint a cat or a fiddle, so that they look as if we could 
 take them up ; ” but we cannot imitate the ocean, or the 
 Alps. We can imitate fruit, but not a tree ; flowers, but 
 not a pasture ; cut-glass, but not the rainbow. All pict- 
 ures in which deceptive powers of imitation are dis- 
 played are therefore either of contemptible subjects, or 
 have the imitation shown in contemptible parts of them, 
 bits of dress, jewels, furniture, etc. 
 
 Thirdly, these ideas are contemptible, because no ideas 
 of power are associated with them ; to the ignorant, imi- 
 tation, indeed, seems difficult, and its suc- 
 
 . , . , , § 6. Imitation is 
 
 cess praiseworthy, but even they can oy contemptible be- 
 
 ., .. i ,•] cause it is easy. 
 
 no possibility see more m the artist than 
 
 they do in a juggler, who arrives at a strange end by 
 
94 
 
 OF IDEAS OF IMITATION. 
 
 means with which they are unacquainted. To the in- 
 structed, the juggler is by far the more respectable artist 
 of the two, for they know sleight of hand to be an art of 
 immensely more difficult acquirement, and to imply more 
 ingenuity in the artist than a power of deceptive imita- 
 tion in painting, which requires nothing more for its at- 
 tainment than a true eye, a steady hand, and moderate 
 industry — qualities which in no degree separate the imi- 
 tative artist from a watch-maker, pin-maker, or any other 
 neat-handed artificer. These remarks do not apply to 
 the art of the Diorama, or the stage, where the pleasure 
 is not dependent on the imitation, but is the same which 
 we should receive from nature herself, only far inferior in 
 degree. It is a noble pleasure ; but we shall see in the 
 course of our investigation, both that it is inferior to 
 that which we receive when there is no deception at all, 
 and why it is so. 
 
 "Whenever then in future, I speak of ideas of imita- 
 tion, I wish to be understood to mean the immediate and 
 § 7. Kecapituia- Present perception that something pro- 
 tlon - duced by art is not what it seems to be. 
 
 I prefer saying “ that it is not what it seems to be,” to 
 saying “ that it seems to be what it is not,” because we 
 perceive at once what it seems to be, and the idea of 
 imitation, and the consequent pleasure, result from the 
 subsequent perception of its being something else — flat, 
 for instance, when we thought it was round. 
 
CHAPTER Y. 
 
 OF IDEAS OF TKUTH. 
 
 The word truth, as applied to art, signifies the faith- 
 ful statement, either to the mind or senses, of any fact 
 of nature. e „ __ . 
 
 . . , § 1. Meaning of 
 
 We receive an idea of truth, then, when the word “truth” 
 
 » ! as applied to art. 
 
 we perceive the faithfulness of such a 
 statement. The difference between ideas of truth and 
 of imitation lies chiefly in the following points. 
 
 First, — Imitation can only be of something material, 
 but truth has reference to statements both of the quali 
 ties of material things, and of emotions, §2. First differ- 
 impressions, and thoughts. There is a truth 6 and* hStf 
 moral as well as material truth, — a truth of tl0n ‘ 
 impression as well as of form,— of thought as well as of 
 matter ; and the truth of impression and thought is a 
 thousand times the more important of the two. Hence, 
 truth is a term of universal application, but imitation is 
 limited, to that narrow field of art which takes cogni- 
 zance only of material things. 
 
 Secondly, — Truth may be stated by any signs or sym- 
 bols which have a definite signification in the minds of 
 those to whom they are addressed, al- § 3 ge cond aiffer- 
 though such signs be themselves no image ence - 
 nor likeness of anything. Whatever can excite in the 
 mind the conception of certain facts, can give ideas of 
 truth, though it be in no degree the imitation or resem- 
 blance of those facts. If there be — we do not say there 
 is — but if there be in painting anything which operates, 
 
96 
 
 OF IDEAS OF TRUTH . 
 
 as words do, not by resembling anything, but by being 
 taken as a symbol and substitute for it, and thus induc- 
 ing the effect of it, then this channel of communication 
 can convey uncorrupted truth, though it do not in any 
 degree resemble the facts whose conception it induces. 
 But ideas of imitation, of course, require the likeness of 
 the object. They speak to the perceptive faculties only : 
 truth to the conceptive. 
 
 Thirdly, — And in consequence of what is above stated, 
 an idea of truth exists in the statement of one attribute 
 § 4 . Third differ- of anything, but an idea of imitation re- 
 ence * quires the resemblance of as many attri- 
 
 butes as we are usually cognizant of in its real presence. 
 A pencil outline of the bough of a tree on white paper 
 is a statement of a certain number of facts of form. It 
 does not yet amount to the imitation of anything. The 
 idea of that form is not given in nature by lines at all, 
 still less by black lines with a white . space between 
 them. But those lines convey to the mind a distinct 
 impression of a certain number of facts, which it recog- 
 nizes as agreeable with its previous impressions of the 
 bough of a tree ; and it receives, therefore, an idea of 
 truth. If, instead of two lines, we give a dark form with 
 the brush, we convey information of a certain relation of 
 shade between the bough and sky, recognizable for an- 
 other idea of truth ; but we have still no imitation, for 
 the white paper is not the least like air, nor the black 
 shadow like wood. It is not until after a certain number 
 of ideas of truth have been collected together, that we 
 arrive at an idea of imitation. 
 
 Hence it might at first sight appear, that an idea of 
 imitation, inasmuch as several ideas of truth were united 
 in it, was nobler than a simple idea of 
 
 §5. No accurate . n „ .. n . 
 
 truth^necessary truth. And if it were necessary that the 
 ideas of truth should be perfect, or should 
 be subjects of contemplation as such , it would be so. 
 
OF IDEAS OF TRUTH. 
 
 97 
 
 But, observe, we require to produce the effect of imita- 
 tion only so many and such ideas of truth as the senses 
 are usually cognizant of. Now the senses are not usu- 
 ally, nor unless they be especially devoted to the ser- 
 vice, cognizant, with accuracy, of any truths but those of 
 space and projection. It requires long study and atten- 
 tion before they give certain evidence of even the sim- 
 plest truths of form. For instance, the quay on which 
 the figure is sitting, with his hand at his eyes, in 
 Claude’s seaport, No. 14, in the National Gallery, is 
 egregiously out of perspective. The eye of this artist, 
 with all his study, had thus not acquired the power of 
 taking cognizance of the apparent form even of a simple 
 parallelopiped. How much less of the complicated 
 forms of boughs, leaves, or limbs ? Although, therefore, 
 something resembling the real form is necessary to de- 
 ception, this something is not to be called a truth of 
 form ; for, strictly speaking, there are no degrees of 
 truth, there are only degrees of approach to it ; and an 
 approach to it, whose feebleness and imperfection would 
 instantly offend and give pain to a mind really capable 
 of distinguishing truth, is yet quite sufficient for all the 
 purposes of deceptive imagination. It is the same with 
 regard to color. If we were to paint a tree sky-blue, or 
 a dog rose-pink, the discernment of the public would be 
 keen enough to discover the falsehood ; but, so that there 
 be just so much approach to truth of color as may come 
 up to the common idea of it in men’s minds, that is to 
 say, if the trees be all bright green, and flesh unbroken 
 buffi, and ground unbroken brown, though all the real and 
 refined truths of color be wholly omitted, or rather defied 
 and contradicted, there is yet quite enough for all pur- 
 poses of imitation. The only facts then, which we are 
 usually and certainly cognizant of, are those of distance 
 and projection, and if these be tolerably given, with 
 something like truth of form and color to assist them, 
 7 
 
98 
 
 OF IDEAS OF TRUTH. 
 
 the idea of imitation is complete. I would undertake to 
 paint an arm, with every muscle out of its place, and 
 every bone of false form and dislocated articulation, and 
 yet to observe certain coarse and broad resemblances of 
 true outline, which, with careful shading-, would induce 
 deception, and draw down the praise and delight of the 
 discerning public. The other day at Bruges, while I was 
 endeavoring to set down in my note-book something of 
 the ineffable expression of the Madonna in the cathe- 
 dral, a French amateur came up to me, to inquire if I 
 had seen the modern French pictures in a neighboring 
 church. I had not, but felt little inclined to leave my 
 marble for all the canvas that ever suffered from French 
 brushes. My apathy was attacked with gradually in- 
 creasing energy of praise. Rubens never executed — 
 Titian never colored anything like them. I thought this 
 highly probable, and still sat quiet. The voice contin- 
 ued at my ear. “ Parbleu, Monsieur, Michel- Ange n’a 
 rien produit de plus beau ! ” “ De plus beau ? ” repeated 
 
 I, wishing to know what particular excellences of Mi- 
 chael Angelo were to be intimated by this expression. 
 “ Monsieur, on ne peut plus — c’est un tableau admi- 
 rable — inconcevable : Monsieur,” said the Frenchman, 
 lifting up his hands to heaven, as he concentrated in 
 one conclusive and overwhelming proposition the quali- 
 ties which were to outshine Rubens and overpower 
 Buonaroti — “ Monsieur, il sort ! ” 
 
 This gentleman could only perceive two truths — flesh 
 color and projection. These constituted his notion of 
 the perfection of painting ; because they unite all that 
 is necessary for deception. He was not therefore cog- 
 nizant of many ideas of truth, though perfectly cogni- 
 zant of ideas of imitation. 
 
 g e ideas of truth We see > i n the course of our investi- 
 
 with ideas^f taS- g^i 011 of ideas of truth, that ideas of imi- 
 tation - tation not only do not imply their pres- 
 
OF IDEAS OF TRUTH. 
 
 99 
 
 ence, but even are inconsistent with it ; and that pictures 
 which imitate so as to deceive, are never true. But this is 
 not the place for the proof of this ; at present we have 
 only to insist on the last and greatest distinction between 
 ideas of truth and of imitation — that the mind, in receiv- 
 ing one of the former, dwells upon its own conception of 
 the fact, or form, or feeling stated, and is occupied only 
 with the qualities and character of that fact or form, con- 
 sidering it as real and existing, being all the while totally 
 regardless of the signs or symbols by which the notion of 
 it has been conveyed. These signs have no pretence, nor 
 hypocrisy, nor legerdemain about them ; — there is noth- 
 ing to be found out, or sifted, or surprised in them ; — they 
 bear their message simply and clearly, and it is that 
 message which the mind takes from them and dwells 
 upon, regardless of the language in which it is delivered. 
 But the mind, in receiving an idea of imitation, is wholly 
 occupied in finding out that what has been suggested to 
 it is not what it appears to be : it does not dwell on the 
 suggestion, but on the perception that it is a false sug- 
 gestion : it derives its pleasure, not from the contempla- 
 tion of a truth, but from the discovery of a falsehood. 
 Bo that the moment ideas of truth are grouped together, 
 so as to give rise to an idea of imitation, they change 
 their very nature — lose their essence as ideas of truth — 
 and are corrupted and degraded, so as to share in the 
 treachery of what they have produced. Hence, finally, 
 ideas of truth are the foundation, and ideas of imitation 
 the destruction, of all art. We shall be better able to 
 appreciate their relative dignity after the investigation 
 which we propose of the functions of the former ; but 
 we may as well now express the conclusion to which we 
 shall then be led — that no picture can be good which 
 deceives by its imitation, for the very reason that noth- 
 ing can be beautiful which is not true. 
 
CHAPTER YI. 
 
 OF IDEAS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 Any material object which can give us pleasure in the 
 simple contemplation of its outward qualities without any 
 direct and definite exertion of the intellect, I call in some 
 _ . way, or in some degree, beautiful. Why 
 
 the term “ beau- we receive pleasure from some forms and 
 colors, and not from others, is no more to 
 be asked or answered than why we like sugar and dislike 
 wormwood. The utmost subtilty of investigation will 
 only lead us to ultimate instincts and principles of hu- 
 man nature, for which no farther reason can be given 
 than the simple will of the Deity that we should be so 
 created. We may, indeed, perceive, as far as we are ac- 
 quainted with His nature, that we have been so con- 
 structed as, when in a healthy and cultivated state of 
 mind, to derive pleasure from whatever things are illus- 
 trative of that nature ; but we do not receive pleasure 
 from them because they are illustrative of it, nor from 
 any perception that they are illustrative of it, but in- 
 stinctively and necessarily, as we derive sensual pleasure 
 from the scent of a rose. On these primary principles 
 of our nature, education and accident operate to an un- 
 limited extent ; they may be cultivated or checked, di- 
 rected or diverted, gifted by right guidance with the 
 most acute and faultless sense, or subjected by neglect 
 to every phase of error and disease. He who has fol- 
 lowed up these natural laws of aversion and desire, ren- 
 dering them more and more authoritative by constant 
 
OF IDEAS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 101 
 
 obedience, so as to derive pleasure always from that 
 which God originally intended should give him pleasure, 
 and who derives the greatest possible sum of pleasure 
 from any given object, is a man of taste. 
 
 This, then, is the real meaning of this disputed word. 
 Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest pos- 
 sible pleasure from those material sources § 2 DefiIlition of 
 which are attractive to our moral nature in theterm “taste.” 
 its purity and perfection. He who receives little pleas- 
 ure from these sources, wants taste ; he who receives 
 pleasure from any other sources, has false or bad 
 taste. 
 
 And it is thus that the term “ taste ” is to be distin- 
 guished from that of “ judgment,” with which it is con- 
 stantly confounded Judgment is a gen- _ ■ „ 
 
 eral term, expressing definite action ox the tetweenjaste and 
 intellect, and applicable to every kind of 
 subject which can be submitted to it. There may be 
 judgment of congruity, judgment of truth, judgment 
 of justice, and judgment of difficulty and excellence. 
 But all these exertions of the intellect are totally 
 distinct from taste, properly so called, which is the 
 instinctive and instant preferring of one material ob- 
 ject to another without any obvious reason, except 
 that it is proper to human nature in its perfection so 
 to do. 
 
 Observe, however, I do not mean by excluding direct 
 exertion of the intellect from ideas of beauty, to assert 
 that beauty has no effect upon nor connec- 4 
 tion with the intellect. All our moral beauty may be- 
 
 ,, , . . . . . come intellectual. 
 
 ieeimgs are so inwoven with our intellect- 
 ual powers, that we cannot affect the one without in 
 some degree addressing the other ; and in all high ideas 
 of beauty, it is more than probable that much of the 
 pleasure depends on delicate and untraceable percep- 
 tions of fitness, propriety, and relation, which are pure- 
 
102 
 
 OF IDEAS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 ly intellectual, and through which we arrive at our 
 noblest ideas of what is commonly and rightly called 
 “ intellectual beauty.” But there is yet no immediate 
 exertion of the intellect ; that is to say, if a person receiv- 
 ing even the noblest ideas of simple beauty be asked 
 why he likes the object exciting them, he will not be 
 able to give any distinct reason, nor to trace in his mind 
 any formed thought, to which he can appeal as a source 
 of pleasure. He will say that the thing gratifies, fills, 
 hallows, exalts his mind, but he will not be able to say 
 why, or how. If he can, and if he can show that he per- 
 ceives in the object any expression of distinct thought, 
 he has received more than an idea of beauty — it is an 
 idea of relation. 
 
 Ideas of beauty are among the noblest which can be 
 presented to the human mind, invariably exalting and 
 purifying it according to their degree; and it would 
 appear that we are intended by the Deity to be constant- 
 § 5 The high ^ under their influence, because there is 
 rank and function not one single object in nature which is 
 
 of ideas of beauty. , , ” . , 
 
 not capable of conveying them, and which, 
 to the rightly perceiving mind, does not present an in- 
 calculably greater number of beautiful than of deformed 
 parts; there being in fact scarcely anything, in pure, 
 undiseased nature, like positive deformity, but only 
 degrees of beauty, or such slight and rare points of per- 
 mitted contrast as may render all around them more 
 valuable by their opposition, spots of blackness in 
 creation, to make its colors felt. 
 
 But although everything in nature is more or less 
 beautiful, every species of object has its own kind and 
 degree of beauty ; some being in their own 
 the term ni -fdeai nature more beautiful than others, and few, 
 if any, individuals possessing the utmost 
 degree of beauty of which the species is capable. This 
 utmost degree of specific beauty, necessarily coexistent 
 
OF IDEAS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 103 
 
 with the utmost perfection of the object in other re- 
 spects, is the ideal of the object. 
 
 Ideas of beauty, then, be it remembered, are the sub- 
 jects of moral, but not of intellectual, perception. By 
 the investigation of them we shall be led to the knowh 
 edge of the ideal subjects of art. 
 
CHAPTER VEL 
 
 OF IDEAS OF RELATION. 
 
 I use this term rather as one of convenience than as 
 adequately expressive of the vast class of ideas which I 
 wish to be comprehended under it, namely, all those 
 §1. General mean- conveyable by art, which are the subjects 
 ing of the term. Q f distinct intellectual perception and ac- 
 tion, and which are therefore worthy of the name of 
 thoughts. But as every thought, or definite exertion of 
 intellect, implies two subjects, and some connection or 
 relation inferred between them, the term “ ideas of re- 
 lation ” is not incorrect, though it is inexpressive. 
 
 Under this head must be arranged everything pro- 
 ductive of expression, sentiment, and character, whether 
 „ „ TTTt . A in figures or landscapes, (for there may be 
 hend-d b undc?S re " as m ucn definite expression and marked 
 carrying out of particular thoughts in the 
 treatment of inanimate as of animate nature,) every- 
 thing relating to the conception of the subject and 
 to the congruity and relation of its parts ; not as they 
 enhance each other’s beauty by known and constant laws 
 of composition, but as they give each other expression 
 and meaning, by particular application, requiring dis- 
 tinct thought to discover or to enjoy: the choice, for 
 instance, of a particular lurid or appalling light, to 
 illustrate an incident in itself terrible, or of a particular 
 tone of pure color to prepare the mind for the expression 
 of refined and delicate feeling: and, in a still higher 
 sense, the invention of such incidents and thoughts as 
 
OF IDEAS OF RELATION. 
 
 105 
 
 can be expressed in words as well as on canvas, and are 
 totally independent of any means of art but such as may 
 serve for the bare suggestion of them. The principal 
 object in the foreground of Turner’s “ Building of Car- 
 thage ” is a group of children sailing toy -boats. The ex- 
 quisite choice of this incident, as expressive of the ruling 
 passion, which was to be the source of future greatness, 
 in* preference to the tumult of busy stone-masons or 
 arming soldiers, is quite as appreciable when it is told 
 as when it is seen, — it has nothing to do with the tech- 
 nicalities of painting ; a scratch of the pen would have 
 conveyed the idea and spoken to the intellect as much as 
 the elaborate realizations of color. Such a thought as 
 this is something far above all art ; it is epic poetry of 
 the highest order. Claude, in subjects of the same kind, 
 commonly introduces people carrying red trunks with 
 iron locks about, and dwells, with infantine delight, on 
 the lustre of the leather and the ornaments of the iron. 
 The intellect can have no occupation here ; we must look 
 to the imitation or to nothing. Consequently, Turner 
 rises above Claude in the very first instant of the concep- 
 tion of his picture, and acquires an intellectual superi- 
 ority which no powers of the draughtsman or the artist 
 (supposing that such existed in his antagonist) could 
 
 ever wrest from him. 
 
 Such are the function and force of ideas of relation. 
 They are what I have asserted in the second chapter of 
 this section to be the noblest subjects of 
 
 v 83 Ths exceed- 
 
 art. Dependent upon it only for expres- fag nobility of 
 
 1 1 x r theee ideas. 
 
 sion, they cause ail the rest 01 its compli- 
 cated sources of pleasure to take, in comparison with 
 them, the place of mere language or decoration ; nay, 
 even the noblest ideas of beauty sink at once beside 
 these into subordination and subjection. It would add 
 little to the influence of Landseer’s picture above in- 
 stanced, Chap. II., § 4 , that the form of the dog should 
 
106 
 
 OF IDEAS OF RELATION. 
 
 be conceived with every perfection of curve and color 
 which its nature was capable of, and that the ideal lines 
 should be carried out with the science of a Praxiteles ; 
 nay, the instant that the beauty so obtained interfered 
 with the impression of agony and desolation, and drew 
 the mind away from the feeling of the animal to its out- 
 ward form, that instant would the picture become mon- 
 strous and degraded. The utmost glory of the human 
 body is a mean subject of contemplation, compared to 
 the emotion, exertion and character of that which ani- 
 mates it ; the lustre of the limbs of the Aphrodite is 
 faint beside that of the brow of the Madonna ; and the 
 divine form of the Greek god, except as it is the incar- 
 nation and expression of divine mind, is degraded beside 
 the passion and the prophecy of the vaults of the Sistine. 
 
 Ideas of relation are, of course, with respect to art 
 generally, the most extensive as the most important 
 §4. why no eub- source of pleasure; and if we proposed 
 ^nsivTa^ciTss^s entering upon the criticism of historical 
 necessary. works, it would be absurd to attempt to do 
 
 so without further subdivision and arrangement. But the 
 old landscape painters got over so much canvas with- 
 out either exercise of, or appeal to, the intellect, that we 
 shall be little troubled with the subject as far as they are 
 concerned ; and whatever subdivision we may adopt, as it 
 will therefore have particular reference to the works of 
 modern artists, will be better understood when we have 
 obtained some knowledge of them in less important 
 points. 
 
 By the term “ ideas of relation,” then, I mean in future 
 to express all those sources of pleasure which involve 
 and require, at the instant of their perception, active 
 exertion of the intellectual powers. 
 
SECTION II. 
 
 OF POWER. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 GENERAL PRINCIPLES RESPECTING IDEAS OF POWER. 
 
 We have seen in tlie last section, what classes of ideas 
 may be conveyed by art, and we have been able so far to 
 appreciate their relative worth as to see, that from the 
 list, as it is to be applied to the purposes § L No necessity 
 of legitimate criticism, we may at once ■ S^deaTof h£- 
 throw out the ideas of imitation ; first, be- tiou - 
 cause, as we have shown, they are unworthy the pursuit 
 of the artist ; and secondly, because they are nothing 
 more than the result of a particular association of ideas 
 of truth. In examining the truth of art, therefore, we 
 shall be compelled to take notice of those particular 
 truths, whose association gives rise to the ideas of imi- 
 tation. We shall then see more clearly the meanness of 
 those truths, and we shall find ourselves able to use them 
 as tests of vice in art, saying of a picture, — “ It deceives, 
 therefore it must be bad.” 
 
 Ideas of power, in the same way, cannot be completely 
 viewed as a separate class ; not because they are mean 
 or unimportant, but because they are al- „ 
 
 . , t§2. Norforsepa- 
 
 most always associated with, or depend- rate ^tudy of ideas 
 
 ent upon, some of the higher ideas of ° power ' 
 
 truth, beauty, or relation, rendered with decision or 
 
 velocity. That power which delights us in the chalk 
 
108 
 
 GENERAL PRINCIPLES RESPECTING 
 
 sketch of a great painter is not one of the fingers, not 
 like that of the writing-master, mere dexterity of hand. 
 It is the accuracy and certainty of the knowledge, ren- 
 dered evident by its rapid and fearless expression, which 
 is the real source of pleasure; and so upon each diffi- 
 culty of art, whether it be to know, or to relate, or to 
 invent, the sensation of power is attendant, when we see 
 that difficulty totally and swiftly vanquished. Hence, 
 as we determine what is otherwise desirable in art, we 
 shall gradually develop the sources of the ideas of 
 power; and if there be anything difficult which is not 
 otherwise desirable, it must be afterward considered 
 separately. 
 
 But it will be necessary at present to notice a particu- 
 lar form of the ideas of power, which is partially inde- 
 pendent of knowledge of truth, or diffi- 
 
 §3. Exceptunder ^ 
 
 one particular culty, and which is apt to corrupt the 
 judgment of the critic, and debase the 
 work of the artist. It is evident that the conception 
 of power which we receive from a calculation of unseen 
 difficulty, and an estimate of unseen strength, can never 
 be so impressive as that which we receive from the 
 present sensation or sight of the one resisting, and the 
 other overwhelming. In the one case the power is imag- 
 ined, and in the other felt. 
 
 There are thus two modes in which we receive the con- 
 ception of pow T er ; one, the most just, when by a perfect 
 knowledge of the difficulty to be overcome, 
 
 § 4 There ore two ^ ^ 
 
 modes of receiv- and the means employed, we form a right 
 commonly incon- estimate of the faculties exerted ; the 
 other, when without possessing such inti- 
 mate and accurate knowledge, we are impressed by a 
 sensation of power in visible action. If these two modes 
 of receiving the impression agree in the result, and if 
 the sensation be equal to the estimate, we receive the 
 utmost possible idea of power. But this is the case 
 
IDEAS OF POWER. 
 
 109 
 
 perhaps with the works of only one man out of the whole 
 circle of the fathers of art, of him to whom we have just 
 referred, Michael Angelo. In others, the estimate and 
 the sensation are constantly unequal, and often contra- 
 dictory. 
 
 The first reason of this inconsistency is, that in order 
 to receive a sensation of power, we must see it in opera- 
 tion. Its victory, therefore, must not be g g reason 
 achieved, but achieving, and therefore of' the mconsis- 
 imperfect. Thus we receive a greater 
 sensation of power from the half-hewn limbs of the Twi- 
 light to the Day of the Cappella de’ Medici, than even 
 from the divine inebriety of the Bacchus in the gallery 
 — greater from the life dashed out along the Friezes of 
 the Parthenon, than from the polished limbs of the 
 Apollo, — greater from the ink sketch of the head of Baf- 
 faele’s St. Catherine, than from the perfection of its real- 
 ization. 
 
 Another reason of the inconsistency is, that the sensa- 
 tion of power is in proportion to the apparent inade- 
 quacy of the means to the end ; so that the 
 
 , . „ . . , § 6. Second reason 
 
 impression is much greater irom a partial for the inconsis- 
 success attained with slight effort, than teucy ' 
 from perfect success attained with greater proportional 
 effort. Now, in all art, every touch or effort does indi- 
 vidually less in proportion as the work approaches per- 
 fection. The first five chalk touches bring a head into 
 existence out of nothing. No five touches in the whole 
 course of the work will ever do so much as these, and 
 the difference made by each touch is more and more 
 imperceptible as the work approaches completion. Con- 
 sequently, the ratio between the means employed and 
 the effect produced is constantly decreasing, and there- 
 fore the least sensation of power is received from the 
 most perfect work. 
 
 It is thus evident that there are sensations of power 
 
110 
 
 GENERAL PRINCIPLES RESPECTING 
 
 about imperfect art, so that it be right art as far as it 
 goes, which must always be wanting in its perfection ; 
 §t. The sensation an( ^ that there are sources of pleasure in 
 Sot tcTbe soufht the hasty sketch and rough hewn block, 
 in imperfect art. which are partially wanting in the tinted 
 canvas and the polished marble. But it is nevertheless 
 wrong to prefer the sensation of power to the intellect- 
 ual perception of it. There is in reality greater power 
 in the completion than in the commencement ; and 
 though it be not so manifest to the senses, it ought to 
 have higher influence on the mind; and therefore in 
 praising pictures for the ideas of power they convey, we 
 must not look to the keenest sensation, but to the high- 
 est estimate, accompanied with as much of the sensation 
 as is compatible with it; and thus we shall consider 
 those pictures as conveying the highest ideas of power 
 which attain the most perfect end with the slightest pos- 
 sible means ; not, observe, those in which, though much 
 has been done with little, all has not been done, but 
 from the picture, in which all has been done, and yet not 
 a touch thrown away. The quantity of work in the 
 sketch is necessarily less in proportion to the effect 
 obtained than in the picture; but yet the picture 
 involves the greater power, if out of all the additional 
 labor bestowed on it, not a touch has been lost. 
 
 For instance, there are few drawings of the present 
 day that involve greater sensations of power than those 
 
 § s instances in ^ re derick Tayler. Every dash tells, and 
 pictures of mod- the quantity of effect obtained is enor- 
 
 ern artists. . . . . . , . 
 
 mous, m proportion to the apparent 
 means. But the effect obtained is not complete. Brill- 
 iant, beautiful, and right, as a sketch, the work is still 
 far from perfection, as a drawing. On the contrary, 
 there are few drawings of the present day that bear evi- 
 dence of more labor bestowed, or more complicated 
 means employed, than those of J ohn Lewis. The result 
 
IDEAS OF POWER . 
 
 Ill 
 
 does not, at first, so much convey an impression of inher- 
 ent power as of prolonged exertion; but the result is 
 complete. Water-color drawing can be carried no far- 
 ther; nothing has been left unfinished or untold. And 
 on examination of the means employed, it is found and 
 felt that not one touch out of the thousands employed 
 has been thrown away ; — that not one dot nor dash could 
 be spared without loss of effect ; — and that the exertion 
 lias been as swift as it has been prolonged — as bold as it 
 has been persevering. The power involved in such a 
 picture is of the highest order, and the enduring pleas- 
 ure following on the estimate of it pure. 
 
 But there is still farther ground for caution in pursu- 
 ing the sensation of powder, connected with the particu- 
 lar characters and modes of execution. § 9> connection 
 This we shall be better able to understand po^and d modes 
 by briefly reviewing the various excel- of executi °n- 
 fences which may belong to execution, and give pleas- 
 ure in it ; though the full determination of what is desir- 
 able in it, and the critical examination of the execution 
 of different artists, must be deferred, as will be immedi- 
 ately seen, until we are more fully acquainted with the • 
 principles of truth. 
 
CHAPTEE II. 
 
 OF IDEAS OF POWER, AS THEY ARE DEPENDENT UPON 
 EXECUTION. 
 
 By the term “execution,” I understand the right 
 „ . „ mechanical use of the means of art to pro- 
 
 8 1. Meaning of . 
 
 the term “execu- duce a given end. 
 
 All qualities of execution, properly so 
 
 called, are influenced by, and in a great degree dependent 
 
 on, a far higher power than that of mere execution, — 
 
 knowledge of truth. For exactly in proportion as an 
 
 artist is certain of his end, will he be swift 
 
 §2. The first . _ . _ . 
 
 quality of execu- and simple in his means; and, as he is 
 
 tion is truth. . . . . , . , . , * 1*1 
 
 accurate and deep m his knowledge, will 
 he be refined and precise in his touch. The first merit 
 of manipulation, then, is that delicate and ceaseless 
 expression of refined truth which is carried out to the 
 last touch, and shadow of a touch, and which makes 
 every hairsbreadth of importance, and every gradation 
 full of meaning. It is not, properly speaking, execution ; 
 but it is the only source of difference between the execu- 
 tion of a commonplace and of a perfect artist. The low- 
 est draughtsman, if he have spent the same time in 
 handling the brush, may be equal to the highest in the 
 other qualities of execution (in swiftness, simplicity, and 
 decision;) but not in truth. It is in the perfection 
 and precision of the instantaneous line that the claim to 
 immortality is laid. And if this truth of truths be pres- 
 ent, all the other qualities of execution may well be 
 spared; and to those artists who wish to excuse their 
 
OF IDEAS OF POWER. 
 
 113 
 
 ignorance and inaccuracy by a species of execution 
 which is a perpetual proclamation, “qu’ils n’ont de- 
 meure qu’un quart d’heure a le faire,” we may reply 
 with the truthful Alceste, “ Monsieur, le temps ne fait 
 rien a l’affaire.” 
 
 The second quality of execution is simplicity. The 
 more unpretending, quiet, and retiring the means, the 
 more impressive their effect. Any osten- §3 The gecond> 
 tation, brilliancy, or pretension of touch, 8im P licit y- 
 — any exhibition of power or quickness, merely as such, 
 above all, any attempt to render lines attractive at the 
 expense of their meaning, is vice. 
 
 The third is mystery. Nature is always mysterious 
 and secret in the use of her means ; and art is always 
 
 likest her when it is most inexplicable. §4 The thirdf 
 
 That execution which is the most incom- myBter y- 
 prehensible, and which therefore defies imitation, (other 
 qualities being supposed alike,) is the best. 
 
 The fourth is inadequacy. The less sufficient the 
 means appear to the end, the greater (as has been 
 already noticed) will be the sensation of 
 
 J §6. The fourth, 
 
 power. inadequacy ; and 
 
 mi np.i ‘ 1 • • ,1 the fifth, decision. 
 
 The filth is decision: the appearance, 
 
 that is, that whatever is done, has been done fear- 
 lessly and at once ; because this gives us the impres- 
 sion that both the fact to be represented, and the 
 means necessary to its representation, were perfectly 
 known. 
 
 The sixth is velocity. Not only is velocity, or the 
 appearance of it, agreeable as decision is, because it 
 gives ideas of power and knowledge; but §6# The gixtht 
 of two touches, as nearly as possible the velocit y* 
 same in other respects, the quickest will invariably be 
 the best. Truth being supposed equally present in the 
 shape and direction of both, there will be more even- 
 ness, grace and variety in the quick one than in the 
 8 
 
114: 
 
 OF IDEAS OF POWER , 
 
 slow one. It will be more agreeable to the eye as a 
 touch or line, and will possess more of the qualities of 
 the lines of nature — gradation, uncertainty, and unity. 
 
 These six qualities are the only perfectly legitimate 
 sources of pleasure in execution ; but I might have added 
 § 7. strangeness a seventh — strangeness, which in many 
 sJmrceof piSsure cases is productive of a pleasure not alto- 
 m execution. gether mean or degrading, though scarce- 
 ly right. Supposing the other higher qualities first 
 secured, it adds in no small degree to our impression of 
 the artist’s knowledge, if the means used be such as we 
 should never have thought of, or should have thought 
 adapted to a contrary effect. Let us, for instance, com- 
 pare the execution of the bull’s head in the left-hand 
 lowest corner of the Adoration of the Magi, in the 
 Museum at Antwerp, with that in Berghem’s landscape, 
 No. 132, in the Dulwich gallery. Rubens first scratches 
 horizontally over his canvas a thin grayish brown, trans- 
 parent and even, very much the color of light wainscot ; 
 the horizontal strokes of the bristles being left so evi- 
 dent, that the whole might be taken for an imitation of 
 wood, were it not for its transparency. On this ground 
 the eye, nostril, and outline of the cheek are given with 
 two or three rude, brown touches (about three or four 
 minutes’ work in all), though the head is colossal. The 
 background is then laid in with thick, solid, warm white, 
 actually projecting all round the head, leaving it; in dark 
 intaglio. Finally, five thin and scratchy strokes of very 
 cold bluish white are struck for the high light on the 
 forehead and the nose, and the head is complete. Seen 
 within a yard of the canvas, it looks actually transpar- 
 ent — a flimsy, meaningless, distant shadow; while the 
 background looks solid, projecting, and near. From the 
 right distance, (ten or twelve yards off, whence alone the 
 whole of the picture can be seen,) it is a complete, rich, 
 substantial, and living realization of the projecting head 
 
AS DEPENDENT ON EXECUTION. 
 
 115 
 
 of the animal; while the background falls far behind. 
 Now, there is no slight nor mean pleasure in perceiving 
 such a result attained by means so strange. By Berg- 
 hem, on the other hand, a dark background is first laid 
 in with exquisite delicacy and transparency, and on this 
 the cow’s head is actually modelled in luminous white, 
 the separate locks of hair projecting from the canvas. 
 No surprise, nor much pleasure of any kind, would be 
 attendant on this execution, even were the result equally 
 successful ; and what little pleasure w r e had in it van- 
 ishes, when on retiring from the picture, we find the 
 head shining like a distant lantern, instead of substan- 
 tial or near Yet strangeness is not to be considered as 
 a legitimate source of pleasure. That means which is 
 most conducive to the end, should always be the most 
 pleasurable; and that which is most conducive to the 
 end, can be strange only to the ignorance of the specta- 
 tor. This kind of pleasure is illegitimate, therefore, 
 because it implies and requires, in those who feel it, 
 ignorance of art. 
 
 The legitimate sources of pleasure in execution are 
 therefore truth, simplicity, mystery, inadequacy, deci- 
 sion, and velocity. But of these, be it ob- § 8. Yet even the 
 
 -i r. • i i • ■ i legitimate sources 
 
 served, some are so iar inconsistent with of pleasure in exe- 
 
 ii ii , ,1 , -i *i i • i - i cution are incon- 
 
 others, that they cannot be united m high sistent with each 
 degrees. Mystery with inadequacy, for otn8r ‘ 
 instance ; since to see that the means are inadequate, we 
 must see what they are. Now, the first three are the 
 great qualities of execution, and the last three are the 
 attractive ones, because on them are chiefly attendant 
 the ideas of power. By the first three the attention is 
 withdrawn from the means and fixed on the result : by 
 the last three, withdrawn from the result and fixed on 
 the means. To see that execution is swift or that it is 
 decided, we must look away from its creation to observe 
 it in the act of creating ; we must think more of the pal- 
 
116 
 
 OF IDEAS OF POWER , 
 
 let than of the picture, but simplicity and mystery com- 
 pel the mind to leave the means and fix itself on the 
 § 9. And fondness conception. Hence the danger of too 
 leadf to\he adop- great fondness for those sensations of 
 tion of the lowest. p 0we r which are associated with the three 
 
 last qualities of execution ; for although it is most de- 
 sirable that these should be present as far as they are 
 consistent with the others, and though their visible 
 absence is always painful and wrong, yet the moment 
 the higher qualities are sacrificed to them in the least 
 degree, we have a brilliant vice. Berghem and Salvator 
 Bosa are good instances of vicious execution dependent 
 on too great fondness for sensations of power, vicious 
 because intrusive and attractive in itself, instead of 
 being subordinate to its results and forgotten in them. 
 There is perhaps no greater stumbling-block in the 
 artist’s way, than the tendency to sacrifice truth and 
 simplicity to decision and velocity,* captivating quali- 
 ties, easy of attainment, and sure to attract attention and 
 praise, while the delicate degree of truth which is at 
 first sacrificed to them is so totally unappreciable by the 
 majority of spectators, so difficult of attainment to the 
 artist, that it is no wonder that efforts so arduous and 
 
 * I have here noticed only noble vices, the sacrifices of one excel- 
 lence to another legitimate but inferior one. There are, on the other 
 hand, qualities of execution which are often sought for and praised, 
 though scarcely by the class of persons for whom I am writing, in 
 which everything is sacrificed to illegitimate and contemptible sources 
 of pleasure, and these are vice throughout, and have no redeeming 
 quality nor excusing aim. Such is that which is often thought so de- 
 sirable in the Drawing-master, under the title of boldness, meaning 
 that no touch is ever to be made less than the tenth of an inch broad ; 
 such, on the other hand, the softness and smoothness which are the 
 great attraction of Carlo Dolci, and such the exhibition of particular 
 powers and tricks of the hand and fingers, in total forgetfulness of 
 any end whatsoever to be attained thereby, which is especially char- 
 acteristic of modern engraving. Compare Sect. II. Chap. II. § 31. 
 Note. 
 
AS DEPENDENT ON EXECUTION 117 
 
 unrewarded should be abandoned. But if the tempta- 
 tion be once yielded to, its consequences are fatal ; there 
 is no pause in the fall. I could name a § 10 Therefore 
 celebrated modern artist — once a man of perilous - 
 the highest power and promise, who is a glaring in- 
 stance of the peril of such a course. Misled by the un- 
 due popularity of his swift execution, he has sacrificed 
 to it, first precision, and then truth, and her associate, 
 beauty. What was first neglect of nature, has become 
 contradiction of her; what was once imperfection, is 
 now falsehood ; and all that was meritorious in his man- 
 ner is becoming the worst, because the most attractive, 
 of vices ; decision without a foundation, and swiftness 
 without an end. 
 
 Such are the principal modes in which the ideas of 
 power may become a dangerous attraction to the artist 
 — a false test to the critic. But in all §1L Recapituia- 
 cases where they lead us astray it will be tion - 
 found that the error is caused by our preferring victory 
 over a small apparent difficulty to victory over a great, 
 but concealed, one ; and so that we keep this distinction 
 constantly in view, (whether with reference to execution 
 or to any other quality of art,) between the sensation 
 and the intellectual estimate of power, we shall always 
 find the ideas of power a just and high source of pleas- 
 ure in every kind and grade of art. 
 
CHAPTER HI. 
 
 OF THE SUBLIME. 
 
 It may perhaps be wondered that in the division we 
 have made of our subject, we have taken no notice of the 
 sublime in art, and that in our explanation of that divi- 
 sion we have not once used the word. 
 
 The fact is, that sublimity is not a specific term, — not 
 a term descriptive of the effect of a particular class of 
 § 1. sublimity is ideas. Anything* which elevates the mind 
 the mfnd of an^ sublime, and elevation of mind is pro- 
 filing above it. duced by the contemplation of greatness 
 of any kind ; but chiefly, of course, by the greatness of 
 the noblest things. Sublimity is, therefore, only an- 
 other word for the effect of greatness upon the feelings. 
 Greatness of matter, space, power, virtue, or beauty, are 
 thus all sublime; and there is perhaps no desirable 
 quality of a work of art, which in its perfection is not, 
 in some way or degree, sublime. 
 
 I am fully prepared to allow of much ingenuity in 
 Burke’s theory of the sublime, as connected with self- 
 82. Burke’s theory preservation. There are few things so 
 the lubiimeTncor- great as death; and there is perhaps 
 rect, and why. nothing which banishes all littleness of 
 thought and feeling in an equal degree with its con- 
 templation. Everything, therefore, which in any way 
 points to it, and, therefore, most dangers and powers 
 over which we have little control, are in some degree 
 sublime. But it is not the fear, observe, but the con- 
 templation of death ; not the instinctive shudder and 
 
OF THE SUBLIME. 
 
 119 
 
 struggle of self-preservation, but the deliberate meas- 
 urement of the doom, which are really great or sublime 
 in feeling. It is not while we shrink, but while we defy, 
 that we receive or convey the highest conceptions of the 
 fate. There is no sublimity in the agony of terror. 
 Whether do we trace it most in the cry to the moun- 
 tains, “ fall on us,” and to the hills, “ cover us,” or in the 
 calmness of the prophecy — “ And though after my skin 
 worms destroy this body, 3 ^et in my flesh I shall see 
 God ? ” A little reflection will easily con- o „ _ . . 
 
 vince any one, that so far from the feel- lime, but not the 
 
 pip . . fear of it. 
 
 mgs of self-preservation being necessary 
 to the sublime, their greatest action is totally destruc- 
 tive of it ; and that there are few feelings less capable of 
 its perception than those of a coward. But the simple 
 conception or idea of greatness of suffering or extent of 
 destruction is sublime, whether there be any connection 
 of that idea with ourselves or not. If we were placed 
 beyond the reach of all peril or pain, the perception of 
 these agencies in their influence on others would not be 
 less sublime, not because peril or pain are sublime in 
 their own nature, but because their contemplation, ex- 
 citing compassion or fortitude, elevates the mind, and 
 renders meanness of thought impossible. §4 The M hegt 
 Beauty is not so often felt to be sublime ; beauty is sublime, 
 because, in many kinds of purely material beauty there 
 is some truth in Burke’s assertion, that “ littleness ” is 
 one of its elements. But he who has not felt that there 
 may be beauty without littleness, and that such beauty 
 is a source of the sublime, is yet ignorant of the meaning 
 of the ideal in art. I do not mean, in 
 
 § 5. And generally 
 
 tracing the source of the sublime to great- wh ateve r elevates 
 ness, to hamper myself with any fine-spun 
 theory. I take the widest possible ground of investiga- 
 tion, that sublimity is found wherever anything elevates 
 the mind ; that is, wherever it contemplates anything 
 
120 
 
 OF THE SUBLIME. 
 
 above itself, and perceives it to be so. This is the sim- 
 ple philological signification of the word derived from 
 sublimis ; and will serve us much more easily, and be a 
 far clearer and more evident ground of argument, than 
 any mere metaphysical or more limited definition, while 
 the proof of its justness will be naturally developed by 
 its application to the different branches of art. 
 
 As, therefore, the sublime is not distinct from what is 
 beautiful, nor from other sources of pleasure in art, but 
 § 6. The former is only a particular mode and manifesta- 
 OTbjeS 1 is f there- tion of them, my subject will divide itself 
 into the investigation of ideas of truth, 
 beauty, and relation ; and to each of these classes of 
 ideas I destine a separate part of the work. The inves- 
 tigation of ideas of truth will enable us to determine 
 the relative rank of artists as followers and historians of 
 nature. 
 
 That of ideas of beauty will lead us to compare them 
 in their attainment, first of what is agreeable in techni- 
 cal matters, then in color and composition, finally and 
 chiefly, in the purity of their conceptions of the ideal. 
 
 And that of ideas of relation will lead us to compare 
 them as originators of just thought. 
 
PART II. 
 
 OF TRUTH. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 GENERAL PRINCIPLES RESPECTING IDEAS OF TRUTH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OF IDEAS OF TRUTH IN THEIR CONNECTION WITH THOSE OF 
 BEAUTY AND RELATION. 
 
 It cannot but be evident, from the above division of 
 the ideas conveyable by art, that the landscape painter 
 must always have two great and distinct ends ; the first, 
 to induce in the spectator’s mind the faith- 
 
 ^ . § 1. The two great 
 
 ful conception of any natural objects what- ends of landscape 
 A ° _ painting are the 
 
 soever ; the second, to guide the spectator’s representation of 
 
 _ . ° , , , , ., facts and thoughts. 
 
 mind to those objects most worthy ot its 
 contemplation, and to inform him of the thoughts and 
 feelings with which these were regarded by the artist 
 himself. 
 
 In attaining the first end, the painter only places the 
 spectator where he stands himself ; he sets him before 
 the landscape and leaves him. The spectator is alone. 
 He may follow out his own thoughts as he would in the 
 natural solitude, or he may remain untouched, unreflect- 
 ing and regardless, as his disposition may incline him. 
 
122 
 
 OF IDEAS OF TRUTH. 
 
 But he has nothing of thought given to him, no new 
 ideas, no unknown feelings, forced on his attention or 
 his heart. The artist is his conveyance, not his compan- 
 ion, — his horse, not his friend. But in attaining the 
 second end, the artist not only places the spectator, but 
 talks to him : makes him a sharer in his own strong feel- 
 ings and quick thoughts ; hurries him away in his own 
 enthusiasm ; guides him to ail that is beautiful ; snatches 
 him from ail that is base, and leaves him more than de- 
 lighted, — ennobled and instructed, under the sense of 
 having not only beheld a new scene, but of having held 
 communion with a new mind, and having been endowed 
 for a time with the keen perception and the impetuous 
 emotion of a nobler and more penetrating intelligence. 
 
 Each of these different aims of art will necessitate a 
 different system of choice of objects to be represented. 
 § 2. They induce The first does not indeed imply choice at 
 all, but it is usually united with the selec- 
 tion of such objects as may be naturally 
 and constantly pleasing to all men, at all times ; and this 
 selection, when perfect and careful, leads to the attain- 
 ment of the pure ideal. But the artist aiming at the 
 second end, selects his objects for their meaning and 
 character, rather than for their beauty ; and uses them 
 rather to throw light upon the particular thought he 
 wishes to convey, than as in themselves objects of uncon- 
 nected admiration. 
 
 Now, although the first mode of selection, when guided 
 by deep reflection, may rise to the production of works 
 § 3 . The first mode possessing a noble and ceaseless influence 
 produce l sameuess on the human mind, it is likely to degen er- 
 and repetition. a -fc e into, or rather, in nine cases out of ten, 
 
 it never goes beyond, a mere appeal to such parts of our 
 animal nature as are constant and common — shared by 
 all, and perpetual in all ; such, for instance, as the 
 pleasure of the eye in the opposition of a cold and warm 
 
 a different choice 
 of material sub 
 jects. 
 
OF IDEAS OF TRUTH. 
 
 123 
 
 color, or of a massy form with a delicate one. It also 
 tends to induce constant repetition of the same ideas, 
 and reference to the same principles; it gives rise to 
 those rules of art which properly excited Reynolds’s in- 
 dignation when applied to its higher efforts ; it is the 
 source of, and the apology for, that host of technicalities 
 and absurdities which in all ages have been the curse of 
 art and the crown of the connoisseur. 
 
 But art, in its second and highest aim, is not an appeal 
 to constant animal feelings, but an expression and 
 awakening of individual thought : it is § 4 The ^ cor}(Ji 
 therefore as various and as extended in its necessitating va- 
 efforts as the compass and grasp of the 
 directing mind ; and we feel, in each of its results, that 
 we are looking, not at a specimen of a tradesman’s wares, 
 of which he is ready to make us a dozen to match, but at 
 one coruscation of a perpetually active mind, like which 
 there has not been, and will not be, another. 
 
 Hence, although there can be no doubt which of these 
 branches of art is the highest, it is equally evident that 
 the first will be the most generally felt and § 5m yet the first 
 appreciated. For the simple statement of is ^ eligkful to ail. 
 the truths of nature must in itself be pleasing to every 
 order of mind ; because every truth of nature is more or 
 less beautiful ; and if there be just and right selection 
 of the more important of these truths — based, as above 
 explained, on feelings and desires common to all man- 
 kind — the facts so selected must, in some degree, be de- 
 lightful to all, and their value appreciable by all : more 
 or less, indeed, as their senses and instinct have been 
 rendered more or less acute and accurate by use and 
 study ; but in some degree by all, and in the same way 
 by all. But the highest art, being based § 6t The Becond 
 on sensations of peculiar minds, sensations only t0 a few * 
 occurring to them only at particular times, and to a plu- 
 rality of mankind perhaps never, and being expressive 
 
124 
 
 OF IDEAS OF TRUTH. 
 
 of thoughts which could only rise out of a mass of the 
 most extended knowledge, and of dispositions modified 
 in a thousand ways by peculiarity of intellect — can only 
 be met and understood by persons having some sort of 
 sympathy with the high and solitary minds which pro- 
 duced it — sympathy only to be felt by minds in some 
 degree high and solitary themselves. He alone can ap- 
 preciate the art, who could comprehend the conversation 
 of the painter, and share in his emotion, in moments of 
 his most fiery passion and most original thought. And 
 whereas the true meaning and end of his art must thus 
 be sealed to thousands, or misunderstood by them ; so 
 also, as he is sometimes obliged, in working out his own 
 peculiar end, to set at defiance those constant laws which 
 have arisen out of our lower and changeless desires, that 
 whose purpose is unseen, is frequently in its means and 
 parts displeasing. 
 
 But this want of extended influence in high art, be it 
 especially observed, proceeds from no want of truth in 
 the art itself, but from a want of sympathy in the specta- 
 tor with those feelings in the artist which prompt him to 
 the utterance of one truth rather than of 
 another. For (and this is what I wish at 
 present especially to insist upon) although 
 it is possible to reach what I have stated to be the first 
 end of art, the representation of facts, without reaching 
 the second, the representation of thoughts, yet it is al- 
 together impossible to reach the second without having 
 previously reached the first. I do not say that a man 
 cannot think, having false basis and material for thought ; 
 but that a false thought is worse than the want of 
 thought, and therefore is not art. And this is the rea- 
 son why, though I consider the second as the real and 
 only important end of all art, I call the representation 
 of facts the first end ; because it is necessary to the 
 other, and must be attained before it. It is the founda- 
 
 § 7. The first 
 necessary to the 
 second. 
 
OF IDEAS OF TRUTH. 
 
 125 
 
 tion of all art; like real foundations it may be little 
 thought of when a brilliant fabric is raised on it ; but it 
 must be there : and as few buildings are beautiful un- 
 less every line and column of their mass have reference 
 to their foundation, and are suggestive of its existence 
 and strength, so nothing can be beautiful in art which 
 does not in all its parts suggest and guide to the foun- 
 dation, even where no undecorated portion of it is visi- 
 ble ; while the noblest edifices of art are built of such 
 pure and fine crystal that the foundation may all be seen 
 through them ; and then many, while they do not see 
 what is built upon that first story, yet much admire the 
 solidity of its brickwork ; thinking they understand all 
 that is to be understood of the matter; while others 
 stand beside them, looking not at the low story, but 
 up into the heaven at that building of crystal in which 
 the builder’s spirit is dwelling. And thus, though we 
 want the thoughts and feelings of the artist as well as 
 the truth, yet they must be thoughts arising out of the 
 knowledge of truth, and feelings raising out of the con- 
 templation of truth. We do not want his mind to be as 
 badly blown glass, that distorts what we see through it ; 
 but like a glass of sweet and strange color, that gives 
 new tones to what we see through it ; and a glass of rare 
 strength and clearness too, to let us see more than we 
 could ourselves, and bring nature up to us and near to 
 us. Nothing can atone for the want of truth, not the 
 most brilliant imagination, the most playful fancy, the 
 most pure feeling, (supposing that feeling could be pure 
 and false at the same time ;) not the most § g Tbe exceed 
 exalted conception, nor the most compre- ^ i. ut ^ mportance 
 hensive grasp of intellect, can make amends 
 for the want of truth, and that for two reasons : first, be- 
 cause falsehood is in itself revolting and degrading; 
 and secondly, because nature is so immeasurably supe- 
 rior to all that the human mind can conceive, that every 
 
126 
 
 OF IDEAS OF TRUTH. 
 
 departure from her is a fall beneath her, so that there 
 can be no such thing 1 as an ornamental falsehood. All 
 falsehood must be a blot as well as a sin, an injury as 
 well as a deception. 
 
 We shall, in consequence, find that no artist can be 
 graceful, imaginative, or original, unless he be truth - 
 „ n _ , , ful ; and that the pursuit of beauty, in- 
 
 want of beauty no stead of leading us away from truth, in- 
 creases the desire for it and the necessity 
 of it tenfold ; so that those artists who are really great 
 in imaginative power, will be found to have based their 
 boldness of conception on a mass of knowledge far ex- 
 ceeding that possessed by those who pride themselves 
 on its accumulation without regarding its use. Coldness 
 and want of passion in a picture, are not signs of the 
 accuracy, but of the paucity, of its statements ; true vigor 
 and brilliancy are not signs of audacity, but of knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 Hence it follows that it is in the power of all, with 
 care and time, to form something like a just judgment 
 § 10 How truth the re l a fi Ye merits of artists ; for, al- 
 ered a just < crfteri- tll0ll g‘ l1 with respect to the feeling and 
 on of ail art. passion of pictures, it is often as impossi- 
 ble to criticise as to appreciate, except to such as are 
 in some degree equal in powers of mind, and in some 
 respects the same in modes of mind, with those whose 
 works they judge ; yet, with respect to the representa- 
 tion of facts, it is possible for all, by attention, to form 
 a right judgment of the respective powers and attain- 
 ments of every artist. Truth is a bar of comparison at 
 which they may all be examined, and according to the 
 rank they take in this examination, will almost invaria- 
 bly be that which, if capable of appreciating them in 
 every respect, we should be just in assigning them ; 
 so strict is the connection, so constant the relation 
 between the sum of knowledge and the extent of 
 
OF IDEAS OF TRUTH. 
 
 127 
 
 thought, between accuracy of perception and vividness 
 of idea. 
 
 I shall endeavor, therefore, in the present portion of 
 the work, to enter with care and impartiality into the 
 investigation of the claims of the schools of ancient and 
 modern landscape to faithfulness in representing nature. 
 I shall pay no regard whatsoever to what may be thought 
 beautiful, or sublime, or imaginative. I shall look only 
 for truth; bare, clear, downright statement of facts; 
 showing in each particular, as far as I am able, what the 
 truth of nature is, and then seeking for the plain ex- 
 pression of it, and for that alone. And I shall thus en- 
 deavor, totally regardless of fervor of imagination or 
 brilliancy of effect, or any other of their more capti- 
 vating qualities, to examine and to judge the works of 
 the great living painter, who is, I believe, imagined by 
 the majority of the public to paint more falsehood and 
 less fact than any other known master. We shall see 
 with what reason. 
 
CHAPTEK n. 
 
 THAT THE TRUTH OE NATURE IS NOT TO BE DISCERNED BY 
 THE UNEDUCATED SENSES. 
 
 It may be here inquired by the reader, with much 
 appearance of reason, why I think it necessary to devote 
 a separate portion of the work to the showing of what is 
 truthful in art. “ Cannot we,” say the public, “ see what 
 
 §1. The common natnre is with 0U1 ‘ OWn e y es > and ° ut 
 
 men \^th^respect ^ or ourselves what is like her?” It will 
 d°iscernLg 0 truth° f ^e as well to determine this question be- 
 fore we go farther, because if this were 
 possible, there would be little need of criticism or teach- 
 ing with respect to art. 
 
 Now, I have just said that it is possible for all men, by 
 care and attention, to form a just judgment of the fidel- 
 ity of artists to nature. To do this, no peculiar powers 
 of mind are required, no sympathy with particular feel- 
 ings, nothing which every man of ordinary intellect does 
 not in some degree possess, — powers, namely, of observa- 
 tion and intelligence, which by cultivation may be 
 brought to a high degree of perfection and acuteness. 
 But until this cultivation has been bestowed, and until 
 the instrument thereby perfected has been employed in 
 a consistent series of careful observation, it is as absurd 
 as it is audacious to pretend to form any judgment 
 whatsoever respecting the truth of art: and my first 
 business, before going a step farther, must be to combat 
 the nearly universal error of belief among the thought- 
 less and unreflecting, that they know either what nature 
 
TRUTH NOT EASILY DISCERNED. 
 
 129 
 
 is, or what is like her, that they can discover truth by 
 instinct, and that their minds are such pure Venice glass 
 as to be shocked by all treachery. I have to prove to 
 them that there are more things in heaven and earth 
 than are dreamed of in their philosophy, and that the 
 truth of nature is a part of the truth of God ; to him 
 who does not search it out, darkness, as it is to him who 
 does, infinity. 
 
 The first great mistake that people make in the mat- 
 ter, is the supposition that they must see a thing if it be 
 before their eyes. They forget the great truth told them 
 by Locke, Book ii., chap. 9, § 3 “ This is , 2 Men u(mal]jr 
 certain, that whatever alterations are made Jj^ re of gJSf 
 in the body, if they reach not the mind, e y es - 
 whatever impressions are made on the outward parts, 
 if they are not taken notice of within, there is no per- 
 ception. Fire may burn our bodies, with no other effect 
 than it does a billet, unless the motion be continued to 
 the brain, and there the sense of heat or idea of pain be 
 produced in the mind, wherein consists actual percep- 
 tion. How often may a man observe in himself, that 
 while his mind is intently employed in the contempla- 
 tion of some subjects and curiously surveying some ideas 
 that are there, it takes no notice of impressions of sound- 
 ing bodies, made upon the organ of hearing, with the 
 same attention that uses to be for the producing the 
 ideas of sound ! A sufficient impulse there may be on 
 the organ, but it not reaching the observation of the 
 mind, there follows no perception, and though the mo- 
 tion that uses to produce the idea of sound be made in 
 the ear, yet no sound is heard.” And what is here said, 
 which all must feel by their own experience to be true, 
 is more remarkably and necessarily the case with sight 
 than with any other of the senses, for this reason, that 
 the ear is not accustomed to exercise constantly its func- 
 tions of hearing ; it is accustomed to stillness, and the 
 9 
 
130 
 
 TRUTH NOT EASILY DISCERNED. 
 
 occurrence of a sound of any kind whatsoever is apt to 
 awake attention, and be followed with perception, in 
 proportion to the degree of sound ; but the eye, during 
 our waking hours, exercises constantly its function of 
 seeing ; it is its constant habit ; we always, as far as the 
 bodily organ is concerned, see something, and we always 
 see in the same degree, so that the occurrence of sight, 
 as such, to the eye, is only the continuance of its neces- 
 sary state of action, and awakes no attention whatsoever, 
 except by the particular nature and quality of the sight. 
 And thus, unless the minds of men are particularly di- 
 rected to the impressions of sight, objects pass perpetu- 
 ally before the eyes without conveying any impression 
 to the brain at all; and so pass actually unseen, not 
 merely unnoticed, but in the full, clear sense of the word, 
 unseen. And numbers of men being preoccupied witli 
 business or care of some description, totally unconnected 
 with the impressions of sight, such is actually the case 
 with them, they receiving from nature only the inevi- 
 table sensations of blueness, redness, darkness, light, 
 etc., and except at particular and rare moments, no more 
 whatsoever. 
 
 The degree of ignorance of external nature in which 
 men may thus remain, depends, therefore, partly on the 
 
 number and character of the subjects with 
 
 § 3. But more or i n 
 
 less in proportion which their minds may be otherwise occu- 
 
 to their natural . _ _ _ . , , „ 
 
 sensibility to what pied, and partly on a natural want ot sea- 
 ls beautiful. » -i ± p p 
 
 sibility to the power ot beauty ot form, 
 and the other attributes of external objects. I do not 
 think that there is ever such absolute incapacity in the 
 eye for distinguishing and receiving pleasure from cer- 
 tain forms and colors, as there is in persons who are 
 technically said to have no ear, for distinguishing notes, 
 but there is naturally every degree of bluntness and 
 acuteness, both for perceiving the truth of form, and for 
 receiving pleasure from it when perceived. And al- 
 
TRUTH NOT EASILY DISCERNED. 
 
 131 
 
 though I believe even the lowest degree of these facul- 
 ties can be expanded almost unlimitedly by cultivation, 
 the pleasure received rewards not the labor necessary, 
 and the pursuit is abandoned. So that while in those 
 whose sensations are naturally acute and vivid, the call 
 of external nature is so strong that it must be obeyed, 
 and is ever heard louder as the approach to her is nearer, 
 — in those whose sensations are naturally blunt, the call 
 is overpowered at once by other thoughts, and their 
 faculties of perception, weak originally, die of disuse. 
 With this kind of bodily sensibility to §4. connected 
 color and form is intimately connected that Sate a of P moral 
 higher sensibility which we revere as one feelmg ' 
 of the chief attributes of all noble minds, and as the 
 chief spring of real poetry. I believe this kind of sensi- 
 bility may be entirely resolved into the acuteness of 
 bodily sense of which I have been speaking, associated 
 With love, love I mean in its infinite and holy functions, 
 as it embraces divine and human and brutal intelli- 
 gences, and hallows the physical perception of external 
 objects by association, gratitude, veneration, and other 
 pure feelings of our moral nature. And although the 
 discovery of truth is in itself altogether intellectual, and 
 dependent merely on our powers of physical perception 
 and abstract intellect, wholly independent of our moral 
 nature, yet these instruments (perception and judgment) 
 are so sharpened and brightened, and so far more swiftly 
 and effectively used, when they have the energy and pas- 
 sion of our moral nature to bring them into action — per- 
 ception is so quickened by love, and judgment so tem- 
 pered by veneration, that, practically, a man of deadened 
 moral sensation is always dull in his perception of truth, 
 and thousands of the highest and most divine truths of 
 nature ate wholly concealed from him, however constant 
 and indefatigable may be his intellectual search. Thus, 
 then, the farther we look, the more we are limited in the 
 
132 
 
 TRUTH NOT EASILY DISCERNED. 
 
 number of those to whom we should choose to appeal as 
 judges of truth, and the more we perceive how great a 
 number of mankind may be partially incapacitated from 
 either discovering or feeling it. 
 
 Next to sensibility, which is necessary for the percep- 
 tion of facts, come reflection and memory, which are nec- 
 § 5. And of the in- essary for the retention of them, and rec- 
 teiiectuai powers. G g n ition of their resemblances. For a man 
 
 may receive impression after impression, and that viv- 
 idly and with delight, and yet, if he take no care to rea- 
 son upon those impressions and trace them to their 
 sources, he may remain totally ignorant of the facts that 
 produced them ; nay, may attribute them to facts with 
 which they have no connection, or may coin causes for 
 them that have no existence at all. And the more sensi- 
 bility and imagination a man possesses, the more likely 
 will he be to fall into error ; for then he will see what- 
 ever he expects, and admire and judge with his heart, 
 and not with his eyes. How many people are misled, 
 by what has been said and sung of the serenity of the 
 Italian skies, to suppose they must be more blue than 
 the skies of the north, and think that they see them 
 so ; whereas, the sky of Italy is far more dull and gray 
 in color than the skies of the north, and is distinguished 
 only by its intense repose of light. And this is con- 
 firmed by Benvenuto Cellini, who, I remember, on his 
 first entering France, is especially struck with the clear- 
 ness of the sky, as contrasted with the mist of Italy. 
 And what is more strange still, when people see in a 
 painting what they suppose to have been the source of 
 their impressions, they will affirm it to be truthful, 
 though they feel no such impression resulting from it. 
 Thus, though day after day they may have been im- 
 pressed by the tone and warmth of an Italian sky, yet 
 not having traced the feeling to its source, and suppos- 
 ing themselves impressed by its blueness , they will affirm 
 
TRUTH NOT EASILY DISCERNED. 
 
 133 
 
 a blue sky in a painting to be truthful, and reject the 
 most faithful rendering of all the real attributes of Italy 
 as cold or dull. And this influence of the imagination 
 over the senses, is peculiarly observable in „ . , J 
 
 ’ T ... p . § 6. How sight de- 
 
 the perpetual disposition of mankind to pends upon pre- 
 suppose that they see what they know, and vl0Ub know e ge ‘ 
 vice versa in their not seeing what they do not know. 
 Thus, if a child be asked to draw the corner of a house, 
 he 'will lay down something in the form of the letter T. 
 He has no conception that the two lines of the roof, 
 which he knows to be level, produce on his eye the im- 
 pression of a slope. It requires repeated and close at- 
 tention before he detects this fact, or can be made to feel 
 that the lines on his paper are false. And the Chinese, 
 children in all things, suppose a good perspective draw- 
 ing to be as false as we feel their plate patterns to be, or 
 wonder at the strange buildings which come to a point 
 at the end. And all the early works, whether of nations 
 or of men, show, by their want of shade , how little the 
 eye, without knowledge, is to be depended upon to dis- 
 cover truth. The eye of a Red Indian, keen enough to 
 find the trace of his enemy or his prey, even in the un- 
 natural turn of a trodden leaf, is yet so blunt to the im- 
 pressions of shade, that Mr. Catlin mentions his once 
 having been in great danger from having painted a por- 
 trait with the face in half-light, which the untutored ob- 
 servers imagined and affirmed to be the painting of half 
 a face. Barry, in his sixth lecture, takes notice of the 
 same want of actual sight in the early painters of Italy. 
 “ The imitations,” he says, “ of early art are like those of 
 children — nothing is seen in the spectacle before us, 
 unless it be previously known and sought for ;■ and num- 
 berless observable differences between the age of igno- 
 rance and that of knowledge, show how much the con- 
 traction or extension of our sphere of vision depends 
 upon other considerations than the mere returns of our 
 
134 
 
 TRUTH NOT EASILY DISCERNED. 
 
 natural optics.” And the deception which takes place 
 so broadly in cases like these, has infinitely greater in- 
 fluence over our judgment of the more intricate and less 
 tangible truths of nature. We are constantly supposing 
 that we see what experience only has shown us, or can 
 show us, to have existence, constantly missing the sight 
 of what we do not know beforehand to be visible ; and 
 painters, to the last hour of their lives, are apt to fall in 
 some degree into the error of painting what exists, rather 
 than what they can see. I shall prove the extent of this 
 error more completely hereafter. 
 
