UNIVERSITEITSBIBLIOTHEEK UTRECHT

3576 1604

If, having walked with Nature,
And offered, far as frailty would allow,
My heart a dally sacrifice to Truth,
I now afftim of Nature and of Truth,
Whom I have served, that their- Divinity
Revolts, offended at the ways of men,
Philosophers, who, though the human soul
Be of a thousand faculties composed.
And twice ten thousand interests, do yet prize
This soul, and the transcendent universe.
No more than as a mirror that reflects
To proud Self-love her own intelligence."

I WAS in hopes that this volume might have gone its
way without preface; but as I look over the sheets, I
find in them various fallings short of old purposes which
require a word of explanation.

Of which shortcomings, the chief is the want of refer-
ence to the landscape of the Poussins and Salvator; my
original intention having been to give various examples
of their mountain-drawing, that it might be compared
with Turner's. But the ten years intervening between
the commencement of this work and its continuation have
taught me, among other things, that Life is shorter and
less availably divisible than I had supposed : and I
think now that its hours may be better employed than
in making facsimiles of bad work. It would have re-
quired the greatest care, and prolonged labour, to give
uncaricatured representations of Salvator's painting, or
of any other work depending on the free dashes of the

brush, so as neither to mend nor mar it. Perhaps in
the next volume I may give one or two examples asso-
ciated with vegetation; but in general, I shall be content
with directing the reader's attention to the facts in nature,
and in Turner ; leaving him to carry out for himself what-
ever comparisons he may judge expedient.

I am afraid, also, that disappointment may be felt
at not finding plates of more complete subject illustrating
these chapters on mountain beauty. But the analysis
into wliich I had to enter required the dissection of
drawings, rather than their complete presentation; while,
also, on the scale of any readable page, no effective pre-
sentation of large drawings could be given. Even my
vignette, the frontispiece to the third volume, is partly
spoiled by having too little white paper about it; and
the fiftieth plate, from Turner's Goldau, necessarily
omits, owing to its reduction, half the refinements of the
foreground. It is quite waste of time and cost to reduce
Turner's drawings at all; and I therefore consider these
volumes only as guides to them, hoping hereafter to
illustrate some of the best on their own scale.

Several of the plates appear, in their present position,
nearly unnecessary; 14. and 15., for instance, in Vol. III.
These are illustrations of the chapters on the Firmament
in the fifth volume; but I should have had the plates

disproportionately crowded at last, if I had put all that it
needed in that volume ; and as these two bear somewhat
on various mattors spoken of in the third, I placed them
where they are first alluded to. The frontispiece has
chief reference to the same chapters; but seemed in its
three divisions, properly introductory to our whole sub-
ject. It is a simple sketch from nature, taken at sunset
from the hills near Como, some two miles up the eastern
side of the lake, and about a thousand feet above it,
looking towards Lugano. The sky is a little too heavy
for the advantage of the landscape below ; but I am not
answerable for the sky. It was there.^

In the multitudinous letterings and references of this
volume there may possibly be one or two awkward errata ;
but not so many as to make it necessary to delay the
volume while I look it over again in search of them. The
reader will perhaps be kind enough to note at once that
in page 184., at the fourth line from the bottom of the
text, the words " general truth " refer to the angle-
measurements, not to the diagrams; which latter are given
merely for reference, .and might cause some embarrass-
ment if the statement of measured accuracy were sup-
posed to refer to them.

' PersoES unacqnainted with hill sceuery are apt to forgot that the sky of the
mountains is often close to the spectator. A black thundercloud may literally be
dashing itself in his face, while the blue hills seen through its rents may be thirty
miles away. Generally speaking, we do not enough understand the nearness of manj
clouds, even in le^'fil countries, as compared with the land horizon. See also the close
of § 12. in Chap. III. of this volume.

Vll

Vlll

One or two graver misapprehensions I had it in my
mind to warn the reader against; but on the whole, as I
have honestly tried to make the book intelligible, I believe
it will be found inteUigible by any one who thinks it worth
a careful reading; and every day convinces me more and
more that no warnings can preserve from misunderstanding,
those who have no desire to understand.

XIV. Resulting Forms :—First, Aiguilles . . . 177
XV. Resulting FormsSecondly, Crests . . .200

XVI. Resulting Forms :—Thirdly, Precipices . . 234
XVII. Resulting FormsFourthly, Banks . . .269
XVIII. Resulting Forms:—Fifthly, Stones ... 808

395
400
408

§ 1. The work which we proposed to ourselves, towards the close of the
last volume, as first to be undertaken in this, was the examina-
tion of those peculiarities of system in which Turner either stood
alone, even in the modern school, or was a distinguished repre-
sentative of modern, as opposed to ancient, practice.

And the most interesting of these subjects of inquiry, with
which, therefore, it may be best to begin, is the precise form under
which he has admitted into his work the modern feeling of the
picturesque, which, so far as it consists in a delight in ruin, is
perhaps the most suspicious and questionable of all the characters
distinctively belonging to our temper, and art.

It is especially so, because it never appears, even in the slightest
measure, until the days of the decline of art in the seventeenth
century. The love of neatness and precision, as opposed to all
disorder, maintains itself down to Eaphael's childhood without the
slightest interference of any other feeling; and it is not until
Claude's time, and owing in great part to his influence, that the
new feeling distinctly establishes itself.

Plate 18. shows the kind of modification which Claude used
to make on the towers and backgrounds of Ghirlandajo; the
old Florentine giving his idea of Pisa, with its leaning tower,
with the utmost neatness and precision, and handsome youths
riding over neat bridges on beautiful horses; Claude reducing
the delicate towers and walls to unintelligible ruin, the well built
bridge to a rugged stone one, the handsome rider to a weary-
traveller, and the perfectly drawn leafage to confusion of copse-
wood or forest.^

How far he was right in doing this; or how far the moderns
are right in carrying the principle to greater excess, and seeking
always for poverty-stricken rusticity or pensive ruin, we must now
endeavour to ascertain.

The essence of picturesque character has been already defined*^
to be a sublimity not inherent in the nature of the thing, but
caused by something external to it; as the ruggedness of a cot-
tage roof possesses something of a mountain aspect, not belonging
to the cottage as such. And this sublimity may be either in
mere external ruggedness, and other visible character, or it may
lie deeper, in an expression of sorrow and old age, attributes
which are both sublime; not a dominant expression, but one
mingled with such familiar and common characters as prevent the
object from becoming perfectly pathetic in its sorrow, or perfectly
venerable in its age.

§ 2. For instance, I cannot find words to express the intense
pleasure I have always in first finding myself, after some pro-
longed stay in England, at the foot of the old tower of Calais
church. The large neglect, the noble unsightliness of it; the
record of its years written so visibly, yet without sign of weak-
ness or decay; its stern wasteness and gloom, eaten away by the
Channel winds, and overgrown with the bitter sea grasses; its
slates and tiles all shaken and rent, and yet not falling; its

' Ghirlandajo is seen to the greatest possible disadvantage in this plate, as I ha^'e
been forced again to copy from Lasinio, who leaves out all the light and shade, and
vulgarizes every form ; but the points requiring notice here are sufficiently shown, and
I will do Ghirlandajo more justice hereafter.

CHAP. I.

desert of brickwork full of bolts, and holes, and ugly fissures,
and 3'et strong, like a bare brown rock; its carelessness of what
any one thinks or feels about it, putting forth no claim, having
no beauty nor desirableness, pride, nor grace ; yet neither asking
for pity; not, as ruins are, useless and piteous, feebly or fondly
garrulous of better days; but useful still, going through its own
daily work,—as some old fisherman beaten grey by storm, yet
drawing his daily nets : so it stands, with no complaint about
its past youth, in blanched and meagre massiveness and service-
bleness, gathering human souls together underneath it; the sound
of its bells for prayer still rolling through its rents; and the
grey peak of it seen far across the sea, principal of the three
that rise above the waste of surfy sand and hillocked shore,—the
lighthouse for life, and the belfry for labour, and this for patience
and praise.

I cannot tell the half of the strange pleasures and thoughts
that come about me at the sight of that old tower; for, in
some sort, it is the epitome of all that makes the Continent of
Europe interesting, as opposed to new countries; and, above all,
it completely expresses that agedness in the midst of active life
which binds the old and tlie new into harmony. We, in England,
have our new street, our new inn, our green shaven lawn, and our
piece of ruin emergent from it,—a mere specimen of the middle
ages put on a bit of velvet carpet to be shown, which, but for
its size, might as well be on a museum shelf at once, under cover.
J3ut, on the Continent, the links are unbroken between the past
and present, and in such use as they can serve for, the grey-
headed wrecks are suffered to stay with men ; while, in unbroken
line, the generations of spared buildings are seen succeeding each
in its place. And thus in its largeness, in its permitted evidence
of slov/ decline, in its poverty, in its absence of all pretence, of
all show and care for outside aspect, that Calais tower has an
infinite of symbolism in it, all the more striking because usually
seen in contrast with English scenes expressive of feelings the
exact reverse of these.

§ 4. And I am sorry to say that the opposition is most distinct in
that noble carelessness as to what people think of it. Once, on

■

coming from the Cojitinent, almost the first inscription I saw in
m}^ native English was this :

And it struck me forcibly, for I had not come across the idea
of gentility, among the upper limestones of the Alps, for seven
months ; nor do I think that the Continental nations in general
have the idea. They would have advertised a ''pretty " house, or
a "large" one, or a "convenient" one; but they could not, by
any use of the terms afforded by their several languages, have got
at the English " genteel." Consider, a little, all the meanness
that there is in that epithet, and then see, when next you cross
the Channel, how scornful of it that Calais spire will look.

§ 5. Of which spire the largeness and age are also opposed exactly
to the chief appearances of modern England, as one feels them
on first returning to it; that marvellous smallness both of houses
and scenery, so that a ploughman in the valley has his head
on a level with the tops of all the hills in the neighbourhood ;
and a house is organized into complete establishment,— parlour,
kitchen, and all, with a knocker to its door, and a garret windoAv
to its roof, and a bow to its second story,^ on a scale of 12 feet
wide by 15 high, so that three such at least would go into the
granary of an ordinary Swiss cottage : and also our serenity of
perfection, our peace of conceit, everything being done that
vulgar minds can conceive as wanting to be done; the spirit
of Avell-principled housemaids everywhere, exerting itself for per-
petual propriety and renovation, so that nothing is old, but only
" old-fashioned," and contemporary, as it were, in date and impres-
siveness only Avith last year's bonnets. Abroad, a building of
the eighth or tenth century stands ruinous in the open street;
the children play round it, the peasants heap their corn in it,
the buildings of yesterday nestle about it, and fit their new
stones into its rents, and tremble in sympathy as it trembles.
No one wonders at it, or thinks of it as separate, and of another
time; we feel the ancient world to be a real thing, and one with

' The principal street of Canterbury has some curious examples of this tininess.

■

. I

■■ t

the new: antiquity is no dream ; it is rather the children playing
about the old stones that are the dream. But all is continuous ;
and the words, " from generation to generation," understandable
there. Whereas here we have a living present, consisting merely
of what is "fashionable" and "old-fashioned;" and a past, of
which there are no vestiges; a past which peasant or citizen can
no more conceive; all equally far away; Queen Elizabeth as old
as Queen Boadicea, and both incredible. At Verona we look out
of Can Grande's window to his tomb; and if he does not stand
beside us, we feel only that he is in the grave instead of the
chamber,—not that he is old, but that he might have been beside
us last night. But in England the dead are dead to purpose.
One cannot believe they ever were alive, or anything else than
what they are now—names in school-books.

§ 6. Then that spirit of trimness. The smooth paving stones ; the
scraped, hard, even, ruthless roads; the neat gates and plates, and
essence of border and order, and spikiness and spruceness.
Abroad, a country-house has some confession of human weakness
and human fates about it. There are the old grand gates still,
which the mob pressed sore against at the Kevolution, and the
strained hinges have never gone so well since ; and the broken
greyhound on the pillar—still broken—better so : but the long
avenue is gracefully pale with fresh green, and the courtyard
bright with orange-trees ; the garden is a little run to waste—
since Mademoiselle was married nobody cares much about it; and
one range of apartments is shut up—nobody goes into them since
Madame died. But with us, let who will be married or die, we
neglect nothing. All is polished and precise again ne^Lt morning ;
and whether people are happy or miserable, poor or prosperous,
still we sweep the stairs of a Saturday.'

§ Now, I have insisted long on this English character, because I
want the reader to understand thoroughly the opposite element
of the noble picturesque; its expression, namely, of svffering, of
poverty, or decay, nobly endured by unpretending strength of

' This, however, is of course true only of insignificant duties, necessary for
api>ciirance' sake. Serious duties, necessary for kindness' sake, must be pretermitted
in any domestic affliction, under pain of shocking the English public.

heart. Nor only unpretending, but unconscious. If there he
visible pensiveness in the building, as in a ruined abbey, it
becomes, or claims to become, beautiful; but the picturesqueness
is in the unconscious suffering,—the look that an old labourer
has, not knowing that there is anything pathetic in his grey hair,
and withered arms, and sunburnt breast; and thus there are
the two extremes, the consciousness of pathos in the confessed
ruin, which may or may not be beautiful, according to the kind of
it; and the entire denial of all human calamity and care, in the
swept proprieties and neatnesses of English modernism: and,
between these, there is the unconscious confession of the facts of
distress and decay, in by-words; the world's hard work being
gone through all the while, and no pity asked for, nor contempt
feared. And this is the expression of that Calais spire, and of
all picturesque things, in so far as they have mental or human
expression at all.

§ 8. I say, in so far as they have mental expression, because their
merely outward delightfulness—that which makes them pleasant
in painting, or, in the literal sense, picturesque—is their actual
variety of colour and form. A broken stone has necessarily
more various forms in it than a whole one ; a bent roof has more
various curves in it than a straight one; every excrescence or
cleft involves some additional complexity of light and shade, and
every stain of moss on eaves or wall adds to the delightfulness of
colour. Hence, in a completely picturesque object, as an old
cottage or mill, there are introduced, by various circumstances
not essential to it, but, on the whole, generally somewhat detri-
mental to it as cottage or mill, such elements of sublimity—
complex light and shade, varied colour, undulatory form, and so on
—as can generally be found only in noble natural objects, woods,
rocks, or mountains. This sublimity, belonging in a parasitical
manner to the building, renders it, in the usual sense of the
word, " picturesque."

§ 9. Now, if this outward sublimity be sought for by the painter,
without any regard for the real nature of the thing, and without
any comprehension of the pathos of character hidden beneath, it
forms the low school of the surface-picturesque; that which fills

ordinary drawing-books and scrap-books, and employs, perhaps,
the most popular living landscape painters of France, England,
and Germany. But if these same outward characters be sought for
in subordination to the inner character of the object, every source
of pleasurableness being refused which is incompatible with that,
while perfect sympathy is felt at the same time with the object
as to all that it tells of itself in those sorrowful by-words, we
have the school of true or noble picturesque; still distinguished
from the school of pure beauty and sublimity, because, in its
subjects, the pathos and sublimity are all hy the way, as in
Calais old spire,—not inherent, as in a lovely tree or mountain ;
while it is distinguished still more from the schools of the lower
picturesque by its tender sympathy, and its refusal of all sources
of pleasure inconsistent with the perfect nature of the thing to be
studied.

§ 10. The reader will only be convinced of the broad scope of this
law by careful thought, and comparison of picture with picture;
but a single example will make the principle of it clear to him.

On the whole, the first master of the lower picturesque, among
our living artists, is Clarkson Stanfield; his range of art being,
indeed, limited by his pursuit of this character. I take, there-
fore, a windmill, forming the principal subject in his drawing of
Brittany, near Dol (engraved in the Coast Scenery), Fig. 1.
Plate 19., and beside it I place a windmill, which forms also the
principal subject in Turner's study of the Lock, in the Liber
Studiorum. At first sight I dare say the reader may like Stan-
lield's best; and there is, indeed, a great deal more in it to
attract liking. Its roof is nearly as interesting in its ruggedness
as a piece of the stony peak of a mountain, with a chalet built
on its side; and it is exquisitely varied in swell and curve.
Turner's roof, on the contrary, is a plain, ugly gable,—a wind-
mill roof, and nothing more. Stanj&eld's sails are twisted into
most effective wrecks, as beautiful as pine bridges over Alpine
streams; only they do not look as if they had ever been service-
able windmill sails: they are bent about in cross and awkward
ways, as if they were wai-ped or cramped; and their timbers
look heavier than necessary. Turner's sails have no beauty

about them like that of Alpine bridges ; but they have the
exact switchy sway of the sail that is always straining against
the wind ; and the timbers form clearly the lightest possible
framework for the canvass,—thus showing the essence of wind-
mill sail. Then the clay wall of Stanfield's mill is as beautiful
as a piece of chalk cliif, all worn into furrows by the rain, coated
with mosses, and rooted to the ground by a heap of crumbled
stone, embroidered with grass and creeping plants. But this is
not a serviceable state for a windmill to be in. The essence of a
windmill, as distinguished from all other mills, is, that it should
turn round, and be a spinning thing, ready always to face the
wind; as light, therefore, as possible, and as vibratory; so that it
is in no wise good for it to approximate itself to the nature of
chalk cliffs.

Now observe how completely Turner has chosen his mill so as
to mark this great fact of windmill nature; how high be has set
it; how slenderly he has supported it; how he has built it all
of wood; how he has bent the lower planks so as to give the
idea of the building lapping over the pivot on which it rests
inside ; and how, finally, he has insisted on the great leverage
of the beam behind it, while Stanfield's lever looks more like a
prop than a thing to turn the roof with. And he has done all
this fearlessly, though none of these elements of form are pleasant
ones in themselves, but tend, on the whole, to give a somewhat
mean and spider-like look to the principal feature in his picture;
and then, finally, because he could not get the windmill dissected,
and show us the real heart and centre of the whole, behold, he
has put a pair of old millstones, lying outside, at the bottom of it.
These—the first cause and motive of all the fabric—laid at its
foundation; and beside them the cart Avhich is to fulfil the end of
the fabric's being, and take home the sacks of flour.

§ 11, So far of what each painter chooses to draw. But do not fail
also to consider the spirit in which it is drawn. Observe, that
though all this ruin has befallen Stanfield's mill, Stanfield is not
in the least sorry for it. On the contrary, he is delighted, and
evidently thinks it the most fortunate thing possible. The owner
is ruined, doubtless, or dead; but his mill forms an admirable

object in our view of Brittany. So far from being grieved about
it, we will make it our principal lightif it were a fruit-tree in
spring-blossom, instead of a desolate mill, we could not make it
whiter or brighter; we illumine our whole picture with it, and
exult over its every rent as a special treasure and possession.

Not so Turner. His mill is still serviceable ; but, for all that,
he feels somewhat pensive about it. It is a poor property, and
evidently the owner of it has enough to do to get his own bread
out from between its stones. Moreover, there is a dim type of
all melancholy human labour in it,—catching the free winds, and
setting them to turn grindstones. It is poor work for the winds ;
better, indeed, than drowning sailors or tearing down forests, but
not their proper work of marshalling the clouds, and bearing the
wholesome rains to the place where they are ordered to fall, and
fanning the flowers and leaves when they are faint with heat.
Turning round a couple of stones, for the mere pulverization of
human food, is not noble work for the winds. So, also, of all
low labour to which one sets human souls. It is better than no
labour; and, in a still higher degree, better than destructive
wandering of imagination ; but yet, that grinding in the darkness,
for mere food's sake, must be melancholy work enough for many
a living creature. All men have felt it so ; and this grinding at
the mill, whether it be breeze or soul that is set to it, we cannot
much rejoice in. Turner has no joy of his mill. It shall be
dark against the sky, yet proud, and on the hill-top ; not ashamed
of its labour, and brightened from beyond, the golden clouds
stooping over it, and the calm summer sun going down behind,
far away, to his rest.

§ 12. Now in all this observe how the higher condition of art (for I
suppose the reader will feel, with me, that Turner is the highest)
depends upon largeness of sympathy. It is mainly because the
one painter has communion of heart with his subject, and the
other only casts his eyes upon it feelinglessly, that the work of the
one is greater than that of the other. And, as we think farther
over the matter, we shall see that this is indeed the eminent cause
of the difference between the lower picturesque and the higher.
For, in a certain sense, the lower picturesque ideal is eminently a

heartless one : the lover of it seems to go forth into the world in
a temper as merciless as its rocks. All other men feel some regret
at the sight of disorder and ruin. He alone delights in both ;
it matters not of what. Fallen cottage—desolate villa—deserted
village—blasted heath—mouldering castle—to him, so that they
do but show jagged angles of stone and timber, all are sights
equally joyful. Poverty, and darkness, and guilt, bring in their
several contributions to his treasury of pleasant thoughts. The
shattered window, opening into black and ghastly rents of wall,
the foul rag or straw wisp stopping them, the dangerous roof,
decrepit floor and stair, ragged misery or wasting age of the
inhabitants,—all these conduce, each in due measure, to the fulness
of his satisfaction. What is it to him that the old man has passed
his seventy years in helpless darkness and untaught waste of soul ?
The old man has at last accomplished his destiny, and filled the
corner of a sketch, where something of an unshapely nature was
wanting. What is it to him that the people festei in that feverish
misery in the low quarter of the town, by the river ? Nay, it is
much to him. What else were they made for ? what could they
have done better ? The black timbers, and the green water, and
the soaking wrecks of boats, and the torn remnants of clothes
hung out to dry in the sun ;—truly the fever-struck creatures,
Avhose lives have been given for the production of these materials
of effect, have not died in vain.^

' I extract from my private diary a passage bearing somewhat on the matter in
hand :—

" Amiens, 11th May, 18—. I had a happy walk here this afternoon, down among
the branching currents of the Somme ; it divides into five or six,—shallow, green, and
not over-wliolesome ; some quite narrow and foul, running beneath clusters of fearful
houses, reeling masses of rotten timber; and a few mere stumps of pollard willow
sticking out of the banks of soft mud, only retained in shape of bank by being shored
up with timbers ; and boats like paper boats, nearly as thin at least, for the coster-
mongers to paddle about in among the weeds, the water soaking through the lath
bottoms, and floating the dead leaves from the vegetable-baskets with which they
were loaded. Miserable little back yards, opening to the water, with steep stone
steps down to it, and little platforms for the ducks ; and separate duck stau'cases,
composed of a sloping board with cross bits of wood leading to the ducks' doors ; and
sometimes a flower-pot or two on them, or even a flower,—one group, of wallflowers
and geraniums, curiously vivid, being seen against the darkness of a dyer's back
yard, who had been dying black all day, and all was black in his yard but the

§ 13. Yet, for all this, I do not say the lover of the lower picturesque
is a monster in human form. He is by no means this, though
truly we might at first think so, if we came across him unawares,
and had not met with any such sort of person before. Generally
speaking, he is kind-hearted, innocent of evil, but not broad in
thought; somewhat selfish, and incapable of acute sympathy with
others; gifted at the same time with strong artistic instincts and
capacities for the enjoyment of varied form, and light, and shade,
in pursuit of which enjoyment his life is passed, as the lives of
other men are, for the most part, in the pursuit of what they
also like,—be it honour, or money, or indolent pleasure,—very
irrespective of the poor people living by the stagnant canal.
And, in some sort, the hunter of the picturesque is better than
many of these; inasmuch as he is simple-minded and capable of
unostentatious and economical delights, which, if not very helpful
to other people, are at all events utterly uninjurious, even to the
victims or subjects of his picturesque fancies; while to many
others his work is entertaining and useful. And, more than all
this, even that delight which he seems to take in misery is not
altogether unvirtuous. Through all his enjoyment there runs a
certain undercurrent of tragical passion,—a real vein of human
sympathy;—it lies at the root of all those strange morbid haunt-
ings of his; a sad excitement, such as other people feel at a tra-
gedy, only less in degree, just enough, indeed, to give a deeper tone
to his pleasure, and to make him choose for his subject the broken
stones of a cottage wall rather than of a roadside bank, the
picturesque beauty of form in each being supposed precisely the
same : and, together with this slight tragical feeling, there is also

flowers, and they fiery and pure ; the water by no means so, but still working its Avay
steadily over the weeds, until it narrowed into a current strong enough to turn two
or three mill-wheels, one working against the side of an old flamboyant Gothic
church, whose richly ti-aceried buttresses sloped into the filthy stream ;—all exqui-
sitely picturesque, and no less miserable. We delight in seeing the figures in these
boats pushing them about the bits of blue water, in Trout's drawings; but as I looked
to-day at the unhealthy face and melancholy mien of the man in the boat pushing his
load of peats along the ditch, and ot the people, men as well as women, who sat spin-
ning gloomily at the cottage doors, I could not help feeling how many suffering
persons must pay for my picturesque subject and happy walk."

a bumble and romantic sympathy; a vague desire, in bis own
mind, to live in cottages rather tban in palaces; a joy in bumble
things, a contentment and delight in makeshifts, a secret per-
suasion (in many respects , a true one) that there is in these
ruined cottages a happiness often quite as great as in kings'
palaces, and a virtue and nearness to God infinitely greater and
holier than can commonly be found in any other kind of place ; so
that the misery in which he exults is not, as he sees it, misery, but
nobleness,—"poor, and sick in body, and beloved by the Grods." ^
And thus, being nowise sure that these things can be mended at
all, and very sure that he knows not how to mend them, and also
that the strange pleasure he feels in them must ho.ve some good
reason in the nature of things, he yields to his destiny, enjoys
his dark canal without scruple, and mourns over every improve-
ment in the town, and every movement made by its sanitary
commissioners, as a miser would over a planned robbery of his
chest; in all this being not only innocent, but even respectable and
admirable, compared with the kind of person who has no pleasure
in sights of this kind, but only in fair fagades, trim gardens, and
park palings, and who would thrust all poverty and misery out of
his way, collecting it into back alleys, or sweeping it finally out
of the world, so that the street might give wider play for his
chariot wheels, and the breeze less offence to his nobility.

§ 14. Therefore, even the love for the lower picturesque ought to be
cultivated with care, wherever it exists ; not with any special view
to artistic, but to merely humane, education. It will never really
or seriously interfere with practical benevolence ; on the contrary,
it will constantly lead, if associated with other benevolent prin-
ciples, to a truer sympathy with the poor, and better understanding
of the right ways of helping them; and, in the present stage of
civilization, it is the most important element of character, not
directly moral, which can be cultivated in youth; since it is mainly
for the want of this feeling that we destroy so many ancient monu-
ments, in order to erect " handsome " streets and shops instead,
which might just as well have been erected elsewhere, and whose

effect on our minds, so far as they have any, is to increase every
disposition to frivolity, expense, and display.

These, and such other considerations not directly connected
with our subject, I shall, perhaps, be able to press farther at
the close of my work; meantime, we return to the immediate
question, of the distinction between the lower and higher pic-
turesque, and the artists who pursue them.

§ IT). It is evident, from what has been advanced, that there is no
definite bar of separation between the two; but that the dignity
of the picturesque increases from lower to higher, in exact pro-
portion to the sympathy of the artist with his subject. And in
like manner, his own greatness depends (other things being equal)
on the extent of this sympathy. If he rest content with narrow
enjoyment of outward forms, and light sensation of luxurious
tragedy, and so goes on multiplying his sketches of mere pic-
turesque material, he necessarily settles down into the ordinary
"clever" artist, very good and respectable, maintaining himself
by his sketching and painting in an honourable way, as by any
other daily business, and in due time passing away from the world
without having, on the whole, done much for it. Such has been
the necessary, not very lamentable, destiny of a large number of
men in these days, whose gifts urged them to the practice of art,
but who possessing no breadth of mind, nor having met with
masters capable of concentrating what gifts they had towards
nobler use, almost perforce remained in their small picturesque
cu'cle; getting more and more narrowed in range of sympathy
as they fell more and more into the habit of contemplating the
one particular class of subjects that pleased them, and recomposing
them by rules of art.

I need not give instances of this class, we have very few
painters who belong to any other; I only pause for a moment to
except from it a man too often confounded with the draughtsmen
of the lower picturesque;—a very great man, who, though partly
by chance, and partly by choice, limited in range of subject, pos-
sessed for that subject the profoundest and noblest sympathy,—-
Samuel Prout. His renderings of the character of old buildings,
such as that spire of Calais, are as perfect and as heartfelt as I

can conceive possible; nor do I suppose that any one else will
ever hereafter equal them.^ His early works show that he pos-
sessed a grasp of mind which could have entered into almost any
kind of landscape subject; that it was only chance—I do not know
if altogether evil chance—which fettered him to stones; and that
in reality he is to be numbered among the true masters of the
nobler picturesque.

§ 16. Of these, also, the ranks rise in worthiness, according to their
sympathy. In the noblest of them, that sympathy seems quite
unlimited; they enter with their whole heart into all nature;
their love of grace and beauty keeps them from delighting too
much in shattered stones and stunted trees, their kindness and
compassion from dwelling by choice on any kind of misery,
their perfect humility from avoiding simplicity of subject when it
comes in their way, and their grasp of the highest thoughts
from seeking a lower sublimity in cottage walls and penthouse
roofs. And, whether it be home of English village thatched
with straw and walled with clay, or of Italian city vaulted with
gold and roofed with marble ; whether it be stagnant stream under
ragged willow, or glancing fountain between arcades of laurel,
all to them will bring equal power of happiness, and equal field
for thought.

§ 17. Turner is the only artist who hitherto has furnished the entire
type of this perfection. The attainment of it in all respects is, of
course, impossible to man; but the complete type of such a mind
has once been seen in him, and, I think, existed also in Tintoret;
though, as far as I know, Tintoret has not left any work which
indicates sympathy with the humour of the world. Paul Veronese,
on the other hand, had sympathy with its humour, but not with
its deepest tragedy or horror. Rubens wants the feeling for gi-ace
and mystery. And so, as we pass through the list of great
painters, we shall find in each of them some local narrowness.
Now, I do not, of course, mean to say that Turner has accom-
plished all to which his sympathy prompted him ; necessarily,

si <

= t ■

I believe when a thing is once ivell done in this world, it nevei' can be clone over

the very breadth of effort involved, in some directions, manifest
failure; but he has shown, in casual incidents, and byways, a
range of feeling which no other painter, as far as I know, can
equal. He cannot, for instance, draw children at play as well
as Mulready; but just glean out of his works the evidence of his
sympathy with children;—look at the girl putting her bonnet on
the dog, in the foreground of the Richmond, Yorkshire; the
juvenile tricks and "marine dabblers" of the Liber Studiorum;
the boys scrambling after their kites in the woods of the Greta
and Buckfastleigh; and the notable and most pathetic drawing of
the Kirkby Lonsdale churchyard, Avitli the schoolboys making a
fortress of their larger books on the tombstone, to bombard with
the more projectile volumes ; and passing from these to the
intense horror and pathos of the Rizpah, consider for yourself
whether there was ever any other painter who could strike such
an octave. Whether there has been or not, in other walks of art,
this power of sympathy is unquestionably in landscape unrivalled;
and it will be one of our pleasantest future tasks to analyze in his
various drawing the character it always gives ; a character, indeed,
more or less marked in all good work whatever, but to which, being
preeminent in him, I shall always hereafter give the name of the
" Turnerian Picturesque."

PAKT V.

^ 1. We saw, in the course of the last chapter, with what kind of
feehng an artist ought to regard the character of every object he
undertakes to paint. The next question is, what objects he ought
to undertake to paint; how far he should be influenced by his
feelings in the choice of subjects ; and how far he should permit
himself to alter, or, in the usual art language, improve, nature.
For it has already been stated (Vol. III. Chap. iii. § 21.), that
all great art must be inventive ; that is to say, its subject must
be produced by the imagination. If so, then great landscape art
cannot be a mere copy of any given scene; and we have now to
inquire what else than this it may be.

§ 2. If the reader will glance over that twenty-first, and the
following three paragraphs of the same chapter, he will see that
we there divided art generally into "historical" and "poetical,"
or the art of relating facts simply, and facts imaginatively. Now
with respect to landscape, the historical art is simple topography,
and the imaginative art is what I have in the heading of the
present chapter called Turnerian topography, and must in the
course of it endeavour to explain.

Observe, however, at the outset, that, touching the duty or
fitness of altering nature at all, the quarrels which have so
wofully divided the world of art are caused only by want of
understanding this simplest of all canons,—"It is always wrong
to draw what you don't see." This law is inviolable. But then,
some people see only things that exist, and others see things that
do not exist, or do not exist apparently. And if they really see

^ ■■ ■'4 T ■

s!'
h .

these non-apparent things, they are quite right to draw them ;
the only harm is when people try to draw non-apparent things,
who don't see them, but think they can calculate or compose into
existence what is to them for evermore invisible. If some people
really see angels where others see only empty space, let them
paint the angels; only let not anybody else think they can paint
an angel too, on any calculated principles of the angelic.

§ If, therefore, when we go to a place, we see nothing else
than is there, we are to paint nothing else, and to remain pure
topographical or historical landscape painters. If, going to the
place, we see something quite different from what is there, then
we are to paint that—nay, we must paint that, whether we will
or not; it being, for us, the only reality we can get at. But let
us beware of pretending to see this unreality if we do not.

The simple observance of this rule would put an end to nearly
all disputes, and keep a large number of men in healthy work,
who now totally waste their lives ; so that the most important
question that an artist can possibly have to determine for him-,
self, is whether he has invention or not. And this he can ascertain
with ease. If visions of unreal things present themselves to
him with or without his own will, praying to be painted, quite
ungovernable in their coming or going,—neither to be summoned
if they do not choose to come, nor banished if they do,—he has
invention. If, on the contrary, he only sees the commonly visible
facts ; and, should he not like them, and want to alter them, finds
that he must think of a rule whereby to do so, he has no inven-
tion. All the rules in the world will do him no good; and if
he tries to draw anything else than those materially visible facts,
he will pass his whole life in uselessness, and produce nothing but
scientific absurdities.

§ 4. Let him take his part at once, boldly, and be content. Pure
history and pure topography are most precious things ; in many
cases more useful to the human race than, high imaginative work ;
and assuredly it is intended that a large majority of all who are
employed in art should never aim at anything higher. It is only
vanity, never love, nor any other noble feeling, which prompts
men to desert their allegiance to the simple truth, in vain pursuit

of the imaginative truth which has been appointed to be for ever-
more sealed to them.

Nor let it be supposed that artists who possess minor degrees
of imaginative gift need be embarrassed by the doubtful sense
of their own powers. In general, when the imagination is at
all noble, it is irresistible, and therefore those who can at all
resist it ought to resist it. Be a plain topographer if you
possibly can; if Nature meant you to be anything else, she will
force you to it; but never try to be a prophet; go on quietly
with your hard camp-work, and the spirit will come to you in
the camp, as it did to Eldad and Medad, if you are appointed
to have it; but try above all things to be quickly perceptive of
the noble spirit in others, and to discern in an instant between its
true utterance. and the diseased mimicries of it. In a general
way, remember it is a far better thing to find out other great men,
than to become one yourself: for you can but become one at best,
but you may bring others to light in numbers.

§ 5. We have, therefore, to inquire what kind of changes these
are, which must be wrought by the imaginative painter on
landscape, and by whom they have been thus nobly wrought.
First, for the better comfort of the non-imaginative painter, be
it observed, that it is not possible to find a landscape, which
if painted precisely as it is, will not make an impressive picture.
No one Imows, till he has tried, what strange beauty and subtle
composition is prepared to his hand by Nature, wherever she
is left to herself; and what deep feeling may be found in many
of the most homely scenes, even where man has interfered
with those wild ways of hers. But, beyond this, let him note
that though historical topography forbids alteration, it neither
forbids sentiment nor choice. So far from doing this, the
proper choice of subject^ is an absolute duty to the topo-

' ObseiT-e, what was said in the second volume respecting the spirit of choice as
evil, refers only to young students, and to that choice which assumes that any common
subject is not good enough, nor interesting enough, to be studied. But, though all
is good for study, and all is beautiful, some is better than the rest for the help and
pleasure of others ; and this it is our duty always to choose, if we have opportunity,
being quite happy with what is Avithin our reach, if we have not.

graphical painter : he should first take care that it is a subject
intensely pleasing to himself, else he will never paint it well;
and then also, that it shall be one in some sort pleasurable to
the general public, else it is not worth painting at all; and
lastly, take care that it be instructive, as well as pleasurable
to the public, else it is not worth painting with care. I should
particularly insist at present on this careful choice of subject,
because the Pre-Raphaelites, taken as a body, have been culpably
negligent in this respect, not in humble respect to Nature,
but in morbid indulgence of their own impressions. They
happen to find their fancies caught by a bit of an oak hedge,
or the weeds at the side of a duck-pond, because, perhaps, they
remind them of a stanza of Tennyson; and forthwith they sit
down to sacrifice the most consummate skill, two or three months
of the best summer time available for out-door work (equivalent
to some seventieth or sixtieth of all their lives), and nearly
all their credit with the public, to this duck-pond delineation.
Now it is indeed quite right that they should see much to be
loved in the hedge, nor less in the ditch; but it is utterly
and inexcusably wrong that they should neglect the nobler
scenery which is full of majestic interest, or enchanted by
historical association; so that, as things go at present, we have
all the commonalty, that may be seen whenever we choose,
painted properly; but all of lovely and wonderful, which we
cannot see but at rare intervals, painted vilely: the castles of
the Ehine and Rhone made vignettes of for the annuals; and
the nettles and mushrooms, which were prepared by nature
eminently for nettle porridge and fish sauce, immortalized by art
as reverently as if we were Egyptians and they deities.
§ 6. Generally speaking, therefore, the duty of every painter at
present, who has not much invention, is to take subjects of which
the portraiture will be precious in after times: views of our
f abbeys and cathedrals; distant views of cities, if possible chosen

from some spot in itself notable by association; perfect studies
of the battle fields of Europe, of all houses of celebrated men,
and places they loved, and, of course, of the most lovely natural
scenery. And, in doing all this, it should be understood,

primarily, whether the picture is topographical or not: if topo-
graphical, then not a line is to be altered, not a stick nor
stone removed, not a colour deepened, not a form improved;
the picture is to be, as far as possible, the reflection of the
place in a mirror; and the artist to consider himself only as a
sensitive and skilful reflector, taking care that no false impression
is conveyed by any error on his part which he might have
avoided; so that it may be for ever afterwards in the power of
all men to lean on his work with absolute trust, and to say:
"So it was on such a day of June or July of such a year, such
a place looked like this : those weeds were growing there, so
tall and no taller; those stones were lying there, so many and
no more; that tower so rose against the sky, and that shadow so
slept upon the street."

§ 7. Nor let it be supposed that the doing of this would ever
become mechanical, or be found too easy, or exclude sentiment.
As for its being easy, those only think so who never tried it;
composition being, in fact, infinitely easier to a man who can
compose, than imitation of this high kind to even the most able
imitator; nor would it exclude sentiment, for, however sincerely
we may try to paint all we see, this cannot, as often aforesaid,
be ever done : all that is possible is a certain selection, and more
or less wilful assertion, of one fact in preference to another;
which selection ought always to be made under the influence
of sentiment. Nor will such topography involve an entire
submission to ugly accidents interfering with the impressiveness of
the scene. I hope, as art is better understood, that our painters
will get into the habit of accompanying all their works with a
written statement of their own reasons for painting them, and
the circumstances under which they were done ; and, if in this
written document they state the omissions they have made, they
may make as many as they think proper. For instance, it is not
possible now to obtain a view of the head of the Lake of Geneva
without including the " Hotel Biron "—an establishment looking
like a large cotton factory—just above the Castle of Chillon.
This building ought always to be omitted, and the reason for the
omission stated. So the beauty of the whole town of Lucerne, as

seen from the lake, is destroyed by the large new hotel for the
English, which ought, in lilce manner, to be ignored, and the
houses behind it drawn as if it were transparent.
§ 8. But if a painter has inventive power he is to treat his subject
f in a totally different way; giving not the actual facts of it, but

And now, once for all, let it be clearly understood, that an
^ " impression on the mind " does not mean a piece of manufacture.

put a dark cloud, or, in front of it, a dark piece of foreground;
then they repeat this light somewhere else in a less degree, and
I connect the two lights together by some intermediate ones. If

they find any part of the foreground uninteresting, they put a
group of figures into it; if any part of the distance, they put
something there from, some other sketch; and proceed to inferior
detail in the same manner, taking care always to put white stones
i near black ones, and purple colours near yellow ones, and angular

recipe and practice as cookery; like that, not by any means a
thing easily done well, but still having no reference whatever
to impressions on the mind."
§ 9. But the artist who has real invention sets to work in a totally
diff'erent way. First, he receives a true impression from the
place itself, and takes care to keep hold of that as his chief good;
indeed, he needs no care in the matter, for the distinction of his
mind from that of others consists in his instantly receiving such
sensations strongly, and being unable to lose them; and then he
sets himself as far as possible to reproduce that impression on the
mind of the spectator of his picture.

Now, observe, this impression on the mind never results from
the mere piece of scenery which can be included within the
limits of the picture. It depends on the temper into which the
mind has been brought, both by all the landscape round, and by

what has been seen previously in the course of the day; so that
no particular spot upon which the painter's glance may at any
moment fall is then to him what, if seen by itself, it will be
to the spectator far away; nor is it what it would be, even to
that spectator if he had come to the reality through the steps
which Nature has appointed to be the preparation for it, instead
of seeing it isolated on an exhibition wall. For instance, on
the descent of the St. Gothard, towards Italy, just after passing
through the narrow gorge above Faido, the road emerges into a
little breadth of valley, which is entirely filled by fallen stones
and debris, partly disgorged by the Ticino as it leaps out of the
narrower chasm, and partly brought down by winter avalanches
from a loose and decomposing mass of mountain on the left.
Beyond this first promontory is seen a considerably higher range,
but not an imposing one, which rises above the village of Faido.
The etching, Plate 30., is a topographical outline of the scene,
with the actual blocks of rock which happened to be lying in
the bed of the Ticino at the spot from which I chose to draw it.
The masses of loose debris (which, for any permanent purpose,
I had no need to draw, as their arrangement changes at every
flood) I have not drawn, but only those features of the landscape
which happen to be of some continual importance. Of which
note, first, that the little three-windowed building on the left is
the remnant of a gallery built to protect the road which once
went on that side, from the avalanches and stones that come
down the " couloir " Mn the rock above. It is only a ruin, the
greater part having been by said avalanches swept away, and
the old road, of which a remnant is also seen on the extreme
left, abandoned, and carried now along the hill side on the right,
partly sustained on rough stone arches, and winding down, as
seen in the sketch, to a weak wooden bridge, which enables it
to recover its old track past the gallery. It seems formerly (but
since the destruction of the gallery) to have gone about a mile
farther down the river on the right bank, and then to have been

' " Couloir" is a good untranslateable Savoyard word, for a place down which
stones and water fall in storms ; it is perhaps deserving of naturalization.

carried across bj' a longer wooden bridge, of which only the
two butments are seen in the sketch, the rest having been
swept away by the Ticino, and the new bridge erected near
the spectator.

§ 10, There is nothing in this scene, taken by itself, particularly
interesting or impressive. The mountains are not elevated, nor
particularly fine in form, and the heaps of stones which encumber
the Ticino present nothing notable to the ordinary eye. But,
in reality, the place is approached through one of the narrowest
and most sublime ravines in the Alps, and after the traveller
during the early part of the day has been familiarized with the
aspect of the highest peaks of tlie Mont St. Gothard. Hence it
speaks quite another language to him from that in which it would
address itself to an unprepared spectator : the confused stones,
which by themselves would be almost without any claim upon
his thoughts, become exponents of the fury of the river by which
he has journeyed all day long; the defile beyond, not in itself
narrow or terrible, is regarded nevertheless with awe, because it
is imagined to resemble the gorge that has just been traversed
above; and, although no very elevated mountains immediately
overhang it, the scene is felt to belong to, and arise in its
essential characters out of, the strength of those mightier moun-
tains in the unseen north.