 Be it also observed, that all these difficulties would 
 lie in the way, even if the truths of nature were always 
 §7. The difficulty the same, constantly repeated and brought 
 variety 6 of truths before us. But the truths of nature are 
 m nature. 0 ne eternal change — one infinite vari- 
 
 ety. There is no bush on the face of the globe exactly 
 like another bush ; — there are no two trees in the forest 
 whose boughs bend into the same network, nor two leaves 
 on the same tree which could not be told one from the 
 other, nor two waves in the sea exactly alike. And out 
 of this mass of various, yet agreeing beauty, it is by long 
 attention only that the conception of the constant char- 
 acter — the ideal form — hinted at by all, yet assumed by 
 none, is fixed upon the imagination for its standard of 
 truth. 
 
 It is not singular, therefore, nor in any way disgrace- 
 ful, that the majority of spectators are totally incapable 
 of appreciating the truth of nature, when fully set before 
 them ; but it is both singular and disgraceful that it is 
 so difficult to convince them of their own incapability. 
 Ask the connoisseur, who has scampered over all Europe, 
 the shape of the leaf of an elm, and the chances are ninety 
 to one that he cannot tell you ; and yet he will be volu- 
 ble of criticism on every painted landscape from Dresden 
 to Madrid, and pretend to tell you whether they are like 
 
TRUTH NOT EASILY DISCERNED. 
 
 135 
 
 nature or not. Ask an enthusiastic chatterer in the Sis- 
 tine Chapel how many ribs he has, and you get no an- 
 swer ; but it is odds that you do not get out of the door 
 without his informing you that he considers such and 
 such a figure badly drawn ! 
 
 A few such interrogations as these might indeed con- 
 vict, if not convince, the mass of spectators of incapa- 
 bility, Were it not for the universal reply, that they can 
 recognize what they cannot describe, and feel what is 
 truthful, though they do not know what is § 8. we recognize 
 truth. And this is, to a certain degree, leaSfmpSant 1 ^ 
 true : a man may recognize the portrait of sea Pa i.? 
 
 his friend, though he cannot, if you ask chap ‘ ** 
 him apart, tell you the shape of his nose or the height 
 of his forehead ; and everyone could tell nature herself 
 from an imitation ; why not then, it will be asked, what 
 is like her from what is not ? For this simple reason, 
 that we constantly recognize things by their least impor- 
 tant attributes, and by help of very few of those, and if 
 these attributes exist not in the imitation, though there 
 may be thousands of others far higher and more valua- 
 ble, yet if those be wanting, or imperfectly rendered, by 
 which we are accustomed to recognize the object, we deny 
 the likeness ; while if these be given, though all the great 
 and valuable and important attributes may be wanting, 
 we affirm the likeness. Recognition is no proof of real 
 and intrinsic resemblance. We recognize our books by 
 their bindings, though the true and essential character- 
 istics lie inside. A man is known to his dog by the 
 smell — to his tailor by the coat — to his friend by the 
 smile: each of these know him, but how little, or how 
 much, depends on the dignity of the intelligence. That 
 which is truly and indeed characteristic of the man, is 
 known only to God. One portrait of a man may possess 
 exact accuracy of feature, and no atom of expression ; it 
 may be, to use the ordinary terms of admiration bestowed 
 
136 
 
 TRUTH NOT EASILY DISCERNED. 
 
 on such portraits by those whom they please, “ as like 
 as it can stare.” Everybody, down to his cat, would 
 know this. Another portrait may have neglected or mis- 
 represented the features, but may have given the flash 
 of the eye, and the peculiar radiance of the lip, seen on 
 him only in his hours of highest mental excitement. 
 None but his friends would know this. Another may 
 have given none of his ordinary expressions, but one 
 which he wore in the most excited instant of his life, 
 when all his secret passions and all his highest powers 
 were brought into play at once. None but those who 
 had then seen him might recognize this as like. But 
 which would be the most truthful portrait of the man ? 
 The first gives the accidents of body — the sport of cli- 
 mate, and food, and time — which corruption inhabits, and 
 the worm waits for. The second gives the stamp of the 
 soul upon the flesh ; but it is the soul seen in the emo- 
 tions which it shares with many — which may not be 
 characteristic of its essence — the results of habit, and 
 education, and accident — a gloze, whether purposely 
 worn or unconsciously assumed, perhaps totally contrary 
 to all that is rooted and real in the mind that it conceals. 
 The third has caught the trace of all that was most hid- 
 den and most mighty, when all hypocrisy, and all habit, 
 and all petty and passing emotion — the ice, and the bank, 
 and the foam of the immortal river — were shivered, and 
 broken, and swallowed up in the awakening of its inward 
 strength ; when the call and claim of some divine motive 
 had brought into visible being those latent forces and 
 feelings which the spirit’s own volition could not sum- 
 mon, nor its consciousness comprehend ; which God only 
 knew, and God only could awaken, the depth and the 
 mystery of its peculiar and separating attributes. And 
 so it is with external Nature : she has a body and a soul 
 like man ; but her soul is the Deity. It is possible to 
 represent the body without the spirit ; and this shall be 
 
TRUTH NOT EASILY DISCERNED. 
 
 137 
 
 like to those whose senses are only cognizant of body. 
 It is possible to represent the spirit in its ordinary and 
 inferior manifestations ; and this shall be like to those 
 who have not watched for its moments of power. It is 
 possible to represent the spirit in its secret and high 
 operations ; and this shall be like only to those to whose 
 watching they have been revealed. All these are truth ; 
 but according to the dignity of the truths he can repre- 
 sent or feel, is the power of the painter, — the justice of 
 the judge. 
 
CHAPTEB m. 
 
 OF THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF TRUTHS: — FIRST, THAT 
 PARTICULAR TRUTHS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN GEN- 
 ERAL ONES. 
 
 § 1 . 
 
 determining the 
 relative impor 
 tance of truths. 
 
 I have in the last chapter affirmed that we usually re- 
 cognize objects by their least essential characteristics. 
 This very naturally excites the inquiry what I consider 
 Necessity of their important characteristics, and why I 
 call one truth more important than an- 
 other. And this question must be im- 
 mediately determined, because it is evident, that in 
 judging of the truth of painters, we shall have to con- 
 sider not only the accuracy with which individual 
 truths are given, but the relative importance of the 
 truths themselves ; for as it constantly happens that the 
 powers of art are unable to render all truths, that 
 artist must be considered the most truthful who has 
 preserved the most important at the expense of the 
 most trifling. 
 
 Now if we are to begin our investigation in Aristotle’s 
 way, and look at the tpaivo/jicva of the subject, we shall 
 immediately stumble over a maxim which 
 is in everybody’s mouth, and which, as it 
 is understood in practice, is true and use- 
 ful, as it is usually applied in argument, 
 false and misleading. “ General truths are more impor- 
 tant than particular ones.” Often, when in conversation, 
 I have been praising Turner for his perpetual variety, 
 and for giving so particular and separate a character to 
 
 § 2. Misapplica- 
 tion of the aph- 
 orism : “ General 
 truths are more 
 important than 
 particular ones.” 
 
IMPORTANCE OF TRUTHS. 
 
 139 
 
 each, of his compositions, that the mind of the painter 
 can only be estimated by seeing all that he has ever 
 done, and that nothing can be prophesied of a picture 
 coming into existence on his easel, but that it will be 
 totally different in idea from all that he has ever done 
 before; and when I have opposed this inexhaustible 
 knowledge or imagination, whichever it may be, to the 
 perpetual repetition of some half-dozen conceptions by 
 Claude and Poussin, I have been met by the formidable 
 objection, enunciated with much dignity and self-satis- 
 faction on the part of my antagonist — “ That is not paint- 
 ing general truths, that is painting partic- § Yaiaeness of 
 ular truths.” Now there must be some- 
 thing wrong in that application of a prin- tl0U - 
 ciple which would make the variety and abundance which 
 we look for as the greatest sign of intellect in the writer, 
 the greatest sign of error in the painter ; and we shall 
 accordingly see, by an application of it to other matters, 
 that, taken without limitation, the whole proposition is 
 utterly false. For instance, Mrs. Jameson somewhere 
 mentions the exclamation of a lady of her acquaintance, 
 more desirous to fill a pause in conversation than abun- 
 dant in sources of observation : “ What an excellent book 
 the Bible is ! ” This was a very general truth indeed, a 
 truth predicable of the Bible in common with many 
 other books, but it certainly is neither striking nor im- 
 portant. Had the lady exclaimed — “ How evidently is 
 the Bible a divine revelation ! ” she would have expressed 
 a particular truth, one predicable of the Bible only; 
 but certainly far more interesting and important. Had 
 she, on the contrary, informed us that the Bible was a 
 book, she would have been still more general, and still 
 less entertaining. If I ask anyone who somebody else 
 is, and receive for answer that he is a man, I get little 
 satisfaction for my pains ; but if I am told that he is Sir 
 Isaac Newton, I immediately thank my neighbor for his 
 
140 
 
 OF THE RELATIVE 
 
 information. The fact is, and the above instances may 
 serve at once to prove it if it be not self-evident, that 
 §4. Generality generality gives importance to the subject, 
 siSe?t anfe particu- anc ^ limitation or particularity to the predi- 
 lanty m tbe predi- ca te. If I say that such and such a man 
 in China is an opium-eater, I say nothing 
 very interesting, because my subject (such a man) is 
 particular. If I say that all men in China are opium- 
 eaters, I say something interesting, because my subject 
 (all men) is general. If I say that all men in China eat, 
 I say nothing interesting, because my predicate (eat) is 
 general. If I say that all men in China eat opium, I say 
 something interesting, because my predicate (eat opium) 
 is particular. 
 
 Now almost everything which (with reference to a 
 given subject) a painter has to ask himself whether he 
 shall represent or not, is a predicate. Hence in art, par- 
 ticular truths are usually more important than general 
 ones. 
 
 How is it then that anything so plain as this should 
 be contradicted by one of the most universally received 
 aphorisms respecting art ? A little reflection will show 
 us under what limitations this maxim may be true in 
 practice. 
 
 It is self-evident that when we are painting or de- 
 scribing anything, those truths must be the most impor- 
 tant which are most characteristic of what 
 tance of 1 tr£§w is to be told or represented. Now that 
 
 of species is not i • 1 ® i? i i_i n i 
 
 owing to their which is first and most broadly character- 
 generality. istie of a thing, is that which distinguishes 
 
 its genus, or which makes it what it is. For instance, 
 that which makes drapery he drapery, is not its being 
 made of silk or worsted or flax, for things are made of all 
 these which are not drapery, but the ideas peculiar to 
 drapery; the properties which, when inherent in a 
 thing, make it drapery, are extension, non-elastic flexi- 
 
IMPORTANCE OF TRUTHS. 
 
 141 
 
 bility, unity, and comparative thinness. Everything 
 which has these properties, a waterfall, for instance, if 
 united and extended, or a net of weeds over a wall, is 
 drapery, as much as silk or woollen stuff is. So that 
 these ideas separate drapery in our minds from every- 
 thing else ; they are peculiarly characteristic of it, and 
 therefore are the most important group of ideas con- 
 nected with it ; and so with everything else, that which 
 m&kes the thing what it is, is the most important idea, 
 or group of ideas connected with the thing. But as this 
 idea must necessarily be common to all individuals of 
 the species it belongs to, it is a general idea with re- 
 pect to that species ; while other ideas, which are not 
 characteristic of the species, and are therefore in reality 
 general, as black or white are terms applicable to more 
 things than drapery,) are yet particular with respect to 
 that species, being predicable only of certain individuals 
 of it. Hence it is carelessly and falsely said, that gen- 
 eral ideas are more important than particular ones ; care- 
 lessly and falsely, I say, because the so-called general 
 idea is important, not because it is common to all the 
 individuals of that species, but because it separates that 
 species from everything else. It is the distinctiveness, 
 not the universality of the truth, which renders it im- 
 portant. And the so-called particular idea is unimpor- 
 tant, not because it is not predicable of the whole spe- 
 cies, but because it is predicable of things out of that 
 species. It is not its individuality, but its generality 
 which renders it unimportant. So, then, 
 
 . . . . . . . • §6. All truths val- 
 
 truths are important just m proportion as liable as they are 
 
 . , . .... ill characteristic. 
 
 they are characteristic, and are valuable, 
 primarily, as they separate the species from all other 
 created things ; secondarily, as they separate the individ- 
 uals of that species from one another : thus “ silken ” or 
 “ woollen ” are unimportant ideas with respect to drapery, 
 because they neither separate the species from other 
 
142 
 
 OF THE RELATIVE 
 
 things, nor even the individuals of that species from one 
 another, since, though not common to the whole of it, 
 they are common to indefinite numbers of it ; but the 
 particular folds into which any piece of drapery may 
 happen to fall, being different in many particulars from 
 those into which any other piece of drapery will fall, 
 are expressive not only of the characters of the species, 
 flexibility (non-elasticity, etc.,) but of individuality and 
 definite character in the case immediately observed, and 
 are consequently most important and necessary ideas. 
 So in a man, to be short-legged or long-nosed, or any- 
 thing else of accidental quality, does not distinguish 
 him from other short-legged or long-nosed animals ; but 
 the important truths respecting a man are, first, the 
 marked development of that distinctive organization 
 which separates him as man from other animals, and 
 secondly, that group of qualities which distinguish the 
 individual from all other men, which make him Paul or 
 Judas, Newton or Shakspeare. 
 
 Such are the real sources of importance in truths as far 
 as they are considered with reference merely to their being 
 § 7. otherwise general, or particular ; but there are other 
 are 1 yaiuabie pec be- sources of importance which give farther 
 cause beautiful. weight to the ordinary opinion of the 
 
 greater value of those which are general, and which ren- 
 der this opinion right in practice ; I mean the intrinsic 
 beauty of the truths themselves, a quality which it is not 
 here the place to investigate, but which must just be 
 noticed, as invariably adding value to truths of species 
 rather than to those of individuality. The qualities and 
 properties which characterize man or any other animal 
 as a species, are the perfection of his or its form of mind, 
 almost all individual differences arising from imperfec- 
 tions ; hence a truth of species is the more valuable to 
 art, because it must always be a beauty, while a truth of 
 individuals is commonly, in some sort or way, a defect. 
 
IMPORTANCE OF TRUTHS. 
 
 143 
 
 § 8. And many 
 truths, valuable 
 if separate, may 
 be objectionable 
 in connection with 
 others. 
 
 Again, a truth which may be of great interest, when 
 an object is viewed by itself, may be objectionable when 
 it is viewed in relation to other objects. 
 
 Thus if we were painting a piece of drapery 
 as our whole subject, it would be proper to 
 give in it every source of entertainment, 
 which particular truths could supply, to give it varied 
 color and delicate texture; but if we paint this same 
 piece of drapery, as part of the dress of a Madonna, all 
 these ideas of richness or texture become thoroughly 
 contemptible, and unfit to occupy the mind at the same 
 moment with the idea of the Virgin. The conception of 
 drapery is then to be suggested by the simplest and 
 slightest means possible, and all notions of texture and 
 detail are to be rejected with utter reprobation ; but this, 
 observe, is not because they are particular or general or 
 anything else, with respect to the drapery itself, but 
 because they draw the attention to the dress instead 
 of the saint, and disturb and degrade the imagination 
 and the feelings ; hence we ought to give the conception 
 of the drapery in the most unobtrusive way possible, by 
 rendering those essential qualities distinctly, which are 
 necessary to the very existence of drapery, and not one 
 more. 
 
 With these last two sources of the importance of truths, 
 we have nothing to do at present, as they are dependent 
 upon ideas of beauty and relation : I merely allude to 
 them now, to show that all that is alleged by Sir J. Rey- 
 nolds and other scientific writers respecting the kind 
 of truths proper to be represented by the painter or 
 sculptor is perfectly just and right ; while yet the prin- 
 ciple on which they base their selection (that general 
 truths are more important than particular ones) is alto- 
 gether false. Canova’s Perseus in the Vatican is entirely 
 spoiled by an unlucky tassel in the folds of the mantle 
 (which the next admirer of Canova who passes would do 
 
144 
 
 IMPORTANCE OF TRUTHS. 
 
 well to knock off ;) but it is spoiled not because this is a 
 particular truth, but because it is a contemptible, unnec- 
 essary, and ugly truth. The button which fastens the 
 vest of the Sistine Daniel is as much a particular truth 
 as this, but it is a necessary one, and the idea of it is 
 given by the simplest possible means ; hence it is right 
 and beautiful. 
 
 Finally, then, it is to be remembered that all truths as 
 far as their being particular or general affects their value 
 § 9. Recapituia- a ^ are valuable in proportion as they 
 tion - are particular, and valueless in proportion 
 
 as they are general; or to express the proposition in 
 simpler terms, every truth is valuable in proportion as it 
 is characteristic of the thing of which it is affirmed. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OF THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF TRUTHS SECONDLY, THAT 
 RARE TRUTHS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN FREQUENT 
 ONES. 
 
 It will be necessary next for us to determine how far 
 frequency or rarity can affect the importance of truths, 
 and whether the artist is to be considered the most 
 truthful who paints what is common or 
 
 , . , . § 1. No accidental 
 
 what is unusual m nature. violation of nat- 
 
 Now the whole determination of this should Ke^epr? 
 question depends upon whether the un- 
 usual fact be a violation of nature’s general principles, 
 or the application of some of those principles in a pe- 
 culiar and striking way. Nature sometimes, though very 
 rarely, violates her own principles ; it is her principle 
 to make everything beautiful, but now and then, for an 
 instant, she permits what, compared with the rest of her 
 works, might be called ugly ; it is true that even these 
 rare blemishes are permitted, as I have above said, for a 
 good purpose, (Part I. Sec. I. Chap. 5,) they are valua- 
 ble in nature, and used as she uses them, are equally 
 valuable (as instantaneous discords) in art ; but the ar- 
 tist who should seek after these exclusively, and paint 
 nothing else, though he might be able to point to some- 
 thing in nature as the original of every one of his ugli- 
 nesses, would yet be, in the strict sense of the word, 
 false, — false to nature, and disobedient to her laws. For 
 instance, it is the practice of nature to give character to 
 the outlines of her clouds, by perpetual angles and right 
 lines. Perhaps once in a month, by diligent watching, 
 10 
 
146 
 
 OF THE RELATIVE 
 
 we might be able to see a cloud altogether rounded and 
 made up of curves; but the artist who paints nothing 
 but curved clouds must yet be considered thoroughly 
 and inexcusably false. 
 
 But the case is widely different, when instead of a 
 principle violated, we have one extraordinarily carried 
 „ _ out or manifested under unusual circum- 
 
 § 2. But the cases 
 
 1 rindSe? h^ve s l ances - Though nature is constantly 
 exemplified Mngly beautiful, s ^ e does no ^ exhibit her highest 
 powers of beauty constantly, for then they 
 would satiate us and pall upon our senses. It is neces- 
 sary to their appreciation that they should be rarely 
 k g wh . h e shown. Her finest touches are things 
 comparatively which must be watched for; her most per- 
 fect passages of beauty are the most evan- 
 escent. She is constantly doing something beautiful for 
 us, but it is something which she has not done before 
 and will not do again ; some exhibition of her general 
 powers in particular circumstances which, if we do not 
 catch at the instant it is passing, will not be repeated 
 for us. Now they are these evanescent passages of 
 perfected beauty, these perpetually varied examples of 
 utmost power, which the artist ought to seek for and 
 arrest. No supposition can be more absurd than that 
 effects or truths frequently exhibited are more character- 
 istic of nature than those which are equally necessary 
 by her laws, though rarer in occurrence. Both the fre- 
 quent and the rare are parts of the same great system ; 
 to give either exclusively is imperfect truth, and to 
 repeat the same effect or thought in two pictures is 
 
 §4 ah repetition was l e d life- What should we think of a 
 is biamabie. poet who should keep all his life repeating 
 the same thought in different words ? and why should we 
 be more lenient to the parrot-painter who has learned one 
 lesson from the page of nature, and keeps stammering 
 it out with eternal repetition without turning the leaf ? 
 
IMPORTANCE OF TRUTHS. 
 
 147 
 
 Is it less tautology to describe a thing over and over 
 again with lines, than it is with words ? The teaching 
 of nature is as varied and infinite as it is constant ; and 
 the duty of the painter is to watch for every one of her 
 lessons, and to give (for human life will admit of nothing 
 more) those in which she has manifested each of her 
 principles in the most peculiar and striking way. The 
 deeper his research and the rarer the phenomena he has 
 noted, the more valuable will his works be ; to repeat 
 himself, even in a single instance, is treachery to nature, 
 for a thousand human lives would not be enough to give 
 one instance of the perfect manifestation of each of her 
 powers ; and as for combining or classifying them, as 
 well might a preacher expect in one sermon to express 
 and explain every divine truth which can be gathered 
 out of God’s revelation, as a painter expect in one com- 
 position to express and illustrate every lesson which 
 can be received from God’s creation. § 5> The duty of 
 Both are commentators on infinity, and sam?a?that i8 of h a 
 the duty of both is to take for each dis- P reacher - 
 course one essential truth, seeking particularly and in- 
 sisting especially on those which are less palpable to 
 ordinary observation, and more likely to escape an indo- 
 lent research ; and to impress that, and that alone, upon 
 those whom they address, with every illustration that 
 can be furnished by their knowledge, and every adorn- 
 ment attainable by their power. And the real truthful- 
 ness of the painter is in proportion to the number and 
 variety of the facts he has so illustrated; those facts 
 being always, as above observed, the realization, not the 
 violation of a general principle. The quantity of truth 
 is in proportion to the number of such facts, and its 
 value and instructiveness in proportion to their rarity. 
 All really great pictures, therefore, exhibit the general 
 habits of nature, manifested in some peculiar, rare, and 
 beautiful way. 
 
CHAPTER Y. 
 
 OF THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF TRUTHS THIRDLY, THAT 
 TRUTHS OF COLOR ARE THE LEAST IMPORTANT OF ALL 
 TRUTHS. 
 
 In the two last chapters, we have pointed out general 
 tests of the importance of all truths, which will be suffi- 
 cient at once to distinguish certain classes of properties 
 § i. Difference be- bodies, as more necessary to be told 
 
 than others, because more characteristic, 
 ties in bodies. either of the particular thing to be repre- 
 sented, or of the principles of nature. 
 
 According to Locke, Book ii. chap. 8, there are three 
 sorts of qualities in bodies : first, the “ bulk, figure, num- 
 ber, situation, and motion or rest of their solid parts : 
 those that are in them, whether we perceive them or 
 not.” These he calls primary qualities. Secondly, 
 “ the power that is in any body to operate after a pecul- 
 iar manner on any of our senses,” (sensible qualities.) 
 And thirdly, “ the power that is in any body to make 
 such a change in another body as that it shall operate on 
 our senses differently from what it did before : these last 
 being usually called poivers .” 
 
 Hence he proceeds to prove that those which he calls 
 primary qualities are indeed part of the essence of the 
 § 2. The first are body, and characteristic of it ; but that the 
 tic/tbe^ctm^im- two other kinds of qualities which together 
 perfectly so. he calls secondary, are neither of them 
 more than powers of producing on other objects, or in 
 us, certain effects and sensations. Now a power of influ- 
 ence is always equally characteristic of two objects — the 
 
IMPORTANCE OF TRUTHS . 
 
 149 
 
 active and passive; for it is as much necessary that 
 there should be a power in the object suffering to 
 receive the impression, as in the object acting to give 
 the impression. (Compare Locke, Book ii. chap. 21, 
 sect. 2.) For supposing two people, as is frequently the 
 case, perceive different scents in the same flower, it is 
 evident that the power in the flower to give this or that 
 depends on the nature of their nerves, as well as on that 
 of its own particles ; and that we are as correct in saying 
 it is a power in us to perceive, as in the object to 
 impress. Every power, therefore, being characteristic 
 of the nature of two bodies, is imperfectly and incom- 
 pletely characteristic of either separately ; but the pri- 
 mary qualities, being characteristic only of the body in 
 which they are inherent, are the most important truths 
 connected with it. For the question, what the thing is, 
 must precede, and be of more importance than the ques- 
 tion, what can it do. 
 
 Now, by Locke’s definition above given, only bulk, fig- 
 ure, situation, and motion or rest of solid parts, are pri- 
 mary qualities. Hence all truths of color 
 sink at once into the second rank. He, § 3 - p olor is a 
 therefore, who has neglected a truth of ^ therefore less 
 form for a truth of color, has neglected a form - 
 greater truth for a less one. 
 
 And that color is indeed a most unimportant character- 
 istic of objects, will be farther evident on the slightest 
 consideration. The color of plants is constantly chang- 
 ing with the season, and of everything with the quality 
 of light failing on it ; but the nature and essence of the 
 thing are independent of these changes. An oak is an 
 oak, whether green with spring or red with winter; a 
 dahlia is a dahlia, whether it be yellow or crimson ; and 
 if some monster-hunting botanist should ever frighten 
 the flower blue, still it will be a dahlia ; but let one curve 
 of the petals — one groove of the stamens be wanting, and 
 
150 
 
 OF THE RELATIVE 
 
 the flower ceases to be the same. Let the roughness of 
 the bark and the angles of the boughs be smoothed or 
 diminished, and the oak ceases to be an oak ; but let it 
 retain its inward structure and outward form, and though 
 its leaves grew white, or pink, or blue, or tri color, it 
 would be a white oak, or a pink oak, or a republican oak, 
 but an oak still. Again, color is hardly ever even a pos- 
 sible distinction between two objects of the same species. 
 Two trees, of the same kind, at the same season, and of 
 the same age, are of absolutely the same color ; but they 
 are not of the same form, nor anything like it. There 
 §4 color no dis- can no difference in the color of two 
 object? of etw tbe pi eces of roc k broken from the same place ; 
 same species. but it is impossible they should be of the 
 same form. So that form is not only the chief character- 
 istic of species, but the only characteristic of individuals 
 of a species. 
 
 Again, a color, in association with other colors, is dif- 
 ferent from the same color seen by itself. It has a dis- 
 § 5. And different tinct and peculiar power upon the retina de- 
 from S what at it^is Pendent on its association. Consequently, 
 alone * the color of any object is not more depend- 
 
 ent upon the nature of the object itself, and the 
 eye beholding it, than on the color of the objects 
 near it; in this respect also, therefore, it is no char- 
 acteristic. 
 
 And so great is the uncertainty with respect to those 
 qualities or powers which depend as much on the nature 
 A of the object suffering as of the object act- 
 
 § C. It is not . . ° J 
 
 certain whether mg, that it is totally impossible to prove 
 any two people .* ,, , , . 
 
 see the same coi- that one man sees m the same thing the 
 same color that another does though he 
 may use the same name for it. One man may see yellow 
 where another sees blue, but as the effect is constant, 
 they agree in the term to be used for it, and both call it 
 blue, or both yellow, having yet totally different ideas at- 
 
IMPORTANCE OF TRUTHS. 
 
 151 
 
 taclied to the term. And yet neither can be said to see 
 falsely, because the color is not in the thing, but in the 
 thing and them together. But if they see forms differ- 
 ently, one must see falsely, because the form is positive 
 in the object. My friend may see boars blue for any- 
 thing I know, but it is impossible he should see them 
 with paws instead of hoofs, unless his eyes or brain are 
 diseased. (Compare Locke, Book ii. chajD. xxxii. § 15.) 
 But I do not speak of this uncertainty as capable of 
 having any effect on art, because, though perhaps Land- 
 seer sees dogs of the color which I should call blue, yet 
 the color he puts on the canvas, being in the same way 
 blue to him, will still be brown or dog-color to me; 
 and so we may argue on points of color just as if all 
 men saw alike, as indeed in all probability they do; 
 but I merely mention this uncertainty to show farther 
 the vagueness and unimportance of color as a character- 
 istic of bodies. 
 
 Before going farther, however, I must explain the 
 sense in which I have used the word “ form,” because 
 painters have a most inaccurate and care- „ „ 
 
 * - . § 7. Form, con- 
 
 less habit of confining the term to the out- sited ^as ^an 
 line of bodies, whereas it necessarily implies scape, includes 
 light and shade. It is true that the out- Il&ht 
 line and the chiaroscuro must be separate subjects of 
 investigation with the student ; but no form whatsoever 
 can be known to the eye in the slightest degree without 
 its chiaroscuro; and, therefore, in speaking of form 
 generally as an element of landscape, I mean that perfect 
 and harmonious unity of outline with light and shade, by 
 which all the parts and projections and proportions of a 
 body are fully explained to the eye, being nevertheless 
 perfectly independent of sight or power in other objects, 
 the presence of light upon a body being a positive ex- 
 istence, whether we are aware of it or not, and in no 
 degree dependent upon our senses. This being under- 
 
152 
 
 OF THE RELATIVE 
 
 stood, the most convincing* proof of the unimportance of 
 color lies in the accurate observation of the way in 
 § a importance which any material object impresses itself 
 ii? elpresskig h the 031 the mind. If we look at nature careful- 
 giaracter of^bod- we s h a ll find that her colors are in a 
 portance of color, state of perpetual confusion and indistinct- 
 ness, while her forms, as told by light and shade, are 
 invariably clear, distinct, and speaking. The stones and 
 gravel of the bank catch green reflections from the 
 boughs above; the bushes receive grays and yellows 
 from the ground ; every hairbreadth of polished surface 
 gives a little bit of the blue of the sky or the gold of the 
 sun, like a star upon the local color; this local color, 
 changeful and uncertain in itself, is again disguised and 
 modified by the hue of the light, or quenched in the gray 
 of the shadow ; and the confusion and blending of tint is 
 altogether so great, that were we left to find out what 
 objects were by their colors only, we would scarcely in 
 places distinguish the boughs of a tree from the air 
 beyond them, or the ground beneath them. I know that 
 people unpractised in art will not believe this at first ; 
 but if they have accurate powers of observation, 
 they may soon ascertain it for themselves; they will 
 find that, while they can scarcely ever determine the 
 exact hue of anything, except when it occurs in large 
 masses, as in a green field or the blue sky, the form, 
 as told by light and shade, is always decided and 
 evident, and the source of the chief character of every 
 object. Light and shade indeed so completely con- 
 quer the distinctions of local color, that the difference 
 in hue between the illumined parts of a white and 
 black object is not so great as the difference (in sun- 
 shine) between the illumined and dark side of either 
 separately. 
 
 We shall see hereafter, in considering ideas of beauty, 
 that color, even as a source of pleasure, is feeble com- 
 
IMPORTANCE OF TRUTHS . 
 
 153 
 
 pared to form ; but this we cannot insist upon at pres- 
 ent ; we have only to do with simple truth, and the ob- 
 servations we have made are sufficient to § 9< Recapitula . 
 prove that the artist who sacrifices or for- tion - 
 gets a truth of form in the pursuit of a truth of color, 
 sacrifices what is definite to what is uncertain, and what 
 is essential to what is accidental. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 RECAPITULATION. 
 
 It ought farther to be observed respecting truths in 
 general, that those are always most valuable which are 
 most historical, that is, which tell us most about the 
 
 § 1 The im or P as ^ an( ^ ^ u ^ ure states of the object to 
 tance of histori- which they belong. In a tree, for instance, 
 it is more important to give the appear- 
 ance of energy and elasticity in the limbs which is indic- 
 ative of growth and life, than any particular character of 
 leaf, or texture of bough. It is more important that we 
 should feel that the uppermost sprays are creeping 
 higher and higher into the sky, and be impressed with 
 the current of life and motion which is animating every 
 fibre, than that we should know the exact pitch of relief 
 with which those fibres are thrown out against the sky. 
 For the first truths tell us tales about the tree, about 
 what it has been, and will be, while the last are charac- 
 teristic of it only in its present state, and are in no way 
 talkative about themselves. Talkative facts are always 
 more interesting and more important than silent ones. 
 So again the lines in a crag which mark its stratifica- 
 tion, and how it has been washed and rounded by water, 
 or twisted and drawn out in fire, are more important, 
 because they tell more than the stains of the lichens 
 which change year by year, and the accidental fissures of 
 frost or decomposition ; not but that both of these are 
 historical, but historical in a less distinct manner, and for 
 shorter periods. 
 
 Hence in general the truths of specific form are the 
 first and most important of all ; and next to them, 
 
RECAPITULA TION \ 
 
 155 
 
 § 2. Form, as ex- 
 plained by light 
 and shade, the 
 first of all truths. 
 Tone, light and 
 color are second- 
 ary. 
 
 those truths of chiaroscuro which are necessary to make 
 us understand every quality and part of forms, and the 
 relative distances of objects among each 
 other, and in consequence their relative 
 bulks. Altogether lower than these, as 
 truths, though often most important as 
 beauties, stand all effects of chiaroscuro 
 which are productive merely of imitations of light and 
 tone, and all effects of color. To make us understand 
 the space of the sky, is an end worthy of the artist’s 
 highest powers ; to hit its particular blue or gold is an 
 end to be thought of when we have accomplished the 
 first, and not till then. 
 
 Finally, far below all these come those particular ac- 
 curacies or tricks of chiaroscuro which cause objects 
 to look projecting from the canvas, not 
 worthy oi the name ot truths, because chiaroscuro the 
 they require for their attainment the sac- 
 rifice of all others ; for not having at our disposal the 
 same intensity of light by which nature illustrates her 
 objects, we are obliged, if we would have perfect decep- 
 tion in one, to destroy its relation to the rest. (Com- 
 pare Sect. II. chap. Y.) And thus he who throws one 
 object out of his picture, never lets the spectator into it. 
 Michael Angelo bids you follow his phantoms into the 
 abyss of heaven, but a modern French painter drops his 
 hero out of the picture frame. 
 
 This solidity or projection then, is the very lowest 
 truth that art can give ; it is the painting of mere mat- 
 ter, giving that as food for the eye which is properly 
 only the subject of touch; it can neither instruct nor 
 exalt, nor please except as jugglery ; it addresses no 
 sense of beauty nor of power ; and wherever it charac- 
 terizes the general aim of a picture, it is the sign and 
 the evidence of the vilest and lowest mechanism which 
 art can be insulted by giving name to. 
 
CHAPTEB YU. 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 We have seen, in the preceding chapters, some proof 
 of what was before asserted, that the truths necessary 
 for deceptive imitation are not only few, but of the 
 § i. The different very lowest order. W e thus find painters 
 conseouenfo^the ranging themselves into two great classes ; 
 Station aiI Sr at one aiming at the development of the 
 fcruth * exquisite truths of specific form, refined 
 
 color, and ethereal space, and content with the clear and 
 impressive suggestion of any of these, by whatsoever 
 means obtained ; and the other casting all these aside, 
 to attain those p articular truths of tone and chiaroscuro, 
 which may trick the spectator into a belief of reality. 
 The first class, if they have to paint a tree, are intent 
 upon giving the exquisite designs of intersecting undu- 
 lation in its boughs, the grace of its leafage, the intri- 
 cacy of its organization, and all those qualities which 
 make it lovely or affecting of its kind. The second 
 endeavor only to make you believe that you are look- 
 ing at wood. They are totally regardless of truths or 
 beauties of form ; a stump is as good as a trunk for all 
 their purposes, so that they can only deceive the eye 
 into the supposition that it is a stump and not canvas. 
 
 § 2. The old mas- To which of these classes the great body 
 aim only at imita- ^ ie °hl landscape painters belonged, 
 tion * may be partly gathered from the kind of 
 
 praise which is bestowed upon them by those who ad- 
 mire them most, which either refers to technical mat- 
 
APPLICATION OF FOREGOING PRINCIPLES . 157 
 
 ters, dexterity of touch, clever oppositions of color, etc., 
 or is bestowed on the power of the painter to deceive. 
 M. de Marmontel, going into a connoisseur’s gallery, 
 pretends to mistake a fine Berghem for a window. This, 
 he says, was affirmed by its possessor to be the greatest 
 praise the picture had ever received. Such is indeed 
 the notion of art which is at the bottom of the venera- 
 tion usually felt for the old landscape painters ; it is of 
 course the palpable, first idea of ignorance; it is the 
 only notion which people unacquainted with art can by 
 any possibility have of its ends ; the only test by which 
 people unacquainted with nature can pretend to form 
 anything like judgment of art. It is strange that, with 
 the great historical painters of Italy before them, who 
 had broken so boldly and indignantly from the trammels 
 of this notion, and shaken the very dust of it from their 
 feet, the succeeding landscape painters should have 
 wasted their lives in jugglery : but so it is, and so it will 
 be felt, the more we look into their works, that the de- 
 ception of the senses was the great and §3> What truths 
 first end of all their art. To attain this they gave - 
 they paid deep and serious attention to effects of light 
 and tone, and to the exact degree of relief which material 
 objects take against light and atmosphere ; and sacri- 
 ficing every other truth to these, not necessarily, but 
 because they required no others for deception, they 
 succeeded in rendering these particular facts with a 
 fidelity and force which, in the pictures that have come 
 down to us uninjured, are as yet unequalled, and never 
 can be surpassed. They painted their foregrounds with 
 laborious industry, covering them with details so as to 
 render them deceptive to the ordinary eye, regardless of 
 beauty or truth in the details themselves ; they painted 
 their trees with careful attention to their pitch of shade 
 against the sky, utterly regardless of all that is beauti- 
 ful or essential in the anatomy of their foliage and 
 
158 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 boughs : they painted their distances with exquisite use 
 of transparent color and aerial tone, totally neglectful of 
 all facts and forms which nature uses such color and 
 tone to relieve and adorn. They had neither love of 
 nature, nor feeling of her beauty ; they looked for her 
 coldest and most commonplace effects, because they 
 were easiest to imitate ; and for her most vulgar forms, 
 because they were most easily to be recognized by the 
 untaught eyes of those whom alone they could hope to 
 please ; they did it, like the Pharisee of old, to be seen 
 of men, and they had their reward. They do deceive 
 and delight the unpractised eye ; they will to all ages, 
 as long as their colors endure, be the standards of ex- 
 cellence with all, who, ignorant of nature, claim to be 
 thought learned in art. And they will to all ages be, to 
 those who have thorough love and knowledge of the 
 creation which they libel, instructive proofs of the lim- 
 ited number and low character of the truths which are 
 necessary, and the accumulated multitude of pure, 
 broad, bold falsehoods which are admissible in pictures 
 meant only to deceive. 
 
 There is of course more or less accuracy of knowledge 
 and execution combined with this aim at effect, accord- 
 ing to the industry and precision of eye possessed by 
 the master, and more or less of beauty in the forms se- 
 lected, according to his natural taste ; but both the 
 beauty and truth are sacrificed unhesitatingly where 
 they interfere with the great effort at deception. 
 Claude had, if it had been cultivated, a fine feeling for 
 beauty of form, and is seldom ungraceful in his foliage ; 
 but his picture, when examined with reference to essen- 
 tial truth, is one mass of error from beginning to end. 
 Cuyp, on the other hand, could paint close truth of 
 everything, except ground and water, with decision and 
 success, but he has no sense of beauty. Gaspar Poussin, 
 more ignorant of truth than Claude, and almost as dead 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 159 
 
 to beauty as Cuyp, has yet a perception of the feeling 1 
 and moral truth of nature which often redeems the pict- 
 ure ; but yet in all of them, everything that they can do 
 is done for deception, and nothing for the sake or love 
 of what they are painting. 
 
 Modern landscape painters have looked at nature with 
 totally different eyes, seeking not for what is easiest to 
 imitate, but for what is most important to § 4> The princi _ 
 tell. Eejecting at once all ideal of bona ^ e 0 8 pt °| by ie So£ 
 fide imitation, they think only of convey- ern arti8ts - 
 ing the impression of nature into the mind of the spec- 
 tator. And' there is, in consequence, a greater sum of 
 valuable, essential, and impressive truth in the works of 
 two or three of our leading modern landscape painters, 
 than in those of all the old masters put together, and 
 of truth too, nearly unmixed with definite or avoidable 
 falsehood ; while the unimportant and feeble truths of 
 the old masters are choked with a mass of perpetual 
 defiance of the most authoritative laws of nature. 
 
 I do not expect this assertion to be believed at pres- 
 ent ; it must rest for demonstration on the examination 
 we are about to enter upon ; yet, even without reference 
 to any intricate or deep-laid truths, it appears strange to 
 me, that anyone familiar with nature, and fond of her, 
 should not grow weary and sick at heart among the 
 melancholy and monotonous transcripts of her which 
 alone can be received from the old school 
 
 p i * i i i 1 1 *8 -« § 6. General feel- 
 
 of art. A man accustomed to the broad, ing of ciaude, 
 
 M , •j-i'i -j-iji i Salvator, and G. 
 
 sea-shore, with its bright breakers, Poussin, con- 
 
 P . -j t t trasted with the 
 
 and tree winds, and sounding rocks, and freedom and vast- 
 eternal sensation of tameless power, can 
 scarcely but be angered when Claude bids him stand 
 still on some paltry, chipped and chiselled quay with 
 
 porters and wheelbarrows running against him, to watch 
 a weak, rippling bound and barriered water, that has not 
 
 strength enough in one of its waves to upset the flower- 
 
160 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 pots on the wall, or even to fling* one jet of spray over 
 the confining stone. A man accustomed to the strength 
 and glory of God’s mountains, with their soaring and 
 radiant pinnacles, and surging sweeps of measureless 
 distance, kingdoms in their valleys, and climates upon 
 their crests, can scarcely but be angered when Salvator 
 bids him stand still under some contemptible fragment 
 of splintery crag, which an Alpine snow-wreath would 
 smother in its first swell, with a stunted bush or two 
 growing out of it, and a volume of manufactory smoke 
 for a sky. A man accustomed to the grace and infin- 
 ity of nature’s foliage, with every vista a cathedral, and 
 every bough a revelation, can scarcely but be angered 
 when Poussin mocks him with a black round mass of 
 impenetrable paint, diverging into feathers instead of 
 leaves, and supported on a stick instead of a trunk. The 
 fact is, there is one thing wanting in all the doing of 
 these men, and that is the very virtue by which the work 
 of human mind chiefly rises above that of the Daguerreo- 
 type or Calotype, or any other mechanical means that 
 ever have been or may be invented, Love : There is no 
 evidence of their ever having gone to nature with any 
 thirst, or received from her such emotion as could make 
 them, even for an instant, lose sight of themselves ; there 
 is in them neither earnestness nor humility ; there is no 
 simple or honest record of any single truth ; none of the 
 plain words nor straight efforts that men speak and make 
 when they once feel. 
 
 Nor is it only by the professed landscape painters that 
 the great verities of the material world are betrayed : 
 
 § 6 inadequacy ^ ran( ^ as are the motives of landscape in 
 of Tufan and S Tm- the works of the earlier and mightier men, 
 toret * there is yet in them nothing approaching 
 
 to a general view nor complete rendering of natural 
 phenomena; not that they are to be blamed for this-, 
 for they took out of nature that which was fit for their 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 161 
 
 purpose, and their mission was to do no more ; but we 
 must be cautious to distinguish that imaginative abstrac- 
 tion of landscape which alone we find in them, from the 
 entire statement of truth which has been attempted by 
 the modems. I have said in the chapter on symmetry 
 in the second volume, that all landscape grandeur van- 
 ishes before that of Titian and Tintoret ; and this is true 
 of whatever these two giants touched ; — but they touched 
 little. A few level flakes of chestnut foliage; a blue 
 abstraction of hill forms from Cadore or the Euganeans ; 
 a grand mass or two of glowing ground and mighty 
 herbage, and a few burning fields of quiet cloud were all 
 they needed ; there is evidence of Tintoret’s having felt 
 more than this, but it occurs only in secondary fragments 
 of rock, cloud, or pine, hardly noticed among the accu- 
 mulated interest of his human subject. From the win- 
 dow of Titian’s house at Yenice, the chain of the Tyro- 
 lese Alps is seen lifted in spectral power above the 
 tufted plain of Treviso ; every dawn that reddens the 
 towers of Murano lights also a line of pyramidal fires 
 along that colossal ridge ; but there is, so far as I know, 
 no evidence in any of the master’s works of his ever hav- 
 ing beheld, much less felt, the majesty of their burning. 
 The dark firmament and saddened twilight of Tintoret 
 are sufficient for their end ; but the sun never plunges 
 behind San Giorgio in Aliga without such retinue of 
 radiant cloud, such rest of zoned light on the green la- 
 goon, as never received image from his hand. More 
 than this, of that which they loved and rendered much 
 is rendered conventionally ; by noble conventionalities 
 indeed, but such nevertheless as would be inexcusable if 
 the landscape became the principal subject instead of 
 an accompaniment. I will instance only the San Pietro 
 Martire, which, if not the most perfect, is at least the 
 most popular of Titian’s landscapes ; in which, to obtain 
 light on the flesh of the near figures the sky is made as 
 11 
 
162 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 dark as deep sea, the mountains are laid in with violent 
 and impossible blue, except one of them on the left, 
 which, to connect the distant light with the foreground, 
 is thrown into light relief, unexplained by its materials, 
 unlikely in its position, and in its degree impossible 
 under any circumstances. 
 
 I do not instance these as faults in the picture : there 
 are no works of very powerful color which are free from 
 s 7. causes of its conventionality concentrated or diffused, 
 on 111 Subsequent daring or disguised ; but as the conven- 
 schoois. tionality of this whole picture is mainly 
 
 thrown into the landscape, it is necessary, while we ac- 
 knowledge the virtue of this distance as a part of the 
 great composition, to be on our guard against the license 
 it assumes and the attractiveness of its overcharged 
 color. Fragments of far purer truth occur in the works 
 of Tintoret ; and in the drawing of foliage, whether 
 rapid or elaborate, of masses or details, the Venetian 
 painters, taken as a body, may be considered almost 
 faultless models. But the whole field of what they have 
 done is so narrow, and therein is so much of what is only 
 relatively right, and in itself false or imperfect, that the 
 young and inexperienced painter could run no greater 
 risk than the too early taking them for teachers ; and to 
 the general spectator their landscape is valuable rather 
 as a means of peculiar and solemn emotion than as min- 
 istering to, or inspiring the universal love of nature. 
 Hence while men of serious mind, especially those 
 whose pursuits have brought them into continued rela- 
 tions with the peopled rather than the lonely world, will 
 always look to the Venetian painters as having touched 
 those simple chords of landscape harmony which are 
 most in unison with earnest and melancholy feeling ; 
 those whose philosophy is more cheerful and more ex- 
 tended, as having been trained and colored among sim- 
 ple and solitary nature, will seek for a wider and more 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 163 
 
 systematic circle of teaching : they may grant that the 
 barred horizontal gloom of the Titian sky, and the massy 
 leaves of the Titian forest are among the most sublime 
 of the conceivable forms of material things ; but they 
 know that the virtue of these very forms is to be learned 
 only by right comparison of them with the cheerfulness, 
 fulness and comparative inquietness of other hours and 
 scenes ; that they are not intended for the continual 
 food, but the occasional soothing of the human heart ; 
 that there is a lesson of not less value in its place, 
 though of less concluding and sealing authority, in every 
 one of the more humble phases of material things : and 
 that there are some lessons of equal or greater authority 
 which these masters neither taught nor received. And 
 until the school of modern landscape arose Art had 
 never noted the links of this mighty chain ; it mattered 
 not that a fragment lay here and there, no heavenly 
 lightning could descend by it ; the landscape of the Ve- 
 netians was without effect on any contemporary in sub- 
 sequent schools ; it still remains on the continent as use- 
 less as if it had never existed; and at this moment 
 German and Italian landscapes, of which no words are 
 scornful enough to befit the utter degradation, hang in 
 the Venetian Academy in the next room to the Desert of 
 Titian and the Paradise of Tintoret.* 
 
 That then which I would have the reader inquire re- 
 specting every work of art of undetermined merit sub- 
 mitted to his judgment, is not whether it §8 The value of 
 be a work of especial grandeur, impor- arthow to be k esti- 
 tance, or power ; but whether it have any mated - 
 
 * Not the large Paradise, but the Fall of Adam, a small picture 
 chiefly in brown and gray, near Titian’s Assumption. Its companion, 
 the Death of Abel, is remarkable as containing a group of trees which 
 Turner, I believe accidentally, has repeated nearly mass for mass in 
 the “Marly.” Both are among the most noble works of this or 
 any other master, whether for preciousuess of color or energy of 
 thought. 
 
164 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 virtue or substance as a link in this chain of truth, 
 whether it have recorded or interpreted anything before 
 unknown, whether it have added one single stone to our 
 heaven-pointing pyramid, cut away one dark bough, or 
 levelled one rugged hillock in our path. This, if it be 
 an honest work of art, it must have done, for no man ever 
 yet worked honestly without giving some such help to 
 his race. God appoints to every one of his creatures a 
 separate mission, and if they discharge it honorably, if 
 they quit themselves like men and faithfully follow that 
 light which is in them, withdrawing from it all cold and 
 quenching influence, there will assuredly come of it such 
 burning as, in its appointed mode and measure, shall 
 shine before men, and be of service constant and holy. 
 Degrees infinite of lustre there must always be, but the 
 weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, 
 which is peculiar to him, and which worthily used will 
 be a gift also to his race forever — 
 
 “ Fool not,” says George Herbert, 
 
 For all may liave. 
 
 If they dare choose, a glorious life or grave.” 
 
 If, on the contrary, there be nothing of this freshness 
 achieved, if there be neither purpose nor fidelity in what 
 is done, if it be an envious or powerless imitation of 
 other men’s labors, if it be a display of mere manual dex- 
 terity or curious manufacture, or if in any other mode it 
 show itself as having its origin in vanity, — Cast it out. 
 It matters not what powers of mind may have been con- 
 cerned or corrupted in it, all have lost their savor, it is 
 worse than worthless ; — perilous — Cast it out. 
 
 Works of art are indeed always of mixed kind, their 
 honesty being more or less corrupted by the various 
 weaknesses of the painter, by his vanity, his idleness, or 
 his cowardice ; (the fear of doing right has far more in. 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 165 
 
 fluence on art than is commonly thought,) that only is 
 altogether to be rejected which is altogether vain, idle, 
 and cowardly. Of the rest the rank is to be estimated 
 rather by the purity of their metal than the coined value 
 of it. 
 
 Keeping these principles in view, let us endeavor to 
 obtain something like a general view of the assistance 
 
 which has been rendered to our study of _ „ . . . 
 
 . <*-1 i § 9 * Religious 
 
 nature by the various occurrences of land landscape of Italy. 
 
 . ° The aamirable- 
 
 scape m elder art, and by the more exclu- neg^of its com - 
 sively directed labors of modern schools. 
 
 To the ideal landscape of the early religious painters 
 of Italy I have alluded in the concluding chapter of the 
 second volume. It is absolutely right and beautiful in 
 its peculiar application ; but its grasp of nature is nar- 
 row and its treatment in most respects too severe and con- 
 ventional to form a profitable example when the land- 
 scape is to be alone the subject of thought. The great 
 virtue of it is its entire, exquisite, and humble realization 
 of those objects it selects ; in this respect differing from 
 such German imitations of it as I have met with, that 
 there is no effort of any fanciful or ornamental modifi- 
 cations, but loving fidelity to the thing studied. The 
 foreground plants are usually neither exaggerated nor 
 stiffened ; they do not form arches or frames or borders ; 
 their grace is unconfined, their simplicity undestroyed. 
 Cima da Conegliano, in his picture in the church of the 
 Madonna del! Orto at Venice, has given us the oak, the 
 fig, the beautiful “Erba della Madonna” on the wall, 
 precisely such a bunch of it as may be seen growing at 
 this day on the marble steps of that very church ; ivy 
 and other creepers, and a strawberry plant in the fore- 
 ground, with a blossom and a berry just set, and one half 
 ripe and one ripe, all patiently and innocently painted 
 from the real thing, and therefore most divine. Fra 
 Angelico’s use of the oxalis acetosella is as faithful in 
 
166 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 representation as touching- in feeling.* The ferns that 
 grow on the walls of Fiesole may be seen in their simple 
 verity on the architecture of Ghirlandajo. The rose, 
 the myrtle, and the lily, the olive and orange, pome- 
 granate and vine, have received their fairest portraiture 
 where they bear a sacred character ; even the common 
 plantains and mallows of the waysides are touched with 
 deep reverence by Raffaelle ; and indeed for the perfect 
 treatment of details of this kind, treatment as delicate 
 and affectionate as it is elevated and manly, it is to the 
 works of these schools alone that we can refer. And on 
 this their peculiar excellence I should the more earnestly 
 insist, because it is of a kind altogether neglected by the 
 English school, and with most unfortunate result, many 
 of our best painters missing their deserved rank solely 
 from the want of it, as Gainsborough; and all being 
 more or less checked in their progress or vulgarized in 
 their aim. 
 
 It is a misfortune for all honest critics, that hardly any 
 quality of art is independently to be praised, and with- 
 § 10. Finish, and ou ^ reference to the motive from which it 
 how w Sht° a id resulted, and the place in which it appears ; 
 how wrong. so no principle can be simply enforced 
 but it shall seem to countenance a vice ; while the work 
 of qualification and explanation both weakens the force 
 of what is said, and is not perhaps always likely to be 
 with patience received : so also those who desire to mis- 
 understand or to oppose have it always in their power 
 to become obtuse listeners or specious opponents. Thus 
 I hardly dare insist upon the virtue of completion, lest 
 I should be supposed a defender of Wouvermans or 
 Gerard Dow ; neither can I adequately praise the power 
 
 * The triple leaf of this plant, and white flower, stained purple, 
 probably gave it strange typical interest among the Christian painters. 
 Angelico, in using its leaves mixed with daisies in the foreground of 
 his Crucifixion had, I imagine, a view also to its chemical property. 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 167 
 
 of Tintoret, without fearing to be thought adverse to 
 Holbein or Perugino. The fact is, that both finish and 
 impetuosity, specific minuteness, or large abstraction, 
 may be the signs of passion, or of its reverse ; may re- 
 sult from affection or indifference, intellect or dulness. 
 Some men finish from intense love of the beautiful in the 
 smallest parts of what they do ; others in pure incapa- 
 bility of comprehending anything but parts ; others to 
 show their dexterity with the brush, and prove expen- 
 diture of time. Some are impetuous and bold in their 
 handling, from having great thoughts to express which 
 are independent of detail ; others because they have bad 
 taste or have been badly taught ; others from vanity, and 
 others from indolence. (Compare Yol. II. Chap. IX. § 8.) 
 Now both the finish and incompletion are right where 
 they are the signs of passion or of thought, and both are 
 wrong, and I think the finish the more contemptible of 
 the two, when they cease to be so. The modern Italians 
 will paint every leaf of a laurel or rose-bush without 
 the slightest feeling of their beauty or character ; and 
 without showing one spark of intellect or affection from 
 beginning to end. Anything is better than this ; and 
 yet the very highest schools do the same thing, or nearly 
 so, but with totally different motives and perceptions, 
 and the result is divine. On the whole, I conceive that 
 the extremes of good and evil lie with the finishers, and 
 that whatever glorious power we may admit in men 
 like Tintoret, whatever attractiveness of method to 
 Bubens, Eembrandt, or, though in far less degree, our 
 own Beynolds, still the thoroughly great men are those 
 who have done everything thoroughly, and who, in a 
 word, have never despised anything, however small, 
 of God’s making. And this is the chief fault of our 
 English landscapists, that they have not the intense 
 all-observing penetration of well-balanced mind ; they 
 have not, except in one or two instances, anything of 
 
168 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 that feeling which Wordsworth shows in the follow- 
 ing lines : — 
 
 “ So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive ; — 
 
 Would that the little flowers were born to live 
 Conscious of half the pleasure which they give. 
 
 That to this mountain daisy’s self were known 
 The beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown 
 On the smooth surface of this naked stone T 
 
 That is a little bit of good, downright, foreground 
 painting — no mistake about it ; daisy, and shadow, and 
 stone texture and all. Our painters must come to this 
 before they have done their duty ; and yet, on the other 
 hand, let them beware of finishing, for the sake of finish, 
 all over their picture. The ground is not to be all over 
 daisies, nor is every daisy to have its star-shaped shad- 
 ow ; there is as much finish in the right concealment of 
 things as in the right exhibition of them ; and while I 
 demand this amount of specific character where nature 
 shows it, I demand equal fidelity to her where she con- 
 ceals it. To paint mist rightly, space rightly, and light 
 rightly, it may be often necessary to paint nothing else 
 rightly, but the rule is simple for all that ; if the artist 
 is painting something that he knows and loves, as he 
 knows it because he loves it, whether it be the fair 
 strawberry of Cima, or the clear sky of Francia, or the 
 blazing incomprehensible mist of Turner, he is all right ; 
 but the moment he does anything as he thinks it ought 
 to be, because he does not care about it, he is all wrong. 
 He has only to ask himself whether he cares for anything 
 except himself ; so far as he does he will make a good 
 picture ; so far as he thinks of himself a vile one. This 
 is the root of the viciousness of the whole French school. 
 Industry they have, learning they have, power they have, 
 feeling they have, yet not so much feeling as ever to 
 force them to forget themselves even for a moment ; the 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 169 
 
 § 11. The open 
 skies of the relig- 
 ious schools, how 
 valuable. Moun- 
 tain drawing of 
 Masaccio. Land- 
 scape of the Bel- 
 linis and Giorgi- 
 one. 
 
 ruling motive is invariably vanity, and the picture there- 
 fore an abortion. 
 
 Keturning to the pictures of the religious schools, we 
 find that their open skies are also of the highest valua 
 Their preciousness is such that no subse- 
 quent schools can by comparison be said 
 to have painted sky at all, but only clouds, 
 or mist, or blue canopies. The golden sky 
 of Marco Basaiti in the Academy of Yenice 
 altogether overpowers and renders value- 
 less that of Titian beside it. Those of Francia in the 
 gallery of Bologna are even more wonderful, because 
 cooler in tone and behind figures in full light. The 
 touches of white light in the horizon of Angelico’s Last 
 Judgment are felt and wrought with equal truth. The 
 dignified and simple forms of cloud in repose are often 
 by these painters sublimely expressed, but of change- 
 ful cloud form they show no examples. The architec- 
 ture, mountains, and water of these distances are com- 
 monly conventional ; motives are to be found in them of 
 the highest beauty, and especially remarkable for quan- 
 tity and meaning of incident ; but they can only be 
 studied or accepted in the particular feeling that pro- 
 duced them. It may generally be observed that what- 
 ever has been the result of strong emotion is ill seen 
 unless through the medium of such emotion, and will 
 lead to conclusions utterly false and perilous, if it be 
 made a subject of cold-hearted observance, or an object 
 of systematic imitation. One piece of genuine mountain 
 drawing, however, occurs in the landscape of Masaccio’s 
 Tribute Money. It is impossible to say what strange 
 results might have taken place in this particular field of 
 art, or how suddenly a great school of landscape might 
 have arisen, had the life of this great painter been pro- 
 longed. Of this particular fresco I shall have much to 
 say hereafter. The two brothers Bellini gave a marked 
 
170 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 and vigorous impulse to the landscape of Venice, of 
 Gentile’s architecture I shall speak presently. Gio- 
 vanni’s, though in style less interesting and in place less 
 prominent, occurring chiefly as a kind of frame to his 
 pictures, connecting them with the architecture of the 
 churches for wdiich they were intended, is in refinement 
 of realization, I suppose, quite unrivalled, especially in 
 passages requiring pure gradation, as the hollows of 
 vaultings. That of Veronese would look ghostly beside 
 it ; that of Titian lightless. His landscape is occasion- 
 ally quaint and strange like Giorgione’s, and as fine in 
 color, as that behind the Madonna in the Brera gallery 
 at Milan ; but a more truthful fragment occurs in the 
 picture in San Francesco della Vigna at Venice ; and in 
 the picture of St. Jerome in the church of San Crisosto- 
 mo, the landscape is as perfect and beautiful as any back- 
 ground may legitimately be, and finer, as far as it goes, 
 than anything of Titian’s. It is remarkable for the abso- 
 lute truth of its sky, whose blue, clear as crystal, and 
 though deep in tone bright as the open air, is gradated 
 to the horizon with a cautiousness and finish almost in- 
 conceivable ; and to obtain light at the horizon without 
 contradicting the system of chiaroscuro adopted in the 
 figures which are lighted from the right hand, it is 
 barred across with some glowing white cirri, which, in 
 their turn, are opposed by a single dark horizontal line of 
 lower cloud ; and to throw the whole farther back, there 
 is a wreath of rain cloud of warmer color floating above 
 the mountains, lighted on its under edge, whose faith- 
 fulness to nature, both in hue and in its light and 
 shattering form, is altogether exemplary ; the wandering 
 of the light among the hills is equally studied, and the 
 whole is crowned by the grand realization of the leaves 
 of the fig-tree alluded to (Vol. II. Part hi. Chap. 5), as 
 well as of the herbage upon the rocks. Considering that 
 with all this care and completeness in the background, 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 171 
 
 there is nothing that is not of meaning and necessity in 
 reference to the figures, and that in the figures them- 
 selves the dignity and heavenliness of the highest relig- 
 ious painters are combined with a force and purity of 
 color, greater I think than Titian’s, it is a work which 
 may be set before the young artist as in every respect a 
 nearly faultless guide. Giorgione’s landscape is inven- 
 tive and solemn, but owing to the rarity even of his nom- 
 inal works I dare not speak of it in general terms. It is 
 certainly conventional, and is rather, I imagine, to be 
 studied for its color and its motives than its details. 
 
 Of Titian and Tintoret I have spoken already. The 
 latter is in every way the greater master, never indulging 
 in the exaggerated color of Titian, and at- 
 
 , . . , , i -i * -i , -I • §12. Landscape of 
 
 taming lar more perfect light ; his grasp Titian and Tmto- 
 of nature is more extensive, and his view 
 of her more imaginative, (incidental notices of his land- 
 scape will be found in the chapter on Imagination pen- 
 etrative, of the second volume,) but he is usually too 
 impatient to carry liis thoughts as far out, or to realize 
 with as much substantiality as Titian. In the St. Jerome 
 of the latter, in the gallery of the Brera, there is a su- 
 perb example of the modes in which the objects of land- 
 scape may be either suggested or elaborated according 
 to their place and claim. The larger features of the 
 ground, foliage, and drapery, as well as the lion in the 
 lower angle, are executed with a slightness which admits 
 not of close examination, and which, if not in shade, would 
 be offensive to the generality of observers. But on the 
 rock above the lion, where it turns towards the light, and 
 where the eye is intended to dwell, there is a wreath of 
 ivy of which every leaf is separately drawn with the great- 
 est accuracy and care, and beside it a lizard, studied with 
 equal earnestness, yet always with that right grandeur 
 of manner to which I have alluded in the preface. Tin- 
 toret seldom reaches or attempts the elaboration in sub- 
 
172 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 stance and color of these objects, bnt he is even more 
 truth -telling and certain in his rendering of all the great 
 characters of specific form, and as the painter of Space 
 he stands altogether alone among dead masters ; being 
 the first who introduced the slightness and confusion of 
 touch which are expressive of the effects of luminous 
 objects seen through large spaces of air, and the princi- 
 ples of aerial color which have been since carried out in 
 other fields by Turner. I conceive him to be the most 
 powerful painter whom the world has seen, and that he 
 was prevented from being also the most perfect, partly 
 by untoward circumstances in his position and education, 
 partly by the very fulness and impetuosity of his own mind, 
 partly by the want of religious feeling and its accompa- 
 nying perception of beauty for his noble treatment of 
 religious subjects, of which I have given several exam- 
 ples in the third part, appears to be the result only of 
 that grasp which a great and well-toned intellect neces- 
 sarily takes of any subject submitted to it, and is want- 
 ing in the signs of the more withdrawn and sacred sym- 
 pathies. 
 
 But whatever advances were made by Tintoret in 
 modes of artistical treatment, he cannot be considered 
 as having enlarged the sphere of landscape conception. 
 He took no cognizance even of the materials and mo- 
 tives, so singularly rich in color, which were forever 
 around him in his own Yenice. All portions of Vene- 
 tian scenery introduced by him are treated conventional- 
 ly and carelessly ; the architectural characters lost alto- 
 gether, the sea distinguished from the sky only by a 
 darker green, while of the sky itself only those forms 
 were employed by him which had been repeated again 
 and again for centuries, though in less tangibility and 
 completion. Of mountain scenery he has left, I believe, 
 no example so far carried as that of J ohn Bellini above 
 instanced. 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES . 
 
 173 
 
 The Florentine and Ambrian schools supply us with 
 no examples of landscape, except that introduced by 
 their earliest masters, gradually over- gi3 gch00ls of 
 whelmed under renaissance architecture. and r BSogn| Iilan ’ 
 
 Leonardo’s landscape has been of un- 
 fortunate effect on art, so far as it has had effect at all. 
 In realization of detail he verges on the ornamental, in 
 his rock outlines he has all the deficiencies and little of 
 the feeling of the earlier men. Behind the “ Sacrifice for 
 the Friends ” of Giotto at Pisa, there is a sweet piece 
 of rock incident, a little fountain breaking' out at the 
 mountain foot, and trickling away, its course marked by 
 branches of reeds, the latter formal enough certainly, 
 and always in triplets, but still with a sense of nature 
 pervading the whole which is utterly wanting to the 
 rocks of Leonardo in the Holy Family in the Louvre. 
 The latter are grotesque without being ideal, and extra- 
 ordinary without being impressive. The sketch in the 
 Uffizii of Florence has some fine foliage, and there is of 
 course a certain virtue in all the work of a man like Leo- 
 nardo which I would not depreciate, but our admiration 
 of it in this particular field must be qualified, and our 
 following cautious. 
 
 No advances were made in landscape, so far as I know, 
 after the time of Tintoret ; the power of art ebbed gradu- 
 ally away from the derivative schools ; various degrees of 
 cleverness or feeling being manifested in more or less bril- 
 liant conventionalism. I once supposed there, was some 
 life in the landscape of Bomenichino, but in this I must 
 have been wrong. The man who painted the Madonna 
 del Bosario and Martyrdom of St. Agnes in the gallery of 
 Bologna, is palpably incapable of doing anything good, 
 great, or right in any field, way, or kind, whatsoever.* 
 
 * This is no rash method of judgment, sweeping and hasty as it may 
 appear. From the weaknesses of an artist, or failures, however nu- 
 merous, we have no right to conjecture his total inability ; a time may 
 
174 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 Though, however, at this period the general grasp of 
 the schools was perpetually contracting, a gift was given 
 , , „ , to the world by Claude, for which we are 
 vator, and the perhaps hardly enough grateful, owing to 
 
 Poussins. f * J % - , 
 
 the very frequency of our after enjoyment 
 of it. He set the sun in heaven, and was, I suppose, the 
 first who attempted anything like the realization of actual 
 sunshine in misty air. He gives the first example of the 
 study of nature for her own sake, and allowing for the 
 unfortunate circumstances of his education, and for his 
 evident inferiority of intellect, more could hardly have 
 been expected from him. His false taste, forced compo- 
 sition, and ignorant rendering of detail have perhaps 
 been of more detriment to art than the gift he gave was 
 of advantage. The character of his own mind is sin- 
 gular ; I know of no other instance of a man’s working 
 from nature continually with the desire of being true, 
 and never attaining the power of drawing so much as a 
 
 come when he may rise into sudden strength, or an instance occur 
 when his efforts shall be successful. But there are some pictures 
 which rank not under the head of failures, but of perpetrations or 
 commissions ; some things which a man cannot do nor say without 
 sealing forever his character and capacity. The angel holding the 
 cross with his finger in his eye, the roaring red-faced children about 
 the crown of thorns, the blasphemous (I speak deliberately and de- 
 terminedly) head of Christ upon the handkerchief, and the mode in 
 which the martyrdom of the saint is exhibited (I do not choose to use 
 the expressions which alone could characterize it) are perfect, suffi- 
 cient, incontrovertible proofs that whatever appears good in any of the 
 doings of such a painter must be deceptive, and that we may be as- 
 sured that our taste is corrupted and false whenever we feel disposed 
 to admire him. I am prepared to support this position, however un- 
 charitable it may seem ; a man may be tempted into a gross sin by 
 passion, and forgiven ; and yet there are some kinds of sins into which 
 only men of a certain kind can be tempted, and which cannot be for- 
 given. It should be added, however, that the artistical qualities of 
 these pictures are in every way worthy of the conceptions they real- 
 ize ; I do not recollect any instances of color or execution so coarse 
 and feelingless. 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 175 
 
 bough of a tree rightly. Salvator, a man originally en- 
 dowed with far higher power of mind than Claude, was 
 altogether unfaithful to his mission, and has left us, I 
 believe, no gift. Everything that he did is evidently for 
 the sake of exhibiting his own dexterity ; there is no 
 love of any kind for anything ; his choice of landscape 
 features is dictated by no delight in the sublime, but by 
 mere animal restlessness or ferocity, guided by an imag- 
 inative power of which he could not altogether deprive 
 himself. He has done nothing which others have not 
 done better, or which it would not have been better not 
 to have done ; in nature, he mistakes distortion for en- 
 ergy, and savageness for sublimity ; in man, mendicity 
 for sanctity, and conspiracy for heroism. 
 
 The landscape of Nicolo Poussin shows much power, 
 and is usually composed and elaborated on right princi- 
 ples, (compare preface to second edition,) but I am aware 
 of nothing that it has attained of new or peculiar excel- 
 lence ; it is a graceful mixture of qualities to be found 
 in other masters in higher degrees. In finish it is infe- 
 rior to Leonardo’s, in invention to Giorgione’s, in truth 
 to Titian’s, in grace to Raffaelle’s. The landscapes of 
 Gaspar have serious feeling and often valuable and sol- 
 emn color ; virtueless otherwise, they are full of the 
 most degraded mannerism, and I believe the admiration 
 of them to have been productive of extensive evil among 
 recent schools. 
 
 The development of landscape north of the Alps, pre- 
 sents us with the same general phases under modifica- 
 tions dependent partly on less intensity of 
 
 1 .. t. : . , , §15. German and 
 
 feeling, partly on diminished availableness Flemish land- 
 of landscape material. That of the relig- 
 ious painters is treated with the same affectionate com- 
 pletion ; but exuberance of fancy sometimes diminishes 
 the influence of the imagination, and the absence of the 
 Italian force of passion admits of more patient and some- 
 
176 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 what less intellectual elaboration. A morbid habit of 
 mind is evident in many, seeming to lose sight of the 
 balance and relations of things, so as to become intense 
 in trifles, gloomily minute, as in Albert Durer ; and this 
 mingled with a feverish operation of the fancy, which 
 appears to result from certain habitual conditions of 
 bodily health rather than of mental culture, (and of which 
 the sickness without the power is eminently characteris- 
 tic of the modern Germans ;) but with all this there are 
 virtues of the very highest order in those schools, and I 
 regret that my knowledge is insufficient to admit of my 
 giving any detailed account of them. 
 
 In the landscape of Rembrandt and Rubens, we have 
 the northern parallel to the power of the Venetians. 
 Among the etchings and drawings of Rembrandt, land- 
 scape thoughts may be found not unworthy of Titian, 
 and studies from nature of sublime fidelity ; but his sys- 
 tem of chiaroscuro was inconsistent with the gladness, 
 and his peculiar modes of feeling with the grace, of nat- 
 ure ; nor from my present knowledge can I name any 
 work on canvas in which he has carried out the dignity 
 of his etched conceptions, or exhibited any perceptive- 
 ness of new truths. 
 
 Not so Rubens, who perhaps furnishes us with the first 
 instances of complete unconventional unaffected land- 
 scape. His treatment is healthy, manly, and rational, not 
 very affectionate, yet often condescending to minute and 
 multitudinous detail ; always as far as it goes pure, for- 
 cible, and refreshing, consummate in composition, and 
 marvellous in color. In the Pitti palace, the best of its 
 two Rubens landscapes has been placed near a character- 
 istic and highly -finished Titian, the marriage of St. Cath- 
 erine. But for the grandeur of line and solemn feeling in 
 the flock of sheep, and the figures of the latter work, I 
 doubt if all its glow and depth of tone could support its 
 over charged green and blue against the open breezy 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 177 
 
 sunshine of the Fleming. I do not mean to rank the art 
 of Rubens with that of Titian, but it is always to be re- 
 membered that Titian hardly ever paints sunshine, but 
 a certain opalescent twilight which has as much of 
 human emotion as of imitative truth in it, — 
 
 “ The clouds that gather round the setting sun 
 Do take a sober coloring from an eye 
 That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality : ” 
 
 and that art of this kind must always be liable to some 
 appearance of failure when compared with a less pa- 
 thetic statement of facts. 
 
 It is to be noted, however, that the licenses taken by 
 Rubens in particular instances are as bold as his general 
 statements are sincere. In the landscape just instanced 
 the horizon is an oblique line ; in the Sunset of our own 
 gallery many of the shadows fall at right angles to the 
 light ; and in a picture in the Dulwich gallery a rainbow 
 is seen by the spectator at the side of the sun. 
 
 These bold and frank licenses are not to be considered 
 as detracting from the rank of the painter ; they are usu- 
 ally characteristic of those minds whose grasp of nature 
 is so certain and extensive as to enable them fearlessly 
 to sacrifice a truth of actuality to a truth of feeling. 
 Yet the young artist must keep in mind that the paint- 
 er’s greatness consists not in his taking, but in his aton- 
 ing for them. 
 
 Among the professed landscapists of the Dutch 
 school, we find much dexterous imitation of certain 
 kinds of nature, remarkable usually for its § 16> The i ower 
 persevering rejection of whatever is great, Dutch schools - 
 valuable, or affecting in the object studied. Where, 
 however, they show real desire to paint what they saw 
 as far as they saw it, there is of course much in them 
 that is instructive, as in Cuyp and in the etchings of 
 Waterloo, which have even very sweet and genuine feel- 
 12 
 
178 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 ing*, and so in some of their architectural painters. 
 But the object of the great body of them is merely to 
 display manual dexterities of one kind or another, and 
 their effect on the public mind is so totally for evil, that 
 though I do not deny the advantage an artist of real 
 judgment may derive from the study of some of them, I 
 conceive the best patronage that any monarch could 
 possibly bestow upon the arts, would be to collect the 
 whole body of them into a grand gallery and bum it to 
 the ground. 
 
 Passing to the English school, we find a connecting 
 link between them and the Italians formed by Bichard 
 § it English Wilson. Had this artist studied under 
 school, Wilson and favorable circumstances, there is evidence 
 
 Gainsborough. . . n 
 
 oi his having possessed power enough to 
 produce an original picture ; but, corrupted by study of 
 the Poussins, and gathering his materials chiefly in 
 their field, the district about Borne — a district especially 
 unfavorable, as exhibiting no pure or healthy nature, 
 but a diseased and overgrown Flora among half-devel- 
 oped volcanic rocks, loose calcareous concretions, and 
 mouldering wrecks of buildings — and whose spirit, I 
 conceive, to be especially opposed to the natural tone of 
 the English mind, his originality was altogether over- 
 powered, and, though he paints in a manly way and 
 occasionally reaches exquisite tones of color, as in the 
 small and very precious picture belonging to Mr. Bo- 
 gers, and sometimes manifests some freshness of feeling, 
 as in the Villa of Maecenas of our National Gallery, yet 
 his pictures are in general mere diluted adaptations 
 from Poussin and Salvator, without the dignity of the 
 one or the fire of the other. 
 
 Not so Gainsborough — a great name his, whether of 
 the English or any other school. The greatest colorist 
 since Bubens, and the last, I think, of legitimate color- 
 ists ; that is to say, of those who were fully acquainted 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES . 
 
 179 
 
 with the power of their material ; pure in his English 
 feeling, profound in his seriousness, graceful in his gay- 
 ety, there are nevertheless certain deductions to be 
 made from his worthiness which yet I dread to make, 
 because my knowledge of his landscape works is not 
 extensive enough to justify me in speaking of them de- 
 cisively ; but this is to be noted of all that I know, that 
 they are rather motives of feeling and color than earnest 
 studies; that their execution is in some degree man- 
 nered, and always hasty ; that they are altogether want- 
 ing in the affectionate detail of which I have already 
 spoken ; and that their color is in some measure depend- 
 ent on a bituminous brown and conventional green 
 which have more of science than of truth in them. 
 These faults may be sufficiently noted in the magnificent 
 picture presented by him to the Royal Academy, and 
 tested by a comparison of it with the Turner (Llanberis,) 
 in the same room. Nothing can be more attractively 
 luminous or aerial than the distance of the Gainsbor- 
 ough, nothing more bold or inventive than the forms of 
 its crags and the diffusion of the broad distant light 
 upon them, where a vulgar artist would have thrown 
 them into dark contrast. But it will be found that the 
 light of the distance is brought out by a violent exag- 
 geration of the gloom in the valley ; that the forms of 
 the green trees which bear the chief light are careless 
 and ineffective ; that the markings of the crags are 
 equally hasty; and that no object in the foreground has 
 realization enough to enable the eye to rest upon it. 
 The Turner, a much feebler picture in its first impres- 
 sion, and altogether inferior in the quality and value of 
 its individual hues, will yet be found in the end more 
 forcible, because unexaggerated ; its gloom is moderate 
 and aerial, its light deep in tone, its color entirely un- 
 conventional, and the forms of its rocks studied with 
 the most devoted care. With Gainsborough terminates 
 
180 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 the series of painters connected with the elder schools. 
 By whom, among those yet living or lately lost, the im- 
 pulse was first given to modern landscape, I attempt not 
 to decide. Such questions are rather invidious than 
 interesting; the particular tone or direction of any 
 school seems to me always to have resulted rather from 
 certain phases of national character, limited to particu- 
 lar periods, than from individual teaching ; and, espe- 
 cially among moderns, what has been good in each mas- 
 ter has been commonly original. 
 
 I have already alluded to the simplicity and earnest- 
 ness of the mind of Constable ; to its vigorous rupture 
 § is. constable, with school laws, and to its unfortunate 
 Caicott. error on the opposite side. Unteachable- 
 
 ness seems to have been a main feature of his character, 
 and there is corresponding want of veneration in the 
 way he approaches nature herself. His early education 
 and associations were also against him ; they induced in 
 him a morbid preference of subjects of a low order. I 
 have never seen any work of his in which there were any 
 signs of his being able to draw, and hence even the most 
 necessary details are painted by him inefficiently. His 
 works are also eminently wanting both in rest and re- 
 finement, and Fuseli’s jesting compliment is too true ; 
 for the showery weather in which the artist delights, 
 misses alike the majesty of storm and the loveliness of 
 calm weather: it is great-coat weather, and nothing 
 more. There is strange want of depth in the mind 
 which has no pleasure in sunbeams but when piercing 
 painfully through clouds, nor in foliage but when shaken 
 by the wind, nor in light itself but when dickering, glis- 
 tening, restless, and feeble. Yet, with all these deduc- 
 tions, his works are to be deeply respected as thoroughly 
 original, thoroughly honest, free from affectation, manly 
 in manner, frequently successful in cool color, and es- 
 pecially realizing certain motives of English scenery 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 181 
 
 with perhaps as much affection as such scenery, unless 
 when regarded through media of feeling derived from 
 higher sources, is calculated to inspire. 
 
 On the works of Calcott, high as his reputation stands, 
 I should look with far less respect ; I see not any pref- 
 erence or affection in the artist; there is no tendency 
 in him with which we can sympathize, nor does there 
 appear any sign of aspiration, effort, or enjoyment in 
 any one of his works. He appears to have completed 
 them methodically, to have been content with them 
 when completed, to have thought them good, legitimate, 
 regular pictures ; perhaps in some respects better than 
 nature. He painted everything tolerably, and nothing 
 excellently ; he has given us no gift, struck for us no 
 light, and though he has produced one or two valuable 
 works, of which the finest I know is the Marine in the 
 possession of Sir J. Swinburne, they will, I believe, in 
 future have no place among those considered represent- 
 ative of the English school. 
 
 Throughout the range of elder art it will be remem- 
 bered we have found no instance of the faithful paint- 
 ing of mountain scenery, except in a faded 
 background of Masaccio’s: nothing more tendency of re- 
 
 ,, . IT,- , cent landscape. 
 
 than rocky eminences, undulating hills, or 
 fantastic crags, and even these treated altogether under 
 typical forms. The more specific study of mountains 
 seems to have coincided with the most dexterous prac- 
 tice of water-color ; but it admits of doubt whether the 
 choice of subject has been directed by the vehicle, or 
 whether, as I rather think, the tendency of national feel- 
 ing has been followed in the use of the most appropriate 
 means. Something is to be attributed to the increased 
 demand for slighter works of art, and much to the sense 
 of the quality of objects now called picturesque, which 
 appears to be exclusively of modern origin. From what 
 feeling the character of middle-age architecture and cos- 
 
182 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 tume arose, or with what kind of affection their forms 
 were regarded by the inventors, I am utterly unable to 
 guess ; but of this I think we may be assured, that the 
 natural instinct and child-like wisdom of those days were 
 altogether different from the modern feeling, which ap- 
 pears to have taken its origin in the absence of such ob- 
 jects, and to be based rather on the strangeness of their 
 occurrence than on any real affection for them ; and 
 which is certainly so shallow and ineffective as to be 
 instantly and always sacrificed by the majority to fash- 
 ion, comfort, or economy. Yet I trust that there is a 
 healthy though feeble love of nature mingled with it, 
 nature pure, separate, felicitous, which is also peculiar 
 to the moderns; and as signs of this feeling, or min- 
 isters to it, I look with veneration upon many works 
 which, in a technical point of view, are of minor im- 
 portance. 
 
 I have been myself indebted for much teaching and 
 more delight to those of the late G. Bobson. Weak- 
 § 20. g. Robeon, nesses there are in them manifold, much 
 use of° x the tom bad drawing, much forced color, much over- 
 “ style.” finish, little of wdiat artists call composi- 
 
 tion ; but there is thorough affection for the thing 
 drawn ; they are serious and quiet in the highest degree, 
 certain qualities of atmosphere and texture in them have 
 never been excelled, and certain facts of mountain scen- 
 ery never but by them expressed, as, for instance, the 
 stillness and depth of the mountain tarns, with the re- 
 versed imagery of their darkness signed across by the 
 soft lines of faintly touching winds ; the solemn flush of 
 the brown fern and glowing heath under evening light ; 
 the purple mass of mountains far removed, seen against 
 clear still twilight. With equal gratitude I look to the 
 drawings of David Cox, which, in spite of their loose and 
 seemingly careless execution, are not less serious in their 
 meaning, nor less important in their truth. I must, 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 1S3 
 
 however, in reviewing those modern works in which cer- 
 tain modes of execution are particularly manifested, in- 
 sist especially on this general principle, applicable to all 
 times of art ; that what is usually called the style or 
 manner of an artist is, in all good art, nothing but the 
 best means of getting at the p articular truth which the 
 artist w anted ; it is not a mode peculiar to himself of 
 getting at the same truths as other men, but the only 
 mode of getting the particular facts he desires, and which 
 mode, if others had desired to express those facts, they 
 also must have adopted. All habits of execution per- 
 sisted in under no such necessity, but because the artist 
 has invented them, or desires to show his dexterity in 
 them, are utterly base ; for every good painter finds so 
 much difficulty in reaching the end he sees and desires, 
 that he has no time nor power left for playing tricks on 
 the road to it ; he catches at the easiest and best means 
 he can get ; it is possible that such means may be sin- 
 gular, and then it will be said that his style is strange ; 
 but it is not a style at all, it is the saying of a particular 
 thing in the only way in which it possibly can be said. 
 Thus the reed pen outline and peculiar touch of Prout, 
 which are frequently considered as mere manner, are in 
 fact the only means of expressing the crumbling charac- 
 ter of stone which the artist loves and desires. That 
 character never has been expressed except by him, nor 
 will it ever be expressed except by his means. And it is 
 of the greatest importance to distinguish this kind of 
 necessary and virtuous manner from the conventional 
 manners very frequent in derivative schools, and always 
 utterly to be contemned, wherein an artist, desiring noth- 
 ing and feeling nothing, executes everything in his own 
 particular mode, and teaches emulous scholars how to do 
 with difficulty what might have been done with ease. It 
 is true that there are sometimes instances in which great 
 masters have employed different means of getting at the 
 
184 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 same end, but in these cases their choice has been always 
 of those which to them appeared the shortest and most 
 complete ; their practice has never been prescribed by 
 affectation or continued from habit, except so far as must 
 be expected from such weakness as is common to all 
 men ; from hands that necessarily do most readily what 
 they are most accustomed to do, and minds always liable 
 to prescribe to the hands that which they can do most 
 readily. 
 
 The recollection of this will keep us from being* of- 
 fended with the loose and blotted handling of David 
 Cox. There is no other means by which his object could 
 be attained. The looseness, coolness, and moisture of 
 his herbage; the rustling crumpled freshness of his 
 broad-leaved weeds ; the play of pleasant light across his 
 deep heathered moor or plashing sand ; the melting of 
 fragments of white mist into the dropping blue above ; 
 all this has not been fully recorded except by him, and 
 what there is of accidental in his mode of reaching it, 
 answers gracefully to the accidental part of nature her- 
 self, Yet he is capable of more than this, and if he suf- 
 fers himself uniformly to paint beneath his capability, 
 that which began in feeling must necessarily end in man- 
 ner. He paints too many small pictures, and perhaps 
 has of late permitted his peculiar execution to be more 
 manifest than is necessary. Of this, he is himself the 
 best judge. For almost all faults of this kind the public 
 are answerable, not the painter. I have alluded to one 
 of his grander works — such as I should wish always to 
 see him paint — in the preface; another, I think still 
 finer, a red sunset on distant hills, almost unequalled for 
 truth and power of color, was painted by him several 
 years ago, and remains, I believe, in his own posses- 
 sion. 
 
 The deserved popularity of Copley Fielding has ren- 
 dered it less necessary for me to allude frequently to his 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 185 
 
 works in tlie following pages than it would otherwise 
 have been, more especially as my own sympathies and 
 enjoyments are so entirely directed in the 
 
 , J , T-ii- ii i-i i T §21> Copley Field- 
 
 cnannel which his art has taken, that 1 am mg. Phenomena 
 afraid of trusting them too far. Yet I may, 01 distant c °‘° x ’ 
 perhaps, be permitted to speak of myself so far as I sup- 
 pose my own feelings to be representative of those of a 
 class ; and I suppose that there are many who, like my- 
 self, at some period of their life have derived more in- 
 tense and healthy pleasure from the works of this painter 
 than of any other whatsoever ; healthy, because always 
 based on his faithful and simple rendering of nature, 
 and that of very lovely and impressive nature, altogether 
 freed from coarseness, violence, or vulgarity. Various 
 references to that wdiich he has attained will be found 
 subsequently : what I am now about to say respecting 
 what he has not attained, is not in depreciation of what 
 he has accomplished, but in regret at his suffering 
 powers of a high order to remain in any measure dor- 
 mant. 
 
 He indulges himself too much in the use of crude 
 color. Pure cobalt, violent rose, and purple, are of fre- 
 quent occurrence in his distances; pure siennas and 
 other browns in his foregrounds, and that not as expres- 
 sive of lighted but of local color. The reader will find 
 in the following chapters that I am no advocate for sub- 
 dued coloring ; but crude color is not bright color, and 
 there was never a noble or brilliant work of color yet 
 produced, whose real form did not depend on the sub- 
 duing of its tints rather than the elevation of them. 
 
 It is perhaps one of the most difficult lessons to learn 
 'in art, that the warm colors of distance, even the most 
 glowing, are subdued by the air so as in no wise to re- 
 semble the same color seen on a foreground object ; so 
 that the rose of sunset on clouds or mountains has a gray 
 in it which distinguishes it from the rose color of the 
 
186 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 leaf of a flower ; and the mingling of this gray of dis- 
 tance, without in the slightest degree taking away the 
 expression of the intense and perfect purity of the color 
 in and by itself, is perhaps the last attainment of the 
 great landscape colorist. In the same way the blue of 
 distance, however intense, is not the blue of a bright blue 
 flower, and it is not distinguished from it by different 
 texture merely, but by a certain intermixture and under- 
 current of warm color, which is altogether wanting in 
 many of the blues of Fielding’s distances; and so of 
 every bright distant color ; while in foreground where 
 colors may be, and ought to be, pure, yet that any of 
 them are expressive of light is only to be felt where there 
 is the accurate fitting of them to their relative shadows 
 which we find in the works of Giorgione, Titian, Tinto- 
 ret, Veronese, Turner, and all other great colorists in 
 proportion as they are so. Of this fitting of light to 
 shadow Fielding is altogether regardless, so that his 
 foregrounds are constantly assuming the aspect of over- 
 charged local color instead of sunshine, and his figures 
 and cattle look transparent. 
 
 Again, the finishing of Fielding’s foregrounds, as re- 
 gards their drawing, is minute without accuracy, multi- 
 22 tudinous without thought, and confused 
 
 mountain** f ore- without mystery. Where execution is seen 
 to be in measure accidental, as in Cox, it 
 may be received as representative of what is accidental 
 in nature ; but there is no part of Fielding’s foreground 
 that is accidental ; it is evidently worked and re-worked, 
 dotted, rubbed, and finished with great labor, and where 
 the virtue, playfulness, and freedom of accident are thus 
 removed, one of two virtues must be substituted for them. 
 Either we must have the deeply studied and imaginative 
 foreground, of which every part is necessary to every 
 other, and whose every spark of light is essential to the 
 well-being of the whole, of which the foregrounds of 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 187 
 
 Turner in the Liber Stndiorum are the most eminent 
 examples I know, or else we must have in some measure 
 the botanical faithfulness and realization of the early 
 masters. Neither of these virtues is to be found in Field- 
 ing’s. Its features, though grouped with feeling, are yet 
 scattered and inessential. Any one of them might be al- 
 tered in many ways without doing harm ; there is no pro- 
 portioned, necessary, unalterable relation among them ; 
 no evidence of invention or of careful thought, while on 
 the other hand there is no botanical or geological accu- 
 racy, nor any point on which the eye may rest with thor- 
 ough contentment in its realization. 
 
 It seems strange that to an artist of so quick feeling 
 the details of a mountain foreground should not prove 
 irresistibly attractive, and entice him to greater accuracy 
 of study. There is not a fragment of its living rock, nor 
 a tuft of its heathery herbage, that has not adorable 
 manifestations of God’s working thereupon. The har- 
 monies of color among the native lichens are better than 
 Titian’s ; the interwoven bells of campanula and heather 
 are better than all the arabesques of the Vatican ; they 
 need no improvement, arrangement, nor alteration, noth- 
 ing but love, and every combination of them is different 
 from every other, so that a painter need never repeat 
 himself if he will only be true ; yet all these sources of 
 power have been of late entirely neglected by Fielding ; 
 there is evidence through all his foregrounds of their 
 being mere home inventions, and like all home inven- 
 tions they exhibit perpetual resemblances and repeti- 
 tions ; the painter is evidently embarrassed without his 
 rutted road in the middle, and his boggy pool at the 
 side, which pool he has of late painted in hard lines of 
 violent blue: there is not a stone, even of the nearest 
 and most important, which has its real lichens upon it, 
 or a studied form or anything more to occupy the mind 
 than certain variations of dark and light browns. The 
 
188 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 same faults must be found with his present painting of 
 foliage, neither the stems nor leafage being ever studied 
 from nature ; and this is the more to be regretted, be- 
 cause in the earlier works of the artist there was much 
 admirable drawing, and even yet his power is occasion- 
 ally developed in his larger works, as in a Bolton Ab- 
 bey on canvas, which was, — I cannot say, exhibited, — 
 but was in the rooms of the Boyal Academy in 1843.* 
 I should have made the preceding remarks with more 
 hesitation and diffidence, but that, from a comparison 
 of works of this kind with the slighter ornaments of the 
 water-color rooms, it seems evident that the painter is 
 not unaware of the deficiencies of these latter, and con- 
 
 * It appears not to be sufficiently understood by those artists who 
 complain acrimoniously of their position on the Academy walls, that 
 the Academicians have in their own rooms a right to the line and the 
 best places near it ; in their taking this position there is no abuse nor 
 injustice ; but the Academicians should remember that with their rights 
 they have their duties, and their duty is to determine among the works 
 of artists not belonging to their body those which are most likely to 
 advance public knowledge and judgment, and to give these the best 
 places next their own ; neither would it detract from their dignity it 
 they occasionally ceded a square even of their own territory, as they 
 did gracefully and rightly, and, I am sorry to add, disinterestedly, to 
 the picture of Paul de la Roche, in 1844. Now the Academicians 
 know perfectly well that the mass of portrait which encumbers their 
 walls at half height is worse than useless, seriously harmful to the 
 public taste, and it was highly criminal (I use the'word advisedly) that 
 the valuable and interesting work of Fielding, of which I have above 
 spoken, should have been placed where it was, above three rows of 
 eye-glasses and waistcoats. A very beautiful work of Harding’s was 
 treated either in the same or the following exhibition, with still greater 
 injustice. Fielding’s was merely put out of sight ; Harding’s where 
 its faults were conspicuous and its virtues lost. It was an Alpine 
 scene, of which the foreground, rocks, and torrents were painted 
 with unrivalled fidelity and precision ; the foliage was dexterous, the 
 aerial gradations of the mountains tender and multitudinous, their 
 forms carefully studied and very grand. The blemish of the picture 
 was a buff-colored tower with a red roof ; singularly meagre in detail, 
 and conventionally relieved from a mass of gloom. The picture was 
 placed where nothing but this tower could be seen. 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES . 
 
 189 
 
 § 23. De Wint. 
 
 cedes something of what he would himself desire to what 
 he has found to he the feeling of a majority of his admir- 
 ers. This is a dangerous modesty, and especially so in 
 these days when the judgment of the many is palpably 
 as artificial as their feeling is cold. 
 
 There is much that is instructive and deserving of high 
 praise in the sketches of De Wint. Yet it is to be 
 remembered that even the pursuit of truth, 
 however determined, will have results lim- 
 ited and imperfect when its chief motive is the pride of 
 being true ; and I fear that these works, sublime as many 
 of them have unquestionably been, testify more accu- 
 racy of eye and experience of color than exercise of 
 thought. Their truth of effect is often purchased at too 
 great an expense by the loss of all beauty of form, and 
 of the higher refinements of color ; deficiencies, however, 
 on which I shall not insist, since the value of the 
 sketches, as far they go, is great ; they have done good 
 service and set good example, and whatever their fail- 
 ings may be, there is evidence in them that the painter 
 has always done what he believed to be right. 
 
 The influence of the masters of whom we have hith- 
 erto spoken is confined to those who have access to their 
 actual works, since the particular qualities 
 
 , . , . , ’ , . . . , § 24. Influence of 
 
 m which they excel, are m no wise to be Engraving, j. d. 
 rendered by the engraver. Those of whom Haidmg ‘ 
 we have next to speak are known to the public in a great 
 measure by the help of the engraver ; and while their 
 influence is thus very far extended, their modes of work- 
 ing are perhaps, in some degree modified by the habit- 
 ual reference to the future translation into light and 
 shade ; reference which is indeed beneficial in the care it 
 induces respecting the arrangement of the chiaroscuro 
 and the explanation of the forms, but which is harmful, 
 so far as it involves a dependence rather on quantity of 
 picturesque material than on substantial color or simple 
 
190 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 treatment, and as it admits of indolent diminution of size 
 and slightness of execution. 
 
 We should not be just to the present works of J. D. 
 Harding unless he took this influence into account. 
 Some years back none of our artists realized more labo- 
 riously, nor obtained more substantial color and texture ; 
 a large drawing in the possession of B. G. Windus, Esq., 
 of Tottenham, is of great value as an example of his 
 manner at the period; a manner not only careful, but 
 earnest, and free from any kind of affectation. Partly 
 from the habit of making slight and small drawings 
 for engravers, and partly also, I imagine, from an over- 
 strained seeking after appearances of dexterity in execu- 
 tion, his drawings have of late years become both less 
 solid and less complete ; not, however, without attaining 
 certain brilliant qualities in exchange which are very 
 valuable in the treatment of some of the looser portions 
 of subject. Of the extended knowledge and various 
 powers of this painter, frequent instances are noted in 
 the following pages. Neither, perhaps, are rightly esti- 
 mated among artists, owing to a certain coldness of sen- 
 timent in his choice of subject, and a continual prefer- 
 ence of the picturesque to the impressive ; proved per- 
 haps in nothing so distinctly as in the little interest 
 usually attached to his skies, which, if aerial and expres- 
 sive of space and movement, content him, though desti- 
 tute of story, power, or character : an exception must be 
 made in favor of the very grand sunrise on the Swiss 
 Alps, exhibited in 1844, wherein the artist’s real power 
 was in some measure displayed, though I am convinced 
 he is still capable of doing far greater things. So in his 
 foliage he is apt to sacrifice the dignity of his trees to 
 their wildness, and lose the forest in the copse, neither 
 is he at all accurate enough in his expression of species 
 or realization of near portions. These are deficiencies, 
 be it observed, of sentiment, not of perception, as there 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 191 
 
 are few who equal him in rapidity of seizure of material 
 truth. 
 
 Yery extensive influence in modern art must be at- 
 tributed to the works of Samuel Prout; and as there 
 are some circumstances belonging* to his 
 
 i • i -j -1 § 25. Samuel 
 
 treatment of architectural subject which Prout. Early 
 
 . • 1 1 • j i i p n painting of archi- 
 
 ll does not come within the sphere ol the tecture, how den- 
 
 following chapters to examine, I shall en- 
 deavor to note the more important of them here. 
 
 Let us glance back for a moment to the architectural 
 drawing of earlier times. Before the time of the Bel- 
 linis at Venice, and of Ghirlandajo at Florence, I believe 
 there are no examples of anything beyond conventional 
 representation of architecture, often rich, quaint, and 
 full of interest, as Memmi’s abstract of the Duomo at 
 Florence at S ta . Maria Novella; but not to be classed 
 with any genuine efforts at representation. It is much 
 to be regretted that the power and custom of introduc- 
 ing well-drawn architecture should have taken place 
 only when architectural taste had been itself corrupted, 
 and that the architecture introduced by Bellini, Ghir- 
 landajo, Francia, and the other patient and pov/erful 
 workmen of the fifteenth century, is exclusively of the 
 renaissance styles ; while their drawing of it furnishes 
 little that is of much interest to the architectural 
 draughtsman as such, being always governed by a ref- 
 erence to its subordinate position, so that all forceful 
 shadow and play of color are (most justly) surrendered 
 for quiet and uniform hues of gray and chiaroscuro of 
 extreme simplicity. Whatever they chose to do they 
 did with consummate grandeur, (note especially the chia- 
 roscuro of the square window of Ghirlandajo’s, which so 
 much delighted Vasari, in S ta . Maria Novella; and the 
 daring management of a piece of the perspective in the 
 Salutation, opposite, where he has painted a flight of 
 stairs descending in front, though the picture is twelve 
 
192 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 feet above the eye) ; and yet this grandeur, in all these 
 men, results rather from the general power obtained in 
 their drawing of the figure than from any definite knowl- 
 edge respecting the things introduced in these accessory 
 parts ; so that while in some points it is impossible for 
 any painter to equal these accessories, unless he were in 
 all respects as great as Ghirlandajo or Bellini, in others 
 it is possible for him, with far inferior powers, to attain 
 a representation both more accurate and more interest- 
 ing. 
 
 In order to arrive at the knowledge of these, we must 
 briefly take note of a few of the modes in which architec- 
 ture itself is agreeable to the mind, especially of the in- 
 fluence upon the character of the building which is to be 
 attributed to the signs of age. 
 
 It is evident, first, that if the design of the building be 
 originally bad, the only virtue it can ever possess will be 
 § 2g. Effects of i n signs of antiquity. All that in this 
 m|s, how faxde- world enlarges the sphere of affection or 
 sirabie. imagination is to be reverenced, and all 
 
 those circumstances enlarge it which strengthen our 
 memory or quicken our conception of the dead; hence 
 it is no light sin to destroy anything that is old, more 
 especially because, even with the aid of all obtainable 
 records of the past, we, the living, occupy a space of 
 too large importance and interest in our own eyes ; we 
 look upon the world too much as our own, too much as 
 if we had possessed it and should possess it forever, and 
 forget that it is a mere hostelry, of which we occupy 
 the apartments for a time, which others better than we 
 have sojourned in before, who are now where we should 
 desire to be with them. Fortunately for mankind, as 
 some counterbalance to that wretched love of novelty 
 which originates in selfishness, shallowness, and conceit, 
 and which especially characterizes all vulgar minds, 
 there is set in the deeper places of the heart such affec- 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES . 
 
 193 
 
 tion for the signs of age that the eye is delighted even 
 by injuries which are the work of time; not but that 
 there is also real and absolute beauty in the forms and 
 colors so obtained, for which the original lines of the 
 architecture, unless they have been very grand indeed, 
 are well exchanged, so that there is hardly any building 
 so ugly but that it may be made an agreeable object by 
 such appearances. It would not be easy, for instance, to 
 find a less pleasing piece of architecture than the portion 
 of the front of Queen’s College, Oxford, which has just 
 been restored ; yet I believe that few persons could have 
 looked with total indifference on the mouldering and 
 peeled surface of the oolite limestone previous to its 
 restoration. If, however, the character of the building 
 consist in minute detail or multitudinous lines, the evil 
 or good effect of age upon it must depend in great meas- 
 ure on the kind of art, the material, and the climate. 
 The Parthenon, for instance, would be injured by any 
 markings which interfered with the contours of its sculpt- 
 ures; and any lines of extreme purity, or colors of 
 original harmony and perfection are liable to injury, 
 and are ill exchanged for mouldering edges or brown 
 weatherstains. 
 
 But as all architecture is, or ought to be, meant to be 
 durable, and to derive part of its glory from its antiq- 
 uity, all art that is liable to mortal injury from effects 
 of time is therein out of place, and this is another rea- 
 son for the principle I have asserted in the second 
 part, page 314. I do not at this instant recollect a 
 single instance of any very fine building which is not 
 improved up to a certain period by all its signs of 
 age, after which period, like all other human works, it 
 necessarily declines, its decline being in almost ail ages 
 and countries accelerated by neglect and abuse in its 
 time of beauty, and alteration or restoration in its time 
 of age. 
 
 n 
 
194 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 Thus I conceive that all buildings dependent on color, 
 whether of mosaic or painting, have their effect im- 
 proved by the richness of the subsequent tones of 
 age ; for there are few arrangements of color so per- 
 fect but that they are capable of improvement by 
 some softening and blending of this kind : with mosaic, 
 the improvement may be considered as proceeding al- 
 most so long as the design can be distinctly seen ; with 
 painting, so long as the colors do not change or chip 
 off. 
 
 Again, upon all forms of sculptural ornament, the ef- 
 fect of time is such, that if the design be poor, it will 
 enrich it ; if overcharged, simplify it ; if harsh and vio- 
 lent, soften it ; if smooth and obscure, exhibit it ; what- 
 ever faults it may have are rapidly disguised, whatever 
 virtue it has still shines and steals out in the mellow 
 light; and this to such an extent, that the artist is al- 
 ways liable to be tempted to the drawing of details in 
 old buildings as of extreme beauty, which look cold and 
 hard in their architectural lines ; and I have never yet 
 seen any restoration or cleaned portion of a building 
 whose effect was not inferior to the weathered parts, 
 even to those of which the design had in some parts al- 
 most disappeared. On the front of the church of San 
 Michele at Lucca, the mosaics have fallen out of half the 
 columns, and lie in weedy ruin beneath ; in many, the 
 frost has torn large masses of the entire coating away, 
 leaving a scarred unsightly surface. Two of the shafts 
 of the upper star window are eaten entirely away by the 
 sea wind, the rest have lost their proportions, the edges 
 of the arches are hacked into deep hollows, and cast in- 
 dented shadows on the weed-grown wall. The process 
 has gone too far, and yet I doubt not but that this 
 building is seen to greater advantage now than when 
 first built, always with exception of one circumstance, 
 that the French shattered the lower wheel window, 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES . 
 
 195 
 
 and set np in front of it an escutcheon with “ Libertas ” 
 upon it, which abomination of desolation, the Lucchese 
 have not yet had human-heartedness enough to pull 
 down. 
 
 Putting therefore the application of architecture as an 
 accessory out of the question, and supposing our object 
 to be the exhibition of the most impressive qualities of 
 the building itself, it is evidently the duty of the 
 draughtsman to represent it under those conditions, and 
 with that amount of age-mark upon it which may best 
 exalt and harmonize the sources of its beauty : this is 
 no pursuit of mere picturesqueness, it is true following 
 out of the ideal character of the building ; nay, far greater 
 dilapidation than this may in portions be exhibited, for 
 there are beauties of other kinds, not otherwise attain- 
 able, brought out by advanced dilapidation ; but when 
 the artist suffers the mere love of ruinousness to inter- 
 fere with his perception of the art of the building, and 
 substitutes rude fractures and blotting stains for all its 
 fine chiselling and determined color, he has lost the end 
 of his own art. 
 
 So far of aging ; next of effects of light and color. It 
 is, I believe, hardly enough observed among architects 
 that the same decorations are of totally 
 
 . . § 2T. Effects of 
 
 different effect according to their position light how neces- 
 and the time of day. A moulding which Sd&g he of nd Ie- 
 is of value on a building facing south, 
 where it takes deep shadows from steep sun, may be 
 utterly ineffective if placed west or east ; and a mould- 
 ing which is chaste and intelligible in shade on a north 
 side, may be grotesque, vulgar, or confused when it 
 takes black shadows on the south. Farther, there is a 
 time of day in which every architectural decoration is 
 seen to best advantage, and certain times in which its 
 peculiar force and character are best explained ; of these 
 niceties the architect takes little cognisance, as he must 
 
196 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 in some sort calculate on tire effect of ornament at all 
 times ; but to the artist they are of infinite importance, 
 and especially for this reason, that there is always much 
 detail on buildings which cannot be drawn as such, 
 which is too far off, or too minute, and which must con- 
 sequently be set down in short hand of some kind or 
 another ; and, as it were, an abstract, more or less philo- 
 sophical, made of its general heads. Of the style of this 
 abstract, of the lightness, confusion, and mystery neces- 
 sary in it, I have spoken elsewhere ; at present I insist 
 only on the arrangement and matter of it. All good 
 ornament and all good architecture are capable of being 
 put into short-hand ; that is, each has a perfect system 
 of parts, principal and subordinate, of which, even when 
 the complemental details vanish in distance, the system 
 and anatomy yet remain visible so long as anything is 
 visible ; so that the divisions of a beautiful spire shall 
 be known as beautiful even till their last line vanishes 
 in blue mist, and the effect of a well-designed moulding 
 shall be visibly disciplined, harmonious, and inventive, 
 as long as it is seen to be a moulding at all. Now the 
 power of the artist of marking this character depends 
 not on his complete knowledge of the design, but on his 
 experimental knowledge of its salient and bearing parts, 
 and of the effects of light and shadow, by which their 
 saliency is best told. He must therefore be prepared, 
 according to his subject, to use light, steep or level, in- 
 tense or feeble, and out of the resulting chiaroscuro 
 select those peculiar and hinging points on which the 
 rest are based, and by which all else that is essential 
 may be explained. 
 
 The thoughtful command of all these circumstances 
 constitutes the real architectural draughtsman ; the hab- 
 its of executing everything either under one kind of 
 effect or in one manner, or of using unintelligible and 
 meaningless abstracts of beautiful designs, are those 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 197 
 
 which must commonly take the place of it and are the 
 most extensively esteemed.* 
 
 Let us now proceed with our review of those artists 
 who have devoted themselves more peculiarly to archi- 
 tectural subject. 
 
 Foremost among them stand Gentile Bellini and Yittor 
 Carpaccio, to whom we are indebted for the only exist- 
 ing faithful statements of the architecture p ^ 
 
 of 'Old Venice, and who are the only au- urai painting of 
 
 . . . . Gentile Bellini 
 
 thorities to whom we can trust m conject- and vittor car- 
 uring the former beauty of those few dese- 
 crated fragments, the last of which are now being rap- 
 idly swept away by the idiocy of modern Venetians. 
 
 Nothing can be more careful, nothing more delicately 
 finished, or more dignified in feeling than the works of 
 both these men ; and as architectural evidence they are 
 the best we could have had, all the gilded parts being 
 gilt in the picture, so that there can be no mistake or 
 confusion of them with yellow color or light, and all the 
 frescoes or mosaics given with the most absolute preci- 
 sion and fidelity. At the same time they are by no 
 means examples of perfect architectural drawing ; there 
 is little light and shade in them of any kind, and none 
 whatever of the thoughtful observance of temporary ef- 
 fect of which we have just been speaking ; so that, in 
 rendering the character of the relieved parts, their solid- 
 ity, depth, or gloom, the representation fails altogether, 
 and it is moreover lifeless from its very completion, 
 both the signs of age and the effects of use and habita- 
 tion being utterly rejected; rightly so, indeed, in these 
 instances, (all the architecture of these painters being in 
 background to religious subject), but wrongly so, if we 
 
 * I have not given any examples in this place, because it is difficult 
 to explain such circumstances of effect without diagrams : I purpose 
 entering into fuller discussion of the subject with the aid of illustra- 
 
198 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 look to tlie architecture alone. Neither is there any- 
 thing* like aerial perspective attempted ; the employment 
 of actual gold in the decoration of all the distances, and 
 the entire realization of their details, as far as is possi- 
 ble on the scale compelled by perspective, being alone 
 sufficient to prevent this, except in the hands of painters 
 far more practised in effect than either Gentile or Car- 
 paccio. But with all these discrepancies, Gentile Bel- 
 lini’s church of St. Mark’s is the best church of St. Mark’s 
 that has ever been painted, so far as I know; and I 
 believe the reconciliation of true aerial perspective and 
 chiaroscuro with the splendor and dignity obtained by 
 the real gilding and elaborate detail, is a problem yet to 
 be accomplished. With the help of the Daguerreotype, 
 and the lessons of color given by the later Venetians, 
 we ought now to be able to accomplish it, more espe- 
 cially as the right use of gold has been shown us by the 
 greatest master of effect whom V enice herself produced, 
 Tintoret, who has employed it with infinite grace on the 
 steps ascended by the young Madonna, in his large pict- 
 ure in the church of the Madonna dell’ Orto. Perugino 
 uses it also with singular grace, often employing it for 
 golden light on distant trees, and continually on the 
 high light of hair, and that without losing relative dis- 
 tances. 
 
 The great group of Venetian painters who brought 
 landscape art, for that time, to its culminating point, 
 
 29 Ad of the ^ ave l e ^> as we h ave a l rea dy seen, little 
 Venetians gener- that is instructive in architectural paint- 
 ing. The causes of this I cannot compre- 
 hend, for neither Titian nor Tintoret appears to despise 
 anything that affords them either variety of form or of 
 color, the latter especially condescending to very trivial 
 details,— as in the magnificent carpet painting of the 
 Doge Mocenigo; so that it might have been expected 
 that in the rich colors of St. Mark’s, and the magnificent 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 199 
 
 and fantastic masses of the Byzantine palaces, they would 
 have found whereupon to dwell with delighted elabora- 
 tion. This is, however, never the case, and although 
 frequently compelled to introduce portions of Venetian 
 locality in their backgrounds, such portions are always 
 treated in a most hasty and faithless manner, missing 
 frequently all character of the building, and never ad- 
 vanced to realization. In Titian’s picture of Faith, the 
 view of Venice below is laid in so rapidly and slightly, 
 the houses all leaning this way and that, and of no color, 
 the sea a dead gray green, and the ship -sails mere dashes 
 of the brush, that the most obscure of Turner’s Venices 
 would look substantia] beside it ; while in the very pict- 
 ure of Tintoret in which he has dwelt so elaborately on 
 the carpet, he has substituted a piece of ordinary renais- 
 sance composition for St. Mark’s, and in the background 
 has chosen the Sansovino side of the Piazzetta, treating 
 even that so carelessly as to lose all the proportion and 
 beauty of its design, and so flimsily that the line of the 
 distant sea which has been first laid in, is seen through all 
 the columns. Evidences of magnificent power of course 
 exist in whatever he touches, but his full power is never 
 turned in this direction. More space is allowed to his 
 architecture by Paul Veronese, but it is still entirely sug- 
 gestive, and would be utterly false except as a frame or 
 background for figures. The same may be said with re- 
 spect to Raffaelle and the Roman school. 
 
 If, however, these men laid architecture little under 
 contribution to their own art, they made their own art a 
 glorious gift to architecture, and the wails of Venice, 
 which before, I believe, had received color only in ara- 
 besque patterns, were lighted with human § 30 Fresco 
 life by Giorgione, Titian, Tintoret, and Venetian °exteri- 
 Veronese. Of the works of Tintoret and ors * Canaletto - 
 Titian, nothing now, I believe, remains ; two figures of 
 Giorgione’s are still traceable on the Fondaco de’ 
 
200 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 Tedeschi, one of which, singularly uninjured, is seen 
 from far above and below the Rialto, flaming like the re- 
 flection of a sunset. Two figures of Veronese were also 
 traceable till lately, the head and arms of one still re- 
 main, and some glorious olive-branches which were be- 
 side the other ; the figure having been entirely effaced 
 by an inscription in large black letters on a whitewash 
 tablet which we owe to the somewhat inopportunely ex- 
 pressed enthusiasm of the inhabitants of the district in 
 favor of their new pastor.* Judging, however, from the 
 rate at which destruction is at present advancing, and 
 seeing that, in about seven or eight years more, Venice 
 will have utterly lost every external claim to interest, 
 except that which attaches to the group of buildings im- 
 mediately around St. Mark’s place, and to the larger 
 churches, it may be conjectured that the greater part of 
 her present degradation has taken place, at any rate, 
 within the last forty years. Let the reader with such 
 scraps of evidence as may still be gleaned from under the 
 stucco and paint of the Italian committees of taste, and 
 from among the drawing-room innovations of English 
 and German residents restore Venice in his imagination 
 to some resemblance of what she must have been before 
 her fall. Let him, looking from Lido or Eusina, replace 
 
 * The inscription is to the following effect, — a pleasant thing to see 
 upon the walls, were it but more innocently placed : — 
 
 CAMPO. DI. S. MAURIZIO 
 DIO 
 
 CONSERVI A NOI. 
 
 LUNGAMENTE 
 
 LO ZELANTIS. E. REVERENDIS 
 D. LUIGI, piccmi. 
 
 NOSTRO 
 
 NOVELLO PIEVANO. 
 
 GLI ESULTANT. 
 
 PARROCCHIANI 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 201 
 
 in the forest of towers those of the hundred and sixty-six 
 churches which the French threw down ; let him sheet 
 her walls with purple and scarlet, overlay her minarets 
 with gold,* cleanse from their pollution those choked 
 canals which are now the drains of hovels, where they 
 were once vestibules of palaces, and fill them with gilded 
 barges and bannered ships; finally, let him withdraw 
 from this scene, already so brilliant, such sadness and 
 stain as had been set upon it by the declining energies 
 of more than half a century, and he will see Venice as it 
 was seen by Canaletto ; whose miserable, virtueless, heart- 
 less mechanism, accepted as the representation of such 
 various glory, is, both in its existence and acceptance, 
 among the most striking signs of the lost sensation and 
 deadened intellect of the nation at that time ; a numb- 
 ness and darkness more without hope than that of the 
 grave itself, holding and wearing yet the sceptre and the 
 crown like the corpses of the Etruscan kings, ready to 
 sink into ashes at the first unbarring of the door of the 
 sepulchre. 
 
 The mannerism of Canaletto is the most degraded that 
 I know in the whole range of art. Professing the most 
 servile and mindless imitation, it imitates nothing but 
 the blackness of the shadows; it gives no one single 
 architectural ornament, however near, so much form as 
 might enable us even to guess at its actual one ; and this 
 I say not rashly, for I shall prove it by placing portions 
 of detail accurately copied from Canaletto side by side 
 with engravings from the Daguerreotype ; it gives the 
 buildings neither their architectural beauty nor their 
 
 * The quantity of gold with which the decorations of Venice were 
 once covered could not now be traced or credited without reference 
 to the authority of Gentile Bellini. The greater part of the marble 
 mouldings have been touched with it in lines and points, the minarets 
 of St. Mark’s, and all the florid carving of the arches entirely sheeted. 
 The Casa d’Oro retained it on its lions until the recent commencement 
 of its Restoration. 
 
202 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 ancestral dignity, for there is no texture of stone nor 
 character of age in Canaletto’s touch ; which is invariably 
 a violent, black, sharp, ruled penmanlike line, as far re- 
 moved from the grace of nature as from her faintness 
 and transparency; and for his truth of color, let the 
 single fact of his having omitted oil record , whatsoever , 
 of the frescoes whose wrecks are still to be found at least 
 on one half of the unrestored palaces, and, with still less 
 * 'excusableness, all record of the magnificent colored mar- 
 bles of many whose greens and purples are still un- 
 dimmed upon the Casa Dario, Casa Bianca Capello, and 
 multitudes besides, speak for him in this respect. 
 
 Let it be observed that I find no fault with Canaletto, 
 for his want of poetry, of feeling, of artistical thought- 
 fulness in treatment, or of the various other virtues 
 which he does not so much as profess. He professes 
 nothing but colored Daguerreotypeism. Let us have it: 
 most precious and to be revered it would be : let us have 
 fresco where fresco was, and that copied faithfully ; let 
 us have carving where carving is, and that architecturally 
 true. I have seen Daguerreotypes in which every figure 
 and rosette, and crack and stain, and fissure are given on 
 a scale of an inch to Canaletto’s three feet. What ex- 
 cuse is there to be offered for his omitting, on that scale, 
 as I shall hereafter show, all statement of such ornament 
 whatever ? Among the Flemish schools, exquisite imita- 
 tions of architecture are found constantly, and that not 
 with Canaletto’s vulgar, black exaggeration of shadow, 
 but in the most pure and silvery and luminous grays. I 
 have little pleasure in such pictures ; but I blame not 
 those who have more ; they are what they profess to be, 
 and they are wonderful and instructive, and often grace- 
 ful, and even affecting, but Canaletto possesses no virtue 
 except that of dexterous imitation of commonplace light 
 and shade, and perhaps, with the exception of Salvator, 
 no artist has ever fettered his unfortunate admirers more 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 203 
 
 securely from all healthy or vigorous perception of truth, 
 or been of more general detriment to all subsequent 
 schools. 
 
 Neither, however, by the Flemings, nor b y any other 
 of the elder schools, was the effect of age or of human 
 life upon architecture ever adequately ex- § 3L Expression 
 pressed. What ruins they drew looked as afchitect- 
 
 if broken down on purpose, what weeds ure by s * Prout ‘ 
 they put on seemed put on for ornament. Their domes- 
 tic buildings had never any domesticity, the people 
 looked out of their windows evidently to be drawn, or 
 came into the streets only to stand there forever. A pe- 
 culiar studiousness infected all accident ; bricks fell out 
 methodically, windows opened and shut by rule ; stones 
 were chipped at regular intervals ; everything that hap- 
 pened seemed to have been expected before ; and above 
 all, the street had been washed and the houses dusted 
 expressly to be painted in their best. We owe to Prout, 
 I believe, the first perception, and certainly the only ex- 
 isting expression of precisely the characters which were 
 wanting to old art, of that feeling which results from the 
 influence among the noble lines of architecture, of the 
 rent and the rust, the fissure, the lichen, and the weed, 
 and from the writing upon the pages of ancient walls of 
 the confused hieroglyphics of human history. I sup- 
 pose, from the deserved popularity of the artist, that the 
 strange pleasure which I find myself in the deciphering 
 of these is common to many ; the feeling has been rashly 
 and thoughtlessly contemned as mere love of the pictu- 
 resque ; there is, as I have above shown, a deeper moral in 
 it, and we owe much, I am not prepared to say how much, 
 to the artist by whom pre-eminently it has been excited 
 For, numerous as have been his imitators, extended as 
 his influence, and simple as his means and manner, there 
 has yet appeared nothing at all to equal him ; there is no 
 stone drawing, no vitality of architecture like Prout’s. 1 
 
204 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 say not this rashly, I have Mackenzie in my eye and 
 many other capital imitators ; and I have carefully re- 
 viewed the Architectural work of the Academicians, often 
 most accurate and elaborate. I repeat, there is nothing 
 but the work of Prout which is true, living, or right in 
 its general impression, and nothing, therefore, so inex- 
 haustibly agreeable. Faults he has, manifold, easily de- 
 tected, and much declaimed against by second-rate ar- 
 tists; but his excellence no one has ever famched, and his 
 lithographic work, (Sketches in Flanders and Germany,) 
 which was, I believe, the first of the kind, still remains 
 the most valuable of all, numerous and elaborate as its 
 various successors have been. The second series (in Italy 
 and Switzerland) was of less value, the drawings seemed 
 more laborious, and had less of the life of the original 
 sketches, being also for the most part of subjects less 
 adapted for the development of the artist’s peculiar pow- 
 ers ; but both are fine, and the Brussels, Louvain, Co- 
 logne, and Nuremberg, subjects of the one, together with 
 the Tours, Amboise, Geneva, and Sion, of the other, ex- 
 hibit substantial qualities of stone and wood drawing, 
 together with an ideal appreciation of the present active 
 vital being of the cities, such as nothing else has ever 
 approached. Their value is much increased by the cir- 
 cumstance of their being drawn by the artist’s own hand 
 upon the stone, and by the consequent manly reckless- 
 ness of subordinate parts, (in w r orks of this kind, be it 
 remembered, much is subordinate,) which is of all charac- 
 ters of execution the most refreshing. Note the scrawled 
 middle tint of the wall behind the Gothic well at Batis- 
 bonne, and compare this manly piece of work with the 
 wretched smoothness of recent lithography. Let it not 
 be thought that there is any inconsistency between what 
 I say here and what I have said respecting finish. This 
 piece of dead wall is as much finished in relation to its 
 function as a wall of Ghirlandajo’s or Leonardo’s in rela- 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES . 
 
 205 
 
 tion to theirs, and the refreshing- quality is the same in 
 both, and manifest in all great masters, without excep- 
 tion, that of the utter regardlessness of the means so that 
 their end be reached. The same kind of scrawling occurs 
 often in the shade of Kaffaelle. 
 
 It is not only, however, by his peculiar stone touch nor 
 perception of human character that he is distinguished. 
 He is the most dexterous of all our artists „ _ 
 
 § 32. His excellent 
 
 nr a certain kind ot composition. JNo one composition and 
 can place figures like him, except Turner. 
 
 It is one thing to know where a piece of blue or white 
 is wanted, and another to make the wearer of the blue 
 apron or white cap come there, and not look as if it were 
 against her will. Prout’s streets are the only streets 
 that are accidentally crowded, his markets are the only 
 markets where one feels inclined to get out of the way. 
 With others we feel the figures so right where they are, 
 that we have no expectation of their going anywhere 
 else, and approve of the position of the man with the 
 wheelbarrow, without the slightest fear of his running 
 against our legs. One other merit he has, far less gen- 
 erally acknowledged than it should be : he is among our 
 most sunny and substantial colorists. Much conventional 
 color occurs in his inferior pictures (for he is very un- 
 equal) and some in all ; but portions are always to be 
 found of quality so luminous and pure that I have found 
 these works the only ones capable of bearing juxtaposi- 
 tion with Turner and Hunt, who invariably destroy every- 
 thing else that comes within range of them. His most 
 beautiful tones occur in those drawings in which there is 
 prevalent and powerful warm gray, his most failing ones 
 in those of sandy red. On his deficiencies I shall not insist, 
 because I am not prepared to say how far it is possible 
 for him to avoid them. We have never seen the reconcil- 
 iation of the peculiar characters he has obtained with 
 the accurate following out of architectural detail. With 
 
206 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 his present modes of execution, farther fidelity is impos- 
 sible, nor has any other mode of execution yet obtained 
 the same results ; and though much is unaccomplished 
 by him in certain subjects, and something of over-man- 
 nerism may be traced in his treatment of others, as es- 
 pecially in his mode of expressing the decorative parts 
 of Greek or Roman architecture, yet in his own peculiar 
 Gothic territory, where the spirit of the subject itself is 
 somewhat rude and grotesque, his abstract of decoration 
 has more of the spirit of the reality than far more labori- 
 ous imitation. The spirit of the Flemish Hotel de Yille 
 and decorated street architecture has never been even in 
 the slightest degree felt or conveyed except by him, and 
 by him, to my mind, faultlessly and absolutely ; and 
 though his interpretation of architecture that contains 
 more refined art in its details is far less satisfactory, still 
 it is impossible, while walking on his favorite angle of 
 the Piazzetta at Venice, either to think of any other ar- 
 tist than Prout or not to think of him. 
 
 Many other dexterous and agreeable architectural ar- 
 tists we have of various degrees of merit, but of all of 
 
 3° Modern w l ]on b it may be general!} 7 said, that they 
 architectural draw hats, faces, cloaks, and caps much 
 pamtmg. better than Prout, but figures not so well ; 
 
 that they draw walls and windows but 
 not cities, mouldings and buttresses but not cathedrals. 
 Joseph Nash’s work on the architecture of the middle 
 ages is, however, valuable, and I suppose that Haghe’s 
 works may be depended on for fidelity. But it appears 
 very strange that a workman capable of producing the 
 clever drawings he has, from time to time, sent to the 
 New Society of Painters in Water Colors, should publish 
 lithographs so conventional, forced, and lifeless. 
 
 It is not without hesitation, that I mention a name re- 
 specting which the reader may already have been sur- 
 prised at my silence, that of G. Cattermole. There are 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 207 
 
 signs in his works of very peculiar gifts, and perhaps 
 also of powerful genius ; their deficiencies I should will- 
 ingly attribute to the advice of ill- judging friends, and 
 to the applause of a public satisfied with shallow efforts, 
 if brilliant ; yet I cannot but think it one necessary char- 
 acteristic of ail true genius to be misled by no such false 
 fires. The Antiquarian feeling of Cattermole is pure, 
 earnest, and natural ; and I think his imagination origi- 
 nally vigorous, certainly his fancy, his grasp of momen- 
 tary passion considerable, his sense of action in the 
 human body vivid and ready. But no original talent, how- 
 ever brilliant, can sustain its energy when the demands 
 upon it are constant, and all legitimate support and 
 food withdrawn. I do not recollect in any, even of the 
 most important of Cattermole’s works, so much as a fold 
 of drapery studied out from nature. Violent convention- 
 alism of light and shade, sketchy forms continually less 
 and less developed, the walls and the faces drawn with 
 the same stucco color, alike opaque, and all the shades 
 on flesh, dress, or stone, laid in with the same arbitrary 
 brown, forever tell the same tale of a mind wasting its 
 strength and substance in the production of emptiness, 
 and seeking, by more and more blindly hazarded hand- 
 ling, to conceal the weakness which the attempt at finish 
 would betray. 
 
 This tendency of late, has been painfully visible in his 
 architecture. Some drawings made several years ago 
 for an annual illustrative of Scott’s works were for the 
 most part pure and finely felt — (though irrelevant to our 
 present subject, a fall of the Clyde should be noticed, 
 admirable for breadth and grace of foliage, and for the 
 bold sweeping of the water, and another subject of which 
 I regret that I can only judge by the engraving ; Glen- 
 dearg at twilight — the monk Eustace chased by Christie 
 of the Clint Hill — which I think must have been one of 
 the sweetest pieces of simple Border hill feeling ever 
 
208 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 painted) — and about that time his architecture, though 
 always conventionally brown in the shadows, was gener- 
 ally well drawn, and always powerfully conceived. 
 
 Since then, he has been tending gradually through ex- 
 aggeration to caricature, and vainly endeavoring to attain 
 by inordinate bulk of decorated parts, that dignity 
 which is only to be reached by purity of proportion and 
 majesty of line. 
 
 It has pained me deeply, to see an artist of so great 
 original power indulging in childish fantasticism and 
 § 84. The evil in exaggeration, and substituting for the se- 
 poi n rof*view C of' rious and subdued work of legitimate im- 
 “o^n^ciSS- agination, monster machicolations and 
 urai subject. colossal cusps and crockets. While there 
 is so much beautiful architecture daily in process of 
 destruction around us, I cannot but think it treason to 
 imagine anything ; at least, if we must have composition, 
 let the design of the artist be such as the architect would 
 applaud. But it is surely very grievous, that while our 
 idle artists are helping their vain inventions by the fall 
 of sponges on soiled paper, glorious buildings with the 
 whole intellect and history of centuries concentrated in 
 them, are suffered to fall into unrecorded ruin. A day 
 does not now pass in Italy without the destruction of 
 some mighty monument; the streets of all her cities 
 echo to the hammer, half of her fair buildings lie in 
 separate stones about the places of their foundation; 
 would not time be better spent in telling us the truth 
 about these perishing remnants of majestic thought, 
 than in perpetuating the ill-digested fancies of idle 
 hours ? It is, I repeat, treason to the cause of art for 
 any man to invent, unless he invents something better 
 than has been invented before, or something differing in 
 kind. There is room enough for invention in the picto- 
 rial treatment of what exists. There is no more honor- 
 able exhibition of imaginative power, than in the selec- 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES . 
 
 209 
 
 tion of such, place, choice of such treatment, introduction 
 of such incident, as may produce a noble picture with- 
 out deviation from one line of the actual truth ; and 
 such I believe to be, indeed, in the end the most advan- 
 tageous, as well as the most modest direction of the 
 invention, for I recollect no single instance of architec- 
 tural composition by any men except such as Leonardo 
 or Veronese, who could design their architecture thor- 
 oughly before they painted it, which has not a look of 
 inanity and absurdity. The best landscapes and the 
 best architectural studies have been views ; and I would 
 have the artist take shame to himself in the exact degree 
 in which he finds himself obliged in the production of 
 his picture to lose any, even of the smallest parts or 
 most trivial hues which bear a part in the great impres- 
 sion made by the reality. The difference between the 
 drawing of the architect and artist * ought never to be, 
 as it now commonly is, the difference between lifeless 
 formality and witless license ; it ought to be between 
 giving the mere lines and measures of a building, and 
 giving those lines and measures with the impression and 
 soul of it besides. All artists should be ashamed of 
 themselves when they find they have not the power of 
 being true; the right wit of drawing is like the right 
 wit of conversation, not hyperbole, not violence, not fri- 
 volity, only well expressed, laconic truth. 
 
 Among the members of the Academy, we have at pres- 
 ent only one professedly architectural draughtsman of 
 note, David Roberts, whose reputation § 35 works of 
 is probably farther extended on the conti- Selr d fide5t°y e and 
 nent than that of any other of our artists, grace * 
 except Landseer. I am not certain, however, that I 
 have any reason to congratulate either of my country- 
 
 * Indeed there should be no such difference at all. Every architect 
 ought to be an artist ; every very great artist is necessarily an archi- 
 tect. 
 
 14 
 
210 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 men upon this their European estimation ; for I think 
 it exceedingly probable that in both instances it is ex- 
 clusively based on their defects ; and in the case of Mr. 
 Roberts, in particular, there has of late appeared more 
 ground for it than is altogether desirable in a smooth- 
 ness and over-finish of texture which bears dangerous fel- 
 lowship with the work of our Gallic neighbors. 
 