§11. Any topographical delineation of the facts, therefore, must be
wholly incapable of arousing in the mind of the beholder those
sensations which would bo caused by the facts themselves, seen
in their natural relations to others. And the aim of the great
inventive landscape painter must be to give the far higher and
deeper truth of mental vision, rather than that of the physical
facts, and to reach a representation which, though it may bo totally
useless to engineers or geographers, and, when tried by rule and
measure, totally unlike the place, shall yet be capable of pro-
ducing on the far-away beholder's mind precisely the impression
which the reality would have produced, and putting his heart
into the same state in which it would have been, had he verily
descended into the valley from the gorges of Airolo.

CHAP. II.

understand the sacredness of the truth of Imjjression, and supposes
that, once quitting hold of his first thought, he may by Philo-
sophy compose something prettier than he saw, and mightier than
he felt, it is all over with him. Every such attempt at compo-
sition will be utterly abortive, and end in something that is
neither true nor fanciful; something geographically useless, and
intellectually absurd.

But if, holding fast his first thought, he finds other ideas
insensibly gathering to it, and, whether he will or not, modifying it
into something which is not so much the image of the place itself,
as the spirit of the place, let him yield to such fancies, and follow
them wherever they lead. For, though error on this side is very
rare among us in these days, it is possible to check these finer
thoughts by mathematical accuracies, so as materially to impair
the imaginative faculty. I shall be able to explain this better
after we have traced the actual operation of Turner's mind on
the scene under discussion.

§ 13. Turner was always from his youth fond of stones (we shall
see presently why). Whether large or small, loose or embedded,
hewn into cubes or worn into boulders, he loved them as much
as William Hunt loves pineapples and plums. So that this
great litter of fallen stones, which to any one else would have
been simply disagreeable, was to Turner much the same as
if the whole valley had been filled with plums and pineapples,
and delighted him exceedingly, much more than even the gorge
of Dazio Grande just above. But that gorge had its effect upon
him also, and was still not well out of his head when the dili-
gence stopped at the bottom of the hill, just at that turn of the
road on the right of the bridge; which favourable opportunity
Turner seized to make what he called a " memorandum " of the
place, composed of a few pencil scratches on a bit of thin paper,
that would roll up with others of the sort and go into his pocket
afterwards. These pencil scratches he put a few blots of colour
upon (I suppose at Bellinzona the same evening, certainly ?iot
upon the spot), and showed me this blotted sketch when he
came home. I asked him to make me a drawing of it, which he
did, and casually told me aftewards (a rare thing for him to do)

that he liked the drawing he had made. Of this drawing I have
etched a reduced outline in Plate 21.

§ 14. In which, primarily, observe that the whole place is altered in
scale, and brought up to the general majesty of the higher forms of
the Alps. It will be seen that, in my topographical sketch, there
are a few trees rooted in the rock on this side of the gallery, show-
ing, by comparison, that it is not above four or five hundred feet
high. These trees Turner cuts away, and gives the rock a height
of about a thousand feet, so as to imply more power and danger in
the avalanche coming down the couloir.

Next, he raises, in a still greater degree, all the mountains
beyond, putting three or four ranges instead of one, but uniting
them into a single massy bank at their base, which he makes
overhang the valley, and thus reduces it nearly to such a chasm
as that which he had just passed through above, so as to unite
the expression of this ravine with that of the stony valley. The
few trees, in the hollow of the glen, he feels to be contrary in
spirit to the stones, and fells them, as he did the others; so also
he feels the bridge in the foreground, by its slenderness, to contra-
dict the aspect of violence in the torrent; he thinks the torrent and
avalanches should have it all their own way hereabouts; so he
strikes down the nearer bridge, and restores the one farther off,
where the force of the stream may be supposed less. Next, the
bit of road on the right, above the bank, is not built on a wall, nor
on arches high enough to give the idea of an Alpine road in
general; so he makes the arches taller, and the bank steeper,
introducing, as we shall see presently, a reminiscence from the
upper part of the pass.

§ 15. I say, he " thinks " this, and " introduces " that. But, strictly
speaking, he does not think at all. If he thought, he would
instantly go wrong; it is only the clumsy and uninventive artist
who thinks. All these changes come into his head involuntarily;
an entirely imperative dream, crying, " Thus it must be," has
taken possession of him; he can see, and do, no otherwise than
as the dream directs.

This is especially to be remembered with respect to the next
incident—the introduction of figures. Most persons to whom

I have shown the drawing, and who feel its general character,
regret that there is any living thing in it; they say it destroys
the majesty of its desolation. But the dream said not so to
Turner. The dream insisted particularly upon the great fact of
its having come by the road. The torrent was wild, the stones
were wonderful; but the most wonderful thing of all was how
we ourselves, the dream and I, ever got here. By our feet we
could not—by the clouds we could not—by any ivory gates we
could not—in no other wise could we have come than by the
coach road. One of the great elements of sensation, all the day
long, has been that extraordinary road, and its goings on, and
gettings about; . here, under avalanches of stones, and among
insanities of torrents, and overhangings of precipices, much tor-
mented,and driven to all manner of makeshifts and coils to this
side and the other, still the marvellous road persists in going on,
and that so smoothly and safely, that it is not merely great
diligences, going in a caravannish manner, with whole teams of
horses, that can traverse it, but little postchaises with small post-
boys, and a pair of ponies. And the dream declared that the
full essence and soul of the scene, and consummation of all the
wonderfulness of the torrents and Alps, lay in a postchaise,
with small ponies and post-boy, which accordingly it insisted
upon Turner's inserting, whether he liked it or not, at the turn
of the road.

§ 16. Now, it will be observed by any one familiar with ordinary
principles of arrangement of form (on which principles I shall
insist at length in another place), that while the dream introduces
these changes bearing on the expression of the scene, it is also
introducing other changes, which appear to be made more or less
in compliance with received rules of composition,^ rendering the

' I have just said, § 12, that if, quitting hold of this original impression, the artist
tries to compose something prettier than he saw, it is all over with him; but, retaining
the first impression, he will, nevertheless, if he has invention, instinctively modify
many lines and parts of it—possibly all parts of it—for the better; sometimes making
them individually more pictorial, sometimes preventing them from interfering with
each other's beauty. For almost all natural landscapes are redundant treasures of
more or less confused beauty, out of which the human instinct of invention can
by just choice an-ange, not a better treasure, but one more fitted to human sight
and emotion,—infinitely narrower, infinitely less lovely in detail, but having this

CHAP. II.

masses broader, the lines more continuous, and the curves more
graceful. But the curious part of the business is, that these
changes seem not so much to be wrought by imagining an
entirely new condition of any feature, as by remembering some-
thing which will fit better in that place. For instance, Turner
felt the bank on the right
ought to be made more
solid and rocky, in order to
suggest firmer resistance to
the stream, and he turns
it, as will be seen by com-
paring the etchings, into a
kind of rock buttress to
the wall, instead of a mere
bank. Now, the buttress
into which he turns it is
very nearly a facsimile of
one which he had drawn
on that very St. Gothard
road, far above, at the
Devil's Bridge, at least
thirty years before, and
which he had himself etched and engraved for the Liber Stu-
diorum, although the plate was never published. Fig. 1. is a
copy of the bit of the etching in question. Note how the
wall winds over it, and observe especially the peculiar depression
in the middle of its surface, and compare it in those parts
generally with the features introduced in the later composition.

great virtue, that there shall be absolutely nothing which does not contribute to the
cffect of the whole; whereas in the natural landscape there is a redundancy which
impresses only as redundance, and often an occurrence of marring features ; not of
ugliness only, but of ugliness in the wrong place. Ugliness has its proper virtue and
use; but ugliness occurring at the wrong time (as if the negro servant, instead of
standing behind the king, in Tintoret's picture, were to thrust his head in front of the
noble features of his master) is justly to be disliked and withdrawn.

" Why, this," exclaims the idealist, «is what I have always been saying, and you
have always been denying." No ; I never denied this. But I denied that painters in
general, when they spoke of improving Nature, knew what Nature was. Observe :
before they dare so much as to dream of arranging her, they must be able to paint her

if ,

iiit-ffirilii'iV f-ii

Of course, tins might be set down as a mere chance coincidence,
but for the frequency of the cases in which Turner can be shown
to have done the same thing, and to have introduced, after a
lapse of many years, memories of something which, however
apparently small or unimportant, had struck him in his earlier
studies. These instances, when I can detect them, I shall point
out as I go on engraving his works; and I think they are nume-
rous enough to induce a doubt whether Turner's composition was
not universally an arrangement of remembrances, summoned just
as they were wanted, and set each in its fittest place. It is this
very character which appears to me to mark it as so distinctly an
act of dream-vision; for in a dream there is just this kind of
confused remembrance of the forms of things which we have seen
long ago, associated by new and strange laws. That common
dreams are gi'otesque and disorderly, and Turner's dream natural
and orderly, does not, to my thinking, involve any necessary dif-
ference in the real species of act of mind. I think I shall be able
to show, in the course of the following pages, or elsewhere, that
whenever Turner really tried to compose, and made modifications
of his subjects on principle, he did wrong, and spoiled them; and
that he only did right in a kind of passive obedience to his first
vision, that vision being composed primarily of the strong memory
of the place itself which he had to draw; and secondarily, of
memories of other places (whether recognized as such by himself
or not I cannot tell), associated, in a harmonious and helpful way,
with the new central thought.

§ 17. The Idnd of mental chemistry by which the dream summons
and associates its materials, I have already endeavoured, not to
explain, for it is utterly inexplicable, but to illustrate, by a well
ascertained though equally inexplicable fact in common chemistry.
That illustration (§ 8. of chapter on Imaginative Association,
Vol. II.) I see more and more ground to think correct. How far

as she is ; nor will the most skilful arrangement ever atone for the slightest wilful
failure in truth of representation : and I am continually declaiming against arrange-
ment, not because arrangement is wrong, but because our present painters have for
the most part nothing to arrange. They cannot so much as paint a weed or a post
accurately ; and yet they pretend to improve the forests and mountains.

I could show that it held with all great inventors, I know not,
but with all those whom I have carefully studied (Dante, Scott,
Turner, and Tintoret) it seems to me to hold absolutely; their
imagination consisting, not in a voluntary production of new
images, but an involuntary remembrance, exactly at the right
moment, of something they had actually seen.

Imagine all that any of these men had seen or heard in the
whole course of their lives, laid up accurately in their memories
as in vast storehouses, extending, with the poets, even to the
slightest intonations of syllables heard in the beginning of their
lives, and, with the painters, down to minute folds of drapery,
and shapes of leaves or stones; and over all this unindexed and
immeasurable mass of treasure, the imagination brooding and
wandering, but dream-gifted, so as to summon at any moment
exactly such groups of ideas as shall justly fit each other: this I
conceive to be the real nature of the imaginative mind, and this, I
believe, it would be oftener explained to us as being, by the men
themselves who possess it, but that they have no idea what the
state of other persons' minds is in comparison; they suppose
every one remembers all that he has seen in the same way, and
do not understand how it happens that they alone can produce
good drawings or great thoughts.

§ 18. Whether this be the case with all inventors or not, it was
assuredly the case with Turner, to such an extent that he seems
never either to have lost, or cared to disturb, the impression made
upon him by any scene,—even in his earliest youth. He never
seems to have gone back to a place to look at it again, but, as
he gained power, to have painted and repainted it as first seen,
associating with it certain new thoughts or new knowledge, but
never shaking the central pillar of the old image. Several
instances of this have been already given in my pamphlet on
Pre-Eaphaelitism; others will be noted in the course of our
investigation of his works; one, merely for the sake of illus-
tration, I will give here.

§ 19. Plate 22, is an outline of a drawing of the town and castle of
Nottingham, made by Turner for Walker's Itinerant, and engraved
in that work. The engraving (from which this outline was made,

. 5

as I could not discover the drawing itself) was published on the
28th of February, 1795, a period at which Turner was still working
in a very childish way; and the whole design of this plate is
curiously stiff and commonplace. Note, especially, the two formal
little figures under the sail.

In the year 1833, an engraving of Nottingham, from a drawing
by Turner, was published by Moon, Boys, and Graves, in the
England and Wales series. Turner certainly made none of the
drawings for that series long before they were wanted; and if,
therefore, we suppose the drawing to have been made so much as
three years before the publication of the plate, it will be setting
the date of it as far back as is in the slightest degree probable.
We may assume, therefore (and the conclusion is sufficiently esta-
blished, also, by the style of the execution), that there was an
interval of at least thirty-five years between the making of those
two drawings,—thirty-five years, in the course of which Turner
had become, from an unpractised and feeble draughtsman, the
most accomplished artist of his age, and had entirely changed his
methods of work and his habits of feeling.

§ 20. On the page opposite to the etching of the first, I have given
an etching of the last Nottingham. The one will be found to
be merely the amplification and adornment of the other. Every
incident is preserved; even the men employed about the log of
wood are there, only now removed far away (beyond the lock on
the right, between it and the town), and so lost in mist that,
though made out by colour in the drawing, they cannot be made
clear in the outline etching. The canal bridge and even the stiff
mast are both retained; only another boat is added, and the sail
dropped upon the higher mast is hoisted on the lower one; and
the castle, to get rid of its formality, is moved a little to the left,
so as to hide one side. But, evidently, no new sketch has been
made. The painter has returned affectionately to his boyish
impression, and worked it out with his manly power.

§ 21. How far this manly power itself acted merely in the accumu-
lation of memories, remains, as I said, a question undetermined;
but at all events, Turner's mind is not more, in my estimation,
distinguished above others by its demonstrably arranging and

r.-ii

I 'fi-iiliiifirffim

ruling faculties, than by its demonstrably retentive and submissive
faculties; and the longer I investigate it, the more this tenderness
of perception and grasp of memory seem to me the root of its
greatness. So that I am more and more convinced of vfhat I
had to state respecting the imagination, now many years ago,
viz., that its true force lies in its marvellous insight and foresight,
—that it is, instead of a false and deceptive faculty, exactly the
most accurate and truth-telling faculty which the human mind
possesses; and all the more truth-telling, because in its work, the
vanity and individualism of the man himself are crushed, and he
becomes a mere instrument or mirror, used by a higher power
for the reflection to others of a truth which no effort of his could
ever have ascertained; so that all mathematical, and arithmetical,
and generally scientific truth, is, in comparison, truth of the husk
and surface, hard and shallow; and only the imaginative truth is
precious. Hence, whenever we want to know what are the chief
facts of any case, it is better not to go to political economists, nor
to mathematicians, but to the great poets; for I find they always
see more of the matter than any one else: and in like manner
those who want to know the real facts of the world's outside
aspect, will find that they cannot trust maps, nor charts, nor any
manner of mensuration; the most important facts being always
quite immeasurable, and that (with only some occasional and
trifling inconvenience, if they form too definite anticipations as to
the position of a bridge here, or a road there) the Turnerian
topography is the only one to be trusted.

§ 22, One or two important corollaries may be drawn from these
principles, respecting the kind of fidelity which is to be exacted
from men who have no imaginative power. It has been stated,
over and over again, that it is not possible to draw the whole of
nature, as in a mirror. Certain omissions must be made, and
certain conventionalties admitted, in all art. Now it ought to be
the instinctive affection of each painter which guides him to the
omissions he is to make, or signs he is to use ; and his choice of
this or the other fact for representation, his insistance upon this
or the other character in his subject, as that which to him is
impressive, constitutes, when it is earnest and simple, part of the

value of his work. This is the only inspiration he is capable of,
but it is a kind of inspiration still; and although he may not
have the memory or the associative power which would enable
him to compose a subject in the Turnerian manner, he may have
certain affections, perfectly expressible in his work, and of which
he ought to allow the influence to be seen.i
§ 23. And this may especially be permitted in rapid sketching of
effects or scenes which either in their speedy passing away, or
for want of time, it is impossible to draw faithfully. Generally,
if leisure permit, the detailed drawing of the object will be
grander than any ''impression on the mind" of an unimaginative
person; but if leisure do not permit, a rapid sketch, marking
forcibly the points that strike him, may often have considerable
interest in its way. The other day I sketched the towers
of the Swiss Fribourg hastily from the Hotel de Zahringen.
It was a misty morning with broken sunshine, and the towers
were seen by flickering light through broken clouds, — dark
blue mist filling the hollow of the valley behind them. I have
engraved the sketch on the opposite page, adding a few details,
and exaggerating the exaggerations; for in drawing from nature,
even at speed, I am not in the habit of exaggerating enough
to illustrate what I mean. The next day, on a clear and
calm forenoon^ I daguerreotyped the towers, with the result
given on the next Plate (35. Fig. 2.) ; and this unexaggerated
statement, with its details properly painted, would not only be the
more right, but infinitely the grander of the two. But the first
sketch nevertheless conveys, in some respects, a truer idea of
Fribourg than the other, and has, therefore, a certain use. For
instance, the wall going up behind the main tower is seen in my
drawing to bend very distinctly, following the difierent slopes of
the hill. In the daguerreotype this bend is hardly perceptible.

' For instance, even in my topographical etching, Plate 20., I have given only a
few lines out of the thousands which existed in the scene. Those lines are what I
considered the leading ones. Another person might have thought other lines the
leading ones, and liis representation might be equally true as far as it went ; but
which of our representations went farthest would depend on our relative degrees of
knowledge and feeling about hills.

And yet the notablest thing m the town of Fribourg is, that all its
walls have got flexible spines, and creep up and down the preci-
pices more in the manner of cats than walls ; and there is a
general sense of height, strength, and grace, about its belts of
tower and rampart, which clings even to every separate and less
graceful piece of them when seen on the spot; so that the hasty
sketch, expressing this, has a certain veracity wanting altogether
in the daguerreotype.

Nay, sometimes, even in the most accurate and finished topo-
graphy, a slight exaggeration may be permitted; for many of
the most important facts in nature are so subtle, that they must
be slightly exaggerated, in order to be made noticeable when
they are translated into the comparatively clumsy lines of even
• the best drawing,^ and removed from the associating circum-
stances which enhanced their influence, or directed attention to
them, in nature.

§ 24. Still, in all these cases, the more unconscious the draughtsman
is of the changes he is making, the better. Love will then do
its own proper work; and the only true. test of good or bad, is
ultimately, strength of affection. For it does not matter with
what wise purposes, or on what wise principles, the thing is drawn ;
if it be not drawn for love of it, it will never be right; and if it
he drawn for love of it, it will never be wrong—love's misrepre-
sentation being truer than the most mathematical presentation.
And although all the reasonings about right and wrong, through
which we have been led in this chapter, could never be brought to
bear on the work at the moment of doing it, yet this test of right
holds alwaysif the artist is in anywise modifying or methodizing
to exhibit himself and his dexterity, his work will, in that precise
degree, be abortive; and if he is working with hearty love of the
place, earnest desire to be faithful to it, and yet an open heart for
every fancy that Heaven sends him, in that precise degree his work
will be great and good.

Or the best photograph. The question of the exact relation of value between
photography and good topographical drawing, I hope to examine in another place.

I'AHT V.

» Part II. Sec. II. Chap. I.

uib

§ 1. Having in the preceding chapter seen the grounds on which
to explain and justify Turner's choice of facts, we proceed to
examine finally those modes of representing them introduced
by him;—modes so utterly at variance with the received doc-
trines on the subject of art, as to cause his works to be re-
garded with contempt, or severe blame, by all reputed judges,
at the period of their first appearance. And, chiefly, I must
confirm and farther illustrate the general statements made re-
specting light and shade in the chapters on Truth of Tone,^
and on Infinity,^ deduced from the great fact (§ 6. chapter on
Truth of Tone) that "nature surpasses us in power of ob-
taining light as much as the sun surpasses white paper." I
found that this part of the book was not well understood, be-
cause people in general have no idea how much the sun does
surpass white paper. In order to know this practically, let the
reader take a piece of pure white di-awing-paper, and place it in
the position in which a drawing is usually seen. This is, pro-
perly, upright (all drawings being supposed to be made on ver-
tical planes), as a picture is seen on a room wall. Also, the
usual place in which paintings or drawings are seen is at some
distance from a window, with a gentle side light falling upon
them, front lights being unfavourable to nearly all drawing.
Therefore the highest light an artist can ordinarily command for
his work is that of white paint, or paper, under a gentle side

light.^ But if he wished to get as much light as possible, and
to place the artist under the most favourable circumstances, we
should take the drawing near the window. Put therefore your

white paper upright, and take it to
the window. Let a c, c d, be two
sides of your room, with a window
at b h. Under ordinary circumstances
your picture would be hung at e, or
in some such position on the wall c d.
First, therefore, put your paper up-
right at e, and then bring it gra-
dually to the window, in the suc-
cessive positions /, g, and (opening
the window) finally at p. You will
notice that as you come nearer the window the light gradually
increases on the paper ; so that in the position at p it is far
better lighted than it was at e. If, however, the sun actually
falls upon it at p, the experiment is unfair, for the picture is
not meant to be seen in sunshine, and your object is to com-
pare pure white paper, as ordinarily used, with sunshine. So
either take a time when the sun does not shine at all, or does
not shine in at the window where the experiment is to be tried;
or else keep the paper so far within the window that the sun may
not touch it. Then the experiment is perfectly fair, and you will
find that you have the paper at p in full, serene, pictorial light, of
the best kind, and highest attainable power.

§ 2, Now, leaning a little over the window sill, bring the edge of
the paper at p against the sky, rather low down on the horizon
(I suppose you choose a fine day for the experiment, that the
sun is high, and the sky clear blue, down to the horizon). The
moment you bring your white paper against the sky you will be
startled to find this bright white paper suddenly appear in shade.
You will draw it back, thinking you have changed its position.
But no; the paper is not in shade. It is as bright as ever it was ;
brighter than under ordinary circumstances it ever can be. But,

Fig. 2.

behold, the blue sky of the horizon is far brighter. The one is
indeed blue, and the other white, but the white is darkest, and
by a great deal. And you will, though perhaps not for the first
time in your life, perceive that though black is not easily proved
to be white, white may, under certain circumstances, be very nearly
proved black, or at all events brown.^

§ 3. When this fact is first shown to them, the general feeling with
most people is, that, by being brought against the sky, the white
paper is somehow or other brought "into shade." But this is
not so; the paper remains exactly as it was; it is only compared
with an actually brighter hue, and looks darker by comparison.
The circumstances are precisely like those which afi'ect our sen-
sations of heat and cold. If, when by chance we have one hand
warm, and another cold, we feel, with each hand, water warmed
to an intermediate degree, we shall first declare the water to be
cold, and then to be warm; but the water has a definite heat
wholly independent of otir sensations, and accurately ascertain-
able by a thermometer. So it is with light and shade. Looking
from the bright sky to the white paper, we affirm the white
paper to be '' in shade,"—that is, it produces on us a sensation
of darkness, by comparison. But the hue of the paper, and that
of the sky, are just as fixed as temperatures are; and the sky is
actually a brighter thing than white paper, by a certain number
of degrees of light, scientifically determinable. In the same
way, every other colour, or force of colour, is a fixed thing, not
dependent on sensation, but numerically representable with as
much exactitude as a degree of heat by a thermometer. And of
these hues, that of open sky is one not producible by human
art. The sky is not blue colour merely,—it is blue fire, and
cannot be painted.

§ 4. Next, observe, this blue fire has in it ivhite fire; that is, it
has white clouds, as much brighter than itself as it is brighter
than the white paper. So, then, above this azure light, we have
another equally exalted step of white light. | Supposing the

' For which reason, I said in the Appendix to the third volume, that the expres-
sion " finite realization of infinity " was a considerably less rational one than " black
realization of white."

value of the light of the pure white paper represented by the
number 10, then that of the blue sky will be (approximately)
about 20, and of the white clouds 30.

But look at the white clouds carefully, and it will be seen
they are not all of the same white ; parts of them are quite grey
compared with other parts, and they are as full of passages of light
and shade as if they were of solid earth. Nevertheless, their most
deeply shaded part is that already so much lighter than the blue
sky, Avhich has brought us up to our number 30, and all these
high lights of white are some 10 degrees above that, or, to white
paper, as 40 to 10. And now if you look from the blue sky and
white clouds towards the sun, you will find that this cloud white,
which is four times as white as white paper, is quite dark and
lightless compared with those silver clouds that burn nearer the
sun itself, which you cannot gaze upon,—an infinite of brightness.
How will you estimate that ?

And yet to express all this, we have but our poor white paper
after all. We must not talk too proudly of our " truths " of
art: I am afraid we shall have to let a good deal of black
fallacy into it, at the best.

§ 5. Well, of the sun, and of the silver clouds, we will not talk
for the present. But this principal fact we have learned by
our experiment with the white paper, that, taken all in all,
the calm sky, with such light and shade as are in it, is
brighter than the earth; brighter than the whitest thing on
earth which has not, at the moment of comparison, heaven's own
direct light on it. Which fact it is generally one of the first
objects of noble painters to render. I have already marked one
part of their aim in doing so, namely, the expression of infinity;
but the opposing of heavenly light to earth-darkness is another
most important one; and of all ways of rendering a picture
generally impressive (see especially § 12 of the chapter just
referred to), this is the simplest and surest. Make the sky calm
and luminous, and raise against it dark trees, mountains, or
towers, or any other substantial and terrestrial thing, in bold
outline, and the mind accepts the assertion of this great and
solemn truth with thankfulness.

§ 6. But tins may be done either nobly or basely, as any other
solemn truth may be asserted. It may be spoken with true
feeling of all that it means ; or it may be declared, as a Turk
declares that '' God is great," when he means only that he
himself is lazy. The " heaven is bright," of many vulgar
painters, has precisely the same amount of signification; it means
that they know nothing,—will do nothing,—are without thought
— without care—without passion. They will not walk the
earth, nor watch the ways of it, nor gather the flowers of it.
They will sit in the shade, and only assert that very perceptible,
long-ascertained fact, " heaven is bright." And as it may be
asserted basely, so it may be accepted basely. Many of our capa-
cities for receiving noblest emotion are abused, in mere idleness,
for pleasure's sake, and people take the excitement of a solemn
sensation as they do that of a strong drink. Thus the abandoned
court of Louis XIV. had on fast days its sacred concerts, doubt-
less entering in some degree into the religious expression of the
music, and thus idle and frivolous women at the present day
will weej) at an oratorio. So the sublimest effects of landscape
may be sought through mere indolence; and even those who
are not ignorant, or dull, judge often erroneously of such effects
of art, because their very openness to all pleasant and sacred
association instantly colours whatever they see, so that, give
them but the feeblest shadow of a thing they love, they are
instantly touched by it to the heart, and mistake their own plea-
surable feelings for the result of the painter's power. Thus
when, by spotting and splashing, such a painter as Constable
reminds them somewhat of wet grass and green leaves, forth-
with they fancy themselves in all the happiness of a meadow
walk; and when Gaspar Poussin throws out his yellow horizon
with black hills, forthwith they are touched as by the solemnity
of a real Italian twilight, altogether forgetting that wet grass
and twilight do not constitute the universe; and prevented by
their joy at being pleasantly cool, or gravely warm, from seeking
any of those more precious truths which cannot be caught by
momentary sensation, but must be thoughtfully pursued.

brighter than the eai-th is not a precious truth unless the earth
itself be first understood. Despise the earth, or slander it;
fix your eyes on its gloom, and forget its loveliness; and we do
not thank you for your languid or despairing perception of
brightness in heaven. But rise up actively on the earth,—learn
what there is in it, Imow its colour and form, and the full
measure and make of it, and if after that you can say ''heaven
is bright," it will be a precious truth, but not till then. Giovanni
Bellini knows the earth well, paints it to the full, and to the
smallest fig-leaf and falling flower,—blue hill and white-walled
city,—glittering robe and golden hair; to each he will give its
lustre and loveliness; and then, so far as with his poor human
lips he may declare it, far beyond all these, he proclaims that
'' heaven is bright." But Gaspar, and such other landscapists,
painting all Nature's flowery ground as one barrenness, and
all her fair foliage as one blackness, and all her exquisite forms
as one bluntness; when, in this sluggard gloom and sullen
treachery of heart, they mutter their miserable attestation to
what others had long ago discerned for them,—the sky's bright-
ness,—we do not thank them; or thank them only in so far as,
even in uttering this last remnant of truth, they are more
commendable than those who have sunk from apathy to atheism,
and declare, in their dark and hopeless backgrounds, that heaven
is not bright.

A mountain five or six miles olf, in a sunny summer morning
in Switzerland, will commonly present itself in some such pitch of
dark force, as related to the sky, as that shown in Fig. 4. Plate
35., while the sky itself will still, if there are white clouds in it,
tell as a clear dark, throwing out those white clouds in vigorous
relief of light; yet, conduct the experiment of the white paper
as already described, and you will, in all probability, find that the
darkest part of the mountain—its most vigorous nook of almost
black-looking shadow—is whiter than the paper.

' The colour, but not the form. I wanted the contour of the top of the Breven for

the Aiguille Bouchard (the mountain which is seen from the
village of Chamouni, on the other side of the G-lacier des Bois),
distant, by Forbes's map, a furlong or two less than four miles
in a direct line from the point of observation. The observation
was made on a warm sunny morning, about eleven o'clock, the
sky clear blue; the mountain seen against it, its shadows grey
purple, and its sunlit parts greenish. Then the darkest part
of the mountain was lighter than j^ure ivhite faper, held upright
in full light at the window, parallel to the direction in which the
light entered. And it will thus generally be found impossible to
represent, in any of its true colours, scenery distant more than
two or three miles, in full daylight. The deepest shadows are
whiter than white paper.

§ 9. As, however, we pass to nearer objects, true representation
gradually becomes possible;—to what degree is always of course
ascertainable accurately by the same mode of experiment. Bring
the edge of the paper against the thing to be drawn, and on that
edge—as precisely as a lady would match the colours of two
pieces of a dress—match the colour of the landscape (with a little
opaque white mixed in the tints you use, so as to render it easy
to lighten or darken them). Take care not to imitate the tint as
you believe it to be, but accurately as it is; so that the coloured
edge of the paper shall not be discernible from the colour of
the landscape. You will then lind (if before inexperienced) that
shadows of trees, which you thought were dark green or black,
are pale violets and purples ; that lights, which you thought were
green, are intensely yellow, brown, or golden, and most of them
far too bright to be matched at all. When you have got all the
imitable hues truly matched, sketch the masses of the landscape
out completely in those true and ascertained colours ; and you will
find, to your amazement, that you have painted it in the colours
of Turner,—in those very colours which perhaps you have been
laughing at all your life,—the fact being that he, and he alone, of
all men, ever ^minted Nature in her oivn colours.

reference in another place, and have therefore given it instead of that of the Bouchard,
but in the proper depth of tint.

§ 10. " Well, but," you will answer, impatiently, " how is it, if they
are the true colours, that they look so unnatural ? "

Because they are not shown in true contrast to the sky, and to
other high lights. Nature paints her shadows in pale purple, and
then raises her lights of heaven and sunshine to such height that
the pale purple becomes, by comparison, a vigorous dark. But
poor Turner has no sun at his command to oppose his pale colours.
He follows Nature submissively as far as he can ; puts pale purple
where she does, bright gold where she does; and then when, on the
summit of the slope of light, she opens her wings and quits the
earth altogether, burning into ineffable sunshine, what can he do
but sit helpless, stretching his hands towards her in calm consent,
as she leaves him and mocks at him !

§11. "Well," but you will farther ask, "is this right or wise?
ought not the contrast between the masses to be given, rather
than the actual hues of a few parts of them, when the others are
inimitable ? "

Yes, if this weo'e possible, it ought to be done; but the true
contrasts can never be given. The whole question is simply
whether you will be false at one side of the scale or at the other,
—that is, whether you will lose yourself in light or in darkness.
This necessity is easily expressible in numbers. Suppose the
utmost light you wish to imitate is that of serene, feebly lighted,
clouds in ordinary sky (not sun or stars, which it is, of course,
impossible deceptively to imitate in painting by any artifice).
Then, suppose the degrees of shadow between those clouds and
Nature's utmost darkness accurately measured, and divided into a
hundred degrees (darkness being zero). Next we measure our
own scale, calling our utmost possible black, zero; ^ and we
shall be able to keep parallel with Nature, perhaps up to as far
as her 40 degrees; all above that being whiter than our white
paper. Well, with our power of contrast between zero and 40,
we have to imitate her contrasts between zero and 100. Now,
if we want true contrasts, we can first set our 40 to represent

' Even here we shall be defeated by Nature, her utmost darkness being deeper
thaii ours. See Part II. Sec, II. Chap. I. § 4—7. &c.

her 100, our 20 for her 80, and our zero for her 60; every
thing below her 60 being lost in blackness. This, is, with certain
modifications, Rembrandt's system. Or, secondly, we can put
zero for her zero, 20 for her 20, and 40 for her 40 ; everything
above 40 being lost in whiteness. This is, with certain modi-
fications, Paul Veronese's system. Or, finally, we can put our
zero for her zero, and our 40 for her 100; our 20 for her 50,
our 30 for her 75, and our 10 for her 25, proportioning the inter-
mediate contrasts accordingly. This is, with certain modifications.
Turner's system;' the modifications, in each case, being the
adoption, to a certain extent, of either of the other systems. Thus,
Turner inclines to Paul Veronese; liking, as far as possible, to get
his hues perfectly true up to a certain point,—that is to say, to let
his zero stand for Nature's zero, and his 10 for her 10, and his 20
for her 20, and then to expand towards the light by quick but
cunning steps, putting 27 for 50, 30 for 70, and reserving some
force still for the last 90 to 100. So Rembrandt modifies his
system on the other side, putting his 40 for 100, his 30 for 90, his
20 for 80; then going subtly downwards, 10 for 50, 5 for 30;
nearly everything between 30 and zero being lost in gloom, yet so
as still to reserve his zero for zero. The systems expressed in
tabular form will stand thus :—

!'■ I,--

iiEsSis

§ 12. Now it is evident that in Rembrandt's system, while the con-
trasts are not more right than with Veronese, the colours are all

' When the clouds are brilliantly lighted, it may rather be, as stated in § 4. above
in the proportion of 160 to 40. I take the number 100 us more calculable.

wrong, from beginning to end. With Turner and Veronese,
Nature's 10 is their 10, and Nature's 20 their 20; enabling them
to give pure truth up to a certain point. But with Kembrandt,
not one colour is absolutely true, from one side of the scale to
the other; only the contrasts are true at the top of the scale. Of
course, this supposes Rembrandt's system applied to a subject
which shall try it to the utmost, such as landscape. Rembrandt
generally chose subjects in which the real colours were very
nearly imitable,—as single heads with dark backgrounds, in
which Nature's highest light was little above his own; her 40
being then truly representable by his 40, his picture became
nearly an absolute truth. But his system is only right when
applied to such subjects: clearly, when we have the full scale
of natural light to deal with. Turner's and Veronese's convey
the greatest sum of truth. But not the most complete deception,
for people are so much more easily and instinctively impressed
by force of light than truth of colour, that they instantly miss the
relative power of the sky, and the upper tones; and all the true,
local colouring looks strange to them, separated from its adjuncts
of high light; whereas, give them the true contrast of light,
and they will not observe the false local colour. Thus all Gaspar
Poussin's and Salvator's pictures, and all effects obtained by
leaving high lights in the midst of exaggerated darkness, catch
the eye and are received for true, while the pure truth of Veronese
and Turner is rejected as unnatural; only not so much in
Veronese's case as in Turner's because Veronese confines himself
to more imitable things, as draperies, figures, and architecture,
in which his exquisite truth at the bottom of the scale tells on the
eye at once; but Turner works a good deal also (see the table)
at the top of the natural scale, dealing with effects of sunlight and
other phases of the upper colours, more or less inimitable, and
betraying therefore, more or less, the artifices used to express
them. It will be observed, also, that in order to reserve some
force for the top of his scale, Turner is obliged to miss his
gradations chiefly in middle tints (see the table), where the
feebleness is sure to be felt. His principal point for missing the
midmost gradations is almost always between the earth and sky ;

lie draws the earth truly as far as he can, to the horizon; then
the sky as far as he can, with his 30 to 40 part of the scale.
They run together at the horizon ; and the spectator complains
that there is no distinction between earth and sky, or that the
earth does not look solid enough.

are typically represented these three conditions of light and shade,
characteristic, 5, of Rembrandt, 6, of Turner, and 7, of Veronese.
The pillar to be drawn is supposed, in all the three cases, white;
Rembrandt represents it as white on its highest light; and,
getting the true gradations between this highest light and extreme
dark, is reduced to his zero, or black, for the dark side of the
white object. This first pillar also represents the system of
Leonardo da Vinci. In the room of the Louvre appropriated to
Italian drawings is a study of a piece of drapery by Leonardo.
Its lights are touched with the finest white chalk, and its shadows
wrought, through exquisite gradations, to utter blackness. The
pillar 6 is drawn on the system of Turner; the high point of
light is still distinct: but even the darkest part of the shaft is
kept pale, and the gradations which give the roundness are
wrought out with the utmost possible delicacy. The third shaft
is drawn on Veronese's system. The light, though still focused,
is more diffused than with Turner; and a slight flatness results
from the determination that the fact of the shaft's being luhite
shall be discerned more clearly even than that it is round; and
that its darkest part shall still be capable of brilliant relief, as a
white mass, from other objects round it.

§ 14. This resolution, on Veronese's part, is owing to the profound
respect for the colours of objects which necessarily influenced
him, as the colourist at once the most brilliant and the most
tender of all painters of the elder schools; and it is necessary
for us briefly to note the way in which this greater or less
respect for local colour influences the system of the three painters
in light and shade.

Take the whitest piece of note-paper you can find, put a blot
of ink.upon it, carry it into the sunshine, and hold it fully fronting
the sunshine, so as to make the paper look as dazzling as possible,

but not to let the wet blot of ink shine. You will then find the
ink look intensely black,—blacker, in fact, than anywhere else,
owing to its vigorous contrast with the dazzling paper.

Kemove the paper from the sunshine. The ink will not look
so black. Carry the paper gradually into the darkest part of the
room, and the contrast will as gradually appear to diminish ;
and, of course, in darkness, the distinction between the black
and the white vanishes. Wet ink is as perfect a representative
as is by any means attainable of a perfectly dark colour; that
is, of one which absorbs all the light that falls on it; and the
nature of such a colour is best understood by considering it as
a piece of portable night. Now, of course, the higher you raise
the daylight about this bit of night, the more vigorous is the
contrast between the two. And, therefore, as a general rule,
the higher you raise the light on any object with a pattern or
. stain upon it, the more distinctly that pattern or stain is seen.

But observe : the distinction between the full black of ink, and
full white of paper, is the utmost reach of light and dark possible
to art. Therefore, if this contrast is to be represented truly, no
deeper black can ever be given in any shadow than that offered
at once, as local colour, in a full black pattern, on the highest light.
And, where colour is the principal object of the picture, that
colour must, at all events, be as right as possible where it is best
seen, i. e. in the lights. Hence the principle of Paul Veronese,
and of all the great Venetian colourists, is to use full black for
full black in high light, letting the shadow shift for itself as best
it may; and sometimes even putting the local black a little
darker in light than shadow, in order to give the more vigorous
contrast noted above. Let the pillars in Plate 25. be supposed
to have a black mosaic pattern on the lower part of their shafts.
Paul Veronese's general practice will be, as at 7, having marked
the rounding of the shaft as well as he can in the white parts, to
paint the pattern with one even black over all, reinforcing it, if
at all, a little in the light.

§ 15. Repeat the experiment on the note-paper with a red spot of
carmine instead of ink. You will now find that the contrast in
the sunshine appears about the same as in the shade—the red and

white rising and falling together, and dying away together into
the darkness. The fact, however, is, that the contrast does
actually for some time increase towards the light; for in utter
darkness the distinction is not visible—the red cannot be distin-
guished from the white; admit a little light, and the contrast is
feebly discernible; admit more, it is distinctly discernible. But
you cannot increase the contrast beyond a certain point. From
that point the red and white for some time rise very nearly
equally in light, or fall together very nearly equally in shade ; but
the contrast will begin to diminish in very high lights, for strong
sunlight has a tendency to exhibit particles of dust, or any
sparkling texture in the local colour, and then to diminish its
power; so that in order to see local colour well, a certain
degree of shadow is necessary; for instance, a very delicate
complexion is not well seen in the sun ; and the veins of a marble
pillar, or the colours of a picture, can only be properly seen in
comparative shade.
§ ifi. I will not entangle the reader in the very subtle and curious
variations of the laws in this matter. The simple fact which is
necessary for him to observe is, that the paler and purer the
colour, the more the great Venetian colourists will reinforce it
in the shadow, and allow it to fall or rise in sympathy with the
light; and those especially whose object it is to represent sunshine,
nearly always reinforce their local colours somewhat in the
shadows, and keep them both fainter and feebler in the light, so
that they thus approach a condition of universal glow, the full
colour being used for the shadow, and a delicate and somewhat
subdued hue of it for the light. And this to the eye is the
loveliest possible condition of colour. Perhaps few people have
ever asked themselves why they admire a rose so much more than
all other flowers. If they consider, they will find, first, that red
is, in a delicately gradated state, the loveliest of all pure colours;
and secondly, that in the rose there is no shadow, except what is
composed of colour. All its shadows are fuller in colour than
its lights, owing to the translucency and reflective poAver of its
leaves.

'.fl
, .ii»

■ !i:

the light, and reinforced in the shadow, will therefore represent
the Venetian system with repect to paler colours, and the system,
for the most part, even with respect to darker colours, of painters
who attempt to render effects of strong sunlight. Generally,
therefore, it represents the practice of Turner. The first shaft, 5,
exhibits the disadvantage of the practice of Rembrandt and
Leonardo, in that they cannot show the local colour on the
dark side, since, however energetic, it must at last sink into their
exaggerated darkness.

§ 17. Now, from all the preceding inquiry, the reader must perceive
more and more distinctly the great truth, that all forms of right
art consist in a certain choice made between various classes of
truths, a few only being, represented, and others necessarily
excluded; and that the excellence of each style depends first on
its consistency with itself,—the perfect fidelity, as far as possible,
to the truths it has chosen; and secondly, on the breadth of its
harmony, or number of truths it has been able to reconcile, and
the consciousness with which the truths refused are acknowledged,
even though they may not be represented. A great artist is just
like a wise and hospitable man with a small house : the large
companies of truths, like guests, are waiting his invitation; he
wisely chooses from among this crowd the guests who will be
happiest with each other, making those whom he receives thoroughly
comfortable, and kindly remembering even those whom he excludes;
while the foolish host, trying to receive all, leaves a large part of
his company on the staircase, without even knowing who is there,
and destroys, by inconsistent fellowship, the pleasure of those who
gain entrance.

§ 18. But even those hosts who choose well will be farther distin-
guished from each other by their choice of nobler or inferior
companies; and we find the greatest artists mainly divided
into two groups,—those who paint principally with respect to
local colour, headed by Paul Veronese, Titian, and Turner;
and those who paint principally with reference to light and shade
irrespective of colour, headed by Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt,
and Raphael. The noblest members of each of these classes
introduce the element proper to the other class, in a subordinate

way. Paul Veronese introduces a subordinate light and shade,
and Leonardo introduces a subordinate local colour. The main
difference is, that with Leonardo, Rembrandt, and Raphael, vast
masses of the picture are lost in comparatively colourless (dark
grey or brown) shadow; these painters beginning with the lights,
and going down to blackness ; but with Veronese, Titian, and
Turner, the whole picture is like the rose,—glowing with colour
in the shadows, and rising into paler and more delicate hues, or
masses of whiteness, in the lights; they having begun with the
shadoivs, and gone up to-whiteness.

§ 19. The colourists have in this respect one disadvantage, and three
advantages. The disadvantage is, that between their less violent
hues, it is not possible to draw all the forms which can be repre-
sented by the exaggerated shadows of the chiaroscurists, and
therefore a slight tendency to flatness is always characteristic of
the greater colourists, as opposed to Leonardo or Rembrandt.
When the form of some single object is to be given, and its
subtleties are to be rendered to the utmost, the Leonardesque
manner of drawing is often very noble. It is generally adopted by
Albert Durer in his engravings, and is very useful, when employed
by a thorough master, in many kinds of engraving; ^ but it is an
utterly false method of study, as we shall see presently.

Ji
't'

§ 20. Of the three advantages possessed by the colourists over the
chiaroscurists, the first is, that they have in the greater portions
of their pictures absolute truth, as shown above, § 12, while
the chiaroscurists have no absolute truth anywhere. With the
colourists the shadows are right; the lights untrue : but with the

'ir

f/f,
i-f

' It is often extremely difficult to distinguish properly between the Leonardesque
manner, in which local colour is denied altogether, and the Tumeresque, in which
local colour at its highest point in the picture is merged in whiteness. Thus, Albert
Durer's noble " Melancholia " is entirely Leonardesque ; the leaves on her head, her
flesh, her wings, her dress, the wolf, the wooden ball, and the rainbow, being all
equally white on the high lights. But my drawing of leaves, facing page 126,
Vol. III., is Tumeresque; because, thougii I leave pure white to represent the pale
green of leaves and grass in high light, I give definite increase of darkness to four of
the bramble leaves, which, in reality, were purple, and leave a dark withered stalk
nearly black, though it is in light, where it crosses the leaf in the centre. These dis-
tinctions could only be properly explained by a lengthy scries of examples ; wliich I
hope to give some day or other, but have not space for here.

chiaroscurists lights and shadows are both untrue. The second
advantage is, that also the relations of colour are broader and
vaster with the colourists than the chiaroscurists. Take, for
example, that piece of drapery studied by Leonardo, in the
Louvre, with white lights and black shadows. Ask yourself,
first, whether the real drapery was black or white. If white,
then its high lights are rightly white; but its folds being black,
it could not as a 7nass be distinguished from the black or dark
objects in its neighbourhood. But the fact is, that a white
cloth or handkerchief always is distinguished in daylight, as a
whole white- iMng, from all that is coloured about it: we see at
once that there is a white piece of stuff, and a red, or green, or
grey one near it, as the case may be : and this relation of
the white object to other objects not white, Leonardo has wholly
deprived himself of the power of expressing; while, if the cloth
were black or dark, much more has he erred by making its lights
white. In either case, he has missed the large relation of mass
to mass, for the sake of the small one of fold to fold. And this
is more or less the case with all chiaroscurists; with all painters,
that is to say, who endeavour in their studies of objects to get
rid of the idea of colour, and give the abstract shade. They
invariably exaggerate the shadows, not with respect to the thing
itself, but with respect to all around it; and they exaggerate the
lights also, by leaving pure white for the high light of what in
reality is grey, rose-coloured, or, in some way, not white.

as?!

CHAP. III.

of tuknerian light.

§ 21. This method of study, being peculiarly characteristic of the
Roman and Florentine schools, and associated with very accurate
knowledge of form and expression, has gradually got to be
thought by a large body of artists the grand way of study;
an idea which has been fostered all the more because it was an
unnatural way, and therefore thought to be a philosophical one.
Almost the first idea of a child, or of a simple person looking at
any thing, is, that it is a red, or a black, or a green, or a white
thing. Nay, say the artists; that is an unphilosophical and
barbarous view of the matter. Red and white are mere vulgar
appearances; look farther into the matter, and you will see such
and such wonderful other appearances. «Abstract those, they are

PART T.

the heroic, epic, historic, and generally eligible appearances. And
acting on this grand principle, they draw flesh white, leaves white,
ground white, everything white in the light, and everything
black in the shade—and think themselves wise. But, the longer
I live, the more ground I see to hold in high honour a certain
sort of childishness or innocent susceptibility. Generally speaking,
I find that when we first look at a subject, we get a glimpse
of some of the greatest truths about it: as we look longer,
our vanity, and false reasoning, and half-knowledge, lead us
into various wrong opinions ; but as we look longer still,
we gradually return to our first impressions, only with a full
understanding of their mystical and innermost reasons; and of
much beyond and beside them, not then known to us, now
added (partly as a foundation, partly as a corollary) to what
at first we felt or saw. It is thus eminently in this matter of
colour. Lay your hand over the page of this book,—any child
or simple person looking at the hand and book, would perceive,
as the main fact of the matter, that a brownish pink thing was
laid over a white one. The grand artist comes and tells you
that your hand is not pink, and your paper is not white. He
shades your fingers and shades your book, and makes you see
all manner of starting veins, and projecting muscles, and black
hollows, where before you saw nothing but paper and fingers. But
go a little farther, and you will get more innocent again ; you will
find that, when " science has done its worst, two and two still make
four;" and that the main and most important facts about your
hand, so seen, are, after all, that it has four fingers and a thumb
—showing as brownish pink things on white paper.

§ 22. I have also been more and more convinced, the more I think
of it, that in general ipride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.
All the other passions do occasional good, but whenever pride
puts in its word, everything goes wrong, and what it might really
be desirable to do, quietly and innocently, it is mortally dangerous
to do, proudly. Thus, while it is very often good for the artist
to make studies of things, for the sake of knowing their forms,
with their high lights all white, the moment he does this in a
haughty way, and thinks himself drawing in the great style.

■«

because he leaves high lights white, it is all over with him;
and half the degradation of art in modern times has been owing
to endeavours, much fostered by the metaphysical G-ermans, to
see things without colour, as if colour were a vulgar thing, the
result being, in most students, that they end by not being able
to see anything at all; whereas the true and perfect way of
studying any object is simply to look what its colour is in high
light, and put that safely down, if possible; or, if you are making
a chiaroscuro study, to take the grey answering to that colour,
and cover the ivliole object at once with that grey, firmly resolving
that no part of it shall be brighter than that; then look for the
darkest part of it, and if, as is probable, its darkest part be
still a great deal lighter than black, or than other things about
it, assume a given shade, as dark as, with due reference to
other things, you can have it, but no darker. Mark that for
your extreme dark on the object, and between those limits get
as much drawing as you can, by subtlety of gradation. That
will tax your powers of drawing indeed; and you will find this,
which seems a childish and simple way of going to work, requires
verily a thousandfold more power to carry out than all the pseudo-
scientific abstractions that ever were invented.

§ 23. Nor can it long be doubted that it is also the most impressive
way to others; for the third great advantage possessed by the
colourists is, that the delightfulness of their picture, its sacred-
ness, and general nobleness, are increased exactly in proportion
to the quantity of light and of lovely colour they can introduce
in the shadows, as opposed to the black and grey of the chiaro-
scurists. I have already, in the Stones of Venice, vol. ii.
chap, v., insisted upon the fact of the sacredness of colour, and
its necessary connection with all pure and noble feeling. What
we have seen of the use of colour by the poets will help to
confirm this truth; but perhaps I have not yet enough insisted
on the simplest and readiest to hand of all proofs,—the way,
namely, in which God has employed colour in His creation as
the unvarying accompaniment of all that is purest, most innocent,
and most precious ; while for things precious only in material
uses, or dangerous, common colours are reserved. Consider

for a little while what sort of a world it would be if all flowers
were grey, all leaves black, and the sky hrotvn. Imagine that,
as completely as may be, and consider whether you would think
the world any whit more sacred for being thus transfigured into
the hues of the shadows in Raphael's Transfiguration. Then
observe how constantly innocent things are bright in colour ;
look at a dove's neck, and compare it with the grey back of
a viper; I have often heard talk of brilliantly coloured serpents;
and I suppose there are such,—as there are gay poisons, like
the foxglove and kalmia—types of deceit: but all the venomous
serpents I have really seen are grey, brick-red, or brown,
variously mottled ; and the most awful serpent I have seen,
the Egyptian asp, is precisely of the colour of gravel, or only
a little greyer. So, again, the crocodile and alligator are grey,
but the innocent lizard green and beautiful. I do not mean
that the rule is invariable, otherwise it would be more convincing
than the lessons of the natural universe are intended ever to be ;
there are beautiful colours on the leopard and tiger, and in the
berries of the nightshade; and there is nothing very notable in
brilliancy of colour either in sheep or cattle (though, by the way,
the velvet of a brown bull's hide in the sun, or the tawny white
of the Italian oxen, is, to my mind, lovelier than any leopard's
or tiger's skin): but take a wider view of nature, and compare
generally rainbows, sunrises, roses, violets, butterflies, birds,
gold-fish, rubies, opals, and corals, with alligators, hippopotami,
lions, wolves, bears, swine, sharks, slugs, bones, fungi,^ fogs,
and corrupting, stinging, destroying things in general, and you
will feel then how the question stands between the colourists and
chiaroscurists,—which of them have nature and life on their side,
and which have sin and death.

§ 24. Finally : the ascertainment of the sanctity of colour is not left
to human sagacity. It is distinctly stated in Scripture. I have
before alluded to the sacred chord of colour (blue, purple, and
scarlet, with white and gold) as appointed in the Tabernacle;

' It is notable, however, that nearly all the poisonous agarics are scarlet or speckled,
and wholesome ones brown or grey, as if to show us that things rising out of darkness
and decay are always most deadly when they are well drest.

this chord is the fixed base of all colouring with the workmen
of every great age ; the purple and scarlet will be found constantly
employed by noble painters, in various unison, to the exclusion
in general of pure crimson ;—it is the harmony described by
Herodotus as used in the battlements of Ecbatana, and the
invariable base of all beautiful missal-painting; the mistake con-
tinually made by modern restorers, in supposing the purple to
be a faded crimson, and substituting full crimson for it, being
instantly fatal to the whole work, as, indeed, the slightest modi-
fication of any hue in a perfect colour-harmony must always be.^
In this chord the scarlet is the powerful colour, and is on the
whole the most perfect representation of abstract colour which
exists; blue being in a certain degree associated with shade,
yellow with light, and scarlet, as absolute colour, standing alone.
Accordingly, we find it used, together with cedar wood, hyssop, and
running water, as an emblem of purification, in Leviticus xiv. 4.
and other places, and so used not merely as representative of
the colour of blood, since it was also to be dipped in the actual
blood of a living bird. So that the cedar wood for its perfume,
the hyssop for its searchingness, the water for its cleansing, and
the scarlet for its kindling or enlightening, are all used as tokens
of sanctification; ^ and it cannot be with any force alleged,
in opposition to this definite appointment, that scarlet is used
incidentally to illustrate the stain of sin,—" though thy sins be as
scarlet,"—any more than it could be received as a diminution of
the authority for using snow-whiteness as a type of purity, that
Gehazi's leprosy is described as being " white as snow." An
incidental image has no authoritative meaning, but a stated cere-
monial appointment has; besides, we have the reversed image
given distinctly in Prov. xxxi.: " She is not afraid of the snow
for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet.''^
And, again: "Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed
you in scarlet, with other delights." So, also, the arraying of

' Hence the intense absurdity of endeavouring to " restore " the colour of ancient
buildings by the hands of ignorant colourists, as at the Crystal Palace,

® The redeemed Rahab bound for a sign a scarlet thread in the window. Compare
Canticles, iv. 3.

the mystic Babylon in purple and scarlet may be interpreted
exactly as we choose; either, by those who think colour sensual,
as an image of earthly pomp and guilt, or, by those who think it
sacred, as an image of assumed or pretended sanctity. It is
possible the two meanings may be blended, and the idea may be
that the purple and fine linen of Diyes are worn in hypocritical
semblance of the purple and fine linen of the high priest, being,
nevertheless, themselves, in all cases typical of all beauty and
purity. I hope, however, to be able some day to enter farther
into these questions with respect to the art of illumination;
meantime, the facts bearing on our immediate subject may be
briefly recapitulated. All men, completely organized and justly
tempered, enjoy colour; it is meant for the perpetual comfort
and delight of the human heart; it is richly bestowed on the
highest works of creation, and the eminent sign and seal of
perfection in them; being associated with life in the human body,
with liffht in the sky, with purity and hardness in the earth,—
death, night, and pollution of all kinds being colourless. And
although if form and colour be brought into complete opposition,^

' TJie inconsistency between perfections of colour and form, which I have had to
insist upon in other places, is exactly like that between articulation and harmony.
We cannot have the richest harmony with the sharpest and most audible articu-
lation of words; yet good singers will articulate clearly; and the perfect study of
the science of music will conduct to a fine articulation; but the study of pronun-
ciation will not conduct to, nor involve, that of harmony. So, also, though, as said
farther on, subtle expression can be got without colour, perfect expression never can;
for the colour of the face is a part of its expression. How often has that scene
between Francesca di Rimini and her lover been vainly attempted by sculptors, simply
because they did not observe that the main note of expression in it was in the fair
sheet-lightning—fading and flaming through the cloud of passion !

And, of course, in landscape, colour is the principal source of expression. Take one
melancholy chord from the close of Crabbe's Patron :

" Cold grew the foggy morn; the day was brief,
Loose on the cherry hung the crimson leaf.
The dew dwelt ever on tlie herb; the woods
Eoared with strong blasts; with mighty showers, the floods:
All green was vanished, save of pine and yew
That still displayed their melancholy hue;
Save the green holly, with its berries red
And the green moss that o'er the gravel spread."

so that it should be put to us as a matter of stern choice whether
we should have a work of art all of form, without colour (as an
Albert Durer's engraving), or all of colour, without form (as an
imitation of mother-of-pearl), form is beyond all comparison the
more precious of the two; and in explaining the essence of
objects, form is essential, and colour more or less accidental (com-
pare Chap. v. of the first section of Vol. I,); yet if colour be
introduced at all, it is necessary that, whatever else may be wrong,
that should be right: just as, though the music of a song may not
be so essential to its influence as the meaning of the words, yet if
the music be given at all, it must be right, or its discord will spoil
the words; and it would be better, of the two, that the words
should be indistinct, than the notes false. Hence, as I have said
elsewhere, the business of a painter is to paint. If he can colour,
he is a painter, though he can do nothing else; if he cannot colour,
he is no painter, though he may do everything else. But it is, in
fact, impossible, if he can colour, but that he should be able to do
more; for a faithful study of colour will always give power over
form, though the most intense study of form will give no power
over colour. The man who can see all the greys, and reds, and
purples in a peach, will paint the peach rightly round, and rightly
altogether; but the man who has only studied its roundness, may
not see its purples and greys, and if he does not, will never get it
to look like a peach; so that great power over colour is always
a sign of large general art-intellect. Expression of the most
subtle kind can be often reached by the slight studies of carica-
turists ; ^ sometimes elaborated by the toil of the dull, and some-
times by the sentiment of the feeble; but to colour well requires
real talent and earnest study, and to colour perfectly is the rarest
and most precious power an artist can possess. Every other gift
may be erroneously cultivated, but this will guide to all healthy,
natural, and forcible truth; the student may be led into folly by
philosophers, and into falsehood by purists; but he is always safe,
if he holds the hand of a colourist.

PART V.

§ 1. In the preceding chapters we have shown the nature of Turner's
art; first, as respected sympathy with his subject; next, as
respected fidelity to local detail; and thirdly, as respected prin-
ciples of colour. "We have now finally to confirm what in various
places has been said respecting his principles of delineation, or
that mysterious and apparently uncertain execution by which he is
distinguished from most other painters.

In Chap. in. § 17. of the preceding volume Ave concluded gene-
rally that all great drawing was distinct drawing; but with refer-
ence, nevertheless, to a certain sort of indistinctness, necessary to
the highest art, and afterwards to be explained. And the inquiry
into this seeming contradiction has, I trust, been made somewhat
more interesting by what we saw respecting modern art in the
fourth paragraph of Chap, xvi., namely, that it was distinguished
from old art eminently by mdistinctness, and by its idle omission
of details for the sake of general effect. Perhaps also, of all
modern artists, Turner is the one to whom most people would
first look as the great representative of this nineteenth century
cloudiness, and " ingenious speaking concerning smoke; " every
one of his compositions being evidently dictated by a delight in
seeing only part of things rather than the whole, and in casting
clouds and mist around them rather than unveiling them.

§ 2. And as the head of modern mystery, all the ranks of the best
ancient, and of even a very important and notable division of
modern authority, seem to be arrayed against him. As we saw
in preceding chapters, every great man was definite until the

seventeenth century. John Bellini, Leonardo, Angelico, Durer,
Perugino, Raphael,—all of them hated fog, and repudiated in-
dignantly all manner of concealment. Clear, calm, placid, per-
petual vision, far and near; endless perspicuity of space; unfatigued
veracity of eternal light; perfectly accurate delineation of every
leaf on the trees, every flower in the fields, every golden
thread in the dresses of the figures, up to the highest point
of calm brilliancy which was penetrable to the eye, or pos-
sible to the pencil,—these were their glory'. On the other—
the entirely mysterious—side, we have only sullen and sombre
Rembrandt; desperate Salvator; filmy, futile Claude; occasionally
some countenance from Correggio and Titian, and a careless
condescension or two from Tintoret,^—not by any means a
balanced weight of authority. Then, even in modern times,
putting Turner (who is at present the prisoner at the bar) out of
the question, we have, in landscape, Stanfield and Harding as
definers, against Copley Fielding and Robson on the side of the
clouds;'^ Mulready and Wilkie against Etty,—even Etty being
not so much misty in conception as vague in execution, and not,
therefore, quite legitimately to be claimed on the foggy side ;
while, finally, the whole body of the Pre-Raphaelites—certainly
the greatest men, taken as a class, whom modern Europe has
produced in concernment with the arts—entirely agree with the
elder religious painters, and do, to their utmost, dwell in an
element of light and declaration, in antagonism to all mist and
deception. Truly, the clouds seem to be getting much the worst
of it; and I feel, for the moment, as if nothing could be said for
them. However, having been myself long a cloud-worshipper,
and passed many hours of life in the pursuit of them from crag
to crag, I must consider what can possibly be submitted in their
defence, and in Turner's.

' In the clouds around Mount Sinai, in the picture of the Golden Calf; the smoke
turning into angels, in the Cenacolo in San Giorgio Maggiore; and several other such
instances.

® Stanfield I call a defluer, as opposed to Copley Fielding, because, though, like all
other moderns, he paints cloud and storm, he will generally paint all the masts and
yards of a ship, rather than merely her black bows glooming through the foam; and all
the rocks on a hill side, rather thkn the blue outline of the hill through the mist.

§ 3. The first and principal thing to be submitted is, that the clouds
are there. Whether we like them or not, it is a fact that by far
the largest spaces of the habitable world are full of them. That
is Nature's will in the matter ; and whatever we may theoretically
determine to be expedient or beautiful, she has long ago deter-
mined what shall le. We may declare that clear horizons and
blue skies form the most exalted scenery; but for all that, the bed
of the river in the morning will still be traced by its line of white
mist, and the mountain peaks will be seen at evening only in the
rents between their blue fragments of towering cloud. Thus it
is, and that so constantly, that it is impossible to become a faithful
landscape painter without continually getting involved in effects
of this kind. We may, indeed, avoid them systematically, but
shall become narrow mannerists if we do.

§ 4. But not only is there a partial and variable mystery thus
caused by clouds and vapours throughout great s|)aces of land-
scape ; there is a continual mystery caused throughout all spaces,
caused by the absolute infinity of things. We never see any-
thing clearly. I stated this fact partly in the chapter on
Truth of Space, in the first volume, but not with sufficient illus-
tration, so that the reader might by that chapter have been led to
infer that the mystery spoken of belonged to some special distance
of the landscape, whereas the fact is, that everything we look at,
be it large or small, near or distant, has an equal quantity of
mystery in it; and the only question is, not how much mystery
there is, but at what part of the object mystification begins. We
suppose we see the ground under our feet clearly, but if we try
to number its grains of dust, we shall find that it is as full of
confusion and doubtful form as anything else; so that there is
literally 7io point of clear sight, and there never can be. What
we call seeing a thing clearly, is only seeing enough of it to make
out what it is; this point of intelligibility varying in distance for
different magnitudes and kinds of things, while the appointed
quantity of mystery remains nearly the same for all. Thus:
throwing an Open book and an embroidered handkerchief on a
lawn, at a distance of half a mile we cannot tell which is which ;
that is the point of mystery for the whole of those things. They

are then merely white spots of indistinct shape. We approach
them, and perceive that one is a book, the other a handker-
chief, but cannot read the one, nor trace the embroidery of the
other. The mystery has ceased to be in the whole things, and
has gone into their details. We go nearer, and can now read the
text and trace the embroidery, but cannot see the fibres of the
paper, nor the threads of the stuff. The mystery has gone into a
third place. We take both up and look closely at them; we see
the watermark and the threads, but not the hills and dales in the
paper's surface, nor the fine fibres which shoot off from every
thread. The mystery has gone into a fourth place, where it must
stay, till we take a microscope, which will send it into a fifth,
sixth, hundredth, or thousandth place, according to the power we
use. When, therefore, we say, we see the book clearly, we mean
only that we know it is a book. Wlien we say that we see the
letters clearly, we mean that we know what letters they are ; and
artists feel that they are drawing objects at a convenient distance
when they are so near them as to know, and to be able in'painting
to show that they know, what the objects are, in a tolerably com-
plete manner; but this power does not depend on any definite
distance of the object, but on its size, kind, and distance, together;
so that a small thing in the foreground may be precisely in the
same phase or place of mystery as a large thing far away.

§ 5, The other day, as I was lying down to rest on the side of
the hill round which the Rhone sweeps in its main angle, opposite
Martigny, and looking carefully across the valley to the ridge of
the hill which rises above Martigny itself, then distant about
four miles, a plantain seed-vessel about an inch long, and a
withered head of a scabious half an inch broad, happened to be
seen rising up, out of the grass near me, across the outline of the
distant hill, so as seemingly to set themselves closely beside the
large pines and chestnuts which fringed that distant ridge. The
plantain was eight yards from me, and the scabious seven;
and to my sight, at these distances, the plantain and the far-
away pines were equally clear (it being a clear day, and the
sun stooping to the west). The pines, four miles off, showed
their branches, but I could not count them : and two or three

FART V.

young and old Spanish chestnuts beside them showed their
broken masses distinctly; but I could not count those masses,
only I knew the trees to be chestnuts by their general look.
The plantain and scabious in like manner I knew to be a
plantain and scabious by their general look. I saw the plantain
seed-vessel to be, somehoAV, rough, and that there were two little
projections at the bottom of the scabious head which I knew to
mean the leaves of the calyx; but I could no more count dis-
tinctly the seeds of the plantain, or the group of leaves forming
the calyx of the scabious, than I could count the branches of the
far-away pines.

§ 6. Under these circumstances, it is quite evident that neither the
pine nor plantain could have been rightly represented by a single
dot or stroke of colour. Still less could they be represented by a
definite drawing, on a small scale, of a pine with all its branches
clear, or of a plantain with all its seeds clear. The round dot or
long stroke would represent nothing, and the clear delineation too
much. Thev were not mere dots of colour which I saw on the
hill, but something full of essence of pine; out of which I could
gather which were young and which were old, and discern the
distorted and crabbed pines from the symmetrical and healthy
pines; and feel how the evening sun was sending its searching
threads among their dark leaves ;—assuredly they were more than
dots of colour. And yet not one of their boughs or outlines could
be distinctly made out, or distinctly drawn. Therefore, if I had
drawn either a definite pine, or a dot, I should have been equally
wrong, the right lying in an inexplicable, almost inimitable, con-
fusion between the two.

§7. "But is this only the case with pines four miles away, and
with plantains eight yards ? "

Not so. Everything in the field of sight is equally puzzling,
and can only be drawn rightly on the same difficult conditions.
Try it fairly. Take the commonest, closest, most familiar thing,
and strive to draw it verily as you see it. Be sure of this last
fact, for otherwise you will find yourself continually drawing, not
what you see, but what you know. The best practice to begin
with is, sitting about three yards from a bookcase (not your own,

so that you may know none of the titles of the books), to try to
draw the books accurately, with the titles on the backs, and pat-
terns on the bindings, as you see them. You are not to stir from
your place to look what they are, but to draw them simply as
they appear, giving the perfect look of neat lettering; which,
nevertheless, must be (as you will find it on most of the books)
absolutely illegible. Next try to draw a piece of patterned muslin
or lace (of which you do not know the pattern), a little way oif,
and rather in the shade; and be sure you get all the grace and
look of the pattern without going a step nearer to see what it is.
Then try to draw a bank of grass, with all its blades; or a bush,
with all its leaves ; and you will soon begin to understand under
what a universal law of obscurity we live, and perceive that all
distinct drawing must be had drawing, and that nothing can be
right, till it is unintelligible.

§8. "How! and Pre-Kaphaelitism and Durerism, and all that you
have been talking to us about for these five hundred pages ! "

Well, it is all right; Pre-Raphaelitism is quite as unintelligible
as need be (I will answer for Durerism fai'ther on). Examine
your Pre-Eaphaelite painting well, and you will find it is the
precise fulfilment of these laws. You can make out your plantain
head and your pine, and see entirely what they are; but yet
they are full of mystery, and suggest more than you can see.
So also with Turner, the true head of Pre-Raphaelitism. You
shall see the spots of the trout lying dead on the rock in his
foreground, but not count them. It is only the Germans and
the so-called masters of drawing and defining that are wrong, not
the Pre-Raphaelites.^

' Compare, if at hand, my letter in the Times, of the 5th of May, 1864, on
Hunt's Light of the World, I extract the passage bearing chiefly on the point in
question.

" As far as regards the technical qualities of Mr. Hunt's painting, I would only ask
the spectator to observe this difference between true Pre-llaphaelite work and its imi-
tations. The true work represents all objects exactly as they would appear in nature,
in the position and at the distances which the arrangement of the picture supposes.
The false work represents them with all their details, as if seen through a microscope.
Examine closely the ivy on the door in Mr. Hunt's picture, and there will not be
found in it a single clear outline. All is the most exquisite mystery of colour;
becoming reality at its due distance. In like manner, examine the small gems on the
robe of the figure. Not one will be made out in form, and yet there is not one of all

PART V.

Not, that is to say, so far as it is possible to be right. No
human skill can get the absolute truth in this matter; but a draw-
ing by Turner of a large scene, and by Holman Hunt of a small
one, are as close to truth as human eyes and hands can reach.

§ 9. " Well, but how of Veronese and all the firm, fearless
draughtsmen of days gone by ? "

They are indeed firm and fearless, but they are all myste-
rious. Not one great man of them, but he will puzzle you, if you
look close, to know what he means. Distinct enough, as to his
general intent, indeed, just as Nature is distinct in her general
intent, but examine his touches, and you will find in Veronese,
in Titian, in Tintoret, in Correggio, and in all the great painters,
properly so called, a peculiar melting and mystery about the
pencilling, sometimes called softness, sometimes freedom, some-
times breadth; but in reality a most subtle confusion of colours
and forms, obtained either by the apparently careless stroke of
the brush, or by careful retouching with tenderest labour; but
always obtained in one way or another: so that though, when
compared with work that has no meaning, all great work is dis-
tinct,—compared with work that has narrow and stubborn meaning,
all great work is indistinct; and if we find, on examining any
picture closely, that it is all clearly to be made out, it cannot be,
as painting, first-rate. There is no exception to this rule. Excel-
lence of the highest kind, without obscurity, cannot exist.

§ 10. " But you said that all authority was against Turner,—Titian's
and Veronese's, as well as that of the older painters."

Yes, as regards his choice of misty or foggy subject, it is so ;
but in this matter of mere execution, all the great painters are
with him, though at first he seems to differ from them, on account
of that choice of foggy subject; and because, instead of painting
things under circumstances when their general character is to be
discerned at once (as Veronese paints human figures close to us

those minute points of green colour, btit it has two or three distinctly varied shades
of green in it, giving its mysterious value and lustre. The spurious imitations of
Pre-Raphaelite work represent the most minute leaves and other objects with sharp
outlines, hut with no variety of colour, and with none of the concealment, none of the
infinity of nature."

and the size of life), he is always painting things twenty and thirty
miles away, reduced to unintelligible and eccentric shades.

That we will discuss in the next chapter: let us keep at
present to the question of execution.

" Keeping to that question, why is it that a photograph always
looks clear and sharp,—not at all like a Turner ? "

Photographs never look entirely clear and sharp; but because
clearness is supposed a merit in them, they are usually taken from
very clearly marked and un-Turnerian subjects; and such results
as are misty and faint, though often precisely those which contain
the most subtle renderings of nature, are thrown away, and the
clear ones only are preserved. Those clear ones depend for much
of their force on the faults of the process. Photography either
exaggerates shadows, or loses detail in the lights, and, in many
ways which I do not here pause to explain, misses certain of the
utmost subtleties of natural effect (which are often the things that
Turner has chiefly aimed at), while it renders subtleties of form
which no human hand could achieve. But a delicately taken
photograph of a truly Turnerian subject, is far more like Turner
in the drawing than it is to the work of any other artist; though,
in the system of chiaroscuro, being entirely and necessarily Bem-
brandtesque, the subtle mystery of the touch (Turnerism carried
to an infinitely wrought refinement) is not usually perceived.

So far as they are quite clear, they are imperfect, and know-
ingly imperfect, if considered as painters of real appearances;
but by means of this veiy imperfection or conventionalism, they
often give certain facts which are more necessary to their pur-
pose than these outward appearances. For instance, in Fig. 2.
of Plate 25., facing page 32., I requested Mr, Le Keux to fac-
simile, as far as might be, the look of the daguerreotype; and he
has admirably done so. But if Albert Durer had drawn the
wall between those towers, he would have represented it with all
its facts distinctly revealed, as in Fig. 1.; and in many respects

'—■—•

this clear statement is precious, though, so far as regards ocular
truth, it is not natural. A modern sketcher of the "hold" school
would represent the tower as in Fig. 3.; that is to say, in a manner
just as trenchant and firm, and therefore ocularly false, as Durer's;
but, in all probability, with involved entireness of fallacy or igno-
rance as to the wall facts; rendering the work nearly valueless; or
valuable only in colour or composition; not as draughtsmanship.

Of this we shall have more to say presently, here we may
rest satisfied with the conclusion that to a perfectly great manner
of painting, or to entirely finished work, a certain degree of
indistinctness is indispensable. As all subjects have a mystery
in them, so all drawing must have a mystery in it; and from
the nearest object to the most distant, if we can quite make
out what the artist would be at, there is something wrong. The
strokes of paint, examined closely, must be confused, odd, incom-
prehensible ; having neither beginning nor end,—melting into each
other, or straggling over each other, or going wrong and coming right
again, or fading away altogether ; and if we can make anything of
them quite out, that part of the drawing is wrong, or incomplete.

§ 13. Only, observe, the method by which the confusion is obtained
may vary considerably according to the distance and scale of
the picture itself; for very curious effects are produced upon
all paintings by the distance of the eye from them. One of
these is the giving a certain softness to all colours, so that
hues which would look coarse or bald if seen near, may some-
times safely be left, and are left, by the great workmen in.
their large works, to be corrected by the kind of bloojii which
the distance of thirty or forty feet sheds over them. I say,
" sometimes," because this optical effect is a very subtle one,
and seems to take place chiefly on certain colours, dead fresco
colours especially; also the practice of the great workmen is
very different, and seems much to be regulated by the time at
their disposal. Tintoret's picture of Paradise, with 600 figures
in it, adapted to a supposed distance of from fifty to a hundred
feet, is yet coloured so tenderly that the nearer it is approached
the better it looks ; nor is it at all certain that the colour
which is wrong near, will look right a little way off, or even a

great way off: I have never seen any of our Academy portraits
made to look like Titians by being hung above the line : still,
distance does produce a definite effect on pictorial colour, and
in general an improving one. It also deepens the relative
power of all strokes and shadows. A touch of shade which,
seen near, is all but invisible, and, as far as effect on the picture
is concerned, quite powerless, will be found a little way off,
to tell as a definite shadow, and to have a notable result on
all that is near it; and so markedly is this the case, that in all
fine and first-rate drawing there are many passages in which if
we see the touches we are putting on, we are doing too much ;
they must be put on by the feeling of the hand only, and have
their effect on the eye when seen in unison, a little way off.
This seems strange; but I believe the reason of it is, that, seen
at some distance, the parts of the touch or touches are gathered
together, and their relations truly shown ; while, seen near,
they are scattered and confused. On a large scale, and in
common things, the phenomenon is of constant occurrence; the
" dirt bands "on a glacier, for instance, are not to be counted
on the glacier itself, and yet their appearance is truly stated
by Professor Forbes to be " 07ie of great importance, though
from the two circumstances of being hest seen at a distance, or
considerable height, and in a feeble or slanting light, it had
very naturally been overlooked both by myself and others, like
what are called blind paths over moors, visible at a distance,
but lost when we stand upon them." ^
§ 14. Not only, however, does this take place in a picture very
notably, so that a group of touches will tell as a compact and
intelligible mass, a little way off, though confused when seen
near; but also a dark touch gains at a little distance in apparent
darkness, a light touch in apparent light, and a coloured touch
in apparent colour, to a degree inconceivable by an unpractised
person; so that literally, a good painter is obliged, working
near his picture, to do in everything only about half of what
he wants, the rest being done by the distance. And if the

effect, at such distance, is to bo of confusion, then sometimes,
seen near, the work must be a confusion worse confounded,
almost utterly unintelligible : hence the amazement and blank
wonder of the public at some of the finest passages of Turner,
which look like a mere meaningless and disorderly work of
chance; but, rightly understood, are preparations for a given
result, like the most subtle moves of a game of chess, of which
no bystander can for a long time see the intention, but which
are, in dim, underhand, wonderful way, bringing out their fore-
seen and inevitable result.

§ 15. And, be it observed, no other means would have brought
out that result. Every distance and size of picture has its own
proper method of work ; the artist will necessarily vary that
method somewhat according to circumstances and expectations :
he may sometimes finish in a way fitted for close observation,
to please his patron, or catch the public eye; and sometimes
be tempted into such finish by his zeal, or betrayed into it by
forgetfulness, as I think Tintoret has been, slightly, in his
Paradise, above mentioned. But there never yet was a picture
thoroughly effective at a distance, which did not look more or
less unintelligible near. Things which in distant effect are
folds of dress, seen near are only two or three grains of golden
colour set there apparently by chance ; what far off is a solid
limb, near, is a grey shade with a misty outline, so broken
that it is not easy to find its boundary ; and what far off
may perhaps be a man's face, near, is only a piece of thin
brown colour, enclosed by a single flowing wave of a brush
loaded with white, while three brown touches across one edge
of it, ten feet away, become a mouth and eyes. The more
subtle the power of the artist, the more curious the difference
will be between the apparent means and the effect produced;
and one of the most sublime feelings connected with art consists
in the perception of this very strangeness, and in a sympathy
Avith the foreseeing and foreordaining power of the artist. In
Turner, Tintoret, and Paul Veronese, the intenseness of percep-
tion, first, as to what is to be done, and then, of the means of
doing it, is so colossal, that I always feel in the presence of their

pictures just as other people would in that of a supernatural
being. Common talkers use the word " magic " of a great
painter's power without knowing what they mean by it. They
mean a great truth. That power is magical; so magical, that,
well understood, no enchanter's work could be more miraculous or
more appalling; and though I am not often kept from saying
things by timidity, I should be afraid of offending the reader,
if I were to define to him accurately the kind and the degree of
awe, with which I haye stood before Tintoret's Adoration of the
Magi, at Venice, and Veronese's Marriage in Cana, in the Louvre.

§ 16. It will now, I hope, be understood how easy it is for dull
artists to mistake the mystery of great masters for careless-
ness, and their subtle concealment of intention for want of
intention. For one person who can perceive the delicacy, in-
vention, and veracity of Tintoret or Reynolds^ there are thou-
sands who can perceive the dash of the brush and the confusion of
the colour. They suppose that the merit consists in dash and
confusion, and that they may easily rival Reynolds by being
unintelligible, and Tintoret by being impetuous. But I assure
them, very seriously, that obscurity is not always admirable, nor
impetuosity always right; that disorder does not necessarily
imply discretion, nor haste, security. It is sometimes difficult to
understand the words of a deep thinker; but it is equally difficult
to understand an idiot; and young students will find it, on
the whole, the best thing they can do to strive to be clear; ^ not
affectedly clear, but manfully and firmly. Mean something, and
say something, whenever you touch canvass; yield neither to the
affectation of precision nor of speed, and trust to time, and your
honest labour, to invest your work gradually, in such measure
and kind as your genius can reach, with the tenderness that comes
of love, and the mystery that comes of power.

' Reynolds is usually admired for his dash and speed. His true merit is in an
ineffable subtlety combined with this speed. The tenderness of some of Reynolds'
touches is quite beyond telling.

^ Esi)ccially in distinction of species of things. It may be doubtful whether in a
great picture wc arc to represent the bloom upon a grape, but never doubtful that we
are to paint a grape so as to be known from a cherry.

§ 1. In the preceding chapter we were concerned only with the mys-
tery necessary in all great art. We have yet to inquire into the
nature of that more special love of concealment in which Turner
is the leading representative of modern cloud-worship ; causing
Dr. Waagen sapiently to remark that " he " had here succeeded
in combining " a crude painted medley with a general foggy
appearance." ^

As, for defence of his universal indistinctness, my appeal was
in the last chapter to universal fact, so, for defence of this special
indistinctness, my first appeal is in this chapter to special fact.
An English painter justifiably loves fog, because he is born in
a foggy country; as an Italian painter justifiably loves clear-
ness, because he is born in a comparatively clear country. I
have heard a traveller familiar with the East complain of the
effect in a picture of Copley Fielding's, that " it was such
very bad weather." But it ought not to be bad weather to
the English. Our green country depends for its life on those
kindly rains and floating swirls of cloud; we ought, therefore,
to love them, and to paint them.

§ 2. But there is no need to rest my defence on this narrow English
ground. The fact is, that though the climates of the South
and East may be comparatively clear, they are no more abso-
lutely clear than our own northern air; and that wherever a
landscape-painter is placed, if he paints faithfully, he will have

' Art and Artists in England, vol. ii. p. 151. The other characteristics which
Dr. "Waagen discovers in Turner are, " such a looseness of treatment, such a total
want of truth, as I never before met with."

continually to paint effects of mist. Intense clearness, whether
in the North aftei' or before rain, or in some moments of twilight
in the South, is alwaj^s, as far as I am acquainted with natural
phenomena, a notable thing. Mist of some sort, or mirage, or
confusion of light, or of cloud, are the general facts; the distance
may vary in different climates at which the effects of mist begin,
but they are always present; and therefore, in all probability it
is meant that we should enjoy them.

§ 3. Nor does it seem to me in any wise difficult to understand why
they should be thus appointed for enjoyment. In former parts
of this work we were able to trace a certain delightfulness in
every visible feature of natural things which was typical of any
great spiritual truth; surely, therefore, we need not wonder
now, that mist and all its phenomena have been made delightful
to us, since our happiness as thinking beings must depend on our
being content to accept only partial knowledge, even in those
matters which chiefly concern us. If we insist upon perfect
intelligibility and complete declaration in every moral subject,
we shall instantly fall into misery of unbelief. Our whole
happiness and power of energetic action depend upon our being
able to breathe and live in the cloud ; content to see it opening
here and closing there; rejoicing to catch, through the thinnest
films of it, glimpses of stable and substantial things; but yet
perceiving a nobleness even in the concealment, and rejoicing
that the kindly veil is spread where the untempered light might
have scorched us, or the infinite clearness wearied.

§ 4. And I believe that the resentment of this interference of the
mist is one of the forms of proud error which are too easily
mistaken for virtues. To be content in utter darkness and
ignorance is indeed unmanly, and therefore we think that to
love light and seek knowledge must always be right. Yet
(as in all matters before observed), wherever pride has any
share in the work, even knowledge and light may be ill pursued.
Knowledge is good, and light is good, yet man perished in
seeking knowledge, and moths perish in seeking light; and if we,
who are crushed before the moth, will not accept such mystery
as is needful for us, we shall perish in like manner. But,

accepted in humbleness, it instantly becomes an element of
pleasm-e; and I think that every rightly constituted mind ought
to rejoice, not so much in knowing anything clearly, as in feeling
that there is infinitely more which it cannot know. None but
proud or weak men would mourn over this, for we may always
know more if we choose, by working on; but the pleasure is,
I think, to humble people, in knowing that the journey is endless,
the treasure inexhaustible, — watching the cloud still march
before them with its summitless pillar, and being sure that, to
the end of time and to the length of eternity, the mysteries of its
infinity will still open farther and farther, their dimness being
the sign and necessary adjunct of their inexhaustibleness. I
know there are an evil mystery and a deathful dimness,—the
mystery of the great Babylon—the dimness of the sealed eye
and soul ; but do not let us confuse these with the glorious
mystery of the things which the angels " desire to look into,"
or with the dimness which, even before the clear eye and open
soul, still rests on sealed pages of the eternal volume.

§ 5. And going down from this great truth to the lower truths
which are types of it in smaller matters, we shall find, that as
soon as people try honestly to see all they can of anything,
they come to a point where a noble dimness begins. They see
more than others; but the consequence of their seeing more is,
that they feel they cannot see all; and the more intense their
perception, the more the crowd of things which they partly
see will multiply upon them; and their delight may at last
principally consist in dwelhng on this cloudy part of their
prospect, '^omewhat casting away or aside what to them has
become com^jaratively common, but is perhaps the sum and
substance of all that other people see in the thing, for the
utmost subtleties and shadows and glancings of it cannot be
caught but by the most practised vision. And as a delicate ear
rejoices in the slighter and more modulated passages of sound
which to a blunt ear are utterly monotonous in their quietness,
or unintelligible in their complication, so, when the eye is ex-
quisitely keen and clear, it is fain to rest on grey films of shade,
and wandering rays of light, and intricacies of tender form,

cilal'. v.

passing over hastily, as unwgi'tliy or commonplace, what to
a less educated sense appears the whole of the subject.^ In
painting, this progress of the eye is marked always by one
consistent sign—its sensibility, namely, to effects of gradation
in light and colour, and habit of looking for them, rather even
than for the signs of the essence of the subject. It will,
indeed, see more of that essence than is seen by other eyes;
and its choice of the points to be seized upon will be always
regulated by that special' sympathy which we have above
examined as the motive of the Turnerian picturesque : but yet,
the more it is cultivated, the more of light and colour it will
perceive, the less of substance.

§ 6. Thus, when the eye is quite uncultivated, it sees that a man
is a man, and a face is a face, but has no idea what shadows
or lights fall upon the form or features. Cultivate it to some
degree of artistic power, and it will then see shadows distinctly,
but only the more vigorous of them. Cultivate it still farther,
and it will see light within light, and shadow within shadow,
and will continually refuse to rest in what it had already dis-
covered, that it may pursue what is more removed and more
subtle, until at last it comes to give its chief attention and display
its chief power on gradations which to an untrained faculty are
partly matters of indifference, and partly imperceptible. That
these subtle gradations have indeed become matters of primal
importance to it, may be ascertained by observing that they
are the things it will last part with, as the object retires into
distance; and that, though this distance may become so great
as to render the real nature of the object quite undiscernible,
the gradations of light upon it will not be lost.

§ 7. For instance. Fig. 1., on the opposite page, Plate 26., is a
tolerably faithful rendering of the look of a wall tower of a Swiss
town as it would be seen within some hundred yards of it. Fig, 2.
is (as nearly as I can render it) a facsimile of Turner's actual
drawing of this tower, at a presumed distance of about half a

' And yet, all these intricacies will produce for it another whole ; as simple and
natural as the child's first conception of the thing ; only more comprehensive. See
above, Chap, III. § 21.

mile. It has far less of intelligible delineation, either of windows,
cornices, or tiles; but intense care has still been given to get
the pearly roundness of the side, and the exact relations of all the
tones of shade. And now, if Turner wants to remove the tower
still farther back, he will gradually let the windows and stones all
disappear together, before he will quit his shadows and delicately
centralized rays. At Fig. 3. the tower is nearly gone, but the
pearly roundness of it and principal lights of it are there still.
At Fig. 4. (Turner's ultimate condition in distance) the essence of
the thing is quite unintelligible ; we cannot answer for its being
a toAver at all. But the gradations of light are still there, and as
much pains have been taken to get them as in any of the other
instances. A vulgar artist would have kept something of the form
of the tower, expressing it by a few touches ; and people would call
it clever drawing. Turner lets the tower melt into air, but still
he works half an hour or so over those delicate last gradations,
which perhaps not many people in England besides himself can
fully see, as not many people can understand the final work of
a great mathematician. I assume, of course, in this example,
that the tower, as it grows less and less distinct, becomes part of
the subject of a larger picture. Fig. 1. represents nearly what
Turner's treatment of it would be if it were the principal
subject of a vignette; and Fig. 4. his treatment of it as an object
in the extreme distance of a large oil picture. If at the same
supposed distance it entered into a smaller drawing, so as to be
much smaller in size, he might get the gradations with less
trouble, sometimes even by a single sweep of the brush; but
some gradation would assuredly be retained, though the tower
were diminished to the height of one of the long letters of
this type.