 The fidelity of intention and honesty of system of 
 Roberts have, however, always been meritorious ; his 
 drawing of architecture is dependent on no unintelli- 
 gible lines, or blots, or substituted types : the main lines 
 of the real design are always there, and its hollowness 
 and undercuttings given with exquisite feeling ; his 
 sense of solidity of form is very peculiar, leading him to 
 dwell with great delight on the roundings of edges and 
 angles ; his execution is dexterous and delicate, singu- 
 larly so in oil, and his sense of chiaroscuro refined. But 
 he has never done himself justice, and suffers his pict- 
 ures to fall below the rank they should assume, by the 
 presence of several marring characters, which I shall 
 name, because it is perfectly in his power to avoid them. 
 In looking over the valuable series of drawing of the 
 Holy Land, which we owe to Mr. Roberts, we cannot 
 but be amazed to find how frequently it has happened 
 that there was something very white immediately in the 
 foreground, and something very black exactly behind it. 
 The same thing happens perpetually with Mr. Roberts’s 
 pictures ; a white column is always coming out of a blue 
 mist, or a white stone out of a green pool, or a white 
 monument out of a brown recess, and the artifice is not 
 always concealed with dexterity. This is unworthy of 
 so skilful a composer, and it has destroyed the impres- 
 siveness as well as the color of some of his finest works. 
 It shows a poverty of conception, which appears to me 
 to arise from a deficient habit of study. It will be re- 
 membered that of the sketches for this work, several 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 211 
 
 times exhibited in London, every one was executed in 
 the same manner, and with about the same degree of 
 completion : being all of them accurate records of the 
 main architectural lines, the shapes of the shadows, and 
 the remnants of artificial color, obtained, by means of 
 the same grays, throughout, and of the same yellow 
 (a singularly false and cold though convenient color) 
 touched upon the lights. As far as they went, nothing 
 could be more valuable than these sketches, and the 
 public, glancing rapidly at their general and graceful 
 effects, could hardly form anything like an estimate of 
 the endurance and determination which must have been 
 necessary in such a climate to obtain records so patient, 
 entire, and clear, of details so multitudinous as (espe- 
 cially) the hieroglyphics of the Egyptian temples ; an 
 endurance which perhaps only artists can estimate, and 
 for which we owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Roberts 
 most difficult to discharge. But if these sketches were 
 all that the artist brought home, whatever value is to be 
 attached to them as statements of fact, they are alto- 
 gether insufficient for the producing of pictures. I saw 
 among them no single instance of a downright study; 
 of a study in which the real hues and shades of sky and 
 earth had been honestly realized or attempted ; nor were 
 there, on the other hand, any of those invaluable-blotted- 
 five-minutes works which record the unity of some sin- 
 gle and magnificent impressions. Hence the pictures 
 which have been painted from these sketches have been 
 as much alike in their want of impressiveness as the 
 sketches themselves, and have never borne the living 
 aspect of the Egyptian light ; it has always been impos- 
 sible to say whether the red in them (not a pleasant one) 
 was meant for hot sunshine or for red sandstone — their 
 power has been farther destroyed by the necessity the 
 artist seems to feel himself under of eking out their ef- 
 fect by points of bright foreground color, and thus we 
 
212 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 have been encumbered with caftans, pipes, scymetars, 
 and black hair, when all that we wanted was a lizard, or 
 an ibis. It is perhaps owing* to this want of earnestness 
 in study rather than to deficiency of perception, that the 
 coloring of this artist is commonly untrue. Some time 
 ago when he was painting Spanish subjects, his habit 
 was to bring out his whites in relief from transparent 
 bituminous browns, which though not exactly right in 
 color, were at any rate warm and agreeable ; but of late 
 his color has become cold, waxy, and opaque, and in his 
 deep shades he sometimes permits himself the use of a 
 violent black which is altogether unjustifiable. A pict- 
 ure of Eoslin Chapel exhibited in 1844, showed this de- 
 fect in the recess to which the stairs descend, in an ex- 
 travagant degree ; and another exhibited in the British 
 Institution, instead of showing the exquisite crumbling 
 and lichenous texture of the Eoslin stone, was polished 
 to as vapid smoothness as ever French historical pict- 
 ure. The general feebleness of the effect is increased 
 by the insertion of the figures as violent pieces of local 
 color unaffected by the light and unblended with the 
 hues around them, and bearing evidence of having been 
 painted from models or draperies in the dead light of a 
 room instead of sunshine. On these deficiencies I should 
 not have remarked, but that by honest and determined 
 painting from and of nature, it is perfectly in the power 
 of the artist to supply them ; and it is bitterly to be re- 
 gretted that the accuracy and elegance of his work 
 should not be aided by that genuineness of hue and ef- 
 fect which can only be given by the uncompromising 
 effort to paint not a fine picture but an impressive and 
 known verity. 
 
 The two artists whose works it remains for us to re- 
 view, are men who have presented us with examples of 
 the treatment of every kind of subject, and among the 
 rest with portions of architecture which the best of 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 213 
 
 our exclusively architectural draughtsmen could not 
 excel. 
 
 The frequent references made to the works of Clarkson 
 Stanfield throughout the subsequent pages render it less 
 necessary for me to speak of him here at §3 6. ciarkson 
 any length. He is the leader of the Eng- stanfield * 
 lish Realists, and perhaps among the more remarkable 
 of his characteristics is the look of common-sense and 
 rationality which his compositions will always bear when 
 opposed to any kind of affectation. He appears to think 
 of no other artist. What he has learned, has been from 
 his own acquaintance with and affection for the steep 
 hills and the deep sea ; and his modes of treatment are 
 alike removed from sketchiness or incompletion, and 
 from exaggeration or effort. The somewhat over-prosaic 
 tone of his subjects is rather a condescension to what he 
 supposes to be public feeling, than a sign of want of 
 feeling in himself ; for in some of his sketches from nat- 
 ure or from fancy, I have seen powers and perceptions 
 manifested of a far higher order than any that are trace- 
 able in his Academy works, powers which I think him 
 much to be blamed for checking. The portion of his 
 pictures usually most defective in this respect is the 
 sky, which is apt to be cold and uninventive, always 
 well drawn, but with a kind of hesitation in the clouds 
 whether it is to be fair or foul weather; they having* 
 neither the joyfulness of rest, nor the majesty of storm. 
 Their color is apt also to verge on a morbid purple, as 
 was eminently the case in the large picture of the wreck 
 on the coast of Holland exhibited in 1844, a work in which 
 both his powers and faults were prominently manifested, 
 the picture being full of good painting, but wanting in 
 its entire appeal. There was no feeling of wreck about 
 it ; and, but for the damage about her bowsprit, it would 
 have been impossible for a landsman to say whether the 
 hull was meant for a wreck or a guardship. Neverthe- 
 
2 It 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 less, it is always to be recollected, that in subjects of 
 this kind it is probable that much escapes us in conse- 
 quence of our want of knowledge, and that to the eye of 
 the seaman much may be of interest and value which to 
 us appears cold. At all events, this healthy and rational 
 regard of things is incomparably preferable to the dra- 
 matic absurdities which weaker artists commit in mat- 
 ters marine ; and from copper-colored sunsets on green 
 waves sixty feet high, with cauliflower breakers, and 
 ninepin rocks ; from drowning on planks, and starving 
 on rafts, and lying naked on beaches, it is really re- 
 freshing to turn to a surge of Stanfield’s true salt, ser- 
 viceable, unsentimental sea. It would be well, however, 
 if he would sometimes take a higher flight. The castle 
 of Ischia gave him a grand subject, and a little more 
 invention in the sky, a little less muddiness in the rocks, 
 and a little more savageness in the sea, would have made 
 it an impressive picture ; it just misses the sublime, yet 
 is a fine work, and better engraved than usual by the Art 
 Union. 
 
 One fault we cannot but venture to find, even in our 
 own extreme ignorance, with Mr. Stanfield’s boats ; they 
 never look weather-beaten. There is something pecu- 
 liarly precious in the rusty, dusty, tar-trickled, fishy, 
 phosphorescent brown of an old boat, and when this has 
 just dipped under a wave and rises to the sunshine it is 
 enough to drive Giorgione to despair. I have never 
 seen any effort at this by Stanfield; his boats always 
 look new-painted and clean ; witness especially the one 
 before the ship in the wreck picture above noticed ; and 
 there is some such absence of a right sense of color in 
 other portions of his subject ; even his fishermen have 
 always clean jackets and unsoiled caps, and his very 
 rocks are lichenless. And, by the way, this ought to be 
 noted respecting modern painters in general, that they 
 have not a proper sense of the value of dirt; cottage 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 215 
 
 children never appear but in fresh got-up caps and 
 aprons, and white-handed beggars excite compassion in 
 unexceptionable rags. In reality, almost all the colors 
 of things associated with human life derive something of 
 their expression and value from the tones of impurity, 
 and so enhance the value of the entirely pure tints of 
 nature herself. Of Stanfield’s rock and mountain draw- 
 ing enough will be said hereafter. His foliage is infe- 
 rior ; his architecture admirably drawn, but commonly 
 wanting in color. His picture of the Doge’s palace at 
 Venice was quite clay-cold and untrue. Of late he has 
 shown a marvellous predilection for the realization, even 
 to actually relieved texture, of old worm-eaten wood ; we 
 trust he will not allow such fancies to carry him too 
 far. 
 
 The name I have last to mention is that of J. M. W. 
 Turner. I do not intend to speak of this artist at present 
 in general terms, because my constant practice through- 
 out this work is to say, when I speak of an § 37i J# M> w> 
 artist at all, the very truth of what I be- Bationai fS?§| il 
 lieve and feel respecting him; and the aU s reat painters, 
 truth of what I believe and feel respecting Turner would 
 appear in this place, unsupported by any proof, mere 
 rhapsody. I shall therefore here confine myself to a 
 rapid glance at the relations of his past and present 
 works, and to some notice of what he has failed of ac- 
 complishing: the greater part of the subsequent chap- 
 ters will be exclusively devoted to the examination of 
 the new fields over which he has extended the range of 
 landscape art. 
 
 It is a fact more universally acknowledged than en- 
 forced or acted upon, that all great painters, of whatever 
 school, have been great only in their rendering of what 
 they had seen and felt from early childhood ; and that 
 the greatest among them have been the most frank in 
 acknowledging this their inability to treat anything 
 
216 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 successfully but that with which they had been famil- 
 iar. The Madonna of Raffaeile was born on the Urbino 
 mountains, Ghirlandajo’s is a Florentine, Bellini’s a Ve- 
 netian ; there is not the slightest effort on the part of 
 any one of these great men to paint her as a Jewess. It 
 is not the place here to insist farther on a point so sim- 
 ple and so universally demonstrable. Expression, char- 
 acter, types of countenance, costume, color, and accesso- 
 ries are with all great painters whatsoever those of their 
 native land, and that frankly and entirely, without the 
 slightest attempt at modification ; and I assert fearlessly 
 that it is impossible that it should ever be otherwise, 
 and that no man ever painted or ever will paint well 
 anything but what he has early and long seen, early and 
 long felt, and early and long loved. How far it is pos- 
 sible for the mind of one nation or generation to be 
 healthily modified and taught by the work of another, I 
 presume not to determine ; but it depends upon whether 
 the energy of the mind which receives the instruction be 
 sufficient, while it takes out of what it feeds upon that 
 which is universal and common to all nature, to resist 
 all warping from national or temporary peculiarities. 
 Nino Pisano got nothing but good, the modern French 
 nothing but evil, from the study of the antique ; but 
 Nino Pisano had a God and a character. All artists who 
 have attempted to assume, or in their weakness have 
 been affected by, the national peculiarities of other times 
 and countries, have instantly, whatever their original 
 power, fallen to third-rate rank, or fallen altogether, and 
 have invariably lost their birthright and blessing, lost 
 their power over the human heart, lost all capability 
 of teaching or benefiting others. Compare the hybrid 
 classification of Wilson with the rich English purity of 
 Gainsborough ; compare the recent exhibition of middle- 
 age cartoons for the Houses of Parliament with the 
 works of Hogarth ; compare the sickly modern German 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES . 
 
 217 
 
 imitations of the great Italians with Albert Durer and 
 Holbein ; compare the vile classicality of Canova and the 
 modern Italians with Mino da Eiesole, Luca della Eob- 
 bia, and Andrea del Verrocchio. The manner of Mcolo 
 Poussin is said to be Greek— it may be so ; this only I 
 know, that it is heartless and profitless. The severity of 
 the rule, however, extends not in full force to the nation- 
 ality, but only to the visibility of things ; for it is very 
 possible for an artist of powerful mind to throw himself 
 well into the feeling of foreign nations of his own time. 
 Thus John Lewis has been eminently successful in his 
 seizing of Spanish character. Yet it may be doubted 
 if the seizure be such as Spaniards themselves would 
 acknowledge ; it is probably of the habits of the people 
 more than their hearts; continued efforts of this kind, 
 especially if their subjects be varied, assuredly end in 
 failure ; Lewis, who seemed so eminently penetrative in 
 Spain, sent nothing from Italy but complexions and cos- 
 tumes, and I expect no good from his stay in Egypt. 
 English artists are usually entirely ruined by residence 
 in Italy, but for this there are collateral causes which it 
 is not here the place to examine. Be this as it may, and 
 whatever success may be attained in pictures of slight 
 and unpretending aim, of genre, as they are called, in the 
 rendering of foreign character, of this I am certain, that 
 whatever is to be truly great and affecting must have on 
 it the strong stamp of the native land ; not a law this, 
 but a necessity, from the intense hold on their country 
 of the affections of all truly great men ; all classicality, 
 all middle-age patent reviving, is utterly vain and ab- 
 surd ; if we are now to do anything great, good, awful, 
 religious, it must be got out of our own little island, 
 and out of this year 1846, railroads and all : if a British 
 painter, I say this in earnest seriousness, cannot make 
 historical characters out of the British House of Peers, 
 he cannot paint history ; and if he cannot make a Ma- 
 
218 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 donna of a British girl of the nineteenth century, he 
 cannot paint one at all. 
 
 The rule, of course, holds in landscape ; yet so far less 
 authoritatively, that the material nature of all countries 
 and times is in many points actually, and 
 
 § 38. Influence . ... • • i J V * , 
 
 of this feeling on m all, m principle, the same ; so that feel- 
 
 Landscape sub- ings educated in Cumberland, may find 
 their food in Switzerland, and impressions 
 first received among the rocks of Cornwall, be recalled 
 upon the precipices of Genoa. Add to this actual same- 
 ness, the power of every great mind to possess itself of 
 the spirit of things once presented to it, and it is evident, 
 that little limitation can be set to the landscape painter 
 as to the choice of his field ; and that the law of nation- 
 ality will hold with him only so far as a certain joyfulness 
 and completion will be by preference found in those parts 
 of his subject which remind him of his own land. But 
 if he attempt to impress on his landscapes any other 
 spirit than that he has felt, and to make them landscapes 
 of other times, it is all over with him, at least, in the de- 
 gree in which such reflected moonshine takes place of 
 the genuine light of the present day. 
 
 The reader will at once perceive how much trouble this 
 simple principle will save both the painter and the critic ; 
 it at once sets aside the whole school of common com- 
 position, and exonerates us from the labor of minutely 
 examining any landscape which has nymphs or philoso- 
 phers in it. 
 
 It is hardly necessary for us to illustrate this principle 
 by any reference to the works of early landscape paint- 
 ers, as I suppose it is universally acknowledged with 
 respect to them ; Titian being the most remarkable in- 
 stance of the influence of the native air on a strong mind, 
 and Claude, of that of the classical poison on a weak one ; 
 but it is very necessary to keep it in mind in reviewing 
 the works of our great modern landscape painter. 
 
TEE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 219 
 
 I do not know in what district of England Turner first 
 or longest studied, but the scenery whose influence I 
 can trace most definitely throughout his „ 
 
 , . i i 7 1 § 39. Its peculiar 
 
 works, varied as they are, is that or York- manifestation in 
 7 # Turner. 
 
 shire. Of all his drawings, I think, those 
 of the Yorkshire series have the most heart in them, the 
 most affectionate, simple, unwearied, serious finishing of 
 truth. There is in them little seeking after effect, but a 
 strong love of place, little exhibition of the artist’s own 
 powers or peculiarities, but intense appreciation of the 
 smallest local minutiae. These drawings have unfortun- 
 ately changed hands frequently, and have been abused 
 and ill-treated by picture dealers and cleaners; the 
 greater number of them are now mere wrecks. I name 
 them not as instances, but as proofs of the artist’s study 
 in this district ; for the affection to which they owe their 
 excellence, must have been grounded long years before. 
 It is to be traced, not only in these drawings of the 
 places themselves, but in the peculiar love of the painter 
 for rounded forms of hills ; not but that he is right in 
 this on general principles, for I doubt not, that, with his 
 peculiar feeling for beauty of line, his hills would have 
 been rounded still, even if he had studied first among 
 the peaks of Cadore ; but rounded to the same extent and 
 with the same delight in their roundness, they would not 
 have been. It is, I believe, to those broad wooded steeps 
 and swells of the Yorkshire downs that we in part ow r e 
 the singular massiveness that prevails in Turner’s moun- 
 tain drawing, and gives it one of its chief elements of 
 grandeur. Let the reader open the Liber Studiorum, 
 and compare the painter’s enjoyment of the lines in the 
 Ben Arthur, with his comparative uncomfortableness 
 among those of the aiguilles about the Mer de Glace. 
 Great as he is, those peaks would have been touched very 
 differently by a Savoyard as great as he. 
 
 I am in the habit of looking to the Yorkshire draw- 
 
220 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 ings, as indicating one of the culminating points in 
 Turner's career. In these he attained the highest degree 
 of what he had up to that time attempted, namely, finish 
 and quantity of form united with expression of atmos- 
 phere, and light without color. His early drawings are 
 singularly instructive in this definiteness and simplicity 
 of aim. No complicated or brilliant color is ever thought 
 of in them ; they are little more than exquisite studies 
 in light and shade, very green blues being used for the 
 shadows, and golden browns for the lights. The diffi- 
 culty and treachery of color being thus avoided, the artist 
 was able to bend his whole mind upon the drawing, and 
 thus to attain such decision, delicacy, and completeness 
 as have never in anywise been equalled, and as might 
 serve him for a secure foundation in all after experiments. 
 Of the quantity and precision of his details, the draw- 
 ings made for Hakewill’s Italy are singular examples. 
 The most perfect gem in execution is a little bit on the 
 Rhine, with reeds in the foreground, in the possession of 
 B. G. Windus, Esq., of Tottenham; but the Yorkshire 
 drawings seem to be on the whole the most noble repre- 
 sentatives of his art at this period. 
 
 About the time of their production, the artist seems to 
 have felt that he had done either all that could be done, 
 or all that was necessary, in that manner, and began to 
 reach after something beyond it. The element of color 
 begins to mingle with his work, and in the first efforts to 
 reconcile his intense feeling for it with his careful form, 
 several anomalies begin to be visible, and some unfortu- 
 nate or uninteresting works necessarily belong to the 
 period. The England drawings, which are very charac- 
 teristic of it, are exceedingly unequal, — some, as the 
 Oakhampton, Kilgarren, Alnwick, and Llanthony, being 
 among his finest works; others, as the Windsor from 
 Eton, the Eton College, and the Bedford, showing coarse- 
 ness and conventionality. 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 221 
 
 I do not know at what time the painter first went 
 abroad, but among the earliest of the series of the Liber 
 Studiorum (dates 1808, 1809) occur the § 40 The domes _ 
 magnificent Mont St. Gothard, and little S Libi ec st S u(S- 
 Devil’s Bridge. Now it is remarkable that orum - 
 after his acquaintance with this scenery, so congenial in 
 almost all respects with the energy of his mind, and sup- 
 plying him with materials of which in these two subjects, 
 aiid in the Chartreuse, and several others afterwards, he 
 showed both his entire appreciation and command, the 
 proportion of English to foreign subjects should in the 
 rest of the work be more than two to one ; and that those 
 English subjects should be — many of them — of a kind 
 peculiarly simple, and of every-day occurrence, such as 
 the Pembury Mill, the Farm Yard Composition with the 
 White Horse, that with the Cocks and Pigs, Hedging 
 and Ditching, Watercress Gatherers (scene at Twicken- 
 ham,) and the beautiful and solemn rustic subject called 
 a Watermill; and that the architectural subjects instead 
 of being taken, as might have been expected of an artist 
 so fond of treating effects of extended space, from some 
 of the enormous continental masses, are almost exclu- 
 sively British; Bivaulx, Holy Island, Dumblain, Dun- 
 stanborough, Chepstow, St. Catherine’s, Greenwich Hos- 
 pital, an English Parish Church, a Saxon Buin, and an 
 exquisite Beminiscence of the English Lowland Castle 
 in the pastoral, with the brook, wooden bridge, and wild 
 duck, to all of which we have nothing foreign to oppose 
 but three slight, ill considered, and unsatisfactory sub- 
 jects, from Basle, Lauffenbourg, and another Swiss vil- 
 lage ; and, further, not only is the preponderance of sub- 
 ject British, but of affection also ; for it is strange with 
 what fulness and completion the home subjects are 
 treated in comparison with the greater part of the foreign 
 ones. Compare the figures and sheep in the Hedging 
 and Ditching, and the East gate, Winchelsea, together 
 
222 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 with the near leafage, with the puzzled foreground and 
 inappropriate figures of the Lake of Thun ; or the cattle 
 and road of the St. Catherine’s Hill, with the foreground 
 of the Bonneville ; or the exquisite figure with the sheaf 
 of corn, in the Watermill, with the vintages of the Gren- 
 oble subject. 
 
 In his foliage the same predilections are remarkable. 
 Reminiscences of English willows by the brooks, and 
 English forest glades mingle even with the heroic foli- 
 age of the iEsacus and Hesperie, and the Cephalus ; into 
 the pine, whether of Switzerland or the glorious Stone, 
 he cannot enter, or enters at his peril, like Ariel. Those 
 of the Valley of Chamounix are fine masses, better pines 
 than other people’s, but not a bit like pines for all that ; 
 he feels his weakness, and tears them off the distant 
 mountains with the mercilessness of an avalanche. The 
 Stone pines of the two Italian compositions are fine in 
 their arrangement, but they are very pitiful pines ; the 
 glory of the Alpine rose he never touches ; he munches 
 chestnuts with no relish ; never has learned to like olives ; 
 and, by the vine, we find him in the foreground of the 
 Grenoble Alps laid utterly and incontrovertibly on his 
 back. 
 
 I adduce these evidences of Turner’s nationality (and 
 innumerable others might be given if need were) not as 
 proofs of weakness but of power ; not so much as testify- 
 ing want of perception in foreign lands, as strong hold on 
 his own will ; for I am sure that no artist who has not 
 this hold upon his own will ever get good out of any 
 other. Keeping this principle in mind, it is instructive 
 to observe the depth and solemnity which Turner’s 
 feeling received from the scenery of the continent, the 
 keen appreciation up to a certain point of all that is lo- 
 cally characteristic, and the ready seizure for future use 
 of all valuable material. 
 
 Of all foreign countries he has most entirely entered 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES . 
 
 223 
 
 into the spirit of France ; partly because here he found 
 more fellowship of scene with his own England, partly 
 because an amount of thought which will Tmuafe aint 
 miss of Italy or Switzerland, will fathom mg o^mncKnd 
 
 ^ ,11 ,i . . . Swiss landscape. 
 
 France; partly because there is m the The latter aefi- 
 French foliage and forms of ground, much C1 
 that is especially congenial with his own peculiar choice 
 of form. To what cause it is owing I cannot tell, nor is 
 it 'generally allowed or felt; but of the fact I am certain, 
 that for grace of stem and perfection of form in their 
 transparent foliage, the French trees are altogether un- 
 matched ; and their modes of grouping and massing are 
 so perfectly and constantly beautiful that I think of all 
 countries for educating an artist to the perception of 
 grace, France bears the bell ; and that not romantic nor 
 mountainous France, not the Yosges, nor Auvergne, nor 
 Provence, but lowland France, Picardy and Normandy, 
 the valleys of the Loire and Seine, and even the district, 
 so thoughtlessly and mindlessly abused by English trav- 
 ellers, as uninteresting, traversed between Calais and 
 Dijon ; of which there is not a single valley but is full of 
 the most lovely pictures, nor a mile from which the artist 
 may not receive instruction; the district immediately 
 about Sens being perhaps the most valuable from the 
 grandeur of its lines of poplars and the unimaginable 
 finish and beauty of the tree forms in the two great ave^ 
 nues without the walls. Of this kind of beauty Turner 
 was the first to take cognizance, and he still remains the 
 only, but in himself the sufficient painter of French land- 
 scape. One of the most beautiful examples is the draw- 
 ing of trees engraved for the Keepsake, now in the pos- 
 session of B. Gr. Windus, Esq. ; the drawings made to illus- 
 trate the scenery of the Rivers of France supply in- 
 stances of the most varied character. 
 
 The artist appears, until very lately, rather to have 
 taken from Switzerland thoughts and general concept 
 
224 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 tions of size and of grand form and effect to be used in liis 
 after compositions, than to have attempted the seizing 
 of its actual character. This was beforehand to be ex- 
 pected from the utter physical impossibility of rendering 
 certain effects of Swiss scenery, and the monotony and 
 unmanageableness of others. The Valley of Chamounix 
 in the collection of Walter Fawkes, Esq., I have never 
 seen ; it has a high reputation ; the Hannibal Passing 
 the Alps in its present state exhibits nothing but a heavy 
 shower and a crowd of people getting wet ; another pict- 
 ure in the artist’s gallery of a land-fall is most masterly 
 and interesting, but more daring than agreeable. The 
 Snow-storm, avalanche, and inundation, is one of his 
 mightiest works, but the amount of mountain drawing 
 in it is less than of cloud and effect ; the subjects in the 
 Liber Studiorum are on the whole the most intensely 
 felt, and next to them the vignettes to Rogers’s Poems 
 and Italy. Of some recent drawings of Swiss subject I 
 shall speak presently. 
 
 The effect of Italy upon his mind is very puzzling. 
 On the one hand, it gave him the solemnity and power 
 §42 His render- which are manifested in the historical 
 iefe? f stmk?s C suc- compositions of the Liber Studiorum, 
 compositions ^ ikjw more especially the Rizpah, the Cephalus, 
 failing. the scene from the Fairy Queen, and the 
 
 iEsacus and Hesperie : on the other, he seems never to 
 have entered thoroughly into the spirit of Italy, and the 
 materials he obtained there were afterward but awkward- 
 ly introduced in his large compositions. 
 
 Of these there are very few at all worthy of him ; none 
 but the Liber Studiorum subjects are thoroughly great, 
 and these are great because there is in them the serious- 
 ness without the materials of other countries and times. 
 There is nothing particularly indicative of Palestine in 
 the Barley Harvest of the Rizpah, nor in those round 
 and awful trees ; only the solemnity of the south in the 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES . 
 
 225 
 
 lifting* of the near burning moon. The rocks of the Ja- 
 son may be seen in any quarry of Warwickshire sand- 
 stone. Jason himself has not a bit of Greek about him 
 — he is a simple warrior of no period in particular, nay, I 
 think there is something of the nineteenth century about 
 his legs. When local character of this classical kind is 
 attempted, the painter is visibly cramped : awkward re- 
 semblances to Claude testify the want of his usual force- 
 ful originality : in the tenth Plague of Egypt, he makes 
 us think of Belzoni rather than of Moses ; the fifth is a 
 total failure, the pyramids look like brick-kilns, and the 
 fire running along the ground bears brotherly resem- 
 blance to the burning of manure. The realization of the 
 tenth plague now in his gallery is finer than the study, 
 but still uninteresting; and of the large compositions 
 which have much of Italy in them, the greater part are 
 overwhelmed with quantity and deficient in emotion. 
 The Crossing the Brook is one of the best of these hy- 
 brid pictures; incomparable in its tree-drawing, it yet 
 leaves us doubtful where we are to look and what we are 
 to feel ; it is northern in its color, southern in its foliage, 
 Italy in its details, and England in its sensations, with- 
 out the grandeur of the one, or the healthiness of the 
 other. 
 
 The two Cartilages are mere rationalizations of Claude, 
 one of them excessively bad in color, the other a grand 
 thought, and yet one of the kind which does no one any 
 good, because everything in it is reciprocally sacrificed ; 
 the foliage is sacrificed to the architecture, the architect- 
 ure to the water, the water is neither sea, nor river, nor 
 lake, nor brook, nor canal, and savors of Begent’s Park ; 
 the foreground is uncomfortable ground, — let on build- 
 ing leases. So the Caligula’s Bridge, Temple of Jupiter, 
 Departure of Begulus, Ancient Italy, Cicero’s Villa, and 
 such others, come they from whose hand they may, I 
 class under the general head of “ nonsense pictures.” 
 15 
 
226 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 There never can be any wholesome feeling developed in 
 these preposterous accumulations, and where the artist’s 
 feeling fails, his art follows ; so that the worst possible 
 examples of Turner’s color are found in pictures of this 
 class ; in one or two instances he has broken through the 
 conventional rules, and then is always fine, as in the 
 Hero and Leander ; but in general the picture rises in 
 value as it approaches to a view, as the Fountain of Fal- 
 lacy, a piece of rich northern Italy, with some fairy 
 waterworks; this picture was unrivalled in color once, 
 but is now a mere wreck. So the Bape of Proserpine, 
 though it is singular that in his Academy pictures even 
 his simplicity fails of reaching ideality ; in this picture 
 of Proserpine the nature is not the grand nature of all 
 time, it is indubitably modern,* and we are perfectly 
 electrified at anybody’s being carried away in the corner 
 except by people with spiky hats and carabines. This is 
 traceable to several causes; partly to the want of any 
 grand specific form, partly to the too evident middle-age 
 character of the ruins crowning the hills, and to a multi- 
 plicity of minor causes which we cannot at present enter 
 into. 
 
 Neither in his actual views of Italy has Turner ever 
 caught her true spirit, except in the little vignettes to 
 § 43. His views of Bogers’s Poems. The Villa of Galileo, the 
 briilimcTam? rl nameless composition with stone pines, the 
 dundant quantity. seV eral villa moonlights, and the convent 
 
 compositions in the Voyage of Columbus, are altogether 
 exquisite ; but this is owing chiefly to their simplicity 
 and perhaps in some measure to their smallness of size. 
 
 * This passage seems at variance with what has been said of the ne- 
 cessity of painting present times and objects. It is not so. A great 
 painter makes out of that which he finds before him something which 
 is independent of all time. He can only do this out of the materials 
 ready to his hand, but that which he builds has the dignity of dateless 
 age. A little painter is annihilated by an anachronism, and is con- 
 ventionally antique, and involuntarily modern. 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 227 
 
 None of his large pictures at all equal them ; the Bay of 
 Baiae is encumbered with material, it contains ten times 
 as much as is necessary to a good picture, and yet is so 
 crude in color as to look unfinished. The Palestrina is 
 full of raw white, and has a look of Hampton Court 
 about its long avenue ; the modern Italy is purely Eng- 
 lish in its near foliage ; it is composed from Tivoli ma- 
 terial enriched and arranged most dexterously, but it has 
 the look of a rich arrangement, and not the virtue of the 
 real thing. The early Tivoli, a large drawing taken from 
 below the falls, was as little true, and still less fortunate, 
 the trees there being altogether affected and artificial. 
 The Florence engraved in the Keepsake is a glorious 
 drawing, as far as regards the passage with the bridge 
 and sunlight on the Arno, the Cascine foliage, and dis- 
 tant plain, and the towers of the fortress on the left ; but 
 the details of the duomo and the city are entirely missed, 
 and with them the majesty of the whole scene. The 
 vines and melons of the foreground are disorderly, and 
 its cypresses conventional; in fact, I recollect no in- 
 stance of Turner’s drawing a cypress except in general 
 terms. 
 
 The chief reason of these failures I imagine to be the 
 effort of the artist to put joyousness and brilliancy of 
 effect upon scenes eminently pensive, to substitute radi- 
 ance for serenity of light, and to force the freedom and 
 breadth of line which he learned to love on English 
 downs and Highland moors, out of a country dotted 
 by campaniles and square convents, bristled with cy- 
 presses, partitioned by walls, and gone up and down by 
 steps. 
 
 In one of the cities of Italy he had no such difficulties 
 to encounter. At Venice he found freedom of sj)ace, 
 brilliancy of light, variety of color, massy simplicity of 
 general form ; and to Venice we owe many of the motives 
 in which his highest powers of color have been dis- 
 
228 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 played after tliat change in his system of which we must 
 now take note. 
 
 Among the earlier paintings of Turner, the culminat- 
 ing period, marked by the Yorkshire series in his draw- 
 § 44. Changes in- in g s , is distinguished by great solemnity 
 in° d the d received an( ^ simplicity of subject, prevalent gloom 
 system of art. i n light and shade, and brown in the hue, 
 
 the drawing manly but careful, the minutiae sometimes 
 exquisitely delicate. All the finest works of this period 
 are, I believe, without exception, views, or quiet single 
 thoughts. The Calder Bridge, belonging to E. Bicknell, 
 Esq., is a most pure and beautiful example. The Ivy 
 Bridge, I imagine to be later, but its rock foreground is 
 altogether unrivalled and remarkable for its delicacy of 
 detail ; a butterfly is seen settled on one of the large 
 brown stones in the midst of the torrent. Two paintings 
 of Bonneville, in Savoy, one in the possession of Abel 
 Allnutt, Esq., the other, and, I think, the finest, in a col- 
 lection at Birmingham, show more variety of color than 
 is usual with him at the period, and are in every respect 
 magnificent examples. Pictures of this class are of pe- 
 culiar value, for the larger compositions of the same 
 period are all poor in color, and most of them much 
 damaged, but the smaller works have been far finer orig- 
 inally, and their color seems secure. There is nothing 
 in the range of landscape art equal to them in their way, 
 but the full character and capacity of the painter is not 
 in them. Grand as they are in their sobriety, they still 
 leave much to be desired ; there is great heaviness in 
 their shadows, the material is never thoroughly van- 
 quished, (though this partly for a very noble reason, 
 that the painter is always thinking of and referring to 
 nature, and indulges in no artistical conventionalities,) 
 and sometimes the handling appears feeble. In warmth, 
 lightness, and transparency they have no chance against 
 Gainsborough ; in clear skies and air tone they are alike 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 229 
 
 unfortunate when they provoke comparison with Claude ; 
 and in force and solemnity they can in nowise stand 
 with the landscape of the Venetians. 
 
 The painter evidently felt that he had farther powers, 
 and pressed forward into the field where alone they 
 could be brought into play. It was impossible for him, 
 with all his keen and long-disciplined perceptions, not 
 to feel that the real color of nature had never been 
 attempted by any school ; and that though conventional 
 representations had been given by the Venetians of sun- 
 light and twilight, by invariably rendering the whites 
 golden and the blues green, yet of the actual, joyous, 
 pure, roseate hues of the external world no record had 
 even been given. He saw also that the finish and spe- 
 cific grandeur of nature had been given, but her fulness, 
 space, and mystery never; and he saw that the great 
 landscape painters had always sunk the lower middle 
 tints of nature in extreme shade, bringing the entire 
 melody of color as many degrees down as their possible 
 light was inferior to nature’s ; and that in so doing a 
 gloomy principle had influenced them even in their 
 choice of subject. 
 
 For the conventional color he substituted a pure 
 straightforward rendering of fact, as far as was in his 
 power ; and that not of such fact as had been before even 
 suggested, but of all that is most brilliant, beautiful, and 
 inimitable ; he went to the cataract for its iris, to the 
 conflagration for its flames, asked of the sea its intensest 
 azure, of the sky its clearest gold. For the limited space 
 and defined forms of elder landscape, he substituted the 
 quantity and the mystery of the vastest scenes of earth ; 
 and for the subdued chiaroscuro he substituted first a 
 balanced diminution of oppositions throughout the scale, 
 and afterward, in one or two instances, attempted the re- 
 verse of the old principle, taking the lowest portion of 
 the scale truly, and merging the upper part in high light. 
 
230 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 Innovations so daring and so various could not be in- 
 troduced without corresponding peril; the difficulties 
 § 45. Difficulties tilat la y in his way were more than any 
 ner Ms 1 ResuSant human intellect could altogether surmount, 
 deficiencies. In pi s time there has been no one system 
 of color generally approved ; every artist has his own 
 method and his own vehicle; how to do what Gains- 
 borough did, we know not ; much less what Titian ; to 
 invent a new system of color can hardly be expected of 
 those who cannot recover the old. To obtain perfectly 
 satisfactory results in color under the new conditions 
 introduced by Turner, would at least have required the 
 exertion of all his energies in that sole direction. But 
 color has always been only his second object. The 
 effects of space and form, in which he delights, often 
 require the employment of means and method totally at 
 variance with those necessary for the obtaining of pure 
 color. It is physically impossible, for instance, rightly 
 to draw certain forms of the upper clouds with the brush ; 
 nothing will do it but the pallet-knife with loaded white 
 after the blue ground is prepared. Now it is impossible 
 that a cloud so drawn, however glazed afterward, should 
 have the virtue of a thin warm tint of Titian’s, showing 
 the canvas throughout. So it happens continually. Add 
 to these difficulties, those of the peculiar subjects at- 
 tempted, and to these again, all that belong to the al- 
 tered system of chiaroscuro, and it is evident that we 
 must not be surprised at finding many deficiencies or 
 faults in such works, especially in the earlier of them, 
 nor even suffer ourselves to be withdrawn by the pur- 
 suit of what seems censurable from our devotion to what 
 is mighty. 
 
 Notwithstanding, in some chosen examples of pictures 
 of this kind, I will name three : Juliet and her Nurse ; 
 the old Temeraire, and the Slave Ship : I do not admit 
 that there are at the time of their first appearing on the 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES . 
 
 231 
 
 walls of the Boyal Academy, any demonstrably avoidable 
 faults. I do not deny that there may be, nay, that it is 
 likely there are ; but there is no living artist in Europe 
 whose judgment might safely be taken on the subject, or 
 who could without arrogance affirm of any part of such a 
 picture, that it was wrong ; I am perfectly willing to 
 allow, that the lemon yellow is not properly representa- 
 tive of the yellow of the sky, that the loading of the 
 color is in many places disagreeable, that many of the 
 details are drawn with a kind of imperfection different 
 from what they would have in nature, and that many of 
 the parts fail of imitation, especially to an uneducated 
 eye. But no living authority is of weight enough to 
 prove that the virtues of the picture could have been 
 obtained at a less sacrifice, or that they are not worth 
 the sacrifice ; and though it is perfectly possible that 
 such may be the case, and that what Turner has done 
 may hereafter in some respects be done better, I believe 
 myself that these works are at the time of their first ap- 
 pearing as perfect as those of Phidias or Leonardo ; that 
 is to say, incapable, in their way, of any improvement 
 conceivable by human mind. 
 
 Also, it is only by comparison with such that we are 
 authorized to affirm definite faults in any of his others, 
 for we should have been bound to speak, at least for the 
 present, with the same modesty respecting even his worst 
 pictures of this class, had not his more noble efforts given 
 us canons of criticism. 
 
 But, as was beforehand to be expected from the diffi- 
 culties he grappled with, Turner is exceedingly unequal ; 
 he appears always as a champion in the thick of fight, 
 sometimes with his foot on his enemies’ necks, sometimes 
 staggered or struck to his knee ; once or twice altogether 
 down. He has failed most frequently, as before noticed, 
 in elaborate compositions, from redundant quantity ; 
 sometimes, like most other men, from overcare, as very 
 
232 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 signally in a large and most labored drawing of Bambor- 
 ough ; sometimes, unaccountably, his eye for color seem- 
 ing to fail him for a time, as in a large painting of Borne 
 from the Forum, and in the Cicero’s Villa, Building of 
 Carthage, and the picture of this year in the British In- 
 stitution ; and sometimes, I am sorry to say, criminally, 
 from taking licenses which he must know to be illegiti- 
 mate, or indulging in conventionalities which he does 
 not require. 
 
 On such instances I shall not insist, for the finding 
 fault with Turner is not, I think, either decorous in my- 
 self or like to be beneficial to the reader.* The greater 
 number of failures took place in the transition period, 
 
 * One point, however, it is incumbent upon me to notice, being no 
 question of art but of material. The reader will have observed that I 
 strictly limited the perfection of Turner’s works to the time of their 
 first appearing on the walls of the Royal Academy. It bitterly grieves 
 me to have to do this, but the fact is indeed so. No picture of Turner’s 
 is seen in perfection a month after it is painted. The Walhalla 
 cracked before it had been eight days in the Academy rooms ; the 
 vermilions frequently lose lustre long before the exhibition is over ; 
 and when all the colors begin to get hard a year or two after the pict- 
 ure is painted, a painful deadness and opacity comes over them, the 
 whites especially becoming lifeless, and many of the warmer passages 
 settling into a hard valueless brown, even if the paint remains per- 
 fectly firm, which is far from being always the case. I believe that 
 in some measure these results are unavoidable, the colors being so pe- 
 culiarly blended and mingled in Turner’s present manner as almost to 
 necessitate their irregular drying ; but that they are not necessary to 
 the extent in which they sometimes take place, is proved by the com- 
 parative safety of some even of the more brilliant works. Thus the 
 Old Temeraire is nearly safe in color, and quite firm ; while the Juliet 
 and her Nurse is now the ghost of what it was ; the Slaver shows no 
 cracks, though it is chilled in some of the darker passages, while the 
 Walhalla and several of the recent Venices cracked in the Royal Acad- 
 emy. It is true that the damage makes no further progress after the 
 first year or two, and that even in its altered state the picture is always 
 valuable and records its intention ; but it is bitterly to be regretted 
 that so great a painter should not leave a single work by which in suc- 
 ceeding ages he might be estimated. The fact of his using means so 
 imperfect, together with that of his utter neglect of the pictures in his 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 233 
 
 when the artist was feeling for the new qualities, and 
 endeavoring to reconcile them with more careful elabo- 
 ration of form than was properly consistent „ 
 
 with them. Gradually his hand became ^ rk J er ? recent 
 more free, his perception and grasp of the 
 new truths more certain, and his choice of subject more 
 adapted to the exhibition of them. But his powers did 
 not attain their highest results till toward the year 1840, 
 about which period they did so suddenly, and with a 
 vigor and concentration which rendered his pictures at 
 that time almost incomparable with those which had 
 preceded them. The drawings of Nemi and Oberwesel, 
 in the j)ossession-of B. G. Windus, Esq., were among the 
 first evidences of this sudden advance ; only the foliage 
 in both of these is inferior; and it is remarkable that in 
 this phase of his art, Turner has drawn little foliage, 
 and that little badly — the great characteristic of it being 
 its power, beauty, and majesty of color, and its abandon- 
 ment of all littleness and division of thought to a single 
 impression. In the year 1842, he made some drawings 
 from recent sketches in Switzerland ; these, with some 
 produced in the following years, all of Swiss subject, I 
 
 own gallery, are a phenomenon in human mind which appears to me 
 utterly inexplicable ; and both are without excuse. If the effects he 
 desires cannot be to their full extent produced except by these treach- 
 erous means, one picture only should be painted each year as an exhi- 
 bition of immediate power, and the rest should be carried out, what- 
 ever the expense of labor and time, in safe materials, even at the risk 
 of some deterioration of immediate effect. That which is greatest in 
 him is entirely independent of means ; much of what he now accom- 
 plishes illegitimately might without doubt be attained in securer modes 
 — wdiat cannot should without hesitation be abandoned. Fortunately 
 the drawings appear subject to no such deterioration. Many of them 
 are now almost destroyed, but this has been, I think, always through 
 ill-treatment, or has been the case only with very early works. I have 
 myself known no instance of a drawing properly protected, and not 
 rashly exposed to light suffering the slightest change. The great foes 
 of Turner, as of all other great colorists especially, are the picture- 
 cleaner and the mounter. 
 
234 
 
 GENERAL APPLICATION OF 
 
 consider to be, on the whole, the most characteristic and 
 perfect works he has ever produced. The Academy pict- 
 ures were far inferior to them ; but among- these exam- 
 ples of the same power were not -wanting, more especially 
 in the smaller pictures of Yenice. The Sun of Yenice, 
 going to sea ; the San Benedetto, looking towards Fu- 
 sina ; and a view of Murano, with the Cemetery, were all 
 faultless ; another of Yenice, seen from near Fusina, with 
 sunlight and moonlight mixed (1844) was, I think, when 
 I first saw it, (and it still remains little injured,) the most 
 perfectly beautiful piece of color of all that I have seen 
 produced by human hands, by any means, or at any 
 period. Of the exhibition of 1845, 1 have only seen a 
 small Yenice, (still I believe in the artist’s possession,) 
 and the two whaling subjects. The Yenice is a second- 
 rate work, and the two others altogether unworthy of 
 him. 
 
 In conclusion of our present sketch of the course of 
 landscape art, it may be generally stated that Turner is 
 the only painter, so far as I know, who has ever drawn 
 the sky, (not the clear sky, which we before saw belonged 
 exclusively to the religious schools, but the various 
 forms and phenomena of the cloudy heavens,) all previ- 
 vious artists having only represented it typically or par- 
 tially ; but he absolutely and universally : he is the only 
 painter who has ever drawn a mountain, or a stone ; no 
 other man ever having learned their organization, or 
 possessed himself of their spirit, except in part and ob- 
 scurely, (the one or two stones noted of Tintoret’s, (Yol. 
 II., Part iii., Ch. 3,) are perhaps hardly enough on 
 which to found an exception in his favor.) He is the 
 only painter who ever drew the stem of a tree, Titian 
 having come the nearest before him, and excelling him in 
 the muscular development of the larger trunks, (though 
 sometimes losing the woody strength in a serpent-like 
 fiaccidity,) but missing the grace and character of the 
 
THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 235 
 
 ramifications. He is the only painter who has ever rep- 
 resented the surface of calm, or the force of agitated 
 water ; who has represented the effects of space on dis- 
 tant objects, or who has rendered the abstract beauty 
 of natural color. These assertions I make deliberately, 
 after careful weighing and consideration, in no spirit of 
 dispute, or momentary zeal; but from strong and con- 
 vinced feeling, and with the consciousness of being able 
 to prove them. 
 
 This proof is only partially and incidentally attempted 
 in the present portion of this work, which was originally 
 written, as before explained, for a temporary purpose, 
 and which, therefore, I should have gladly cancelled, 
 but that, relating as it does only to simple matters of 
 fact and not to those of feeling, it may still, perhaps, be 
 of service to some readers who would be unwilling to enter 
 into the more speculative fields with which the succeed- 
 ing sections are concerned. I leave, therefore, nearly as 
 it was originally written, the following examination of 
 the relative truthfulness of elder and of recent art ; always 
 requesting the reader to remember, as some excuse for 
 the inadequate execution, even of what I 
 
 , , H , , , -I u . , §47. Difficulty of 
 
 have here attempted, how difficult it is to demonstration in 
 . - such subjects. 
 
 express or explain, by language only, those 
 delicate qualities of the object of sense, on the seizing of 
 which ail refined truth of representation depends. Try, 
 for instance, to explain in language the exact qualities of 
 the lines on which depend the whole truth and beauty of 
 expression about the half-opened lips of Baffaelie’s St. 
 Catherine. There is, indeed, nothing in landscape so 
 ineffable as this; but there is no part nor portion of 
 God’s works in which the delicacy appreciable by a cul- 
 tivated eye, and necessary to be rendered in art, is not 
 beyond all expression and explanation ; I cannot tell it 
 you, if you do not see it. And thus I have been entirely 
 unable, in the following pages, to demonstrate clearly 
 
23G 
 
 THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 
 
 anything of really deep and perfect truth ; nothing but 
 what is coarse and commonplace, in matters to be judged 
 of by the senses, is within the reach of argument. How 
 much or how little I have done must be judged of by the 
 reader : how much it is impossible to do I have more 
 fully shown in the concluding section. 
 
 I shall first take into consideration those general 
 truths, common to all the objects of nature, which are 
 productive of what is usually called “ effect,” that is to 
 say, truths of tone, general color, space, and light. I 
 shall then investigate the truths of specific form and 
 color, in the four great component parts of landscape — 
 sky, earth, water, and vegetation. 
 
SECTION n. 
 
 OF GENERAL TRUTHS. 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 OF TRUTH OF TONE. 
 
 As I have already allowed, that in effects of tone, the 
 old masters have never yet been equalled ; and as this is 
 the first, and nearly the last, concession I shall have to 
 make to them, I wish it at once to be thoroughly under- 
 stood how far it extends. 
 
 I understand two thing's by the word “ tone : ’’—first, 
 the exact relief and relation of objects against and to 
 each other in substance and darkness, as 
 they are nearer or more distant, and the 
 perfect relation of the shades of all of them 
 to the chief light of the picture, whether 
 that be sky, water, or anything else. Secondly, the ex- 
 act relation of the colors of the shadows to the colors of 
 the lights, so that they may be at once felt 
 to be merely different degrees of the same 
 light ; and the accurate relation among the 
 illuminated parts themselves, with respect 
 to the degree in which they are influenced 
 by the color of the light itself, whether warm or cold ; so 
 that the whole of the picture (or, where several tones 
 are united, those parts of it which are under each), may 
 be felt to be in one climate, under one kind of light, and 
 
 § 1. Meaning of 
 the word “tone:*’ 
 First, the right re- 
 lation of objects 
 in shadow to the 
 principal light. 
 
 § 2. Secondly, the 
 quality of color by 
 which it is felt to 
 owe part of its 
 brightness to the 
 hue of light upon 
 it. 
 
238 
 
 OF TRUTH OF TONE. 
 
 in one kind of atmosphere ; this being chiefly dependent 
 on that peculiar and inexplicable quality of each color 
 laid on, which makes the eye feel both what is the actual 
 color of the object represented, and that it is raised 
 to its apparent pitch by illumination. A very bright 
 brown, for instance, out of sunshine, may be precisely of 
 the same shade of color as a very dead or cold brown in 
 sunshine, but it will be totally different in quality ; 
 and that quality by which the illuminated dead color 
 would be felt in nature different from the unilluminated 
 bright one, is what artists are perpetually aiming at, and 
 connoisseurs talking nonsense about, under the name of 
 “ tone.” The want of tone in pictures is caused by ob- 
 jects looking bright in their own positive hue, and not 
 by illumination, and by the consequent want of sensa- 
 tion of the raising of their hues by light. 
 
 The first of these meanings of the word “tone” is 
 liable to be confounded with what is commonly called 
 aerial perspective.” But aerial perspec- 
 
 §.3. Bifferenee be- 
 tween tone m its 
 first sense and 
 
 tween tone m its tive is the expression of space, by any 
 
 aerial perspective, means whatsoever, sharpness of edge, viv- 
 idness of color, etc., assisted by greater pitch of shadow, 
 and requires only that objects should be detached 
 from each other, by degrees of intensity in proportion 
 to their distance, without requiring that the difference 
 between the farthest and nearest should be in positive 
 quantity the same that nature has put. But what I 
 have called “ tone ” requires that there should be the 
 same sum of difference, as well as the same division of 
 differences. 
 
 Now the finely toned pictures of the old masters are, 
 in this respect, some of the notes of nature played two 
 § A l _ Th ® P ict ^es or three octaves below her key: the dark 
 
 of the old masters . . 
 
 perfect in relation o meets m the middle distance having pre- 
 
 of middle tints to . n , . . . 
 
 light. eisely the same relation to the light ot the 
 
 sky which they have in nature, but the light being nec- 
 
OF TRUTH OF TONE. 
 
 239 
 
 essarily infinitely lowered, and the mass of the shadow 
 deepened in the same degree. I have often been struck, 
 when looking at a camera-obscuro on a dark day, with 
 the exact resemblance the image bore to one of the finest 
 pictures of the old masters ; all the foliage coming dark 
 against the sky, and nothing being seen in its mass but 
 here and there the isolated light of a silvery stem or an 
 unusually illumined cluster of leafage. 
 
 .Now if this could be done consistently, and all the 
 notes of nature given in this way an octave or two down, 
 it would be right and necessary so to do: „ „ 
 
 but be it observed, not only does nature quentiy totally 
 
 . 7 . . false m relation of 
 
 surpass us m power oi obtaining light as ^die^tmts to 
 much as the sun surpasses white paper, but 
 she also infinitely surpasses us in her power of shade. 
 Her deepest shades are void spaces from which no light 
 whatever is reflected to the eye ; ours are black surfaces 
 from which, paint as black as we may, a great deal of 
 light is still reflected, and which, placed against one of 
 nature’s deep bits of gloom, would tell as distinct light. 
 Here we are then, with white paper for our highest light, 
 and visible illumined surface for our deepest shadow, set 
 to run the gauntlet against nature, with the sun for her 
 light, and vacuity for her gloom. It is evident that she 
 can well afford to throw her material objects dark against 
 the brilliant aerial tone of her sky, and yet give in those 
 objects themselves a thousand intermediate distances 
 and tones before she comes to black, or to anything like 
 it — all the illumined surfaces of her objects being as dis- 
 tinctly and vividly brighter than her nearest and darkest 
 shadows, as the sky is brighter than those illumined sur- 
 faces. But if we, against our poor, dull obscurity of 
 yellow paint, instead of sky, insist on having the same 
 relation of shade in material objects, we go down to the 
 bottom of our scale at once ; and what in the world are 
 we to do then ? Where are all our intermediate distances 
 
240 
 
 OF TRUTH OF TONE. 
 
 to come from ? — how are we to express the aerial rela- 
 tions among the parts themselves, for instance, of foliage, 
 whose most distant boughs are already almost black ? — 
 how are we to come up from this to the foreground, and 
 when we have done so, how are we to express the distinc- 
 tion between its solid parts, already as dark as we can 
 make them, and its vacant hollows, which nature has 
 marked sharp and clear and black, among # its lighted sur- 
 faces ? It cannot but be evident at a glance, that if to 
 any one of the steps from one distance to another, we give 
 the same quantity of difference in pitch of shade which 
 nature does, we must pay for this expenditure of our means 
 by totally missing half a dozen distances, not a whit less 
 important or marked, and so sacrifice a multitude of 
 truths, to obtain one. And this, accordingly was the 
 means by which the old masters obtained their (truth ?) 
 of tone. They chose those steps of distance which are 
 the most conspicuous and noticeable — that for instance 
 from sky to foliage, or from clouds to hills — and they 
 gave these their precise pitch of difference in shade with 
 exquisite accuracy of imitation. Their means were then 
 exhausted, and they were obliged to leave their trees flat 
 masses of mere filled-up outline, and to omit the truths 
 of space in every individual part of their picture by the 
 thousand. But this they did not care for ; it saved them 
 trouble ; they reached their grand end, imitative effect ; 
 they thrust home just at the places where the common 
 and careless eye looks for imitation, and they attained 
 the broadest and most faithful appearance of truth of 
 tone which art can exhibit. 
 
 But they are prodigals, and foolish prodigals, in art ; 
 they lavish their whole means to get one truth, and leave 
 
 themselves powerless when they should 
 
 § 6. General false- . , 
 
 hood of such a seize a thousand. And is it indeed worthy 
 
 system. # 
 
 of being called a truth, when we have a 
 vast history given us to relate, to the fulness of which 
 
OF TRUTH OF TONE. 
 
 241 
 
 neither our limits nor our language are adequate, instead 
 of giving all its parts abridged in the order of their im- 
 portance, to omit or deny the greater part of them, that 
 we may dwell with verbal fidelity on two or three ? Nay, 
 the very truth to which the rest are sacrificed is rendered 
 falsehood by their absence, the relation of the tree to 
 the sky is marked as an impossibility by the want of 
 relation of its parts to each other. 
 
 'Turner starts from the beginning with a totally differ- 
 ent principle. He boldly takes pure white (and justly, 
 for it is the sign of the most intense sun- . . . 
 
 beams) for his highest light, and lamp- of^ Turner in this 
 black for his deepest shade ; and between 
 these he makes every degree of shade indicative of a sep- 
 arate degree of distance,* giving each step of approach, 
 not the exact difference in pitch which it would have in 
 nature, but a difference bearing the same proportion to 
 that which his sum of possible shade bears to the sum 
 of nature’s shade; so that an object half way between 
 his horizon and his foreground will be exactly in half 
 tint of force, and every minute division of intermediate 
 space will have just its proportionate share of the lesser 
 sum, and no more. Hence where the old masters ex- 
 pressed one distance, he expresses a hundred; and where 
 they said furlongs, he says leagues. Which of these 
 modes of procedure be most agreeable with truth, I think 
 I may safely leave the reader to decide for himself. He 
 will see in this very first instance, one proof of what we 
 above asserted, that the deceptive imitation of nature is 
 inconsistent with real truth ; for the very means by which 
 the old masters attained the apparent accuracy of tone 
 
 * Of course I am not speaking here of treatment of chiaroscuro, but 
 of that quantity of depth of shade by which, cceteris paribus, a near ob- 
 ject will exceed a distant one. For the truth of the systems of Turner 
 and the old masters, as regards chiaroscuro, vide Chapter III. of this 
 Section, § 8. 
 
 m 
 
242 
 
 OF TRUTH OF TONE. 
 
 which is so satisfying to the eye, compelled them to give 
 up all idea of real relations of retirement, and to repre- 
 sent a few successive and marked stages of distance, like 
 the scenes of a theatre, instead of the imperceptible, 
 multitudinous, symmetrical retirement of nature, who is 
 not more careful to separate her nearest bush from her 
 farthest one, than to separate the nearest bough of that 
 bush from the one next to it. 
 
 Take, for instance, one of the finest landscaj>es that 
 ancient art has produced — the work of a really great and 
 intellectual mind, the quiet Nicholas Pous- 
 
 § 8. Comparison of . , • i ^ n 
 
 n^p on as in’s sin, in our own JN ational Gallery, with the 
 traveller washing his feet. The first idea 
 we receive from this picture is that it is evening, and 
 all the light coming from the horizon. Not so. It is full 
 noon, the light coming steep from the left, as is shown 
 by the shadow of the stick on the right-hand pedestal — 
 (for if the sun were not very high, that shadow could not 
 lose itself half-way down, and if it were not lateral, the 
 shadow would slope, instead of being vertical). Now, 
 ask yourself, and answer candidly, if those black masses 
 of foliage, in which scarcely any form is seen but the 
 outline, be a true representation of trees under noon- 
 day sunlight, sloping from the left, bringing out, as it 
 necessarily would do, their masses into golden green, 
 and marking every leaf and bough with sharp shadow 
 and sparkling light. The only truth in the picture is 
 the exact pitch of relief against the sky of both trees 
 and hills, and to this the organization of the hills, the 
 intricacy of the foliage, and everything indicative either 
 of the nature of the light, or the character of the objects, 
 are unhesitatingly sacrificed. So much falsehood does it 
 cost to obtain two apparent truths of tone. Or take, as 
 a still more glaring instance, No. 260 in the Dulwich 
 Gallery, where the trunks of the trees, even of those 
 farthest off, on the left, are as black as paint can make 
 
OF TRUTH OF TONE . 
 
 243 
 
 them, and there is not, and cannot be, the slightest in- 
 crease of force, or any marking whatsoever of distance 
 by color, or any other means, between them and the fore- 
 ground. 
 
 Compare with these Turner’s treatment of his materi- 
 als in the Mercury and Argus. He has here his light 
 actually coming from the distance, the sun 
 
 , . , - , , . § 9. With Turn- 
 
 bemg nearly m the centre oi the picture, er’s“ Mercury and 
 
 and a violent relief of objects against it 
 would be far more justifiable than in Poussin’s case. But 
 this dark relief is used in its full force only with the 
 nearest leaves of the nearest group of foliage over- 
 hanging the foreground from the left ; and between these 
 and the more distant members of the same group, though 
 only three or four yards separate, distinct aerial per- 
 spective and intervening mist and light are shown; 
 while the large tree in the centre, though very dark, as 
 being very near, compared with all the distance, is much 
 diminished in intensity of shade from this nearest 
 group of leaves, and is faint compared with all the fore- 
 ground. It is true that this tree has not, in consequence, 
 the actual pitch of shade against the sky which it would 
 have in nature ; but it has precisely as much as it pos- 
 sibly can have, to leave it the same proportionate rela- 
 tion to the objects near at hand. And it cannot but be 
 evident to the thoughtful reader, that whatever trickery 
 or deception may be the result of a contrary mode of 
 treatment, this is the only scientific or essentially truth- 
 ful system, and that what it loses in tone it gains in 
 aerial perspective. 
 
 Compare again the last vignette in Rogers’s Poems, 
 the “Datur Hora Quieti,” where everything, even the 
 darkest parts of the trees, is kept pale and io And 
 full of graduation; even the bridge where the '“Datur Hora 
 it crosses the descending stream of sun- 
 shine, rather lost in the light than relieved against it. 
 
OF TRUTH OF TONE. 
 
 2 U 
 
 until we come up to the foreground, and then the vigor- 
 ous local black of the plough throws the whole picture 
 into distance and sunshine. I do not know anything in 
 art which can for a moment be set beside this drawing 
 for united intensity of light and repose. 
 
 Observe, I am not at present speaking of the beauty or 
 desirableness of the system of the old masters ; it may be 
 sublime, and affecting, and ideal, and intellectual, and a 
 great deal more ; but all I am concerned with at present 
 is, that it is not true ; while Turner’s is the closest and 
 most studied approach to truth of which the materials 
 of art admit. 
 
 It was not, therefore, with reference to this division of 
 the subject that I admitted inferiority in our great mod- 
 
 § 11 The second ern mas ^ er 1 ° Claude or Poussin, but with 
 sense of the word reference to the second and more usual 
 
 tone / 7 
 
 meaning of the word “tone” — the exact 
 relation and fitness of shadow and light, and of the 
 hues of all objects under them ; and more especially that 
 precious quality of each color laid on, which makes it 
 appear a quiet color illuminated, not a bright color in 
 shade. But I allow this inferiority only with respect to 
 §12. Remarkable the paintings, of Turner, not to his draw- 
 refpect 100 between i n to s - I could select from among the works 
 dr a whiggf of t urn- na med in Chap. VI. of this section, pieces 
 er - of tone absolutely faultless and perfect, 
 
 from the coolest grays of wintry dawn to the intense fire 
 of summer noon. And the difference between the pre- 
 vailing character of these and that of nearly all the 
 paintings, (for the early oil pictures of Turner are far less 
 perfect in tone than the most recent,) it is difficult to ac- 
 count for, but on the supposition that there is something 
 in the material which modern artists in general are in- 
 capable of mastering, and which compels Turner him- 
 self to think less of tone in oil color, than of other and 
 more important qualities. The total failures of Callcott, 
 
OF TRUTH OF TONE. 
 
 245 
 
 whose struggles after tone ended so invariably in shiver- 
 ing winter or brown paint, the misfortune of Landseer 
 with his evening sky in 1842, the frigidity of Stanfield, 
 and the earthiness and opacity which all the magnificent 
 power and admirable science of Etty are unable entirely 
 to conquer, are too fatal and convincing proofs of the 
 want of knowledge of means, rather than of the absence 
 of aim, in modern artists as a body. Yet, g ^ ^ ^ ^ 
 with respect to Turner, however much the to want of power 
 want of tone in his early paintings (the Fall ° ver tne mateildL 
 of Carthage, for instance, and others painted at a time 
 when he was producing the most exquisite hues of light 
 in water-color) might seem to favor such a supposition, 
 there are passages in his recent works (such, for instance, 
 as the sunlight along the sea, in the Slaver) which di- 
 rectly contradict it, and which prove to us that wdiere he 
 now errs in tone, (as in the Cicero’s Villa,) it is less ow- 
 ing to want of power to reach it, than to the pursuit of 
 some different and nobler end. I shall therefore glance 
 at the particular modes in which Turner manages his 
 tone in his present Academy pictures ; the early ones 
 must be given up at once. Place a genuine untouched 
 Claude beside the Crossing the Brook, and the difference 
 in value and tenderness of tone will be felt in an instant, 
 and felt the more painfully because all the cool and 
 transparent qualities of Claude w T ould have been here de- 
 sirable, and in their place, and appear to have been 
 aimed at. The foreground of the Building of Carthage, 
 and the greater part of the architecture of the Fall, are 
 equally heavy and evidently paint, if we compare them 
 with genuine passages of Claude’s sunshine. There is a 
 very grand and simple piece of tone in the possession of 
 J. Allnutt, Esq., a sunset behind willows, but even this 
 is wanting in refinement of shadow, and is crude in its 
 extreme distance. Not so with the recent Academy 
 pictures ; many of their passages are absolutely faultless ; 
 
246 
 
 OF TRUTH OF TON FT 
 
 all are refined and marvellous, and with the exception 
 of the Cicero’s Yilla, we shall find few pictures painted 
 within the last ten years which do not either present us 
 with perfect tone, or with some higher beauty, to which 
 it is necessarily sacrificed. If we glance at the require- 
 ments of nature, and her superiority of means to ours, we 
 shall see why and how it is sacrificed. 
 
 Light, with reference to the tone it induces on objects, 
 is either to be considered as neutral and white, bringing 
 § i4. The two ou ^ l° ca l colors with fidelity ; or colored, 
 ofliSht to q becon- anc ^ consequently modifying these local 
 sidered. tints, with its own. But the power of 
 
 pure white light to exhibit local color is strangely 
 variable. The morning light of about nine or ten is usu- 
 ally very pure ; but the difference of its effect on differ- 
 ent days, independently of mere brilliancy, is as incon- 
 ceivable as inexplicable. Everyone knows how capri- 
 ciously the colors of a fine opal vary from day to day, and 
 how rare the lights are which bring them fully out. 
 Now the expression of the strange, penetrating, deep, 
 neutral light, which, while it alters no color, brings 
 every color up to the highest possible pitch and key of 
 pure, harmonious intensity, is the chief attribute of 
 finely-toned pictures by the great colorists as opposed 
 to pictures of equally high tone, by masters who, careless 
 of color, are content, like Cuyp, to lose local tints in the 
 golden blaze of absorbing light. 
 
 Falsehood, in this neutral tone, if it may be so called, 
 is a matter far more of feeling than of proof, for any 
 color is possible under such lights ; it is meagreness and 
 
 15 Falsehoods ^ ee ^ eness 0]Q ly which are to be avoided ; 
 by which Titian and these are rather matters of sensation 
 
 attains the appear- _ . . . . . . 
 
 ance of quality in than ot reasoning. But it is yet easy 
 enough to prove by what exaggerated and 
 false means the pictures most celebrated for this quality 
 are endowed with their richness and solemnity of color. 
 
OF TRUTH OF TONE. 
 
 24-7 
 
 In the Bacchus and Ariadne of Titian, it is difficult to im- 
 agine anything more magnificently impossible than the 
 blue of the distant landscape ; — impossible, not from its 
 vividness, but because it is not faint and aerial enough to 
 account for its purity of color ; it is too dark and blue at 
 the same time ; and there is indeed so total a want of 
 atmosphere in it, that, but for the difference of form, it 
 would be impossible to tell the mountains (intended to 
 be ten miles off) from the robe of Ariadne close to the 
 spectator. Yet make this blue faint, aerial, and distant — 
 make it in the slightest degree to resemble the truth of 
 nature’s color — and all the tone of the picture, all its 
 intensity and splendor, will vanish on the instant. So 
 again, in the exquisite and inimitable little bit of color, 
 the Europa in the Dulwich Gallery ; the blue of the dark 
 promontory on the left is thoroughly absurd and impos- 
 sible, and the warm tones of the clouds equally so, unless 
 it were sunset ; but the blue especially, because it is 
 nearer than several points of land which are equally in 
 shadow, and yet are rendered in warm gray. But the 
 whole value and tone of the picture would be destroyed 
 if this blue w T ere altered. 
 