Yes. The truth is indeed so. If you watch any object as it
fades in distance, it will lose gradually its force, its intelligibility,
its anatomy, its whole comprehensible being; but it will never
lose its gradation of light. Up to the last moment, what light
is seen on it, feebly glimmering and narrowed almost to a point
or a line, is still full of change. One part is brighter than

■m-

another, and brighter with as lovely and tender increase as it was
when nearest to us; and at last, though a white house ten miles
away will be seen only as a small square spot of light, its windows,
doors, or roof being as utterly invisible as if they were not in exist-
ence, the gradation of its light -will not be lost; one part of the
spot will be seen to be brighter than another.

§ 9. Is there not a deep meaning in this ? We, in our daily looking
at the thing, think that its own make is the most important part
of it. Windows and porticos, eaves and cornices, how interesting
or how useful are they ! Surely, the chief importance of the
thing is in these. No ; not in these ; but in the play of the light
of heaven upon it. There is a place and time when all those
windows and porticos will be lost sight of; when the only question
becomes, " What light had it ? " How much of heaven was looking
upon it ? What were the broad relations of it, in light and
darkness, to the sky and earth, and all things around it ? It
might have strange humours and ways of its own—many a
rent in its wall, and many a roughness on its roof; or it might
have many attractivenesses and noblenesses of its own—fair
mouldings and gay ornaments ; but the time comes when all these
are vain, and when the slight, wandering warmth of heaven's
sunshine which the building itself felt not, and not one eye in a
thousand saw, becomes all in all. I leave the reader to follow out
the analogies of this.

§10. "Well, but," it is still objected, "if this be so, why is it
necessary to insist, as you do always, uj)on the most minute and
careful renderings of form ? "

Because, though these gradations of light are indeed, as an
object dies in distance, the only things it can retain, yet as it
lives its active life near us, those very gradations can only be seen
properly by the effect they have on its character. You can only
show how the light affects the object, by Imowing thoroughly
what the object is; and noble mystery differs from ignoble, in
being a veil thrown between us and something definite, known,
and substantial; but the ignoble mystery is a veil cast before
chaos, the studious concealment of Nothing.

Turner's knowledge adds to the mystery of his pictures. In the
course of the first volume I had several times occasion to insist on
the singular importance of cast shadows, and the chances of their
sometimes gaining supremacy in visibility over even the things
that cast them. Now a cast shadow is a much more curious thing
than we usually suppose. The strange shapes it gets into,—the
manner in which it stumbles over everything that comes in its
way, and frets itself into all manner of fantastic schism, taking
neither the shape of the thing that casts it, nor of that it is cast
upon, but an extraordinary, stretched, flattened, fractured, ill-
jointed anatomy of its own,—cannot be imagined until one is
actually engaged in shadow-hunting. If any of these wayward
umbr£e are faithfully remembered and set down by the" painter,
they nearly always have an unaccountable look, quite different
from anything one would have invented or philosophically con-
jectured for a shadow; and it constantly happens, in Turner's
distances, that such strange pieces of broken shade, accurately
remembered, or accurately invented, as the case may be, cause a
condition of unintelligibility, quaint and embarrassing almost in
exact proportion to the amount of truth it contains.

§ 12, I believe the reader must now sufficiently perceive that the
right of being obscure is not one to be lightly claimed; it can
only be founded on long effort to be intelligible, and on the present
power of heing intelligible to the exact degree which the nature
of the thing admits. Nor shall we, I hope, any more have diffi-
culty in understanding how the noble mystery and the ignoble,
though direct opposites, are yet continually mistaken for each
other—the last aping the first; and the most wretched artists
taking pride in work which is simply slurred, slovenly, ignorant,
empty, and insolent, as if it w^ere nobly mysterious (just as a
drunkard who cannot articulate supposes himself oracular) ;
whereas the noble art-mystery, as all noble language-mystery, is
reached only by intense labour. Striving to speak with uttermost
truth of expression, weighing word against word, and wasting
none, the great speaker, or writer, toils first into perfect intelli-
gibleness, then, as he reaches to higher subject, and still more
concentrated and wonderful utterance, he becomes ambiguous—

as Dante is ambiguous,—half a dozen different meanings light-
ening out in separate rays from every word, and, here and there,
giving rise to much contention of critics as to what the intended
meaning actually was. But it is no drunkard's babble for all
that, and the men who think it so, at the third hour of the day,
do not highly honour themselves in the thought.

§ 13. And now observe how perfectly the conclusions arrived at
here consist with those of the third chapter, and how easily we
may understand the meaning of that vast weight of authority
Avhich we found at first ranged against the clouds, and strong in
arms on the side of intelligibility. Nearly all great men must,
for the reasons above given, be intelligible. Even, if they are to
be the greatest, still they must struggle through intelligibility to
obscurity; if of the second class, then the best thing they can
' do, all their lives through, is to be intelligible. Therefore, the
enormous majority of all good and true men will be dear men;
and the drunkards, sophists, and sensualists will, for the most
part, sink back into the fog-bank, and remain wrapt in darkness,
unintelligibility, and futility. Yet, here and there, once in a
couple of centuries, one man will rise past clearness, and become
dark with excess of light.

§ 14. " Well, then, you mean to say that the tendency of this age
to general cloudiness, as opposed to the old religious clearness of
painting, is one of degradation; but that Turner is this one man
who has risen past clearness ? "

Yes. With some modifications of the saying, I mean that; but
those modifications will take us a little time to express accurately.

For, first, it will not do to condemn every minor painter
utterly, the moment we see he is foggy. Copley Fielding, for
instance, was a minor painter; but his love of obscurity in rain
clouds, and dew-mist on downs, was genuine love, full of sweetness
and happy aspiration ; and, in this way, a little of the light of the
higher mystery is often caught by the simplest men when they
keep their hearts open.

§ 15. Neither will it be right to set down every painter for a great
man, the moment we find he is clear; for there is a hard and
vulgar intelligibility of nothingness, just as there is an ambiguity

of nothingness. And as often, in conversation, a man wlio speaks
but badly and indistinctly lias, nevertheless, got much to say; and
a man who speaks boldly and plainly may yet say what is little
worth hearing; so, in painting, there are men who can express
themselves but blunderingly, and yet have much in them to
express; and there are others who talk with great precision,
whose works are yet very impertinent and untrustworthy assertions.
Sir Joshua Eeynolds is full of fogginess and shortcomings as
compared with either of the Caraccis; but yet one Sir Joshua is
worth all the Caraccis in Europe; and so, in our modern water-
colour societies, there are many men who define clearly enough,
all whose works, put together, are not worth a careless blot by
Cox or Barrett.

§ 16. Let me give one illustration more, which will be also of some
historical usefulness in marking the relations of the clear and
obscure schools.

We have seen, in our investigation of Greek landscape. Homer's
intense love of the aspen poplar. For once, in honour of Homer
and the Greeks, I will take an aspen for the subject of comparison,
and glance at the different modes in which it would have been,
or was, represented from the earliest to the present stage of
landscape art.

The earliest manner which comes within our field of examina-
tion is that of the thirteenth century. Fig. 1. Plate 27. is an
aspen out of the wood in which Absalom is slain, from a Psalter
in my own possession, executed, certainly, after the year 1250,
and before 1272 : the other trees in the wood being, first, of
course, the oak in which Absalom is caught, and a sycamore.
All these trees are somewhat more conventional than is even
usual at the period ; though, for this reason, the more characteristic
as examples of earliest work. There is no great botanical accuracy
until some forty years later (at least in painting) ; so that I
cannot be quite sure, the leaf not being flat enough at the
base, that this tree is meant for an aspen : but it is so in all
probability; and whether it be or be not, serves well enough to
mark the definiteness and symmetry of the old art,—a symmetry
which, be it always observed, is never formal or unbroken.

chap. v.

This tree, though it looks formal enough, branches unequally at
the top of the stem. But the lowest figure in Plate 7. Vol. III.
is a better example from the MS. Sloane, 1975., Brit. Mus.
Every plant in that herbarium is drawn with some approach to
accuracy, in leaf, root, and flower ; while yet all are subjected to
the sternest conventional arrangement; coloured in almost any
way that pleases the draughtsman, and set on quaint grounds of
barred colour, like bearings on shields; ^ one side of the plant
always balancing the other, but never without some transgression or
escape from the law of likeness, as in the heads of the cyclamen
flower, and several other parts of this design. It might seem
at first, that the root was more carelessly drawn than the rest,
and uglier in colour; but this is in pure conscientiousness. The
workman knew that a root was ugly and earthy; he would not
make it ornamental and delicate. He would sacrifice his pleasant
colours and graceful lines at once for the radical fact; and rather
spoil his page than flatter a fibre.

§ 17. Here, then, we have the first mediaeval condition of art, con-
sisting in a fenced, but varied, symmetry; a perfect definiteness;
and a love of nature, more or less interfered with by conven-
tionalism and imperfect knowledge. Fig. 2. in Plate 27. repre-
sents the next condition of mediaeval art, in which the effort at
imitation is contending with the conventional type. This aspen
is from the MS. Cotton, Augustus, a. 5., from which I have
already taken an example of rocks to compare with Leonardo's.
There can be no doubt here about the species of the tree in-
tended, as throughout the MS. its illuminator has carefully dis-
tinguished the oak, the willow, and the aspen ; and this example,
though so small (it is engraved of the actual size), is very charac-
teristic of the aspen ramification ; and in one point, of ramifi-
cation in general, namely, the division of the tree into two masses,
each branching outwards, not across each other. Whenever a tree
divides at first into two or three nearly equal main branches, the

1 Compare Vol. III. Chap. XIV. § 13. Touching the exact degree in which
ignorance or incapacity is mingled with wilful conventionalism in this drawing, we
shall inquire in the chapters on Vegetation.

PART V.

secondary branches always spring from the outside of the divided
ones, just as, when a tree grows under a rock or wall, it shoots
away from it, never towards it. The beautiful results of this
arrangement we shall trace in the next volume; meantime in
the next Plate (28.) I have drawn the main^ ramifications of a
real aspen, growing freely, but in a sheltered place, as far as may
be necessary to illustrate the point in question.

§ 18. This example, Fig. 2. in Plate 27., is sufficiently characteristic
of the purist medijBval landscape, though there is somewhat more
leaning to naturalism than is usual at the period. The next
example. Fig. 3., is from Turner's vignette of St. Anne's Hill
(Kogers's Poems, p. 214.). Turner almost always groups his
trees, so that I have had difficulty in finding one on a small
scale and isolated, which would be characteristic of him ; nor is
this one completely so, for I had no access to the original
vignette, it being, I believe, among the drawings that have
been kept from the public, now these four years, because the
Chancery lawyers do not choose to determine the meaning of
Turner's perfectly intelligible, though informal, will; and Mr.
Goodall's engraving, which I have copied, though right in many
respects, is not representative of the dotted touch by which
Turner exj)ressed the aspen foliage. I have not, however, ven-
tured to alter it, except only by adding the extremities where
they were hidden in the vignette by the trelliswork above.

The principal difference between the Turnerian aspen and
the purist aspen is, it will be seen, in the expression of light-
ness and confusion of foliage, and roundness of the tree as a
mass; while the purist tree, like the thirteenth century one,
is still flat. All attempt at the expression of individual leaves
is now gone, the tree being too far oif to justify their delineation ;
but the direction of the light, and its gradations, are carefully
studied.

. 1 i

' Only the ?nam lines; the outer sprays have had no pains taken with them, as T
am going to put some leaA'es on them in next volume.

It is quite impossible to facsimile good free work. Both Turner and Harding
suiter grievously in this plate.

Harding's; quite inimitable in the quantity of life and truth
obtained by about a quarter of a minute's work ; but beginning to
show the faulty vagueness and carelessness of modernism. The
stems, though beautifully free, are not thoroughly drawn nor
rounded; and in the mass of the tree, though well formed, the
tremulousness and transparency of leafage are lost. Nor is it
possible, by Harding's manner of drawing, to express such
ultimate truths; his execution, which, in its way, no one can
at all equal (the best chalk drawing of Calame and other foreign
masters being quite childish and feeble in comparison), is yet
sternly limited in its reach, being originally based on the assump-
tion that nothing is to be delicately drawn, and that the method
is only good which insures specious incompletion.

It will be observed, also, that there is a leaning first to one
side, then to the other, in Harding's aspen, which marks the wild
picturesqueness of modernism as opposed to the quiet but stiff
dignity of the purist (Fig. 2.) ; Turner occupying exactly the
intermediate place.

The next example (Fig. 5.) is an aspen of Constable's, on
the left in the frontispiece to Mr. Leslie's life of him. Here
we have arrived at the point of total worthlessness, the tree
being as flat as the old purist one, but, besides, wholly false
in ramification, idle, and undefined in every respect; it being,
however, just possible still to discern what the tree is meant for,
and therefore the type of the worst modernism not being com-
pletely established.

§ 20. Fig. 6. establishes this type, being the ordinary condition of
tree-treatment in our blotted water-colour drawings; the nature
of the tree being entirely lost sight of, and no accurate know-
ledge, of any kind, possessed or communicated.

Thus, from the extreme of definiteness and light, in the
thirteenth century (the middle of the Dark Ages !), we pass to the
extreme of uncertainty and darkness, in the middle of the
nineteenth century.

As, however, the definite mediasval work has some faults, so the
indefinite modern work has some virtues, its very uncertainty
enabling it to appeal pleasantly to the imagination (though in an

part v.

inky manner, as described above, Vol. Ill, Cliap. x. § 10.), and
sometimes securing qualities of colour which could no otherwise
be obtained. It ought, however, if we would determine its true
standing, to be compared, not with the somewhat forced and
narrow decision of the thirteenth century, but with the perfect
and well-informed decision of Albert Durer and his fellow-work-
men. For the proper representation of these there was no room
in this plate ; so in Plate 25., above, on each side of the Daguerreo-
typed towers of Fribourg, I have given, Fig. 1., a Dureresque,
and Fig. 3. a Blottesque, version of the intermediate wall. The
latter version may, perhaps, be felt to have some pleasantness
in its apparent ease; and it has a practical advantage, in its capa-
bility of being executed in a quarter of a minute, while the
Dureresque statement cannot be made in less than a quarter of an
hour. But the latter embraces not only as much as is worth the
extra time, but even an infinite of contents, beyond and above the
other, for the other is in no single place clear in its assertion of
any-thing; whereas the Dureresque work, asserting clearly many
most interesting facts about the grass on the ledges, the bricks of
the windows, and the growth of the foliage, is for ever a useful
and trustworthy record; the other for ever an empty dream. If
it is a beautiful dream, full of lovely colour and good composition,
we will not quarrel with it; but it can never be so, unless it is
founded first on the Dureresque knowledge, and suggestive of it,
through all its own mystery or incompletion. So that by all
students the Dureresque is the manner to be first adopted, and
calmly continued as long as possible; and if their inventive
instincts do not, in after life, force them to swifter or more cloudy
execution,—if at any time it becomes a matter of doubt with
them how far to surrender their gift of accuracy,—let them be
assured that it is best always to err on the side of clearness; to
live in the illumination of the thirteenth century rather than the
mysticism of the nineteenth, aud vow themselves to the cloister
rather than lose themselves in the desert.

§ 21. I am afraid the reader must be tired of this matter ; and yet
there is one question more which I must for a moment touch
upon, in conclusion, namely, the mystery of clearness itself. In

an Italian twilight, when, sixty or eighty miles away, the ridge
of the Western Alps rises in its dark and serrated blue against
the crystalline vermilion, there is still unsearchableness, but an
unsearchableness without cloud or concealment, — an infinite
unknown, but no sense of any veil or interference between us
and it: we are separated from it, not by any anger of storm, not
by any vain and fading vapour, but only by the deep infinity of the
thing itself. I find that the great religious painters rejoiced in
that kind of unknowableness, and in that only;" and I feel that
even if they had had all the power to do so, still they would not
have put rosy mists and blue shadows behind their sacred figures,
but only the far-away sky and cloudless mountains. Probably the
right conclusion is that the clear and cloudy mysteries are alike
noble; but that the beauty of the wreaths of frost mist, folded
over banks of greensward deep in dew, and of the purple clouds
of evening, and the wreaths of fitful vapour gliding through
groves of pine, and irised around the pillars of waterfalls, is
more or less typical of the kind of joy which we should take in
the imperfect knowledge granted to the earthly hfe, while the
serene and cloudless mysteries set forth that belonging to the
redeemed life. But of one thing I am well assured, that so far
as the clouds are regarded, not as concealing the truth of other
things, but as themselves true and separate creations, they are
not usually beheld by us with enough honour; we have too great
veneration for cloudlessness. My reasons for thinking this I will
give in the next chapter; here we have, I believe, examined as
far as necessary the general principles on which Turner worked,
and justified his adoption of them so far as they contradicted
preceding practice.

It remains for us to trace, with more observant patience, the
ground which was marked out in the first volume; and, whereas
in that volume we hastily compared the truth of Turner with that
of preceding landscapists, we shall now, as closely as possible,
examine the range of what he himself has done and felt, and the
way in which it is likely to influence the future acts and thoughts
of men.

real effect of tlie things painted—clouds, or mountains, or whatever
else they may be—is, or ought to be, in general, on men's minds,
showing the grounds of their beauty or impressiveness as best
I can ; and then examining how far Turner seems to have under-
stood these reasons of beauty, and how far his work interprets, or
can take the place of nature. But in doing this, I shall, for the
sake of convenience, alter the arrangement which I followed in
the first volume ; and, instead of examining the sky first, treat
of it last; because, in many illustrations which I must give of
other things, I shall have to introduce pieces of sky backgi-ound
which will all be useful for reference when I can turn back to
them from the end of the book, but which I could not refer to in
advance without anticipating all my other illustrations. Never-
theless, some ]3oints which I have to note respecting the meaning
of the sky are so intimately connected with the subjects we have
just been examining, that I cannot properly defer their con-
sideration to another place; and I shall state them, therefore, in
the next chapter, afterwards proceeding, in the order I adopted
in the first volume, to examine the beauty of mountains, water,
and vegetation.

-J—u.

§ 1. The task which we now enter upon, as explained in the close of
the preceding chapter, is the ascertaining as far as possible what
the proper effect of the natural beauty of different objects ought
to be on the human mind, and the degree in which this nature of
theirs, and true influence, have been understood and transmitted
by Turner.

I mean to begin with the mountains, for the sake of con-
venience in illustration; but, in the proper order of thought,
the clouds ought to be considered first; and I think it will be
well, in this intermediate chapter, to bring to a close that line of
reasoning by which we have gradually, as I hope, strengthened
the defences around the love of mystery which distinguishes
our modern art; and to show, on final and conclusive authority,
what noble things these clouds are, and with what feeling it
seems to be intended by their Creator that we should contem-
plate them.

§ 2. The account given of the stages of Creation in the first chapter
of Genesis, is in every respect clear and intelligible to the simplest
reader, except in the statement of the work of the second day.
I suppose that this statement is passed over by careless readers
without an endeavour to understand it; and contemplated by
simple and faithful readers as a sublime mystery, which was not
intended to be understood. But there is no mystery in any other
part of the chapter, and it seems to me unjust to conclude that
any was intended here.

chap. vi.

the firmament.

part v.

being the first in the Bible in which the heavens are named,
and the only one in which the word "Heaven," all important
as that word is to our understanding of the most precious
promises of Scripture, receives a definite explanation.

Let us, therefore, see whether, by a little careful comparison of
the verse with other passages in which the word occurs, we may not
be able to arrive at as clear an understanding of this portion of the
chapter as of the rest.

§3, In the first place, the English word "Firmament" itself is
obscure and useless; because we never employ it but as a
synonym of heaven; it conveys no other distinct idea to us;
and the verse, though from our familiarity with it we imagine
that it possesses meaning, has in reality no more point or value
than if it were written, " Grod said, let there be a something
in the midst of the waters, and God called the something
Heaven."

But the marginal reading, "Expansion," has definite value;
and the statement that " God said, let there be an expansion in the
midst of the waters, and God called the expansion Heaven," has an
apprehensible meaning.

§ 4. Accepting this expression as the one intended, we have next
to ask what expansion there is, between two waters, describable
by the term Heaven. Milton adopts the term " expanse; " *
but he understands it of the whole volume of the air which
surrounds the earth. "Whereas, so far as we can tell, there is
no water beyond the air, in the fields of space; and the whole
expression of division of waters from waters is thus rendered
valueless.

§ 5. Now, with respect to this whole chapter, we must remember
always that it is intended for the instruction of all manldnd, not
for the learned reader only; and that, therefore, the most simple
and natural interpretation is the likeliest in general to be the

' " God made
The firmament, expanse of liquid, pm-e,
Transparent, elemental air, diffused
In circuit to the uttermost convex
Of this great round."

■n —~

true one. An unscientific reader knows little about the manner in
which the volume of the atmosphere surrounds the earth; but
I imagine that he could hardly glance at the sky when rain
was falling in the distance, and see the level line of the bases
of the clouds from which the shower descended, without being
able to attach an instant and easy meaning to the words ''Ex-
pansion in the midst of the waters." And if, having once
seized this idea, he proceeded to examine it more accurately,
he would perceive at once, if he had ever noticed anyihmg of
the nature of clouds, that the level line of their bases did
indeed most severely and stringently divide " waters from
waters," that is to say, divide water in its collective and tangible
state, from water in its divided and aerial state ; or the Avaters
which fall and Jioiv, from those which rise and float. Next, if
we try this interpretation in the theological sense of the word
Heaven, and examine whether the clouds are spoken of as God's
dwelling-place, we find G-od going before the Israelites in a pillar
of cloud; revealing Himself in a cloud on Sinai; appearing in a
cloud on the mercy seat, filling the Temple of Solomon with
the cloud when its dedication is accepted; appearing in a great
cloud to Ezekiel; ascending into a cloud before the eyes of
the disciples on Mount Olivet; and in like manner returning to
Judgment. "Behold, he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall
see him." " Then shall they see the son of man coming in the
clouds of heaven, with power and great glory." ^ While farther,
the "clouds" and "heavens" are used as interchangeable words
in those Psalms which most distinctly set forth the power of God :
" He bowed the heavens also, and came do^vn; he made darkness
pavilions round about him, dark waters, and thick clouds of the
skies." And, again : " Thy mercy, oh Lord, is in the heavens,
and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds." And, again :
" His excellency is over Israel, and his strength is in the clouds."
Again : " The clouds poured out water, the skies sent out a

' The reader may refer to the following texts, which it is needless to quote: Exod.
xiii. 21. xvi. 10. xix. 9. xxiv. 16. xxxiv. 5., Tvcvit. xvi. 2., Num. x. 34., Judges v, 4.,
1 Kings viii. 10., Ezek. i. 4., Dan. vii. 13., Matt. xxiv. 30., 1 Thess. iv. 17., Rev. i. 7.

sound, the voice of thy thunder was in the heaven." Again:
" Clouds and darkness are round about him, righteousness and
judgment are the habitation of his throne; the heavens declare
his righteousness, and all the people see his glory."

§ In all these passages the meaning is unmistakeable, if they
possess definite meaning at all. We are too apt to take them
merely for sublime and vague imagery, and therefore gradually
to lose the apprehension of their life and power. The expression,
" He bowed the heavens," for instance, is, I suppose, received
by most readers as a magnificent hyperbole, having reference to
some peculiar and fearful manifestation of God's power to the
writer of the Psalm in which the words occur. But the expression
either has plain meaning, or it has no meaning. Understand
by the term '' Heavens " the compass of infinite space around the
earth, and the expression, " bowed the Heavens," however sublime,
is wholly without meaning; infinite space cannot be bent or bowed.
But understand by the " Heavens " the veil of clouds above the
earth, and the expression is neither hyperbolical nor obscure;
it is pure, plain, and accurate truth, and it describes God,
not as revealing Himself in any peculiar way to David, but
doing what He is still doing before our own eyes day by day.
By accepting the words in their simple sense, we are thus led
to apprehend the immediate presence of the Deity, and His purpose
of manifesting Himself as near us whenever the storm-cloud stoops
upon its course; while by our vague and inaccurate acceptance
of the words we remove the idea of His presence far from us,
into a region which we can neither see nor know; and gradually,
from the close realization of a living God who " maketh the
clouds his chariot," we refine and explain ourselves into dim
and distant suspicion of an inactive God, inhabiting inconceivable
places, and fading into the multitudinous formalisms of the laws of
Nature.

§ 7. All errors of this kind—and in the present day we are in
constant and grievous danger of falling into them—arise from
the originally mistaken idea that man can, "by searching, find
out God—find out the Almighty to perfection; " that is to say,
by help of courses of reasoning and accumulations of science.

it
h

t r

.1-

apprehend the nature of the Deity in a more exalted and more
accurate manner than in a state of comparative ignorance;
whereas it is clearly necessary, from the beginning to the end
of time, that God's way of revealing Himself to His creatures
should be a simj^le way, which all those creatures may under-
stand. Whether taught or untaught, whether of mean capacity
or enlarged, it is necessary that communion with their Creator
should be possible to all; and the admission to such communion
must be rested, not on their having a knowledge of astronomy,
but on their having a human soul. In order to render this com-
munion possible, the Deity has stooped from His throne, and has
not only, in the person of the Son, taken upon him the veil of our
human Jlesh, but, in the person of the Father, taken upon Him the
veil of our human thoughts, and permitted us, by His own spoken
authority, to conceive Him simply and clearly as a loving Father
and Friend ;~a being to be walked with and reasoned with ; to be
moved by our entreaties, angered by our rebellion, alienated by
our coldness, pleased by our love, and glorified by our labour;
and, finally, to be beheld in immediate and active, presence in
all the powers and changes of creation. This conception of
G-od, which is the child's, is evidently the only one which can
be universal, and therefore the only one which for us can be true.
The moment that, in our pride of heart, we refuse to accept the
condescension of the Almighty, and desire Him, instead of stooping
to hold our hands, to rise up before us into His glory,—we hoping
that by standing on a grain of dust or two of human knowledge
higher than our fellows, we may behold the Creator as He rises,—
God takes us at our word; He rises, into His own invisible and
inconceivable majesty; He goes forth upon the ways which are not
our ways, and retires into the thoughts which are not our thoughts ;
and we are left alone. And presently we say in our vain hearts,
" There is no God."

§ 8- I would desire, therefore, to receive God's account of His own
creation as under the ordinary limits of human knowledge and
imagination it would be received by a simply minded man ; and
finding that the '' heavens and the eai-th " are spoken of always
as having something like equal relation to each other (" thus

the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of
them"), I reject at once all idea of the term "Heavens " being
intended to signify the infinity of space inhabited by countless
worlds; for between those infinite heavens and the particle of
sand, which not the earth only, but the sun itself, with all the
solar system, is in relation to them, no relation of equality or
comparison could be inferred. But I suppose the heavens to
mean that part of creation which holds equal companionship
with our globe; I understand the " rolling of those heavens
together as a scroll" to be an equal and relative destruction
with the melting of the elements in fervent heat;"^ and
I understand the making the firmament to signify that, so far
as man is concerned, most magnificent ordinance of the clouds;
—the ordinance, that as the great plain of waters was formed
on the face of the earth, so also a plain of waters should be
stretched along the height of air, and the face of the cloud answer
the face of the ocean ; and that this upper and heavenly plain
should be of waters, as it were, glorified in their nature, no longer
quenching the fire, but now bearing fire in their own bosoms; no
longer murmuring only when the winds raise them or rocks divide,
but answering each other with their own voices from pole to pole ;
no longer restrained by established shores, and guided through
unchanging channels, but going forth at their pleasure like the
armies of the angels, and choosing their encampments upon the
heights of the hills; no longer hurried downwards for ever, moving
but to fall, nor lost in the lightless accumulation of the abyss,

' Compare also Job, xxxvi. 29., " The spreading of the clouds, and the noise of his
tabernacle; " and xxxviii. 33., " Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven ? canst thou
set the dominion thereof in the earth ? canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds ? "

" The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue, ethereal sky,
And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great Original proclaim "—

the writer has clearly the true distinctions in his mind ; he does not use his words,
as we too often accept them, in vain tautology. By the spacious firmament he means
the clouds, using the word spacious to mark the tnie meaning of the Hebrew term :
the blue ethereal sky is the real air or ether, blue above the clouds ; the heavens are
the starry space, for which he uses this word, less accurately, indeed, than the others,
but as the only one available for his meaning.

but covering the east and west with the waving of their wings,
and robing the gloom of the farther infinite with a vesture of
divers colours, of which the threads are purple and scarlet, and
the embroideries flame.

§ 9, This, I believe, is the ordinance of the firmament; and it seems
to me that in the midst of the material nearness of these heavens
God means us to acknowledge His own immediate presence as
visiting, judging, and blessing us. " The earth shook, the heavens
also dropped, at the presence of God." " He doth set his bow in
the cloud," and thus renews, in the sound of every drooping swathe
of rain, his promises of everlasting love. " In them hath he set
a tabernacle for the sun;" whose burning ball, which Avithout the
firmament would be seen but as an intolerable and scorching circle
in the blackness of vacuity, is by that firmament surrounded with
gorgeous service, and tempered by mediatorial ministries; by the
firmament of clouds the golden pavement is spread for his chariot
wheels at morning; by the firmament of clouds the temple is
built for his presence to fill with light at noon ; by the firmament
of clouds the purple veil is closed at evening round the sanctuary
of his rest; by the mists of the firmament his implacable light is
divided, and its separated fierceness appeased into the soft blue
that fills the depth of distance with its bloom, and the flush with
which the mountains burn as they drink the overflowing of the
dayspring. And in this tabernacling of the unendurable sun -with
men, through the shadows of the firmament, God would seem to set
forth the stooping of His own majesty to men, upon the throne of
the firmament. As the Creator of all the worlds, and the Inhabiter
of eternity, we cannot behold Him ; but, as the Judge of the earth
and the Preserver of men, those heavens are indeed His dwelling-
place. " Swear not, neither by heaven, for it is God's throne;
nor by the earth, for it is his footstool." And all those passings
to and fro of fruitful shower and grateful shade, and all those
visions of silver palaces built about the horizon, and voices of
moaning winds and threatening thunders, and glories of coloured
robe and cloven ray, are but to deepen in our hearts the acceptance,
and distinctness, and dearness of the simple words, " Our Father,
which art in heaven."

■h 1

1. Having thus arrived at some appreliension of the true meaning
and noble offices of the clouds, we leave farther inquiry into their
aspects to another time, and follow the fixed arrangement of our
subject; first, to the crests of the mountains. Of these also,
having seen in our review of ancient and modern landscape various
strange differences in the way men looked upon them, it will be
well in the outset to ascertain, as far as may be, the true meaning
and office.

The words which marked for us the purpose of the clouds are
followed immediately by those notable ones :—

" And God said. Let the waters which are under the heaven
be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land
appear."

We do not, perhaps, often enough consider the deep sig-
nificance of this sentence. "We are too apt to receive it as the
description of an event vaster only in its extent, not in its nature,
than the compelling the Red Sea to draw back, that Israel might
pass by. We imagine the Deity in like manner rolling the waves
of the greater ocean together on an heap, and setting bars and
doors to them eternally.

But there is a far deeper meaning than this in the solemn
words of Genesis, and in the correspondent verse of the Psalm,
" His hands prepared the dry land." Up to that moment the
earth had been void, for it had been without form. The command
that the waters should be gathered was the command that the
earth should be sculptured. The sea was not driven to his place
in suddenly restrained rebellion, but withdrawn to his place in

i'au t y.

perfect and patient obedience. The dry land appeared, not in
level sands, forsaken by the surges, which those surges might
again claim for their own; but in range beyond range of swelling
hill and iron rock, for ever to claim kindred with the firmament,
and be companioned by the clouds of heaven.

§ 2. What space of time was in reality occupied by the " day "
of Genesis, is not, at present, of any importance for us to
consider. By what furnaces of fire the adamant was melted, and
by what wheels of earthquake it was torn, and by what teeth
of glacier and \^^eight of sea-waves it was engraven and finished
into its perfect form, we may perhaps hereafter endeavour to
conjecture ; but here, as in few words the work is summed by
the historian, so in few broad thoughts it should be compre-
hended by us; and as we read the mighty sentence, " Let the
dry land appear," we should try to follow the finger of God, as
it engraved upon the stone tables of the earth the letters and
the law of its everlasting form; as, gulf by gulf, the channels of
the deep were ploughed; and, cape by cape, the lines were traced,
with Divine foreknowledge, of the shores that were to limit the
nations; and, chain by chain, the mountain walls were lengthened
forth, and their foundations fastened for ever; and the compass
was set upon the face of the depth, and the fields, and the highest
part of the dust of the world were made; and the right hand of
Christ first strewed the snow on Lebanon, and smoothed the slopes
of Calvary.

§ 3. It is not, I repeat, always needful, in many respects it is not
possible, to conjecture the manner, or the time, in which this
work was done ; but it is deeply necessary for all men to consider
the magnificence of the accomplished purpose, and the depth of
the wisdom and love which are manifested in the ordinances
of the hills. For observe, in order to bring the world into the
form which it now bears, it was not mere sculpture that was
needed; the mountains could not stand for a day unless they
were formed of materials altogether diiferent from those which
constitute the lower hills, and the surfaces of the valleys. A
harder substance had to be prepared for every mountain chain;
yet not so hard but that it might be capable of crumbling down

■/s.

into eartli fit to nourish the alpine forest and the alpine flower;
not so hard but that, in the midst of the utmost majesty of its
enthroned strength, there should be seen on it the seal of death,
and the writing of the same sentence that had gone forth against
the human frame, " Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt
return." ^ And with this perishable substance the most majestic
forms were to be framed that were consistent with the safety of
man ; and the peak was to be lifted, and the cliff rent, as high and
as steeply as was possible, in order yet to permit the shepherd to
feed his flocks upon the slope, and the cottage to nestle beneath
their shadow.

§ And observe, two distinct ends were to be accomplished in
the doing this. It was, indeed, absolutely necessary that such
eminences should be created, in order to fit the earth in any
wise for human habitation ; for without mountains the air could
not be purified, nor the floAving of the rivers sustained, and the
earth must have become for the most part desert plain, or stagnant
marsh. But the feeding of the rivers and the purifying of the
winds are the least of the services appointed to the hills. To
fill the thirst of the human heart for the beauty of God's
working,—to startle its lethargy with the deep and pure agitation
of astonishment,—are their higher missions. They are as a great
and noble architecture; first giving shelter, comfort, and rest;
and covered also with mighty sculpture and painted legend. It is
impossible to examine in their connected system the features of
even the most ordinary mountain scenery, without concluding
that it has been prepared in order to unite as far as possible, and
in the closest compass, every means of delighting and sanctifying
the heart of man. "As far as possible ; " that is, as far as is
consistent with the fulfilment of the sentence of condemnation on
the whole earth. Death must be upon the hills ; and the cruelty
of the tempests smite them, and the briar and thorn spring up
upon them : but they so smite, as to bring their rocks into the
fairest forms; and so spring, as to make the very desert blossom

' " Surely the mountain falling cometh to nought, and the rock is removed out of
his place. The waters wear the stones : thou washest away the things which grow out
of the dust of the earth ; and thou destroyest the hope of man,"—Job, xiv. 18,19.

as the rose. Even among our own hills of Scotland and Cum-
berland, though often too barren to be perfectly beautiful, and
always too low to be perfectly sublime, it is strange how many
deep sources of delight are gathered into the compass of their
glens and vales ; and how, down to the most secret cluster of their
far-away flowers, and the idlest leap of their straying streamlets,
the whole heart of Nature seems thirsting to give, and still to
give, shedding forth her everlasting beneficence with a profusion
so patient, so passionatej that our utmost observance and thank-
fulness are but, at last, neglect of her nobleness, and apathy to
her love. But among the true mountains of the greater orders
the Divine purpose of appeal at once to all the faculties of the
human spirit becomes still more manifest. Inferior hills ordi-
narily interrupt, in some degree, the richness of the valleys at
their feet; the grey downs of southern England, and treeless
coteaux of central France, and grey swells of Scottish moor,
whatever peculiar charm they may possess in themselves, are at
least destitute of those which belong to the woods and fields of
the lowlands. But the great mountains lift the lowlands on their
sides. Let the reader imagine, first, the appearance of the most
varied plain of some richly cultivated country; let him imagine
it dark with graceful woods, and soft with deepest pastures; let
him fill the space of it, to the utmost horizon, with innumerable
and changeful incidents of scenery and life; leading pleasant
streamlets through its meadows, strewing clusters of cottages
beside their banks, tracing sweet footpaths through its avenues,
and animating its fields with happy flocks, and slow wandering
spots of cattle; and when he has wearied himself with endless
imagining, and left no space without some loveliness of its own,
let him conceive all this great plain, with its infinite treasures of
natural beauty and happy human life, gathered up in God's hands
from one edge of the horizon to the other, like a woven garment;
and shaken into deep falling folds, as the robes droop from a
king's shoulders; all its bright rivers leaping into cataracts along
the hollows of its fall, and all its forests rearing themselves aslant
against its slopes, as a rider rears himself back when his horse
plunges; and all its villages nestling themselves into the new

windings of its glens; and all its pastures thrown into steep
waves of greensward, dashed with dew along the edges of their
folds, and sweeping down into endless slopes, with a cloud here
and there lying quietly, half on the grass, half in the air; and
he will have as yet, in all this lifted world, only the foundation of
one of the great Alps. And whatever is lovely in the lowland
scenery becomes lovelier in this change : the trees which grew
heavily and stiffly from the level line of plain assume strange
curves of strength and grace as they bend themselves against the
mountain side ; they breathe more freely, and toss their branches
more carelessly as each climbs higher, looking to the clear light
above the topmost leaves of its brother tree : the flowers which
on the arable plain fell before the plough, now find out for them-
selves unapproachable places, where year by year they gather
into happier fellowship, and fear no evil; and the streams which
in the level land crept in dark eddies by unwholesome banks, now
move in showers of silver, and are clothed with rainbows, and
bring health and life wherever the glance of their waves can
reach.

§ 5, And although this beauty seems at first, in its wildness,
inconsistent with the service of man, it is, in fact, more necessary
to his happy existence than all the level and easily subdued land
which he rejoices to possess. It seems almost an insult to the
reader's intelligence to ask him to dwell (as if they could be
doubted) on the tises of the hills ; and yet so little, until lately,
have those uses been understood, that, in the seventeenth century,
one of the most enlightened of the religious men of his day
(Fleming), himself a native of a mountain country, casting about
for some reason to explain to himself the existence of mountains,
and prove their harmony with the general perfectness of the pro-
vidential government of creation, can light upon this reason only,
" They are inhabited by the beasts."

§ 6. It may not, therefore, even at this day, be altogether profitless
mountains.^ 01" unnecessary to review briefly the nature of the three great
to'^wale™"*^"" oflices which mountain ranges are appointed to fulfil, in order
to preserve the health and increase the happiness of mankind.
Their first use is of course to give motion to water. Every

fountain and river, from the inch-deep streamlet that crosses
the village lane in trembling clearness, to the massy and silent
march of the everlasting multitude of waters in Amazon or
Ganges, owe their play, and purity, and power, to the ordained
elevations of the earth. Gentle or steep, extended or abrupt,
some determined slope of the earth's surface is of course neces-
sary, before any wave can so much as overtake one sedge in its
pilgrimage; and how seldom do we enough consider, as we
walk beside the margins of our pleasant brooks, how beautiful
and wonderful is that ordinance, of which every blade of grass
that waves in their clear water is a perpetual sign ; that the dew
and rain fallen -on the face of the earth shall find no resting-
place ; shall find, on the contrary, fixed channels traced for them,
from the ravines of the central crests down which they roar in
sudden ranks of foam, to the dark hollows beneath the banks
of lowland pasture, round which they must circle slowly among
the stems and beneath the leaves of the lilies ; paths prepared
for them, by which, at some appointed rate of journey, they must
evermore descend, sometimes slow and sometimes swift, but never
pausing; the daily portion of the earth they have to glide over
marked for them at each successive sunrise, the place which
has known them knowing them no more, and the gateways of
guarding mountains opened for them in cleft and chasm, none
letting them in their pilgrimage; and, from afar off, the great
heart of the sea calling them to itself! Deep calleth unto deep.
I know not which of the two is the more wonderful,—that calm,
gradated, invisible slope of the champaign land, which gives
motion to the stream; or that passage cloven for it through
the ranks of hill, which, necessary for the health of the land
immediately around them, would yet, unless so supernaturally
divided, have fatally intercepted the flow of the waters from
far-off countries. When did the great spirit of the river first
knock at those adamantine gates ? When did the porter open
to it, and cast his keys away for ever, lapped in whirling sand ?
I am not satisfied—no one should be satisfied—with that vague
answer,—the river cut its way. Not so. The river found its
way. I do not see that rivers, in their own strength, can do

much in cutting their way ; they are nearly as apt to choke
their channels up, as to carve them out. Only give a river
some little sudden power in a valley, and see how it will use it.
Cut itself a bed ? Not so, by any means, but fill up its bed, and
look for another, in a wild, dissatisfied, inconsistent manner. Any
way, rather than the old one, will better please it; and even if
it is banked up and forced to keep to the old one, it will not
deepen, but do all it can to raise it, and leap out of it. And
although, wherever water has a steep fall, it will swiftly cut
itself a bed deep into the rock or ground, it will not, when the
rock is hard, cut a wider channel than it actually needs ; so that
if the existing river beds, through ranges of mountain, had in
reality been cut by the streams, they would be found, wherever
the rocks are hard, only in the form of narrow and profound-
ravines,—like the well-known channel of the Niagara below the
fall; not in that of extended valleys. And the actual work of
true mountain rivers, though often much greater in proportion
to their body of water than that of the Niagara, is quite in-
significant when compared with the area and depth of the valleys
through which they flow; so that, although in many cases it
appears that those larger valleys have been excavated at earlier
periods by more powerful streams, or by the existing stream in
a more powerful condition, still the great fact remains always
equally plain, and equally admirable, that, whatever the nature
and duration of the agencies employed, the earth was so shaped
at first as to direct the currents of its rivers in the manner most
healthy and convenient for man. The valley of the Khone may,
though it is not likely, have been in great part excavated in
early time by torrents a thousand times larger than the Rhone ;
but it could not have been excavated at all, unless the moun-
tains had been thrown at first into two chains, between which
the torrents were set to work in a given direction. And it
is easy to conceive how, under any less beneficent dispositions
of their masses of hill, the continents of the earth might either
have been covered with enormous lakes, as parts of North
America actually are covered; or have become wildernesses of
pestiferous marsh ; or lifeless plains, upon which the water

would have dried as it fell, leaving them for great part of
the year desert. Such districts do exist, and exist in vastness :
the lohole earth is not prepared for the habitation of man;
only certain small portions are prepared for him,—the houses,
as it were, of the human race, from which they are to look
abroad upon the rest of the world, not to wonder or complain
that it is not all house, but to be grateful for the kindness
of the admirable building, in the house itself, as compared
with the rest. It would be as absurd to think it an evil that
all the world is not fit for us to inhabit, as to think it an
evil that the globe is no larger than it is. As much as we
shall ever need is evidently assigned to us for our dwelling-
place ; the rest, covered with rolling waves or drifting sands,
fretted with ice or crested with fire, is set before us for con-
templation in an uninhabitable magnificence ; and that part which
we are enabled to inhabit owes its fitness for human life chiefly to
its mountain ranges, which, throwing the superfluous rain off as it
falls, collect it in streams or lakes, and guide it into given places,
and in given directions; so that men can build their cities in the
midst of fields which they know will be always fertile, and establish
the lines of their commerce upon streams which will not fail.

§ 7. Nor is this giving of motion to water to be considered as
confined only to the surface of the earth. A no less important
function of the hills is in directing the flow of the fountains
and springs, from subterranean reservoirs. There is no mira-
culous springing up of water out of the ground at our feet; but
every fountain and well is supplied from a reservoir among the
hills, so placed as to involve some slight fall or pressure, enough
to secure the constant flowing of the stream. And the incalculable
blessing of the power given to us in most valleys, of reaching by
excavation some point whence the water will rise to the surface of
the ground in perennial flow, is entirely owing to the concave
disposition of the beds of clay or rock raised from beneath the
bosom of the valley into ranks of enclosing hills.

■■'if

RWlll

change in the currents and nature of the air. Such change to air.
would, of course, have been partly caused by diff'ereuces in soils

and vegetation, even if the earth had been level; but to a far less
extent than it is now by the chains of hills, which, exposing
on one side their masses of rock to the full heat of the sun
(increased by the angle at which the rays strike on the slope), and
on the other casting a soft shadow for leagues over the plains at
their feet, divide the earth not only into districts, but into
climates, and cause perpetual currents of air to traverse their
passes, and ascend or descend their ravines, altering both the
temperature and nature of the air as it passes, in a thousand
different ways; moistening it with the spray of their waterfalls,
sucking it down and beating it hither and thither in the pools of
their torrents, closing it within clefts and caves, where the sun-
beams never reach, till it is as cold as November mists, then
sending it forth again to breathe softly across the slopes of velvet
fields, or to be scorched among sunburnt shales and grassless
crags; then drawing it back in moaning swirls through clefts
of ice, and up into dewy wreaths above the snow-fields; then
piercing it with strange electric darts and flashes of mountain
fire, and tossing it high in fantastic storm-cloud, as the dried
grass is tossed by the mower, only suffering it to depart at last,
when chastened and pure, to refresh the faded air of the far-off
plains.

§ 9. The third great use of mountains is to cause perpetual change
Togive^change ^^ ^^ earth. Without such provision the ground

(

to the ground, under cultivation would in a series of years become exhausted,
and require to be upturned laboriously by the hand of man. But
the elevations of the earth's surface provide for it a perpetual
renovation. The higher mountains suffer their summits to be
broken into fragments and to be cast down in sheets of massy
rock, full, as we shall see presently, of every substance necessary
for the nourishment of plants : these fallen fragments are again
broken by frost, and ground by torrents, into various conditions of
sand and clay — materials which are distributed perpetually by
the streams farther and farther from the mountain's base. Every
shower which swells the rivulets enables their waters to carry
certain portions of earth into new positions, and exposes new
banks of ground to be mined in their turn. That turbid foaming

of the angry water,—that tearing down of bank and rock along
the flanks of its fury,—are no disturbances of the kind course of
nature; they are beneficent operations of laws necessary to the
existence of man and to the beauty of the earth. The process
is continued more gently, but not less effectively, over all the
surface of the lower undulating country; and each filtering thread
of summer rain which trickles through the short turf of the uplands
is bearing its own appointed burden of earth to be thrown down on
some new natural garden in the dingles below.

And it is not, in reality, a degrading, but a true, large, and
ennobling view of the mountain ranges of the world, if we compare
them to heaps of fertile and fresh earth, laid up by a prudent
gardener beside his garden beds, whence, at intervals, he casts on
them some scattering of new and virgin ground. That which we
so often lament as convulsion or destruction is nothing else than
the momentary shaking of the dust from the spade. The winter
floods, which inflict a temporary devastation, bear with them the
elements of succeeding fertility; the fruitful field is covered with
sand and shingle in momentary judgment, but in enduring mercy ;
and the great river, which chokes its mouth with marsh, and tosses
terror along its shore, is but scattering the seeds of the harvests of
futurity, and preparing the seats of unborn generations.

§ 10. I have not spoken of the local and peculiar utilities of
mountains: I do not count the benefit of the supply of summer
streams from the moors of the higher ranges,—of the various
medicinal plants which are nested among their rocks,—of the
delicate pasturage which they furnish for cattle, ^—of the forests in
which they bear timber for shipping,—the stones they supply for
building, or the ores of metal which they collect into spots open
to discovery, and easy for working. All these benefits are of a
secondary or a limited nature. But the three great functions
which I have just described,—those of giving motion and change
to water, air, and earth,—are indispensable to human existence;
they are operations to be regarded with as full a depth of gratitude

' The highest pasturages (at least so say the Savoyards) being always the best and
richest.

as the laws which bid the tree bear fruit, or the seed multiply itself
in the earth. And thus those desolate and threatening ranges of
dark mountain, which, in nearly all ages of the world, men have
looked upon with aversion or with terror, and shrunk back from as
if they were haunted by perpetual images of death, are, in reality,
sources of life and happiness far fuller and more beneficent than
all the bright fruitfulnesses of the plain. The valleys only feed;
the mountains feed, and guard, and strengthen us. We take our
ideas of fearfulness and sublimity alternately from the mountains
and the sea ; but we associate them unjustly. The sea wave, with
all its beneficence, is yet devouring and terrible; but the silent
wave of the blue mountain is lifted towards heaven in a stillness of
perpetual mercy; and the one surge, unfathomable in its darkness,
the other, unshaken in its faithfulness, for ever bear the seal of
their appointed symbolism :

" Thy righteousness is like the great mountains :
Hlx^ judgments are a great deep."

§ 1. In the early days of geological science, the substances which com-
posed the crust of the earth, as far as it could be examined, were
supposed to be referable to three distinct classes : the first con-
sisting of rocks which not only supported all the rest, but from
which all the rest were derived, therefore called " Primary;"
the second class consisting of rock formed of the broken frag-
ments or altered substance of the primary ones, therefore called
" Secondary; " and, thirdly, rocks or earthy deposits formed by
the. ruins and detritus of both primary and secondary rocks,
called therefore " Tertiary." This classification was always, in
some degree, uncertain; and has been lately superseded by more
complicated systems, founded on the character of the fossils con-
tained in the various deposits, and on the circumstances of position,
by which their relative ages are more accurately ascertainable.
But the original rude classification, though of little, if any, use
for scientific purposes, was based on certain broad and conspicuous
phenomena, which it brought clearly before the popular mind.
In this way it may still be serviceable, and ought, I think, to be
permitted to retain its place, as an introduction to systems more
defined and authoritative.

§ 2. For the fact is, that in approaching any large mountain range,
the ground over which the spectator passes, if he examine it with
any intelligence, will almost always arrange itself in his mind
under three great heads. There will be, first, the ground of the
plains or valleys he is about to quit, composed of sand, clay, gravel,

rolled stones, and variously mingled soils; which, if he has any
opportunity,—at the banks of a stream, or the sides of a railway
cutting,—to examine to any depth, he will find arranged in beds
exactly resembling those of modern sandbanks or sea-beaches,
and appearing to have been formed under such natural laws as
are in operation daily around us. At the outskirts of the hill
district, he may, perhaps, find considerable eminences, formed
of these beds of loose gravel and sand; but, as he enters into
it farther, he will soon discover the hills to be composed of
some harder substance, properly deserving the name of rook,
sustaining itself in picturesque forms, and appearing, at first', to
owe both its hardness and its outlines to the action of laws such
as do not hold at the present day. He can easily explain the
nature, and account for the distribution, of the banks which over-
hang the lowland road, or of the dark earthy deposits which enrich
the lowland pasture; but he cannot so distinctly imagine how
the limestone hills of Derbyshire and Yorkshire were hardened
into their stubborn whiteness, or raised into their cavernous cliffs.
Still, if he carefully examines the substance of these more noble
rocks, he will, in nine cases out of ten, discover them to be
composed of fine calcareous dust, or closely united particles of
sand ; and will be ready to accept as possible, or even probable, the
suggestion of their having been formed, by slow deposit, at the
bottom of deep lakes and ancient seas, under such laws of Nature
as are still in operation.

§ 3. But, as he advances yet farther into the hill district, he finds
the rocks around him assuming a gloomier and more majestic con-
dition. Their tint darkens; their outlines become wild and irre-
gular ; and whereas before they had only appeared at the roadside
in narrow ledges among the turf, or glanced out from among the
thickets above the brooks in white walls and fantastic towers, they
now rear themselves up in solemn and shattered masses far and
near; softened, indeed, with strange harmony of clouded colours,
but possessing the whole scene with their iron spirit; and rising,
in all probability, into eminences as much prouder in actual eleva-
tion than those of the intermediate rooks, as more powei'ful in their
influence over every minor feature of the landscape.

§ 4. And when the traveller proceeds to observe closely the materials
of which these nobler ranges are composed, he finds also a complete
change in their internal structure. They are no longer formed of
delicate sand or dust—each particle of that dust the same as every
other, and the whole mass depending for its hardness merely on
their closely cemented unity; but they are now formed of several
distinct substances, visibly unlike each other ; and not pressed, but
crystallized into one mass,—crystallized into a unity far more
perfect than that of the dusty limestone, but yet without the least
mingling of their several natures with each other. Such a rock,
freshly broken, has a spotty, granulated, and, in almost all instances,
sparkling, appearance ; it requires a much harder blow to break it
than the limestone or sandstone; but, when once thoroughly
shattered, it is easy to separate from each other the various sub-
stances of which it is composed, and to examine them in their
individual grains or crystals ; of which each variety will be found
to have a different degree of hardness, a dififerent shade of colour,
and a different character of form.

But this examination will not enable the observer to com-
prehend the method either of their formation or aggregation, at
least by any process such as he now sees taking place around
him; he will at once be driven to admit that some strange and
powerful operation has taken place upon these rocks, different
from any of which he is at present cognizant ; and farther
inquiry will probably induce him to admit, as more than pro-
bable, the supposition that their structure is in great part
omng to the action of enormous heat prolonged for indefinite
periods.

§ 5. Now, although these three great groups of rocks do indeed
often pass into each other by imperceptible gradations, and
although their peculiar aspect is never a severe indication of
their relative ages, yet their characters are for the most part so
defined as to make a strong impression on the mind of an
ordinary observer, and their age is also for the most part approxi-
mately indicated by their degrees of hardness, and crystalline
aspect. It does, indeed, sometimes happen that a soft and slimy
clay will pass into a rock like Aberdeen granite by transitions

so subtle that no point of separation can be determined; and
it very often happens that rocks like Aberdeen granite are of
more recent formation than certain beds of sandstone and lime-
stone. But in spite of all these uncertainties and exceptions,
I believe that unless actual pains be taken to efface from the
mind its natural impressions, the idea of three great classes of
rocks and earth will maintain its ground in the thoughts of the
general observer; that whether he desire it or not, he will find
himself throwing the soft and loose clays and sands together
under one head; placing the hard rocks, of a dull, compact,
homogeneous substance, under another head; and the hardest
rocks, of a crystalline, glittering, and various substance, under
a third head; and having done this, he will also find that, with
certain easily admissible exceptions, these three classes of rocks
are, in every district which he examines, of three dififerent ages ;
that the softest are the youngest, the hard and homogeneous
ones are older, and the crystalline are the oldest; and he will,
perhaps, in the end, find it a somewhat inconvenient piece of
respect to the complexity and accuracy of modern geological
science, if he refuse to the three classes, thus defined in his
imagination, their ancient titles of Tertiary, Secondary, and
Primary.

§ 0. But however this may be, there is one lesson evidently in-
tended to be taught by the different characters of these rocks,
Avhich we must not allow to escape us. We have to observe,
first, the state of perfect powerlessness, and loss of all beauty,
exhibited in those beds of earth in which the separated pieces or
particles are entirely independent of each other, more especially in
the gravel whose pebbles have all been rolled into one shape:
secondly, the greater degree of permanence, power, and beauty
possessed by the rocks whose component atoms have some affection
and attraction for each other, though all of one kind; and, lastly,
the utmost form and highest beauty of the rocks in which the
several atoms have all different shapes, characters^ and offices ;
but are inseparably united by some fiery process which has-
purified them all.

ordinances seem intended to teach us tlie great truths which are
the basis of all political science; how the polishing friction
which separates, the aifection that binds, and the affliction that
fuses and confirms, are accurately symbolized by the processes
to which the several ranks of hills appear to owe their present
aspect; and how, even if the knowledge of those processes be
denied to us, that present aspect may in itself seem no imperfect
image of the various states of mankind : first, that which is power-
less through total disorganization; secondly, that which, though
united, and in some degree powerful, is yet incapable of great
efibrt or result, owing to the too great similarity and confusion of
offices, both in ranks and individuals ; and finally, the perfect state
of brotherhood and strength in which each character is clearly
distinguished, separately perfected, and employed in its proper
place and office. *

§ 7. I shall not, however, so oppose myself to the views of our
leading geologists as to retain here the names of Primary, Secon-
dary, and Tertiary rocks. But as I wish the reader to keep the
ideas of the three classes clearly in his mind, I will ask his leave
to give them names which involve no theory, and can be liable,
therefore, to no grave objections. We will call the hard, and
(generally) central, masses Crystalline Rocks, because they almost
always present an appearance of crystallization. The less hard
substances, which appear compact and homogeneous, we will call
Coherent Rocks, and for the scattered debris we will use the general
term Diluvium.

§ 8. All these substances agree in one character, that of being
more or less soft and destructible. One material, indeed, which
enters largely into the composition of most of them, flint, is
harder than iron; but even this, their chief source of strength,
is easily broken by a sudden blow; and it is so combined in the
large rocks with softer substances, that time and the violence of
the weather invariably produce certain destructive efiects on their
masses. Some of them become soft, and moulder away; others
break, little by little, into angular fragments or slaty sheets; but
all jield in some way or other; and the problem to be solved in
every mountain range appears to be, that under these conditions

of decay, the cliffs and peaks may be raised as high, and thrown
into as nohle forms, as is possible, consistently with an effective,
though not perfect permanence, and a general, though not absolute
security.

§ 9- Perfect permanence and absolute security were evidently in
nowise intended.^ It would have been as easy for the Creator
to have made mountains of steel as of granite, of adamant as
of lime; but this was clearly no part of the Divine counsels :
mountains were to be destructible and frail ; to melt under
the soft lambency of the streamlet ; to shiver before the subtle
wedge of the frost; to wither with untraceable decay in their
own substance; and yet, under all these conditions of destruc-
tion, to be maintained in magnificent eminence before the eyes
of men.

• Nor is it in anywise difficult for us to perceive the beneficent
reasons for this appointed frailness of the mountains. They appear
to be threefold: the first, and the most important, that successive
soils might be supplied to the plains, in the manner explained in
the last chapter, and that men might be furnished with a material
for their works of architecture and sculpture, at once soft enough
to be subdued, and hard enough to be preserved ; the second, that
some sense of danger might ahvays be connected with the most
precipitous forms, and thus increase their sublimity; and the
third, that a subject of perpetual interest might be opened to the
human mind in observing the changes of form brought about by
time on these monuments of creation.

In order, therefore, to understand the method in which these
various substances break, so as to produce the forms which are of
chief importance in landscape, as well as the exquisite adaptation

' I am well aware that to the minds of many persons nothing bears a greater
appearance of presumption than any attempt at reasoning respecting the purposes of
the Divine Being ; and that in many cases it would be thought more consistent with
the modesty of humanity to limit its endeavour to the ascertaining of physical causes
than to form conjectures respecting Divine intentions. But I believe this feeling to
be false and dangerous. Wisdom can only be demonstrated in its ends, and goodness
/ only perceived in its motives. He who in a morbid modesty supposes that he is

>1 incapable of apprehending any of the purposes of God, renders himself also incapable

of witnessing His wisdom ; and he who supposes that favours may be bestowed
without intention, will soon learn to receive them without gratitude.

of all their qualities to the service of men, it will be well that
I should take some note of them in their order; not with any
mineralogical accuracy, but with care enough to enable me here-
after to explain, without obscurity, any phenomena dependent upon
such peculiarities of substance.

rocks generally presented an appearance of " crystallization," I
meant a glittering or granulated look, somewhat like that of a
coarse piece of freshly broken loaf sugar.

But this appearance may also exist in rocks of uniform Are always
and softer substance, such as statuary marble, of which freshly
broken pieces, put into a sugar-basin, cannot be distinguished by
the eye from the real sugar. Such rocks are truly crystalline in
structure; but the group to which I wish to limit the term
"crystalline" is not only thus granulated and glittering, but
is always composed of at least two, usually three or four, sub-
stances, intimately mingled with each other in the form of small
grains or crystals, and giving the rock a more or less speclded
or mottled look, according to the size of the crystals and their
variety of colour. It is a law of nature, that whenever rocks
are to be employed on hard service, and for great purposes, they
shall be thus composed. And there appear to be two distinct
providential reasons for this.

§ 11. The first, that these crystalline rocks being, as we saw above,
generally the oldest and highest, it is from them that other soils
of various kinds must be derived; and they were therefore made
a kind of storehouse, from which, wherever they were found, all
kinds of treasures could be developed necessary for the service of
man and other living creatures. Thus the granite of Mont Blanc
is a crystalline rock composed of four substances; and in these
four substances are contained the elements of nearly all kinds of
sandstone and clay, together with potash, magnesia, and the metals
of iron and manganese. Wherever the smallest portion of this
rock occurs, a certain quantity of each of these substances may
be derived from it, and the plants and animals which require them
sustained in health.

manner are capable of more interesting variety in form than any
others ; and as they were continually to be exposed to sight in the
high ranges, they were so prepared as to be always as interesting
and beautiful as possible.

into two two great classes, according to the arrangement, in them, of the
pacTcr^tS- particles of a substance called mica. It is not present in all of
lines and Slaty them; but when it occurs, it is usually in large quantities, and a

notable source of character. It varies in colour, occurring white,
brown, green, red, and black; and in aspect, from shining plates
to small dark grains, even these grains being seen, under a
magnifier, to be composed of little plates, like pieces of exceed-
ingly thin glass; but with this great difference from glass, that,
whether large or small, the plates will not easily break across, but
are elastic, and capable of being bent into a considerable curve;
only if pressed with a knife upon the edge, they will separate into
any number of thinner plates, more and more elastic and flexible
according to their thinness, and these again into others still finer;
there seeming to be no limit to the possible subdivision but the
coarseness of the instrument employed.

§ 13, Now when these crystals, or
grains, represented by the black
spots and lines in Fig. 3, lie as
they do at a in that figure, in all
directions, cast hither and thither
among the other materials of the
stone,—sometimes on their faces,

sometimes on their sides, some-
times on their edges,—they give
the rock an irregularly granulated
appearance and structure, so that it
will break with equal ease in any
direction; but if these crystals lie
all one way, with their sides pa-
rallel, as at h, they give the rock
a striped or slaty look, and it will
most readily break in the direc-

109

tion in which they lie, separating itself into folia or plates, more
or less distinctly according to the quantity of mica in its mass.
In the example Fig. 4, a piece of rock from the top of Mont
Breven, there are very few of them, and the material with which
they are surrounded is so hard and compact that the whole mass
breaks irregularly, like a solid flint, beneath the hammer; but

the plates of mica nevertheless influence the fracture on a large
scale, and occasion, as we shall see hereafter, the peculiar form
, of the precipice at the summit of the mountain,^

The rocks which are destitute of mica, or in which the mica
lies irregularly, or in which it is altogether absent, I shall call
Compact CrystalHnes. The rocks in which the mica lies regu-
larly I shall call Slaty Crystallines.
§ 14. 1st. Compact Crystallines.—Under this head are embraced Compact

the large group of the granites, syenites, and porphyries,—rocks links.
which all agree in the following particulars :—

t'
^ it.

Speckledness. of different substances necessitates their being all more or less
spotted or dashed with various colours; there being generally a
prevalent ground colour, with other subordinate hues broken
over it, forming, for the most part, tones of silver grey, of warm
but subdued red, or purple. Now, there is in this a very mar-
vellous provision for the beauty of the central ranges. Other
rocks, placed lower among the hills, receive colour upon their
surfaces from all kinds of minute vegetation; but these higher
and more exposed rocks are liable to be in many parts barren ;
and the wild forms into which they are thrown necessitate
their being often freshly broken, so as to bring their pure
colour, untempered in anywise, frankly into sight. Hence it is
appointed that this colour shall not be raw or monotonous, but
composed—as all beautiful colour must be composed—by mingling
of many hues in one. Not that there is any aim at attractive
beauty in these rocks; they are intended to constitute solemn
and desolate scenes; and there is nothing delicately or variously
disposed in their colours. Such beauty would have been incon-
sistent with their expression of power and terror, and it is reserved
for the marbles and other rocks of inferior office. But their colour
is grave and perfect; closely resembling, in many cases, the sort
of hue reached by cross-chequering in the ground of fourteenth-
century manuscripts, and peculiarly calculated for distant effects
of light; being, for the most part, slightly warm in tone, so as to
receive with full advantage the red and orange rays of sunlight.
This warmth is almost always farther aided by a glowing orange
colour, derived from the decomposition of the iron which, though
in small quantity, usually is an essential element in them: the
orange hue forms itself in unequal veins and spots upon the sur-
faces which have been long exposed, more or less darkening them ;
and a very minute black lichen,—so minute as to look almost like
spots of dark paint,— a little opposed and warmed by the golden
Lichen geographicus, still farther subdues the paler hues of the
highest granite rocks. Now, when a surface of this kind is re-
moved to a distance of four or five miles, and seen under warm
light through soft air, the orange becomes russet, more or less

inclining to pure red, according to the power of the rays: but
the black of the lichen becomes pure dark blue; and the result
of their combination is that peculiar reddish purple which is
so strikingly the characteristic of the rocks of the higher Alps.
Most of the travellers who have seen the Valley of Chamouni
carry away a strong impression that its upper precipices are of
red rock. But they are, without exception, of a whitish grey,
toned and raised by this united operation of the iron, the lichen,
and the light.

tones upon rocks of porphyry; but the beautiful colour of that
rock in its interior substance has rendered it one of the favourite
materials of the architects of all ages, in their most costly work.
Not that all porphyry is purple; there are green and white por-
phyries, as there are yellow and white roses ; but the first idea of
a porphyry rock is that it shall be purple,—just as the first idea
of a rose is that it shall be red. The purple inclines always
towards russet^ rather than blue, and is subdued by small spots
of grey or white. This speckled character, common to all the
crystalline rocks, fits them, in art, for large and majestic work;
it unfits them for delicate sculpture ; and their second universal
characteristic is altogether in harmony with this consequence of
their first.

§16. This second characteristic is a tough hardness, not a brittle Their second
hardness, like that of glass or flint, which will splinter violently Toughness,
at a blow in the most unexpected directions; but a grave hard-

' As we had to complain of Dante for not enough noticing the colours of rocks in
wild nature, let us do him the justice to refer to his noble symbolic use of their
colours when seen in the hewn block.

" The lowest stair was marble white, so smooth
And polished that therein my mirrored form
Distinct I saw. The next of hue more dark
Than sablest grain, a rough and singed block,
Cracked lengthwise and across. The third, that lay
Massy above, seemed porphyry, that flamed
Red as the life-blood spouting from a vein."

This stair is at the gate of Purgatory. The white step means sincerity of con-
science ; the black, contrition ; the purple (I believe), pardon by the Atonement.

ness, wlLicli will bear many blows before it yields, and when it is
forced to yield at last, will do so, as it were, in a serious and
thoughtful way; not spitefully, nor uselessly, nor irregularly, but
in the direction in which it is wanted, and where the force of the
blow is directed—there, and there only. A flint which receives a
shock stronger than it can bear, gives up everything at once, and
flies into a quantity of pieces, each piece full of flaws. But a piece
of granite seems to say to itself, very solemnly : "If these people
are resolved to split me into two pieces, that is no reason why I
should split myself into three. I will keep together as well as I
can, and as long as I can; and if I must fall to dust at last, it
shall be slowly and honourably ; not in a fit of fury." The import-
ance of this character, in fitting the rock for human uses, cannot
be exaggerated : it is essential to such uses that it should be hard,
for otherwise it could not bear enormous weights without being
crushed; and if, in addition to this hardness, it had been brittle,
like glass, it could not have been employed except in the rudest
way, as flints are in Kentish walls. But now it is possible to
cut a block of granite out of its quarry to exactly the size we
want ; and that with perfect ease, without gunpowder, or any
help but that of a few small iron wedges, a chisel, and a heavy
hammer. A single workman can detach a mass fifteen or twenty
feet long, by merely drilling a row of holes, a couple of inches
deep, and three or four inches apart, along the surface, in the
direction in which he wishes to split the rock, and then inserting
wedges into each of these holes, and striking them, consecutively,
with small, light, repeated blows along the whole row. The granite
rends, at last, along the line, quite evenly, requiring very little
chiselling afterwards to give the block a smooth face.

§ 17. This after-chiselling, however, is necessarily tedious work, and
therefore that condition of speckled colour, which is beautiful if
exhibited in broad masses, but offensive in delicate forms, exactly
falls in with the conditions of possible sculpture. Not only is
it more laborious to carve granite delicately, than a softer rock ;
but it is physically impossible to bring it into certain refinements
of form. It cannot be scraped and touched into contours, as
marble can; it must be struck hard, or it will not yield at all;

ilfi

and to strike a delicate and detached form hard, is to break it.
The detached fingers' of a delicate hand, for instance, cannot,
as far as I know, be cut in granite. The smallest portion could
not be removed from them without a strength of blow which
would break off the finger. Hence the sculptor of granite is
forced to confine himself to, and to seek for, certain types of
form capable of expression in his material ; he is naturally
driven to make his figures simple in surface, and colossal in
size, that they may bear his blows ; and this simplicity and
magnitude are exactly the characters necessary to show the
granitic or porphyiitic colour to the best advantage. And thus
we are guided, almost forced, by the laws of nature, to do right
in art. Had granite been white, and marble speckled (and why
should this not have been, but by the definite Divine appoint-
ment for the good of man?), the huge figures of the Egyptian
would have been as oppressive to the sight as cliffs of snow,
and the Venus de Medicis would have looked like some exqui-
sitely graceful species of frog.

§18. The third universal characteristic of these rocks is their Tlicir third
decomposition into the purest sand and clay. Some of them purity in de-
decompose spontaneously, though slowly, on exposure to weather; f'omposthon.
the greater number only after being mechanically pulverized; but
the sand and clay to which by one or the other process they are
reducible, are both remarkable for their purity. The clay is the
finest and best that can be found for porcelain ; the sand often
of the purest white, always lustrous and bright in its particles.
The result of this law is a peculiar aspect of purity in the
landscape composed of such rocks. It cannot become muddy, or
foul, or unwholesome. The streams which descend through it
may indeed be opaque, and as white as cream Avith the churned
substance of the granite ; but their water, after this substance has
been thrown down, is good and pure, and their shores ai'e not
slimy or treacherous, but of pebbles, or of firm and sparkling sand.
The quiet streams, springs, and lakes are always of exquisite
clearness, and the sea which washes a granite coast is as unsullied
as a flawless emerald. It is remarkable to what an extent this
intense purity in the country seems to influence the character of
VOL. IV. I

its inhabitants. It is almost impossible to make a cottage built
in a granite country look absolutely miserable. Rough it may be,
—neglected, cold, full of aspect of hardship,—but it never can
look foul; no matter how carelessly, how indolently, its inhabi-
tants may live, the water at their doors will not .stagnate, the
soil beneath their feet will not allow itself to be trodden into slime,
the timbers of their fences will not rot, they cannot so much as
dirty their faces or hands if they try; do the worst they can, there
will still be a feeling of firm ground under them, and pure air
about them, and an inherent wholesomeness in their abodes which
it will need the misery of years to conquer. And, as far as I
remember, the inhabitants of granite countries have always a force
and healthiness of character, more or less abated or modified, of
course, according to the other circumstances of their life, but still
definitely belonging to them, as distinguished from the inhabitants
of the less pure districts of the hills.

These, then, are the principal characters of the compact crys-
tallines, regarded in their minor or detached masses. Of the
peculiar forms which they assume we shall have to speak presently;
meantime, retaining these general ideas touching their nature and
substance, let us proceed to examine, in the same point of view,
the neighbouring group of slaty crystallines.

M^^ -

wem

§ 1. It will be remembered tliat we said in the last chapter (§ 4.)
that one of the notable characters of the whole group of the
crystallines was the incomprehensibility of the processes which
have brought them to their actual state. This however is more
peculiarly true of the slaty crystallines. It is perfectly possible,
by many processes of chemistry, to produce masses of irregular
crystals which, though not of the substange of granite, are very
like it in their mode of arrangement. But, as far as I am aware,
it is impossible to produce artificially anything resembling the
structure of the slaty crystallines. And the more I have examined
the rocks themselves, the more I have felt at once the difficulty
of explaining the method of their formation, and the growing
interest of inquiries respecting that method. The facts (and
I can venture to give nothing more than facts) are briefly
these :—

§ 2. The mineral called mica, described in the course of the last
chapter, is closely connected with another, differing from it in
containing a considerable quantity of magnesia. This associated
mineral, called chlorite, is of a dull greenish colour, and opaque,
while the mica is, in thin plates, more or less translucent; and
the chlorite is apt to occur more in the form of a green earth, or
green dust, than of finely divided plates. The original quantity
of magnesia in the rock determines how far the mica shall give

place to chlorite; and in the intermediate conditions of rock we
find a black and nearly opaque mica, containing a good deal of
magnesia, together with a chlorite, which at first seems mixed with
small plates of true mica, or is itself formed of minute plates or
spangles, and then, as the quantity of magnesia increases, assumes
its proper form of a dark green earth.

§ 3. By this appointment there is obtained a series of materials by
which the aj)pearance of the rock may bo varied to almost any
extent. From plates of brilliant white mica half a foot broad,
flashing in the sun like panes of glass, to a minute film of dark
green dust, hardly traceable by the eye, an infinite range of
conditions is found in the different groups of rocks; but always
under this general law, that, for the most part, the compact
crystallines present the purest and boldest plates of mica ; and the
tendency to pass into slaty crystallines is commonly accompanied
by the change of the whiteness of the mica to a dark or black
colour, indicating (I believe) the presence of magnesia, and by the
gradual intermingling with it of chloritic earth ; or else of a cognate
mineral (differing from chlorite in containing a quantity of lime)
called hornblende.

Such, at least, is eminently the case in the Alps; and in the
account I have to give of their slaty crystallines, it must be
understood that in using the word " mica " generally, I mean the
more obscure conditions of the mineral, associated with chlorite
and hornblende.

§ 4. Now it is quite easy to understand how, in the compact
crystallines, the various elements of the rock, separating from
each other as they congealed from their fluid state, whether
of watery solution or fiery fusion, might arrange themselves in
irregular grains as at a in Fig. 3. p. 109. Such an arrangement
constantly takes place before our eyes in volcanic rocks as they
cool. But it is not at all easy to understand how the white, hard,
and comparatively heavy substances should throw themselves into
knots and bands in one definite direction, and the delicate films of
mica should undulate about and between them, as in Fig. 5., on
next page, like rivers among islands, pursuing, however, on the
whole, a straight course across the mass of rock. If it could be

shown that such pieces of stone had been formed in the horizontal
position in which I have drawn the one in the figure, the structure
would be somewhat intelligible as the result of settlement. But,
on the contrary, the lines of such foliated rocks hardly ever are

horizontal; neither can distinct evidence be found of their at any
time having been so. The evidence, on the contrary, is often
strongly in favour of their having been formed in the highly
inclined directions in which they now occur, such as that of the
piece in Fig. 7. p. 119. ^
§ 5. Such, however, is the simple fact, that when the compact
crystallines are about to pass into slaty crystallines, their mica
throws itself into these bands and zones, undulating around knots
of the other substances which compose the rock. Gradually the
knots diminish in size, the mica becomes more abundant and
more definite in direction, and at last the mass, when broken
across the beds, assumes the appearance of Fig. 6. on next page.^
Now it will be noticed that, in the lines of that figure, no less,
than in Fig. 5., though more delicately, there is a subdued, but

^ This is a piece of the gneiss of the Montanvert, near the Chalets of Blaitiere
(lessons.

continual, expression of undulation. This character belongs,
more or less, to nearly the whole mass of the slaty crystalline
rocks; it is one of exquisite beauty, and of the highest impor-
tance to their picturesque forms. It is also one of as great
mysteriousness as beauty. For these two figures are selected from
crystallines whose beds are remarkably straight; in the greater

number the undulation becomes far more violent, and, in many,
passes into absolute contortion. Fig. 7. is a piece of a slaty
crystalline, rich in mica, from the valley of St. Nicolas, below
Zermatt. The rock from which it was broken was thrown into
coils three or four feet across : the fragment, which is drawn of
the real size, was at one of the turns, and came away like a thick
portion of a crumpled quire of paper from the other sheets.^

' " Some idea may be formed of the nature of these incurvations by supposing the
gneiss beds to have been in a plastic state, either from the action of heat or of some
other unknown caitse, and, while in this state, to have been subjected to pressure at
the two extremities, or in some other parts, according to the nature of the cui-vatures.
But even this hypothesis (though the best that has been thought of) will scarcely
enable us to explain all the contortions which not merely the beds of gneiss, but
likewise of mica slate and clay slate, and even greywacke slate, exhibit. There is
a bed of clay slate near the ferry to Kerrcra, a few miles south of Oban, in Argyle-

JtL

mia

§ G. I might devote half a volume to a description of the fantastic Tyi)ical dia-
and incomprehensible arrangements of these rocks and their veins; clystamife^^^

sliirc. This bed has bceu partly wasted away by the sea, and its structure exposed
to view. It contains a central cylindrical nucleus of unknown length (but certainly
considerable), round which six beds of clay slate are wrapt, the one within the other,
so as to form six concentric cylinders. Now, however plastic the clay slate may have
been, there is no kind of pressure which will account for this structure ; the central
cylinder would have required to have been rolled six times in succession (allowing an
interval for solidification between each) in the plastic clay slate."—Outlines of Mine-
ralogy, Geology, §'c., by Tliomas Thomson, M.D.

but all that is necessary for the general reader to know or remem-
ber, is this broad fact of the undulation of their whole substance.
For there is something, it seems to me, inexpressibly marvellous
in this phenomenon, largely looked at. It is to be remembered
that these are the rocks which, on the average, will be oftenest
observed, and with the greatest interest, by the human race.
The central granites are too far removed, the lower rocks too
common, to be carefully studied; these slaty crystallines form
the noblest hills that are easily accessible, and seem to be thus
calculated especially to attract observation, and reward it. Well,
we begin to examine them; and, first, we find a notable hard-
ness in them, and a thorough boldness of general character, which
make us regard them as very types of perfect rocks. They have
nothing of the look of dried earth about them, nothing petty or
limited in the display of their bulk. Where they are, they seem
to form the world; no mere bank of a river here, or of a lane
there, peeping out among the hedges or forests : but from the
lowest valley to the highest clouds, all is theirs—one adamantine
dominion and rigid authority of rock. We yield ourselves to the
impression of their eternal, unconquerable stubbornness of strength;
their mass seems the least yielding, least to be softened, or in
anywise dealt with by external force, of all earthly substance.
And, behold, as we look farther into it, it is all touched and
troubled, like waves by a summer breeze; rippled, far more
delicately than seas or lakes are rippled : they only undulate along
their surfaces—this rock trembles through its every fibre, like the
chords of an Eolian harp—like the stillest air of spring with
the echoes of a child's voice. Into the heart of all those great
mountains, through every tossing of their boundless crests, and
deep beneath all their unfathomable defiles, flows that strange
quivering of their substance. Other and weaker things seem to
express their subjection to an Infinite power only by momentary
terrors: as the weeds bow down before the feverish wind, and
the sound of the going in the tops of the taller trees passes on
before the clouds, and the fitful opening of pale spaces on the
dark water, as if some invisible hand were casting dust abroad
upon it, gives warning of the anger that is to come, we may well

121

CHAP. IX.

imagine that there is indeed a fear passing upon the grass, and
leaves, and waters, at the presence of some great spirit commissioned
to let the tempest loose; but the terror passes, and their sweet
rest is perpetually restored to the pastures and the waves. Not
so to the mountains. They, which at first seem strengthened
beyond the dread of any violence or change, are yet also ordained
to bear upon them the symbol of a perpetual Fear: the tremor
which fades from the soft lake and gliding river is sealed, to all
eternity, upon the rock; and while things that pass visibly from
birth to death may sometimes forget their feebleness, the moun-
tains are made to possess a perpetual memorial of their infancy,—
that infancy which the prophet saw in his vision : "I beheld the
earth, and lo, it was without form and void, and the heavens, and
they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and lo, they trembled;
and all the hills moved lightly.

§ 7, Thus far may we trace the apparent typical signification of Serviceable
the structure of those noble rocks. The material uses of this the Slaty
structure are not less important. These substances of the higher Crystallines,
mountains, it is always to be remembered, were to be so hard as building with,
to enable them to be raised into, and remain in, the most mag-
nificent forms; and this hardness renders it a matter of great
difficulty for the peasant to break them into such masses as are
required for his daily purposes. He is compelled in general to
gather the fragments which are to form the walls of his house or
his garden from the ruins into which the mountain suffers its
ridges to be naturally broken ; and if these pieces were absolutely
irregular in shape, it would be a matter of much labour and skill
to build securely with them. But the flattened arrangement of
the layers of mica always causes the rock to break into flattish
fragments, requiring hardly any pains in the placing them so as to
lie securely in a wall, and furnishing light, broad, and unflawed
pieces to serve for slates upon the roof; for fences, when set edge- '

§8. Farther: whenever rocks break into utterly irregular frag-2. Stability in
ments, the masses of debris which they form are not only
excessively difficult to walk over, but the pieces touch each
other in so few points, and suffer the water to run so easily

and so far thrDUgh their cavities, that it takes a long series
of years to enable them either to settle themselves firmly, or
receive the smallest covering of vegetation. Where the sub-
stance of the stone is soft, it may soon be worn down, so that
the irregular form is of less consequence. But in the hard
crystallines, unless they had a tendency to break into flattish
fragments, their ruins would remain for centuries in impassable
desolation. The flat shape of the separate pieces prevents this;
it -permits—almost necessitates — their fitting into and over
each other in a tolerably close mass, and thus they become
comparatively easy to the foot, less permeable to water, and
therefore retentive both of surface moisture and of the seeds of
vegetation.

3. Security on regards the habitableness of the hills. When stones are thrown
dechvitics. °

together in rounded or massy blocks, like a heap of hazel nuts,
small force will sometimes disturb their balance; and when once
set in motion, a square-built and heavy fragment will thunder
down even a slightly sloping declivity, with an impetus as unlikely
to be arrested as fatal in its increase. But when stones lie flatly,
as dead leaves lie, it is not easy to tilt any one of them upon
its edge, so as to set it in motion; and when once moved, it will
nearly always slide, not roll, and be stopped by the first obstacle
it encounters, catching against it by the edge, or striking into
the turf where first it falls, like a hatchet. Were it not for the
merciful ordinance that the slaty crystallines should break into
thin and flattish fragments, the frequent falls of stones from the
hill sides would render many spots among the greater moun-
tain chains utterly uninhabitable, which are now comparatively
secure.

4. Tendency to {j^Qes in the mountains, and in the stones of the foreground, we
form the love- "

liest scenery, shall have to speak presently; with regard to the uses of the
material it is only necessary to note farther that these slaty rocks
are of course, by their wilful way of brealdng, rendered unfit for
sculpture, and for nearly all purposes of art; the properties which
render them convenient for the peasant in building his cottage,

123

making them unavailable for the architecture of more elaborate
edifices. One very great advantage is thus secured for the scenery
they compose, namely, that it is rarely broken by quarries. A
single quarry will often spoil a whole Alpine landscape ; the effect
of the lovely bay of the Lago Maggiore, for instance, in which lie
the Borromean Islands, is, in great part, destroyed by the scar
caused by a quarry of pink granite on its western shore; and
the valley of Chamouni itself has lost some of its loveliest rock
scenery in consequence of the unfortunate discovery that the
boulders which had fallen from its higher pinnacles, and were
lying in massy heaps among its pines, were available for stone
lintels and door-posts in the building of its new inns. But the
slaty crystallines, though sometimes containing valuable mines,
are hardly ever quarried for stone ; and the scenes they compose
retain, in general, little disturbed by man, their aspect of melan-
choly power, or simple and noble peace. The colour of their own
mass, when freshly broken, is nearly the same as that of the com-
pact crystallines ; but it is far more varied by veins and zones of
included minerals, and contains usually more iron, which gives
a rich brown or golden colour to their exposed sides, so that the
colouring of these rocks is the most glowing to be found in the
mountain world. They form also soil for vegetation more quickly,
and of a more fruitful kind than the granites, and appear, on the
whole, intended to unite every character of grandeur and of beauty,
and to constitute the loveliest as well as the noblest scenes which
the earth ever unfolds to the eyes of men.

§ j. It will be remembered that we resolved to give generally the
term " coherent" to those rocks which appeared to be composed
of one compact substance, not of several materials. But, as in
all the arrangements of Nature we find that her several classes
pass into each other by imperceptible gradations, and that there
is no ruling of red lines between one and the otlier, we need
not suppose that we shall find any plainly distinguishable limit
between the crystalline and coherent rocks. Sometimes, indeed,
a very distinctly marked crystalline will be joined by a cohe-
rent rock so sharply and neatly that it is possible to break
off specimens, no larger than a walnut, containing portions of
each; but far more frequently the transition from one to the
other is effected gradually; or, if not, there exist, at anj^ rate,
in other places intervening, a series of rocks which possess an
imperfectly crystalline character, passing down into that of simple
coherence. This transition is usually effected through the dif-
ferent kinds of slate; the slaty crystallines becoming more and
more fine in texture, until at last they appear composed of
nothing but very fine mica or chlorite; and this mass of mica-
ceous substance becomes more and more compact and silky in
texture, losing its magnesia, and containing more of the earth
which forms the substance of clay, until at last it assumes the
familiar appearance of roofing-slate, the noblest example of the

coherent rocks. I call it the noblest, as bemg the nearest to the
crystallines, and possessing much in common with them. Con-
nected with this well-known substance are enormous masses of
other rocks, more or less resembling it in character, of which
the following are universal characteristics.

§ 2. First. They nearly always, as just said, contain more of the Characteris-
earth, which is the basis of clay, than the crystalline rocks; coherLts,^^
and they can be scratched or crushed with much greater faci-i. Softness of
lity. The point of a knife will trace a continuous powdery
streak upon most of the coherent rocks; while it will be quite
powerless against a large portion of the granular knots in the
crystallines. Besides this actual softness of substance, the slaty 2. Lamination
coherents are capable of very fine division into flakes, not stiuctuie.
irregularly and contortedly, like the crystallines, but straightly,
so as to leave a silky lustre on the sides of the fragments,
as in roofing slate; and separating with great ease, yielding to
a slight pressure against the edge. Consequently, although the
slaty coherents are capable of forming large and bold moun-
tains, they are liable to all kinds of destruction and decay in
a far greater degree than the crystallines; giving way in large
masses under frost, and crumbling into heaps of flaky rubbish,
which in its turn dissolves or is ground down into impalpable
dust or mud, and carried to great distances by the mountain
streams. These characters render the' slaty coherents peculiarly
adapted for the support of vegetation ; and as, though apparently
homogeneous, they usually contain as many chemical elements
as the crystallines, they constitute (as far as regards the imme-
diate nourishment of soils) the most important part of mountain
ranges.