 Now, as much of this kind of richness of tone is always 
 given by Turner as is compatible with truth of aerial ef- 
 fect ; but he will not sacrifice the higher ig Tm . ner wm 
 truths of liis landscape to mere pitch of not use such 
 color as Titian does. He infinitely prefers 
 having the power of giving extension of space, and ful- 
 ness of form, to that of giving deep melodies of tone ; he 
 feels too much the incapacity of art, with its feeble means 
 of light, to give the abundance of nature’s gradations ; 
 and therefore it is, that taking pure white for his highest 
 expression of light, that even pure yellow may give him 
 one more step in the scale of shade, he becomes necessa- 
 rily inferior in richness of effect to the old masters of 
 tone, (who always used a golden highest light,) but gains 
 
248 
 
 OF TRUTH OF TONE. 
 
 by the sacrifice a thousand more essential truths. For, 
 though we all know how much more like light, in the 
 . abstract, a finely-toned warm hue will be to 
 in essential truth the feelings than white, yet it is utterly 
 
 by the sacrifice. . ^ J 
 
 impossible to mark the same number of gra- 
 dations between such a sobered high light and the deep- 
 est shadow, which we can between this and white ; and 
 as these gradations are absolutely necessary to give the 
 facts of form and distance, which, as we have above 
 shown, are more important than any truths of tone,* 
 Turner sacrifices the richness of his picture to its com- 
 pleteness — the manner of the statement to its matter. 
 And not only is he right in doing this for the sake 
 of space, but he is right also in the abstract ques- 
 tion of color ; for as we observed above (Sect. 14,) it is 
 only the white light — the perfect unmodified group of 
 rays — which will bring out local color perfectly ; and if 
 the picture, therefore, is to be complete in its system of 
 color, that is, if it is to have each of the three primitives 
 in their purity, it must have white for its hig'hest light, 
 otherwise the puritjr of one of them at least will be im- 
 possible. And this leads us to notice the second and 
 § is. The second more frequent quality of light, (which is 
 quality of light. assumed if we make our highest represen- 
 
 tation of it yellow,) the positive hue, namely, which it 
 may itself possess, of course modifying whatever local 
 tints it exhibits, and thereby rendering certain colors 
 necessary, and certain colors impossible. Under the di- 
 rect yellow light of a descending sun, for instance, pure 
 white and pure blue are both impossible ; because the 
 purest whites and blues that nature could produce would 
 be turned in some degree into gold or green by it ; and 
 when the sun is within half a degree of the horizon, if 
 
 * More important, observe, as matters of truth or fact. It may of- 
 ten chance that, as a matter of feeling, the tone is the more important 
 of the two ; but with this we have here no concern. 
 
OF TRUTH OF TONE. 
 
 249 
 
 the sky be clear, a rose light supersedes the golden one, 
 still more overwhelming in its effect on local color. I 
 have seen the pale fresh green of spring vegetation in 
 the gardens of Venice, on the Lido side, turned pure 
 russet, or between that and crimson, by a vivid sunset of 
 this kind, every particle of green color being absolutely 
 annihilated. And so under all colored lights, (and there 
 are few, from dawn to twilight, which are not slightly 
 tinted by some accident of atmosphere,) there is a 
 change of local color, which, when in a picture it is so 
 exactly proportioned that we feel at once both what the 
 local colors are in themselves, and what is the color 
 and strength of the light upon them, gives us truth of 
 tone. 
 
 For expression of effects of yellow sunlight, parts might 
 be chosen out of the good pictures of Cuyp, which have 
 never been equalled in art. But I much § 19 The perfec . 
 
 tion of Cuyp in 
 this respect in- 
 terfered with by 
 numerous sole- 
 
 not present many glaring solecisms in tone. ci8ms * 
 
 I have not seen many fine pictures of his, which were 
 not utterly spoiled by the vermilion dress of some prin- 
 cipal figure, a vermilion totally unaffected and un warmed 
 by the golden hue of the rest of the picture ; and, what 
 is worse, with little distinction, between its own illu- 
 mined and shaded parts, so that it appears altogether 
 out of sunshine, the color of a bright vermilion in dead, 
 cold daylight. It is possible that the original color may 
 have gone down in all cases, or that these parts may 
 have been villanously repainted : but I am the rather dis- 
 posed to believe them genuine, because even throughout 
 the best of his pictures there are evident recurrences of 
 the same kind of solecism in other colors — greens for in- 
 stance — as in the steep bank on the right of the largest 
 picture in the Dulwich Gallery ; and browns, as in the 
 lying cow in the same picture, which is in most visible and 
 
 doubt if there be a single bright Cuyp in aspect? i™ 
 the world, which, taken as a whole, does terfered with - by 
 
250 
 
 OF TRUTH OF TONE. 
 
 painful contrast with the one standing beside it, the flank 
 of the standing one being bathed in breathing sunshine, 
 and the reposing one laid in with as dead, opaque, and life- 
 less brown as ever came raw from a novice’s pallet. And 
 again, in that marked 83, while the figures on the right 
 are walking in the most precious light, and those just 
 beyond them in the distance leave a furlong or two of 
 pure visible sunbeams between us and them, the cows in 
 the centre are entirely deprived, poor things, of both 
 light and air. And these failing parts, though they 
 often escape the eye when we are near the picture and 
 able to dwell upon what is beautiful in it, yet so injure 
 its whole effect that I question if there be many Cuyps 
 in which vivid colors occur, which will not lose their 
 effect, and become cold and flat at a distance of ten or 
 twelve paces, retaining their influence only when the eye 
 is close enough to rest on the right parts without includ- 
 ing the whole. Take, for instance, the large one in our 
 National Gallery, seen from the opposite door, where the 
 black cow appears a great deal nearer than the dogs, and 
 the golden tones of the distance look like a sepia draw- 
 ing rather than like sunshine, owing chiefly to the utter 
 want of aerial grays indicated through them. 
 
 Now, there is no instance in the works of Turner of 
 anything so faithful and imitative of sunshine as the best 
 §20. Turner i s parts of Cuyp ; but at the same time, there 
 parts 3 — S^more i s not a single vestige of the same kind of 
 so m the whole. solecism. It is true, that in his fondness 
 for color, Turner is in the habit of allowing excessively 
 cold fragments in his warmest pictures ; but these are 
 never, observe, warm colors with no light upon them, 
 useless as contrasts while they are discords in the tone ; 
 but they are bits of the very coolest tints, partially re- 
 moved from the general influence, and exquisitely valu- 
 able as color, though, with all deference be it spoken, I 
 think them sometimes slightly destructive of what would 
 
OF TRUTH OF TONE . 
 
 251 
 
 otherwise be perfect tone. Eor instance, the two blue 
 and white stripes on the drifting flag of the Slave Ship, 
 are, I think, the least degree too purely cool. I think 
 both the blue and white would be impossible under such 
 a light; and in the same way the white parts of the 
 dress of the Napoleon interfered by their coolness with 
 the perfectly managed warmth of all the rest of the pict- 
 ure. But both these lights are reflexes, and it is nearly 
 impossible to say what tones may be assumed even by 
 the warmest light reflected from a cool surface ; so that 
 we cannot actually convict these parts of falsehood, and 
 though we should have liked the tone of the picture 
 better had they been slightly warmer we cannot but like 
 the color of the picture better with them as they are ; 
 while Cuyp’s failing portions are not only evidently and 
 demonstrably false, being in direct light, but are as dis- 
 agreeable in color as false in tone, and injurious to every- 
 thing near them. And the best proof of the grammatical 
 accuracy of the tones of Turner is in the perfect and un- 
 changing influence of all his pictures at any distance. 
 We approach only to follow the sunshine into every 
 cranny of the leafage, and retire only to feel it diffused 
 over the scene, the whole picture glowing like a sun or 
 star at whatever distance we stand, and lighting the air 
 between us and it ; while many even of the best pictures 
 of Claude must be looked close into to be felt, and lose 
 light every foot that we retire. The smallest of the three 
 seaports in the National Gallery is valuable and right in 
 tone when w r e are close to it ; but ten yards off, it is all 
 brick- dust, offensively and evidently false in its whole 
 hue. 
 
 The comparison of Turner with Cuyp and Claude may 
 sound strange in most ears ; but this is chiefly because 
 we are not in the habit of analyzing and § 21 The power 
 dwelling upon those difficult and daring jSja^mbs^of 
 passages of the modern master which do tones - 
 
202 
 
 OF TRUTH OF TONE. 
 
 not at first appeal to our ordinary notions of truth, ow- 
 ing to his habit of uniting two, three, or even more sep- 
 arate tones in the same composition. In this also he 
 strictly follows nature, for wherever climate changes, 
 tone changes, and the climate changes with every 200 
 feet of elevation, so that the upper clouds are always 
 different in tone from the lower ones, these from the rest 
 of the landscape, and in all probability, some part of the 
 horizon from the rest. And when nature allows this in 
 a high degree, as in her most gorgeous effects she always 
 will, she does not herself impress at once with intensity 
 of tone, as in the deep and quiet yellows of a July even- 
 ing, but rather with the magnificence and variety of asso- 
 ciated color, in which, if we give time and attention to 
 it, we shall gradually find the solemnity and the depth 
 of twenty tones instead of one. Now in Turner’s power 
 of associating cold with warm light, no one has ever ap- 
 proached, or even ventured into the same field with him. 
 The old masters, content with one simple tone, sacri- 
 ficed to its unity all the exquisite gradations and varied 
 touches of relief and change by which nature unites her 
 hours with each other. They gave the warmth of the 
 sinking sun, overwhelming all things in its gold ; but 
 they did not give those gray passages about the horizon 
 where, seen through its dying light, the cool and the 
 gloom of night gather themselves for their victory. 
 Whether it was in them impotence or judgment, it is 
 not for me to decide. I have only to point to the daring 
 of Turner in this respect, as something to which art 
 affords no matter of comparison, as that in which the 
 mere attempt is, in itself, superiority. Take the evening 
 effect with the Temeraire. That picture will not, at the 
 first glance, deceive as a piece of actual sunlight ; but 
 this is because there is in it more than sunlight, because 
 under the blazing veil of vaulted fire which lights the 
 vessel on her last path, there is a blue, deep, desolate 
 
OF TRUTH OF TONE. 
 
 253 
 
 hollow of darkness, out of which you can hear the voice 
 of the night wind, and the dull boom of the disturbed 
 sea; because the cold, deadly shadows of the twilight 
 are gathering through every sunbeam, and moment by 
 moment as you look, you will fancy some new film and 
 faintness of the night has risen over the vastness of the 
 departing form. 
 
 And if, in effects of this kind, time be taken to dwell 
 upon the individual tones, and to study the laws of their 
 reconcilement, there will be found in the g 22 Eecapitl , la . 
 recent Academy pictures of this great artist tion - 
 a mass of various truth to which nothing can be brought 
 for comparison, which stands not only unrivalled, but 
 uncontended with, and which, when in carrying out it 
 may be inferior to some of the picked passages of the 
 old masters, is so through deliberate choice rather to 
 suggest a multitude of truths than to imitate one, and 
 through a strife with difficulties of effect of which art 
 can afford no parallel example. Nay, in the next chap- 
 ter, respecting color, we shall see farther reason for 
 doubting the truth of Claude, Cuyp, and Poussin, in tone, 
 — reason so palpable that if these were all that were to 
 be contended with, I should scarcely have allowed any 
 inferiority in Turner whatsoever ; * but I allow it, not so 
 much with reference to the deceptive imitations of 
 sunlight, wrought out with desperate exaggerations of 
 shade, of the professed landscape painters, as with refer- 
 ence to the glory of Rubens, the glow of Titian, the sil- 
 ver tenderness of Cagliari, and perhaps more than all to 
 
 * We must not leave the subject of tone without alluding to the 
 works of the late George Barrett, which afford glorious and exalted 
 passages of light ; and John Varley, who, though less truthful in his 
 aim, was frequently deep in his feeling. Some of the sketches of Do 
 Wint are also admirable in this respect. As for our oil pictures, the 
 less that is said about them the better. Callcott has the truest aim ; 
 but not having any eye for color, it is impossible for him to succeed 
 
254 
 
 OF TRUTH OF TONE. 
 
 the precious and pure passages of intense feeling and 
 heavenly light, holy and undefiled, and glorious with the 
 changeless passion of eternity, which sanctify with their 
 shadeless peace the deep and noble conceptions of the 
 early school of Italy, — of Fra Bartolomeo, Perugino, and 
 the early mind of Bafiaelle. 
 
CHAPTER H. 
 
 OF TRUTH OF COLOR. 
 
 There is, in tlie first room of the National Gallery, a 
 landscape attributed to Gaspar Poussin, called some- 
 times Aricia, sometimes Le or La Riccia, g L observations 
 according to the fancy of catalogue print- Lanc- 
 
 ers. Whether it can be supposed to re- en- 
 semble the ancient Aricia, now La Riccia, close to Albano, 
 I will not take upon me to determine, seeing that most of 
 the towns of these old masters are quite as like one place 
 as another ; but, at any rate, it is a town on a hill, wooded 
 with two-and-thirty bushes, of very uniform size, and 
 possessing about the same number of leaves each. These 
 bushes are all painted in with one dull opaque brown, 
 becoming very slightly greenish towards the lights, and 
 discover in one place a bit of rock, which of course 
 would in nature have been cool and gray beside the 
 lustrous hues of foliage, and which, therefore, being 
 moreover completely in shade, is consistently and scien- 
 tifically painted of a very clear, pretty, and positive 
 brick-red, the only thing like color in the picture. The 
 foreground is a piece of road, which in order to make 
 allowance for its greater nearness, for its being com- 
 pletely in light, and, it may be presumed, for the quan- 
 tity of vegetation usually present on carriage-roads, is 
 given in a very cool green gray, and the truth of the 
 picture is completed by a number of dots in the sky on 
 the right, with a stalk to them, of a sober and similar 
 brown. 
 
256 
 
 OF TRUTH OF COLOR . 
 
 Not long* ago, I was slowly descending this very bit 
 of carriage-road, the first turn after you leave Al- 
 
 0 o 4 bano, not a little impeded by the worthy 
 
 with the actual successors of the ancient prototypes of 
 
 Veiento.* It had been wild weather when 
 
 1 left Rome, and all across the Campagna the clouds 
 were sweeping in sulphurous blue, with a clap of thun- 
 der or two, and breaking gleams of sun along the Clau- 
 dian aqueduct lighting up the infinity of its arches like 
 the bridge of chaos. But as I climbed the long slope of 
 the Alban mount, the storm swept finally to the north, 
 and the noble outline of the domes of Albano and 
 graceful darkness of its ilex grove rose against pure 
 streaks of alternate blue and amber, the upper sky grad- 
 ually flushing through the last fragments of rain-cloud 
 in deep, palpitating azure, half ether and half dew. The 
 noon-day sun came slanting down the rocky slopes of 
 La Riccia, and its masses of entangled and tall foliage, 
 whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure 
 of a thousand evergreens, were penetrated with it as 
 with rain. I cannot call it color, it was conflagration. 
 Purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like the curtains of 
 God’s tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the valley 
 in showers of light, every separate leaf quivering with 
 buoyant and burning life ; each, as it turned to reflect or 
 to transmit the sunbeam, first a torch and then an emer- 
 ald. Far up into the recesses of the valley, the green 
 vistas arched like the hollows of mighty waves of some 
 crystalline sea, with the arbutus flowers dashed along 
 their flanks for foam, and silver flakes of orange spray 
 tossed into the air around them, breaking over the gray 
 walls of rock into a thousand separate stars, fading and 
 kindling alternately as the weak wind lifted and let 
 
 * ‘ ‘ Csecus adulator — 
 
 Dignus Aricinos qui mendicaret ad axes, 
 
 Blandaque dcvexae jaetaret basia rhedas.” 
 
OF TRUTH OF COLOR . 
 
 25 1 
 
 them fall. Every glade of grass burned like the golden 
 floor of heaven, opening in sudden gleams as the foli- 
 age broke and closed above it, as sheet-lightning opens 
 in a cloud at sunset ; the motionless masses of dark rock 
 — dark though flushed with scarlet lichen,— casting their 
 quiet shadows across its restless radiance, the fountain 
 underneath them filling its marble hollow with blue mist 
 and fitful sound, and over all — the multitudinous bars of 
 amber and rose, the sacred clouds that have no darkness, 
 and only exist to illumine, were seen in fathomless inter- 
 vals between the solemn and orbed repose of the stone 
 pines, passing to lose themselves in the last, white, blind- 
 ing lustre of the measureless line where the Campagna 
 melted into the blaze of the sea. 
 
 Tell me who is likest this, Poussin or Turner ? Not 
 in his most daring and dazzling efforts could Turner 
 himself come near it ; but you could not at § 3. Turner him- 
 the time have thought or remembered the brilliancy f to °na£ 
 •work of any other man as having the re- ure ' 
 motest hue or resemblance of what you saw. Nor am I 
 speaking of what is uncommon or unnatural ; there is no 
 climate, no place, and scarcely an hour, in which nature 
 does not exhibit color which no mortal effort can imitate 
 or approach. For all our artificial pigments are, even 
 when seen under the same circumstances, dead and light- 
 less beside her living color ; the green of a growing leaf, 
 the scarlet of a fresh flower, no art nor expedient can 
 reach ; but in addition to this, nature exhibits her hues 
 under an intensity of sunlight which trebles their brill- 
 iancy, while the painter, deprived of this splendid aid, 
 works still with what is actually a gray shadow compared 
 to the force of nature’s color. Take a blade of grass and 
 a scarlet flower, and place them so as to receive sun- 
 light beside the brightest canvas that ever left Turner’s 
 easel, and the picture will be extinguished. So far from 
 out-facing nature, he does not, as far as mere vividness 
 17 
 
258 
 
 OF TRUTH OF COLOR. 
 
 of color goes, one-half reach her ; — but does he use this 
 brilliancy of color on objects to which it does not properly 
 belong ? Let us compare his works in this respect with 
 a few instances from the old masters. 
 
 There is, on the left hand side of Salvator’s Mercury 
 and the Woodman in our National Gallery, something, 
 § 4. Impossible without doubt intended for a rocky moun- 
 Titian ; tain, in the middle distance, near enough 
 
 for all its fissures and crags to be distinctly visible, or, 
 rather, for a great many awkward scratches of the brush 
 over it to be visible, which, though not particularly rep- 
 resentative either of one thing or another, are without 
 doubt intended to be symbolical of rocks. Now no 
 mountain in full light, and near enough for its details of 
 crag to be seen, is without great variety of delicate color. 
 Salvator has painted it throughout without one instant 
 of variation ; but this, I suppose, is simplicity and gener- 
 alization; — let it pass: but what is the color ? Pure shy 
 blue , without one grain of gray, or any modifying hue 
 whatsoever ; — the same brush which had just given the 
 bluest parts of the sky, has been more loaded at the same 
 part of the pallet, and the whole mountain thrown in 
 with unmitigated ultramarine. Now mountains only can 
 become pure blue when there is so much air between us 
 and them that they become mere flat, dark shades, every 
 detail being totally lost : they become blue when they 
 become air, and not till then. Consequently this part of 
 Salvator’s painting, being of hills perfectly clear and 
 near, with all their details visible, is, as far as color is 
 concerned, broad, bold falsehood — the direct assertion of 
 direct impossibility. 
 
 In the whole range of Turner’s works, recent or of old 
 date, you will not find an instance of anything near enough 
 to have details visible, painted in sky blue. Wherever 
 Turner gives blue, there he gives atmosphere ; it is air, 
 not object. Blue he gives to his sea; so does nature 
 
OF TRUTH OF COLOR. 
 
 259 
 
 blue he gives, sapphire deep, to his extreme distance ; 
 so does nature;— blue he gives to the misty shadows 
 and hollows of his hills; so does nature: but blue he 
 gives not , where detailed and illumined surface are visi- 
 ble ; as he comes into light and character, so he breaks 
 into warmth and varied hue ; nor is there in one of his 
 works, and I speak of the Academy pictures especially, 
 one touch of cold color which is not to be accounted for, 
 and proved right and full of meaning. 
 
 I do not say that Salvator’s distance is not artist-like ; 
 both in that, and in the yet more glaringly false distances 
 of Titian above alluded to, and in hundreds of others of 
 equal boldness of exaggeration, I can take delight, and 
 perhaps should be sorry to see them other than they are ; 
 but it is somewhat singular to hear people talking of 
 Turner’s exquisite care and watchfulness in color as false, 
 while they receive such cases of preposterous and au- 
 dacious fiction with the most generous and single cre- 
 dulity. 
 
 Again, in the upper sky of the picture of Nicolas 
 Poussin, before noticed, the clouds are of a very fine 
 clear olive-green, about the same tint as § 5 Pousshlj and 
 the brightest parts of the trees beneath ciaude - 
 them. They cannot have altered, (or else the trees must 
 have been painted in gray), for the hue is harmonious 
 and well united with the rest of the picture, and the 
 blue and white in the centre of the sky are still fresh and 
 pure. Now a green sky in open and illumined distance 
 is very frequent, and very beautiful ; but rich olive-green 
 clouds, as far as I am acquainted with nature, are a piece 
 of color in which she is not apt to indulge. You will be 
 puzzled to show me such a thing in the recent works of 
 Turner.* Again, take any important group of trees, I 
 
 * There is perhaps nothing more characteristic of a great colorist 
 than his power of using greens in strange places without their being 
 felt as such, or at least than a constant preference of green gray to 
 
260 
 
 OF TRUTH OF COLOR. 
 
 do not care whose — Claude’s, Salvator’s, or Poussin’s— 
 with lateral light (that in the Marriage of Isaac and Be- 
 becca, or Gaspar’s Sacrifice of Isaac, for instance :) Can 
 it be seriously supposed that those murky browns and 
 melancholy greens are representative of the tints of 
 leaves under full noonday sun ? I know that you cannot 
 help looking upon all these pictures as pieces of dark 
 relief against a light wholly proceeding from the dis- 
 tances ; but they are nothing of the kind — they are noon 
 and morning effects with full lateral light. Be so kind 
 as to match the color of a leaf in the sun (the darkest 
 you like) as nearly as you can, and bring your matched 
 color and set it beside one of these group of trees, and 
 take a blade of common grass, and set it beside any part 
 of the fullest light of their foregrounds, and then talk 
 about the truth of color of the old masters ! 
 
 And let not arguments respecting the sublimity or fidel- 
 ity of impression be brought forward here. I have noth- 
 ing whatever to do with this at present. I am not talking 
 about what is sublime, but about what is true. People 
 attack Turner on this ground they never speak of 
 beauty or sublimity with respect to him, but of nature 
 and truth, and let them support their own favorite 
 masters on the same grounds. Perhaps I may have the 
 very deepest veneration for the feeling of the old mas- 
 ters, but I must not let it influence me now — my business 
 is to match colors, not to talk sentiment. Neither let 
 it be said that I am going too much into details, and 
 that general truths may be obtained by local falsehood. 
 
 purple gray. And this hue of Poussin’s clouds would have been per- 
 fectly agreeable and allowable, had there been gold or crimson enough 
 in the rest of the picture to have thrown it into gray. It is only be- 
 cause the lower clouds are pure white and blue, and because the trees 
 are of the same color as the clouds, that the cloud color becomes false. 
 There is a fine instance of a sky, green in itself, but turned gray by 
 the opposition of warm color, in Turner’s Devonport with the Dock- 
 yards. 
 
OF TRUTH OF COLOR. 
 
 261 
 
 Truth is only to be measured by close comparison of act- 
 ual facts ; we may talk forever about it in generals, and 
 prove nothing. We cannot tell what effect falsehood may 
 produce on this or that person, but we can very well tell 
 what is false and what is not, and if it produce on our 
 senses the effect of truth, that only demonstrates their 
 imperfection and inaccuracy, and need of cultivation. 
 Turner’s color is glaring to one person’s sensations, and 
 beautiful to another’s. This proves nothing. Poussin’s 
 color is right to one, soot to another. This proves noth- 
 ing. There is no means of arriving at any conclusion 
 but close comparison of both with the known and de- 
 monstrable hues of nature, and this comparison will in- 
 variably turn Claude or Poussin into blackness, and even 
 Turner into gray. 
 
 Whatever depth of gloom may seem to invest the ob- 
 jects of a real landscape, yet a window with that land- 
 scape seen through it, will invariably appear a broad 
 space of light as compared with the shade of the room 
 walls ; and this single circumstance may prove to us both 
 the intensity and the diffusion of daylight in open air, 
 and the necessity, if a picture is to be truthful in effect 
 of color, that it should tell as a broad space of graduated 
 illumination — not, as do those of the old masters, as a 
 patchwork of black shades. Their works are nature in 
 mourning weeds, — ovS’ iv tjXlu) KaOap (2 TeOpapL/Hvoi, a A. A.’ VI TO 
 
 (TvpLfiLyeL (TKLa, 
 
 It is true that there are, here and there, in the Acad- 
 emy pictures, passages in which Turner has translated 
 the unattainable intensity of one tone of . e „ m 
 color, into the attainable pitch of a higher translation of coi- 
 one : the golden green for instance, of in- 
 tense sunshine on verdure, into pure yellowy because he 
 knows it to be impossible, with any mixture of blue 
 whatsoever, to give faithfully its relative intensity of 
 light, and Turner always will have his light and shade 
 
262 
 
 OF TRUTH OF COLOR. 
 
 right, whatever it costs him in color. But he does this 
 in rare cases, and even then over very small spaces ; and I 
 should be obliged to his critics if they would go out to 
 some warm, mossy green bank in full summer sunshine, 
 and try to reach its tone ; and when they find, as find they 
 will, Indian yellow and chrome look dark beside it, let 
 them tell me candidly which is nearest truth, the gold 
 of Turner, or the mourning and murky olive browns and 
 verdigris greens in which Claude, with the industry and 
 intelligence of a Sevres china painter, drags the labo- 
 rious bramble leaves over his childish foreground. 
 
 But it is singular enough that the chief attacks on 
 Turner for overcharged brilliancy, are made, not when 
 § t. Notice of ef- there could by any possibility be any 
 
 fects in which no. „ , . .. . . , . , 
 
 brilliancy of art chance oi his outstepping nature, but when 
 
 can even approach , , i « 
 
 that of reality. he has taken subjects which no colors ot 
 earth could ever vie with or reach, such, for instance, as 
 his sunsets among the high clouds. When I come to 
 speak of skies, I shall point out what divisions, pro- 
 portioned to their elevation, exist in the character of 
 clouds. It is the highest region, — that exclusively 
 characterized by white, filmy, multitudinous, and quiet 
 clouds, arranged in bars, or streaks, or flakes, of which I 
 speak at present, a region which no landscape painters 
 have ever made one effort to represent, except Rubens 
 and Turner — the latter taking it for his most favorite 
 and frequent study. Now we have been speaking 
 hitherto of what is constant and necessary in nature, of 
 the ordinary effects of daylight on ordinary colors, and 
 we repeat again, that no gorgeousness of the pallet can 
 reach even these. But it is a widely different thing 
 when nature herself takes a coloring fit, and does some- 
 thing extraordinary, something really to exhibit her 
 power. She has a thousand ways and means of rising 
 above herself, but incomparably the noblest manifesta- 
 tions of her capability of color are in these sunsets 
 
OF TRUTH OF COLOR. 
 
 263 
 
 among the high clouds. I speak especially of the 
 moment before the sun sinks, when his light turns pure 
 rose-color, and when this light falls upon a zenith 
 covered with countless cloud-forms of inconceivable 
 delicacy, threads and flakes of vapor, which would in 
 common daylight be pure snow white, and which 
 give therefore fair field to the tone of light. There is 
 then no limit to the multitude, and no check to the in- 
 tensity of the hues assumed. The whole sky from the 
 zenith to the horizon becomes one molten, mantling sea 
 of color and fire ; every black bar turns into massy gold, 
 every ripple and wave into unsullied, shadowless, crim- 
 son, and purple, and scarlet, and colors for which there 
 are no words in language, and no ideas in the mind, — 
 things which can only be conceived while they are 
 visible, — the intense hollow blue of the upper sky melt- 
 ing through it all, — showing here deep, and pure, and 
 lightless, there, modulated by the filmy, formless body 
 of the transparent vapor till it is lost imperceptibly in 
 its crimson and gold. Now there is no connection, no 
 one link of association or resemblance, between those 
 skies and the work of any mortal hand but Turner’s. 
 He alone has followed nature in these her highest 
 efforts ; he follows her faithfully, but far behind ; follows 
 at such a distance below her intensity that the Napoleon 
 of last year’s exhibition, and the Temeraire of the year 
 before, would look colorless and cold if the eye came 
 upon them after one of nature’s sunsets among the high 
 clouds. But there are a thousand reasons § 8> Eea sonsfor 
 why this should not be believed. The ^uiity 1 o? 1 the U ob- 
 concurrence of circumstances necessary to fpe^'to W/fr 
 produce the sunsets of which I speak does representation, 
 not take place above five or six times in the summer, and 
 then only for a space of from five to ten minutes, just as 
 the sun reaches the horizon. Considering how seldom 
 people think of looking for sunset at all, and how 
 
264 
 
 OF TRUTH OF COLOR. 
 
 seldom, if they do, they are in a position from which it 
 can be fully seen, the chances that their attention should 
 be awake, and their position favorable, during these few 
 flying instants of the year, is almost as nothing. What 
 can the citizen, who can see only the red light on the 
 canvas of the wagon at the end of the street, and the 
 crimson color of the bricks of his neighbor’s chimney, 
 know of the flood of fire which deluges the sky from the 
 horizon to the zenith ? What can even the quiet inhab- 
 itant of the English lowlands, whose scene for the mani- 
 festation of the fire of heaven is limited to the tops of 
 hayricks, and the rooks’ nests in the old elm-trees, know 
 of the mighty passages of splendor which are tossed 
 from Alp to Alp over the azure of a thousand miles of 
 champaign ? Even granting the constant vigor of ob- 
 servation, and supposing the possession of such impos- ' 
 sible knowledge, it needs but a moment’s reflection to 
 prove how incapable the memory is of retaining for any 
 time the distinct image of the sources even of its most 
 vivid impressions. WTiat recollection have we of the 
 sunsets which delighted us last year ? We may know 
 that they were magnificent, or glowing, but no distinct 
 image of color or form is retained — nothing of whose 
 degree (for the great difficulty with the memory is to re- 
 tain, not facts, but degrees of fact) we could be so cer- 
 tain as to say of anything now presented to us, that it is 
 like it. If we did say so, we should be wrong ; for we 
 may be quite certain that the energy of an impression 
 fades from the memory, and becomes more and more in- 
 distinct every day ; and thus we compare a faded and in- 
 distinct image with the decision and certainty of one 
 present to the senses. How constantly do we affirm that 
 the thunder-storm of last week was the most terrible one 
 we ever saw in our lives, because we compare it, not with 
 the thunder-storm of last year, but with the faded and 
 feeble recollection of it. And so, when we enter an 
 
OF TRUTH OF COLOR. 
 
 265 
 
 exhibition, as we have no definite standard of truth be- 
 fore us, our feelings are toned down and subdued to the 
 quietness of color which is all that human power can 
 ordinarily attain to ; and when we turn to a piece of 
 higher and closer truth, approaching the pitch of the 
 color of nature, but to which we are not guided, as we 
 should be in nature, by corresponding gradations of 
 light everywhere around us, but which is isolated and 
 cut off suddenly by a frame and a wall, and surrounded 
 by darkness and coldness, what can we expect but that it 
 should surprise and shock the feelings ? Suppose, where 
 the Napoleon hung in the Academy last § 9. color of the 
 year, there could have been left, instead, Na P° leon - 
 an opening in the wall, and through that opening, in the 
 midst of the obscurity of the dim room and the smoke- 
 laden atmosphere, there could suddenly have been 
 poured the full glory of a tropical sunset, reverberated 
 from the sea : How would you have shrunk, blinded, 
 
 from its scarlet and intolerable lightnings ! What pict- 
 ure in the room would not have been blackness after it ? 
 And why then do you blame Turner because he dazzles 
 you ? Hoes not the falsehood rest with those who do 
 not? There was not one hue in this whole picture 
 which was not far below what nature would have used in 
 the same circumstances, nor was there one inharmonious 
 or at variance with the rest ; — the stormy blood-red of 
 the horizon, the scarlet of the breaking sunlight, the 
 rich crimson browns of the wet and illumined sea-weed ; 
 the pure gold and purple of the upper sky, and, shed 
 through it all, the deep passage of solemn blue, where 
 the cold moonlight fell on one pensive spot of the limit- 
 less shore — all were given with harmony as perfect as 
 their color was intense ; and if, instead of passing,' "as I 
 doubt not you did, in the hurry of your unreflecting 
 prejudice, you had paused but so much as one quarter of 
 an hour before the picture, you would have found the 
 
266 
 
 OF TRUTH OF COLOR. 
 
 sense of air and space blended with every line, and 
 breathing* in every cloud, and every color instinct and 
 radiant with visible, glowing, absorbing light. 
 
 It is to be observed, however, in general, that where- 
 ever in brilliant effects of this kind, we approach to 
 anything like a true statement of nature’s 
 liBcre p fncTbJ color, there must yet be a distinct differ- 
 
 tween the attain- • n • • i 
 
 able brilliancy of ence in the impression we convey, because 
 color and light. we canno t approach her light. All such 
 
 hues are usually given by her with an accompanying in- 
 tensity of sunbeams which dazzles and overpowers the 
 eye, so that it cannot rest on the actual colors, nor under- 
 stand what they are ; and hence in art, in rendering all 
 effects of this kind, there must be a want of the ideas of 
 imitation , which are the great source of enjoyment to the 
 ordinary observer ; because we can only give one series 
 of truths, those of color, and are unable to give the ac- 
 companying truths of light, so that the more true we are 
 in color, the greater, ordinarily, will be the discrepancy 
 felt between the intensity of hue and the feebleness of 
 light. But the painter who really loves nature will not, 
 on this account, give you a faded and feeble image, 
 which indeed may appear to you to be right, because 
 your feelings can detect no discrepancy in its parts, but 
 which he knows to derive its apparent truth from a 
 systematized falsehood. No ; he will make you under- 
 stand and feel that art cannot imitate nature — that where 
 it appears to do so, it must malign her, and mock her. 
 He will give you, or state to you, such truths as are in 
 his power, completely and perfectly ; and those which 
 he cannot give, he will leave to your imagination. If 
 you are acquainted with nature, you will know all he 
 has given to be true, and you will supply from your 
 memory and from your heart that life which he cannot 
 give. If you are unacquainted with nature, seek else- 
 where for whatever may happen to satisfy your feelings ,• 
 
OF TRUTH OF COLOR . 
 
 267 
 
 but do not ask for the truth which you would not ac- 
 knowledge and could not enjoy. 
 
 Nevertheless the aim and struggle of the artist must 
 always be to do away with this discrepancy as far as 
 the powers of art admit, not by lowering his color, but 
 by increasing his light. And it is indeed by this that 
 the works of Turner are peculiarly distin- §11 Thigdiscrep _ 
 guished from those of all other colorists, by ancy less m TuV- 
 
 . . . - ner than m other 
 
 the dazzling intensity, namely, of the light colorists, 
 which he sheds through every hue, and which, far more 
 than their brilliant color, is the real source of their over- 
 powering effect upon the eye, an effect so reasonably 
 made the subject of perpetual animadversion, as if the 
 sun which they represent were quite a quiet, and subdued, 
 and gentle, and manageable luminary, and never dazzled 
 anybody, under any circumstances whatsoever. I am fond 
 of standing by a bright Turner in the Academy, to listen 
 to the unintentional compliments of the crowd — “ What 
 a glaring thing ! ” “I declare I can’t look at it ! ” “ Don’t 
 it hurt your eyes ? ” — expressed as if they were in the 
 constant habit of looking the sun full in the face, with the 
 most perfect comfort and entire facility of vision. It is 
 curious, after hearing people malign some of Turner’s 
 noble passages of light, to pass to some § 12 . its great ex- 
 really ungrammatical and false picture of at?rUut a ^ U to Ou- 
 tlie old masters, in which we have color bens ‘ 
 given without light. Take, for instance, the landscape 
 attributed to Rubens, No. 175, in the Dulwich Gallery. 
 I never have spoken, and I never will speak 01 Rubens 
 but with the most reverential feeling ; and whatever im- 
 perfections in his art may have resulted from his unfor- 
 tunate want of seriousness and incapability of true pas- 
 sion, his calibre of mind was originally such that I be- 
 lieve the world may see another Titian and another Raf- 
 aelle before it sees another Rubens. But I have before 
 alluded to the violent license he occasionally assumes; 
 
208 
 
 OF TRUTH OF COLOR. 
 
 and there is an instance of it in this picture apposite to 
 the immediate question. The sudden streak and circle of 
 yellow and crimson in the middle of the sky of that pict- 
 ure, being the occurrence of a fragment of a sunset color 
 in pure daylight, and in perfect isolation, while at the 
 same time it is rather darker, when translated into light 
 and shade, than brighter than the rest of the sky, is a case 
 of such bold absurdity, come from whose pencil it may, 
 that if every error which Turner has fallen into in the 
 whole course of his life were concentrated into one, that 
 one would not equal it ; and as our connoisseurs gaze 
 upon this with never-ending approbation, we must not be 
 surprised that the accurate perceptions which thus take 
 delight in pure fiction, should consistently be disgusted 
 by Turner’s fidelity and truth. 
 
 Hitherto, however, we have been speaking of vividness 
 of pure color, and showing that it is used by Turner 
 § 13. Turner only where nature uses it, and in no less de- 
 pTr C e ] or V y r i vTI gree. But we have hitherto, therefore, been 
 color ’ speaking of a most limited and uncharac- 
 
 teristic portion of his works ; for Turner, like all great 
 colorists, is distinguished not more for his power of daz- 
 zling and overwhelming the eye with intensity of effect, 
 than for his power of doing so by the use of subdued and 
 gentle means. There is no man living more cautious and 
 sparing in the use of pure color than Turner. To say that 
 he never perpetrates anything like the blue excrescences 
 of foreground, or hills shot like a housekeeper’s best silk 
 gown, with blue and red, which certain of our celebrated 
 artists consider the essence of the sublime, would be but 
 a poor compliment. I might as well praise the portraits 
 of Titian because they have not the grimace and paint of 
 a clown in a pantomime ; but I do say, and say with con- 
 fidence, that there is scarcely a landscape artist of the 
 present day, however sober and lightless their effects may 
 look, who does not employ more pure and raw color than 
 
OF TRUTH OF COLOR. 
 
 209 
 
 Turner ; and that the ordinary tinsel and trash, or rather 
 vicious and perilous stuff, according to the power of the 
 mind producing it, with which the walls of our Acade- 
 my are half covered, disgracing, in weak hands, or in 
 more powerful, degrading and corrupting our whole 
 school of art, is based on a system of color beside which 
 Turner’s is as Yesta to Cotytto — the chastity of fire to 
 the foulness of earth. Every picture of this great color- 
 ist has, in one or two parts of it (key-notes of the whole), 
 points where the system of each individual color is con- 
 centrated by a single stroke, as pure as it can come from 
 the pallet ; but throughout the great space and extent of 
 even the most brilliant of his works, there will not be 
 found a raw color ; that is to say, there is no warmth 
 which has not gray in it, and no blue which has not 
 warmth in it ; and the tints in which he most excels and 
 distances all other men, the most cherished and inimitable 
 portions of his color are, as with all perfect colorists they 
 must be, his grays. 
 
 It is instructive in this respect, to compare the sky of 
 the Mercury and Argus with the various illustrations of 
 the serenity, space, and sublimity naturally inherent in 
 blue and pink, of which every year’s exhibition brings 
 forward enough and to spare. In the Mercury and 
 Argus, the pale and vaporous blue of the heated sky is 
 broken with gray and pearly white, the gold color of the 
 light warming it more or less as it approaches or retires 
 from the sun ; but throughout, there is not a grain of 
 pure blue ; all is subdued and warmed at the same time 
 by the mingling gray and gold, up to the very zenith, 
 where, breaking through the flaky mist, the transparent 
 and deep azure of the sky is expressed with a single 
 crumbling touch; the key-note of the whole is given, 
 and every part of it passes at once far into glowing and 
 aerial space. The reader can scarcely fail to remember 
 at once sundry works in contradistinction to this, with 
 
270 
 
 OF TRUTH OF COLOR. 
 
 great names attached to them, in which the sky is a sheer 
 piece of plumber’s and glazier’s work, and should be 
 valued per yard, with heavy extra charge for ultra- 
 marine. 
 
 Throughout the works of Turner, the same truthful 
 princixDle of delicate and subdued color is carried out 
 „ with a care and labor of which it is diffi- 
 
 § 14. The basis of . 
 
 gray, under aii his cult to form a conception. He gives a dash 
 
 vivjq hues A ° 
 
 of pure white for his highest light ; bat 
 all the other whites of his picture are pearled down with 
 gray or gold. He gives a fold of pure crimson to the 
 drapery of his nearest figure, but all his other crimsons 
 will be deepened with black, or warmed with yellow. In 
 one deep reflection of his distant sea, we catch a trace of 
 the purest blue ; but all the rest is palpitating with a 
 varied and delicate gradation of harmonized tint, which 
 indeed looks vivid blue as a mass, but is only so by op- 
 position. It is the most difficult, the most rare thing, to 
 find in his works a definite space, however small, of un- 
 connected color ; that is, either of a blue which has noth- 
 ing to connect it with the warmth, or of a warm color 
 which has nothing to connect it with the grays of the 
 whole ; and the result is that there is a general system 
 and under-current of gray pervading the whole of his 
 color, out of which his highest lights, and those local 
 touches of pure color, which are, as I said before, the 
 key-notes of the picture, flash with the peculiar brill- 
 iancy and intensity in which he stands alone. 
 
 Intimately associated with this toning down and connec- 
 tion of the colors actually used, is his inimitable power 
 § 15 . The variety of var y in £ and blending them, so as never 
 o? hifmost S simp e S ^ ve a quarter of an inch of canvas with- 
 tones - out a change in it, a melody as well as a 
 
 harmony of one kind or another. Observe, I am not at 
 present speaking of this as artistical or desirable in itself, 
 not as a characteristic of the great colorist, but as the aim 
 
OF TRUTH OF COLOR. 
 
 271 
 
 of the simple follower of nature. For it is strange to see 
 how marvellously nature varies the most general and sim- 
 ple of her tones. A mass of mountain seen against the 
 light may, at first, appear all of one blue ; and so it is, 
 blue as a whole, by comparison with other parts of the 
 landscape. But look how that blue is made up. There 
 are black shadows in it under the crags, there are green 
 shadows along the turf, there are gray half-lights upon 
 the rocks, there are faint touches of stealthy warmth and 
 cautious light along their edges ; every bush, every stone, 
 every tuft of moss has its voice in the matter, and joins 
 with individual character in the universal will. Who is 
 there who can do this as Turner will ? The old masters 
 would have settled the matter at once with a transparent, 
 agreeable, but monotonous gray. Many among the mod- 
 erns would probably be equally monotonous with absurd 
 and false colors. Turner only would give the uncertainty 
 — the palpitating, perpetual change — the subjection of 
 all to a great influence, without one part or portion being 
 lost or merged in it — the unity of action with infinity of 
 agent. And I wish to insist on this the more particularly, 
 because it is one of the eternal principles § is. Following 
 of nature, that she will not have one line unapproachable 
 nor color, nor one portion nor atom of vanety of nature - 
 space without a change in it. There is not one of her 
 shadows, tints, or lines that is not in a state of perpetual 
 variation : I do not mean in time, but in space. There is 
 not a leaf in the world which has the same color visible 
 over its whole surface ; it has a white high light some- 
 where ; and in proportion as it curves to or from that 
 focus, the color is brighter or grayer. Pick up a common 
 flint from the roadside, and count, if you can, its changes 
 and hues of color. Every bit of bare ground under your 
 feet has in it a thousand such — the gray pebbles, the 
 warm ochre, the green of incipient vegetation, the grays 
 and blacks of its reflexes and shadows, might keep a 
 
272 
 
 OF TRUTH OF COLOR. 
 
 painter at work for a month, if lie were obliged to follow 
 them touch for touch : how much more, when the same 
 infinity of change is carried out with vastness of object 
 and space. The extreme of distance may appear at first 
 monotonous ; but the least examination will show it to be 
 full of every kind of change — that its outlines are per- 
 petually melting and appearing again — sharp here, 
 vague there — now lost altogether, now just hinted and 
 still confused among each other — and so forever in a 
 state and necessity of change. Hence, wherever in a 
 painting we have unvaried color extended even over a 
 small space, there is falsehood. Nothing can be natural 
 which is monotonous ; nothing true which only tells one 
 story. The brown foreground and rocks of Claude’s 
 Sinon before Priam are as false as color can be : first, be- 
 cause there never was such a brown under sunlight, for 
 even the sand and cinders (volcanic tufa) about Naples, 
 granting that he had studied from these ugliest of all 
 formations, are, where they are fresh fractured, golden 
 and lustrous in full light compared to these ideals of 
 crag, and become, like all other rocks, quiet and gray 
 when weathered ; and secondly, because no rock that ever 
 nature stained is without its countless breaking tints 
 of varied vegetation. And even Stanfield, master as he 
 is of rock form, is apt in the same way to give us here 
 and there a little bit of mud, instead of stone. 
 
 What I am next about to say with respect to Turner’s 
 color, I should wish to be received with caution, as it 
 § it. His dislike admits of dispute. I think that the first 
 fondness’ for The approach to viciousness of color in any 
 ?ow°and°b i°a c k’ master is commonly indicated chiefly by a 
 tm? re- prevalence of purple, and an absence of 
 8pect yellow. I think nature mixes yellow with 
 
 almost every one of her hues, never, or very rarely, using 
 red without it, but frequently using yellow with scarcely 
 any red ; and I believe it will be in consequence found 
 
OF TRUTH OF COLOR. 
 
 273 
 
 that her favorite opposition, that which generally char- 
 acterizes and gives tone to her color, is yellow and black, 
 passing, as it retires, into white and blue. It is beyond 
 dispute that the great fundamental opposition of Rubens 
 is yellow and black ; and that on this, concentrated in 
 one part of the picture, and modified in various grays 
 throughout, chiefly depend the tones of all his finest 
 “works. And in Titian, though there is a far greater ten- 
 dency to the purple than in Rubens, I believe no red is 
 ever mixed with the pure blue, or glazed over it, which 
 has not in it a modifying quantity of yellow. At all 
 events, I am nearly certain that whatever rich and pure 
 purples are introduced locally, by the great colorists, 
 nothing is so destructive of all fine color as the slightest 
 tendency to purple in general tone; and I am equally 
 certain that Turner is distinguished from all the vicious 
 colorists of the present day, by the foundation of all his 
 tones being black, yellow, and the intermediate grays, 
 while the tendency of our common glare-seekers is in- 
 variably to pure, cold, impossible purples. So fond 
 indeed is Turner of black and yellow, that he has given 
 us more than one composition, both drawings and paint- 
 ings, based on these two colors alone, of which the mag- 
 nificent Quilleboeuf, which I consider one of the most 
 perfect pieces of simple color existing, is a most striking 
 example ; and I think that where, as in some of the late 
 Yenices, there has been something like a marked appear- 
 ance of purple tones, even though exquisitely corrected 
 by vivid orange and warm green in the foreground, the 
 general color has not been so perfect or truthful : my 
 own feelings would always guide me rather to the warm 
 grays of such pictures as the Snow Storm, or the glow- 
 ing scarlet and gold of the Napoleon and Slave Ship. 
 But I do not insist at present on this part of the subject, 
 as being perhaps more proper for future examination, 
 when we are considering the ideal of color. 
 
274 : 
 
 OF TRUTH OF COLOR. 
 
 The above remarks have been made entirely with ref- 
 erence to the recent Academy pictures, which have been 
 chiefly attacked for their color. I by no 
 
 §18. His early J , , , ,, J , 
 
 works are false in means intend them to apply to the early 
 works of Turner, those which the enlight- 
 ened newspaper critics are perpetually talking about as 
 characteristic of a time when Turner was “ really great.” 
 He is, and was, really great, from the time when he first 
 could hold a brush, but he never was so great as he is now. 
 The Crossing the Brook, glorious as it is as a compo- 
 sition, and perfect in all that is most desirable and most 
 ennobling in art, is scarcely to be looked upon as a piece 
 of color ; it is an agreeable, cool, gray rendering of space 
 and form, but it is not color ; if it be regarded as such, it 
 is thorougly false and vapid, and very far inferior to the 
 tones of the same kind given by Claude. The reddish 
 brown in the foreground of the Fall of Carthage, with 
 all diffidence be it spoken, is, as far as my feelings are 
 competent to judge, crude, sunless, and in every way 
 wrong ; and both this picture and the Building of Car- 
 thage, though this latter is far the finer of the two, are 
 quite unworthy of Turner as a colorist. 
 
 Not so with the drawings ; these, countless as they are, 
 from the earliest to the latest, though presenting an un« 
 § 19. His drawings broken chain of increasing difficulty over- 
 invariabiy perfect. C ome, and truth illustrated, are all, accord- 
 ing to their aim, equally faultless as to color. Whatever 
 we have hitherto said, applies to them in its fullest 
 extent ; though each, being generally the realization of 
 some effect actually seen, and realized but once, re- 
 quires almost a separate essay. As a class, they are 
 far quieter and chaster than the Academy pictures, 
 and, were they better known, might enable our connois- 
 seurs to form a somewhat more accurate judgment of 
 the intense study of nature on which all Turner’s color 
 is based. 
 
OF TRUTH OF COLOR. 
 
 27a 
 
 One point only remains to be noted respecting his 
 system of color generally — its entire subordination to 
 light and shade, a subordination which §20 The gubiec _ 
 there is no need to prove here, as every of* coiorto that e 3 
 engraving from his works — and few are chiaroscuro, 
 unengraved — is sufficient demonstration of it. I have 
 before shown the inferiority and unimportance in nature 
 ,of color, as a truth, compared with light and shade. 
 That inferiority is maintained and asserted by all really 
 great works of color ; but most by Turner’s as their color 
 is most intense. Whatever brilliancy he may choose to 
 assume, is subjected to an inviolable law of chiaroscuro, 
 from which there is no appeal. No richness nor depth of 
 tint is considered of value enough to atone for the loss 
 of one particle of arranged light. No brilliancy of hue 
 is permitted to interfere with the depth of a determined 
 shadow. And hence it is, that while engravings from 
 works far less splendid in color are often vapid and cold, 
 because the little color employed has not been rightly 
 based on light and shade, an engraving from Turner is 
 always beautiful and forcible in proportion as the color 
 of the original has been intense, and never in a single 
 instance has failed to express the picture as a perfect 
 composition.* Powerful and captivating and faithful as 
 
 * This is saying too much ; for it not unfrequently happens that the 
 light and shade of the original is lost in the engraving, the effect of 
 which is afterwards partially recovered, with the aid of the artist him- 
 self, by introductions of new features. Sometimes, when a drawing 
 depends chiefly on color, the engraver gets unavoidably embarrassed, 
 and must be assisted by some change or exaggeration of the effect ; 
 but the more frequent case is, that the engraver’s difficulties result 
 merely from his inattention to, or wilful deviations from his original ; 
 and that the artist is obliged to assist him by such expedients as the 
 error itself suggests. 
 
 Not unfrequently in reviewing a plate, as very constantly in review- 
 ing a picture after some time has elapsed since its completion, even 
 the painter is liable to make unnecessary or hurtful changes. In the 
 plate of the Old Temeraire, lately published in Finden’s gallery, I do 
 
276 
 
 OF TRUTH OF COLOR . 
 
 his color is, it is the least important of all his excellences, 
 because it is the least important feature of nature. He 
 paints in color, but he thinks in light and shade ; and 
 
 not know whether it was Turner or the engraver who broke up the 
 water into sparkling ripple, but it was a grievous mistake, and has de- 
 stroyed the whole dignity and value of the conception. The flash of 
 lightning in the Winchelsea of the England series does not exist in the 
 original ; it is put in to withdraw the attention of the spectator from 
 the sky, which the engraver destroyed. 
 
 There is an unfortunate persuasion among modern engravers that 
 color can be expressed by particular characters of line ; and in the en- 
 deavor to distinguish by different lines, different colors of equal depth, 
 they frequently lose the whole system of light and shade. It will 
 hardly be credited that the piece of foreground on the left of Turner’s 
 Modern Italy, represented in the Art-Union engraving as nearly coal 
 black, is in the original of a pale warm gray, hardly darker than the 
 sky. All attempt to record color in engraving, is heraldry out of its 
 place : the engraver has no power beyond that of expressing trans- 
 parency or opacity by greater or less openness of line, (for the same 
 depth of tint is producible by lines with very different intervals.) 
 
 Texture of surface is only in a measure in the power of the steel, and 
 ought not to be laboriously sought after ; nature’s surfaces are distin- 
 guished more by form than texture ; a stone is often smoother than a 
 leaf ; but if texture is to be given, let the engraver at least be sure that 
 he knows what the texture of the object actually is, and how to rep- 
 resent it. The leaves in the foreground of the engraved Mercury and 
 Argus have all of them three or four black lines across them. What 
 sort of leaf texture is supposed to be represented by these ? The stones 
 in the foreground of Turner’s Llanthony received from the artist the 
 powdery texture of sandstone ; the engraver covered them with con- 
 torted lines and turned them into old timber. 
 
 A still more fatal cause of failure is the practice of making out or 
 finishing what the artist left incomplete. In the England plate of 
 Dudley, there are two offensive blank windows in the large building 
 with the chimney on the left. These are engraver’s improvements ; in 
 the original they are barely traceable, their lines being excessively 
 faint and tremulous as with the movement of heated air between them 
 and the spectator : their vulgarity is thus taken away, and the whole 
 building left in one grand unbroken mass. It is almost impossible to 
 break engravers of this unfortunate habit, I have even heard of their 
 taking journeys of some distance in order to obtain knowledge of the 
 details which the artist intentionally omitted ; and the evil will neces- 
 sarily continue until they receive something like legitimate artistical 
 
OF TRUTH OF COLOR . 
 
 277 
 
 were it necessary, rather than lose one line of his forms, 
 or one ray of his sunshine, would, I apprehend, be con- 
 tent to paint in black and white to the end of his life. It 
 is by mistaking the shadow for the substance, and aim- 
 ing at the brilliancy and the fire, without perceiving of 
 what deep studied shade and inimitable form it is at 
 once the result and the illustration, that the host of his 
 imitators sink into deserved disgrace. With him, as 
 with all the greatest painters, and in Turner’s more than 
 all, the hue is a beautiful auxiliary in working out the 
 great impression to be conveyed, but is not the source 
 nor the essence of that impression; it is little more 
 than a visible melody, given to raise and assist the mind- 
 in the reception of nobler ideas — as sacred passages of 
 sweet sound, to prepare the feelings for the reading of 
 the mysteries of God. 
 
 education. In one or two instances, however, especially in small 
 plates, they have shown great feeling ; the plates of Miller (especially 
 those of the Turner illustrations to Scott) are in most instances 
 perfect and beautiful interpretations of the originals ; so those of Good- 
 all in Rogers’s works, and Cousens’s in the Rivers of France; those of the 
 Yorkshire series are also very valuable, though singularly inferior to 
 the drawings. But none even of these men appear capable of produc- 
 ing a large plate. They have no knowledge of the means of rendering 
 their lines vital or valuable ; cross-hatching stands for everything ; and 
 inexcusably, for though we cannot expect every engraver to etch 
 like Rembrandt or Albert Durer, or every wood-cutter to draw like 
 Titian, at least something of the system and power of the grand 
 works of those men might be preserved, and some mind and meaning 
 stolen into the reticulation of the restless modern lines. 
 
CHAPTEE m. 
 
 OF TKUTH OF CHIAEOSCURO. 
 
 It is not my intention to enter, in the present portion 
 of the work, upon any examination of Turner’s particular 
 § i. we are not at effects of light. We must know something 
 
 Fn?pardcuia? a S- a ^ ou ^ what is beautiful before we speak of 
 fects of light. these. 
 
 At present I wish only to insist upon two great prin- 
 ciples of chiaroscuro, which are observed throughout 
 the works of the great modern master, and set at defiance 
 by the ancients — great general laws, which may, or may 
 not, be sources of beauty, but whose observance is indis- 
 putably necessary to truth. 
 
 Go out some bright sunny day in winter, and look for 
 a tree with a broad trunk, having rather delicate boughs 
 hanging down on the sunny side, near the trunk. Stand 
 four or five yards from it, with your back to the sun. 
 You will find that the boughs between you and the trunk 
 of the tree are very indistinct, that you confound them in 
 places with the trunk itself, and cannot possibly trace 
 one of them from its insertion to its extremity. But the 
 shadows which they cast upon the trunk, you will find 
 clear, dark, and distinct, perfectly traceable through their 
 whole course, except when they are interrupted by the 
 crossing boughs. And if you retire backwards, you will 
 come to a point where you cannot see the intervening 
 boughs at all, or only a fragment of them here and there, 
 but can still see their shadows perfectly plain. Now, 
 this may serve to show you the immense prominence and 
 
OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO. 
 
 279 
 
 importance of shadows where there is anything like 
 bright light. They are, in fact, commonly far more con- 
 spicuous than the thing which casts them, for being as 
 as large as the casting object, and altogether made up 
 of a blackness deeper than the darkest part of the 
 casting object, (while that object is also broken up 
 with positive and reflected lights,) their large, broad, 
 unbroken spaces, tell strongly on the eye, especially 
 as all form is rendered partially, often totally invis- 
 ible within them, and as they are suddenly termi- 
 nated by the sharpest lines which nature ever shows. 
 For no outline of objects whatsoever is so sharp as the 
 edge of a close shadow. Put your finger over a piece of 
 white paper in the sun, and observe the difference be- 
 tween the softness of the outline of the finger itself and 
 the decision of the edge of the shadow. And note also 
 the excessive gloom of the latter. A piece of black cloth, 
 laid in the light, will not attain one-fourth of the black- 
 ness of the paper under the shadow. 
 
 Hence shadows are in reality, when the sun is shining, 
 the most conspicuous thing in a landscape, next to the 
 highest lights. All forms are understood §2 And therefore 
 and explained chiefly by their agency : the ehadow^i's 68 the 
 roughness of the bark of a tree, for in- chief means of ex- 
 stance, is not seen in the light, nor in the of HgM. 
 shade ; it is only seen between the two, where the shad- 
 ows of the ridges explain it. And hence, if we have to 
 express vivid light, our very first aim must be to get 
 the shadows sharp and visible; and this is not to be 
 done by blackness, (though indeed chalk on white paper 
 is the only thing which comes up to the intensity of real 
 shadows,) but by keeping them perfectly flat, keen, and 
 even. A very pale shadow, if it be quite flat — if it con- 
 ceal the details of the objects it crosses — if it be gray 
 and cold compared to their color, and very sharp edged, 
 will be far more conspicuous, and make everything out 
 
280 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO. 
 
 of it look a great deal more like sunlight, than a shadow 
 ten times its depth, shaded off at the edge, and con- 
 3 t 1 1 absence ^ oun( ^ e( ^ with the color of the objects on 
 of * such distinct- which it falls. Now the old masters of the 
 
 ness in the works in,-.. . 
 
 of the Italian Italian school, m almost all their works, 
 directly reverse this principle : they black- 
 en their shadows till the picture becomes quite appalling, 
 and everything in it invisible ; but they make a point of 
 losing their edges, and carrying them off by gradation ; 
 in consequence utterly destroying every appearance of 
 sunlight. All their shadows are the faint, secondary dark- 
 nesses of mere daylight ; the sun has nothing whatever 
 to do with them. The shadow between the pages of the 
 book which you hold in your hand is distinct and visible 
 enough, (though you are, I suppose, reading it by the 
 ordinary daylight of your room,) out of the sun ; and this 
 weak and secondary shadow is all that we ever find in 
 the Italian masters, as indicative of sunshine. Even 
 . , Cuvp and Berghem, though they know 
 
 § 4. And partial , J F , , n i . .i i j. • 
 
 absence in the thoroughly well what they are about m 
 their foregrounds, forget the principle in 
 their distances ; and though in Claude’s seaports, where 
 he has plain architecture to deal with, he gives us some- 
 thing like real shadows along the stones, the moment we 
 come to ground and foliage with lateral light, away go 
 the shadows and the sun together. In the Marriage of 
 Isaac and Rebecca, in our own gallery, the trunks of the 
 trees between the water-wheel and the white figure in the 
 middle distance are dark and visible ; but their shadows 
 are scarcely discernible on the ground, and are quite 
 vague and lost in the building. In nature, every bit of 
 the shadow would have been darker than the darkest 
 part of the trunks, and both on the ground and building 
 would have been defined and conspicuous; while the 
 trunks themselves would have been faint, confused, and 
 indistinguishable, in their illumined parts, from the grass 
 
OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO . 
 
 281 
 
 or distance. So in Poussin’s Phocion, the shadow of the 
 stick on the stone in the right-hand corner, is shaded off 
 and lost, while you see the stick plain all the way. In 
 nature’s sunlight it would have been the direct reverse 
 — you would have seen the shadow black and sharp all 
 the way down, but you would have had to look for the 
 stick, which in all probability would in several places 
 have been confused with the stone behind it. 
 
 And so throughout the works of Claude, Poussin, and 
 Salvator, we shall find, especially in their conventional 
 foliage, and unarticulated barbarisms of rock, that their 
 whole sum and substance of chiaroscuro is merely the 
 gradation and variation which nature gives in the body 
 of her shadows, and that all which they do to express 
 sunshine, she does to vary shade. They take only one 
 step, while she always takes two ; marking, in the first 
 place, with violent decision, the great transition from sun 
 to shade, and then varying the shade itself with a thou- 
 sand gentle gradations and double shadows, in them- 
 selves equivalent, and more than equivalent, to all that 
 the old masters did for their entire chiaroscuro. 
 
 Now if there be one principle, or secret more than 
 another, on which Turner depends for attaining brill- 
 iancy of light, it is his clear and exquisite m , . 
 drawing ot the shadows. Whatever is ob- of Turner’s works 
 
 . , -i n -i • 7 • -i • i in this respect. 
 
 scare, misty, or undefined m his objects or 
 his atmosphere, he takes care that the shadows be sharp 
 and clear — and then he knows that the light will take 
 care of itself, and he makes them clear, not by blackness, 
 but by excessive evenness, unity, and sharpness of edge. 
 He will keep them clear and distinct, and make them felt 
 as shadows, though they are so faint, that, but for their 
 decisive forms, we should not have observed them for 
 darkness at all. He will throw them one after another 
 like transparent veils, along the earth and upon the air, 
 till the whole picture palpitates with them, and yet the 
 
282 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO . 
 
 darkest of them will be a faint gray, imbued and penetra- 
 ted with light. The pavement on the left of the Hero and 
 Leander, is about the most thorough piece of this kind of 
 sorcery that I remember in art ; but of the general princi- 
 ple, not one of his works is without constant evidence. 
 Take the vignette of the garden opposite the title-page of 
 Rogers’s Poems, and note the drawing of the nearest bal- 
 ustrade on the right. The balusters themselves are faint 
 and misty, and the light through them feeble ; but the 
 shadows of them are sharp and dark, and the intervening 
 light as intense as it can be left. And see how much 
 more distinct the shadow of the running figure is on the 
 pavement, than the checkers of the pavement itself. 
 Observe the shadows on the trunk of the tree at page 91, 
 how they conquer all the details of the trunk itself, 
 and become darker and more conspicuous than any 
 part of the boughs or limbs, and so in the vignette to 
 Campbell’s Beechtree’s Petition. Take the beautiful 
 concentration of all that is most characteristic of Italy 
 as she is, at page 168 of Rogers’s Italy, where we have 
 the long shadows of the trunks made by far the most 
 conspicuous thing in the whole foreground, and hear 
 how Wordsworth, the keenest-eyed of all modern poets 
 for what is deep and essential in nature, illustrates 
 Turner here, as we shall find him doing in all other 
 points. 
 
 “At the root 
 
 Of that tall pine, the shadow of whose bare 
 And slender stem, while here I sit at eve, 
 
 Oft stretches tow’rds me, like a long straight path, 
 
 Traced faintly in the greensward.” 
 
 Excursion, Book VI. 
 
 So again in the Rhymer’s Glen, (Illustrations to Scott,) 
 note the intertwining of the shadows across the path, 
 and the checkering of the trunks by them ; and again on 
 the bridge in the Armstrong’s Tower ; and yet more in 
 
OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO . 
 
 283 
 
 the long avenue of Brienne, where we have a length of 
 two or three miles expressed by the playing shadows 
 alone, and the whole picture filled with sunshine by the 
 long lines of darkness cast by the figures on the snow. 
 The Hampton Court in the England series, is another 
 very striking instance. In fact, the general system of 
 execution observable in all Turner’s drawings, is to work 
 his grounds richly and fully, sometimes stippling, and 
 giving infinity of delicate, mysterious, and ceaseless de- 
 tail ; and on the ground so prepared to cast his shadows 
 with one dash of the brush, leaving an excessively sharp 
 edge of watery color. Such at least is commonly the 
 case in such coarse and broad instances as those I have 
 above given. Words are not accurate ^ t r 
 
 & § 6. The effect of 
 
 enough, nor delicate enough to express or Ms shadows upon 
 trace the constant, all-pervading influence 
 of the finer and vaguer shadows throughout his works, 
 that thrilling influence which gives to the light they 
 leave, its passion and its power. There is not a stone, 
 not a leaf, not a cloud, over which light is not felt to be 
 actually passing and palpitating before our eyes. There 
 is the motion, the actual wave and radiation of the darted 
 beam — not the dull universal daylight, which falls on 
 the landscape without life, or direction, or speculation, 
 equal on all things and dead on all things; but the 
 breathing, animated, exulting light, which feels, and re- 
 ceives, and rejoices, and acts — which chooses one thing 
 and rejects another — which seeks, and finds, and loses 
 again — leaping from rock to rock, from leaf to leaf, from 
 wave to wave, — glowing, or flashing, or scintillating, ac- 
 cording to what it strikes, or in its holier moods, absorb- 
 ing and enfolding all things in the deep fulness of its 
 repose, and then again losing itself in bewilderment, and 
 doubt, and dimness; or perishing and passing away, 
 entangled in drifting mist, or melted into melancholy 
 air, but still, — kindling, or declining, sparkling or still, 
 
284 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO. 
 
 it is the living light, which breathes in its deepest, most 
 entranced rest, which sleeps, but never dies. 
 
 I need scarcely insist farther on the marked distinc- 
 tion between the works of the old masters and those of 
 §7. The distmc- the great modern landscape-painters in 
 beuveen almost an this respect. It is one which the reader 
 an e ciS r and°Lod- can perfectly well work out for himself, by 
 era schools. the slightest systematic attention, — one 
 
 which he will find existing, not merely between this 
 work and that, but throughout the whole body of their 
 productions, and down to every leaf and line. And a 
 little careful watching of nature, especially in her foliage 
 and foregrounds, and comparison of her with Claude, 
 Gaspar Poussin, and Salvator, will soon show him that 
 those artists worked entirely on conventional principles, 
 not representing what they saw, but what they thought 
 would make a handsome picture; and even when they 
 went to nature, which I believe to have been a very much 
 rarer practice with them than their biographers would 
 have us suppose, they copied her like children, drawing 
 what they knew to be there, but not what they saw 
 there.* I believe you may search the foregrounds of 
 Claude, from one end of Europe to another, and you will 
 not find the shadow of one leaf cast upon another. You 
 will find leaf after leaf painted more or less boldly or 
 brightly out of the black ground, and you will find dark 
 leaves defined in perfect form upon the light ; but you 
 will not find the form, of a single leaf disguised or in- 
 terrupted by the shadow of another. And Poussin and 
 Salvator are still farther from anything like genuine 
 truth. There is nothing in their pictures which might 
 not be manufactured in their painting-room, with a 
 branch or two of brambles and a bunch or two of weeds 
 before them, to give them the form of the leaves. And 
 it is refreshing to turn from their ignorant and impotent 
 * Compare Sect. II. Chap. II. § 6. 
 
OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO. 
 
 285 
 
 repetitions of childish conception, to the clear, close, 
 genuine studies of modern artists ; for it is not Turner 
 only, (though here, as in all other points, the first), who 
 is remarkable for fine and expressive decision of chiaro- 
 scuro. Some passages by J. X). Harding are thoroughly 
 admirable in this respect, though this master is getting 
 a little too much into a habit of general keen execution, 
 which prevents the parts which ought to be especially 
 decisive from being felt as such and which makes his 
 pictures, especially the large ones, look a little thin. 
 But some of his later passages of rock foreground have, 
 taken in the abstract, been beyond all praise, owing to 
 the exquisite forms and firm expressiveness of their 
 shadows. And the chiaroscuro of Stanfield is equally 
 deserving of the most attentive study. 
 
 The second point to which I wish at present to direct 
 attention has reference to the arrangement of light and 
 shade. It is the constant habit of nature § 8 second great 
 to use both her highest lights and deepest f™ c c f r e 0 of 
 shadows in exceedingly small quantity; ai| h B ha& “e 
 always in points, never in masses. She will ^tit/and’on'iy 
 give a large mass of tender light in sky or m points - 
 water, impressive by its quantity, and a large mass of 
 tender shadow relieved against it, in foliage, or hill, or 
 building ; but the light is always subdued if it be exten- 
 sive — the shadow always feeble if it be broad. She will 
 then fill up all the rest of her picture with middle tints 
 and pale grays of some sort or another, and on this quiet 
 and harmonious w T hole, she will touch her high lights in 
 spots — the foam of an isolated wave — the sail of a soli- 
 tary vessel — the flash of the sun from a wet roof — the 
 gleam of a single whitewashed cottage — or some such 
 sources of local brilliancy, she will use so vividly and 
 delicately as to throw everything else into definite shade 
 by comparison. And then taking up the gloom, she will 
 use the black hollows of some overhanging bank, or the 
 
286 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO. 
 
 black dress of some shaded figure, or the depth of some 
 sunless chink of wall or window, so sharply as to throw 
 everything else into definite light by comparison ; thus 
 reducing the whole mass of her picture to a delicate 
 middle tint, approaching, of course, here to light, and 
 there to gloom; but yet sharply separated from the 
 utmost degrees either of the one or the other. 
 
 Now it is a curious thing that none of our writers on 
 art seem to have noticed the great principle of nature 
 § 9 . Neglect or * n this respect. They all talk of deep 
 twf r principie by shadow as a thing that may be given in 
 writers on art. quantity, — one fourth of the picture, or, in 
 
 certain effects, much more. Barry, for instance, says 
 that the practice of the great painters, who “ best under- 
 stood the effects of chiaroscuro,” was, for the most part, 
 to make the mass of middle tint larger than the light, 
 and the mass of dark larger than the masses of light and 
 middle tint together, i.e ., occupying more than one-half 
 of the picture. Now I do not know what we are to sup- 
 pose is meant by “understanding chiaroscuro.” If it 
 means being able to manufacture agreeable patterns in 
 the shape of pyramids, and crosses, and zigzags, into 
 which arms and legs are to be persuaded, and passion 
 and motion arranged, for the promotion and encourage- 
 ment of the cant of criticism, such a principle may be 
 productive of the most advantageous results. But if 
 it means, being acquainted with the deep, perpetual, 
 systematic, unintrusive simplicity and unwearied variety 
 of nature’s chiaroscuro — if it means the perception that 
 blackness and sublimity are not synonymous, and that 
 space and light may possibly be coadjutors — then no 
 A , man, who ever advocated or dreamed of 
 
 § 10. And conse- . . . 
 
 qnent misguiding such a principle, is anything more than a 
 of the student. . , , , . _ ” . . . 
 
 novice, blunderer, and trickster m chiaro- 
 scuro. And my firm belief is, that though color is in- 
 great Circe of 
 
 veighed against by all artists, as the 
 
OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO. 
 
 287 
 
 art — the great transformer of mind into sensuality — no 
 fondness for it, no study of it, is half so great a peril 
 and stumbling-block to the young student, as the ad- 
 miration he hears bestowed on such artificial, false, and 
 juggling chiaroscuro, and the instruction he receives, 
 based on such principles as that given us by Fuseli — 
 that “ mere natural light and shade, however separately 
 or individually true, is not always legitimate chiaroscuro 
 in art.” It may not always be agreeable to a sophisti- 
 cated, unfeeling, and perverted mind; but the student 
 had better throw up his art at once, than proceed on the 
 conviction that any other can ever be legitimate. I be- 
 lieve I shall be perfectly well able to prove, in following 
 parts of the work, that “ mere natural light and shade ” 
 is the only fit and faithful attendant of the highest art ; 
 and that all tricks — all visible, intended arrangement — 
 all extended shadows and narrow lights — everything in 
 fact, in the least degree artificial, or tending to make the 
 mind dwell upon light and shade as such, is an injury, 
 instead of an aid, to conceptions of high ideal dignity. 
 I believe I shall be able also to show, that nature man- 
 ages her chiaroscuro a great deal more neatly and 
 cleverly than people fancy; — that “mere natural light 
 and shade ” is a very much finer thing than most artists 
 can put together, and that none think they can improve 
 upon it but those who never understood it. 
 
 But however this may be, it is beyond dispute that 
 every permission given to the student to amuse himself 
 with painting one figure all black, and the Th 
 next all white, and throwing them out value of a simple 
 
 . . 1 ■« -l -a n . . . chiaroscuro. 
 
 with a background oi nothing — every per- 
 mission given to him to spoil his pocketbook with sixths 
 of sunshine and sevenths of shade, and other such frac- 
 tional sublimities, is so much more difficulty laid in the 
 way of his ever becoming a master ; and that none are in 
 the right road to real excellence, but those who are 
 
288 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO. 
 
 struggling to render the simplicity, purity, and inex- 
 haustible variety of nature’s own chiaroscuro in open, 
 cloudless daylight, giving the expanse of harmonious 
 light — the speaking, decisive shadow — and the exquisite 
 grace, tenderness, and grandeur of aerial opposition of 
 local color and equally illuminated lines. No chiaro- 
 scuro is so difficult as this ; and none so noble, chaste, 
 or impressive. On this part of the subject, however, I 
 must not enlarge at present. I wish now only to speak 
 of those great principles of chiaroscuro, which nature 
 observes, even when she is most working for effect — 
 when she is playing with thunderclouds and sunbeams, 
 and throwing one thing out and obscuring another, with 
 the most marked artistical feeling and intention ; — even 
 then, she never forgets her great rule, to give precisely 
 the same quantity of deepest shade which she does of 
 highest light, and no more ; points of the one answering 
 to points of the other, and both vividly conspicuous and 
 'separated from all the rest of the landscape. 
 
 And it is most singular that this separation, which is 
 the great source of brilliancy in nature, should not only 
 § 12. The sharp be unobserved, but absolutely forbidden 
 S& a s ra Ss° f from b y our g‘ rea i writers on art, who are al- 
 her middle tint. ways talking about connecting the light 
 with the shade by imperceptible gradations. Now so 
 surely as this is done, ail sunshine is lost, for impercep- 
 tible gradation from light to dark is the characteristic of 
 objects seen out of sunshine, in what is, in landscape, 
 shadow. Nature’s principle of getting light is the di- 
 rect reverse. She will cover her whole landscape with 
 middle tint, in which she will have as many gradations 
 as you please, and a great many more than you can 
 paint ; but on this middle tint she touches her extreme 
 lights, and extreme darks, isolated and sharp, so that the 
 eye goes to them directly, and feels them to be key T notes 
 of the whole composition. And although the dark 
 
OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO . 
 
 289 
 
 touches are less attractive than the light ones, it is not 
 because they are less distinct, but because they exhibit 
 nothing ; while the bright touches are in parts where 
 everything is seen, and where in consequence the eye 
 goes to rest. But yet the high lights do not exhibit any- 
 thing in themselves, they are too bright and dazzle the 
 eye; and having no shadows in them, cannot exhibit 
 form, for form can only be seen by shadow of some kind 
 or another. Hence the highest lights and deepest darks 
 agree in this, that nothing is seen in either of them ; 
 that both are in exceedingly small quantity, and both are 
 marked and distinct from the middle tones of the land- 
 scape — the one by their brilliancy, the other by their 
 sharp edges, even though many of the more energetic 
 middle tints may approach their intensity very closely. 
 
 I need scarcely do more than tell you to glance at any 
 one of the works of Turner, and you will perceive in a 
 moment the exquisite observation of all * , 0 m 4 . 
 
 these principles ; the sharpness, decision, Turner, 
 conspicuousness, and excessively small quantity, both of 
 extreme light and extreme shade, all the mass of the 
 picture being graduated and delicate middle tint. Take 
 up the Rivers of France, for instance, and turn over a 
 few of the plates in succession. 
 
 1. Chateau Gaillard (vignette.) — Black figures and 
 boats, points of shade ; sun-touches on ^astle, and wake 
 of boat, of light. See how the eye rests on both, and 
 observe how sharp and separate all the lights are, falling 
 in spots, edged by shadow, but not melting off into it. 
 
 2. Orleans. — The crowded figures supply both points 
 of shade and light. Observe the delicate middle tint 
 of both in the whole mass of buildings, and compare 
 this with the blackness of Canaletto’s shadows, against 
 which neither figures nor anything else can ever tell, as 
 points of shade. 
 
 3. Blois. — White figures in boats, buttresses of bridge, 
 
 19 
 
290 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO. 
 
 dome of church on the right, for light; woman on 
 horseback, heads of boats, for shadow. Note especially 
 the isolation of the light on the church dome. 
 
 4. Chateau de Blois. — Torches and white figures for 
 light, roof of chapel and monks’ dresses for shade. 
 
 5. Beaugency. — Sails and spire opposed to buoy and 
 boats. An exquisite instance of brilliant, sparkling, 
 ’solated touches of morning light. 
 
 6. Amboise. — White sail and clouds ; cypresses under 
 castle. 
 
 7. Chauteau of Amboise. — The boat in the centre, with 
 its reflections, needs no comment. Note the glancing 
 lights under the bridge. This is a very glorious and 
 perfect instance. 
 
 8. St. Julien, Tours. — Especially remarkable for its 
 preservation of deep points of gloom, because the whole 
 picture is one of extended shade. 
 
 I need scarcely go on. The above instances are taken as 
 they happen to come, without selection. The reader can 
 proceed for himself. I may, however, name a few cases of 
 chiaroscuro more especially deserving of his study. Scene 
 between Quilleboeuf and Villequier, — Honfleur, — Light 
 Towers of the Heve, — On the Seine between Mantes 
 and Vernon, — The Lantern at St. Cloud, — Confluence of 
 Seine and Marne, — Troyes, — the first and last vignette, 
 and those at pages 36, 63, 95, 184, 192, 203, of Rogers’s 
 poems ; the first and second in Campbell, St. Maurice in 
 the Italy, where note the black stork ; Brienne, Skiddaw, 
 May burgh, Melrose, Jedburgh, in the illustrations to 
 Scott, and the vignettes to Milton, not because these are 
 one whit superior to others of his works, but because the 
 laws of which we have been speaking are more strikingly 
 developed in them, and because they have been well en- 
 graved. It is impossible to reason from the larger plates, 
 in which half the chiaroscuro is totally destroyed by the 
 haggling, blackening, and “ making out ” of the engravers. 
 
CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 OF TRUTH OF SPACE FIRST, AS DEPENDENT ON THE FOCUS 
 OF THE EYE.* 
 
 In the first chapter of this section I noticed the distinc- 
 tion between real aerial perspective, and that overcharged 
 contrast of light and shade by which the old masters ob- 
 tained their deceptive effect ; and I showed 
 that, though inferior to them in the precise ciearfy a ?ndiSted 
 quality or tone of aerial color, our great objects dr Kn 8 by 
 modern master is altogether more truthful theirhue - 
 in the expression of the proportionate relation of all his 
 distances to one another. I am now about to examine 
 those modes of expressing space, both in nature and art 
 by far the most important, which are dependent, not on 
 the relative hues of objects, but on the drawing of them : 
 by far the most important, I say, because the most con- 
 stant and certain ; for nature herself is not always aerial. 
 Local effects are frequent which interrupt and violate 
 the laws of aerial tone, and induce strange deception in 
 our ideas of distance. I have often seen the summit of a 
 snowy mountain look nearer than its base, owing to the 
 
 * I have left this chapter in its original place, because I am more 
 than ever convinced of the truth of the position advanced in the 8th 
 paragraph ; nor can I at present assign any other cause, than that here 
 given, for what is there asserted ; and yet I cannot but think that I 
 have allowed far too much influence to a change so slight as that which 
 we insensibly make in the focus of the eye ; and that the real justifica- 
 tion of Turner’s practice, with respect to some of his foregrounds, is 
 to be elsewhere sought. I leave the subject, therefore, to the reader’s 
 consideration. 
 
292 
 
 OF TRUTH OF SPACE. 
 
 perfect clearness of the upper air. But the drawing of 
 objects, that is to say, the degree in which their details 
 and parts are distinct or confused, is an unfailing and 
 certain criterion of their distance ; and if this be rightly 
 rendered in a painting, we shall have genuine truth of 
 space, in spite of many errors in aerial tone ; while, if 
 this be neglected, all space will be destroyed, whatever 
 dexterity of tint may be employed to conceal the defec- 
 tive drawing. 
 
 First, then, it is to be noticed, that the eye, like any 
 other lens, must have its focus altered, in order to convey 
 a distinct image of objects at different dis- 
 bie to see objects tances ; so that it is totally impossible to 
 tances distinctly at see distinctly, at the same moment, two 
 one moment. objects, one of which is much farther off 
 
 than another. Of this anyone may convince himself in 
 an instant. Look at the bars of your window-frame, so as 
 to get a clear image of their lines and form, and you can- 
 not, while your eye is fixed on them, perceive anything 
 but the most indistinct and shadowy images of whatever 
 objects may be visible beyond. But fix your eyes on 
 those objects, so as to see them clearly, and though they 
 are just beyond and apparently beside the window-frame, 
 that frame will only be felt or seen as a vague, flitting, 
 obscure interruption to whatever is perceived beyond it. 
 A little attention directed to this fact will convince every 
 one of its universality, and prove beyond dispute that 
 objects at unequal distances cannot be seen together, not 
 from the intervention of air or mist, but from the impos- 
 sibility of the rays proceeding from both, converging to 
 the same focus, so that the whole impression, either of 
 one or the other, must necessarily be confused, indis- 
 tinct, and inadequate. 
 
 But, be it observed (and I have only to request that 
 whatever I say may be tested by immediate experiment), 
 the difference of focus necessary is greatest within the 
 
OF TRUTH OF SPACE. 
 
 293 
 
 first five hundred yards, and therefore, though it is totally 
 impossible to see an object ten yards from the eye, and 
 one a quarter of a mile beyond it, at the §3 Especially 
 same moment, it is perfectly possible to euch as a r® b0 , th 
 see one a quarter of a mile off, and one near * 
 five miles beyond it, at the same moment. The conse- 
 quence of this is, practically, that in a real landscape, we 
 *can see the whole of what would be called the middle 
 
 distance and distance together, with facility and clear- 
 ness ; but while we do so we can see nothing in the fore- 
 ground beyond a vague and indistinct arrangement of 
 lines and colors ; and that if, on the contrary, we look at 
 any foreground object, so as to receive a distinct impres- 
 sion of it, the distance and middle distance become all 
 disorder and mystery. 
 
 And therefore, if in a painting our foreground is any- 
 thing, our distance must be nothing, and vice versa ; for 
 if we represent our near and distant ob- ^ ^ 
 jects as giving both at Once that distinct therefore, either 
 
 . iii i*i . . the foreground or 
 
 image to the eye, which we receive m distance must be 
 . n , , I i i n partially sacrificed. 
 
 nature from each, when we look at them 
 
 separately ; * and if we distinguish them from each other 
 
 * This incapacity of the eye must not be confounded with its in- 
 capability to comprehend a large portion of lateral space at once. We 
 indeed can see, at any one moment, little more than one point, the ob- 
 jects beside it being confused and indistinct ; but we need pay no at- 
 tention to this in art, because we can see just as little of the picture as 
 we can of the landscape without turning the eye, and hence any slur- 
 ring or confusing of one part of it, laterally, more than another, is not 
 founded on any truth of nature, but is an expedient of the artist — and 
 often an excellent and desirable one — to make the eye rest where he 
 wishes it. But as the touch expressive of a distant object is as near 
 upon the canvas as that expressive of a near one, both are seen 
 distinctly and with the same focus of the eye, and hence an immediate 
 contradiction of nature results, unless one or other be given with an 
 artificial and increased indistinctness, expressive of the appearance pe- 
 culiar to the unadapted focus. On the other hand, it must be noted that 
 the greater part of the effect above described is consequent not on vari- 
 
294 
 
 OF TRUTH OF SPACE. 
 
 only by the air-tone ; and indistinctness dependent on 
 positive distance, we violate one of the most essential 
 principles of nature ; we represent that as seen at once 
 which can only be seen by two separate acts of seeing*, 
 and tell a falsehood as gross as if we had represented 
 four sides of a cubic object visible together. 
 
 Now, to this fact and principle, no landscape painter 
 of the old school, as far as I remember, ever paid the 
 * . rru' x. t slightest attention. Finishing their fore- 
 being done by the grounds clearly and sharply, and with vig- 
 
 old masters, they ^ J . . & 
 
 could not express orous impression on the eye, giving even 
 the leaves of their bushes and grass with 
 perfect edge and shape, they proceeded into the distance 
 with equal attention to what they could see of its details 
 — they gave all that the eye can perceive ip a distance, 
 when it is fully and entirely devoted to it, and therefore, 
 though masters of aerial tone, though employing every 
 expedient that art could supply to conceal the intersec- 
 tion of lines, though caricaturing the force and shadow 
 of near objects to throw them close upon the eye, they 
 never succeeded in truly representing space. Turner in- 
 troduced a new era in landscape art, by 
 L 6 tkte u ha“°s^ showing that the foreground might be 
 cS?^ng n ou f t u tW8 sunk for the distance, and that it was pos- 
 principTe. s ible to express immediate proximity to 
 
 the spectator, without giving anything like complete- 
 ness to the forms of the near objects. This is not done 
 by slurred or soft lines, observe, (always the sign of 
 vice in art,) but by a decisive imperfection, a firm, but 
 partial assertion of form, which the eye feels indeed to 
 be close home to it, and yet cannot rest upon, or cling 
 to, nor entirely understand, and from which it is driven 
 away of necessity, to those parts of distance on which it 
 is intended to repose. And this principle, originated by 
 
 ation of focus, but on the different angle at which near objects are seen 
 by each of the two eyes, when both are directed towards the distance. 
 
OF TRUTH OF SPACE. 
 
 2D5 
 
 Turner, though fully carried out by him only, has yefc 
 been acted on with judgment and success by several less 
 powerful artists of the English school. Some six years 
 ago, the brown moorland foregrounds of Copley Field- 
 ing were very instructive in this respect. Not a line in 
 them was made out, not a single object clearly distin- 
 guishable. Wet broad sweeps of the brush, sparkling, 
 careless, and accidental as nature herself, always truthful 
 as far as they went, implying knowledge, though not ex- 
 pressing it, suggested everything, while they represented 
 nothing. But far off into the mountain distance came 
 the sharp edge and the delicate form ; the whole inten- 
 tion and execution of the picture being guided and ex- 
 erted where the great impression of space and size was 
 to be given. The spectator was compelled to go forward 
 into the waste of hills — there, where the sun broke wild 
 upon the moor, he must walk and wander — he could not 
 stumble and hesitate over the near rocks, nor stop to 
 botanize on the first inches of his path.* And the im- 
 pression of these pictures was always great and endur- 
 ing, as it was simple and truthful. I do not know any- 
 thing in art which has expressed more completely the 
 force and feeling of nature in these particular scenes. 
 And it is a farther illustration j* of the principle we are 
 insisting upon, that where, as in some of his later works, 
 he has bestowed more labor on the foreground, the pict- 
 ure has lost both in space and sublimity. And among 
 artists in general, who are either not aware of the prin- 
 ciple, or fear to act upon it, (for it requires no small 
 
 * There is no inconsistency, observe, between this passage and what 
 was before asserted respecting the necessity of botanical fidelity^ — 
 where the foreground is the object of attention. Compare Part II. 
 Sec. I. Chap. VII. § 10 : — “To paint mist rightly, space rightly, and 
 light rightly, it may be often necessary to paint nothing else rightly. ” 
 
 f Hardly. It would have been so only had the recently finished 
 foregrounds been as accurate in detail as they are abundant : they are 
 painful, I believe, not from their finish, but their falseness. 
 
296 
 
 OF TRUTH OF SPACE. 
 
 courage, as well as skill, to treat a foreground with that 
 indistinctness and mystery which they have been accus- 
 tomed to consider as characteristic of distance,) the fore- 
 ground is not only felt, as every landscape painter will 
 confess, to be the most embarrassing and unmanageable 
 part of the picture, but, in ninety -nine cases out of a hun- 
 dred, will go near to destroy the effect of the rest of the 
 composition. Thus Callcott’s Trent is severely injured 
 by the harsh group of foreground figures ; and Stanfield 
 very rarely gets through an Academy picture without 
 destroying much of its space, by too much determination 
 of near form; while Harding constantly sacrifices his 
 distance, and compels the spectator to dwell on the fore- 
 ground altogether, though indeed, with such foregrounds 
 as he gives us, we are most happy so to do. But it is 
 § 7 Especially of i n Turner only that we see a bold and de- 
 Turner. cisive choice of the distance and middle 
 
 distance, as his great object of attention ,* and by him 
 only that the foreground is united and adapted to it, not 
 by any want of drawing, or coarseness, or carelessness of 
 execution, but by the most precise and beautiful indica- 
 tion or suggestion of just so much of even the minutest 
 forms as the eye can see when its focus is not adapt- 
 ed to them. And herein is another reason for the 
 vigor and wholeness of the effect of Turner’s works at 
 any distance ; while those of almost all other artists are 
 sure to lose space as soon as we lose sight of the de- 
 tails. 
 
 And now we see the reason for the singular, and to the 
 ignorant in art, the offensive execution of Turner’s fig- 
 § 8. Justification ures. I do not mean to assert that there 
 dra^n g W in n Tu?- is any reason whatsoever, for bad drawing, 
 ner’s figures. (though in landscape it matters exceed- 
 ingly little ;) but that there is both reason and necessity 
 for that leant of drawing which gives even the near- 
 est figures round balls with four pink spots in them in- 
 
OF TRUTH OF SPACE. 
 
 297 
 
 stead of faces, and four dashes of the brush instead of 
 hands and feet ; for it is totally impossible that if the 
 eye be adapted to receive the rays proceeding from the 
 utmost distance, and some partial impression from all 
 the distances, it should be capable of perceiving more 
 of the forms and features of near figures than Turner 
 gives. And how absolutely necessary to the faithful 
 representation of space this indecision really is, might 
 be proved with the utmost ease by any one who had 
 veneration enough for the artist to sacrifice one of his pict- 
 ures to his fame ; who would take some one of his works 
 in which the figures were most incomplete, and have 
 them painted in by any of our delicate and first-rate figure 
 painters, absolutely preserving every color and shade of 
 Turner’s group, so as not to lose one atom of the com- 
 position, but giving eyes for the pink spots, and feet 
 for the white ones. Let the picture be so exhibited in 
 the Academy, and even novices in art would feel at a 
 glance that its truth of space was gone, that every one 
 of its beauties and harmonies had undergone decompo- 
 sition, that it was now a grammatical solecism, a paint- 
 ing of impossibilities, a thing to torture the eye, and 
 offend the mind. 
 
CHAPTEB V. 
 
 OF TRUTH OF SPACE SECONDLY, AS ITS APPEARANCE IS 
 DEPENDENT ON THE POWER OF THE EYE. 
 
 In the last chapter, we have seen how indistinctness of 
 individual distances becomes necessary in order to ex- 
 press the adaptation of the eye to one or other of them ; 
 § i. The peculiar we h ave now to examine that kind of in- 
 pe^dentforfthe re- distinctness which is dependent on real 
 fromthe°eye! );iect8 retirement of the object even when the fo- 
 cus of the eye is fully concentrated upon 
 it. The first kind of indecision is that which belongs 
 to all objects which the eye is not adapted to, whether 
 near or far off : the second is that consequent upon the 
 want of power in the eye to receive a clear image of 
 objects at a great distance from it, however attentively 
 it may regard them. 
 
 Draw on a piece of white paper, a square and a circle, 
 each about a twelfth or eighth of an inch in diameter, 
 and blacken them so that their forms may be very dis- 
 tinct ; place your paper against the wall at the end of 
 the room, and retire from it a greater or less distance 
 according as you have drawn the figures larger or 
 smaller. You will come to a point where, though you 
 can see both the spots with perfect plainness, you can- 
 not tell which is the square and which the circle. 
 
 Now this takes place of course with every object in a 
 landscape, in proportion to its distance and size. The 
 definite forms of the leaves of a tree, however sharply 
 and separately they may appear to come against the sky, 
 
OF TRUTH OF SPACE. 
 
 299 
 
 are quite indistinguishable at fifty yards off, and the 
 form of everything becomes confused before we finally 
 lose sight of it. Now if the character of § 2 . causes con- 
 an object, say the front of a house, be ex- iSiationof de- 
 plained by a variety of forms in it, as 
 the shadows in the tops of the windows, the lines of the 
 architraves, the seams of the masonry, etc. ; these lesser 
 details, as the object falls into distance, become con- 
 fused and undecided, each of them losing their definite 
 forms, but all being perfectly visible as something, a 
 white or a dark spot or stroke, not lost sight of, observe, 
 but yet so seen that we cannot tell what they are. As 
 the distance increases, the confusion becomes greater, 
 until at last the whole front of the house becomes merely 
 a fiat, pale space, in which, however, there is still observ- 
 able a kind of richness and checkering, caused by the 
 details in it, which, though totally merged and lost in 
 the mass, have still an influence on the texture of that 
 mass ; until at last the whole house itself becomes a 
 mere light or dark spot which we can plainly see, but 
 cannot tell what it is, nor distinguish it from a stone or 
 any other object. 
 
 Now what I particularly wish to insist upon, is the 
 state of vision in which all the details of an object are 
 seen, and yet seen in such confusion and § 3 i ns t an ces m 
 disorder that we cannot in the least tell various ob ^ 8Cts “ 
 what they are, or what they mean. It is not mist be- 
 tv/een us and the object, still less is it shade, still less is 
 it want of character; it is a confusion, a mystery, an 
 interfering of undecided lines with each other, not a 
 diminution of their number ; window and door, architrave 
 and frieze, all are there : it is no cold and vacant mass, 
 it is full and rich and abundant, and yet you cannot see 
 a single form so as to know what it is. Observe your 
 friend’s face as he is coming up to you ; first it is nothing 
 more than a white spot ; now it is a face, but you cannot 
 
300 
 
 OF TRUTH OF SPACE. 
 
 see the two eyes, nor the mouth, even as spots ; you see 
 a confusion of lines, a something which you know from 
 experience to be indicative of a face, and yet you can- 
 not tell how it is so. Now he is nearer, and you can 
 see the spots for the eyes and mouth, but they are not 
 blank spots neither; there is detail in them; you can- 
 not see the lips, nor the teeth, nor the brows, and yet 
 you see more than mere spots ; it is a mouth and an eye, 
 and there is light and sparkle and expression in them, 
 but nothing distinct. Now he is nearer still, and you 
 can see that he is like your friend, but you cannot tell 
 whether he is or not ; there is a vagueness and indecision 
 of line still. Now you are sure, but even yet there are 
 a thousand things in his face which have their effect in 
 inducing the recognition, but which you cannot see so 
 as to know what they are. 
 
 Changes like these, and states of vision corresponding 
 to them, take place with each and all of the objects of 
 „ , m , nature, and two great principles of truth 
 
 § 4. Two great ’ . i . 
 
 resultant truths ; are deducible from their observation. First, 
 never di^tmct, and place an object as close to the eye as you 
 like, there is always something in it which 
 you cannot see, except in the hinted and mysterious 
 manner above described. You can see the texture of a 
 piece of dress, but you cannot see the individual threads 
 which compose it, though they are all felt, and have 
 each of them influence on the eye. Secondly, place an 
 object as far from the eye as you like, and until it 
 becomes itself a mere spot, there is always something 
 in it which you can see, though only in the hinted 
 manner above described. Its shadows and lines and 
 local colors are not lost sight of as it retires ; they get 
 mixed and indistinguishable, but they are still there, 
 and there is a difference always perceivable between an 
 object possessing such details and a flat or vacant space. 
 The grass blades of a meadow a mile off, are so far dis- 
 
OF TRUTH OF SPACE. 
 
 301 
 
 cernible that there will be a marked difference between 
 its appearance and that of a piece of wood painted 
 green. And thus nature is never distinct and never 
 vacant, she is always mysterious, but always abundant ; 
 you always see something, but you never see all. 
 
 And thus arise that exquisite finish and fulness which 
 God has appointed to be the perpetual source of fresh 
 pleasure to the cultivated and observant eye, — a finish 
 which no distance can render invisible, and no nearness 
 comprehensible; which in every stone, every bough, 
 every cloud, and every wave is multiplied around us, 
 forever presented, and forever exhaustless. And hence 
 in art, every space or touch in which we can see every- 
 thing, or in which we can see nothing, is false. Nothing 
 can be true which is either complete or vacant; every 
 touch is false which does not suggest more than it repre- 
 sents, and every space is false which represents nothing. 
 
 Now, I would not wish for any more illustrative or 
 marked examples of the total contradiction of these two 
 great principles, than the landscape works §6> complete 
 of the old masters, taken as a body : — the Sele^^rincS 
 Dutch masters furnishing the cases of see- They eo ire ma lMSr 
 ing everything, and the Italians of seeing dis ^ inct or vacant - 
 nothing. The rule with both is indeed the same, differ- 
 ently applied. “You shall see the bricks in the wall, 
 and be able to count them, or you shall see nothing but 
 a dead flat ; ” but the Dutch give you the bricks, and the 
 Italians the flat. Nature’s rule being the precise reverse 
 — “ You shall never be able to count the bricks, but you 
 shall never see a dead space.” 
 
 Take, for instance, the street in the centre of the really 
 great landscape of Poussin (great in feeling at least) 
 marked 260 in the Dulwich Gallery. The 
 
 , , . §6. Instances 
 
 houses are dead square masses with a light from Nicholas 
 
 side and a dark side, and black touches for 
 
 windows. There is no suggestion of anything in any of 
 
302 
 
 OF TRUTH OF SPACE. 
 
 the spaces, the light wall is dead gray, the dark wall 
 dead gray, and the windows dead black. How differently 
 would nature have treated us. She would have let us 
 see the Indian corn hanging on the walls, and the image 
 of the Yirgin at the angles, and the sharp, broken, broad 
 shadows of the tiled eaves, and the deep ribbed tiles 
 with the doves upon them, and the carved Homan capital 
 built into the wall, and the white and blue stripes of the 
 mattresses stuffed out of the windows, and the flapping 
 corners of the mat blinds. All would have been there ; 
 not as such, not like the corn, nor blinds, nor tiles, not 
 to be comprehended nor understood, but a confusion of 
 yellow and black spots and strokes, carried far too fine 
 for the eye to follow, microscopic in its minuteness, and 
 filling every atom and part of space with mystery, out of 
 which would have arranged itself the general impression 
 of truth and life. 
 
 Again, take the distant city on the right bank of the 
 river in Claude’s Marriage of Isaac and Hebecca, in the 
 
 National Gallery. I have seen many cities 
 
 § 7. From Claude. . , . „ , , . „ T 
 
 m my me, and drawn not a lew; and I 
 
 have seen many fortifications, fancy ones included, which 
 frequently supply us with very new ideas indeed, es- 
 pecially in matters of proportion ; but I do not remem- 
 ber ever having met with either a city or a fortress en- 
 tirely composed of round towers of various heights and 
 sizes, all fae-similes of each other, and absolutely agree- 
 ing in the number of battlements. I have, indeed, some 
 faint recollection of having delineated such an one in 
 the first page of a spelling-book when I was four years 
 old ; but, somehow or other, the dignity and perfection 
 of the ideal were not appreciated, and the volume was 
 not considered to be increased in value by the frontis- 
 piece. Without, however, venturing to doubt the entire 
 sublimity of the same ideal as it occurs in Claude, let us 
 consider how nature, if she had been fortunate enough 
 
OF TRUTH OF SPACE. 
 
 303 
 
 to originate so perfect a conception, would have managed 
 it in its details. Claude has permitted us to see every 
 battlement, and the first impulse we feel upon looking 
 at the picture is to count how many there are. Nature 
 would have given us a peculiar confused roughness of 
 the upper lines, a multitude of intersections and spots, 
 which we should have known from experience was indic- 
 ative of battlements, but which we might as well have 
 thought of creating as of counting. Claude has given 
 you the walls below in one dead void of uniform gray. 
 There is nothing to be seen, nor felt, nor guessed at in 
 it ; it is gray paint or gray shade, whichever you may 
 choose to call it, but it is nothing more. Nature would 
 have let you see, nay, would have compelled you to see, 
 thousands of spots and lines, not one to be absolutely 
 understood or accounted for, but yet all characteristic 
 and different from each other ; breaking lights on shat- 
 tered stones, vague shadows from waving vegetation, 
 irregular stains of time and weather, mouldering hollows, 
 sparkling casements — all would have been there — none, 
 indeed, seen as such, none comprehensible or like them- 
 selves, but all visible; little shadows, and sparkles, and 
 scratches, making that whole space of color a transparent, 
 palpitating, various infinity. 
 
 Or take one of Poussin’s extreme distances, such as 
 that in the Sacrifice of Isaac. It is luminous, retiring, 
 delicate and perfect in tone, and is quite § 8 Aad G 
 complete enough to deceive and delight Poussin, 
 the careless eye to which all distances are alike ; nay, it 
 is perfect and masterly, and absolutely right if we con- 
 sider it as a sketch, — as a first plan of a distance, after- 
 wards to be carried out in detail. But we must remem- 
 ber that all these alternate spaces of gray and gold are 
 not the landscape itself, but the treatment of it — not its 
 substance, but its light and shade. They are just what 
 nature would cast over it, and write upon it with every 
 
SO 4 
 
 OF TRUTH OF SPACE. 
 
 cloud, but which she would cast in play, and without 
 carefulness, as matters of the very smallest possible im- 
 portance. All her work and her attention would be 
 given to bring out from underneath this, and through 
 this, the forms and the material character which this can 
 only be valuable to illustrate, not to conceal. Every 
 one of those broad spaces she would linger over in 
 protracted delight, teaching you fresh lessons in every 
 hairsbreadth of it, and pouring her fulness of invention 
 into it, until the mind lost itself in following her, — now 
 fringing the dark edge of the shadow with a tufted line 
 of level forest — now losing it for an instant in a breath 
 of mist — then breaking it with the white gleaming angle 
 of a narrow brook — then dwelling upon it again in a gen- 
 tle, mounded, melting undulation, over the other side of 
 which she would carry you down into a dusty space of 
 soft, crowded light, with the hedges, and the paths, and 
 the sprinkled cottages and scattered trees mixed up and 
 mingled together in one beautiful, delicate, impenetra- 
 ble mystery — sparkling and melting, and passing away 
 into the sky, without one line of distinctness, or one in- 
 stant of vacancy. 
 
 Now it is, indeed, impossible for the painter to follow 
 all this — he cannot come up to the same degree and or- 
 der of infinity — but he can give us a lesser 
 Live necessity p( in kind of infinity. He has not one-thou- 
 
 laudscape paint- , -> . 1 
 
 in g, of fuinesa sandth part oi the space to occupy which 
 nature has; but he can, at least, leave no 
 part of that space vacant and unprofitable. If nature 
 carries out her minutiae over miles, he has no excuse for 
 generalizing in inches. And if he will only give us all 
 he can, if he will give us a fulness as complete and as 
 mysterious as nature’s, we will pardon him for its being 
 the fulness of a cup instead of an ocean. But we will 
 not pardon him, if, because he has not the mile to occu- 
 py, he will not occupy the inch, and because he has fewer 
 
OF TRUTH OF SPACE. 
 
 305 
 
 means at his command, will leave half of those in his 
 power unexerted. Still less will we pardon him for mis- 
 taking 1 the sport of nature for her labor, and for follow- 
 ing her only in her hour of rest, without observing how 
 she has worked for it. After spending centuries in rais- 
 ing the forest, and guiding the river, and modelling 
 the mountain, she exults over her work in buoyancy 
 of spirit, with playful sunbeam and flying cloud; but 
 the painter must go through the same labor, or he 
 must not have the same recreation. Let him chisel his 
 rock faithfully, and tuft his forest delicately, and then 
 we will allow him his freaks of light and shade, and 
 thank him for them ; but we will not be put off with 
 the play before the lesson — with the adjunct instead 
 of the essence — with the illustration instead of the 
 fact. 
 
 I am somewhat anticipating my subject here, because 
 I can scarcely help answering the objections which I 
 know must arise in the minds of most g 10 Breadth is 
 readers, especially of those who are par- not vacancy. 
 tially artistical, respecting “ generalization,” “ breadth,” 
 “ effect,” etc. It were to be wished that our writers on 
 art would not dwell so frequently on the necessity of 
 breadth, without explaining what it means ; and that we 
 had more constant reference made to the principle which 
 I can only remember having seen once clearly explained 
 and insisted on, — that breadth is not vacancy. General- 
 ization is unity, not destruction of part ; and composi- 
 tion is not annihilation, but arrangement of materials. 
 The breadth which unites the truths of nature with her 
 harmonies, is meritorious and beautiful ; but the breadth 
 which annihilates those truths by the million, is not 
 painting nature, but painting over her. And so the 
 masses which result from right concords and relations of 
 details, are sublime and impressive; but the masses 
 which result from the eclipse of details are contemptible 
 20 
 
306 
 
 OF TRUTH OF SPACE. 
 
 and painful.* And we shall show, in following parts of 
 the work, that distances like those of Poussin are mere 
 meaningless tricks of clever execution, which, when once 
 discovered, the artist may repeat over and over again, 
 with mechanical contentment and perfect satisfaction, 
 both to himself and to his superficial admirers, with 
 no more exertion of intellect nor awakening of feeling 
 than any tradesman has in multiplying some ornamental 
 pattern of furniture. Be this as it may, however, (for we 
 cannot enter upon the discussion of the question here,) 
 the falsity and imperfection of such distances admit of 
 no dispute. Beautiful and ideal they may be ; true they 
 are not: and in the same way we might go through 
 every part and portion of the works of the old masters, 
 showing throughout, either that you have every leaf and 
 blade of grass staring defiance to the mystery of nature, 
 or that you have dead spaces of absolute vacuity, equally 
 determined in their denial of her fulness. And even if 
 we ever find (as here and there, in their better pictures, 
 we do) changeful passages of agreeable playing color, or 
 mellow and transparent modulations of mysterious at- 
 mosphere, even here the touches, though satisfactory to 
 the eye, are suggestive of nothing, — they are character- 
 less, — they have none of the peculiar expressiveness and 
 meaning by which nature maintains the variety and in- 
 terest even of what she most conceals. She always tells 
 a story, however hintedly and vaguely; each of her 
 touches is different from all the others ; and we feel with 
 every one, that though we cannot tell what it is, it can- 
 not be anything ; while even the most dexterous dis- 
 tances of the old masters pretend to secrecy without 
 
 * Of course much depends upon the kind of detail so lost. An 
 artist may generalize the trunk of a tree, where he only loses lines of 
 bark, and do us a kindness ; but he must not generalize the details of 
 a champaign, in which there is a history of creation. The full dis- 
 cussion of the subject belongs to a future part of our investigation. 
 
OF TRUTH OF SPACE. 
 
 307 
 
 haying* anything to conceal, and are ambiguous, not from 
 the concentration of meaning, but from the want of it. 
 
 And now, take up one of Turner’s distances, it matters 
 not which, or of what kind, — drawing or painting, small 
 or great, done thirty years ago, or for last § n The fulnesg 
 year’s Academy, as you like; say that of Tu^n^^is- 
 the Mercury and Argus, and look if every tances - 
 fact which I have just been pointing out in nature be 
 not carried out in it. Abundant, beyond the power of 
 the eye to embrace or follow, vast and various, beyond 
 the power of the mind to comprehend, there is yet not 
 one atom in its whole extent and mass which does not 
 suggest more than it represents; nor does it suggest 
 vaguely, but in such a manner as to prove that the con- 
 ception of each individual inch of that distance is abso- 
 lutely clear and complete in the master’s mind, a sepa- 
 rate picture fully worked out : but yet, clearly and fully 
 as the idea is formed, just so much of it is given, and 
 no more, as nature would have allowed us to feel or 
 see ; just so much as would enable a spectator of expe- 
 rience and knowledge to understand almost every mi- 
 nute fragment of separate detail, but appears, to the un- 
 practised and careless eye, just what a distance of nat- 
 ure’s own would appear, an unintelligible mass. Not 
 one line out of the millions there is without meaning, 
 yet there is not one which is not affected and disguised 
 by the dazzle and indecision of distance. No form is 
 made out, and yet no form is unknown. 
 
 Perhaps the truth of this system of drawing is better 
 to be understood by observing the distant character of 
 rich architecture, than of any other object. § 12 Farther 
 Go to the top of Highgate Hill on a clear ciiteitumi d w- 
 summer morning at five o’clock, and look in s* 
 at Westminster Abbey. You will receive an impression 
 of a building enriched with multitudinous vertical lines. 
 Try to distinguish one of those lines all the way down 
 
308 
 
 OF TRUTH OF SPACE. 
 
 from the one next to it : Yon cannot. Try to count 
 them : You cannot. Try to make out the beginning* or 
 end of any one of them : You cannot. Look at it gener- 
 ally, and it is all symmetry and arrangement. Look at it 
 in its parts, and it is all inextricable confusion. Am not I, 
 at this moment, describing a piece of Turner’s drawing, 
 with the same words by which I describe nature ? And 
 what would one of the old masters have done with such a 
 building as this in his distance ? Either he would only 
 have given the shadows of the buttresses, and the light 
 and dark sides of the two towers, and two dots for the 
 windows ; or if more ignorant and more ambitious, he had 
 attempted to render some of the detail, it would have 
 been done by distinct lines, — would have been broad car- 
 icature of the delicate building, felt at once to be false, 
 ridiculous, and offensive. His most successful effort 
 would only have given us, through his carefully toned 
 atmosphere, the effect of a colossal parish church, with- 
 out one line of carving on its economic sides. Turner, 
 and Turner only, would follow and render on the canvas 
 that mystery of decided line, — that distinct, sharp, visi- 
 ble, but unintelligible and inextricable richness, which, 
 examined part by part, is to the eye nothing but con- 
 fusion and defeat, which, taken as a whole, is all unity, 
 symmetry, and truth.* 
 
 Nor is this mode of representation true only with re- 
 spect to distances. Every object, however near the eye, 
 
 has something about it which you cannot 
 
 jects as well as dis- see, and which brings the mystery oi dis- 
 tances. i • i 
 
 tance even into every part and portion oi 
 what we suppose ourselves to see most distinctly. Stand 
 
 * Vide, for illustration, Fontainebleau in the Illustrations to Scott ; 
 Vignette at opening of Human Life, in Rogers’s Poems: Venice, in 
 the Italy ; Chateau de Blois ; the Rouen, and Pont Neuf, Paris, in the 
 Rivers of France. The distances of all the Academy pictures of Ven- 
 ice, especially the Shy lock, are most instructive. 
 
OF TRUTH OF SPACE . 
 
 809 
 
 in the Piazza di St. Marco at Venice, as close to the 
 church as you can, without losing* sight of the top of it. 
 Look at the capitals of the columns on the second story. 
 You see that they are exquisitely rich, carved all over. 
 Tell me their patterns : You cannot. Tell me the direc- 
 tion of a single line in them : You cannot. Yet you see 
 a multitude of lines, and you have so much feeling of a 
 certain tendency and arrangement in those lines, that 
 you are quite sure the capitals are beautiful, and that 
 they are all different from each other. But I defy you 
 to make out one single line in any one of 
 them' Now go to Canaletto’s painting of and ’falsehood of 
 this church, in the Palazzo Manfrini, taken 
 from the very spot on which you stood. How much has 
 he represented of all this ? A black dot under each capi- 
 tal for the shadow, and a yellow one above it for the 
 light. There is not a vestige nor indication of carving 
 or decoration of any sort or kind. 
 
 Very different from this, but erring on the other side, 
 is the ordinary drawing of the architect, who gives the 
 principal lines of the design with delicate clearness and 
 precision, but with no uncertainty or mystery about 
 them ; which mystery being removed, all space and size 
 are destroyed with it, and we have a drawing of a model, 
 not of a building. But in the capital lying on the fore- 
 ground in Turner’s Daphne hunting with Leucippus, we 
 have the perfect truth. Not one jag of the acanthus 
 leaves is absolutely visible, the lines are all disorder, but 
 you feel in an instant that all are there. And so it will 
 invariably be found through every portion of detail in 
 his late and most perfect works. 
 
 But if there be this mystery and inexhaustible finish 
 merely in the more delicate instances of architectural 
 decoration, how much more in the cease- g 16> stm. greater 
 less and incomparable decoration of nature. iS\a?lsc?pe fi fore^ 
 The detail of a single weedy bank laughs g rounds * 
 
310 
 
 OF TRUTH OF SPACE. 
 
 the carving of ages to scorn. Ever 7 leaf and stalk has a 
 design and tracery upon it, — every knot of grass an in- 
 tricacy of shade which the labor of years could never 
 imitate, and which, if such labor could follow it out even 
 to the last fibres of the leaflets, would yet be falsely rep- 
 resented, for, as in all other cases brought forward, it is 
 not clearly seen, but confusedly and mysteriously. That 
 which is nearness for the bank, is distance for its details ; 
 and however near it may be, the greater part of those 
 details are still a beautiful incomprehensibility.* 
 
 * It is to be remembered, however, that these truths present them- 
 selves in all probability under very different phases to individuals of 
 different powers of vision. Many artists who appear to generalize 
 rudely or rashly are perhaps faithfully endeavoring to render the ap- 
 pearance which nature bears to sight of limited range. Others may 
 be led by their singular keenness of sight into inexpedient detail. 
 Works which are painted for effect at a certain distance must be al- 
 ways seen at disadvantage by those whose sight is of different range 
 from the painter’s. Another circumstance to which I ought above to 
 have alluded is the scale of the picture ; for there are different degrees 
 of generalization and different necessities of symbolism, belonging to 
 every scale ; the stipple of the miniature painter would be offensive on 
 features of the life size, and the leaves which Tintoret may articulate 
 on a canvas of sixty feet by twenty-five, must be generalized by Tur- 
 ner on one of four by three. Another circumstance of some impor- 
 tance is the assumed distance of the foreground ; many landscape 
 painters seem to think their nearest foreground is always equally near, 
 v/hereas its distance from the spectator varies not a little, being always 
 at least its own calculable breadth from side to side as estimated by 
 figures or any other object of known size at the nearest part of it. 
 With Claude almost always ; with Turner often, as in the Daphne and 
 Leucippus, this breadth is forty or fifty yards ; and as the nearest fore- 
 ground object must then be at least that distance removed, and may 
 be much more, it is evident that no completion of close detail is in 
 such cases allowable, (see here another proof of Claude’s erroneous 
 practice ;) with Titian and Tintoret, on the contrary, the foreground 
 is rarely more than five or six yards broad, and its objects therefore 
 being only five or six yards distant are entirely detailed. 
 
 None of these circumstances, however, in anywise affect the great 
 principle, the confusion of detail taking place sooner or later in all 
 cases. I ought to have noted, however, that many of the pictures of 
 
OF TRUTH OF SPACE, 
 
 311 
 
 Hence, throughout the picture, the expression of space, 
 and size is dependent upon obscurity, united with, or 
 rather resultant from, exceeding fulness. We destroy 
 both space and size, either by the vacancy, § 16 gpace ard 
 which affords us no measure of space, or are destroyed 
 by the distinctness, which gives us a false ne&s and by va- 
 one. The distance of Poussin, having no 
 indication of trees, nor of meadows, nor of character of 
 any kind, may be fifty miles off, or may be five ; we can- 
 not tell — we have no measure, and in consequence, no 
 vivid impression. But a middle distance of Hobbima’s 
 involves a contradiction in terms ; it states a distance 
 by perspective, which it contradicts by distinctness of 
 detail. 
 
 A single dusty roll of Turner’s brush is more truly ex- 
 pressive of the infinity of foliage, than the niggling of 
 Hobbima could have rendered his canvas, § 17. swift execu- 
 if he had worked on it till doomsday, perfection S of U de- 
 What Sir J. Reynolds says of the mis- 
 placed labor of his Homan acquaintance on separate 
 
 Turner in which the confused drawing has been least understood, 
 have been luminous twilights; and that the uncertainty of twilight is 
 therefore added to that of general distance. In the evenings of the 
 south it not unfrequently happens that objects touched with the re- 
 flected light of the western sky, continue even for the space of half an 
 hour after sunset, glowing, ruddy, and intense in color, and almost as 
 bright as if they were still beneath actual sunshine, even till the moon 
 begins to cast a shadow : but in spite of this brilliancy of color all the 
 details become ghostly and ill-defined. This is a favorite moment of 
 Turner’s, and he invariably characterizes it, not by gloom, but by un- 
 certainty of detail. I have never seen the effect of clear twilight thor- 
 oughly rendered by art ; that effect in which all details are lost, while 
 intense clearness and light are still felt in the atmosphere, in which 
 nothing is distinctly seen, and yet it is not darkness, far less mist, 
 that is the cause of concealment. Turner’s efforts at rendering this 
 effect (as the Wilderness of Engedi, Assos, Chateau de Blois, Caer- 
 laverock, and others innumerable,) have always some slight appear- 
 ance of mistiness, owing to the indistinctness of details ; but it remains 
 to be shown that any closer approximation to the effect is possible. 
 
312 
 
 OF TRUTH OF SPACE . 
 
 leaves of foliage, and the certainty he expresses that a 
 man who attended to general character would in five 
 minutes produce a more faithful representation of a tree, 
 than the unfortunate mechanist in as many years, is thus 
 perfectly true and well founded; but this is not be- 
 cause details are undesirable, but because they are best 
 §18. Finish is far £ iven swift execution, and because, in- 
 lSndscape 68 ?!^^ ^dually, they cannot be given at all. But 
 in historical sub- it should be observed (though we shall be 
 better able to insist upon this point in fu- 
 ture) that much of harm and error has arisen from the 
 supposition and assertions of swift and brilliant histori- 
 cal painters, that the same principles of execution are 
 entirely applicable to landscape, which are right for the 
 figure. The artist who falls into extreme detail in draw- 
 ing the human form, is apt to become disgusting rather 
 than pleasing. It is more agreeable that the general 
 outline and soft hues of flesh should alone be given, 
 than its hairs, and veins, and lines of intersection. And 
 even the most rapid and generalizing expression of the 
 human body, if directed by perfect knowledge, and rig- 
 idly faithful in drawing, will commonly omit very little 
 of what is agreeable or impressive. But the exclusively 
 generalizing landscape painter omits the whole of what 
 is valuable in his subject, — omits thoughts, designs, and 
 beauties by the million, everything, indeed, which can 
 furnish him with variety or expression. A distance in 
 Lincolnshire, or in Lombardy, might both be generalized 
 into such blue and yellow stripes as we see in Poussin ; 
 but whatever there is of beauty or character in either, 
 depends altogether on our understanding the details, 
 and feeling the difference between the morasses and 
 ditches of the one, and the rolling sea of mulberry trees 
 of the other. And so in every part of the subject. I 
 have no hesitation in asserting that it is impossible to go 
 too fine, or think too much about details in landscape, so 
 
OF TRUTH OF SPACE. 
 
 313 
 
 that they be rightly arranged and rightly massed ; but 
 that it is equally impossible to render anything like the 
 fulness or the space of nature, except by that mystery 
 and obscurity of execution which she herself uses, and 
 in which Turner only has followed her. 
 
 We have now rapidly glanced at such general truths of 
 nature as can be investigated without much knowledge 
 * of what is beautiful. Questions of arrange- 
 
 , . , ^ T §19. Recapitula- 
 
 ment, massing, and generalization, 1 pre- tion of the sec- 
 fer leaving untouched, until we know 
 something about details, and something about what is 
 beautiful. All that is desirable, even in these mere tech- 
 nical and artificial points, is based upon truths and hab- 
 its of nature; but we cannot understand those truths 
 until we are acquainted with the specific forms and 
 minor details which they affect, or out of which they 
 arise. I shall, therefore, proceed to examine the invalu- 
 able and essential truths of specific character and form — - 
 briefly and imperfectly, indeed, as needs must be, but 
 yet at length sufficient to enable the reader to pursue, if 
 he will, the subject for himself. 
 
SECTION m. 
 
 OP TRUTH OF SKIES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OF THE OPEN SKY. 
 
 It is a strange thing how little in general people 
 know about the sky. It is the part of creation in which 
 nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more 
 for the sole and evident purpose of talk- 
 
 o i lie p6cniisr a - _ , _ # _ # 
 
 s ky^o^h^p lea ing ^ im an d teaching him, than m any 
 
 and teaching of other of her works, and it is just the part 
 in which we least attend to her. There 
 are not many of her other works in which some more 
 material or essential purpose than the mere pleasing of 
 man is not answered by every part of their organiza- 
 tion ; but every essential purpose of the sky might, so far 
 as we know, be answered, if once in three days, or there- 
 abouts, a great ugly black rain cloud were brought up 
 over the blue, and everything well watered, and so all 
 left blue again till next time, with perhaps a film of 
 morning and evening mist for dew. And instead of this, 
 there is not a moment of any day of our lives, when 
 nature is not producing scene after scene, picture after 
 picture, glory after glory, and working still upon such 
 exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect 
 beauty, that it is quite certain it is all done for us, 
 and intended for our perpetual pleasure. And every 
 
OF THE OPEN SKY. 
 
 315 
 
 man, wherever placed, however far from other sources of 
 interest or of beauty, has this doing for him constantly. 
 The noblest scenes of the earth can be seen and known 
 but by few ; it is not intended that man should live al- 
 ways in the midst of them, he injures them by his pres- 
 ence, he ceases to feel them if he be always with them ; 
 but the sky is for all ; bright as it is, it is not “ too 
 . bright, nor good, for human nature’s daily food ; ” it is 
 fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and 
 exalting of the heart, for the soothing it and purifying it 
 from its dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes 
 capricious, sometimes awful, never the same for two mo- 
 ments together; almost human in its passions, almost 
 spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its infinity, 
 its appeal to wdiat is immortal in us, is as distinct, as 
 its ministry of chastisement or of blessing § 2 . The careiess- 
 to what is mortal is essential. And yet we lellons^re^re- 
 never attend to it, we never make it a sub- ceived * 
 ject of thought, but as it has to do with our animal sen- 
 sations ; we look upon all by w T hich it speaks to us more 
 clearly than to brutes, upon all which bears witness to 
 the intention of the Supreme, that we are to receive 
 more from the covering vault than the light and the dew 
 which we share with the weed and the w r orm, only as a 
 succession of meaningless and monotonous accident, too 
 common and too vain to be worthy of a moment of watch- 
 fulness, or a glance of admiration. If in our moments of 
 utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last 
 resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of ? One 
 says it has been w T et, and another it has been windy, 
 and another it has been w T arm. Who, among the wiiole 
 chattering crowd, can tell me of the forms and the preci- 
 pices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded the 
 horizon at noon yesterday ? Who saw the narrow sun- 
 beam that came out of the south, and smote upon their 
 summits until they melted and mouldered away in a dust 
 
316 
 
 OF THE OPEN SET. 
 
 of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead clouds 
 when the sunlight left them last night, and the west 
 wind blew them before it like withered leaves f All has 
 passed, unregretted as unseen ; or if the apathy be ever 
 shaken off, even for an instant, it is only by what is gross, 
 § 3. The most es- or extraordinary ; and yet it is not 
 
 J® 8 ' in the broad and tierce manifestations of 
 tlest - the elemental energies, not in the clash of 
 
 the hail, nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the highest 
 characters of the sublime are developed. God is not in 
 the earthquake, nor in the tire, but in the still small 
 voice. They are but the blunt and the low faculties of 
 our nature, which can only be addressed through lamp- 
 black and lightning. It is in quiet and subdued pas- 
 sages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep, and the calm, 
 and the perpetual, — that which must be sought ere it is 
 seen, and loved ere it is understood, — things which the 
 angels work out for us daily, and yet vary eternally, 
 which are never wanting, and never repeated, which are 
 to be found always yet each found but once; it is 
 through these that the lesson of devotion is chiefly 
 taught, and the blessing of beauty given. These are 
 what the artist of highest aim must study ; it is these, 
 § 4. Many of our by the combination of which his ideal is to 
 getSr 0f conven- created; these, of which so little notice 
 tionaL is ordinarily taken by common observers, 
 
 that I fully believe, little as people in general are con- 
 cerned with art, more of their ideas of sky are derived 
 from pictures than from reality, and that if we could ex- 
 amine the conception formed in the minds of most edu- 
 cated persons when we talk of clouds, it would frequently 
 be found composed of fragments of blue and white remi- 
 niscences of the old masters. 
 
 I shall enter upon the examination of what is true in 
 sky at greater length, because it is the only part of a pict- 
 ure of which all, if they will, may be competent judges. 
 
OF THE OPEN SKY. 
 
 317 
 
 What I may have to assert respecting the rocks of Salva- 
 tor, or the boughs of Claude, I can scarcely prove, except 
 to those whom I can immure for a month or two in the 
 fastnesses of the Apennines, or guide in their summer 
 walks again and again through the ravines of Sorrento. 
 But what I say of the sky can be brought to an immedi- 
 ate test by all, and I write the more decisively, in the 
 hope that it may be so. 
 
 Let us begin then with the simple open blue of the 
 sky. This is of course the color of the pure atmospheric 
 air, not the aqueous vapor, but the pure 
 
 , -i t •/ . L . i i i § 5 - Nature and 
 
 azote and oxygen, and it is the total color essential qualities 
 of the whole mass of that air between us of the open 
 and the void of space. It is modified by the varying 
 quantity of aqueous vapor suspended in it, whose color, 
 in its most imperfect, and therefore most visible, state of 
 solution, is pure white, (as in steam,) which receives, like 
 any other white, the warm hues of the rays of the sun, 
 and, according to its quantity and imperfect solution, 
 makes the sky paler, and at the same time more or less 
 gray, by mixing warm tones with its blue. This gray 
 aqueous vapor, when very decided, becomes mist, and 
 when local, cloud. Hence the sky is to be considered as 
 a transparent blue liquid, in which, at various elevations, 
 clouds are suspended, those clouds being themselves only 
 particular visible spaces of a substance with which the 
 whole mass of this liquid is more or less impregnated. 
 Now, we all know this perfectly well, and §(! . its common 
 yet we so far forget it in practice, that we vith clouds - 
 little notice the constant connection kept up by nature 
 between her blue and her clouds, and we are not offended 
 by the constant habit of the old masters, of considering 
 the blue sky as totally distinct in its nature, and far sep- 
 arated from the vapors which float in it. With them, 
 cloud is cloud, and blue is blue, and no kind of connec- 
 tion between them is ever hinted at. The sky is thought 
 
318 
 
 OF THE OPEN SKY. 
 
 of as a clear, high material dome, the clouds as separate 
 bodies, suspended beneath it, and in consequence, how- 
 ever delicate and exquisitely removed in tone their skies 
 
 ST. Its exceeding ma J r be, you always . look at them, not 
 depth * through them. Now, if there be one char- 
 
 acteristic of the sky more valuable or necessary to be 
 rendered than another, it is that which Wordsworth has 
 given in the second book of the Excursion : — 
 
 “ The chasm of sky above my head 
 Is Heaven’s profoundest azure. Iso domain 
 For fickle, short-lived clouds, to occupy, 
 
 Or to pass through ; — but rather an abyss 
 In which the everlasting stars abide, 
 
 And whose soft gloom, and boundless depth, might tempt 
 The curious eye to look for them by day.” 
 
 And, in his American Notes, I remember Dickens notices 
 the same truth, describing himself as lying drowsily on 
 the barge deck, looking not at, but through the sky. And 
 if you look intensely at the pure blue of a serene sky, 
 you will see that there is a variety and fulness in its very 
 repose. It is not flat dead color, but a deep, quivering, 
 transparent body of penetrable air, in which you trace or 
 imagine short, falling spots of deceiving’ light, and dim 
 shades, faint, veiled vestiges of dark vapor ; and it is this 
 trembling transparency which our great modern master 
 § 8. These quaii- has especially aimed at and given. His 
 gwen r by "modern blue is never laid on in smooth coats, but 
 masters. i n p rea pi n g- 5 mingling, melting hues, a 
 
 quarter of an inch of which, cut off from all the rest of 
 the picture, is still spacious, still infinite and immeasur- 
 able in depth. It is a painting of the air, something 
 into which you can see, through the parts which are near 
 you into those which are far off ; something which has no 
 surface, and through which we can plunge far and farther, 
 and without stay or end, into the profundity of space 
 
OF THE OPEN SKY . 
 
 319 
 
 whereas, with all the old landscape painters, except 
 Claude, you may indeed go a long way before you come 
 to the sky, but you will strike hard against it at last. A 
 perfectly genuine and untouched sky of § 9 And by 
 Claude is indeed most perfect, and beyond clande * 
 praise, in all qualities of air ; though even with him, I 
 often feel rather that there is a great deal of pleasant aii 
 between me and the firmament, than that the firmament 
 itself is only air. I do not mean, however, to say a word 
 against such skies as that of the Enchanted Castle, or 
 that marked 30 in the National Gallery, or one or two 
 which I remember at Rome ; but how little and by how 
 few these fine passages of Claude are appreciated, is 
 sufficiently proved by the sufferance of such villainous 
 and unpalliated copies as we meet with all over Europe, 
 like the Marriage of Isaac, in our own Gallery, to remain 
 under his name. In fact, I do not remember above ten 
 pictures of Claude’s, in which the skies, whether re- 
 painted or altogether copies, or perhaps from Claude’s 
 hand, but carelessly laid in, like that marked 241, Dul- 
 wich Gallery, were not fully as feelingless and false as 
 those of other masters ; while, with the Poussins, there 
 are no favorable exceptions. Their skies are systemati- 
 cally wrong ; take, for instance, the sky of the Sacrifice 
 of Isaac. It is here high noon, as is shown by the shadow 
 of the figures ; and what sort of color is the sky at the 
 top of the picture ? Is it pale and gray with heat, full 
 of sunshine, and unfathomable in depth? gio. Total absence 
 On the contrary, it is of a pitch of dark- S^PhysFcai 
 ness which, except on the Mont Blanc or S r treatment 8 of 
 Chimborazo, is as purely impossible as °P eask y- 
 color can be. He might as well have painted it coal 
 black ; and it is laid on with a dead coat of flat paint, 
 having no one quality or resemblance of sky about it. 
 It cannot have altered, because the land horizon is as 
 delicate and tender in tone as possible, and is evidently 
 
320 
 
 OF THE OPEN SKY . 
 
 unchanged ; and to complete the absurdity of the whole 
 thing, this color holds its own, without graduation or 
 alteration, to within three or four degrees of the horizon, 
 where it suddenly becomes bold and unmixed yellow. 
 Now the horizon at noon may be yellow when the whole 
 sky is covered with dark clouds, and only one open streak 
 of light left in the distance from which the whole light 
 proceeds ; but with a clear, open sky, and opposite the 
 sun, at noon, such a yellow horizon as this is physically 
 impossible. Even supposing that the upper part of the 
 sky were pale and warm, and that the transition from the 
 one hue to the other were effected imperceptibly and 
 gradually, as is invariably the case in reality, instead of 
 taking place within a space of two or three degrees ; — 
 even then, this gold yellow would be altogether absurd ; 
 but as it is, we have in this sky (and it is a fine picture — 
 one of the best of Gaspar’s that I know,) a notable exam- 
 ple of the truth of the old masters — two impossible 
 colors impossibly united! Find such a color in Turner’s 
 noonday zenith as the blue at the top, or such a color at 
 a noonday horizon as the yellow at the bottom, or such 
 a connection of any colors whatsoever as that in the 
 centre, and then you may talk about his being false to 
 nature if you will. Nor is this a solitary instance ; it is 
 Gaspar Poussin’s favorite and characteristic effect. I 
 remember twenty such, most of them worse than this, in 
 „ , the downright surface and opacity of blue. 
 
 §11. Errors of . _ ® ^ 
 
 cuyp in gradua- Again, look at the large Cuyp m the 
 Dulwich Gallery, which Mr. Hazlitt con- 
 siders the “ finest in the world,” and of which he very 
 complimentarily says, “ The tender green of the valleys, 
 the gleaming lake, the purple light of the hills, have an 
 effect like the down on an unripe nectarine ! ” I ought to 
 have apologized before now, for not having studied suffi- 
 ciently in Covent Garden to be provided with terms of 
 correct and classical criticism. One of my friends begged 
 
OF THE OPEN SKY. 
 