§ 3. I have already often had occasion to allude to the apparent 3, Darkness
connection of brilliancy of colour with vigour of life, or purity ™ colom-?*^^^
of substance. This is preeminently the case in the mineral
kingdom. The perfection with which the particles of any sub-
stance unite in crystallization corresponds, in that kingdom, to
the vital power in organic nature; and it is a universal law, that
according to the purity of any substance, and according to the
energy of its crystallization, is its beauty or brightness. Pure

earths are without exception white when in powder; and the same
earths which are the constituents of clay and sand, form, when
crystallized, the emerald, ruby, sapphire, amethyst, and opal.
Darkness and dulness of colour are the universal signs of dissolu-
tion, or disorderly mingling of elements.^
§ 4. Accordingly, these slaty coherents, being usually composed of
many elements imperfectly united, are also for the most part grey,
black, or dull purple; those which are purest and hardest verging
most upon purple, and some of them in certain lights displaying,
on their smooth sides, very beautiful zones and changeful spaces of
grey, russet, and obscure blue. But even this beauty is strictly
connected with their preservation of such ifirmness of form as
properly belongs to them ; it is seen chiefly on their even and
silky surfaces; less, in comparison, upon their broken edges, and
is lost altogether when they are reduced to powder. They then
form a dull grey dust, or, with moisture, a black slime, of
great value as a vegetative earth, but of intense ugliness when
it occurs in extended spaces in mountain scenery. And thus
the slaty coherents are often employed to form those landscapes
of which the purpose appears to be to impress us with a sense
of horror and pain, as a foil to neighbouring scenes of extreme
beauty. There are many spots among the inferior ridges of
the Alps, such as the Col de Ferret, the Col d'Anterne, and
the associated ranges of the Buet, which, though commanding-
prospects of great nobleness, are themselves very nearly types
of all that is most painful to the human mind. Vast wastes
of mountain ground, covered here and there with dull grey
grass, or moss, but breaking continually into black banks of
shattered slate, all glistening and sodden with slow tricklings
of clogged, incapable streams ; the snow water oozing through
them in a cold sweat, and spreading itself in creeping stains
among their dust; ever and anon a shaking here and there, and a
handful or two of their particles or flakes trembling down, one sees
not why, into more total dissolution, leaving a few jagged teeth,
like the edges of knives eaten away by vinegar, projecting through

' Compare the close of § 11. Chap. III. Vol. III., and, here, Chap. III. § 23.

the half-dislodged mass from the inner rock, keen enough to cut
the hand or foot that rests on them, yet crumbling as they wound,
and soon sinking again into the smooth, slii^pery, glutinous heap,
looking like a beach of black scales of dead fish, cast ashore
from a poisonous sea, and sloping away into foul ravines,
branched down immeasurable slopes of barrenness, where the
winds howl and wander continually, and the snow lies in
wasted and sorrowful fields, covered with sooty dust, that collects
in streaks and stains at the bottom of all its thawing ripples.
I know no other scenes so appalling as these in storm, or so
woful in sunshine.

positions, that is to say, in gentler banks and at lower eleva- vegetation,
tions, they form a ground for the most luxuriant vegetation;
and the valleys of Savoy owe to them some of their loveliest
solitudes, — exquisitely rich pastures, interspersed with arable
and orchard land, and shaded by groves of walnut and cherry.
Scenes of this kind, and of that just described, so singularly
opposed, and apparently brought together as foils to each other,
are, however, peculiar to certain beds of the slaty coherents,
which are both vast in elevation, and easy of destruction. In
Wales and Scotland, the same groups of rocks possess far greater
hardness, while they attain less elevation ; and the result is a
totally diiferent aspect of scenery. The severity of the climate,
and the comparative durableness of the rock, forbid the rich
vegetation; but the exposed summits, though barren, are not
subject to laws of destruction so rapid and fearful as in Swit-
zerland ; and the natural colour of the rock is oftener developed
in the purples and greys which, mingled with the heather, form
the principal elements of the deep and beautiful distant blue of
the British hills. Their gentler mountain streams also permit
the beds of rock to remain in firm, though fantastic, forms along
their banks, and the gradual action of the cascades and eddies
upon the slaty cleavage produces many pieces of foreground
scenery to which higher hills can present no parallel. Of these
peculiar conditions we shall have to speak at length in another
place.

§ C- As far as regards ministry to the purposes of man, the slaty
torn-chitmu^^ coherents are of somewhat more value than the slaty crystallines,
arts Most of them can be used in the same way for rough buildings,

while they furnish finer plates or sheets for roofing. It would be
difficult, perhaj)s, to estimate the exact importance of their educa-
tional influence in the form of drawing-slate. For sculpture they
are, of course, altogether unfit, but I believe certain finer con-
ditions of them are employed for a dark ground in Florentine
mosaic.

§ 7. It remains only to be noticed, that the direction of the lamina-
tion (or separation into small folia) is, in these rocks, not always,
nor even often, indicative of the true direction of their larger beds.
It is not, however, necessary for the reader to enter into ques-
tions of such complicated nature as those which belong to the
study of slaty cleavage; and only a few points, which I could not
pass over, are noted in the Appendix; but it is necessary to observe
here, that all rocks, however constituted, or however disposed, have
certain ways of breaking in one direction rather than another, and
separating themselves into blocks by means of smooth cracks or
fissures, technically called joints, which often influence their forms
more than either the position of their beds, or their slaty lami-
nation ; and always are conspicuous in their weathered masses.
Of these, however, as it would be wearisome to enter into more
detail at present, I rather choose to speak incidentally, as we meet
with examples of their results in the scenery we have to study more
particularly.

§ i-This group of rocks, the last we have to examine, is, as far as
respects geographical extent and usefulness to the human race,
more important than any of the preceding ones. It forms the
greater part of all low hills and uplands throughout the world, and
supplies the most valuable materials for building and sculpture,
being distinguished from the group of the slaty coherents by its
incapability of being separated into thin sheets. All the rocks
belonging to the group break irregularly, like loaf sugar or dried
clay. Some of them are composed of hardened calcareous matter,
and are known as limestone; others are merely hardened sand,
and are called freestone or sandstone; and others, appearing to
consist of dried mud or clay, are of less general importance, and
receive different names in different localities.

§ 2. Among these rocks, the foremost position is, of course, occupied
by the great group of the marbles, of which the substance appears
to have been prepared expressly in order to aiTord to human art a
perfect means of carrying out its purposes. They are of exactly
the necessary hardness,—neither so soft as to be incapable of main-
taining themselves in delicate forms, nor so hard as always to
require a blow to give effect to the sculptor's touch ; the nier,e pres-
sure of his chisel produces a certain effect upon them. The colour
of the white varieties is of exquisite delicacy, owing to the partial
translucency of the pure rock; and it has always appeared to me
a most wonderful ordinance,—one of the most marked pieces of
purpose in the creation,—that all the variegated kinds should be

comparatively opaque, so as to set off the colour on the surface,
while the white, which if it had been opaque would have looked
somewhat coarse (as, for instance, common chalk does), is ren-
dered just translucent enough to give an impression of extreme
purity, but not so translucent as to interfere in the least with the
distinctness of any forms into which it is wrought. The colours
of variegated marbles are also for the most part very beautiful,
especially those composed of purple, amber, and green, with
white; and there seems to be something notably attractive to
the human mind in the vague and veined labyiinths of their
arrangements. They are farther marked as the prepared material
for human work by the dependence of their beauty on smoothness
of surface ; for their veins are usually seen but dimly in the
native rock; and the colours they assume under the action of
weather are inferior to those of the crystallines : it is not until
wrought and polished by man that they show their character.
Finally, they do not decompose. The exterior surface is some-
times destroyed by a sort of mechanical disruption of its outer
flakes, but rarely to the extent in which such action takes place in
other rocks ; and the most delicate sculptures, if executed in good
marble, will remain for ages undeteriorated.

§ 3. Quarries of marble are, however, rare, and we owe the greatest
part of the good architecture of this world to the more ordinary
limestones and sandstones, easily obtainable in blocks of consider-
able size, and capable of being broken, sawn, or sculptured with
ease ; the colour, generally grey, or warm red (the yellow and
white varieties becoming grey with age), being exactly that which
will distinguish buildings by an agreeable contrast from the vege-
tation by which they may be surrounded.

To these inferior conditions of the compact coherents we owe
also the greater part of the pretty scenery of the inhabited globe.
The sweet winding valleys, with peeping cliffs on either side; the
light, irregular wanderings of broken streamlets; the knolls and
slopes covered with rounded woods: the narrow ravines, carpeted
with greensward, and haunted by traditions of fairy or gnome; the
jutting crags, crowned by the castle or watch-tower; the white
sea-clilf and sheep-fed down ; the long succession of coteau,

sunburnt, and bristling with vines,—all these owe whatever
they have of simple beauty to the peculiar nature of the group
of rocks of which we are speaking ; a group which, though
occasionally found in mountain masses of magnificent form and
size, is on the whole characterized by a comparative smallness
of scale, and a tendency to display itself less in true mountains
than in elevated downs or plains, through which winding valleys,
more or less deep, are cut by the action of the streams.

§ 4. It has been said that this group of rocks is distinguished by its
incapability of being separated into sheets. This is only true of
it in small portions, for it is usually deposited in beds or layers of
irregular thickness, which are easily separable from each other;
and when, as not unfrequently happens, some of these beds are
only half an inch or a quarter of an inch thick, the rock appears
to break into flat plates like a slaty coherent. But this appearance
is deceptive. However thin the bed may be, it will be found that
it is in its own substance compact, and not separable into two
other beds; but the true slaty coherents possess a delicate slati-
ness of structure, carried into their most minute portions, so that
however thin a piece of them may be, it is usually possible, if we
have instruments fine enough, to separate it into two still thinner
flakes. As, however, the slaty and compact crystallines, so also
the slaty and compact coherents pass into each other by subtle
gradations, and present many intermediate conditions, very obscure
and indefinable.

§ 5. I said just now that the colours of the compact coherents were
usually such as would pleasantly distinguish buildings from vege-
tation. They are so; but, considered as abstract hues, are yet
far less agreeable than those of the nobler and older rocks. And
it is to be noticed, that as these inferior rocks are the materials
with which we usually build, they form the ground of the idea
suggested to most men's minds by the word " stone," and there-
fore the general term " stone-colour " is used in common parlance
as expressive of the hue to which the compact coherents for
the most part approximate. By stone-colour I suppose we all
understand a sort of tawny grey, with too much yellow in it
to be called cold, and too little to be called warm. And it is

quite true that over enormous districts of Europe, composed of
what are technically known as " Jura " and " mountain " lime-
stones, and A'arious pale sandstones, such is generally the colour
of any freshly broken rock which peeps out along the sides of
their gentler hills. It becomes a little greyer as it is coloured
by time, but never reaches anything like the noble hues of the
gneiss and slate; the very lichens which grow upon it are poorer
and paler ; and although the deep wood mosses will sometimes
bury it altogether in golden cushions, the minor mosses, whose
office is to decorate and chequer the rocks without concealing
them, are always more meagrely set on these limestones than on
the crystallines.

§ 6, I never have had time to examine and throw into classes the
varieties of the mosses which grow on the two kinds of rock, nor
have I been able to ascertain whether there are really numerous
differences between the species, or whether they only grow more
luxuriantly on the crystallines than on the coherents. But this is
certain, that on the broken rocks of the foreground in the crystal-
line groups the mosses seem to set themselves consentfully and
deliberately to the task of producing the most exquisite har-
monies of colour in their power. They will not conceal the form
of the rock, but will gather over it in little brown bosses, like
small cushions of velvet made of mixed threads of dark ruby
silk and gold, rounded over more subdued films of white and
grey, with lightly crisped and curled edges like hoar frost on
fallen leaves, and minute clusters of upright orange stalks with
pointed caps, and fibres of deep green, and gold, and faint
purple passing into black, all woven together, and following
with unimaginable fineness of gentle growth the undulation of
the stone they cherish, until it is charged with colour so that
it can receive no more; and instead of looking rugged, or cold,
or stern, as anything that a rock is held to be at heart, it
seems to be clothed with a soft, dark leopard skin, embroidered
with arabesque of purple and silver. But in, the lower ranges
this is not so. The mosses grow in more independent spots,
not in such a clinging and tender way over the whole surface ;
the lichens are far poorer and fewer; and the colour of the

132

PAKT V.

the materials of mountains.

stone itself is seen more frequently; altered, if at all, only into
a little chiller grey than when it is freshly broken. So that
a limestone landscape is apt to be dull 'and cold in general tone,
with some aspect even of barrenness. The sandstones are much
richer in vegetation : there are, perhaps, no scenes in our own
island more interesting than the wooded dingles which traverse
them, the red rocks glowing out on either side, and shelving
down into the pools of their deep brown rivers, as at Jedburgh
and Langholme; the steep oak copses climbing the banks, the
paler plumes of birch shaking themselves free into the light
of the sky above, and the few arches of the monastery where
the fields in the glen are greenest, or the stones of the border
tower where its clifis are steepest, rendering both field and cliff
a thousandfold more dear to the heart and sight. But deprived
of such associations, and compared in their mere natural beauty
with the ravines of the central ranges, there can be no question
but that even the loveliest passages of such scenery are imperfect
and poor in foreground colour. And at first there would seem
to be an unfairness in this, unlike the usual system of compensa-
tion which so often manifests itself throughout nature. The higher
mountains have their scenes of power and vastness, their blue
precipices and cloud-like snows: why should they also have
the best and fairest colours given to their foreground rocks,
and overburden the human mind with wonder; while the less
majestic scenery, tempting us to the observance of details for which
amidst the higher mountains we had no admiration left, is yet,
in the beauty of those very details, as inferior as it is in scale of
magnitude ?

§ 7. I believe the answer must be, simply, that it is not good for
man to live among what is most beautiful;—that he is a creature
incapable of satisfaction by anything upon earth; and that to
allow him habitually to possess, in any kind whatsoever, the
utmost that earth can give, is the surest way to cast him into
lassitude or discontent.

If the most exquisite orchestral music could be continued
without a pause for a series of years, and children were brought
up and educated in the room in which it was perpetually resound-

ing, I believe their enjoyment of music, or understanding of it,
would be very small. And an accurately parallel effect seems to
be produced upon the powers of contemplation, by the redundant
and ceaseless loveliness of the high mountain districts. The
faculties are paralyzed by the abundance, and cease, as we before
noticed of the imagination, to be capable of excitement, except
by other subjects of interest than those which present themselves
to the eye. So that it is, in reality, better for mankind that the
forms of their common landscape should offer no violent stimulus
to the emotions,—that the gentle upland, browned by the bending
furrows of the plough, and the fresh sweep of the chalk down,
and the narrow winding of the copse-clad dingle, should be more
frequent scenes of human life than the Arcadias of cloud-capped
mountain or luxuriant vale; and that, while humbler (though
always infinite) sources of interest are given to each of us around
the homes to which we are restrained for the greater part of
our lives, these mightier and stranger glories should become the
objects of adventure,—at once the cynosures of the fancies of
childhood, and themes of the happy memory, and the winter's tale
of age.

§ 8- Nor is it always that the inferiority is felt. For, so natural is
it to the human heart to fix itself in hope rather than in present
possession, and so subtle is the charm which the imagination casts
over what is distant or denied, that there is often a more touching
power in the scenes which contain far-away promise of some-
thing greater than themselves, than in those which exhaust the
treasures and powers of Nature in an unconquerable and excel-
lent glory, leaving nothing more to be by the fancy pictured, or
pursued.

PART V.

• I do not know that there is a district in the world more cal-
culated to illustrate this power of the expectant imagination, than
that which surrounds the city of Fribourg in Switzerland, extend-
ing from it towards Berne. It is of grey sandstone, considerably
elevated, but presenting no object of striking interest to the pass-
ing traveller: so that, as it is generally seen in the course of a
hasty journey from the Bernese Alps to those of Savoy, it is
rarely regarded with any other sensation than that of weariness, all

the more painful because accompanied with reaction from the high
excitement caused by the splendour of the Bernese Oberland. The
traveller, footsore, feverish, and satiated with glacier and precipice,
lies back in the corner of the diligence, perceiving little more than
that the road is winding and hilly, and the country through which
it passes cultivated, and tame. Let him, however, only do this
tame country the justice of staying in it a few days, until his mind
has recovered its tone, and take one or two long walks through its
fields, and he will have other thoughts of it. It is, as I said, an
undulating district of grey sandstone, never attaining any con-
siderable height, but having enough of the mountain spirit to
throw itself into continual succession of bold slope and dale;
elevated, also, just far enough above the sea to render the pine a
frequent forest tree along its irregular ridges. Through this
elevated tract the river cuts its way in a rapine some five or six
hundred feet in depth, which winds for leagues between the gentle
hills, unthought of, until its edge is approached; and then suddenly,
through the boughs of the firs, the eye perceives, beneath, the
green and gliding stream, and the broad walls of sandstone cliff
that form its banks ; hollowed out where the river leans against
them, at its turns, into perilous overhanging, and, on the other
shore, at the same spots, leaving little breadths of meadow between
them and the water, half-overgrown with thicket, deserted in their
sweetness, inaccessible from above, and rarely visited by any curious
wanderers along the hardly traceable footpath which struggles for
existence beneath the rocks. And there the river ripples, and
eddies, and murmurs in an utter solitude. It is passing through
the midst of a thickly peopled country ; but never was a stream so
lonely. The feeblest and most far-away torrent among the high
hills has its companions : the goats browse beside it; and the
traveller drinks from it, and passes over it with his stafi'; and the
peasant traces a new channel for it down to his mill-wheel. But
this stream has no companions : it flows on in an infinite seclusion,
not secret nor threatening, but a quietness of sweet daylight and
open air—a broad space of tender and deep desolateness, drooped
into repose out of the midst of human labour and life ; the waves
plashing lowly, with none to hear them ; and the wild birds building

in the boughs, with none to fray them away ; and the soft, fragrant
herbs rising, and breathing, and fading, with no hand to gather
them;—and yet all bright and bare to the clouds above, and to
the fresh fall of the passing sunshine and pure rain.

§ 9. But above the brows of those scarped cliffs, all is in an instant
changed. A few steps only beyond the firs that stretch their
branches, angular, and wild, and white, like forks of lightning, into
the air of the ravine, and we are in an arable country of the most
perfect richness ; the swathes of its corn glowing and burning from
field to field ; its pretty hamlets all vivid with fruitful orchards and
flowery gardens, and goodly with steep-roofed storehouse and barn;
its well-kept, hard, park-like roads rising and falling from hillside
to hillside, or disappearing among brown banks of moss, and
thickets of the wild raspberry and rose ; or gleaming through lines
of tall trees, half glade, half avenue, Avhere the gate opens, or the
gateless path turns trustedly aside, unhindered, into the garden of
some statelier house, surrounded in rural pride with its golden
hives, and carved granaries, and irregular domain of latticed and
espaliered cottages, gladdening to look upon in their delicate home-
liness—delicate, yet, in some sort, rude ; not like our English
homes—trim, laborious, formal, irreproachable in comfort; but
with a peculiar carelessness and largeness in all their detail,
harmonizing with the outlawed loveliness of their country. For
there is an untamed strength even in all that soft and habitable
land. It is, indeed, gilded with corn and fragrant with deep grass,
but it is not subdued to the plough or to the scythe. It gives at
its own free will,—it seems to have nothing m-ested from it nor
conquered in it. It is not redeemed from desertness, but un-
restrained in fruitfulness,—a generous land, bright with capricious
plenty, and laughing from vale to vale in fitful fulness, kind and
wild ; nor this without some sterner element mingled in the heart
of it. For along all its ridges stand the dark masses of innu-
merable pines, taking no part in its gladness, asserting themselves
for ever as fixed shadows, not to be pierced or banished, even in
the intensest sunlight; fallen flakes and fragments of the night,
stayed in their solemn squares in the midst of all the rosy bendings
of the orchard boughs, and yellow efi"ulgence of the harvest, and

tracing themselves in black network and motionless fringes against
the blanched blue of the horizon in its saintly clearness. And yet
they do not sadden the landscape, but seem to have been set there
chiefly to show how bright everything else is round them ; and all
the clouds look of purer silver, and all the air seems filled with a
whiter and more living sunshine, where they are pierced by the
sable points of the pines; and all the pastures look of more glowing
green, where they run up between the purple trunks; and the
sweet field footpaths skirt the edges of the forest for the sake of its
shade, sloping up and down about the slippery roots, and losing
themselves every now and then hopelessly among the ^dolets, and
ground ivy, and brown sheddings of the fibrous leaves; and, at
last, plunging into some open aisle where the light, through the
distant stems, shows that there is a chance of coming out again on
the other side ; and coming out, indeed, in a little while, from the
scented darkness, into the dazzling air and marvellous landscape,
that stretches still farther and farther in new wilfulnesses of grove
and garden, until, at last, the craggy mountains of the Simmenthal
rise out of it, sharp into the rolling of the southern clouds.

§ 10. I believe, for general development of human intelligence and
sensibility, country of this kind is about the most perfect that
exists. A richer landscape, as that of Italy, enervates, or causes
wantonness ; a poorer contracts the conceptions, and hardens the
temperament of both mind and body; and one more curiously or
prominently beautiful deadens the sense of beauty. Even what
is here of attractiveness,—far exceeding, as it does, that of most
of the thickly peopled districts of the temperate zone,—seems to
act harmfully on the poetical character of the Swiss; but take its
inhabitants all in all, as with deep love and stern penetration they
are painted in the works of their principal writer, Gotthelf, and I
believe we shall not easily find a peasantry which would completely
sustain comparison with them.

§ 11. But be this as it may, it is certain that the compact coherent
rocks are appointed to form the greatest part of the earth's surface,
and by their utility, and easily changed and governed qualities, to
tempt man to dwell among them ; being, however, in countries not
definitely mountainous, usually covered to a certain depth by those

beds of loose gravel and sand to wliicli we agreed to give the name
of diluvium. There is nothing which will require to be noted
respecting these last, except the forms into which they are brought
by the action of water; and the account of these belongs properly
to the branch of inquiry which follows next in the order we proposed
to ourselves, namely, that touching the sculpture of mountains, to
which it will be best to devote some separate chapters ; this only
being noted in conclusion respecting the various rocks whose nature
we have been describing, that out of the entire series of them we
may obtain almost every colour pleasant to human sight, not the
less so for being generally a little softened or saddened. Thus we
have beautiful subdued reds, reaching tones of deep purple, in the
porphyries, and of pale rose colour, in the granites ; every kind of
silvery and leaden grey, passing into purple, in the slates ; deep
green, and every hue of greenish grey, in the volcanic rocks, and
serpentines ; rich orange, and golden brown, in the gneiss ; black,
in the lias limestones ; and all these, together with pure white, in
the marbles. One colour only we hardly ever get in an exposed
rock—that dull hroioii which we noticed above, in speaking of
colour generally, as the most repulsive of all hues; every approxi-
mation to it is softened by nature, when exposed to the atmosphere,
into a purply grey. All this can hardly be otherwise interpreted,
than as prepared for the delight and recreation of man ; and I trust
that the time may soon come when these beneficent and beautiful
gifts of colour may be rightly felt and wisely employed, and when
the variegated fronts of our houses may render the term " stone-
colour " as little definite in the mind of the architect as that of
" flower-colour " would be to the'horticulturist.

§ 1. Close beside tlie path by wliicli travellers ascend the Montanvert
from the valley of Chamouni, on the right hand, where it first
begins to rise among the pines, there descends a small stream
from the foot of the granite peak known to the guides as the
Aiguille Charmoz. It is concealed from the traveller by a thicket
of alder, and its murmur is hardly heard, for it is one of the
weakest streams of the valley. But it is a constant stream; fed
by a permanent though small glacier, and continuing to flow even
to the close of the summer, when more copious torrents, depending
only on the melting of the lower snows, have left their beds stony
channels in the sun."

I suppose that my readers must be generally aware that glaciers
are masses of ice in slow motion, at the rate of from ten to twenty
inches a day, and that the stones which are caught between them
and the rocks over which they pass, or which are embedded in
the ice and dragged along by it over those rocks, are of course
subjected to a crushing and grinding power altogether unpa-
ralleled by any other-force in constant action. The dust to
Avhich these stones are reduced by the friction is carried down
by the streams which flow from the melting glacier, so that the
water which in the morning may be pure, owing what little
strength it has chiefly to the rock springs, is in the afternoon
not only increased in volume, but whitened with dissolved dust
of granite, in proportion to the heat of the preceding hours

139

§ 2. The long drought which took place in the autumn of the year
1854, sealing every source of waters except these perpetual ones,
left the torrent of which I am speaking, and such others, in a
state peculiarly favourable to observance of their least action on
the mountains from which they descend. They were entirely
limited to their own ice fountains, and the quantity of powdered
rock which they brought down was, of course, at its minimum,
being nearly unmingled with any earth derived from the dis-
solution of softer soil, or vegetable mould, by rains.

At three in the afternoon, on a warm day in September,
when the torrent had reached its average maximum strength for
the day, I filled an ordinary Bordeaux wine-flask Avith the water
where it was least turbid. From this quart of water I obtained
twenty-four grains of sand and sediment, more or less fine. I
cannot estimate the quantity of water in the stream ; but the
runlet of it at w^iich I filled the flask was giving about tAvo
hundred bottles a minute, or rather more, carrying down there-
fore about three-quarters of a pound of powdered granite every
minute. This would be forty-five pounds an hour; but allowing
for the inferior power of the stream in the cooler periods of the
day, and taking into consideration, on the other side, its increased
power in rain, we may, I think, estimate its average hour's Avork
at twenty-eight or thirty pounds, or a hundredweight every four
hours. By this insignificant runlet, therefore, some four inches
wide and four inches deep, rather more than two tons of the sub-
stance of the Mont Blanc are displaced, and carried down a certain
distance every w^eek; and as it is only for three or four months
that the fioAv of the stream is checked by frost, we may certainly
allow eighty tons for the mass which it annually moves.

§ 3- It is not worth while to enter into any calculation of the
relation borne by this runlet to the great torrents which descend
from the chain of Mont Blanc into the valley of Chamouni.
To call it the thousandth part of the glacier waters, would give
a ludicrous under-estimate of their total powder; but even so
calling it, we should find for result that eighty thousand tons of

mountain must be yearly transformed into drifted sand, and
carried down a certain distance.^ How much greater than this
is the actual quantity so transformed I cannot tell; but take this
quantity as certain, and consider that this represents merely the
results of the labour of the constant summer streams, utterly
irrespective of all sudden falls of stones and of masses of moun-
tain (a single thunderbolt will sometimes leave a scar on the flank
of a soft rock, looking like a trench for a railroad); and we shall
then begin to apprehend something of the operation of the great
laws of change, which are the conditions of all material existence,
however apparently enduring. The hills, which, as compared
with living beings, seem " everlasting," are, in truth, as perishing
as they : its veins of flowing fountain weary the mountain heart,
as the crimson pulse does ours ; the natural force of the iron
crag is abated in its appointed time, like the strength of the
sinews in a human old age; and it is but the lapse of the
longer years of decay which, in the sight of its Creator, distin-
guishes the mountain range from the moth and the worm.

§ 4. And hence two questions arise of the deepest interest. From
what first created forms were the mountains brought into their
present condition ? into what forms will they change in the
course of ages ? Was the world anciently in a more or less
perfect state than it is now? was it less or more fitted for the
habitation of the human race ? and are the changes which it is
now undergoing favourable to that race or not ? The present con-
formation of the earth appears dictated, as has been shown in the
preceding chapters, by supreme wisdom and Idndness. And yet
its former state must have been different from what it is now;
as its present one from that which it must assume hereafter.
Is this, therefore, the earth's prime into which we are born : or
is it, with all its beauty, only the wreck of Paradise?

I cannot entangle the reader in the intricacy of the inquiries
necessary for anything like a satisfactory solution of these questions.

' How far, is another question. Tlie sand which the stream brings from the
bottom of one eddy in its course, it throws down in the next; all that is proved by
the above trial is, that so many tons of material are annually canied down by it a
certain number of feet.

But, were he to engage in such inqumes, their result would be
his strong conviction of the earth's having been brought from a
state in which it was utterly uninhabitable into one fitted for
man;—of its having been, when first inhabitable, more beau-
tiful than it is now; and of its gradually tending to still greater
inferiority of aspect, and unfitness for abode.

It has, indeed, been the endeavour of some geologists to prove
that destruction and renovation are continually proceeding simul-
taneously in mountains as well as in organic creatures; that while
existing eminences are being slowly lowered, others, in order to
supply their place, are being slowly elevated; and that what is lost
in beauty or healthiness in one spot is gained in another. But I
cannot assent to such a conclusion. Evidence altogether incon-
trovertible points to a state of the earth in which it could be
tenanted only by lower animals, fitted for the circumstances under
which they lived by peculiar organizations. From this state it is
admitted gradually to have been brought into that in which we
now see it; and the circumstances of the existing dispensation,
whatever may be the date of its endurance, seem to mo to point
not less clearly to an end than to an origin; to a creation, when
" the earth was without form and void," and to a close, when it
must either be renovated or destroyed.

§ 5. In one sense, and in one only, the idea of a continuous
order of things is admissible, in so far as the phenomena which
introduced, and those which are to terminate, the existing dispen-
sation, may have been, and may in future be, nothing more than
a gigantic development of agencies which are in continual opera-
tion around us. The experience we possess of volcanic agency is
not yet large enough to enable us to set limits to its force; and
as we see the rarity of subterraneous action generally propor-
tioned to its violence, there may be appointed, in the natural
order of things, convulsions to take place after certain epochs, on
a scale which the human race has not yet lived long enough to
witness. The soft silver cloud which writhes innocently on
the crest of Vesuvius, rests there without intermission; but the
fury which lays cities in sepulchres of lava bursts forth only after
intervals of centuries; and the still fiercer indignation of the

greater volcanoes, which makes half the globe vibrate with earth-
quake, and shrivels up whole kingdoms with flame, is recorded
only in dim distances of history: so that it is not irrational to
admit that there may yet be powers dormant, not destroyed,
beneath the apparently calm surface of the earth, whose date of
rest is the endurance of the human race, and whose date of action
must be that of its doom. But whether such colossal agencies are
indeed in the existing order of things or not, still the effective
truth, for us, is one and the same. The earth, as a tormented and
trembling ball, may have rolled in space for myi'iads of ages
before humanity was formed from its dust; and as a devastated
ruin it may continue to roll, when all that dust shall again have
been mingled with ashes that never were warmed by life, or polluted
by sin. But for us the intelligible and substantial fact is that the
earth has been brought, by forces we know not of, into a form
fitted for our habitation: on that form a gradual, but destructive,
change is continually taking place, and the course of that change
points clearly to a period when it will no more be fitted for the
dwelling-place of men.
§ c. It is, therefore, not so much what these forms of the earth
actually are, as what they are continually becoming, that we have
to observe: nor is it possible thus to observe them without an
instinctive reference to the first state out of which they have
been brought. The existing torrent has dug its bed a thousand
feet deep. But in what form was the mountain originally raised
which gave that torrent its track and power ? The existing j}reci-
pice is wrought into towers and bastions by the perpetual fall
of its fragments. In what form did it stand before a single frag-
ment fell ?

Yet to such questions, continually suggesting themselves, it is
never possible to give a complete answer. For a certain dis-
tance, the past work of existing forces can be traced; but there
gradually the mist gathers, and the footsteps of more gigantic
agencies are traceable in the darkness; and still, as we endeavour
to penetrate farther and farther into departed time, the thunder
of the Almighty power sounds louder and louder; and the clouds
gather broader and more fearfully, until at last the Sinai of the

world is seen altogether upon a smoke, and the fence of its foot is
reached, which none can break through.

§ 7. If, therefore, we venture to advance towards the spot where the
cloud first comes down, it is rather with the purpose of fully
pointing out that there is a cloud, than of entering into it. It is
well to have been fully convinced of the existence of the mystery,
in an age far too apt to suppose that everything which is visible
is explicable, and everything that is present, eternal. But besides
ascertaining the existence of this mystery, we shall perhaps be
able to form some few conjectures respecting the facts of mountain
aspects in the past ages. Not respecting the processes or powers
to which the hills owe their origin, but respecting the aspect they
first assumed.

§ 8. For it is evident that, through all their ruin, some traces must
still exist of the original contours. The directions in which the
mass gives way must have been dictated by the disposition of its
ancient sides; and the currents of the streams that wear its flanks
must still, in great part, follow the course of the primal valleys.
So that, in the actual form of any mountain peak, there must
usually be traceable the shadow or skeleton of its former self;
like the obscure indications of the first frame of a war-worn
tower, preserved, in some places, under the heap of its ruins, in
others to be restored in imagination from the thin remnants of its
tottering shell; while here and there, in some sheltered spot, a few
unfallen stones retain their Gothic sculpture, and a few touches
of the chisel, or stains of colour, inform us of the whole mind and
perfect skill of the old designer. With this great difference,
nevertheless, that in the human architecture the builder did not
calculate upon ruin, nor appoint the course of impendent deso-
lation ; but that in the hand of the great Architect of the moun-
tains, time and decay are as much the instruments of His purpose
as the forces by which He first led forth the troops of hills in
leaping flocks :—the lightning and the torrent, and the wasting and
weariness of innumerable ages, all bear their part in the working
out of one consistent plan ; and the Builder of the temple for ever
stands beside His work, appointing the stone that is to fall, and
the pillar that is to be abased, and guiding all the seeming wild-

§ 9- Mountain masses, then, considered with respect to their first
• raising and first sculpture, may he conveniently divided into two
great groups ; namely, those made up of beds or layers, commonly
called stratified ; and those made of more or less united substance,
called unstratified. The former are nearly always composed of
coherent rocks, the latter of crystallines; and the former almost
always occupy the outside, the latter the centre, of mountain
chains. It signifies, therefore, very little whether we distinguish
the groups by calling one stratified and the other unstratified, or
one "coherent" and the other "crystalline," or one "lateral"
and the other " central." But as this last distinction in posi-
tion seems to have more influence on their forms than either
of the others, it is, perhaps, best, when we are examining them
in connection with art, that this should be thoroughly kept in
mind; and therefore we will consider the first group under the
title of " lateral ranges," and the second under that of " central
peaks."

§ 10. The lateral ranges, wliich we are first to examine, are,
for the most part, broad tabular masses of sandstone, lime-
stone, or whatever their material may be,—tilted slightly up
over large spaces (several or many miles square), and forming
precipices with their exposed edges, as a book resting obliquely
on another book forms miniature precipices with its back and
sides. The book is a tolerably accurate representation of the
mountain in substance, as well as in external aspect; nearly all
these tabular masses of rock being composed of a multitude of
thinner beds or layers, as the thickness of the book is made up of
its leaves; while every one of the mountain leaves is usually
written over, though in dim characters, like those of a faded
manuscript, with history of departed ages.

" How were these mountain volumes raised, and how are
they supported ?" are the natural questions following such a
statement.

'mm

No eye has ever seen one of these raised on a large scale;
no investigation has brought completely to light the conditions
under which the materials
which support them were
prepared. This only is
the simple fact, that they
are raised into such sloping
positions; generally seve-
ral resting one upon an-
other, like a row of books

fallen down (Fig. 8.); the last book being usually propped by a
piece of formless compact crystalline rock, represented by the piece
of crumpled paper at a.

§ 11- It is another simple fact that this arrangement is not effected
in an orderly and serene manner; but that the books, if they
were ever neatly bound, have been fearfully torn to pieces and
dog's-eared in the course of their elevation; sometimes torn leaf
from leaf, but more commonly rent across, as if the paper had been
wet and soft: or, to leave the book similitude, which is becoming
inconvenient, the beds seem to have been in the consistence of a
paste, more or less dry; in some places brittle, and brealdng,
like a cake, fairly across; in others moist and tough, and tear-
ing like dough, or bending like hot iron; and, in others, crushed
and shivering into dust like unan-
nealed glass. And in these various
states they are either bent or broken-,
or shivered, as the case may be, into
fragments of various shapes, which are
usually tossed one on the top of
another, as above described; but, of
course, under such circumstances, pre-
senting, not the uniform edges of the books, but jagged edges, as
in Fig. 9.

§ 12. Do not let it be said that I am passing my prescribed limits,
and that I have tried to enter the clouds, and am describing
operations which have never been witnessed. I describe facts or
semblances, not operations. I say " seejii to have been," not

Most travellers must remember the entrance to the valley of
Cluse, from the plain of Bonneville, on the road from Geneva to
Chamouni. They remember
that immediately after enter-
ing it they find a great pre-
cipice on their left, not less
than two thousand feet in per-
pendicular height. That pre-
cipice is formed by beds of
limestone bent like a rainbow,
as in Fig. 10. Their edges constitute the cliff; the flat arch
which they form with their backs is covered with pine forests
and meadows, extending for three or four leagues in the direction
of Sixt. Whether the whole mountain was called out of nothing
into the form it possesses, or created first in the form of a level
mass, and then actually bent and broken by external force, is quite
irrelevant to our present purpose ; but it is impossible to describe
its form without appearing to imply the latter alternative ; and all
the distinct evidence which can be obtained upon the subject points
to such a conclusion, although there are certain features in such
mountains which, up to the present time, have rendered all positive
conclusion impossible, not because they contradict the theories in
question, but because they are utterly inexplicable on any theory
whatever.

§ 13. We return then to our Fig. 9., representing beds which appear
to have been broken short off at the edges. " If they ever were
actually broken," the reader asks, "what could have become of
the bits ? " Sometimes they seem to have been lost, carried away
no one knows where. Sometimes they are really found in
scattered fragments or dust in the neighbourhood. Sometimes
the mountain is simply broken in two, and the pieces correspond
to each other, only leaving a valley between; but more fre-
quently one half slips down, or the other is pushed up. In
such cases, the coincidence of part with part is sometimes so

147

Fif^. 10.

exact, that half of a broken pebble has been found on one
side, and the other half five or six hundred feet below, on the
other.

§ 14. The beds, however, which are to form mountains of any
eminence are seldom divided in this gentle way. If brittle,
one would think they had been broken as a captain's biscuit
breaks, leaving sharp and ragged edges; and if tough, they
appear to have been torn asunder very much like a piece of
new cheese.

The beds which present the most definite appearances of abrupt
fracture, are those of that grey or black limestone above described
(Chap. x. § 4.), formed into a number of thin layers or leaves,
commonly separated by filmy spreadings of calcareous sand, hard
when dry, but easily softened by moisture; the whole, considered
as a mass, easily friable, though particular beds may be very thick
and hard. Imagine a layer of such substance, three or four
thousand feet thick, broken with a sharp crash through the
middle, and one piece of it thrown up as in Fig. 11.

It is evident that the first result of such a shock would be a com-
plete shattering of the consistence of the broken edges, and that
these would fall, some on the instant, and others tottering and

crumbling away from time to time, until the cliff had got in some
degree settled into a tenable form. The fallen fragments would lie
in a confused heap at the bottom, hiding perhaps one half of its
height, as in Fig. 12.; the top of it, wrought into somewhat less
ragged shape, would thenceforward submit itself only to the gradual
influences of time and storm.

I do not say that this operation has actually taken place. I
merely say that such cliffs do in multitudes exist in the form shown
at Fig. 12., or, more properly speaking, in that form modified by
agencies in visible operation, whose work can be traced upon them,
touch by touch. But the condition at Fig. 12. is the first rough
blocldng out of their form, the primal state in which they demon-
strably were, some thousands of years ago, but beyond which no
human reason can trace them without danger of error. The cloud
fastens upon them there.

§ 15. It is rare, however, that such a cliff as that represented in
Fig. 12. can maintain itself long in such a contour. Usually it
moulders gradually away into a steep mound or bank; and the
larger number of bold cliffs are composed of far more solid
rock, which in its general make is quite unshattered and flaw-
less ; apparently unaffected, as far as its coherence is concerned,
by any shock it may have suffered in being raised to its posi-
tion, or hewn into its form. Beds occur in the Alps com-
posed of solid coherent limestone (such as that familiar to the
English traveller in the cliffs of Matlock and Bristol), 3000 or
4000 feet thick, and broken short off throughout a great part

of this thickness, forming nearly i sheer precipices not less than
1500 or 2000 feet in height, after all deduction has been made for
slopes of debris at the bottom, and for rounded diminution at
the top.

§ 16. The geologist plunges into vague suppositions and fantastic
theories in order to account for these cliffs ; but, after all that can
be dreamed or discovered, they remain in great part inexplicable.
If they were interiorly shattered, it would be easy to understand
that, in their hardened condition, they had been broken violently
asunder; but it is not easy to conceive a firm clifi" of lime-
stone broken through a thickness of 2000 feet without showing
a crack in any other part of it. If they were divided in a soft
state, like that of paste, it is still less easy to understand how
any such soft material could maintain itself, till it dried, in the
form of a cliff so enormous and so ponderous: it must have
flowed down from the top, or squeezed itself out in bulging
protuberance at the base. But it has done neither; and we are left
to choose between the suppositions that the mountain was created
in a form approximating to that which it now wears, or that the
shock which produced it was so violent and irresistible, as to
do its work neatly in an instant, and cause no flaws to the rock
except in the actual line of fracture. The force must have been
analogous either to the light and sharp blow of the hammer with
which one breaks a stone into two pieces as it lies in the
hand, or the parting caused by a settlement under great weight,
like the cracks through the brickwork of a modern ill-built
house. And yet the very beds which seem at the time they
were broken to have possessed this firmness of consistence, are
also bent throughout their whole body into waves, apparently
following the action of the force that fractured them, like
waves of sea under the wind. Truly the cloud lies darkly upon
us here !

§ 1". And it renders these precipices more remarkable that there is
in them no principle of compensation against destructive influences.

' Nearly; that is to say, not quite vertical Of the degree of steepness we shall
have more to say hereafter.

They are not cloven back continually into new clilFs, as our chalk
shores are by the sea; otherwise, one might attribute their first
existence to the force of streams. But, on the contrary, the action
of years u^Don them is now always one of deterioration. The
increasing heap of fallen fragments conceals more and more of
their base, and the wearing of the rain lowers the height and
softens the sternness of their brows, so that a great part of their
terror has evidently been subdued by time; and the farther we
endeavour to penetrate their history, the more mysterious are the
forms we are required to explain.

§ 18. Hitherto, however, for the sake of clearness, we have spoken of The three

hills as if they were composed of a single mass or volume of rock, scutative
It is very seldom that they are so. Two or three layers are usually fS^mou
raised at once, with certain general results on mountain form, tains,
which it is next necessary to examine.

1st. Suppose a series of beds raised in the condition a, Fig. 13., i. Wall above

the lowest soft, the up-
permost compact ; it is
evident that the lower
beds would rapidly crum-
ble away, and the com-
pact mass above break
for want of support, until
the rocks beneath had
reached a slope at which
they could securely sustain
themselves, as well as the
weight of wall above, thus
bringing the hill into the
outline h.

2nd. If, on the other hand, the hill were originally raised 2. Slope above
as at c, the softest beds being at the top, these would crumble
into their smooth slope without affecting the outline of the mass
below, and the hill would assume the form d, large masses of
debris being in either of these two cases accumulated at the
foot of the slope, or of the cliff. These first ruins might, by
subsequent changes, be variously engulfed, carried away, or

Fig. 13.

covered over, so as to leave nothing visible, or at least nothing
notable, but the great cliff with its slope above or below it.
Without insisting on the evidences or probabilities of such con-
struction, it is sufficient to state that mountains of the two types,
h and d, are exceedingly common in all parts of the world; and
though of course confused with others, and themselves always
more or less imperfectly developed, yet they are, on the whole,
singularly definite as classes of hills, examples of which can hardly
but remain clearly impressed on the mind of every traveller. Of
the first, h, Salisbury Crags, near Edinburgh, is a nearly perfect
instance, though on a diminutive scale. The cliffs of Lauter-
brunnen, in the Oberland, are almost without exception formed on
the type d,

3rd. When the elevated mass, instead of consisting merely
of two great divisions, includes alternately hard and soft beds,
as at a, Fig. 14., the vertical cliffs and inclined banks alternate
with each other, and the mountain rises in a series of steps,
with receding slopes of turf or debris on the ledge of each,
as at h. At the
head of the valley
of Bixt, in Savoy,
huge masses of
mountain connected
with the Buet are
thus constructed:
their slopes are
quite smooth, and
composed of good
pasture land, and the cliffs in many places literally vertical. In
the summer the peasants make hay on the inclined pastures ; and
the hay is " carried " by merely binding the haycocks tight and
rolling them down the slope and over the cliff, when I have heard
them fall to the bank below, a height of from five to eight hundred
feet, with a sound like the distant report of a heavy piece of
artillery.