 321 
 
 me to observe, the other day, that Claude was “ pulpy ; ” 
 another added the yet more gratifying information that 
 he was “juicy;” and it is now happily discovered that 
 Cuyp is “ downy.” Now I dare say that the sky of this 
 first-rate Cuyp is very like an unripe nectarine : all that 
 I have to say about it is, that it is exceedingly unlike a 
 sky. The blue remains unchanged and ungraduated over 
 . three-fourths of it, down to the horizon ; while the sun, 
 in the left-hand corner, is surrounded with a halo, first of 
 yellow, and then of crude pink, both being separated 
 from each other, and the last from the blue, as sharply as 
 the belts of a rainbow, and both together not ascending 
 ten degrees in the sky. Now it is difficult to conceive 
 how any man calling himself a painter could impose 
 such a thing on the public, and still more how the public 
 can receive it, as a representation of that sunset purple 
 which invariably extends its influence to the zenith, so 
 that there is no pure blue anywhere, but a purple increas- 
 ing in purity gradually down to its point of greatest 
 intensity, (about forty-five degrees from the horizon,) 
 and then melting imperceptibly into the gold, the three 
 colors extending their influence over the whole sky ; so 
 that throughout the whole sweep of the heaven, there is 
 no one spot where the color is not in an equal state of 
 transition — passing from gold into orange, from that 
 into rose, from that into purple, from that into blue, with 
 absolute equality of change, so that in no place can it be 
 said, “ here it changes,” and in no place, “ iiere it is un- 
 changing.” This is invariably the case. There is no such 
 thing — there never was, and never will be such a thing, 
 while God’s heaven remains as it is made — as a serene, 
 sunset sky, with its purple and rose in belts about the 
 sun. 
 
 Such bold, broad examples of ignorance as these would 
 soon set aside all the claims of the professed landscape 
 painters to truth, with whatever delicacy of color or ma- 
 21 
 
322 
 
 OF THE OPEN SKY. 
 
 § 12. The exceed- 
 ing value of the 
 skies of the early 
 Italian and Dutch 
 schools. Their 
 qualities are unat- 
 tainable in mod- 
 ern times. 
 
 nipulation they may be disguised. But there are some 
 skies, of the Dutch school, in which clearness and cool- 
 ness have been aimed at, instead of depth ; 
 and some introduced merely as back- 
 grounds to the historical subjects of the 
 older Italians, which there is no matching 
 in modern times ; one would think angels 
 had painted them, for all is now clay and oil in compari- 
 son. It seems as if we had totally lost the art, for surely 
 otherwise, however little our painters might aim at it or 
 feel it, they would touch the chord sometimes by acci- 
 dent ; but they never do, and the mechanical incapacity 
 is still more strongly evidenced by the muddy struggles 
 of the unhappy Germans, who have the feeling, partially 
 strained, artificial, and diseased, indeed, but still genuine 
 enough to bring out the tone, if they had the mechani- 
 cal means and technical knowledge. But, however they 
 were obtained, the clear tones of this kind of the older 
 Italians are glorious and enviable in the highest degree ; 
 and we shall show, when we come to speak of the beauti- 
 ful, that they are one of the most just grounds of the 
 fame of the old masters. 
 
 But there is a series of phenomena connected with the 
 open blue of the sky, which we must take especial notice 
 of, as it is of constant occurrence in the 
 works of Turner and Claude, the effects, 
 namely, of visible sunbeams. It will be 
 necessary for us thoroughly to understand the circum- 
 stances under which such effects take place. 
 
 Aqueous vapor or mist, suspended in the atmosphere, 
 becomes visible exactly as dust does in the air of a 
 room. In the shadows you not only cannot see the dust 
 itself, because unillumined, but you can see other objects 
 through the dust without obscurity, the air being thus 
 actually rendered more transparent by a deprivation of 
 light. Where a sunbeam enters, every particle of dust 
 
 § 13. Phenomena 
 of visible sun- 
 beams. Their nat- 
 ure and cause. 
 
OF THE OPEN SKY. 
 
 323 
 
 becomes visible, and a palpable interruption to the sight, 
 so that a transverse sunbeam is a real obstacle to the 
 vision, you cannot see things clearly through it. 
 
 In the same way, wherever vapor is illuminated by 
 transverse rays there it becomes visible as a whiteness 
 more or less affecting the purity of the blue, and destroy- 
 ing it exactly in proportion to the degree of illumina- 
 ' tion. But where vapor is in shade, it has very little 
 effect on the sky, perhaps making it a little deeper and 
 grayer than it otherwise would be, but not itself, unless 
 very dense, distinguishable or felt as mist. 
 
 The appearance of mist or whiteness in the blue of the 
 sky, is thus a circumstance which more or less accom- 
 panies sunshine, and which, supposing the §14 . They are 
 quantity of vapor constant, is greatest in £fsl JSTSSS 
 the brightest sunlight. When there are ^jVom 
 
 no clouds in the sky, the whiteness, as it J. ap f s r ’ ^Tth^ut 
 affects the whole sky equally, is not par- clouds * 
 ticularly noticeable. But when there are clouds between 
 us and the sun, the sun being low, those clouds cast 
 shadows along and through the mass of suspended vapor. 
 Within the space of these shadows, the vapor, as above 
 stated, becomes transparent and invisible, and the sky 
 appears of a pure blue. But where the sunbeams strike, 
 the vapor becomes visible in the form of the beams, 
 occasioning those radiating shafts of light which are one 
 of the most valuable and constant accompaniments of a 
 low sun. The denser the mist, the more distinct and 
 sharp -edged will these rays be ; when the air is very clear, 
 they are mere vague, flushing, gradated passages of 
 light ; when it is very thick, they are keen-edged and 
 decisive in a high degree. 
 
 We see then, first, that a quantity of mist dispersed 
 through the whole space of the sky, is necessary to this 
 phenomenon ; and secondly, that what we usually think 
 of as beams of greater brightness than the rest of the 
 
324 
 
 OF THE OPEN SKY. 
 
 sky, are in reality only a part of that sky in its natural 
 state of illumination, cut off and rendered brilliant by 
 the shadows from the clouds, — that these shadows are 
 in reality the source of the appearance of beams, — that, 
 therefore, no part of the sky can present such an appear- 
 ance, except when there are broken clouds between it 
 and the sun ; and lastly, that the shadows cast from such 
 clouds are not necessarily gray or dark, but very nearly 
 of the natural pure blue of a sky destitute of vapor. 
 
 Now, as it has been proved that the appearance of 
 beams can only take place in a part of the sky which has 
 § 15. Erroneous clouds between it and the sun, it is evident 
 representation % that no appearance of beams can ever be- 
 br C the P oid°m e as- from the orb itself, except when there 
 ter8, is a cloud or solid body of some kind be- 
 
 tween us and it ; but that such appearances will almost 
 invariably begin on the dark side of some of the clouds 
 around it, the orb itself remaining the centre of a broad 
 blaze of united light. Wordsworth has given us in two 
 lines, the only circumstances under which rays can ever 
 appear to have origin in the orb itself : — 
 
 “But rays of light, 
 
 Now suddenly diverging from the orb, 
 
 Retired behind the mountain tops, or veiled 
 By the dense air , shot upwards.” 
 
 Excursion, Book IX. 
 
 And Turner has given us the effect magnificently in the 
 Dartmouth of the River Scenery. It is frequent among 
 the old masters, and constant in Claude ; though the 
 latter, from drawing his beams too fine, represents the 
 effect upon the dazzled eye rather than the light which 
 actually exists, and approximates very closely to the 
 ideal which we see in the sign of the Rising Sun ; nay, I 
 am nearly sure that I remember cases in which he has 
 given us the diverging beam, without any cloud or hill 
 
OF THE OPEN SKY. 
 
 325 
 
 interfering with the orb. It may, perhaps, be somewhat 
 difficult to say how far it is allowable to represent that 
 kind of ray which is seen by the dazzled B 
 
 . . . 1 1 j § 16- The ray 
 
 eve. It is very certain that we never which appears in 
 
 . the dazzled eye 
 
 look towards a bright sun without see- should not be 
 
 . . , represented. 
 
 mg glancing rays issue irom it ; but it is 
 equally certain that those rays are no more real existences 
 than the red and blue circles which we see after having 
 been so dazzled, and that if we are to represent the rays 
 we ought also to cover our sky with pink and blue 
 circles. I should on the whole consider it utterly false 
 in principle to represent the visionary beam, and that 
 we ought only to show that which has actual existence. 
 Such we find to be the constant practice of § 17. The prac- 
 Turner. Even where, owing to interposed hS keen percep- 
 clouds, he has beams appearing to issue delicate t phe?o°m- 
 from the orb itself, they are broad bursts ena of rays * 
 of light, not spiky rays ; and his more usual practice is 
 to keep all near the sun in one simple blaze of intense 
 light, and from the first clouds to throw beams to the 
 zenith, though he often does not permit any appearance 
 of rays until close to the zenith itself. Open at the 
 80th page of the Illustrated edition of Rogers’s poems. 
 You have there a sky blazing with sunbeams ; but they 
 all begin a long way from the sun, and they are ac- 
 counted for by a mass of dense clouds surrounding the 
 orb itself. Turn to the 7th page. Behind the old oak, 
 where the sun is supposed to be, you have only a blaze 
 of undistinguished light ; but up on the left, over the 
 edge of the cloud, on its dark side, the sunbeam. Turn 
 to page 192, — blazing rays again, but all beginning 
 where the clouds do, not one can you trace to the sun ; 
 and observe how carefully the long shadow on the moun- 
 tain is accounted for by the dim dark promontory pro- 
 jecting out near the sun. I need not multiply exam- 
 ples; you will find various modifications and uses of 
 
326 
 
 OF THE OPEN SKY. 
 
 these effects throughout his works. But you will not 
 find a single trace of them in the old masters. They give 
 § is. The total you the rays issuing from behind black 
 evidence of sm* clouds, and because they are a coarse and 
 wo^ksofthe Sd common effect which could not possibly 
 masters. escape their observation, and because they 
 
 are easily imitated. They give you the spiky shafts 
 issuing from the orb itself, because these are partially 
 symbolical of light, and assist a tardy imagination, as 
 two or three rays scratched round the sun with a pen 
 would, though they would be rays of darkness instead of 
 light.* But of the most beautiful phenomenon of all, 
 the appearance of the delicate ray far in the sky, thread- 
 ing its way among the thin, transparent clouds, while 
 all around the sun is unshadowed fire, there is no record 
 nor example whatsoever in their works. It was too 
 delicate and spiritual for them ; probably their blunt 
 and feelingless eyes never perceived it in nature, and 
 their untaught imaginations w r ere not likely to originate 
 it in the study. 
 
 Little is to be said of the skies of our other landscape 
 artists. In paintings, they are commonly toneless, 
 
 * I have left this passage as it stood originally, because it is right as 
 far as it goes ; yet it speaks with too little respect of symbolism, 
 which is often of the highest use in religious art, and in some meas- 
 ure is allowable in all art. In the works of almost all the greatest 
 masters there are portions which are explanatory rather than repre- 
 sentative, and typical rather than imitative ; nor could these be parted 
 with but at infinite loss. Note, with respect to the present question, 
 the daring black sunbeams of Titian, in his woodcut of St. Francis 
 receiving the stigmata, and compare here Part III. Sect. II. Chap. IV. 
 8 18 ; Chap. V. § 18. And though I believe that I am right in con- 
 sidering all such symbolism as out of place in pure landscape, and in 
 attributing that of Claude to ignorance or inability, and not to feeling, 
 yet I praise Turner not so much for his absolute refusal to represent 
 the spiky ray about the sun, as for his perceiving and rendering that 
 which Claude never perceived, the multitudinous presence of radiat- 
 ing light in the upper sky, and on all its countless ranks of subtile 
 cloud. 
 
OF THE OPEN SKY. 
 
 327 
 
 § 19. Truth of the 
 skies of modern 
 drawings. 
 
 crude, and wanting in depth and transparency ; but in 
 drawings, some very perfect and delicate examples have 
 been produced by various members of the 
 old Water Color Society, and one or two 
 others ; but with respect to the qualities of 
 which we are at present speaking, it is not right to com- 
 pare drawings with paintings, as the wash or sponging, 
 or other artifices peculiar to water color, are capable of 
 producing an appearance of quality which it needs 
 much higher art to produce in oils. 
 
 Taken generally, the open skies of the moderns are in- 
 ferior in quality to picked and untouched skies of the 
 greatest of the ancients, but far' superior to 
 the average class of pictures which we have 
 every day fathered upon their reputation. 
 
 Nine or ten skies of Claude might be 
 named which are not to be contended with, 
 in their way, and as many of Cuyp. Teniers has given 
 some very wonderful passages, and the clearness of the 
 early Italian and Dutch schools is beyond all imitation. 
 But the common blue daubing which we hear every day 
 in our best galleries attributed to Claude and Cuyp, and 
 the genuine skies of Salvator, and of both the Poussins, 
 are not to be compared for an instant with the best works 
 of modern times, even in quality and transparency ; 
 while in all matters requiring delicate observation or 
 accurate science, — in all which was not attainable by 
 technicalities of art, and which depended upon the 
 artist’s knowledge and understanding of nature, all the 
 works of the ancients are alike the productions of mere 
 children, sometimes manifesting great sensibility, but 
 proving at the same time, feebly developed intelligence 
 and ill-regulated observation. 
 
 § 20. Recapitu- 
 lation. The best 
 skies of the an- 
 cients are, in 
 quality, i n i m i t- 
 able, but in ren- 
 dering of various 
 truth, childish. 
 
CHAPTEE II. 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS: — FIRST, OF THE KEGION OF THE 
 
 CIERUS. 
 
 Our next subject of investigation must be the specific 
 character of clouds, a species of truth which is especially 
 neglected by artists ; first, because as it is within the lim- 
 § 1. Difficulty of its of possibility that a cloud may assume 
 
 ft S C 6 r t ft 1 D 1 II Cf ^ 47 
 
 wherein the truth almost any form, it is difficult to point out, 
 and not always easy to feel, wherein error 
 consists ; and secondly, because it is totally impossible 
 to study the forms of clouds from nature with care and 
 accuracy, as a change in the subject takes place between 
 every touch of the following pencil, and parts of an out- 
 line sketched at different instants cannot harmonize, 
 nature never having intended them to come together. 
 Still if artists were more in the habit of sketching 
 clouds rapidly, and as accurately as possible in the out- 
 line, from nature, instead of daubing down what they 
 call “ effects ” with the brush, they would soon find there 
 is more beauty about their forms than can be arrived at 
 by any random felicity of invention, however brilliant, 
 and more essential character than can be violated with- 
 out incurring the charge of falsehood, — falsehood as 
 direct and definite, though not as traceable as error in 
 the less varied features of organic form. 
 
 The first and most important character of clouds, is 
 dependent on the different altitudes at which they are 
 formed. The atmosphere may be conveniently con- 
 sidered as divided into three spaces, each inhabited by 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS . 
 
 329 
 
 § 2. Ya r i a t i o n 
 of their character 
 at different eleva- 
 tions. The three 
 regions to which 
 they may conven- 
 iently he consid- 
 ered a s belong- 
 ing. 
 
 clouds of specific character altogether different, though, 
 in reality, there is no distinct limit fixed between them 
 by nature, clouds being formed at every 
 altitude, and partaking according to their 
 altitude, more or less of the characters of 
 the upper or lower regions. The scenery 
 of the sky is thus formed of an infinitely 
 graduated series of systematic forms of 
 cloud, each of which has its own region in which alone 
 it is formed, and each of which has specific characters 
 which can only be properly determined by comparing 
 them as they are found clearly distinguished by intervals 
 of considerable space. I shall therefore consider the 
 sky as divided into three regions — the upper region, or 
 region of the cirrus ; the central region, or region of the 
 stratus; the lower region, or the region of the rain- 
 cloud. 
 
 The clouds which I wish to consider as included in the 
 upper region, never touch even the highest mountains 
 of Europe, and may therefore be looked 
 upon as never formed below an elevation 
 of at least 15,000 feet ; they are the motionless multitu- 
 dinous lines of delicate vapor with which the blue of the 
 open sky is commonly streaked or speckled after several 
 days of fine weather. I must be pardoned for giving a 
 detailed description of their specific characters as they 
 are of constant occurrence in the works of modern 
 artists, and I shall have occasion to speak frequently of 
 them in future parts of the work. Their chief characters 
 are — first, Symmetry: They are nearly 
 
 , -a • i . . -| • § 4. The symraet- 
 
 always arranged m some definite and evi- ricai arrangement 
 -j i -i i 1 of its clouds. 
 
 dent order, commonly m long ranks reach- 
 ing sometimes from the zenith to the horizon, each rank 
 composed of an infinite number of transverse bars of 
 about the same length, each bar thickest in the mid- 
 dle, and terminating in a traceless vaporous point at 
 
 § 3. Extent of the 
 upper region. 
 
830 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 each side; the ranks are in the direction of the wind, 
 and the bars of course at right angles to it ; these latter 
 are commonly slightly bent in the middle. Frequently 
 two systems of this kind, indicative of two currents of 
 wind, at different altitudes intersect one another, form- 
 ing a network. Another frequent arrangement is in 
 groups of excessively fine, silky, parallel fibres, com- 
 monly radiating, or having a tendency to radiate, from 
 one of their extremities, and terminating in a plumy 
 sweep at the other : — these are vulgarly known as 
 “ mares’ tails.” The plumy and expanded extremity of 
 these is often bent upwards, sometimes back and up 
 again, giving an appearance of great flexibility and 
 unity at the same time, as if the clouds were tough, and 
 would hold together however bent. The narrow extrem- 
 ity is invariably turned to the wind, and the fibres are 
 parallel with its direction. The upper clouds always 
 fall into some modification of one or other of these 
 arrangements. They thus differ from all other clouds, 
 in having a plan and system ; whereas other clouds, 
 though there are certain laws which they cannot break, 
 have yet perfect freedom from anything like a relative 
 and general system of government. The upper clouds 
 are to the lower, what soldiers on parade are to a mixed 
 multitude ; no men walk on their heads or their hands, 
 and so there are certain laws which no clouds violate ; 
 but there is nothing except in the upper clouds resem- 
 bling symmetrical discipline. 
 
 Secondly, Sharpness of Edge : The edges of the bars 
 of the upper clouds which are turned to the wind, are 
 § 5. Their exceed- often the sharpest which the sky shows ; 
 mg delicacy. no ou ^j n e whatever of any other kind of 
 
 cloud, however marked and energetic, ever approaches 
 the delicate decision of these edges. The outline of a 
 black thunder-cloud is striking, from the great energy 
 of the color or shade of the general mass ; but as a line, 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS . 
 
 331 
 
 it -is soft and indistinct, compared with the edge of the 
 cirrus, in a clear sky with a brisk breeze. On the other 
 hand, the edge of the bar turned away from the wind is 
 always soft, often imperceptible, melting into the blue 
 interstice between it and its next neighbor. Commonly 
 the sharper one edge is, the softer is the other, and the 
 clouds look flat, and as if they slipped over each other 
 like the scales of a fish. When both edges are soft, as is 
 always the case when the sky is clear and windless, the 
 cloud looks solid, round, and fleecy. 
 
 Thirdly, Multitude : The delicacy of these vapors is 
 sometimes carried into such an infinity of division, that 
 no other sensation of number that the § 6. Their num- 
 earth or heaven can give is so impressive. ber ‘ 
 
 Number is always most felt when it is symmetrical, (vide 
 Burke on “ Sublime,” Part ii. sect. 8,) and, therefore, no 
 sea-waves nor fresh leaves make their number so evident 
 or so impressive as these vapors. Nor is nature content 
 with an infinity of bars or lines alone — each bar is in its 
 turn severed into a number of small undulatory masses, 
 more or less connected according to the violence of the 
 wind. When this division is merely effected by undula- 
 tion, the cloud exactly resembles sea-sand ribbed by the 
 tide ; but when the division amounts to real separation 
 we have the mottled or mackerel skies. Commonly, the 
 greater the division of its bars, the broader and more 
 shapeless is the rank or field, so that in the mottled sky 
 it is lost altogether, and we have large irregular fields 
 of equal size, masses like flocks of sheep ; such clouds are 
 three or four thousand feet below the legitimate cirrus. 
 I have seen them cast a shadow on the Mont Blanc at 
 sunset, so that they must descend nearly to within fifteen 
 thousand feet of the earth. 
 
 Fourthly, Purity of Color : The nearest of these clouds 
 — those over the observer’s head, being at least three 
 miles above him, and nearly all entering the ordinary 
 
332 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 sphere of vision, farther from him still, — their dark sides 
 are much grayer and cooler than those of other clouds, 
 , owing to their distance. They are com- 
 
 § 7. Causes of ? , J 
 
 their peculiarly posed oi the purest aqueous vapor, free 
 
 delicate coloring. \ ^ 
 
 from ail foulness of earthy gases, and oi 
 this in the lightest and most ethereal state in which it 
 can be, to be visible. Farther, they receive the light of 
 the sun in a state of far greater intensity than lower ob- 
 jects, the beams being transmitted to them through at- 
 mospheric air far less dense, and wholly unaffected by 
 mist, smoke, or any other impurity. Hence their colors 
 are more pure and vivid, and their white less sullied 
 than those of any other clouds. 
 
 Lastly, Yariety : Variety is never so conspicuous, as 
 when it is united with symmetry. The perpetual change 
 §8. Their variety of form in other clouds, is monotonous 
 of form. * n ver y dissimilarity, nor is difference 
 
 striking where no connection is implied ; but if through 
 a range of barred clouds, crossing half the heaven, all 
 governed by the same forces and falling into one general 
 form, there be yet a marked and evident dissimilarity 
 between each member of the great mass — one more finely 
 drawn, the next more delicately moulded, the next more 
 gracefully bent — each broken into differently modelled 
 and variously numbered groups, the variety is doubly 
 striking, because contrasted with the perfect symmetry 
 of which it forms a part. Hence, the importance of the 
 truth, that nature never lets one of the members of even 
 her most disciplined groups of cloud be like another ; 
 but though each is adapted for the same function, and 
 in its great features resembles all the others, not one, 
 out of the millions with which the sky is checkered, is 
 without a separate beauty and character, appearing to 
 have had distinct thought occupied in its conception, 
 and distinct forces in its production ; and in addition to 
 this perpetual invention, visible in each member of each 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 333 
 
 system, we find systems of separate cloud intersecting 
 one another, the sweeping lines mingled and interwoven 
 with the rigid bars, these in their turn melting into 
 banks of sand-like ripple and flakes of drifted and irreg- 
 ular foam ; under all, perhaps the massy outline of some 
 lower cloud moves heavily across the motionless buoy- 
 ancy of the upper lines, and indicates at once their ele- 
 vation and their repose. 
 
 Such are the great attributes of the upper cloud region ; 
 
 whether they are beautiful, valuable, or impressive, it is 
 
 not our present business to decide, nor to „ m t , , 
 
 endeavor to discover the reason of the 
 
 somewhat remarkable fact, that the whole representation, m 
 .. -ill i nn -i ancient landscape. 
 
 held oi ancient landscape art affords, as iar 
 as we remember, but one instance of any effort whatever 
 to represent the character of this cloud region. That 
 one instance is the landscape of Rubens in our own 
 gallery, in which the mottled or fleecy sky is given with 
 perfect truth and exquisite beauty. To this should per- 
 haps be added, some of the backgrounds of the histori- 
 cal painters, where horizontal lines were required, and a 
 few level bars of white or warm color cross the serenity 
 of the blue. These, as far as they go, are often very 
 perfect, and the elevation and repose of their effect 
 might, we should have thought, have pointed out to the 
 landscape painters that there was something (I do not say 
 much, but certainly something) to be made out of the 
 high clouds. Not one of them, however, took the hint. 
 To whom, among them all, can we look for the slightest 
 realization of the fine and faithful descriptive passage of 
 the “ Excursion,” already alluded to : — 
 
 “ But rays of light, 
 
 Now suddenly diverging from the orb, 
 
 Retired behind the mountain tops, or veiled 
 By the dense air, shot upwards to the crown 
 Of the blue firmament — aloft — and wide : 
 
334 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 And multitudes of little floating clouds, 
 
 Ere we, who saw, of change were conscious, pierced 
 Through their ethereal texture, had become 
 Vivid as fire, — Clouds separately poised, 
 
 Innumerable multitude of forms 
 Scattered through half the circle of the sky ; 
 
 And giving back, and shedding each on each. 
 
 With prodigal communion, the bright hues 
 Which from the unapparent fount of glory 
 They had imbibed, and ceased not to receive. 
 
 That which the heavens displayed the liquid deep 
 Repeated, but with unity sublime. ” 
 
 There is but one master whose works we can think of 
 while we read this ; one alone has taken notice of the 
 §10. The intense neglected upper sky; it is his peculiar 
 study of them by and favorite field ; he has watched its every 
 Turner. modification, and given its every phase and 
 
 feature ; at all hours, in all seasons, he has followed its 
 passions and its changes, and has brought down and 
 laid open to the world another apocalypse of heaven. 
 
 There is scarcely a painting of Turner’s, in which se- 
 renity of sky and intensity of light are aimed at together, 
 in which these clouds are not used, though there are not 
 two cases in which they are used altogether alike. Some- 
 times they are crowded together in masses of mingling 
 light, as in the Shylock; every part and atom sympa- 
 thizing in that continuous expression of slow movement 
 which Shelley has so beautifully touched : — 
 
 “ Underneath the young gray dawn 
 A multitude of dense, white fleecy clouds, 
 
 Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains, 
 Shepherded by the slow, unwilling icind.” 
 
 At other times they are blended with the sky itself, 
 felt only here and there by a ray of light calling them 
 into existence out of its misty shade, as in the Mercury 
 and Argus ; sometimes, where great repose is to be given, 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 335 
 
 they appear in a few detached, equal, rounded flakes, 
 which seem to hang motionless, each like the shadow of 
 the other, in the deep blue of the zenith, as in the Acro- 
 Corinth; sometimes they are scattered in fiery hying 
 fragments, each burning with separate energy, as in the 
 Temeraire ; sometimes woven together with fine threads 
 of intermediate darkness, melting into the blue as in the 
 Napoleon. But in all cases the exquisite manipulation 
 of the master gives to each atom of the multitude its own 
 character and expression. Though they be countless as 
 leaves, each has its portion of light, its shadow, its re- 
 flex, its peculiar and separating form. 
 
 Take for instance the illustrated edition of Bogers’s 
 Poems,* and open it at the 80th page, and observe 
 how every attribute which I have pointed 
 out in the upper sky, is there rendered ette’ sunrise S on 
 with the faithfulness of a mirror ; the long 
 lines of parallel bars, the delicate curvature from the 
 wind, which the inclination of the sail shows you to be 
 from the west ; the excessive sharpness of every edge 
 which is turned to the wind, the faintness of every op- 
 posite one, the breaking up of each bar into rounded 
 masses, and finally, the inconceivable variety with which 
 individual form has been given to every member of the 
 multitude, and not only individual form, but roundness 
 and substance even where there is scarcely a hairbreadth 
 of cloud to express it in. Observe, above everything, 
 the varying indication of space and depth in the whole, 
 so that you may look through and through from one 
 cloud to another, feeling not merely how they retire to 
 the horizon, but how they melt back into the recesses 
 
 * I use this work frequently for illustration, because it is the only 
 one I know in which the engraver has worked with delicacy enough 
 to give the real forms and touches of Turner. I can reason from these 
 plates, (in questions of form only,) nearly as well as I could from the 
 drawings. 
 
336 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 of the sky ; every interval being filled with absolute air, 
 and all its spaces so melting and fluctuating, and fraught 
 with change as with repose, that as you look, you will 
 fancy that the rays shoot higher and higher into the 
 vault of light, and that the pale streak of horizontal 
 vapor is melting away from the cloud that it crosses. 
 Now watch for the next barred sunrise, and take this 
 vignette to the window, and test it by nature’s own 
 clouds, among which you will find forms and passages, I 
 do not say merely like , but apparently the actual origi- 
 nals of parts of this very drawing. And with whom will 
 you do this, except with Turner ? Will you do it with 
 Claude, and set that blank square yard of blue, with its 
 round, white, flat fixtures of similar cloud, beside the 
 purple infinity of nature, with her countless multitude 
 of shadowy lines, and flaky waves, and folded veils of 
 variable mist? Will you do it with Poussin, and set 
 those massy steps of unyielding solidity, with the char- 
 iot-and-four driving up them, by the side of the delicate 
 forms which terminate in threads too fine for the eye to 
 follow them, and of texture so thin woven that the earli- 
 est stars shine through them ? Will you do it with Sal- 
 vator, and set that volume of violent and restless manu- 
 factory smoke beside those calm and quiet bars, which 
 pause in the heaven as if they would never leave it 
 more ? 
 
 Now we have just seen how Turner uses the sharp-edged 
 cirri when he aims at giving great transparency of air. 
 
 12 h' use of ^ was s ^ lown the P rece ding chapter 
 
 the ’ cirrus in ex- that sunbeams, or the appearance of them, 
 pressing mist. , , 
 
 are always sharper m their edge m propor- 
 tion as the air is more misty, as they are most defined in 
 a room where there is most dust flying about in it. Con- 
 sequently, in the vignette we have been just noticing, 
 where transparency is to be given, though there is a 
 blaze of light, its beams are never edged ; a tendency to 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 337 
 
 rays is visible, but yon cannot in any part find a single 
 marked edge of a rising sunbeam, the sky is merely 
 more Hushed in one place than another. Now let us see 
 what Turner does when he wants mist. Turn to the 
 Alps at Daybreak, page 193, in the same book. Here 
 we have the cirri used again, but now they have no sharp 
 edges, they are all fleecy and mingling with each other, 
 'though every one of them has the most exquisite indi- 
 cation of individual form, and thej^ melt back, not till 
 they are lost in exceeding light, as in the other plate, 
 but into a mysterious, fluctuating, shadowy sky, of which, 
 though the light penetrates through it all, you perceive 
 every part to be charged with vapor. Notice particu- 
 larly the half -indicated forms even where it is most se- 
 rene, behind the snowy mountains. And now, how are 
 the sunbeams drawn? no longer indecisive, flushing, 
 palpitating, every one is sharp and clear, and terminated 
 by definite shadow ; note especially the marked lines on 
 the upper cloud ; finally, observe the difference in the 
 mode of indicating the figures, which are here misty and 
 indistinguishable, telling only as shadows, though they 
 are near and large, while those in the former vignette 
 came clear upon the eye, though they were so far off as 
 to appear mere points. 
 
 Now is this perpetual consistency in all points, this 
 concentration of every fact which can possibly bear upon 
 what we are to be told, this watchfulness § ^ H . g conc . gt 
 of the entire meaning and system of nat- encyin everyini- 
 
 , , » nor feature. 
 
 ure, which fills every part and space ot 
 the picture with coincidences of witness, which come out 
 upon us, as they would from the reality, more fully and 
 deeply in proportion to the knowledge we possess and 
 the attention we give, admirable or not ? I could go on 
 writing page after page on every sky of Turner’s, and 
 pointing out fresh truths in every one. In the Havre, 
 for instance, of the Rivers of France we have a new fact 
 22 
 
338 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 pointed out to us with respect to these cirri, namely, 
 their being so faint and transparent as not to be distin- 
 guishable from the blue of the sky, (a frequent case.) 
 except in the course of a sunbeam, which, however, does 
 not illumine their edges, they being not solid enough to 
 reflect light, but penetrates their whole substance, and 
 renders them flat, luminous forms in its path, instantly 
 and totally lost at its edge. And thus a separate essay 
 would be required by every picture, to make fully under- 
 stood the new phenomena which it treated and illus- 
 trated. But after once showing what are the prevailing 
 characteristics of these clouds, we can only leave it to 
 the reader to trace them wherever they occur. There 
 are some fine and characteristic passages of this kind of 
 cloud given by Stanfield, though he dares not use them 
 in multitude, and is wanting in those refined qualities 
 of form which it is totally impossible to explain in 
 words, but which, perhaps, by simple outlines on a large 
 scale, selected from the cloud forms of various artists, I 
 may in following portions of the work illustrate with the 
 pencil. 
 
 Of the colors of these clouds I have spoken before, 
 (Sec. I. Chap. II. ;) but though I then alluded to their 
 § 14. The color of P urit y and vividness, I scarcely took prop- 
 the upper clouds. er notice of their variety ; there is indeed 
 in nature variety in all things, and it would be absurd 
 to insist on it in each case, yet the colors of these clouds 
 are so marvellous in their changefulness, that they re- 
 quire particular notice. If you watch for the next sun- 
 set, when there are a considerable number of these cirri 
 in the sky, you will see, especially at the zenith, that the 
 sky does not remain of the same color for two inches to- 
 gether ; one cloud has a dark side of cold blue, and a 
 fringe of milky white ; another, above it, has a dark side 
 of purple and an edge of red ; another, nearer the sun, 
 has an under-side of orange and an edge of gold ; these 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS . 
 
 339 
 
 yon will find mingled with, and passing into the blue of 
 the sky, which in places yon will not be able to distin- 
 guish from the cool gray of the darker clouds, and which 
 will be itself full of gradation, now pure and deep, now 
 faint and feeble ; and all this is done, not in large 
 pieces, nor on a large scale, but over and oyer again in 
 every square yard, so that there is no single part nor 
 .portion of the whole sky which has not in itself variety 
 of color enough for a separate picture, and yet no sin- 
 gle part which is like another, or which has not some 
 peculiar source of beauty, and some peculiar arrange- 
 ment of color of its own. Now, instead of this, you 
 get in the old masters — Cuyp, or Claude, or whoever 
 they may be — a field of blue, delicately, beautifully, and 
 uniformly shaded down to the yellow sun, with a certain 
 number of similar clouds, each with a dark side of the 
 same gray, and an edge of the same yellow. I do not 
 say that nature never does anything like this, but I say 
 that her principle is to do a great deal more, and that 
 what she does more than this, — what I have above de- 
 scribed, and what you may see in nine sunsets out of 
 ten, — has been observed, attempted, and rendered by 
 Turner only, and by him with a fidelity and force which 
 presents us with more essential truth, and more clear 
 expression and illustration of natural laws, in every 
 wreath of vapor, than composed the whole stock of heav- 
 enly information, which lasted Cuyp and Claude their 
 lives. 
 
 We close then our present consideration of the upper 
 clouds, to return to them when we know what is beauti- 
 ful ; we have at present only to remember g 15 Recapitula _ 
 that of these clouds, and the truths con- tion * 
 nected with them, none before Turner had taken any 
 notice whatsoever; that had they therefore been even 
 feebly and imperfectly represented by him, they would 
 yet have given him a claim to be considered more ex- 
 
340 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 tended and universal in his statement of truths than any 
 of his predecessors ; how much more when we find that 
 deep fidelity in his studied and perfect skies which 
 opens new sources of delight to every advancement of 
 our knowledge, and to every added moment of our con- 
 templation. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 ©F TRUTH OF CLOUDS: — SECONDLY, OF THE CENTRAL CLOUD 
 
 REGION. 
 
 We have next to investigate the character of the Cen- 
 tral Cloud Region, which I consider as including all 
 clouds which are the usual characteristic of ordinary se- 
 rene weather, and which touch and envelop § 1 Estent and 
 the mountains of Switzerland, but never W®* 1 character 
 affect those of our own island ; they may cloud region, 
 therefore be considered as occupying a space of air ten 
 thousand feet in height, extending from five to fifteen 
 thousand feet above the sea. 
 
 These clouds, according to their elevation, appear with 
 great variety of form, often partaking of the streaked or 
 mottled character of the higher region, and as often, 
 when the precursors of storm, manifesting forms closely 
 connected with the lowest rain clouds ; but the species 
 especially characteristic of the central region is a white, 
 ragged, irregular, and scattered vapor, which has little 
 form and less color, and of which a good example may be 
 seen in the largest landscape of Cuyp, in the Dulwich 
 Gallery. When this vapor collects into masses, it is 
 partially rounded, clumsy, and ponderous, as if it would 
 tumble out of the sky, shaded with a dull gray, and to- 
 tally devoid of any appearance of energy or motion. 
 Even in nature, these clouds are comparatively uninter- 
 esting, scarcely worth raising our heads to look at ; and 
 on canvas, valuable only as a means of introducing light, 
 and breaking the monotony of blue ; yet they are, per- 
 
342 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS . 
 
 § 2. Its character- 
 istic clouds, re- 
 quiring no atten- 
 tion nor thought 
 for their represen- 
 tation, are there- 
 fore favorite sub- 
 jects with the old 
 masters. 
 
 haps, beyond all others the favorite clouds of the Dutch 
 masters. Whether they had any motive for the adop- 
 tion of such materials, beyond the extreme 
 facility with which acres of canvas might 
 thus be covered without any troublesome 
 exertion of thought ; or any temptation to 
 such selections beyond the impossibility 
 of error where nature shows no form, and 
 the impossibility of deficiency where she shows no 
 beauty, it is not here the place to determine. Such sides 
 are happily beyond the reach of criticism, for he who 
 tells you nothing cannot tell you a falsehood. A little 
 hake -white, glazed with a light brush over the carefully 
 toned blue, permitted to fall into whatever forms chance 
 might determine, with the single precaution that their 
 edges should be tolerably irregular, supplied, in hun- 
 dreds of instances, a sky quite good enough for all ordi- 
 nary purposes — quite good enough for cattle to graze, or 
 boors to play at nine-pins — and equally devoid of all 
 that could gratify, inform, or offend. 
 
 But although this kind of cloud is, as I have said, typ- 
 ical of the central region, it is not one which nature is 
 
 3 The clouds She scarcely ever lets an hour 
 
 of Salvator and pass without some manifestation of finer 
 forms, sometimes approaching the upper 
 cirri, sometimes the lower cumulus. And then in the 
 lower outlines, we have the nearest approximation which 
 nature ever presents to the clouds of Claude, Salvator, 
 and Poussin, to the characters of which I must request 
 especial attention, as it is here only that we shall have a 
 fair opportunity of comparing their skies with those of 
 the modem school. I shall, as before, glance rapidly at 
 the great laws of specific form, and so put it in the power 
 of the reader to judge for himself of the truth of repre- 
 sentation. 
 
 Clouds, it is to be remembered, are not so much local 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 343 
 
 vapor, as vapor rendered locally visible by a fall of tem- 
 perature. Thus a cloud, whose parts are in constant 
 motion, will hover on a snowy mountain, g 4 Their essen _ 
 pursuing constantly the same track upon tial characters, 
 its flanks, and yet remaining of the same size, the same 
 form, and in the same place, for half a day together. No 
 matter how violent or how capricious the wind may be, 
 ' the instant it approaches the spot where the chilly influ- 
 ence of the snow extends, the moisture it carries becomes 
 visible, and then and there the cloud forms on the in- 
 stant, apparently maintaining its form against the wind, 
 though the careful and keen eye can see all its parts in 
 the most rapid motion across the mountain. The out- 
 lines of such a cloud are of course not determined by 
 the irregular impulses of the wind, but by the fixed lines 
 of radiant heat which regulate the temperature of the 
 atmosphere of the mountain. It is terminated, therefore, 
 not by changing curves, but by steady right lines of more 
 or less decision, often exactly correspondent with the 
 outline of the mountain on which it is formed, and falling 
 therefore into grotesque peaks and precipices. I have 
 seen the marked and angular outline of the Grandes 
 Jorasses, at Chamounix, mimicked in its every jag by 
 a line of clouds above it. Another resultant phenom- 
 enon is the formation of cloud in the calm air to leeward 
 of a steep summit ; cloud whose edges are in rapid mo- 
 tion, where they are affected by the current of the wind 
 above, and stream from the peak like the smoke of a vol- 
 cano, yet always vanish at a certain distance from it as 
 steam issuing from a chimney. When wet weather of 
 some duration is approaching, a small white spot of cloud 
 will sometimes appear low on the hill flanks ; it will not 
 move, but will increase gradually for some little time, 
 then diminish, still without moving; disappear alto- 
 gether, reappear ten minutes afterwards, exactly in the 
 same spot ; increase to a greater extent than before, again 
 
344 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 disappear, again return, and at last permanently ; other 
 similar spots of cloud forming simultaneously, with 
 various fluctuations, each in its own spot, and at the 
 same level on the hill-side, until all expand, join to- 
 gether, and form an unbroken veil of threatening gray, 
 which darkens gradually into storm. What in such cases 
 takes place palpably and remarkably, is more or less a 
 law of formation in all clouds whatsoever ; they being 
 bounded rather by lines expressive of changes of tem- 
 perature in the atmosphere, than by the impulses of the 
 currents of wind in which those changes take place. 
 Even when in rapid and visible motion across the sky, 
 the variations which take place in their outlines are not 
 so much alterations of position and arrangement of parts, 
 as they are the alternate formation and disappearance of 
 parts. There is, therefore, usually a parallelism and con- 
 sistency in their great outlines, which give system to 
 the smaller curves of which they are composed ; and if 
 these great lines be taken, rejecting the minutiae of vari- 
 ation, the resultant form will almost always be angular, 
 § 5. Their angn- an ^ full character and decision. In the 
 erah r Scis?on ge of hock-like fields of equal masses, each indi- 
 outune. vidual mass has the effect, not of an ellipse 
 
 or circle, but of a rhomboid; the sky is crossed and 
 checkered, not honeycombed ; in the lower cumuli, even 
 though the most rounded of all clouds, the groups are 
 not like balloons or bubbles, but like towers or moun- 
 tains. And the result of this arrangement in masses 
 more or less angular, varied with, and chiefly constructed 
 of, curves of the utmost freedom and beauty, is that 
 appearance of exhaustless and fantastic energy which 
 gives every cloud a marked character of its own, suggest- 
 ing resemblances to the specific outlines of organic ob- 
 jects. I do not say that such accidental resemblances 
 are a character to be imitated ; but merely that they bear 
 witness to the originality and vigor of separate concep- 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 345 
 
 tion in cloud forms, which give to the scenery of the sky 
 a force and variety no less delightful than that of the 
 changes of mountain outline in a hill district of great 
 elevation ; and that there is added to this a spirit-like 
 feeling, a capricious, mocking imagery of passion and 
 life, totally different from any effects of inanimate form 
 that the earth can show. 
 
 The minor contours, out of which the larger outlines 
 are composed, are indeed beautifully curvilinear; but 
 they are never monotonous in their curves. 
 
 tp,. . Tii § 6. The compo- 
 
 kirst comes a concave line, then a convex Bition of their 
 one, then an angular jag, breaking off into 
 spray, then a downright straight line, then a curve again, 
 then a deep gap, and a place where all is lost and melted 
 away, and so on ; displaying in every inch of the form 
 renewed and ceaseless invention, setting off grace with 
 rigidity, and relieving flexibility with force, in a manner 
 scarcely less admirable, and far more changeful than 
 even in the muscular forms of the human frame. Nay, 
 such is the exquisite composition of all this, that you 
 may take any single fragment of any cloud in the sky, 
 and you will find it put together as if there had been a 
 year’s thought over the plan of it, arranged with the 
 most studied inequality — with the most delicate symme- 
 try — with the most elaborate contrast, a picture in itself. 
 You may try every other piece of cloud in the heaven, 
 and you will find them every one as perfect, and yet not 
 one in the least like another. 
 
 Now it may perhaps, for anything we know, or have 
 yet proved, be highly expedient and proper, in art, that 
 this variety, individuality, and angular 
 character should be changed into a mass 
 of convex curves, each precisely like its 
 neighbor in all respects, and unbroken from beginning 
 to end ; — it may be highly original, masterly, bold, what- 
 ever you choose to call it ; but it is false. I do not take 
 
 § 7. Their char- 
 acters, as given by 
 S. Rosa. 
 
346 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS . 
 
 upon me to assert that the clouds which in ancient Ger- 
 many were more especially and peculiarly devoted to the 
 business of catching- princesses off desert islands, and 
 carrying them to enchanted castles, might not have pos- 
 sessed something of the pillowy organization which we 
 may suppose best adapted for functions of such delicacy 
 and dispatch. But I do mean to say that the clouds 
 which God sends upon his earth as the ministers of dew, 
 and rain, and shade, and with which he adorns his heaven, 
 setting them in its vault for the thrones of his spirits, 
 have not in one instant or atom of their existence, one 
 feature in common with such conceptions and creations. 
 And there are, beyond dispute, more direct and unmiti- 
 gated falsehoods told, and more laws of nature set at 
 open defiance in one of the “ rolling ” skies of Salvator, 
 such as that marked 159 in the Dulwich Gallery, than 
 were ever attributed, even by the ignorant and unfeel- 
 ing, to all the wildest flights of Turner put together. 
 
 And it is not as if the error were only occasional. It 
 is systematic and constant in all the Italian masters of 
 ,, , the seventeenth century, and in most of 
 
 § 8. Mo n o t o n y J 
 
 and falsehood of the Dutch. They looked at clouds as at 
 
 tne clouds of the 
 
 Italian school gen- everything else which did not particularly 
 help them in their great end of deception, 
 with utter carelessness and bluntness of feeling, — saw 
 that there were a great many rounded passages in them, 
 — found it much easier to sweep circles than to design 
 beauties, and sat down in their studies, contented with 
 perpetual repetitions of the same spherical conceptions, 
 having about the same relation to the clouds of nature, 
 that a child’s carving of a turnip has to the head of the 
 Apollo. Look at the round things about the sun in the 
 bricky Claude, the smallest of the three Seaports in the 
 National Gallery. They are a great deal more like half- 
 crowns than clouds. Take the ropy, tough -looking 
 wTeath in the Sacrifice of Isaac, and find one part of it, if 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 347 
 
 you can, which is not the repetition of every other part 
 of it, all together being as round and vapid as the brush 
 could draw them ; or take the two cauliflower-like pro- 
 tuberances in No. 220 of the Dulwich Gallery, and ad- 
 mire the studied similarity between them ; you cannot 
 tell which is which ; or take the so-called Nicholas Pous- 
 sin, No. 212, Dulwich Gallery, in which, from the brown 
 trees to the right-hand side of the picture, there is not 
 one line which is not physically impossible. 
 
 But it is not the outline only which is thus systemati- 
 cally false. The drawing of the solid form is worse still, 
 for it is to be remembered that although . 
 
 % a 9. V 3St Size Oa 
 
 clouds of course arrange themselves more congregated maes- 
 
 . . . es of cjoud. 
 
 or less into broad masses, with a light side 
 and dark side, both their light and shade are invariably 
 composed of a series of divided masses, each of which 
 has in its outline as much variety and character as the 
 great outline of the cloud ; presenting, therefore, a 
 thousand times repeated, all that I have described as 
 characteristic of the general form. Nor are these multi- 
 tudinous divisions a truth of slight importance in the 
 character of sky, for they are dependent on, and illus- 
 trative of, a quality which is usually in a great degree 
 overlooked, — the enormous retiring spaces of solid 
 clouds. Between the illumined edge of a heaped cloud, 
 and that part of its body which turns into shadow, 
 there will generally be a clear distance of several miles, 
 more or less of course, according to the general size of 
 the cloud, but in such large masses as in Poussin and 
 others of the old masters, occupy the fourth or fifth of 
 the visible sky ; the clear illumined breadth of vapor, 
 from the edge to the shadow, involves at least a distance 
 of five or six miles. We are little apt, in watching the 
 changes of a mountainous range of cloud, to reflect that 
 the masses of vapor which compose it, are huger and 
 higher than any mountain range of the earth ; and the 
 
348 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS . 
 
 distances between mass and mass are not yards of air 
 traversed in an instant by the flying- form, bnt valleys 
 § 10 . Demonstra- of changing atmosphere leagues over; 
 sin with that the slow motion of ascending curves, 
 
 tam ranges. which we can scarcely trace, is a boiling 
 
 energy of exulting vapor rushing into the heaven a thou- 
 sand feet in a minute ; and that the toppling angle whose 
 sharp edge almost escapes notice in the multitudinous 
 forms around it, is a nodding precipice of storms, 3,000 
 feet from base to summit. It is not until we have actu- 
 ally compared the forms of the sky with the hill ranges 
 of the earth, and seen the soaring Alp overtopped and 
 buried in one surge of the sky, that we begin to conceive 
 or appreciate the colossal scale of the phenomena of the 
 latter. But of this there can be no doubt in the mind of 
 any one accustomed to trace the forms of clouds among 
 hill ranges — as it is there a demonstrable and evident 
 fact, that the space of vapor visibly extended over an 
 ordinarily cloudy sky, is^liot less, from the point nearest 
 to the observer to the horizon, than twenty leagues ; that 
 the size of every mass of separate form, if it be at all 
 largely divided, is to be expressed in terms of miles ; and 
 that every boiling heap of illuminated mist in the nearer 
 sky, is an enormous mountain, fifteen or twenty thousand 
 feet in height, six or seven miles over an illuminated sur- 
 face, furrowed by a thousand colossal ravines, torn by 
 local tempests into peaks and promontories, and chang- 
 ing its features with the majestic velocity of the volcano. 
 
 To those who have once convinced themselves of these 
 proportions of the heaven, it will be immediately evi- 
 § u. And conse- dent, that though we might, without much 
 and nt varStYes°of violation of truth, omit the minor divisions 
 feature. 0 f a cloud four yards over, it is the veriest 
 
 audacity of falsehood to omit those of masses where for 
 yards we have to read miles ; first, because it is physically 
 impossible that such a space should be without many and 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 349 
 
 vast divisions ; secondly, because divisions at such dis- 
 tances must be sharply and forcibly marked by aerial 
 perspective, so that not only they must be there, but 
 they must be visible and evident to the eye ; and thirdly, 
 because these multitudinous divisions are absolutely 
 necessary, in order to express this space and distance, 
 which cannot but be fully and imperfectly felt, even with 
 every aid and evidence that art can give of it. 
 
 Now if an artist taking for his subject a chain of vast 
 mountains, several leagues long, were to unite all their 
 varieties of ravine, crag, chasm, and preci- § 12 . No t lightly 
 pice, into one solid, unbroken mass, with to be omitted - 
 one light side and one dark Side, looking like a white 
 ball or parallelepiped two yards broad, the words 
 “ breadth,” “ boldness,” or “ generalization,” would 
 scarcely be received as a sufficient apology for a proceed- 
 ing so glaringly false, and so painfully degrading. But 
 when, instead of the really large and sinrple forms of 
 mountains, united, as they commonly are, by some great 
 principle of common organization, and so closely re- 
 sembling each other as often to correspond in line, and 
 join in effect ; when instead of this, we have to do with 
 spaces of cloud twice as vast, broken up into a multipli- 
 city of forms necessary to, and characteristic of, their very 
 nature — those forms subject to a thousand local changes, 
 having no association with each other, and rendered 
 visible in a thousand places by their own transparency 
 or cavities, where the mountain forms would be lost in 
 shade, — that this far greater space, and this far more 
 complicated arrangement, should be all summed up into 
 one round mass, with one swell of white, and one flat side 
 of unbroken gray, is considered an evidence of the sub- 
 limest powers in the artist of generalization and breadth. 
 Now it may be broad, it may be grand, it may be beauti- 
 ful, artistical, and in every way desirable. I don’t say 
 it is not — I merely say it is a concentration of every kind 
 
350 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS . 
 
 of falsehood : it is depriving heaven of its space, clouds 
 of their buoyancy, winds of their motion, and distance of 
 its blue. 
 
 This is done, more or less, by all the old masters, with- 
 out an exception.* Their idea of clouds was altogether 
 similar ; more or less perfectly carried out, 
 
 § 13. Imperfect ^ J * 
 
 conceptions of this according to their power oi hand and accu- 
 size and extent . . ,, , 
 
 in ancient land- racy oi eye, but universally the same m 
 conception. It was the idea of a compara- 
 tively small, round, puffed-up white body, irregularly 
 associated with other round and puffed-up white bodies, 
 each with a white light side, and a gray dark side, and a 
 soft reflected light, floating a great way below a blue 
 dome. Such is the idea of a cloud formed by most peo- 
 ple ; it is the first, general, uncultivated notion of what 
 we see every day. People think of the clouds as about 
 as large as they look — forty yards over, perhaps ; they 
 see generally that they are solid bodies subject to the 
 same laws as other solid bodies, roundish, whitish, and 
 apparently suspended a great way under a high blue 
 concavity. So that these ideas be tolerably given with 
 smooth paint, they are content, and call it nature. How 
 different it is from anything that nature ever did, or 
 ever will do, I have endeavored to show ; but I cannot, 
 and do not, expect the contrast to be fully felt, unless 
 the reader will actually go out on days when, either be- 
 fore or after rain, the clouds arrange themselves into 
 vigorous masses, and after arriving at something like a 
 conception of their distance and size, from the mode in 
 which they retire over the horizon, will for himself trace 
 and watch their varieties of form and outline, as mass 
 rises over mass in their illuminated bodies. Let him 
 climb from step to step over their craggy and broken 
 slopes, let him plunge into the long vistas of immeasur- 
 
 * Here I include even the great ones — even Titian and Veronese,— 
 excepting only Tintoret and the religious schools. 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS . 
 
 351 
 
 able perspective, that guide back to the blue sky; and 
 when he finds his imagination lost in their immensity, 
 and his senses confused with their multitude, let him go 
 to Claude, to Salvator, or to Poussin, and ask them for a 
 like space, or like infinity. 
 
 But perhaps the most grievous fault of all, in the 
 clouds of these painters, is the utter want of transpar- 
 ency. Not in her most ponderous and g 14 Total want 
 lightless masses will nature ever leave us °* d ^vaSence 
 without some evidence of transmitted sun- laadb d c s ap g f 
 
 shine; and she perpetually gives us pas- 
 sages in which the vapor becomes visible only by the 
 sunshine which it arrests and holds within itself, not 
 caught on its surface, but entangled in its mass— floating 
 fleeces, precious with the gold of heaven ; and this 
 translucency is especially indicated on the dark sides 
 even of her heaviest wreaths, which possess opalescent 
 and delicate hues of partial illumination, far more de- 
 pendent upon the beams which pass through them than 
 on those which are reflected upon them. Nothing, on 
 the contrary, can be more painfulty and ponderously 
 opaque than the clouds of the old masters universally. 
 However far removed in aerial distance, and however 
 brilliant in light, they never appear filmy or evanescent, 
 and their light is always on them, not in them. And this 
 effect is much increased by the positive and persevering 
 determination on the part of their outlines not to be 
 broken in upon, nor interfered with in the slightest de- 
 gree, by any presumptuous blue, or impertinent winds. 
 There is no inequality, no variation, no losing or disguis- 
 ing of line, no melting into nothingness, nor shattering 
 into spray ; edge succeeds edge with imperturbable equa- 
 nimity, and nothing short of the most decided interfer- 
 ence on the part of tree-tops, or the edge of the picture, 
 prevents us from being able to follow them all the way 
 round, like the coast of an island. 
 
r 
 
 352 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 And be it remembered that all these faults and defi- 
 ciencies are to be found in their drawing merely of the 
 
 separate masses of the solid cumulus, the 
 
 §15. Farther . . .. - „ ' , 
 
 proof of their de- easiest drawn oi all clouds. .But nature 
 
 ficiency in space. , 
 
 scarcely ever confines herselt to such 
 masses ; they form but the thousandth part of her vari- 
 ety of effect. She builds up a pyramid of their boiling 
 volumes, bars this across like a mountain with the gray 
 cirrus, envelops it in black, ragged, drifting vapor, cov- 
 ers the open part of the sky with mottled horizontal 
 fields, breaks through these with sudden and long sun- 
 beams, tears up their edges with local winds, scatters over 
 the gaps of blue the infinity of multitude of the high 
 cirri, and melts even the unoccupied azure into palpitat- 
 ing shades. And all this is done over and over again in 
 every quarter of a mile. Where Poussin or Claude have 
 three similar masses, nature has fifty pictures, made up 
 each of millions of minor thoughts — fifty aisles penetrat- 
 ing through angelic chapels to the Shechinah of the 
 blue — fifty hollow ways among bewildered hills — each 
 with their own nodding rocks, and cloven precipices, 
 and radiant summits, and robing vapors, but all unlike 
 each other, except in beauty, all bearing witness to the 
 unwearied, exhaustless operation of the Infinite Mind. 
 Now, in cases like these especially, as we observed be- 
 fore of general nature, though it is altogether hopeless 
 to follow out in the space of any one picture this incal- 
 culable and inconceivable glory, yet the painter can at 
 least see that the space he has at his command, narrow 
 and confined as it is, is made complete use of, and that 
 no part of it shall be without entertainment and food for 
 thought. If he could subdivide it by millionths of 
 inches, he could not reach the multitudinous majesty of 
 nature ; but it is at least incumbent upon him to make 
 the most of what he has, and not, by exaggerating the 
 proportions, banishing the variety and repeating the 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 353 
 
 forms of his clouds, to set at defiance the eternal princi- 
 ples of the heavens — fitfulness and infinity. And now 
 let us, keeping- in memory what we have seen of Poussin 
 and Salvator, take up one of Turner’s skies and see 
 whether he is as narrow in his conception, or as niggardly 
 in his space. It does not matter which we § 16 . instance of 
 take, his sublime Babylon* is a fair exam- the^ky ^ofVar- 
 ple for our present purpose. Ten miles ners Babylon, 
 away, down the Euphrates, where it gleams last along 
 the plain, he gives us a drift of dark elongated vapor, 
 melting beneath into a dim haze which embraces the 
 hills on the horizon. It is exhausted with its own mo- 
 tion, and broken up by the wind in its own body into 
 numberless groups of billowy and tossing fragments, 
 which, beaten by the weight of storm down to the earth, 
 are just lifting themselves again on wearied wings, and 
 perishing in the effort. Above these, and far beyond 
 them, the eye goes back to a broad sea of white, illumin- 
 ated mist, or rather cloud melted into rain, and absorbed 
 again before that rain has fallen, but penetrated through- 
 out, whether it be vapor or whether it be dew, with soft 
 sunshine, turning it as white as snow. Gradually as it 
 rises, the rainy fusion ceases, you cannot tell where the 
 film of blue on the left begins — but it is deepening', deep- 
 ening still, — and the cloud, with its edge first invisible, 
 then all but imaginary, then just felt when the eye is not 
 fixed on it, and lost when it is, at last rises, keen from 
 excessive distance, but soft and mantling in its bod}^, as 
 a swan’s bosom fretted by faint wind, heaving fitfully 
 against the delicate deep blue, with white waves, whose 
 forms are traced by the pale lines of opalescent shadow, 
 shade only because the light is within it, and not upon 
 it, and which break with their own swiftness into a 
 driven line of level spray, winnowed into threads by the 
 wind, and flung before the following vapor like those 
 
 * Engraved in Findel’s Bible Illustrations. 
 
 23 
 
354 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS . 
 
 swift shafts of arrowy water which a great cataract 
 shoots into the air beside it, trying to find the earth. 
 Beyond these, again, rises a colossal mountain of gray 
 cumulus, through whose shadowed sides the sunbeams 
 penetrate in dim, sloping, rain-like shafts; and over 
 which they fall in a broad burst of streaming light, sink- 
 ing to the earth, and showing through their own visible 
 radiance the three successive ranges of hills which con- 
 nect its desolate plain with space. Above, the edgy 
 summit of the cumulus, broken into fragments, recedes 
 into the sky, which is peopled in its serenity with quiet 
 multitudes of the white, soft, silent cirrus ; and under 
 these again, drift near the zenith, disturbed and impatient 
 shadows of a darker spirit, seeking rest and finding none. 
 
 Now this is nature ! It is the’exhaustless living energy 
 with which the universe is filled ; and what will you set 
 § 17. And in his beside it of the works of other men ? Show 
 Poole of Solomon. me & s j n g.} e picture, in the whole compass 
 
 of ancient art, in which I can pass from cloud to cloud, 
 from region to region, from first to second and third 
 heaven, as I can here, and you may talk of Turner’s want 
 of truth. Turn to the Pools of Solomon, and walk 
 through the passages of mist as they melt on the one 
 hand into those stormy fragments of fiery cloud, or, on 
 the other, into the cold solitary shadows that compass 
 the sweeping hill, and when you find an inch without air 
 and transparency, and a hairbreadth without changeful - 
 ness and thought; and when you can count the torn 
 waves of tossing radiance that gush from the sun, as you 
 can count the fixed, white, insipidities of Claude ; or when 
 you can measure the modulation and the depth of that 
 hollow mist, as you can the flourishes of the brush upon 
 the canvas of Salvator, talk of Turner’s want of truth ! 
 
 But let us take up simpler and less elaborate works, 
 for there is too much in these to admit of being analyzed. 
 
 In the vignette of the Lake of Como, in Rogers’s Italy, 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 355 
 
 the space is so small that the details have been partially 
 lost by the engraver; but enough remain to illustrate 
 the great principles of cloud from which m 
 
 , 11 , 1 • § 18. Truths of 
 
 we have endeavored to explain. Observe outline and char- 
 
 _ .. acter in his Como. 
 
 first the general angular outline of the vol- 
 umes on the left of the sun. If you mark the points 
 where the direction of their outline changes, and connect 
 those points by right lines, the cloud will touch, but will 
 not cut, those lines throughout. Yet its contour is as 
 graceful as it is full of character — toppling, ready to 
 change — fragile as enormous — evanescent as colossal. 
 Observe how, where it crosses the line of the sun, it be- 
 comes luminous, illustrating what has been observed of 
 the visibility of mist in sunlight. Observe, above all, the 
 multiplicity of its solid form, the depth of its shadows 
 in perpetual transition ; it is not round and swelled, half 
 light and half dark, but full of breaking irregular shadow 
 and transparency — variable as the wind, and melting 
 imperceptibly above into the haziness of the sun-lighted 
 atmosphere, contrasted in all its vast forms with the deli- 
 cacy and the multitude of the brightly touched cirri. 
 Nothing can surpass the truth of this ; the cloud is as 
 gigantic in its simplicity as the Alp which it opposes ; 
 but how various, how transparent, how infinite in its or- 
 ganization ! 
 
 I would draw especial attention, both here and in all 
 other works of Turner, to the beautiful use of the low 
 horizontal bars or fields of cloud, (cirro- § i 9 . Association 
 stratus,) which associate themselves so fre- 
 quently — more especially before storms — mulus * 
 with the true cumulus, floating on its flanks, or capping 
 it, as if it were a mountain, and seldom mingling with 
 its substance, unless in the very formation of rain. They 
 supply us with one of those beautiful instances of nat- 
 ural composition, by which the artist is superseded and 
 excelled — for, by the occurrence of these horizontal 
 
356 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 flakes, the rolling form of the cumulus is both opposed 
 in its principal lines, and gifted with an apparent solid- 
 ity and vastness, which no other expedient could have 
 exhibited, and which far exceed in awfulness the impres- 
 sion of the noblest mountains of the earth. I have seen 
 in the evening light of Italy, the Alps themselves out- 
 towered by ranges of these mighty clouds, alternately 
 white in the starlight, and inhabited by fire. 
 
 Turn back to the first vignette in the Italy. The an- 
 gular outlines and variety of modulation in the clouds 
 
 20 Th dee a ^ ove and the delicate atmos- 
 
 based knowledge phere of morning into which they are dis- 
 Turner’s Lake of solved about the breathing hills, require 
 
 no comment ; but one part of this vignette 
 demands especial notice ; it is the repetition of the out- 
 line of the snowy mountain by the light cloud above it. 
 The cause of this I have already explained (vide page 
 343,) and its occurrence here is especially valuable as 
 bearing witness to the thorough and scientific knowledge 
 thrown by Turner into his slightest works. The thing 
 cannot be seen once in six months ; it would not have 
 been noticed, much less introduced, by an ordinary ar- 
 tist, and to the public it is a dead letter, or an offence. 
 Ninety-nine persons in a hundred would not have ob- 
 served this pale wreath of parallel cloud above the hill, 
 and the hundredth in all probability says it is unnatural. 
 It requires the most intimate and accurate knowledge of 
 the Alps before such a piece of refined truth can be 
 understood. 
 
 At the 216th page we have another and a new case, in 
 which clouds in perfect repose, unaffected by wind, or 
 
 21 Further an y i n ^ uence hut ^ a ^ i'heir own elastic 
 p r i n c i p i e s o f force, boil, rise, and melt in the heaven 
 
 cloud form exem- - i i i n 
 
 piified in his with more approacli to globular lorm tlian 
 under any other circumstances is possible. 
 I name this vignette, not only because it is most re- 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 357 
 
 markable for the buoyancy and elasticity of inward 
 energy, indicated through the most ponderous forms, 
 and affords us a beautiful instance of the junction of the 
 cirrostratus with the cumulus, of which we have just 
 been speaking (§ 19,) but because it is a characteristic 
 example of Turner’s use of one of the facts of nature 
 not hitherto noticed, that the edge of a partially trans- 
 parent body is often darker than its central surface, 
 because at the edge the light penetrates and passes 
 through, which from the centre is reflected to the eye. 
 The sharp, cutting edge of a wave, if not broken into 
 foam, frequently appears for an instant almost black ; 
 and the outlines of these massy clouds, where their pro- 
 jecting forms rise in relief against the light of their 
 bodies, are almost always marked clearly and firmly by 
 very dark edges. Hence we have frequently, if not con- 
 stantly, multitudinous forms indicated only by outline, 
 giving character and solidity to the great masses of 
 light, without taking away from their breadth. And 
 Turner avails himself of these boldly and constantly, — 
 outlining forms with the brush of which no other indi- 
 cation is given. All the grace and solidity of the white 
 cloud on the right-hand side of the vignette before us, 
 depend upon such outlines. 
 
 As I before observed of mere execution, that one of 
 the best tests of its excellence was the expression of 
 infinity ; so it may be noticed with respect ^ f 
 
 to the painting of details generally, that insisting on the 
 more difference lies between one artist and ner’s works, in- 
 
 . , . , ... . p . i • t i finity is almost an 
 
 another, m the attainment ot this quality, unerring test of 
 than in any other of the efforts of art ; and aU 1:1 uth ' 
 that if we wish, without reference to beauty of com- 
 position, or any other interfering circumstances, to form 
 a judgment of the truth of painting, perhaps the very 
 first thing we should look for, whether in one thing or 
 another — foliage, or clouds, or waves — should be the ex- 
 
358 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 pression of infinity always and everywhere, in all parts 
 and division of parts. For we may be quite sure that 
 what is not infinite, cannot be true ; it does not, indeed, 
 follow that what is infinite, always is true, but it cannot 
 be altogether false, for this simple reason ; that it is im- 
 possible for mortal mind to compose an infinity of any 
 kind for itself, or to form an idea of perpetual variation, 
 and to avoid all repetition, merely by its own combining 
 resources. The moment that we trust to ourselves, we 
 repeat ourselves, and therefore the moment we see in a 
 work of any kind whatsoever, the expression of infinity, 
 we may be certain that the workman has gone to nature 
 for it ; while, on the other hand, the moment we see re- 
 petition, or want of infinity, we may be certain that the 
 workman has not gone to nature for it. 
 