§ 19, The next point of importance in these beds is the curvature,
to which, as well as to fracture, they seem to have been subjected.

3. Slo;
wall a
uately.

pe and
ter-

Fig. 14.

This curvature is not to be confounded with that rippling or
undulating character of every portion of the slaty crystalline rocks
above described. I am now speaking of all kinds of rocks in-
differently ;—not of their appearance in small pieces, but of their
great contours in masses, thousands of feet thick. And it is
almost universally true of these masses that they do not merely
lie in flat superposition, one over another, as the books in Fig. 8. ;
but they lie in leaves, more or less vast and sweeping according to
the scale of the country, as in Fig. 15, where the distance from
one side of the figure to the other is supposed to be four or five
leagues.

§ 20. Now, observe, if the precipices which we have just been
describing had been broken when their substance was in a hard
state, there appears no reason why any connection should be
apparent between the energy of undulation, and these broken rocks.
If the continuous waves were caused by convulsive movements of
the earth's surface while its substance was pliable, and were left
in repose for so long a period as to become perfectly hard before
they were broken into cliffs, there seems no reason why the second
series of shocks should so closely have confined itself to the
locality which had suffered the first, that the most abrupt pre-
cipices should always be associated with the wildest waves. We
might have expected that sometimes we should have had noble
cliffs raised where the waves had been slight; and sometimes low
and slight fractures where the waves had been violent. But this is
not so. The contortions and fractures bear always such relation
to each other as appears positively to imply contemporaneous
formation. Through all the lowland districts of the world the
average contour of the waves of rock is somewhat as represented

in Fig. 16. a, and the little cliffs or hills formed at the edges
of the beds (whether by fracture, or, as oftener happens in such
countries, by gradual washing away under the surge of ancient
seas) are no higher, in proportion to the extent of surface, than
the little steps seen in the centre of the figure. Such is the
nature, and such the scale, of the ranges of hill which form our
own downs and wolds, and the French coteaux beside their wind-
ing rivers. But as we approach the hill countries, the undu-
lation becomes more marked, and the crags more bold ; so that
almost any portion of such mountain ranges as the Jura or the
Vosges will present itself under conditions such as those at h,

the precipices at the edges being bolder in exact proportion to
the violence of wave. And, finally, in the central and noblest
chains the undulation becomes literally contortion ; the beds occur
in such positions as those at c, and the precipices are bold and

21. These facts appear to be just as contrary to the supposition of
the mountains having been formed while the rocks were hard, as
the considerations adduced in § 15. are to that of their being
formed while they were soft. And I believe the more the reader
revolves the subject in his thoughts, and the more opportunities he
has of examining the existing facts, the less explicable those facts
will become to him, and the more reverent will be his acknowledg-
ment of the presence of the cloud.

For, as he examines more clearly the structure of the great
mountain ranges, he will find that though invariably the boldest
forms are associated with the most violent contortions, they some-
times follow the contortions, and sometimes appear entirely inde-
pendent of them. For instance, in crossing the pass of the Tete
Noire, if the traveller defers his journey till near the afternoon, so
that from the top of the pass he may see the great limestone
mountain in the Valais, called the Dent de Morcles, under the full
evening light, he will observe that its peaks are hewn out of a
group of contorted beds, as shown in Fig. 4. Plate 29.' The
wild and irregular zigzag of the beds, which traverse the face
of the cliff with the irregularity of a flash of lightning, has
apparently not the slightest influence on the outline of the peak.
It has been carved out of the mass, with no reference whatever
to the interior structure. In like manner, as we shall see here-
after, the most wonderful peak in the whole range of the Alps
seems to have been cut out of a series of nearly horizontal beds,
as a square pillar of hay is cut out of a half-consumed haystack.
And yet, on the other hand, wo meet perpetually with instances
in which the curves of the beds have in great part directed the
shape of the whole mass of mountain. The gorge which leads
from the village of Ardon, in the Valais, up to the root of the
Diablerets, runs between two ranges of limestone hills, of which
the rude contour is given in Fig. 17. next page. The great slope
seen on the left, rising about seven thousand feet above the

r
i

ravine, is nothing but the back of one sheet of limestone, whose
broken edge forms the first cliff at the topj a height of about six
hundred feet, the second cliff being the edge of another bed
emergent beneath it, and the slope beyond, the surface of a third.
These beds of limestone all descend at a uniform inclination
into the gorge, where they are snapped short off, the torrent
cutting its way along the cleft, while the beds rise on the other
side in a huge contorted wave, forming the ridge of mountains
on the right,—a chain about seven miles in length, and from
five thousand to six thousand feet in height. The actual order
of the beds is seen in Fig. 18., and it is one of the boldest
and clearest examples of the form of mountains being corre-
spondent to the curves of beds which I have ever seen; it
also exhibits a condition of the summits which is of constant
occurrence in stratified hills, and peculiarly important as giving
rise to the serrated structure, rendered classical by the Spaniards
in their universal term for mountain ridges, Sierra, and obtaining
for one of the most important members of the Comasque chain
of Alps its well-known Italian name, — II Kesegone. Such
mountains are not merely successions of irregular peaks, more
or less resembling the edge of a much-hacked sword; they
are orderly successions of teeth set in one direction, closely
resembling those of a somewhat overworn saw, and nearly
always produced by successive beds emerging one from beneath
the other.

§ 22. In all such cases there is an infinitely greater difficulty in
accounting for the forms than in explaining the fracture of a
single bed. How, and when, and where, were the other portions
carried away? Was each bed once continuous over a much
larger space from the point where its edge is now broken off, or
have such beds slipped back into some gulf behind them ? It is
very easy for geologists to speak generally of elevation and con-
vulsion, but very difficult to explain what sort of convulsion it
could be which passed forward from the edge of one bed to the
edge of another, and broke the required portion off each without
disturbing the rest. Try the experiment in the simplest way:
put half a dozen of hard captain's biscuits in a sloping position on

a table, and then try, as they lie, to break the edge of each, one
by one, without disturbing the rest. At least, you will have to
raise the edge before you can break it; to put your hand under-
neath, between it and the next biscuit, before you can get any
l^urchase on it. What force was it that put its fingers between
one bed of limestone 600 feet thick and the next beneath? If
you try to break the biscuits by a blow from above, observe the
necessary force of your bloAv, and then conceive, if you can, the
sort of hammer that was required to break the 600 feet of rock
through in the same way. But, also, you will, ten to one, break
two biscuits at the same time. Now, in these serrated formations,
two biscuits are never broken at the same time. There is no
appearance of the slightest jar having taken place affecting the
bed beneath. If there be, a huge cliff or gorge is formed at
that spot, not a sierra. Thus, in Fig. 18, the beds are affected
throughout their united body by the shock which formed the
ravine at a ; but they are broken, one by one, into the cliffs at h
and c. Sometimes one is tempted to think that they must have
been slipped back, one from off the other; but there is never any
appearance of friction having taken place on their exposed sur-
faces ; in the plurality of instances, their continuance or rise from
their roots in waves (see Fig. 16 above) renders the thing utterly
impossible ; and in the few instances which have been known of
such action actually taking place (which have always been on a
small scale), the sliding bed has been torn into a thousand frag-
ments almost as soon as it began to move.^
§ 23. And, finally, supposing a force found capable of breaking
these beds in the manner required, what force was it that carried
the fragments away ? How were the gigantic fields of shat-
tered marble conveyed from the ledges which were to remain
exposed ? No signs of violence are found on those ledges ;
what marks there are, the rain and natural decay have softly
traced through a long series of years. Those very time-marks
may have indeed effaced mere superficial appearances of convul-

' The Eossberg fall, comjiared to the convulsions which seem to have taken ])lace
in the higher Alps, is like tlie slip of a paving stone compared to the fall of a tower.

sion; but could they have effaced all evidence of the action of
such floods as would have been necessary to carry bodily away the
whole ruin of a block of marble leagues in length and breadth,
and a quarter of a mile thick ? Ponder over the intense marvel-
lousness of this. The bed at c (Fig. 18) must first be broken
through the midst of it into a sharp precipice, without at all
disturbing it elsewhere; and then all of it beyond c is to be
broken up, and carried perfectly away, without disturbing or
wearing down the face of the cliflf at c.

And yet no trace of the means by which all this was effected is
left. The rock stands forth in its white and rugged mystery, as
if its peak had been born out of the blue sky. The strength that
raised it, and the sea that wrought upon it, have passed away, and
left no sign, and we have no words wherein to describe their
departure, no thoughts to form about their action, than those of
the perpetual and unsatisfied interrogation,—

§ i. In the 20th paragrapli of the last chapter, it was noticed that
ordinarily the most irregular contortions or fractures of beds of
rock were found in the districts of most elevated hills, the con-
tortion or fracture thus appearing to be produced at the moment
of elevation. It has also previously been stated that the hard-
ness and crystalline structure of the material increased with the
mountainous character of the ground, so that we find as almost
invariably correlative, the hardness of the rock, its distortion, and
its height; and in like manner, its softness, regidarity oi iJosition,
and loicness. Thus, the line of beds in an English range of down,
composed of soft chalk which crumbles beneath the fingers, will
be as low and continuous as in a of Fig. 16 (p. 154); the
beds in the Jura mountains, composed of firm limestone, which
needs a heavy hammer stroke to break it, will be as high and
wavy as at b; and the ranges of Alps, composed of slaty crys-
tallines, yielding only to steel wedges or to gunpowder, will be
as lofty and as wild in structure as at c. Without this bene-
ficent connection of hardness of material with height, mountain
ranges either could not have existed, or would not have been
habitable. In their present magnificent form they could not have
existed; and whatever their forms, the frequent falls and crum-
blings away, which are of little consequence in the low crags of
Hastings, Dover, or Lyme, would have been fatal to the popu-
lation of the valleys beneath, when they took place from heights
of eight or ten thousand feet.

§ 2. But this hardening of the material would not have been
sufficient, by itself, to secure the safety of the inhabitants.
Unless the reader has been already familiarized with geological
facts, he must surely have been struck by the prominence of the
hedded structure in all the instances of mountain form given in
the preceding chapter; and must have asked himself. Why are
mountains always built in this masonry-like way, rather than
in compact masses ? Now, it is true that according to present
geological theories, the bedded structure was a necessary con-
sequence of the mode in which the materials were accumulated;
but it is not less true that this bedded structure is now the prin-
cipal means of securing the stability of the mass, and is to be
regarded as a beneficent appointment, with such special view.
That structure compels each mountain to assume the safest con-
tour of which under the given circumstances of upheaval it is
capable. If it were all composed of an amorphous mass of stone
as at a, Fig. 19, a crack beginning from the top, as at a; in a,
might gradually extend downwards in the direction x y in b, until
the whole mass, indicated by the shade, separated itself and fell.

But when the whole mountain is arranged in beds, as at c, the
crack beginning at the top stops in the uppermost bed, or if it
extends to the next, it will be in a different place, and the detached
blocks, marked by the shaded portions, are of course stiU as secure

161

in their positions as before the crack took place. If, indeed,
the beds sloped towards the precipice, as at d, the danger would
be greater; but if the reader looks to any of the examples of
mountain form hitherto given, he will find that the universal
tendency of the modes of elevation is to cause the beds to slope
away from the precipice, and to build the whole mountain in
the form c, which afibrds the utmost possible degree of security.
Nearly all the mountains which rise immediately above thickly
peopled districts, though they may appear to be thrown into
isolated peaks, are in reality nothing more than flattish ranks of
rock, terminated by walls of cliff, of this perfectly safe kind; and
it will be part of our task in the succeeding chapter to examine at
some length the modes in which sublime and threatening forms are
almost deceptively assumed by arrangements of mountain which
are in themselves thus simple and secure.

§ 3. It, however, fell within the purpose of the Great Builder to
give, in the highest peaks of mountains, examples of form more
strange and majestic than any which could be attained by struc-
tures so beneficently adapted to the welfare of the human race.
And the admission of other modes of elevation, more terrific and
less secure, takes place exactly in proportion to the increasing
presence of such conditions in the locality as shall render it on
other grounds unlikely to be inhabited, or incapable of being so.
Where the soil is rich and the climate soft, the hills are low and
safe; ^ as the ground becomes poorer and the air keener, they rise
into forms of more peril and pride; and their utmost terror is
shown only where their fragments fall on trackless ice, and the
thunder of their ruin can be heard but by the ibex and the
eagle.

§ 4, The safety of the lower mountains depends, as has just been
observed, on their tendency to divide themselves into beds. But
it will easily be understood that, together with security, such a
structure involves some monotony of aspect; and that the possi-

' It may be thought I should have reversed these sentences!, and written, where
the hills are low and safe, the climate is soft, &c. But it is not so. No antecedent
reason can be shown why the Mont Cervin or Finsteranrhorn should not hare risen
sharp out of the plains of Lombardy, instead of out of glaciers.

bility of a rent like that indicated in the last figure, extending
itself without a check, so as to detach some vast portion of the
mountain at once, would he a means of obtaining accidental forms
of far greater awfulness. We find, accordingly, that the bedded
structure is departed from in the central peaks; that they are in
reality gifted with this power, or, if we choose so to regard it,
affected with this weakness, of rending downwards throughout
into vertical sheets; and that to this end they are usually com-
posed of that structureless and massive rock which we have
characterized by the term ''compact crystalline."

§ 5. This, indeed, is not universal. It happens sometimes that
toward the centre of great hill ranges ordinary stratified rocks
of the coherent groups are hardened into more compact strength
than is usual with them; and out of the hardened mass a peak,
or range of peaks, is cut as if out of a single block. Thus the
well known Dent du Midi of Bex, a mountain of peculiar interest
to the English travellers who crowd the various inns and pen-
sions which now glitter along the shores of the Lake of Geneva
at Vevay, Clarens, and Montreux, is cut out of horizontal beds
of rock which are traceable in the evening light by their dark
and light lines along its sides, like courses of masonry; the real
form of the mountain being that of the ridge of a steep house-
roof, jagged and broken at the top, so that, seen from near
St. Maurice, the extremity of the ridge appears a sharp pyramid.
The Dent de Morcles, opposite the Dent du Midi, has been
already noticed, and is figured in Plate 29. (over leaf) Fig. 4.
In like manner, the Matterhorn is cut out of a block of nearly
horizontal beds of gneiss. But in all these cases the materials
are so hardened and knit together that to all intents and purposes
they form one solid mass ; and when the forms are to be of the
boldest character possible, this solid mass is unstratified, and of
compact crystalline rock.

§ 6. In looking from Geneva in the morning light, Avhen Mont
Blanc and its companion hills are seen dark against the dawn,
almost every traveller must have been struck by the notable
range of jagged peaks which bound the horizon immediately to
the north-east of Mont Blanc. In ordinary weather they appear

1G4

PAiir v.

a single chain, but if any clouds or mists happen to float into
the heart of the group, it divides itself into two ranges, lower
and higher, as in Fig. 1, Plate 29., of which the uppermost and
more distant chain is the real crest of the Alps, and the lower
and darker line is composed of subordinate peaks which form the
south side of the valley of Chamouni, and are therefore ordinarily
known as the '' Aiguilles of Chamouni."

Though separated by some eight or nine miles of actual
distance, the two ranges are part of one and the same system
of rock. They are both of them most notable examples of the
structure of the compact crystalline peaks, and their jagged and
spiry outlines are rendered still more remarkable in any view
obtained of them in the immediate neighbourhood of Geneva, by
their rising, as in the figure, over two long slopes of compara-
tively flattish mountain. The highest of these is the back of
a stratified limestone range, distant about twenty-five miles,
whose precipitous extremity, nodding over the little village of
St. Martin's, is well known under the name of the Aiguille de
Varens. The nearer line is the edge of another limestone moun-
tain, called the Petit Sal^ve, within five miles of Geneva. And
thus we have two ranges of the crystalline rocks opposed to two
ranges of the coherents, both having their distinctive characters,
the one of vertical fracture, the other of level continuousness,
developed on an enormous scale. I am aware of no other view
in Europe where the essential characteristics of the two forma-
tions are so closely and graphically displayed.

§ 7. Nor can I imagine any person thoughtfully regarding the
more distant range, without feeling his curiosity strongly excited
as to the method of its first sculpture. That long banks and
fields of rock should be raised aslope, and break at their edges
into ■clifi's, however mysterious the details of the operation may
be, is yet conceivable in the main circumstances without any
great effort of imagination. But the carving of those great
obelisks and spires out of an infinitely harder rock; the sculp-
ture of all the fretted pinnacles on the inaccessible ^and calm
elevation of that great cathedral, — how and when was this
wrought? It is necessary, before the extent and difficulty of

165

such a question can be felt, to explain more fully the scale and
character of the peaks under consideration.

§ 8. The valley of Chamouni, largely viewed, and irrespectively of
minor ravines and irregularities, is nothing more than a deep
trench, dug between two ranges of nearly continuous mountains,—
dug with a straightness and evenness which render its scenery, in
some respects, more monotonous than that of any other Alpine
valley. On each side it is bordered by banks of turf, darkened
with pine forest, rising at an even slope to a height of about
3000 feet, so that it may best be imagined as a kind of dry moat,
which, if cut across, would be of the form typically shown in
Fig. 20.; the sloping bank on each side being about 3000 feet
high, or the moat about
three fifths of a mile in ver-
tical depth. Then, on the
top of the bank, on each
side, and a little way back
from the edge of the moat,
rise the ranges of the great
mountains, in the form of
shattered crests and pyramids of barren rock sprinkled with
snow. Those on the south side of the valley rise another 3000
feet above the bank on which they stand, so that each of the
masses superadded in Fig. 21. may best be described as a sort
of Egyptian pyramid of the
height of Snowdon or Ben Lo-
mond, hewn out of solid rock,
and set on the shoulder of the
great bank which borders the
valley. Then the Mont Blanc,
a higher and heavier cluster of
such summits, loaded with deep
snow, terminates the range.
Glaciers of greater or less ex-

' I use the terms " pyramid " and " peak " at present, in order to give a rough
general idea of the aspects of these hills. Both terms, as we shall see in the next
chapter, are to be accepted under limitation.

tent descend between the pyramids of rock; and one, supplied
from their largest recesses, even runs down the hank into the
valley. Fig. 22.^ rudely represents the real contours of the

' This coarse sketch is merely given for reference, as I shall often have to speak
of the particular masses of mountain, indicated by the letters in the outline below it;
namely—

mountains, including Mont Blanc itself, on its south side.
The range of peaks, h, p, m, is that already spoken of, known
as the " Aiguilles of Chamouni." They form but a very
small portion of a great crowd of similar, and, for the most
part, larger peaks which constitute the chain of Mont Blanc,
and which receive from the Savoyards the name of Aiguilles,
or needles, in consequence of their peculiarly sharp summits. The
forms of these Aiguilles, wonderful enough in themselves, are,
nevertheless, perpetually exaggerated both by the imagination of
the traveller, and by the artists whose delineations of them find
most frank acceptance. Fig. 1. in Plate 30. (facing p. 181.) is
faithfully copied from the representation given of one of these
mountains in a plate lately published at Geneva. Fig. 2. in the
same plate is a true outline of the mountain itself. Of the
exaggerations in the other I shall have more to say presently :
meantime, I refer to it merely as a proof that I am not myself
exaggerating, in giving Fig. 22. as showing the general cha-
racters of these peaks.

§ 3 This, then, is the problem to be considered,—How mountains
of such rugged and precipitous outline, and at the least 3000 feet
in height, were originally carved out of the hardest rocks, and
set in their present position on the top of the green and sloping
bank which sustains them.

"By mere accident," the reader replies. "The uniform bank
might as easily have been the highest, and the broken granite
peaks have risen from its sides, or at the bottom of it. It is merely
the chance formation of the valley of Chamouni."

Nay; not so-. Although, as if to bring the problem more
clearly before the thoughts of men, by marking the structure
most where the scenery is most attractive, the formation is
more distinct at Chamouni than anywhere else in the Alpine
chain; yet the general condition of a rounded bank sustaining
jagged or pyramidal peaks is more or less traceable throughout
the whole district of the great mountains. The most celebrated
spot, next to the valley of Chamouni, is the centre of the Bernese
Oberland; and it will be remembered by all travellers that in its

principal valley, that of G-rindelwald, not only does the summit of
the Wetterhorn consist of a sharp pyramid raised on the advanced
shoulder of a great promontory, but the two most notable
summits of the Bernese Alps, the Schreckhorn and Finsteraar-
horn, cannot be seen from the valley at all, being thrown far
back upon an elevated plateau, of which only the advanced head
or shoulder, under the name of the Mettenberg, can be seen from
the village. The real summits, consisting in each case of a
ridge starting steeply from this elevated plateau, as if by a
new impulse of angry or ambitious mountain temper, can only
be seen by ascending a considerable height upon the flank of
the opposite mass of the Faulhorn.

§ 10. And this is, if possible, still more notably and provokingly the
case with the great peaks of the chain of Alps between Monte
Rosa and Mont Blanc. It will be seen, by a glance at any map
of Switzerland, that the district which forms the canton Valais is,
in reality, nothing but a ravine sixty miles long, between that
central chain and the Alps of the cantons Fribourg and Berne,
This ravine is also, in its general structure, merely a deeper and
wider moat than that already described as forming the valley of
Chamouni. It lies, in the same manner, between two hanhs
of mountain; and the principal peaks are precisely in the same
manner set back upon the tops of these banks; and so pro-
vokingly far back, that throughout the whole length of the valley
not one of the summits of the chief chain can be seen from it.
That usually pointed out to travellers as Monte Rosa is a sub-
ordinate, though still very colossal mass, called the Montagne de
Saas; and this is the only peak of great size discoverable from
the valley throughout its extent; one or two glimpses of the snows,
not at any eminent point, being caught through the entrances of
the lateral valleys of Evolena, &c.

§ 11. Nor is this merely the consequence of the great distance of
the central ridge. It would be intelligible enough that the moun-
tains should rise gradually higher and higher towards the middle
of the chain, so that the summit at a in the upper diagram of
Fig. 23. should be concealed by the intermediate eminences b, c,

169

from the valley at d. But this is not, by any means, the manner
in which the concealment is effected. The great peaks stand,
as at a in the lower diagram, jagged, sharp, and suddenly start-
ing out of a comparatively tame mass of elevated land, through
which the trench of the valley of the Rhone is cut, as at c.

The subdivision of the bank at h by thousands of ravines, and its
rise, here and there, into more or less notable summits, conceal
the real fact of the structure from a casual observer. But the
longer I stayed among the Alps, and the more closely I examined
them, the more I was struck by the one broad fact of there
being a vast Alpine plateau, or mass of elevated land, upon
Avhich nearly all the highest peaks stood like children set upon
a table, removed, in most cases, far back from the edge of
the plateau, as if for fear of their falling. And the most
majestic scenes in the Alps are produced, not so much by any
violation of this law, as by one of the great peaks having appa-
rently walked to the edge of the table to look over, and thus
showing itself suddenly above the valley in its full height. This
is the case with the Wetterhorn and Eiger at G-rindelwald, and
with the Grande Jorasse, above the Col de Ferret. But the
raised bank or table is always intelligibly in existence, even in
these apparently exceptional cases; and, for the most part, the

great peaks are not allowed to come to the edge of it, but
remain like the keeps of castles far withdrawn, surrounded, league
beyond league, by comparatively level fields of mountain, over
which the lapping sheets of glacier writhe and flow, foaming
about the feet of the dark central crests like the surf of an
enormous sea-breaker hurled over a rounded rock, and islanding
some fragment of it in the midst. And the result of this arrange-
ment is a kind of division of the whole of Switzerland into an
upper and lower mountain-world; the lower world consisting of
rich valleys bordered by steej), but easily accessible, wooded banks
of mountain, more or less divided by ravines, through which
glimpses are caught of the higher Alps; the upper world, reached
after the first steep banks, of 3000 or 4000 feet in height, have
been surmounted, consisting of comparatively level but most
desolate tracts of moor and rock, half-covered by glacier, and
stretching to the feet of the true pinnacles of the chain.

§ 1It can hardly be necessary to point out the perfect wisdom and
kindness of this arrangement, as a provision for the safety of the
inhabitants of the high mountain regions. If the great peaks rose
at once from the deepest valleys, every stone which was struck
from their pinnacles, and every snow-wreath which slipped from
their ledges, would descend at once upon the inhabitable ground,
over which no year would pass without recording some calamity
of earth-sli];) or avalanche; while, in the course of their fall, both
the stones and the snow would strip the woods from the hill sides,
leaving only naked channels of destruction where there are now
the sloping meadow and the chestnut glade. Besides this, the
masses of snow, cast down at once into the warmer air, would all
melt rapidly in the spring, causing furious inundation of every
great river for a month or six weeks. The snow being then all
thawed, except what lay upon the highest peaks in regions of
nearly perpetual frost, the rivers would be supplied during the
summer, only by fountains, and the feeble tricklings on sunny
days from the high snows. The Ehone under such circum-
stances would hardly be larger at . Lyons than the Severn at
Shrewsbury, and many Swiss valleys would be left almost with-

out moisture. All these calamities are prevented by the peculiar
Alpine structure which has been described. The broken rocks
and the sliding snow of the high peaks, instead of being dashed
at once to the vales, are caught upon the desolate shelves or
shoulders which everywhere surround the central crests. The soft
banks which terminate these shelves, traversed by no falling frag-
ments, clothe themselves with richest wood; while the masses of
snow heaped upon the ledge above them, in a climate neither so
warm as to tha,w them quickly in the spring, nor so cold as to
protect them from all the power of the summer sun, either form
themselves into glaciers, or remain in slowly wasting fields even
to the close of the year,—in either case supplying constant, abun-
dant, and regular streams to the villages and pastures beneath,
and to the rest of Europe, noble and navigable rivers.

§ 13. Now, that such a structure is the best and wisest possible,
is, indeed, sufficient reason for its existence; and to many people
it may seem useless to question farther respecting its origin. But
I can hardly conceive any one standing face to face with one
of these towers of central rock, and yet not also asking him-
self, Is this indeed the actual first work of the Divine Master
on which I gaze? Was the great precipice shaped by His
finger, as Adam was shaped out of the dust ? Were its clefts
and ledges carved upon it by its Creator, as the letters were on
the Tables of the Law, and was it thus left to bear its eternal
testimony to His beneficence among these clouds of heaven ?
Or is it the descendant of a long race of mountains, existing
under appointed laws of birth and endurance, death and de-
crepitude ?

§ 14, There can be no doubt as to the answer. The rock itself
answers audibly by the murmur of some falling stone or rending
pinnacle. It is not as it was once. Those waste leagues around
its feet are loaded with the wrecks of what it was. On these,
perhaps, of all mountains, the characters of decay are written
most clearly; around these are spread most gloomily the memorials
of their pride, and the signs of their humiliation.

Their form, as far as human vision can trace it, is one of
eternal decay. No retrospection can raise them out of their
ruins, or withdraw them beyond the law of their perpetual
fate. Existing science may be challenged to form, with the
faintest colour of probability, any conception of the original aspect
of a crystalline mountain ; it cannot be followed in its elevation,
nor traced in its connection with its fellows. No eyes ever
" saw its substance, yet being imperfect;" its history is a mono-
tone of endurance and destruction : all that we can certainly know
of it, is that it was once greater than it is now, and it only
gathers vastness, and still gathers, as it fades into the abyss of the
unknown.

§ 15. Yet this one piece of certain evidence ought not to be
altogether unpursued; and while, with all humility, we shrink
from endeavouring to theorize respecting processes which are
concealed, we ought not to refuse to follow, as far as it will lead
us, the course of thought which seems marked out by conspicuous
and consistent phenomena. Exactly as the form of the lower
mountains seems to have been produced by certain raisings and
bendings of their formerly level beds, so the form of these higher
mountains seems to have been produced by certain breakings
away from their former elevated mass. If the process appears
in either case doubtful, it is less so with respcct to the higher
hills. We may not easily believe that the steep limestone cliffs
on one side of a valley, now apparently secure and stedfast, ever
were united with the cliffs on the other side; but we cannot hesi-
tate to admit that the peak which we see shedding its flakes of
granite on all sides of it, as a fading rose lets fall its leaves,
was once larger than it is, and owes the present characters of
its form chiefly to the modes of its diminution.

§ 16. Holding fast this clue, we have next to take into considera-
tion another fact of not less importance,—that over the whole of
the rounded banks of lower mountain, wherever they have been
in anywise protected from the injuries of time, there are yet
visible the tracks of ancient glaciers. I will not here enter into
detail respecting the mode in which traces of glaciers are dis-
tinguishable. It is enough to state that the footmark, so to

speak, of a glacier is just as easily recognizable as the trail of
any well-known animal; and tliat with as 'much confidence as
we should feel in asserting that a horse had passed along a soft
road which yet retained the prints of its shoes, it may be con-
cluded that the glaciers of the Alps had once triple or quadruple
the extent that they have now; so that not only the banks of
inferior mountains were once covered with sheets of ice, but even
the great valley of the Khone itself was the bed of an enormous
" Mer de G-lace," which extended beyond the Lake of Greneva to
the slopes of Jura.^
§ 17. From what has already been noted of glacier action, the reader
cannot but be aware that its universal effect is to round and soften
the contours of the mountains subjected to it; so that a glacier
may be considered as a vast instrument of friction, a white sand-
paper, applied slowly but irresistibly to all the roughnesses of the
hill which it covers. And this effect is of course greatest when
the ice flows fastest, and contains more embedded stones ; that
is to say, greater towards the lower part of a mountain than near
its summit.

Suppose now a chain of mountains raised in any accidental
form, only of course highest where the force was greatest,—that
is to say, at the centre of the chain,—and presenting any profile
such as a, Fig. 24, over leaf; terminated, perhaps, by a broken
secondary cliff, and the whole covered with a thick bed of glacier,
indicated by the spotted space, and moving in the direction of the
arrows. As it wears away the mountain, not at all at the top,
but always more and more as it descends, it would in process of
time reduce the contour of the flank of the hill to the form at h.
But at this point the snow would begin to slide from the central
peak, and to leave its rocks exposed to the action of the atmo-
sphere. Supposing those rocks disposed to break into vertical
sheets, the summit would soon cleave itself into such a form as
that at X; and the flakes again subdividing and falling, we should

' The glacier tracks on the gneiss of the great angle opposite Martigny are the
most magnificent I ever saw in the Alps ; those above the channel of the Trient,
between Valorsine and the valley of the Rhone, the most interesting.

have conditions such as at y. Meanwhile the glacier is still doing
its work uninterruptedly on the lower bank, bringing the mountain
successively into the outlines c and d, in which the forms x and y
are substituted consecutively for the original summit. But the level
of the whole flank of the mountain being now so much reduced,
the glacier has brought itself by its own work into warmer climate,
and has wrought put its own destruction. It would gradually be
thinned away, and in many places at last vanish, leaving only the
barren rounded mountains, and the tongues of ice still supplied
from the peaks above.

§ 18. Such is the actual condition of the Alps at this moment. I do
not say that they have in reality undergone any such process. But

I think it right to put the supposition before the reader, more with
a view of explaining what the appearance of things actually is,
than with any wish that he should adopt either this or any other
theory on the subject. It facilitates a description of the Breche
de Koland to say, that it looks as if the peer had indeed cut it
open with a swordstroke; but it would be unfair to conclude that
the describer gravely wished the supposition to be adopted as
explanatory of the origin of the ravine. In like manner, the
reader who has followed the steps of the theory I have just
oifered, will have a clearer conception of the real look and
anatomy of the Alps than I could give him by any other means.
But he is welcome to accept in seriousness just as much or as
little of the theory as he likes.^ Only I am well persuaded that
the more* familiar any one becomes with the chain of the Alps,
the more, whether voluntarily or not, the idea will force itself
upon him of their being mere remnants of large masses, —
splinters and fragments, as of a stranded wreck, the greater
part of which has been removed by the waves; and the more
he will be convinced of the existence of two distinct regions,
one, as it were, below the ice, another above it,—one of sub-
jected, the other of emergent rook; the lower worn away by the
action of the glaciers and rains, the higher splintering and falling
to pieces by natural disintegration.

§ 19- I press, however, neither conjecture nor inquiry farther; having
already stated all that is necessary to give the reader a complete
idea of the different divisions of mountain form, I proceed now
to examine the points of pictorial interest in greater detail; and

' For farther information respecting the glaciers and their probable action, the
reader should consult the works of Professor Forbes. I believe this theory of the
formation of the upper peaks has been proposed by him, and recently opposed by
Mr. Sharpe, who believes that the great bank spoken of in the text was originally a
sea-bottom. But I have simply stated in this chaptcr the results of my own watch-
ings of the Alps ; for being without hope of getting time for available examination
of the voluminous works on these subjects, I thought it best to read nothing (except
Forbes's most important essay on the glaciers, several times quoted in the text), and
therefore to give, at all events, the force of independent witness to such impressions as
I received from the actual facts ; De Saussure, always a faithful recorder of those
facts, and my first master in geology, being referred to, occasionally, for information
respecting localities I had not been able to examine.

in order to do so more conveniently, I shall adopt the order,
in description, which Nature seems to have adopted in forma-
tion ; beginning with the mysterious hardness of the central
crystallines, and descending to the softer and lower rocks which
we see in some degree modified by the slight forces still in
operation. We will therefore examine: 1, the pictorial pheno-
mena of the central peaks; 2, those of the summits of the
lower mountains round them, to which we shall find it conve-
nient to give the distinguishing name of Crests ; 3, the forma-
tion of Precipices, properly so called; then, the general aspect
of the Banks and Slopes, produced by the action of water or of
falling debris, on the sides or at the bases of mountains; and
finally, remove, if it may be, a few of the undeserved scorns
thrown upon our most familiar servants, Stones. To each of
these subjects we shall find it necessary to devote a distinct
chapter.

§1-1 HAVE endeavoured in the preceding chapters always to keep
the glance of the reader on the broad aspect of things, and to
separate for him the mountain masses into the most distinctly
comprehensible forms. We must now consent to take more pains
and observe more closely.

§ 2. I begin with the Aiguilles. In Fig. 24, p. 174, at a, it was
assumed that the mass was raised highest merely where the
elevating force was greatest, being of one substance with the
bank or cliff below. But it hardly ever is of the same substance.
Almost always it is of compact crystallines, and the bank of slaty
crystallines; or if it be of slaty crystallines the bank is of slaty
coherents. The bank is almost always the softer of the two.^

Is not this very marvellous ? Is it not exactly as if the sub-
stance had been prepared soft or hard with a sculpturesque view
to what had to be done with it; soft, for the glacier to mould
and the torrent to divide; hard, to stand for ever, central in
mountain majesty ?

§ 3. Next, then, comes the question, How do these compact crys-
tallines and slaty crystallines join each other ? It has long been
a well recognized fact in the science of geology, that the most
important mountain ranges lift up and sustain upon their sides
the beds of rock which form
the inferior groups of hills
around them, in the manner
roughly shown in the section
Fig. 25., where the dark mass
stands for the hard rock of the

VOL. IV.

PART V.

great mountains (crystallines), and the lighter lines at the side
of it indicate the prevalent direction of the beds in the neigh-
bouring hills (coherents), while the spotted portions represent
the gravel and sand of which the great plains are usually com-
posed. But it has not been so universally recognized, though
long ago pointed out by De Saussure, that the great central
groups are often themselves composed of beds lying in a pre-
cisely opposite direction ; so that if we analyze carefully the
structure of the dark mass in the centre of Fig. 25., we shall
find it arranged in lines which slope downwards to the centre;
the flanks of it being of slaty crystalline rock, and the summit
of compact crystallines, as at a, Fig. 26.

In speaking of the sculpture of the central peaks in the last
chapter, I made no reference to the nature of the rocks in the
banks on which they stood. The diagram at a, Fig. 27., as
representative of the original condition, and h, of the resultant
condition, will, compared with Fig. 24. p. 174, more completely
illustrate the change.^
§ 4. By what secondary laws this structure may ultimately be
discovered to have been produced is of no consequence to us at
present; all that it is needful for us to note is the beneficence

It' '
I'-. !

' I have been able to examine these conditions with much care in the chain of
Mont Blanc only, which I chose for the subject of investigation both as being the
most interesting to the general traveller, and as being the only range of the central
mountains which had been much painted by Turner. But I believe the singular
arrangements of beds which take place in this chain have been found by the German
geologists to prevail also in the highest peaks of the western Alps; and there are a
peculiar beauty and providence in them which induce me to expect that farther
inquiries taay justify our attributing them to some very extensive law of the earth's
structure. See the notes from De Saussure in Appendix 2.

which appointed it for the mountains destined to assume the
boldest forms. For into
whatever outline they may
be sculptured by violence
or time, it is evident at a
glance that their stability
and security must always be
the greatest possible under
the given circumstances.
Suppose, for instance, that
the peak is in such a form
as a in Fig. 26., then,
however steep the slope
may be on either side,
there is still no chance of

one piece of rock sliding off another; but if the same outline
were given to beds disposed as at h, the unsupported masses
might slide off those beneath them at any moment, unless
prevented by the inequalities of the surfaces. Farther, in the
minor divisions of the outline, the tendency of the peak at a
will be always to assume contours like those at a in Fig. 28.,

which are, of course, perfectly safe; but the tendency of the
beds at h in Fig. 27. will be to break into contours such as
at h here, which are all perilous, not only in the chance of each
several portion giving way, but in the manner in which they
would deliver, from one to the other, the fragments which fell.
A stone detached from any portion of the peak at a would be
caught and stopped on the ledge beneath it; but a fragment
loosened from h would not stay till it reached the valley by a
series of accelerating bounds.

§ 5. While, however, the secure and noble form represented at a
in Figs. 26. and 28. is for the most part ordained to be that of
the highest mountains, the contours at h, in each figure, are of
perpetual occurrence among the secondary ranges, in which, on a
smaller scale, they produce some of the most terrific and fantastic
forms of precipice; not altogether without danger, as has been
fearfully demonstrated by many a " bergfall " among the limestone
groups of the Alps; but with far less danger than would have
resulted from the permission of such forms among the higher
hills; and with collateral advantages which we shall have pre-
sently to consider. In the meantime, we return to the examina-
tion of the superior groups.

§ 6. The reader is, no doubt, already aware that the chain of the
Mont Blanc is bordered by two great valleys, running parallel to
each other, and seemingly excavated on purpose that travellers
might be able to pass, foot by foot, along each side of the Mont
Blanc and its aiguilles, and thus examine every peak in succession.
One of these valleys is that of Chamouni, the other that of which
one half is called the Allee Blanche, and the other the Val Ferret,
the town of Cormayeur being near its centre, where it opens to
the Val d'Aosta. Now, cutting the chain of Mont Blanc right
across, from valley to valley, through the double range of aiguilles.

the section would be ^ as Fig. 29. here, in which a is the valley of
Chamouni, h the range of aiguilles of Chamouni, c the range of the
Geant, d the valley of Cormayeur.

' That is to say, as it appears to me. There are some points of the following
statements which are disputed among geologists ; the reader will find them hereafter
discussed at greater length.

The little projection under m is intended to mark approxi-
mately the position of the so well-known " Montanvert." It is a
great weakness, not to say worse than weakness, on the part of
travellers, to extol always chiefly what tliey think fewest people
have seen or can see. I have climbed much, and wandered much,
in the heart of the high Alps, but I have never yet seen anything
which equalled the view from the cabin of the Montanvert; and
as the spot is visited every year by increasing numbers of tourists,
I have thought it best to take the mountains which surround it for
the principal subjects of our inquiry.

§ 7. The little eminence left under m truly marks the height of the
Montanvert on the flanks of the aiguilles, but not accurately its
position, which is somewhat behind the mass of mountain supposed
to be cut through by the section. But the top of the Montanvert
is actually formed, as shown at m, by the crests of the oblique
beds of slaty crystallines. Every traveller must remember the
steep and smooth beds of rock, like sloping walls, down which,
and over the ledges of which, the path descends from the cabin to
the edge of the glacier. These sloping walls are formed by the
inner sides of the crystalline beds,^ as exposed in the notch behind
the letter m.

§ 8. To these beds we shall return presently, our object just now
being to examine the aiguille, which, on the Montanvert, forms
the most conspicuous mass of mountain on the right of the spec-
tator. It is known in Chamouni as the Aiguille des Charmoz,
and is distinguished by a very sharp horn or projection on its side,
which usually attracts the traveller's attention as one of the most
singular minor features in the view from the Montanvert. The
larger masses of the whole aiguille, and true contour of this horn,
are carefully given in Plate 30. Fig. 2. as they are seen in morn-
ing sunshine. The impression which travellers usually carry away
with them is, I presume, to be gathered from Fig. 1., a facsimile
of one of the lithographs purchased with avidity by English
travellers, in the shops of Chamouni and Geneva, as giving a

' Running, at that point, veiy nearly, N. E. and s. w., and dipping under the ice at
an angle of about seventy degrees.

faithful representation of this aiguille seen from the Montan-
vert. It is worth while to perpetuate this example of the ideal
landscape of the nineteenth century, popular at the time when the
works of Turner were declared by the public to be extravagant and
unnatural.

§ 9. This example of the common ideal of aiguilles is, however,
useful in another respect. It shows the strong impression which
these Chamouni mountains leave, of their being above all others
sharp-peaked and splintery, dividing more or less into arrowy
spires; and it marks the sense of another and very curious
character in them, that these spires are apt to be somewhat bent
or curved.

Both these impressions are partially true, and need to be insisted
upon, and cleared of their indistinctness, or exaggeration.

First, then, this strong impression of their peakedness and
spiry separateness is always produced with the least possible danger
to the travelling and admiring public; for if in reality these granite
mountains were ever separated into true spires or points, in the
least resembling this popular ideal in Plate 30., the Montanvert and
Mer de Glace would be as inaccessible, except at the risk of life,
as the trenches of a besieged city; and the continual fall of the
splintering fragments would turn even the valley of Chamouni itself
into a stony desolation.

§ 10, Perhaps in describing mountains with any effort to give some
idea of their sublime forms, no expression comes oftener to the
lips than the word " peak." And yet it is curious how rarely,
even among the grandest ranges, an instance can be found of a
mountain ascertainably peaked in the true sense of the word,—
pointed at the top, and sloping steeply on all sides; perhaps not
more than five summits in the chain of the Alps, the Finster-
Aarhorn, Wetterhorn, Bietsch-horn, Weisshorn, and Monte Viso
presenting approximations to such a structure. Even in the case
of not very steep pyramids, presenting themselves in the distance
under some such outline as that at the top of Fig. 30., it almost
invariably happens, when we approach and examine them, that
they do not slope equally on all their sides, but are nothing more
than steep ends of ridges, supported by far-extended masses of

comparatively level rock, which, seen in perspective, give the
impression of a steep slope, though in reality disposed in a hori-
zontal, or nearly horizontal, line.

§ 11. Supposing the central diagram in Fig. 30. to be the apparent
contour of a distant mountain, then its slopes may indeed, by
singular chance, be as steep as they appear; but in all proba-
bility, several of them are perspective descents of its retiring
lines ; and supposing it were formed as the gable roof of the old
French house below, and seen under the same angle, it is evident
that the part of the outline a h (in lettered reference line above)
would be perfectly horizontal; & c, an angle slope, in retiring per-
spective, much less steep than it appears ; c d, perfectly horizontal;
d e, an advancing or forshortened angle slope, less steep than it
aj)pears; and ef, perfectly horizontal.

But if the pyramid presents itself under a more formidable
aspect, and with steeper sides than those of the central diagram.

then it may be assumed (as far as I know mountains) for next to
a certainty, that it is not a pointed obelisk, but the end of a ridge
more or less prolonged, of which we see the narrow edge or section
turned towards us.

For instance, no mountain in the Alps produces a more vigor-
ous impression of peakedness than the Matterhorn. In Professor
Forbes's work on the Alps, it is spoken of as an '' obelisk " of
rock, and represented with little exaggeration in his seventh plate
under the outline Fig. 31. Naturally, in glancing, whether at the
plate or the mountain, we assume the mass to be a peak, and
suppose the line a & to be the steep sfope of its side. But that
line is a perspective line. It is in reality 'perfectly horizontal,
corresponding to ef'm the penthouse roof Fig. 30.