 For instance, in the picture of Salvator before noticed, 
 No. 220 in the Dulwich Gallery, as we see at once that 
 § 23. Instances the two masses of cloud absolutely repeat 
 of itin Se 1 works each other in every one of their forms, 
 of Salvator. an d that each is composed of about twelve 
 
 white sweeps of the brush, all forming the same curve, 
 and all of the same length ; and as we can count these, 
 and measure their common diameter, and by stating the 
 same to anybody else, convey to him a full and perfect 
 idea and knowledge of that sky in all its parts and pro- 
 portions, — as we can do this, we may be absolutely cer- 
 tain, without reference to the real sky, or to any other 
 part of nature, without even knowing what the white 
 things were intended for, we may be certain that they 
 cannot possibly resemble anything ; that whatever they 
 were meant for, they can be nothing but a violent con- 
 tradiction of all nature’s principles and forms. When, 
 on the other hand, we take up such a sky as that of 
 Turner’s Eouen, seen from St. Catherine’s Hill, in the 
 Rivers of France, and find, in the first place, that he 
 has given us a distance over the hills in the horizon, 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 359 
 
 into which, when we are tired of penetrating 1 , we must 
 turn and come back again, there being not the remotest 
 chance of getting to the end of it; and 
 
 i • i j* 824 And of the 
 
 when we see that irom this measureless dis- universal pres- 
 
 . ,n *,in iii* ence of it in those 
 
 tance up to the zenith, the whole sky is one of Turner. The 
 
 P , , pi n iTi, conclusions which 
 
 ocean o± alternate waves ol cloud and light, may be arrived at 
 so blended together that the eye can- fromit ‘ 
 not rest on any one without being guided to the next, 
 and so to a hundred more, till it is lost over and over 
 again in every wreath — that if it divides the sky into 
 quarters of inches, and tries to count or comprehend the 
 component parts of any single one of those divisions, it 
 is still as utterly defied and defeated by the part as by the 
 whole — that there is not one line out of the millions 
 there which repeats another, not one which is uncon- 
 nected with another, not one which does not in itself 
 convey histories of distance and space, and suggest new 
 and changeful form ; then we may be all but certain, 
 though these forms are too mysterious and too delicate 
 for us to analyze — though all is so crowded and so con- 
 nected that it is impossible to test any single part by 
 particular laws — yet without any such tests, we may be 
 sure that this infinity can only be based on truth— that it 
 must be nature, because man could not have originated 
 it, and that every form must be faithful, because none is 
 like another. And therefore it is that I insist so con- 
 stantly on this great quality of landscape painting, as it 
 appears in Turner ; because it is not merely a constant 
 and most important truth in itself, but it almost amounts 
 to a demonstration of every other truth. § 2 s. The muiti- 
 And it will be found a far rarer attainment toease 
 
 in the works of other men than is com- Sot^ve “S h£ 
 monly supposed, and the sign, wherever it }ty?bliUR°the nfi re' 
 is really found, of the very highest art. BOUrce ofnovi ces. 
 For we are apt to forget that the greatest number is no 
 nearer infinity than the least, if it be definite number ; 
 
360 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 and the vastest bulk is no nearer infinity than the most 
 minute, if it be definite bulk ; so that a man may multi- 
 ply his objects forever and ever, and be no nearer infinity 
 than he had reached with one, if he do not vary them 
 and confuse them; and a man may reach infinity in 
 every touch and line, and part, and unit, if in these he 
 be truthfully various and obscure. And we shall find, 
 the more we examine the works of the old masters, that 
 always, and in all parts, they are totally wanting* in 
 every feeling of infinity, and therefore in all truth : and 
 even in the works of the moderns, though the aim is far 
 more just, we shall frequently perceive an erroneous 
 choice of means, and a substitution of mere number or 
 bulk for real infinity. 
 
 And therefore, in concluding our notice of the central 
 cloud region, I should wish to dwell particularly on 
 § 26. Further in- those skies of Turner’s in which we have 
 stances of^mfmity w i 1Q i e space of the heaven covered 
 
 of Turner. with the delicate dim flakes of gathering 
 
 vapor, which are the intermediate link between the cen- 
 tral region and that of the rain-cloud, and which as- 
 semble and grow out of the air ; shutting up the heaven 
 with a gray interwoven veil, before the approach of 
 storm, faint, but universal, letting the light of the upper 
 sky pass pallidly through their body, but never rending 
 a passage for the ray. We have the first approach and 
 gathering of this kind of sky most gloriously given in 
 the vignette at page 115 of Rogers’s Italy, which is one 
 of the most perfect pieces of feeling (if I may transgress 
 my usual rules for an instant) extant in art, owing to the 
 extreme grandeur and stern simplicity of the strange 
 and ominous forms of level cloud behind the building. 
 In that at page 223, there are passages of the same kind, 
 of exceeding perfection. The sky through which the 
 dawn is breaking in the Voyage of Columbus, and that 
 with the Moonlight under the Rialto, in Rogers’s Poems, 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS . 
 
 361 
 
 the skies of the Betlielehem, and the Pyramids in Fin- 
 den’s Bible series, and among the Academy pictures, 
 that of the Hero and Leander, and Flight into Egypt, 
 are characteristic and noble examples, as far as any in- 
 dividual works can be characteristic of the universality 
 of this mighty mind. I ought not to forget the magni- 
 ficent solemnity and fulness of the wreaths of gathering 
 
 darkness in the Folkestone. 
 
 We must not pass from the consideration of the cen- 
 tral cloud region without noticing the general high qual- 
 ity of the cloud-drawing of Stanfield. He s 27 . The excel . 
 is limited in his range, and is apt in exten- drawing 1 of Cl stS£ 
 sive compositions to repeat himself, nei- fieitL 
 ther is he ever very refined ; but his cloud-form is firmly 
 and fearlessly chiselled, with perfect knowledge, though 
 usually with some want of feeling. As far as it goes, it 
 is very grand and very tasteful, beautifully developed in 
 the space of its solid parts and full of action. Next to 
 Turner, he is incomparably the noblest master of cloud- 
 form of all our artists ; in fact, he is the only one among 
 them who really can draiv a cloud. For it is a very dif- 
 ferent thing to rub out an irregular white space neatly 
 with the handkerchief, or to leave a bright little bit of 
 paper in the middle of a wash, than to give the real anat- 
 omy of cloud-form with perfect articula- ^ The 
 tion of chiaroscuro. We have multitudes Branding of the 
 of painters who can throw a light bit of En&llsh schoo “ 
 straggling vapor across their sky, or leave in it delicate 
 aud tender passages of breaking light; but this is a 
 very different thing from taking up each of those bits or 
 passages, and giving it structure, and parts, and solidity. 
 The eye is satisfied with exceedingly little, as an indica- 
 tion of cloud, and a few clever sweeps of the brush on 
 wet paper may give all that it requires ; but this is not 
 drawing clouds, nor will it ever appeal fully and deeply 
 to the mind, except when it occurs only as a part of a 
 
362 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 higher system. And there is not one of our modern ar- 
 tists, except Stanfield, who can do much more than this. 
 As soon as they attempt to lay detail upon their clouds 
 they appear to get bewildered, forget that they are deal- 
 ing with forms regulated by precisely the same simple 
 laws of light and shade as more substantial matter, over- 
 charge their color, confuse their shadows and dark sides, 
 and end in mere ragged confusion. I believe the evil 
 arises from their never attempting to render clouds ex- 
 cept with the brush ; other objects, at some period of 
 study, they take up with the chalk or lead, and so learn 
 something of their form ; but they appear to consider 
 clouds as altogether dependent on cobalt and camel’s 
 hair, and so never understand anything of their real 
 anatomy. But whatever the cause, I cannot point to any 
 central clouds of the moderns, except those of Turner 
 and Stanfield, as really showing much knowledge of, or 
 feeling for, nature, though all are superior to the con- 
 ventional and narrow conceptions of the ancients. We 
 are all right as far as we go, our work may be incom- 
 plete, but it is not false ; and it is far better, far less in- 
 jurious to the mind, that we should be little attracted 
 to the sky, and taught to be satisfied with a light sug- 
 gestion of truthful form, than that we be drawn to it by 
 violently pronounced outline and intense color, to find 
 in its finished falsehood everything to displease or to 
 mislead — to hurt our feelings, if we have foundation for 
 them, and corrupt them, if we have none. 
 
CHAPTEK IY. 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS: THIRDLY, OF THE REGION OF THE 
 
 RAIN-CLOUD. 
 
 The clouds which I wish to consider as characteristic of 
 the lower, or rainy region, differ not so much in their real 
 nature from those of the central and uppermost regions, 
 as in appearance, owing to their greater 
 
 -r, ’ , , , -| , §1. The apparent 
 
 nearness, h or the central clouds, and per- difference in char- 
 
 haps even the high cirri, deposit moisture, lower and central 
 . P . n clouds is depend- 
 
 it not distinctly ram, as is sufficiently ent chiefly on 
 proved by the existence of snow on the pr0Ximity - 
 highest peaks of the Himaleh ; and when, on any such 
 mountains, we are brought into close contact with the 
 central clouds,* we find them little differing from the or- 
 dinary rain-cloud of the plains, except by being slightly 
 less dense and dark. But the apparent differences, de- 
 pendent on proximity, are most marked and important. 
 
 In the first place, the clouds of the central region 
 have, as has been before observed, pure and aerial grays 
 for their dark sides, owing to the necessary g 2 Thelr marked 
 distance from the observer; and as this difference in color, 
 distance permits a multitude of local phenomena capa- 
 ble of influencing color, such as accidental sunbeams, 
 
 * I am unable to say to what height the real rain-cloud may extend ; 
 perhaps there are no mountains which rise altogether above storm. I 
 have never been in a violent storm at a greater height than between 
 8,000 and 9,000 feet above the level of the sea. There the rain-cloud 
 is exceedingly light, compared to the ponderous darkness of the lower 
 air. 
 
3t>I 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 refractions, transparencies, or local mists and showers, 
 to be collected into a space comparatively small, the 
 colors of these clouds are always changeful and palpitat- 
 ing ; and whatever degree of gray or of gloom may be 
 mixed with them is invariably pure and aerial. But the 
 nearness of the rain-cloud rendering it impossible for a 
 number of phenomena to be at once visible, makes its 
 hue of gray monotonous, and (by losing the blue of dis- 
 tance) warm and brown compared to that of the upper 
 clouds. This is especially remarkable on any part of it 
 which may happen to be illumined, which is of a brown, 
 bricky, ochreous tone, never bright, always coming in 
 dark outline on the lights of the central clouds. But 
 it is seldom that this takes place, and when it does, 
 never over large spaces, little being usually seen of the 
 rain- cloud but its under and dark side. This, when the 
 cloud above is dense, becomes of an inky and cold gray, 
 and sulphureous and lurid if there be thunder in the 
 air. 
 
 With these striking differences in color, it presents no 
 few T er nor less important in form, chiefly from losing 
 § 3. And in defi- almost all definiteness of character and 
 lateness of form. ou tline. It is sometimes nothing more 
 
 than a thin mist, whose outline cannot be traced, ren- 
 dering the landscape locally indistinct or dark ; if its 
 outline be visible, it is ragged and torn ; rather a spray 
 of cloud, taken off its edge and sifted by the wind, than 
 an edge of the cloud itself. In fact, it rather partakes 
 of the nature, and assumes the appearance, of real water 
 in the state of spray, than of elastic vapor. This appear- 
 ance is enhanced by the usual presence of formed rain, 
 carried along with it in a columnar form, ordinarily, of 
 course, reaching the ground like a veil, but very often 
 suspended with the cloud, and hanging from it like a 
 jagged fringe, or over it in light, rain being always 
 lighter than the cloud it falls from. These columns, or 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS . 
 
 365 
 
 fringes, of rain are often waved and bent by the wind, or 
 twisted, sometimes even swept upwards from the cloud. 
 The velocity of these vapors, though not necessarily in 
 reality greater than that of the central clouds, appears 
 greater, owing to their proximity, and, of course, also to 
 the usual presence of a more violent wind. They are 
 also apparently much more in the power of the wind, 
 having less elastic force in themselves ; but they are 
 precisely subject to the same great laws of form which 
 regulate the upper clouds. They are not § 4. They are 
 solid bodies borne about with the wind, i7ae Cfc sair£ r great 
 but they carry the wind with them, and laws * 
 cause it. Every one knows, who has ever been out in a 
 storm, that the time when it rains heaviest is precisely 
 the time when he cannot hold up his umbrella; that 
 the wind is carried with the cloud, and lulls when it has 
 passed. Every one who has ever seen rain in a hill coun- 
 try, knows that a rain-cloud, like any other, may have 
 all its parts in rapid motion, and yet, as a whole, remain 
 in one spot. I remember once, when in crossing the 
 Tete Noire, I had turned up the valley towards Trient, I 
 noticed a rain-cloud forming on the Glacier de Trient. 
 With a west wind, it proceeded towards the Col de 
 Balme, being followed by a prolonged wreath of vapor, 
 always forming exactly at the same spot over the glacier. 
 This long, serpent-like line of cloud went on at a great 
 rate till it reached the valley leading down from the Col 
 de Balme, under the slate rocks of the Croix de Eer. There 
 it turned sharp round, and came down this valley, at 
 right angles to its former progress, and finally directly 
 contrary to it, till it came down within five hundred feet 
 of the village, where it disappeared; the line behind 
 always advancing, and always disappearing, at the same 
 spot. This continued for half an hour, the long line de- 
 scribing the curve of a horseshoe ; always coming into 
 existence, and always vanishing at exactly the same 
 
3G6 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 places ; traversing the space between with enormous 
 swiftness. This cloud, ten miles off, would have looked 
 like a perfectly motionless wreath, in the form of a 
 horseshoe hanging over the hills. 
 
 To the region of the rain-cloud belong also all those 
 phenomena of drifted smoke, heat-haze, local mists in 
 
 85. Value, to the tIle mornin §' or evening; in valleys, or 
 painter, of the over water, mirage, white steaming vapor 
 
 ram-cloud. . . . . , 
 
 rising m evaporation from moist and open 
 surfaces, and everything which visibly affects the con- 
 dition of the atmosphere without actually assuming the 
 form of cloud. These phenomena are as perpetual in 
 all countries as they are beautiful, and afford by far the 
 most effective and valuable means which the painter pos- 
 sesses, for modification of the forms of fixed objects. The 
 upper clouds are distinct and comparatively opaque, 
 they do not modify, but conceal ; but through the rain- 
 cloud, and its accessory phenomena, all that is beautiful 
 may be made manifest, and all that is hurtful concealed; 
 what is paltry may be make to look vast, and what is 
 ponderous, aerial ; mystery may be obtained without ob- 
 scurity, and decoration without disguise. And, accord- 
 ingly, nature herself uses it constantly, as one of her 
 chief means of most perfect effect ; not in one country, 
 nor another, but everywhere — everywhere, at least, where 
 there is anything worth calling landscape. I cannot 
 answer for the desert of the Sahara, but I know that 
 there can be no greater mistake, than supposing that 
 delicate and variable effects of mist and rain-cloud are 
 peculiar to northern climates. I have never seen in 
 any place or country effects of mist more perfect than in 
 the Campagna of Rome, and among the hills of Sorrento. 
 It is therefore matter of no little marvel to me, and I 
 conceive that it can scarcely be otherwise to any reflect- 
 ing person, that throughout the whole range of ancient 
 landscape art, there occurs no instance of the painting of 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 367 
 
 a real rain-cloud, still less of any of the more delicate 
 phenomena characteristic of the region. “ Storms ” in- 
 deed, as the innocent public persist in call- g g The old 
 ing such abuses of nature and abortions of masters have not 
 
 , . . left a single in- 
 
 art as the two windy Gasp ars m our IS a- stance of the 
 
 . painting of the 
 
 tional Gallery, are common enough: mas- rain-cioud, and 
 
 & ’ very few efforts 
 
 sive concretions ol ink and indigo, wrung at it. Gaspar 
 
 ....... , , _ . Poussin’s storms. 
 
 'and twisted very hard, apparently m a 
 vain effort to get some moisture out of them; bearing 
 up courageously and successfully against a wind, whose 
 effects on the trees in the foreground can be accounted 
 for only on the supposition that they are all of the 
 India-rubber species. Enough of this in all conscience 
 we have, and to spare; but for the legitimate rain-cloud, 
 with its ragged and spray-like edge, its veilly transpar- 
 ency, and its columnar burden of blessing, neither it, nor 
 anything like it, or approaching it, occurs in any paint- 
 ing of the old masters that I have ever seen ; and I have 
 seen enough to warrant my affirming that if it occur 
 anywhere, it must be through accident rather than in- 
 tention. Nor is there stronger evidence of any percep- 
 tion, on the part of these much respected artists, that 
 there were such things in the world as mists or vapors. 
 If a cloud under their direction ever touches a mountain, 
 it does it effectually and as if it meant to do it. There 
 is no mystifying the matter ; here is a cloud, and there 
 is a hill ; if it is to come on at all, it comes on to some 
 purpose, and there is no hope of its ever going off again. 
 We have, therefore, little to say of the efforts of the old 
 masters, in any scenes which might naturally have been 
 connected with the clouds of the lowest region, except 
 that the faults of form specified in considering the 
 central clouds, are, by way of being energetic or sub- 
 lime, more glaringly and audaciously committed in 
 their “ storms ; ” and that what is a wrong form among 
 clouds possessing form, is there given with increased 
 
368 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 generosity of fiction to clouds which have no form at 
 all. 
 
 Supposing that we had nothing to show in modem 
 art, of the region of the rain-cloud, but the dash of Cox, 
 § r. The great the blot of de Wint, or even the ordinary 
 mo<L e ns °in this stormy skies of the body of our inferior 
 respect. water-color painters, we might yet laugh 
 
 all efforts of the old masters to utter scorn. But one 
 among our water-color artists, deserves especial notice — 
 before we ascend the steps of the solitary throne — as 
 having done in his peculiar walk, what for faithful and 
 pure truth, truth indeed of a limited range and unstudied 
 application, but yet most faithful and most pure, will 
 remain unsurpassed if not unrivalled, — Copley Fielding. 
 § 8 . works of We are well aware how much of what he 
 Copley Fielding. h as done depends in a great degree upon 
 particular tricks of execution, or on a labor somewhat 
 too mechanical to be meritorious ; that it is rather the 
 texture than the plan of his sky which is to be admired, 
 and that the greater part of what is pleasurable in it 
 will fall rather under the head of dexterous imitation 
 than of definite thought. But whatever detractions from 
 his merit we may be compelled to make on these grounds, 
 in considering art as the embodying of beauty, or the 
 channel of mind, it is impossible, when we are speaking 
 of truth only, to pass by his down scenes and moorland 
 showers, of some years ago, in which he produced some 
 of the most perfect and faultless passages of mist and 
 § 9. His peculiar rain-cloud which art has ever seen. Wet, 
 truth> transparent, formless, full of motion, felt 
 
 rather by their shadows on the hills than by their 
 presence in the sky, becoming dark only through in- 
 creased depth of space, most translucent where most 
 sombre, and light only through increased buoyancy of 
 motion, letting the blue through their interstices, and 
 the sunlight through their chasms, with the irregular 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS . 
 
 369 
 
 playfulness and traceless gradation of nature herself, his 
 skies will remain, as long as their colors stand, among 
 the most simple, unadulterated, and complete transcripts 
 of a particular nature which art can point to. Had he 
 painted five instead of five hundred such, and gone 
 on to other sources of beauty, he might, there can be 
 little doubt, have been one of our greatest artists. But 
 it often grieves us to see how his power 
 
 * t -i i j. ,. , , j ^ < § 10 - Hls weak “ 
 
 is limited to a particular moment, to that ness and its prob- 
 . able cause. 
 
 easiest moment for imitation, when knowl- 
 edge of form may be superseded by management of the 
 brush, and the judgment of the Colorist by the manufact- 
 ure of a color; the moment when ail form is melted 
 down and drifted away in the descending veil of rain, 
 and when the variable and fitful colors of the heaven are 
 lost in the monotonous gray of its storm tones.* We 
 can only account for this by supposing that there is 
 something radically wrong in his method of study ; for 
 a man of his evident depth of feeling and pure love of 
 truth ought not to be, cannot be, except from some 
 strange error in his mode of out-of-door practice, thus 
 limited in his range, and liable to decline of power. Wo 
 have little doubt that almost all such failures arise from 
 the artist’s neglecting the use of the chalk, and suppos- 
 ing that either the power of drawing forms, or the sense 
 of their beauty, can be maintained unweakened or un- 
 
 * I ought here, however, to have noted another effect of the rain- 
 cloud, which, so far as I know, has been rendered only by Copley 
 Fielding. It is seen chiefly in clouds gathering for rain, when the 
 sky is entirely covered with a gray veil rippled or waved with pendent 
 swells of soft texture, but excessively hard and liny in their edges. 
 I am not sure that this is an agreeable or impressive form of the 
 rain-cloud, but it is a frequent one, and it is often most faithfully 
 given by Fielding ; only in some cases the edges becoming a little 
 doubled and harsh have given a look of failure or misadventure to 
 some even of the best studied passages ; and something of the same 
 hardness of line is occasionally visible in his drawing of clouds by 
 whose nature it is not warranted. 
 
370 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 blunted, without constant and laborious studies in sim- 
 ple light and shade, of form only. The brush is at once 
 the artist’s greatest aid and enemy; it enables him to 
 make his power available, but at the same time, it under- 
 mines his power, and unless it be constantly rejected 
 for the pencil, never can be rightly used. But what- 
 ever the obstacle be, we do not doubt that it is one 
 which, once seen, may be overcome or removed; and we 
 are in the constant hope of seeing this finely-minded 
 artist shake off his lethargy, break the shackles of 
 habit, seek in extended and right study the sources of 
 real power, and become, what we have full faith in his 
 capability of being, one of the leading artists of his 
 time. 
 
 In passing to the works of our greatest modern mas- 
 ter, it must be premised that the qualities which consti- 
 tute a most essential part of the truth of 
 
 § 11. Impossibil- . . 
 
 ity of reasoning the ram-cloud, are m no degree to be ren- 
 
 on the rain-cloucls ,, . Tl . , « « 
 
 of Turner from dered by engraving. Its mdefimteness ot 
 torn and transparent form is far beyond 
 the power of even our best engravers : I do not say be- 
 yond their possible power, if they would make themselves 
 artists as well as workmen, but far beyond the power they 
 actually possess ; while the depth and delicacy of the 
 grays which Turner employs or produces, as well as the 
 refinement of his execution, are, in the nature of things, 
 utterly beyond all imitation by the opaque and lifeless 
 darkness of the steel. "What we say of his works, 
 therefore, must be understood as referring only to the 
 original drawings; though we may name one or two 
 instances in which the engraver has, to a certain de- 
 gree, succeeded in distantly following the intention of 
 die master. 
 
 Jumieges, in the Bivers of France, ought perhaps, 
 after what we have said of Fielding, to be our first ob- 
 ject of attention, because it is a rendering by Turner of 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 371 
 
 § 13. Illustration 
 of the nature of 
 clouds in the op- 
 posed forms of 
 smoke and steam. 
 
 Fielding’s particular moment, and the only one exist- 
 ing, for Turner never repeats himself. One picture is 
 allotted to one truth ; the statement is per- 
 
 _ , . , i § 12. His render- 
 
 tectly and gloriously made, and he passes mg of Fielding’s 
 on to speak of a fresh portion of God's reve- m e n t in the 
 lation.* The haze of sunlit rain of this most 
 magnificent picture, the gradual retirement of the dark 
 wood into its depth, and the sparkling and evanescent 
 light which sends its variable flashes on the abbey, fig- 
 ures, foliage, and foam, require no comment — they speak 
 home at once. But there is added to this noble com- 
 position an incident which may serve us 
 at once for a farther illustration of the 
 nature and forms of cloud, and for a final 
 proof how deeply and philosophically 
 Turner has studied them. 
 
 We have on the right of the picture, the steam and the 
 smoke of a passing steamboat. Now steam is nothing 
 but an artificial cloud in the process of dissipation ; it is 
 as much a cloud as those of the sky itself, that is, a 
 quantity of moisture rendered visible in the air by im- 
 perfect solution. Accordingly, observe how exquisitely 
 irregular and broken are its forms, how sharp and spray- 
 like ; but with all the facts observed which were pointed 
 out in Chap. II. of this Section, the convex side to the 
 wind, the sharp edge on that side, the other soft and 
 lost. Smoke, on the contrary, is an actual substance 
 existing independently in the air, a solid opaque body, 
 subject to no absorption nor dissipation but that of 
 tenuity. Observe its volumes; there is no breaking 
 up nor disappearing here; the wind carries its elastic 
 globes before it, but does not dissolve nor break them.t 
 
 * Compare Sect. I. Chap. IV. § 5. 
 
 f It does not do so until the volumes lose their density by inequality 
 of motion, and by the expansion of the warm air which conveys them. 
 They are then, of course, broken into forms resembling those of clouds. 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 372 
 
 Equally convex and void of angles on all sides, they 
 are the exact representatives of the clouds of the old 
 masters, and serve at once to show the ignorance and 
 falsehood of these latter, and the accuracy of study which 
 has guided Turner to the truth. 
 
 From this picture we should pass to the Llanthony,* 
 which is the rendering of the moment immediately fol- 
 
 § 14 Moment of ^ ow ^ n §‘ gi yen in the Jumieges. The 
 retiring rain m shower is here half exhausted, half passed 
 by, the last drops are rattling faintly 
 through the glimmering hazel boughs, the white torrent, 
 swelled by the sudden storm, flings up its hasty jets of 
 springing spray to meet the returning light ; and these, 
 as if the heaven regretted what it had given, and were 
 taking it back, pass, as they leap, into vapor, and fall not 
 again, but vanish in the shafts of the sunlight f — hurry- 
 ing, fitful, wind- woven sunlight — which glides through 
 the thick leaves, and paces along the pale rocks like rain ; 
 half conquering, half quenched by the very mists which 
 it summons itself from the lighted pastures as it passes, 
 and gathers out of the drooping herbage and from the 
 streaming crags ; sending them with messages of peace 
 to the far summits of the yet unveiled mountains whose 
 silence is still broken by the sound of the rushing rain. 
 
 * No conception can be formed of this picture from the engraving 1 . 
 It is perhaps the most marvellous piece of execution and of gray color 
 existing, except perhaps the drawing presently to be noticed, Land’s 
 End. Nothing else can be set beside it, even of Turner’s own works 
 — much less of any other man’s. 
 
 f I know no effect more strikingly characteristic of the departure of 
 a storm than the smoking of the mountain torrents. The exhausted 
 air is so thirsty of moisture, that every jet of spray is seized upon by 
 it, and converted into vapor as it springs ; and this vapor rises so 
 densely from the surface of the stream as to give it the exact appear- 
 ance of boiling water. I have seen the whole course of the Arve at 
 Chamounix one line of dense cloud, dissipating as soon as it had risen 
 ten or twelve feet from the surface, but entirely concealing the water 
 from an observer placed above it. 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 373 
 
 With this noble work we should compare one of which 
 we can better judge by the engraving — the Loch Coris- 
 kin, in the illustrations to Scott, because . , 
 
 . . _ § 15. Ana of com- 
 
 lt introduces us to another and a most re- meriting, chosen 
 markable instance of the artist’s vast and meaning for Locn 
 varied knowledge. When rain falls on a Conskin ' 
 mountain composed chiefly of barren rocks, their sur- 
 faces, being violently heated by the sun, whose most in- 
 tense warmth always precedes rain, occasion sudden and 
 violent evaporation, actually converting the first shower 
 into steam. Consequently, upon all such hills, on the 
 commencement of rain, white volumes of vapor are in- 
 stantaneously and universally formed, which rise, are 
 absorbed by the atmosphere, and again descend in rain, 
 to rise in fresh volumes until the surfaces of the hills 
 are cooled. Where there is grass or vegetation, this 
 effect is diminished ; where there is foliage it scarcely 
 takes place at all. Now this effect has evidently been 
 especially chosen by Turner for Loch Coriskin, not only 
 because it enabled him to relieve its jagged forms with 
 veiling vapor, but to tell the tale which no pencilling 
 could, the story of its utter absolute barrenness of un- 
 lichened, dead, desolated rock : — 
 
 “ The wildest glen, but this, can show 
 Some touch of nature’s genial glow, 
 
 On high Benmore green mosses grow, 
 
 And health-bells bud in deep Glencoe. 
 
 And copse on Cruchan Ben ; 
 
 But here, above, around, below, 
 
 On mountain, or in glen, 
 
 Nor tree, nor plant, nor shrub, nor flower, 
 
 Nor aught of vegetative power, 
 
 The wearied eye may ken ; 
 
 But all its rocks at random thrown, 
 
 Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone.” 
 
 Lord op the Isles, Canto III. 
 
374 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 Here, again, we see the absolute necessity of scientific 
 and entire acquaintance with nature, before this great 
 artist can be understood. That which, to the ignorant, 
 is little more than an unnatural and meaningless confu- 
 sion of steam-like vapor, is to the experienced such a 
 full and perfect expression of the character of the spot, 
 as no means of art could have otherwise given. 
 
 In the Long Ships Lighthouse, Land’s End, we have 
 clouds without rain — at twilight — enveloping the cliffs 
 § i6. The draw- the coast, but concealing nothing, every 
 St vapor r 1n Sp t?e outline being visible through their gloom ; 
 Land’s End. and no ^ only the outline — for it is easy to 
 do this — but the surface. The bank of rocky coast ap- 
 proaches the spectator inch by inch, felt clearer and 
 clearer as it withdraws from the garment of cloud — not 
 by edges more and more defined, but by a surface more 
 and more unveiled. We have thus the painting, not of 
 a mere transparent veil, but of a solid body of cloud, 
 every inch of whose increasing distance is marked and 
 felt. But the great wonder of the picture is the inten- 
 sity of gloom which is attained in pure warm gray, with- 
 out either blackness or blueness. It is a gloom depen- 
 dent rather on the enormous space and depth indicated, 
 than on actual pitch of color, distant by real drawing, 
 without a grain of blue, dark by real substance, without 
 a stroke of blackness ; and with all this, it is not form- 
 less, but full of indications of character, wild, irregular, 
 shattered, and indefinite — full of the energy of storm, 
 fiery in haste, and yet flinging back out of its motion 
 the fitful swirls of bounding drift, of tortured vapor 
 tossed up like men’s hands, as in defiance of the tempest, 
 the jets of resulting whirlwind, hurled back from the 
 rocks into the face of the coming darkness ; which, be- 
 yond all other characters, mark the raised passion of the 
 elements. It is this untraceable, unconnected, yet per- 
 petual form— this fulness of character absorbed in the 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS . 
 
 375 
 
 universal energy — which distinguish nature and Turner 
 from all their imitators. To roll a volume of smoke 
 before the wind, to indicate motion or vio- 
 
 , , . . .. „ S17. The mdivid- 
 
 lence by monotonous similarity oi line JJf pa ^ s aracter of 
 and direction, is for the multitude; but 
 to mark the independent passion, the tumultuous sepa- 
 rate existence of every wreath of writhing vapor, yet 
 swept away and overpowered by one omnipotence of 
 storm, and thus to bid us 
 
 “ Be as a Presence or a motion — one 
 Among the many there — —while the mists 
 Flying, and rainy vapors, call out shapes 
 And phantoms from the crags and solid earth, 
 
 As fast as a musician scatters sounds 
 Out of an instrument,”— 
 
 this belongs only to nature and to him. 
 
 The drawing of Coventry may be particularized as a 
 farther example of this fine suggestion of irregularity 
 and fitfulness, through very constant par- g 18 Deepgtudied 
 allelism of direction, both in rain and form of swift ram- 
 clouds. The great mass of cloud, which entr y- 
 traverses the whole picture, is characterized throughout 
 by severe right lines, nearly parallel with each other, 
 into which every one of its wreaths has a tendency to 
 range itself ; but no one of these right lines is actually and 
 entirely parallel to any other, though all have a certain 
 tendency, more or less defined in each, which impresses 
 the mind with the most distinct idea of parallelism. 
 Neither are any of the lines actually straight and un- 
 broken; on the contrary, they are all made up of the 
 most exquisite and varied curves, and it is the imagined 
 line which joins the apices of these — a tangent to them 
 all, which is in reality straight.* They are suggested, 
 not represented, right lines; but the whole volume of 
 * Note especially the dark uppermost outline of the mas*. 
 
376 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 cloud is visibly and totally bounded by them; and, in 
 consequence, its whole body is felt to be dragged out and 
 elongated by the force of the tempest which it carries 
 with it, and every one of its wreaths to be (as was be- 
 fore explained) not so much something borne before or by 
 the wind, as the visible form and presence of the wind 
 itself. We could not possibly point out a more magnifi- 
 cent piece of drawing as a contrast to such works of Sal- 
 D _ „ „ vator as that before alluded to (159 Dulwich 
 
 § 19. Compared 
 
 by^aivaS" given Gallery). Both are rolling masses of con- 
 nected cloud ; but in Turner’s, there is not 
 one curve that repeats another, nor one curve in itself 
 monotonous, nor without character, and yet every part 
 and portion of the cloud is rigidly subjected to the same 
 forward, fierce, inevitable influence of storm. In Salva- 
 tor’s, every curve repeats its neighbor, every curve is 
 monotonous in itself, and yet the whole cloud is curling 
 about hither and thither, evidently without the slightest 
 notion where it is going to, and unregulated by any gen- 
 eral influence whatsoever. I could not bring together 
 two finer or more instructive examples, the one of every- 
 thing that is perfect, the other of everything that is 
 childish or abominable, in the representation of the 
 same facts. 
 
 But there is yet more to be noticed in this noble sky 
 of Turner’s. Not only are the lines of the rolling cloud 
 § 20. Entire e x- thus irregular in their parallelism, but 
 p r eft 10 V°minSe those of the falling rain are equally varied 
 cum stances "the in their direction, indicating the gusty 
 Coventry. changefulness of the wind, and yet kept so 
 
 straight and stern in their individual descent, that we are 
 not suffered to forget its strength. This impression is 
 still further enhanced by the drawing of the smoke, which 
 blows everyway at once, yet turning perpetually in each 
 of its swirls back in the direction of the wind, but so sud- 
 denly and violently, as almost to assume the angular lines 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS . 
 
 of lightning. Farther, to complete the impression, be it 
 observed that all the cattle, both upon the near and dis- 
 tant hill-side, have left off grazing, and are standing stock 
 still and stiff, with their heads down and their backs to 
 the wind ; and finally, that we may be told not only what 
 the storm is, but what it has been, the gutter at the side 
 of the road is gushing in a complete torrent, and partic- 
 „ uiar attention is directed to it by the full burst of light 
 in the sky being brought just above it, so that all its 
 waves are bright with the reflection. 
 
 But I have not quite done with this noble picture yet. 
 Impetuous clouds, twisted rain, flickering sunshine, 
 fleeting shadow, gushing water, and op- § 2L Especially 
 pressed cattle, all speak the same story p y a sTag a ? S *ex- 
 of tumult, fitfulness, power, and velocity. treme re P° 8e - 
 Only one thing is wanted, a passage of repose to contrast 
 with it all, and it is given. High and far above the dark 
 volumes of the swift rain-cloud, are seen on the left, 
 through their opening, the quiet, horizontal, silent flakes 
 of the highest cirrus, resting in the repose of the deep 
 sky. Of all else that we have noticed in this drawing, 
 some faint idea can be formed from the engraving: but 
 not the slightest of the delicate and soft forms of these 
 pausing vapors, and still less of the exquisite depth and 
 palpitating tenderness of the blue with which they are 
 islanded. Engravers, indeed, invariably lose the effect of 
 all passages of cold color, under the mistaken idea that it 
 is to be "kept pale in order to indicate distance ; whereas 
 it ought commonly to be darker than the rest of the sky. 
 
 To appreciate the full truth of this passage, we must 
 understand another effect peculiar to the rain-cloud, that 
 its openings exhibit the purest blue which 
 the sky ever shows. Jb or, as we saw m the of this particular 
 first chapter of this section, that aqueous ly pure blue sky 
 
 -i , ,i i i only seen after 
 
 vapor always turns the sky more or less rain, and how 
 gray, it follows that we never can see the 8een * 
 
378 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 azure so intense as when the greater part of this vapor 
 has just fallen in rain. Then, and then only, pure blue 
 sky becomes visible in the first openings, distinguished 
 especially by the manner in which the clouds melt into 
 it ; their edges ’passing off in faint white threads and 
 fringes, through which the blue shines more and more 
 intensely, till the last trace of vapor is lost in its perfect 
 color. It is only the upper white clouds, however, which 
 do this, or the last fragments of rain-clouds, becoming 
 white as they disappear, so that the blue is never cor- 
 rupted by the cloud, but only paled and broken with pure 
 white, the purest white which the sky ever shows. Thus 
 we have a melting and palpitating color, never the same 
 for two inches together, deepening and broadening here 
 and there into intensity of perfect azure, then drifted and 
 dying away through every tone of pure pale sky, into the 
 snow white of the filmy cloud. Over this roll the deter- 
 mined edges of the rain clouds, throwing it all far back, 
 as a retired scene, into the upper sky. Of this effect the 
 § 23. Absence of °ld masters, as far as I remember, have 
 works^ofthe oil taken no cognizance whatsoever; all with 
 masters. them is, as we partially noticed before, 
 
 either white cloud or pure blue : they have no notion of 
 any double-dealing or middle measures. They bore a 
 hole in the sky, and let you up into a pool of deep, stag- 
 nant blue, marked off by the clear round edges of imper- 
 turbable, impenetrable cloud on all sides — beautiful in 
 positive color, but totally destitute of that exquisite 
 gradation and change, that fleeting, panting’, hesitating 
 effort, with which the first glance of the natural sky is 
 shed through the turbulence of the earth-storm. 
 
 They have some excuse, however, for not attempting 
 this, in the nature of their material, as one accidental 
 dash of the brush with water-color on a piece of wet or 
 damp paper, will come nearer the truth and transpar- 
 ency of this rain-blue than the labor of a day in oils ,* 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS . 
 
 379 
 
 and the purity and felicity of some of the careless, melt- 
 ing, water-color skies of Cox and Tayler may well make 
 us fastidious in all effects of this kind. It ^ success of 
 is, however, only in the drawings of Turner our water - color 
 
 ’ ° artists in its ren- 
 
 that we have this perfect transparency dermg. use of it 
 and variation o± blue, given m association 
 with the perfection of considered form. In Tayler and 
 Cox the forms are always partially accidental and uncon- 
 sidered, often essentially bad, and always incomplete ; in 
 Turner the dash of the brush is as completely under the 
 rule of thought and feeling as its slowest line ; all that 
 it does is perfect, and could not be altered, even in a 
 hairbreadth, without injury ; in addition to this, peculiar 
 management and execution are used in obtaining qual- 
 ity in the color itself, totally different from the manipu- 
 lation of any other artist ; and none, who have ever spent 
 so much as one hour of their lives over his drawing, can 
 forget those dim passages of dreamy blue, barred and 
 severed with a thousand delicate and soft and snowy 
 forms, which, gleaming in their patience of hope be- 
 tween the troubled rushing of the racked earth-cloud, 
 melt farther and farther back into the height of heaven, 
 until the eye is bewildered and the heart lost in the in- 
 tensity of their peace. I do not say that this is beauti- 
 ful — I do not say it is ideal, nor refined — I only ask you 
 to watch for the first opening of the clouds after the next 
 south rain, and tell me if it be not true ? 
 
 The Gosport affords us an instance more exquisite 
 even than the passage above named in the Coventry, of 
 the use of this melting and dewy blue, ac- § 25. Expression 
 companied by two distances of rain-cloud, fnthe a Gospor?and 
 one towering over the horizon, seen blue otherworks * 
 with excessive distance through crystal atmosphere ; the 
 other breaking overhead in the warm, sulphurous frag- 
 ments of spray, whose loose and shattering transparency, 
 being the most essential characteristic of the near rain- 
 
380 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 cloud, is precisely that which the old masters are sure 
 to contradict. Look, for instance, at the wreaths of 
 cloud ? in the Dido and iEneas of Gaspar Poussin, with 
 their unpleasant edges cut as hard and solid and opaque 
 , and smooth as thick black paint can make 
 
 §26. Contrasted * 
 
 with Gaspar Pous- them, rolled up over one another like a 
 sin’s ram-cloud m t 
 
 the^Dido and dirty sail badly reeled; or look at the 
 agreeable transparency and variety of the 
 cloud-edge where it cuts the Mountain in N. Poussin’s 
 Phocion, and compare this with the wreaths which float 
 across the precipice in the second vignette in Campbell, 
 or which gather around the Ben Lomond, the white rain 
 gleaming beneath their dark transparent shadows; or 
 which drift up along the flanks of the wooded hills, called 
 from the river by the morning light, in the Oakhamp- 
 ton ; or which island the crags of Snowdon in the Llan- 
 beris, or melt along the Cumberland hills, while Turner 
 leads us across the sands of Morecambe Bay. This last 
 drawing deserves especial notice ; it is of an evening in 
 spring, when the south rain has ceased at sunset, and 
 through the lulled and golden air, the confused and fan- 
 tastic mists float up along the hollow's of the mountains, 
 white and pure, the resurrection in spirit of the new- 
 fallen rain, catching shadows from the precipices, and 
 mocking the dark peaks with their own mountain-like 
 but melting forms till the solid mountains seem in mo- 
 tion like those waves of cloud, emerging and vanishing 
 as the weak wind passes by their summits ; while the 
 blue, level night advances along the sea, and the surging 
 breakers leap up to catch the last light from the path of 
 the sunset. 
 
 I need not, however, insist upon Turner’s peculiar 
 power of rendering mist, and all those passages of 
 intermediate mystery, between earth and 
 power o l f r render- air, when the mountain is melting into the 
 cloud, or the horizon into the twilight; 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS . 
 
 381 
 
 because his supremacy in these points is altogether un- 
 disputed, except by persons to whom it would be impos- 
 sible to prove anything which did not fall under the 
 form of a Buie of Three. Nothing is more natural than 
 that the studied form and color of this great artist 
 should be little understood, because they require for the 
 full perception of their meaning and truth, such knowl- 
 edge and such time as not one in a thousand possesses, 
 or can bestow ; but yet the truth of them for that very 
 reason is capable of demonstration, and there is hope of 
 our being able to make it in some degree felt and com- 
 prehended even by those to whom it is now a dead letter, 
 or an offence. But the aerial and misty effects of land- 
 scape, being matters of which the eye §2 8. ms effects of 
 should be simply cognizant, and without ef- gjttt 'not TS 
 fort of thought, as it is of light, must, where SloSbee? 
 they are exquisitely rendered, either be e^onlha/nature 
 felt at once, or prove that degree of blind- herself - 
 ness and bluntness in the feelings of the observer which 
 there is little hope of ever conquering. Of course for 
 persons who have never seen in their lives a cloud van- 
 ishing on a mountain-side, and whose conceptions of 
 mist or vapor are limited to ambiguous outlines of spec- 
 tral hackney-coaches and bodiless lamp -posts, discerned 
 through a brown combination of sulphur, soot, and gas- 
 light, there is yet some hope ; we cannot, indeed, tell 
 them what the morning mist is like in mountain air, but 
 far be it from us to tell them that they are incapable of 
 feeling its beauty if they will seek it for themselves. But 
 if you have ever in your life had one opportunity, with 
 your eyes and heart open, of seeing the dew rise from a 
 hill-pasture, or the storm gather on a sea-cliff, and if you 
 have yet no feeling for the glorious passages of mingled 
 earth and heaven which Turner calls up before you into 
 breathing, tangible being, there is indeed no hope for 
 your apathy — art will never touch you, nor nature inform. 
 
382 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 It would be utterly absurd, among the innumerable 
 passages of this kind given throughout his works, to 
 § 29. Various in- P°i n t to one as more characteristic or more 
 stances. perfect than another. The Simmer Lake, 
 
 near Askrig, for expression of mist pervaded with sun- 
 light, — the Lake Lucerne, a recent and unengraved draw- 
 ing, for the recession of near mountain form, not into 
 dark, but into luminous cloud, the most difficult thing to 
 do in art, — the Harlech, for expression of the same phe- 
 nomena, shown over vast spaces in distant ranges of hills, 
 the Ehrenbreitstein, a recent drawing, for expression of 
 mist, rising from the surface of water at sunset, — and, 
 finally, the glorious Oberwesel and Nemi,* for passages 
 of all united, may, however, be named, as noble instances, 
 though in naming five works I insult five hundred. 
 
 One word respecting Turner’s more violent storms, for 
 we have hitherto been speaking only of the softer rain- 
 „ „„ , clouds, associated with gusty tempest, but 
 
 § 30. Turner’s a j r > 
 
 more violent ef- not of the thundercloud and the whirl- 
 
 fects of tempest . _ _ ... , . , 
 
 are never rendered wind. Ii there be any one point m whlCll 
 
 by engravers. 
 
 engravers disgrace themselves more than 
 in another, it is in their rendering of dark and furious 
 storm. It appears to be utterly impossible to force it 
 into their heads, that an artist does not leave his color 
 with a sharp edge and an angular form by accident, or 
 that they may have the pleasure of altering it and im- 
 proving upon it ; and equally impossible to persuade 
 them that energy and gloom mav in some 
 
 §31. General sys- . , 
 
 tem of landscape circumstances be arrived at without any 
 extraordinary expenditure of ink. I am 
 aware of no engraver of the present day whose ideas of a 
 storm-cloud are not comprised under two heads, round- 
 ness and blackness ; and, indeed, their general principles 
 of translation (as may be distinctly gathered from their 
 larger works) are the following : 1. Where the drawing is 
 * In the possession of B. G. Windus, Esq. , of Tottenham. 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS . 
 
 3S3 
 
 gray, make the paper black. 2. Where the drawing is 
 white, cover the page with zigzag lines. 3. Where the 
 drawing has particularly tender tones, cross-hatch them, 
 4. Where any outline is particularly angular, make it 
 round. 5. Where there are vertical reflections in water, 
 express them with very distinct horizontal lines. 6, 
 Where there is a passage of particular simplicit} 7 , treat 
 i't in sections. 7. Where there is anything intentionally 
 concealed, make it out. Yet, in spite of the necessity 
 which all engravers impose upon themselves, of rigidly 
 observing this code of general laws, it is difficult to con- 
 ceive how such pieces of work as the plates of Stone- 
 henge and Winchelsea, can ever have been presented to 
 the public, as in any way resembling, or possessing even 
 the most fanciful relation to the Turner § 32 . The storm in 
 drawings of the same subjects. The orig- tUe stuueheuge * 
 inal of the Stonehenge is perhaps the standard of storm- 
 drawing, both for the overwhelming power and gigantic 
 proportions and spaces of its cloud-forms, and for the 
 tremendous qualities of lurid and sulphurous colors 
 which are gained in them. All its forms are marked 
 with violent angles, as if the whole muscular energy — - 
 so to speak — of the cloud, were writhing in every fold, 
 and their fantastic and fiery volumes have a peculiar 
 horror — an awful life — shadowed out in their strange, 
 swift, fearful outlines, which oppress the mind more than 
 even the threatening of their gigantic gloom. The white 
 lightning, not as it is drawn by less observant or less 
 capable painters, in zigzag fortifications, but in its own 
 dreadful irregularity of streaming fire, is brought down, 
 not merely over the dark clouds, but through the full 
 light of an illumined opening to the blue, which yet can- 
 not abate the brilliancy of its white line ; and the track 
 of the last flash along the ground is fearfully marked by 
 the dog howling over the fallen shepherd, and the ewe 
 pressing her head upon the body of her dead lamb. 
 
384 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 I have not space, however, to enter into examination 
 of Turner’s storm-drawing ; I can only warn the public 
 § 33. General against supposing that its effect is ever 
 effects te L of given rendered by engravers. The great princi- 
 exp T resSon H of P^ es Turner are angular outline, vastness 
 failing ram. and energy of form, infinity of gradation, 
 
 and depth without blackness. The great principles of 
 the engravers {vide Psestum, in Rogers’s Italy, and the 
 Stonehenge, above alluded to) are rounded outline, no 
 edges, want of character, equality of strength, and black- 
 ness without depth. 
 
 I have scarcely, I see, on referring to what I have 
 written, sufficiently insisted on Turner’s rendering of the 
 rainy fringe, whether in distances,, admitting or conceal- 
 ing more or less of the extended plain, as in the Water- 
 loo, and Richmond (with the girl and dog in the fore- 
 ground), or as in the Dunstaffnage, Glencoe, St. Michael’s 
 Mount, and Slave-ship, not reaching the earth, but sus- 
 pended in waving and twisted lines from the darkness 
 of the zenith. But I have no time for farther develop- 
 ment of particular points; I must defer discussion of 
 § 34. Recapituia- them until we take up each picture to be 
 tion of the section. Y j ewe d a s a whole; for the division of the 
 
 sky which I have been obliged to make, in order to ren- 
 der fully understood the peculiarities of character in the 
 separate cloud regions, prevents my speaking of any one 
 work with justice to its concentration of various truth. 
 Be it always remembered that we pretend not, at present, 
 to give any account or idea of the sum of the works of 
 any painter, much less of the universality of Turner’s ; 
 but only to explain in what real truth, as far as it is 
 explicable, consists, and to illustrate it by those pictures 
 in which it most distinctly occurs, or from which it is 
 most visibly absent. And it will only be in the full and 
 separate discussion of individual works, when we are 
 acquainted also with what is beautiful, that we shall be 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 385 
 
 completely able to prove or disprove the presence of the 
 truth of nature. 
 
 The conclusion, then, to which we are led by our 
 present examination of the truth of clouds, is, that the 
 old masters attempted the representation of only one 
 among the thousands of their systems of scenery, and 
 were altogether false in the little they attempted ; while 
 we can find records in modem art of every form or phe- 
 nomenon of the heavens, from the highest film that 
 glorifies the ether to the wildest vapor that darkens the 
 dust, and in all these records we find the most clear 
 language and close thought, firm words, and true mes- 
 sage, unstinted fulness and unfailing faith. 
 
 And indeed it is difficult for us to conceive how, even 
 without such laborious investigation as we have gone 
 through, any person can go to nature for 
 a single day or hour, when she is really 
 at work in any of her nobler spheres of 
 action, and yet retain respect for the old 
 masters ; finding, as find he will, that every 
 scene which rises, rests, or departs before 
 him, bears with it a thousand glories of which there is 
 not one shadow, one image, one trace or line, in any of 
 their works; but which will illustrate to him, at every 
 new instant, some passage which he had not before 
 understood in the high works of modern art. Stand 
 upon the peak of some isolated mountain at daybreak, 
 when the night mists first rise from off the plains, and 
 watch their white and lake -like fields as they float in level 
 bays and winding gulfs about the islanded summits of 
 the lower hills, untouched yet by more than dawn, colder 
 and more quiet than a windless sea under the moon of 
 midnight ; watch when the first sunbeam is sent upon the 
 silver channels, how the foam of their undulating surface 
 parts and passes away ; and down under their depths, the 
 glittering city and green pasture lie like Atlantis, be- 
 25 
 
 § 85. Sketch of a 
 few of the skies 
 of nature, taken 
 as a whole, com- 
 pared with the 
 works of Turner 
 and of the old 
 masters. Morn- 
 ing on the plains. 
 
3S6 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 tween the white paths of winding* * * § rivers ; the flakes of 
 light falling every moment faster and broader among the 
 starry spires, as the wreathed surges break and vanish 
 above them, and the confused crests and ridges of the 
 dark hills shorten their gray shadows upon the plain. 
 § 36. Noon with Has Claude given this? Wait a little 
 gathering storms. i on g erj an d y OU shall see those scattered 
 
 mists rallying in the ravines, and floating up toward 
 you, along the winding valleys, till they couch in quiet 
 masses, iridescent with the morning light,* upon the 
 broad breasts of the higher hills, whose leagues of massy 
 undulation will melt back and back into that robe of 
 material light, until they fade away, lost in its lustre, to 
 appear again above, in the serene heaven, like a wild, 
 bright, impossible dream, foundationless and inaccessi- 
 ble, their very bases vanishing in the unsubstantial and 
 mocking blue of the deep lake below.f Has Claude 
 given this ? Wait yet a little longer, and you shall see 
 those mists gather themselves into white towers, and 
 stand like fortresses along the promontories, massy and 
 motionless, only piled with every instant higher and 
 higher into the sky, J and casting longer shadows athwart 
 the rocks ; and out of the pale blue of the horizon you 
 will see forming and advancing a troop of narrow, dark, 
 pointed vapors, § which will cover the sky, inch by inch, 
 with their gray network, and take the light off the land- 
 scape with an eclipse which will stop the singing of the 
 birds and the motion of the leaves together ; and then 
 
 * I have often seen the white, thin, morning cloud, edged with the 
 seven colors of the prism. I am not aware of the cause of this phe- 
 nomenon, for it takes place not when we stand with our backs to the 
 sun, but in clouds near the sun itself, irregularty and over indefinite 
 spaces, sometimes taking place in the body of the cloud. The colors 
 are distinct and vivid, but have a kind of metallic lustre upon them. 
 
 f Lake Lucerne. 
 
 X St. Maurice (Rogers’s Italy). 
 
 § Vignette, the Great St. Bernard. 
 
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 387 
 
 you will see horizontal bars of black shadow forming’ 
 under them, and lurid wreaths create themselves, you 
 know not how, along the shoulders of the hills; you 
 never see them form, but when you look back to a place 
 which was clear an instant ago, there is a cloud on it, 
 hanging by the precipices, as a hawk pauses over his 
 prey.* * * § Has Claude given this ? And then you will hear 
 the sudden rush of the awakened wind, and you will see 
 those watch-towers of vapor swept away from their foun- 
 dations, and waving curtains of opaque rain let down to 
 the valleys, swinging from the burdened clouds in black, 
 bending fringes, f or pacing in pale columns along the 
 lake level, grazing its surface into foam 
 
 a i ,, . i § 37. Sunset m 
 
 as they go. And then, as the sun sinks, tempest, serene 
 
 you shall see the storm drift for an instant 
 from off the hills, leaving their broad sides smoking, 
 and loaded yet with snow-white torn, steam -like rags of 
 capricious vapor, now gone, now gathered again ; J while 
 the smouldering sun, seeming not far away, but burning 
 like a red-hot ball beside you, and as if you could reach 
 it, plunges through the rushing wind and rolling cloud 
 with headlong fall, as if it meant to rise no more, dyeing 
 all the air about it with blood.§ Has Claude given this ? 
 And then you shall hear the fainting tempest die in the 
 hollow of the night, and you shall see a green halo kind- 
 ling on the summit of the eastern hills, || brighter- 
 brighter yet, till the large white circle of the slow moon 
 is lifted up among the barred clouds,! step by step, line 
 by line ; star after star she quenches with her kindling 
 light, setting in their stead an army of pale, penetrable, 
 
 * Vignette of the Andes. 
 
 f St. Michael’s Mount — England series. 
 
 X Illustration to the Antiquary. Goldeau, a recent drawing of the 
 highest order. 
 
 § Vignette to Campbell’s Last Man. 
 
 | Caerlaverock. 
 
 If St. Denis. 
 
388 
 
 OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS. 
 
 fleecy wreaths in the heaven, to give light upon the 
 earth, which move together, hand in hand, company by 
 company, troop by troop, so measured in their unity of 
 motion, that the whole heaven seems to roll with them, 
 and the earth to reel under them. Ask Claude, or his 
 § 38. And sunrise brethren, for that. And then wait yet for 
 on the Alps. one j 10urj until the east again becomes 
 purple,* and the heaving mountains, rolling against it in 
 darkness, like waves of a wild sea, are drowned one by 
 one in the glory of its burning ; w T atch the white glaciers 
 blaze in their winding paths about the mountains, like 
 mighty serpents with scales of fire ; watch the columnar 
 peaks of solitary snow, kindling downwards, chasm by 
 chasm, each in itself a new morning; their long ava- 
 lanches cast down in keen streams brighter than the 
 lightning, sending each his tribute of driven snow, like 
 altar-smoke, up to the heaven ; the rose-light of their 
 silent domes flushing that heaven about them and above 
 them, piercing with purer light through its purple lines 
 of lifted cloud, casting a new glory on every wreath as 
 it passes by, until the whole heaven — one scarlet canopy, 
 — is interwoven with a roof of waving flame, and tossing, 
 vault beyond vault, as with the drifted wings of many 
 companies of angels; and then, when you can look no 
 more for gladness, and when you are bowed down with 
 fear and love of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me who 
 has best delivered this His message unto men ! 
 
 * Alps at Daybreak (Rogers’s Poems :) Delphi, and various vignettes. 
 
CHAPTER V, 
 
 EFFECTS OF LIGHT RENDERED BY MODERN ART. 
 
 I have before given my reasons (Sect. II. Chap. III.) 
 for not wishing at present to enter upon the discussion 
 of particular effects of light. Not only are we incapable 
 of rightly viewing them, or reasoning upon § R Reagong fop 
 them, until we are acquainted with the mere^, &t present^ 
 principles of the beautiful; but, as I dis- examining the 
 
 r * . . . , particular effects 
 
 tinctly limited myseli, m the present por- of light rendered 
 tion of the work, to the examination of byTmner ‘ 
 general truths, it would be out of place to take cogni- 
 zance of the particular phases of light, even if it were 
 possible to do so, before we have some more definite 
 knowledge of the material objects which they illustrate. 
 I shall therefore, at present, merely set down a rough 
 catalogue of the effects of light at different hours of the 
 day, which Turner has represented : naming a picture or 
 two, as an example of each, which we will hereafter take 
 up one by one, and consider the physical science and the 
 feeling together. And I do this, in. the Hoes of the 
 hope that, in the meantime, some admirer author for assist- 
 ol the olcl masters will be kind enough to investigation of 
 select from the works of any one of them, 
 a series of examples of the same effects, and to give me 
 a reference to the pictures, so that I maybe able to com- 
 pare each with each ; for, as my limited knowledge of 
 the works of Claude or Poussin does not supply me with 
 the requisite variety of effect, I shall be grateful for 
 assistance. 
 
390 
 
 EFFECTS OF LIGHT 
 
 The following list, of course, does not name the hun- 
 dredth part of the effects of light given by Turner ; it 
 only names those which are distinctly and markedly 
 separate from each other, and representative each of an 
 entire class. Ten or twelve examples, often many more, 
 might be given of each; every one of which would dis- 
 play the effects of the same hour and light, modified 
 by different circumstances of weather, situation, and 
 character of objects subjected to them, and especially 
 by the management of the sky ; but it will be generally 
 sufficient for our purpose to examine thoroughly one 
 good example of each. 
 
 The prefixed letters express the direction of the light. 
 F. front light (the sun in the centre, or near the top of 
 the picture ;) L. lateral light, the sun out of the picture 
 on the right or left of the spectator; L. F. the light 
 partly lateral, partly fronting the spectator, as when he 
 is looking south, with the sun in the south-west ; L. B. 
 light partly lateral, partly behind the spectator, as when 
 he is looking north, with the sun in the south-west. 
 
 L. 
 
 F. 
 
 L. 
 
 F, 
 
 F. 
 
 F. 
 
 MORNING. 
 
 EFFECTS. 
 
 NAMES OF FICTURES. 
 
 An hour before sunrise in winter. 
 Violent storm, with rain, on the 
 sea. Light-houses seen through it. 
 
 An hour before sunrise. Serene sky, 
 with light clouds. Dawn in the 
 distance. 
 
 Ten minutes before sunrise. Violent 
 storm. Torchlight. 
 
 Sunrise. Sun only half above the 
 horizon. Clear sky, with light 
 cirri. 
 
 Sun just disengaged from horizon. 
 Misty, with light cirri. 
 
 Sun a quarter of an hour risen. Sky 
 covered with scarlet clouds. 
 
 Lowestoffe, Suffolk. 
 
 Vignette to Voyage of 
 Columbus. 
 
 Fowey Harbor. 
 
 Vignette to Human Life. 
 
 Alps at Daybreak. 
 
 Castle Upnor. 
 
RENDERED BY MODERN ART. 
 
 391 
 
 EFFECTS. 
 
 L.F... Serene sky. Sun emerging from a 
 bank of cloud on horizon, a quar- 
 ter of an hour risen. 
 
 L.F. ..Same hour. Light mists in flakes 
 on hillsides. Clear air. 
 
 L.F. . .Light flying rain-clouds gathering in 
 valleys. Same hour. 
 
 L.B. ..Same hour. A night storm rising 
 off the mountains. Dead calm. 
 
 L. ....Sun half an hour risen. Cloudless 
 sky. 
 
 L Same hour. Light mists lying in the 
 
 valleys. 
 
 F Same hour. Bright cirri. Sun dimly 
 
 seen through battle smoke, with 
 conflagration. 
 
 L Sun an hour risen. Cloudless and 
 
 clear. 
 
 NAMES OF PICTURES. 
 
 Orford, Suffolk. 
 
 Skiddaw. 
 
 Oakhampton. 
 
 Lake of Geneva. 
 Beaugency. 
 
 Kirby Lonsdale. 
 Hohenlinden. 
 
 Buckfastleigli. 
 
 NOON AND AFTERNOON. 
 
 L.B. . .Midday. Dead calm, with heat. [ Corinth. 
 
 Cloudless. 
 
 L Same hour. Serene and bright, with 
 
 streaky clouds. 
 
 L. . . . .Same hour. Serene, with multitudes 
 of the high cirrus. 
 
 L Bright sun, with light wind and 
 
 clouds. 
 
 F Two o’clock. Clouds gathering for 
 
 rain, with heat. 
 
 F Rain beginning with light clouds and 
 
 wind. 
 
 L Soft rain, with heat. 
 
 L.F. . . Great heat. Thunder gathering. 
 
 L Thunder breaking down, after in- 
 
 tense heat, with furious wind. 
 
 L Violent rain and wind, but cool. 
 
 L.F. . .Furious storm, with thunder. 
 
 i Lantern at St. Cloud. 
 
 I Shylock, and other 'Yen- 
 ices'-. 
 
 | Richmond, Middlesex. 
 Warwick. Blenheim. 
 Piacenza. 
 
 Caldron Snout Fall. 
 Malvern. 
 
 AVinchelsea. 
 
 ! Llamberis, Coventry, Ac. 
 Stonehenge, Poes turn, Ac. 
 
 L.B. .Thunder retiring, with 
 Dead calm, with heat. 
 
 rainbow. 
 
 Nottingham. 
 
 1 
 
392 
 
 EFFECTS OF LIGHT 
 
 EFFECTS. 
 
 L.... About three o’clock, summer. Air 
 very cool and clear. Exhausted 
 thunder-clouds low on hills. 
 
 F Descending sunbeams through soft 
 
 clouds, after rain. 
 
 L Afternoon, very clear, after rain. A 
 
 few clouds still on horizon. Dead 
 calm. 
 
 F Afternoon of cloudless day, with 
 
 heat. 
 
 I NAMES OF PICTURES. 
 
 Bingen. 
 
 Carew Castle. 
 Saltash. 
 
 Mercury and Argus. 
 Oberwesel. Nemi. 
 
 EVENING. 
 
 L An hour before sunset. Cloudless. 
 
 F Half an hour before sunset. Light 
 
 clouds. Misty air. 
 
 F Within a quarter of an hour of sun- 
 
 set. Mists rising. Light cirri. 
 
 L.F. .Ten minutes before sunset. Quite 
 cloudless. 
 
 F Same hour. Tumultuous spray of 
 
 illumined rain-cloud. 
 
 F. ....Five minutes before sunset. Sky 
 covered with illumined cirri. 
 
 L.B. ..Same hour. Serene sky. Full 
 moon rising. 
 
 F Sun setting. Detached light cirri 
 
 and clear air. 
 
 L Same hour. Cloudless. New moon. 
 
 L.F. ..Same hour. Heavy storm clouds. 
 Moonrise. 
 
 L.B. ..Sun just set. Sky covered with 
 clouds. New moon setting. 
 
 L.B. ..Sun five minutes set. Strong twi- 
 light, with storm clouds. Full 
 moonrise. 
 
 L.B... Same hour. Serene, with light 
 clouds. 
 
 L.B. . .Same hour. Serene. New moon. 
 
 L.B. . . Sun a quarter of an hour set. Cloud- 
 less. 
 
 Trematon Castle. 
 
 Lake Albano. Florence. 
 
 Dater Hora Quieti. 
 
 Durham. 
 
 Solomon’s Pools. Slave- 
 ship. 
 
 Temeraire. Napoleon. 
 
 Various vignettes. 
 Kenilworth. 
 
 Amboise. 
 
 Troyes. 
 
 First vignette. Pleas- 
 ures of Memory. 
 Caudebec. 
 
 Wilderness of Engedi. 
 Assos. 
 
 Montjan. 
 
 Pyramid of Caius Ces- 
 tius. 
 
 Chateau de Blois. 
 
RENDERED BY MODERN ART . 
 
 393 
 
 EFFECTS. 
 
 L.F. . .Sun half an hour set. Light cirri. 
 
 F Same hour. Dead calm at sea. New 
 
 moon and evening star. 
 
 F.....Sun three-quarters of an hour set. 
 Moon struggling through storm 
 clouds, over heavy sea. 
 
 NIGHT. 
 
 F An hour after sunset. No moon. 
 
 Torchlight. 
 
 F Same hour. Moon rising. Fire 
 
 from furnaces. 
 
 L.F. . . Same hour, with storm clouds. Moon 
 rising. 
 
 L Same hour, with light of rockets and 
 
 tire. 
 
 F Midnight. Moonless, with light- 
 
 houses. 
 
 Same hour, with fire-light. 
 
 F. Ditto. Full moon. Clear air, with 
 
 delicate clouds. Light-houses. 
 
 F Ditto, with conflagration, battle 
 
 smoke, and storm. 
 
 F Ditto. Moonlight through mist. 
 
 Buildings illuminated in interior. | 
 
 F Ditto. Full moon with halo. Light i 
 
 rain-clouds. 
 
 F Full moon. Perfectly serene. Sky 
 
 covered with white cirri. 
 
 NAMES OF PICTURES. 
 
 Clairmont. 
 
 Cowes. 
 
 Folkestone. 
 
 St. Julien. Tours. 
 Dudley. 
 
 Nantes. 
 
 Juliet and her Nurse. 
 Calais. 
 
 Burning of Parliament 
 Houses. 
 
 Towers of the Heve. 
 Waterloo. 
 
 Vignette, St. Herbert’s 
 Isle. 
 
 St. Denis. 
 
 Alnwick. Vignette of Ri- 
 alto, & Bridge of Sighs, 
 

 
 
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RESEARCH institute 
 
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