§ 12. I say " perfectly horizontal," meaning, of course, in general
tendency. It is more or less irregular and broken, but so nearly
horizontal that, after some prolonged examination of the data I
have collected about the Matterhorn, I am at this moment in
doubt which is its top. For as, in order to examine the beds
on its flanks, I walked up the Zmutt glacier, I saw that the
line a 6 in Fig. 31. gradually lost its steepness; and about half-
way up the glacier, the conjectural summit a then bearing nearly
s. B. (forty degrees east of south), I found the contour was as
in Fig. 32. In Fig. 33. p. 186., I have given the contour as
seen from Zermatt; and in all three, the same letters indicate
the same points. In the Figures 32. and 33. I measured the
angles with the greatest care,^ from the base lines x y, which
are accurately horizontal; and their general truth, irrespective
of mere ruggedness, may be depended upon. Now in this flank
view, Fig. 32., what was the summit at Zermatt, a, becomes quite
subordinate, and the point h, far down the flank in Forbes's view,

' It was often of great importance to me to ascertain these apparent slopes with
some degree of correctness. In order to do so without the trouble of carrying any
instrument (except my compass and spirit-level), I had my Alpine pole made as even
as a round nile for about a foot in the middle of its length. Taking the bearing of
the mountain, placing the pole at right angles to the bearing, and adjusting it by the
spirit-level, I brought the edge of a piece of finely cut pasteboard parallel, in a vertical
plane (plumbed), with the apparent slope of the hill side. A pencil line drawn by
the pole then gave me a horizon, Avith which the angle could be easily measured at
home. The measurements thus obtained are given under the figures.

Of the line a b
b e

taken from the Riffelhorn, is here the apparent summit. I was
for some time in considerable doubt which of the appearances was
most trustworthy; and believe now that they are both deceptive;
for I found, on ascending the flank of the hills on the other

side of the Valais, to a height of about five thousand feet above
Brieg, between the Aletsch glacier and Bietsch-horn; being thus
high enough to get a view of the Matterhorn on something like
distant terms of equality, up the St. Nicholas valley, it presented
itself under the outline Fig. 34., which seems to be conclusive for
the supremacy of the point e, between a
and b in Fig. 33. But the impossibility
of determining, at the foot of it, without
a trigonometrical observation, which is the
top of such an apparent peak as the
Matterhorn, may serve to show the reader
how little the eye is to be trusted for the verification of peaked
outline.

§ 13. In like manner, the aiguilles of Chamomii, which present
themselves to the traveller, as he looks up to them from the
village, under an outline approximating to that rudely indicated
at c in the next figure, are in reality buttresses projecting
from an intermediate ridge. Let a be supposed a castle wall,
with slightly elevated masses of square-built buttresses at inter-
vals. Then, by process of dilapidation, these buttresses might

easily be brought to assume in their perspective of ruin the forms
indicated at b, which, with certain modifications, is the actual shape
of the Chamouni aiguilles. The top of the Aiguille Charmoz is
not the point under fZ, but that under e. The deception is

much increased by the elevation of the whole castle wall on
the green bank before spoken of, which raises its foundation
several thousand feet above the eye, and thus, giving amazing
steepness to all the perspective lines, produces an impression ot
the utmost possible isolation of peaks, where, in reality, there is
a well-supported, and more or less continuous, though sharply
jagged, pile of solid walls.

§ 14. There is, however, this great difference between the castle wall
and aiguilles, that the dilapidation in the one would take place by
the fall of horizontal bricks or stones; in the aiguilles it takes
place in quite an opposite manner by the flaking away of nearly
vertical ones.

This is the next point of great interest respecting them.
Observe, the object of their construction appears to be the attain-
ment of the utmost possible peakedness in aspect, with the least
possible danger to the inhabitants of the valleys. As, therefore,
they are first thrown into transverse ridges, which take, in per-
spective, a more or less peaked outline, so, in their dilapidation,
they split into narrow flakes, which, if seen edgeways, look as
sharp as a lance-point, but are nevertheless still strong; being
each of them, in reality, not a lance-point or needle, but a hatchet
edge.

• ft» ;

§ 15. And since if these sharp flakes broke straight across the masses
of mountain, when once the fissure took place, all hold would be
lost between flake and flake, it is ordered (and herein is the most
notable thing in the whole matter) that they shall not break
straight, but in curves, round the body of the aiguilles, somewhat
in the manner of the coats of an onion ; so that, even after the
fissure has taken place, the detached film or flake clings to and
leans upon the central mass, and will not fall from it till centuries
of piercing frost have wedged it utterly from its hold; and, even
then, will not fall all at once, but drop to pieces slowly, and
flake by flake. Consider a little the beneficence of this ordi-
nance^; supposing the cliffs had been built like the castle wall,

■I-

> That is to say, in a clifE intended to owe its outline to dilapidation. Where no
dilapidation is to be permitted, the bedded structure, well knit, is always used. Of
this we shall sec various examples in the IGth chapter.

the mouldering away of a few bricks, more or less, at the
bottom would have brought down huge masses above, as it
constantly does in ruins, and in the mouldering cliffs of the
slaty coherents; while yet the top of the mountain would have
been always blunt and rounded, as at a, Fig. 36., when seen
against the sky. But the
aiguille being built in these
nearly vertical curved flakes,
the worst that the frost can do
to it is to push its undermost
rocks asunder into forms such
as at h, of which, when many
of the edges have fallen, the
lower ones are more or less
supported by the very debris
accumulated at their feet ;
and yet all the while the tops
sustain themselves in the most
fantastic and incredible fineness
of peak against the sky.
§ 16. I have drawn the flakes in
Figure 36., for illustration's
sake, under a caricatured form.
Their real aspect will be un-
derstood in a moment by a
glance at the opposite plate, 31., which represents the central
aiguille in the woodcut outline Fig. 35. (Aiguille Blaiti^re,
called by Forbes Greppond), as seen from within about half
a mile of its actual base. The white shell-like mass beneath
it is a small glacier, which in its beautifully curved outline ^
appears to sympathize with the sweep of the rocks beneath,
( rising and breaking like a wave at the feet of the remarkable
horn or spur which supports it on the right. The base of the
aiguille itself is, as it were, washed by this glacier, or by the
snow which covers it, till late in the season, as a cliff is by the

' Given already as an example of curvature in the Stones of Venice, vol. i. plate 7.

sea; except that a narrow chasm, of some twenty or thirty feet
in depth and two or three feet wide, usually separates the rock
from the ice, which is melted away by the heat reflected from the
southern face of the aiguille. The rock all along this base line
is of the most magnificent compactness and hardness, and rings
under the hammer like a bell; yet, when regarded from a little
distance, it is seen to be distinctly inclined to separate into grand
curved flakes or sheets, of which the dark edges are well marked
in the plate. The pyramidal form of the aiguille, as seen from
this point, is, however, entirely deceptive; the square rock which
forms its apparent summit is not the real top, but much in
advance of it, and the slope on the right against the sky is a
perspective line; while, on the other hand, the precipice in light,
above the three small horns at the narrowest part of the glacier,
is considerably steeper than it appears to be, the cleavage of the
flakes crossing it somewhat obliquely. But I show the aiguille
from this spot that the reader may more distinctly note the
fellowship between its curved precipice and the little dark horn
or spur which bounds the glacier; a spur the more remarkable
because there is just such another, jutting in like manner from
the corresponding angle of the next aiguille (Charmoz), both of
them looking like remnants or foundations of the vaster ancient
pyramids, of which the greater part has been by ages carried
away.

§ 17, The more I examined the range of the aiguilles the more I
was struck by this curved cleavage as their principal character.
It is quite true that they have other straighter cleavages (noticed
in the Appendix, as the investigation of them would be tiresome
to the general reader) ; but it is this to which they owe the
whole picturesqueness of their contours; curved as it is, not
simply, but often into the most strange shell-like undulations, as
will be understood by a glance at Fig. 37., which shows the mere
governing lines at the base of this Aiguille Blaitiere, seen, with
its spur, from a station some quarter of a mile nearer it, and
more to the east than that chosen in Plate 31. These leading
lines are rarely well shown in fine weather, the important contour
from a downwards being hardly relieved clearly from the precipice

'41

beyond (h), unless a cloud intervenes, as it did when I made this
memorandum; while, again, the leading lines of the Aiguille du
Plan, as seen from the foot of it, close to the rocks, are as at
Fig. 38., the generally pyramidal outline being nearly similar to

that of Blaiti^re, and a spur being thrown out to the right, under
a, composed in exactly the same manner of curved folia of rock
laid one against the other. The hollow in the heart of the
aiguille is as smooth and sweeping in curve as the cavity of a
vast bivalve shell.

t-i
I

192

taut v.

RESULTING FORMS.

§ 18- I call these the governing or leading lines, not because they
are the first which strike the eye, but because, like those of the
grain of the wood in a tree-trunk, they rule the swell and fall
and change of all the mass. In Nature, or in a photograph, a
careless observer will by no means be struck by them, any more
than he would by the curves of the tree; and an ordinary artist
would draw rather the cragginess and granulation of the surfaces,
just as he would rather draw the bark and moss of the trunk.
Nor can any one be more steadftistly adverse than I to every
substitution of anatomical knowledge for outward and apparent
fact; but so it is, that, as an artist increases in acuteness of per-
ception, the facts which become outward and apparent to him are
those which bear upon the growth or make of the thing. And,
just as in looking at any woodcut of trees after Titian or Albert
Durer, as compared with a modern water-colour sketch, we shall
always be struck by the writhing and rounding of the tree-trunks
in the one, and the stiffness, and merely blotted or granulated
surfaces of the other; so, in looking at these rocks, the keenness
of the artist's eye may almost precisely be tested by the degree
in which he perceives the curves that give them their strength
and grace, and in harmony with which the flakes of granite are
bound together, like the bones of the jaw of a saurian. Thus
the ten years of study which I have given to these mountains
since I described them in the first volume as "traversed some-
times by graceful curvilinear fissures, sometimes by straight
fissures," have enabled me to ascertain, and now generally at a
glance to see, that the curvilinear ones are dominant, and that even
the fissures or edges which appear perfectly straight have almost
always some delicate sympathy with the curves. Occasionally,
however, as in the separate beds which form the spur or horn of
the Aiguille Blaitiere, seen in true profile in Plate 29. Fig. 3.,

the straightness is so accurate that, not having brought a rule with
me up the glacier, I was obliged to write under my sketch, "Not
possible to draw it straight enough." Compare also the lines
sloping to the left in Fig. 38.

§ 19. "But why not give everything just as it is; without caring
what is dominant and what subordinate ? "

You cannot. Of all the various impossibilities which torment
and humiliate the painter, none are more vexatious than that of
drawing a mountain form. It is indeed impossible enough to
draw, by resolute care, the foam on a wave, or the outline of
the foliage of a large tree; but in these cases when care is
at fault, carelessness will help, and the dash of the brush will
in some measure give wildness to the churning of the foam,
and infinitude to the shaking of the leaves. But chance will
not help us with the mountain. Its fine and faintly organized
edge seems to be definitely traced against the sky; yet let us
set ourselves honestly to follow it, and we find, on the instant,
it has disappeared : and that for two reasons. The first, that
if the mountain be lofty, and in light, it is so faint in colour
that the eye literally cannot trace its separation from the hues
next to it. The other day I wanted the contour of a limestone
mountain in the Valais, distant about seven miles, and as many
thousand feet above me; it was barren limestone ; the morning
sun fell upon it, so as to make it almost vermilion colour, and
the sky behind it a bluish green. Two tints could hardly have
been more opposed, but both were so subtle, that I found it
impossible to see accurately the line that separated the vermilion
from the green. The second, that if the contour be observed
from a nearer point, or looked at when it is dark against the
sky, it will be found composed of millions of minor angles,
crags, points, and fissures, which no human sight or hand can
draw finely enough, and yet all of which have effect upon the
mind.

§ 20. The outline shown as dark against the sky in Plate 29. Fig. 2.
is about a hundred, or a hundred and twenty, yards of the top of
the ridge of Charmoz, running from the base of the aiguille down
to the Montanvert, and seen from the moraine of the Charmoz

glacier, a quarter of a mile distant to tlie south-west.^ It is
formed of decomposing granite, thrown down in blocks entirely
detached, but wedged together, so as to stand continually in these
seemingly perilous contours (being a portion of such a base of
aiguille as that in h, Figure 36. p. 189.).^ The block forming
the summit on the left is fifteen or eighteen feet long ; and the
upper edge of it, which is the dominant point of the Oharmoz
ridge, is the best spot in the Chamouni district for giving a
thorough command of the relations of the aiguilles on each side
of the Mer de Glace. Now put the book, with that page open,
upright, at three yards' distance from you, and try to draw this
contour, which I have made as dark and distinct as it ever could be
in reality, and you will immediately understand why it is impos-
sible to draw mountain outlines rightly.

§ 21. And if not outlines, a fortiori not details of mass, which
have all the complexity of the outline multiplied a thousand fold,
and drawn in fainter colours. Nothing is more curious than
the state of embarrassment into which the unfortunate artist
must soon be cast, when he endeavours honestly to draw the face
of the simplest mountain cliff—say a thousand feet high, and two
or three miles distant. It is full of exquisite details, all seemingly
decisive and clear; but when he tries to arrest one of them, he
cannot see it, — cannot find where it begins or ends, — and

' The top of the aiguille of the Little Charmoz bearing, from the point whence this
sketch Avas made, about six degrees east of north.

® The summits of the aiguilles are often more fantastically rent still. Fig. 39. is
the profile of a portion of the upper edge of the Aiguille du Moine, seen from the crest
of Charmoz ; Fig. 40. shows the three lateral fragments, drawn to a larger scale.

The height of each of the upright masses must be from twenty to twenty-five feet. I
do not know if their rude resemblance to two figures, on opposite sides of a table
or altar, has had anything to do with the name of the aiguille.

presently it runs into another; and then he tries to draw that,
but that will not be drawn, neither, until it has conducted him to
a third, which, somehow or another, made part of the first;
presently he finds that, instead of three, there are in reality four,
and then he loses his place altogether. He tries to draw clear
lines, to make his work look craggy, but finds that then it is too
hard; he tries to draw soft lines, and it is immediately too soft;
he draws a curved line, and instantly sees it should have been
straight; a straight one, and finds when he looks up again, that
it has got curved while he was drawing it. There is nothing for
him but despair, or some sort of abstraction and shorthand for
cliff. Then the only question is, what is the wisest abstraction ;
and out of the multitude of lines that cannot altogether be inter-
preted, which are the really dominant ones; so that if we cannot
give the whole, we may at least give what will convey the most
important facts about the cliff.

§ 02 Recurring then to our '' public opinion" of the Aiguille
Charmoz, we find the greatest exaggeration of, and therefore I
suppose the greatest interest in, the
narrow and spiry point on its left
side. That is in reality not a point
at all, but- a hatchet edge; a flake
of rock, which is enabled to main-
tain itself in this sharp-edged state
by its writhing folds of sinewy
granite. Its structure, on a larger
scale, and seen " edge on," is shown
in Fig. 41. The whole aiguille is
composed of a series of such flakes,
liable, indeed, to all kinds of fissure
in other directions, but holding, by
their modes of vertical association,
the strongest authority over the
form of the whole mountain. It is
not in all lights that they are seen
plainly: for instance, in the morning

Fig 41.

mtm

effect in Plate 30. they are hardly traceable : but the longer we
watch, the more they are perceived ; and their power of sustaining
themselves vertically is so great, that at the foot of the aiguille on
the right a few of them form a detached mass, known as the Petit
Charmoz, between E and c in Fig. 60. p. 216, of which the
height of the outermost flake, between c and d, is about five
hundred feet.

Important, however, as this curved cleavage is, it is so con-
fused among others, that it has taken me, as I said, ten years of
almost successive labour to develope, in any degree of complete-
ness, its relations among the aiguilles of Chamouni; and even of
professed geologists, the only person who has described it properly
is De Saussure, whose continual sojourn among the Alps enabled
him justly to discern the constant from the inconstant phenomena.
And yet, in his very first journey to Savoy, Turner saw it at a
glance, and fastened on it as the main thing to be expressed in
those mountains.

In the opposite Plate (32.), the darkest divison, on the right,
is a tolerably accurate copy of Turner's rendering of the Aiguille
Charmoz (etched and engraved by himself), in the plate called the
" Mer de Glace," in the Liber Studiorum. Its outline is in local
respects inaccurate enough, being modified by Turnerian topo-
graphy ; but the flaky character is so definite, that it looks as if it
had been prepared for an illustrative diagram of the points at
present under discussion.

§ 23. And do not let it be supposed that this was by chance, or that
the modes of mountain drawing at the period would in any wise
have helped Turner to discover these lines. The aiguilles had
been drawn before his, time, and the figure on the left in Plate 32.
Avill show how. It is a facsimile of a piece of an engraving of the
Mer de Glace, by Woollett, after William Pars, published in 1783,
and founded on the general Wilsonian and Claudesque principles
of landscape common at the time. There are, in the rest of the
plate, some good arrangements of shadow and true aerial per-
spective ; and the piece I have copied, which is an attempt to
represent the Aiguille Dru, opposite the Charmoz, will serve, not

unfairly, to show how totally inadequate the draughtsmen of the
time were to perceive the character of mountains; and, also,
how unable the human mind is by itself to conceive anything like
the variety of natural form. The workman had not looked at the
thing,—trusted to his "Ideal," supposed that broken and rugged
rocks might be shaped better out of his own head than by Nature's
laws,—and we see what comes of it.

§ 24. ^nd now, lastly, observe, in the laws by which this strange
curvilinear structure is given to the aiguilles, how the provision
for beauty of form is made in the first landscape materials we
have to study. We have permitted ourselves, according to that
unsystematic mode of proceeding pleaded for in the opening of
our present task, to wander hither and thither as this or that
question rose before us, and demanded, or tempted, our pursuit.
But the reader must yet remember that our special business in
this section of the work is the observance of the nature of beauty,
and of the degrees in which the aspect of any object fulfils the
laws of beauty stated in the second volume. Now in the fifteenth
paragraph of the chapter on infinity, it was stated that curvature
was essential to all beauty, and that what we should ''need
more especially to prove, was the constancy of curviture in
all natural forms whatsoever." And these aiguilles, which are
the first objects we have had definitely to consider appeared
as little likely to fulfil the condition as anything we could have
come upon. I am well assured that the majority of spectators see
no curves in them at all, but an intensely upright, stern, spiry
ruggedness and angularity. And we might even beforehand have
been led to expect, and to be contented in expecting, nothing
else from them than this; for since, as we have said often,
they are part of the earth's skeleton, being created to sustain
and strengthen everything else, and yet differ from a skeleton
in this, that the earth is not only supported by their strength,
but fed by their ruin ; so that they are first composed of the
hardest and least tractable substance, and then exposed to such
storm and violence as shall beat large parts of them to powder ;—
under these desperate conditions of being, I say, we might have

; -J

anticipated some correspondent ruggedness and terribleness of
aspect, some such refusal to comply with ordinaiy laws of beauty,
as we often see in other things and creatures put to hard work,
and sustaining distress or violence.

§ 25. And truly, at first sight, there is such refusal in their look, and
their shattered walls and crests seem to rise in a gloomy contrast
with the soft waves of bank and wood beneath; nor do I mean to
press the mere fact, that, as we look longer at them, other lines
become perceptible, because it might be thought no proof of their
beauty that they needed long attention in order to be discerned.
But I think this much at least is deserving of our notice, as
confirmatory of foregone conclusions, that the forms which in
other things are produced by slow increase or gradual abrasion of
surface, are here produced by rough fracture, when rough fracture
is to be the law of existence. A rose is rounded by its own soft
ways of growth, a reed is bowed into tender curviture by the
pressure of the breeze; but we could not, from these, have proved
any resolved preference, by Nature, of curved lines to others,
inasmuch as it might always have been answered that the curves
were produced, not for beauty's sake, but infallibly by the laws
of vegetable existence; and, looking at broken flints or rugged
banks afterwards, we might have thought that we only liked
the curved lines because associated with life and organism, and
disliked the angular ones, because associated with inaction and
disorder. But Nature gives us in these mountains a more clear
demonstration of her will. She is here driven to make fracture
the law of being. She cannot tuft the rock-edges with moss, or
round them by water, or hide them with leaves and roots. She
is bound to produce a form, admirable to human beings, by
continual breaking away of substance. And behold—so soon as
she is compelled to do this—she changes the law of fracture itself.
" Growth," she seems to say, is not essential to my work, nor
concealment, nor softness ; but curvature is : and if I must produce
my forms by brealdng them, the fracture itself shall be in curves.
If, instead of dew and sunshine, the only instruments I am to use
are the lightening and the frost, then their forked tongues and

crytal wedges shall still work out my laws of tender line.
Devastation instead of nurture may be tlie task of all my
elements, and age after age may only prolong the unrenovated
ruin; but the appointments of typical beauty which have been
made over all creatures shall not therefore be abandoned; and
the rocks shall be ruled, in their perpetual perishing, by the
same ordinances that direct the bending of the reed and the
blush of the rose."

§ 1. Between the aiguilles, or otlier conditions of central peak, and
the hills which are clearly formed, as explained in Chap. xii.
§ 11., by the mere breaking of the edges of solid beds of coherent
rock, there occurs almost always a condition of mountain summit,
intermediate in aspect, as in position. The aiguille may generally
be represented by the type a, Fig, 42.; the solid and simple beds

of rock by the type c. The condition h, clearly intermediate
between the two is, on the whole, the most graceful and perfect
in which mountain masses occur. It seems to have attracted
more of the attention of the poets than either of the others;
and the ordinary word, crest, which we carelessly use in speaking
of mountain summits, as if it meant little more than " edge"
or "ridge," has a peculiar force and propriety when applied to
ranges of cliff whose contours correspond thus closely to the
principal lines of the crest of a Greek helmet.

§ 2. There is another resemblance which they can hardly fail to
suggest when at all irregular in form,—that of a wave about
to break. Byron uses the image definitely of Soracte; and, in
a less clear way, it seems to present itself occasionally to all
minds, there being a general tendency to give or accept accounts
of mountain form under the image of waves; and to speak of
a hilly country, seen from above, as looking like a " sea of
mountains."

CHAP. XV.

Such expressions, vaguely used, do not, I think, generally
imply much more than that the ground is waved or undulated
into bold masses. But if we give prolonged attention to the
mountains of the group h we shall gradually begin to feel that
more profound truth is couched under this mode of speaking,
and that there is indeed an appearance of action and united
movement in these crested masses, nearly resembling that of sea
waves; that they seem not to be heaped up, but to leap or toss
themselves up; and in doing so, to wreathe and twist their
summits into the most fantastic, yet harmonious, curves, governed
by some grand under-sweep like that of a tide running through
the whole body of the mountain chain.

For instance, in Fig. 43., which gives, rudely, the leading lines
of the junction of the " Aiguille pourri" ^ (Ghamouni) with the
Aiguilles Eouges, the reader cannot, I think, but feel that there

is something which binds the mountains together—some common
influence at their heart which they cannot resist: and that, however
they may be broken or disordered, there is true unity among

' So called from the mouldering nature of ^its rocks. They are slaty crystallines,
but unusually fragile.

them as in the sweep of a wild wave, governed, through all its
foaming ridges, by constant laws of weight and motion.

§ 3. How far this apparent unity is the result of elevatory force
in mountain, and how far of the sculptural force of water upon
the mountain, is the question we have mainly to deal with in
the present chapter.

But first look back to Fig. 7. of Plate 8. Vol. III., there given
as the typical representation of the ruling forces of growth
in a leaf. Take away the extreme portion of the curve on the
left, and any segment of the leaf remaining, terminated by one
of its ribs, as a or b, Fig. 44., will be equally a typical contour

of a common crested mountain. If the reader will merely turn
Plate 8. so as to look at the figure upright, with its stalk down-
wards, he will see that it is also the base of the honeysuckle
ornament of the Greeks. I may anticipate what we shall have
to note with respect to vegetation so far as to tell him that it
is also the base of form in all timber trees.

§ 4. There seems something, therefore, in this contour which makes
its production one of the principal aims of Nature in all her
compositions. The cause of this appears
to be, that as the cinq-foil is the simplest
expression of proportion, this is the sim-
plest expression of opposition, in unequal
curved lines. If we take any lines, a x
and e, g, Fig. 45., both of varied curva-
ture (not segments of circles), and one
shorter than the other, and join them to-
gether so as to form one line, as h x, x g,
we shall have one of the common lines
of beauty; if we join them at an angle,
as c ic, a; we shall have the common
crest, which is in fact merely a jointed ]?ig

line of beauty. If we join tliem as at a,
Fig. 46., they form a line at once mono-
tonous and cramped, and the jointed condi-
tion of this same line, h, is hardly less so.
It is easily proved, therefore, that the
junction of lines c x, x y m the simplest and
most graceful mode of opposition ; and easily
observed that in branches of trees, wings
of birds, and other more or less regular
organizations, such groups of line are continually made to govern
the contours. But it is not so easily seen why or how this form
should be impressed upon irregular heaps of mountain,
§ 5. If a bed of coherent rock be raised, in the manner described in
Chap. xiii., so as to form a broken precipice with its edge, and
a long slope with its surface, as at a, Fig. 47. (and in this way
nearly all hills are raised), the top of the precipice has usually
a tendency to crumble down, and, in process of time, to form a
heap of advanced ruins at its foot. On the other side, the back
or slope of the hill does not crumble down, but is gradually
worn away by the streams; and as these are always more con-
siderable, both in velocity and weight, at the bottom of the slope
than the top, the ground is faster worn away at the bottom, and
the straight slope is cut to a curve of continually increasing steep-
ness. Fig. 47. h represents the contour to which the hill a would
thus be brought in process of time ; the dotted line indicating its
original form. The result, it will be seen, is a crest.^

' The materials removed from the slope are spread over the plain or valley below,
A nearly equal quantity is supposed to be removed from the other side; but besides this
removed mass, the materials crumble heavily from above, and form the concavc curve.

§ 6. But crests of this uniform substance and continuous outline
occur only among hills composed of the softest coherent rocks,
and seldom attain any elevation such as to make them important
or impressive. The notable crests are composed of the hard
coherents or slaty crystallines, and then the contour of the crest
depends mainly on the question whether, in the original mass
of it, the beds lie as at a or as at b, Fig. 48. If they lie

as at a, then the resultant crest will have the general appearance
seen at e; the edges of the beds getting separated and serrated
by the weather. If the beds lie as at b, the resultant crest will
be of such a contour as that at d.

The crests of the contour d are formed usually by the harder
coherent rocks, and are notable chiefly for their bold precipices
in front, and regular slopes, or sweeping curves, at the back.
We shall examine them under the special head of precipices.
But the crests of the form at c belong usually to the slaty crys-
tallines, and are those properly called crests, their edges looking,
especially when covered with pines, like separated plumes. These
it is our chief business to examine in the present chapter.

§7. In order to obtain this kind of crest, we first require to have
our mountain beds thrown up in the form a, Fig. 48. This
is not easily done on a large scale, except among the slaty crys-
tallines forming the flanks of the great chains, as in Fig. 29.
p. 180. In that figure it will be seen that the beds forming each
side of the chain of Mont Blanc are thrown into the required
steepness, and therefore, whenever they are broken towards the
central mountain, they naturally form the front of a crest, while
the torrents and glaciers falling over their longer slopes, carve
them into rounded banks towards the valley.

§ 8. But the beauty of a crest or bird's wing consists, in nature,
not merely in its curved terminal outline, but in the radiation of
the plumes, so that while each assumes a different curve, every
curve shall show a certain harmony of direction with all the others.

We shall have to enter into the examination of this subject at
greater length in the 17th chapter; meanwhile, it is sufficient to
observe the law in a single example, such as Fig. 49. over leaf,
which is a wing of one of the angels in Durer's woodcut of
the Fall of Lucifer.^ At first sight the plumes seem disposed
with much irregularity, but there is a sense of power and
motion in the whole which the reader would find was at once

' The lines are a little too straight in their continuations, the engraver having cut
some of the curvature out of their thickness, thinking I had drawn them too coarsely.
But I have chosen this coarsely lined example, and others like it, following, because I
wish to accustom the reader to distinguish between the mere fineness of instrument in
the artist's hand, and the precision of the line he draws. Give Titian a blunt pen, and
still Titian's line will be a noble one : a tyro, with a pen well mended, may draw
more neatly ; but his lines ought to be discerned from Titian's, if we understand
drawing. Every line in this woodcut of Durcr's is refined-, and that in the noblest
sense. Whether broad or fine does not matter, the lines are right; and the most
delicate false line is evermore to be despised, in presence of the coarscst faithful one.

lost by a careless copyist; for it depends on the fact that if we
take the principal curves at any points of the wing, and con-
tinue them in the lines which they are pursuing at the moment
they terminate, these continued lines will all meet in a single
point, c. It is this law which gives unity to the wing.

All groups of curves set beside each other depend for their
beauty upon the observance of this law; ^ and if, therefore, the
mountain crests are to be perfectly beautiful, Nature must contrive
to get this element of radiant curvature into them in one way or

' Not absolutely on the meeting of the curves in one point, but on their radiating
with some harmonious succession of difference in direction. The difference between
lines which arc in true harmony of radiation, and lines which are not, can, in com-
plicated masses, only be detected by a trained eye ; yet it is often the chief differ-
ence between good and bad drawing. A cluster of six or seven black plumes
forming the wing of one of the cherubs in Titian's Assumption, at Venice, has a
freedom and force about It in the painting which no copyist or engraver has
ever yet rendered, though it depends merely on the subtlety of the curves, not on the
colour.

another. Nor does it, at first sight, appear easy for her to get,
I do not say radiant curves, but curves at all: for, in the aiguilles,
she actually bent their beds; but in these slaty crystallines it
seems not always convenient to her to bend the beds; and when
they are to remain straight, she must obtain the curvature in
some other way.

§ 9- One way in which she gets it is curiously simple in itself, but
somewhat difficult to explain, unless the reader will be at the
pains of making a little model for himself out of paste or clay.
Hitherto, observe, we have spoken of these crests as seen at their
sides, as a Greek helmet is seen from the side of the wearer.
By means presently to be examined, these mountain crests are so
shaped that, seen in front, or from behind
(as a helmet crest is seen in front of or be-
hind the wearer), they present the contour
of a sharp ridge, or house gable. Now if
the breadth of this ridge at its base remains
the same, while its height gradually diminishes
from the front of it to the back (as from the
top of the crest to the back of the helmet),
it necessarily assumes the form of such a
quaint gable roof as that shown in profile
in Fig. 50., and in perspective^ in Fig. 51.,
in which the gable is steep at the end
farthest off, but depressed at the end nearest us ; and the
rows of tiles in cod sequence, though in reality quite straight,
appear to radiate as they retire, owing to their different slopes.
When a mountain crest is thus formed, and the concave
curve of its front is carried
into its flanks, each edge of
bed assuming this concave curve,
and radiating, like the rows
of tiles, in perspective at the
same time, the whole crest is
thrown into the form Fig. 52., which is that of the radiating
plume required.

208

PART V.

§ 10, It often happens, however, that Nature does not choose to
keep the ridge broad at the lower extremity, so as to diminish its
steepness. But when this is not so, and the base is narrowed so
that the slope of side shall be nearly equal everywhere, she almost
always obtains her varied curvature of the plume in another way,
by merely turning the crest a little round as it descends. I will
not confuse the reader by examining the complicated results of
such turning on the inclined lines of the strata; but he can
understand, in a moment, its effect on another series of lines,
those caused by rivulets of water down the sides of the crest.
These lines are, of course, always, in general tendency, per-
pendicular. Let a, Fig. 53., be a circular funnel, painted inside
with a pattern of vertical lines meeting at the bottom. Suppose
these lines to represent the ravines traced by the water. Cut
oft' a portion of the lip of the funnel,
as at h, to represent the crest side.
Cut the edge so as to slope down
towards you, and add a slope on the
other side. Then give each inner
line the concave sweep, and you
have your ridge c, of the required
form, with radiant curvature.

I 11. A greater space of such a crest is
always seen on its concave than on its
convex side (the outside of the fun-
nel) ; of this other perspective I shall
have to speak hereafter; meantime,
we had better continue the exami-
nation of the proper crest, the c of
Fig. 48., in some special instance.

The form is obtained usually in the greatest perfection among
the high ridges near the central chain, where the beds of the
slaty crystallines are steep and hard. Perhaps the most interest-
ing example I can choose for close examination will be that of a
mountain in Chamouni, called the Aiguille Bouchard, now fami-
liar to the eye of every traveller, being the ridge which rises,
exactly opposite the Montanvert, beyond the Mer de Glace.

y, V--

The structure of this crest is best seen from near the foot of the
Montanvert, on the road to the source of the Arveron, whence
the top of it, a, presents itself under the outline given rudely in
the opposite plate (33.), in which it will be seen that, while the
main energy of the mountain mass tosses itself against the central
chain of Mont Blanc (which is on the right hand), it is met by a
gi'oup of counter-crests, like the recoil of a broken wave cast against it
from the other side; and yet, as the recoiling water has a sympathy
with the under swell of the very wave against which it clashes, the
whole mass writhes together in strange unity of mountain passion ;
so that it is almost impossible to persuade oneself, after long
looking at it, that the crests have not indeed been once fused and
tossed into the air by a tempest which had mastery over them, as
the winds have over ocean.

§ 12. And yet, if we examine the crest structure closely, we shall
find that nearly all these curvatures are obtained by Nature's
skilful handling of perfectly straight beds,—only the meeting of
those two waves of crest is indeed indicative of the meeting
of two masses of different rocks; it marks that junction of the
slaty with the compact crystallines, which has before been noticed
as the principal mystery of rock structure. To this junction my
attention was chiefly directed during my stay at Chamouni, as
I found it was always at that point that Nature produced the
loveliest mountain forms. Perhaps the time I gave to the study
of it may have exaggerated its interest in my eyes ; and the
reader who does not care for these geological questions, except in
their direct bearing upon art, may, without much harm, miss the
next seven paragraphs, and go on at the twenty-first. Yet there
is one point, in a Turner drawing presently to be examined,
which I cannot explain without inflicting the tediousness even of
these seven upon him.

§ 13. First, then, the right of the Aiguille Bouchard to be called
a crest at all depends, not on the slope from a to b, Plate 33.,
but on that from a to h. The slope from a to & is a perspective
deception ; b is much the highest point of the two. Seen from
the village of Chamouni, the range presents itself under the
outline Fig. 64., the same points in each figure being indicated

by the same letters. From the end of the valley the supremacy
of the mass h c is still more notable. It is altogether with moun-
tains as with human spirits, you never know which is greatest
till they are far away.

§ 14. It will be observed also, that the beauty of the crest, in both
Plate 33. and Fig. 54., depends on the gradually increasing
steepness of the lines of slope between a and h. This is in
great part deceptive, being obtained by the receding of the crest
into a great mountain crater, or basin, as explained in § 11.

But this very recession is a matter of interest, for it takes place
exactly on the line above spoken of, where the slaty crystallines
of the crest join the compact crystallines of the aiguilles ; at
which junction a correspondent chasm or recession, of some kind
or another, takes place along the whole front of Mont Blanc.

§ 15. In the third paragraph of the last chapter we had occasion to
refer to the junction of the slaty and compact crystallines at
the roots of the aiguilles. It will be seen in the figure there
given, that this change is not sudden, but gradated. The

rocks to be joined are of the two types represented in Fig. 3.
p. 108. (for convenience' sake I shall in the rest of this
chapter call the slaty rock gneiss, and the compact rock pro-
togine, its usual French name). Fig. 55. shows the general

manner of junction, beds of gneiss occurring in the middle of
the protogine, and of protogine in the gneiss; sometimes one
touching the other so closely, that a hammer-stroke breaks off
a piece of both; sometimes one passing into the other by a
gradual change, like the zones of a rainbow; the only general
phenomenon being this, that the higher up the hill the gneiss
is, the harder it is (so that while it often yields to the pressure
of the finger down in the valley, on the Montanvert it is nearly
as hard as protogine); and, on the other hand, the lower down
the hill, or the nearer the gneiss, the protogine is, the finer it
is in grain. But still the actual transition from one to the other
is usually within a few fathoms ; and it is that transition, and
the preparation for it, which causes the great step, or jag, on the
flank of the chain, and forms the tops of the Aiguille Bouchard,
Charmoz ridges, Tapia, Montagne de la Cote, Montagno de
Taconay, and Aiguille du G-oute.

of the gneiss beds, dipping, as it seemed, under the Mont Blanc.
For it has been a chief theory with geologists that these central
protogine rocks have once been in fusion, and have risen up
in molten fury, overturning and altering all the rocks around.
But everyday, as I looked at the crested flanks of the Mont Blanc,
I saw more plainly the exquisite regularity of the slopes of the
beds, ruled, it seemed, with an architect's rule, along the edge of
their every flake from the summits to the valley. And this sur-
prised me the more because I had always
heard it stated that the beds of the lateral
crests, a and h, Fig. 66., varied in slope,
getting less and less inclined as they
descended, so as to arrange themselves
somewhat in the form of a fan. It may
be so ; but I can only say that all my
observations and drawings give an opposite report, and that the
beds seemed invariably to present themselves to the eye and the
pencil in parallelism, modified only by the phenomena just ex-
plained (§§ 9, 10.), Thus the entire mass of the Aiguille Bou-
chard, of which only the top is represented in Plate 33., appeared
to me in profile, as in Fig. 57., dependent for all its effect and
character on the descent of the beds in the directions of the dotted

isaiKi

iiiUHii

lines, a, h, cl. The interrupting space, g g, is the Glacier des Bois ;
M is the Montanvert; c, c, the rocks under the glacier, much worn
by the fall of avalanches, but, for all that, showing the steep lines
still with the greatest distinctness. Again, looking down the
valley instead of up, so as to put the Mont Blanc on the left hand,
the principal crests which support it, Taconay and La Cote,
always appeared to me constructed as in Plate 35. (p. 217.), they
also depending for all their effect on the descent of the beds in
diagonal lines towards the left. Nay, half-way up the Breven,
whence the structure of the Mont Blanc is commanded, as far as

these lower buttresses are con-
cerned, better than from the
top of the Breven, I drew
carefully the cleavages of the
beds, as high as the edge of
the Aiguille de Gout6, and
found them exquisitely parallel
throughout; and again on the
Cormayeur side, though less
steep, the beds a, h, Fig. 58.,
traversing the vertical irregular
fissures of the great aiguille
of the All6e Blanche, as seen
over the Lac de Combal,
still appeared to me perfectly
regular and parallel.^ I have not had time to trace them round.

' Nor did any nearer observations ever induce me to form any contrary opinion.
It is not easy to get any consistent series of measurements of the slope of these gneiss
beds ; for, although parallel on the great scale, they admit many varieties of dip in
minor projections. But all my notes unite, whether at the bottom or top of the
great slope of the Montanvert and La Cote, in giving an angle of from 60° to 80° with
the horizon ; the consistent angle being about 75°. I cannot be mistaken in the
measurements themselves, however inconclusive observations on minor portions of
rock may be ; for I never mark an angle unless enough of the upper or lower surface
of the beds be smoothly exposed to admit of my pole being adjusted to it by the
spirit-level. The pole then indicates the strike of the beds, and a quadrant with a
plumb-line their dip; to all intents and purposes accurately. There is a carious
distortion of the beds in the ravine between the Glacier des Bois and foot of the
Montanvert, near the ice, about a thousand feet above the valley ; the beds there seem
to bend suddenly back under the glacier, and in some places to be quite vertical. On
the opposite side of the glacier, below the Chapeau, the dip of the limestone under

through the Aiguille de Bionassay, and above the Col de Bon-
homme, though I know the relations of the beds of limestone to
the gneiss on the latter col are most notable and interesting.
But, as far as was required for any artistical purposes, I perfectly
ascertained the fact that, whatever their real structure might be,
these beds did appear, through the softer contours of the hill,
as straight and parallel; that they continued to appear so until
near the tops of the crests; and that those tops seemed, in
some mysterious way, dependent on the junction of the gneissitic
beds with, or their transition into, the harder protogine of the
aiguilles.

the gneiss, with the intermediate bed, seven or eight feet thick, of the grey porous
rock which the French call cargneule, is highly interesting; but it is so concealed by
debris and the soil of the pine forests, as to he difficult to examine to any extent. On the
whole, the best position for getting the angle of the beds accurately, is the top of the
Tapia, a little below the junction there of the granite and gneiss (see notice of this
junction in Appendix 2.) ; a point from which the summit of the Aiguille du Goute
bears 11° south of west, and that of the Aiguille Bouchard 17° north of east, the
Aiguille Dru 5i° or 6° north of east, the peak of it appearing behind the Petit Char-
moz. The beds of gneiss emerging from the turf under the spectator's feet may be
brought parallel by the eye with the slopes of the Aiguille du Goute on one side, and
the Bouchard (and base of Aiguille d'Argentiere) on the other ; striking as nearly aa
possible from summit to summit through that on which the spectator stands, or from
about 10° north of east to 10° south of west, and dipping with exquisite unifonnityat
an angle of 74 degrees with the horizon. But what struck me as still more strange
was, that from this point I could distinctly see traces of the same straight structure
running through the Petit Charmoz, and the roots of the aiguilles themselves, as in
Fig. 59.; nor could I ever, in the course of countless observations, fairly determine

215

chap. xv.

Look back to Plate 33. The peak of the Bouchard, a, is of
gneiss, and its beds run down in lines originally straight, but more
or less hollowed by weathering, to the point where they plunge
under debris. But the point h is, I believe, of protogine ; and all
the opposed writhing of the waves of rock to the right appears to be
in consequence of the junction.

§ 17. The way in which these curves are produced cannot, however, be
guessed at until we examine the junction more closely. Ascending
about five hundred feet above the cabin of the Montanvert, the
opposite crest of the Bouchard, from a to c, Plate 33., is seen more
in front, expanded into the jagged line, a to c, Plate 34., and the

any point where this slaty structure altogether had ceased. It seemed only to get less
and less traceable towards the centre of the mass of Mont Blanc ; and, from the ridge
of the Aiguille Bouchard itself, at the point a in Plate 33., whence, looking south-west,
the aiguilles can be seen in the most accurate profile obtainable throughout the
valley of Chamouni, I noticed a very singular pai-allelism even on the south-east side
of the Charmoz, x y (Fig. 60.), as if the continued influence of this cleavage were

carried on from the Little Charmoz e, d (in which, seen on the opposite side, T had
traced it as in Fig. 69.), through the central mass of rock r. In this profile, M
is the Mont Blanc itself ; m, the Aiguille du Midi ; p, Aiguille du Plan ; b,
Aiguille Blaiti^re ; c, Great Charmoz ; c, Petit Charmoz; e, passage called dc
I'Etala.

1st. (See references on plate.) The true gneiss beds dipping
down in the direction g h, the point h being the same as h in
Plate 33. These are the beds so notable for their accurate straight-
ness and parallelism.

2nd. The smooth fractures which in the middle of the etching
seem to divide the column of rock into a kind of brickwork. They
are very neat and sharp, running nearly at right angles with the
true beds.^

3rd. The curved fractures of the aiguilles (seen first under the
letter h, and seeming to push outwards against the gneiss beds
continuing through c and the spur below.

4th. An iiTegular cleavage, something like that of starch,
showing itself in broken vertical lines.

5th. Writhing lines, cut by water. These have the greatest
possible influence on the aspect of the precipice : they are not
merely caused by torrents, but by falls of winter snow, and stones
from the glazier moraines, so that the cliff being continually worn
away at the foot of it, is wrought into a great amphitheatre, of
wliich the receding sweep continually varies the apparent steepness
of the crest, as already explained. I believe in ancient times the
great Glacier des Bois itself used to fill this amphitheatre, and
break right up against the base of the Bouchard.

6th. Curvatures worn by water over the back of the crest towards
the valley, in the direction g L

7th. A tendency (which I do not understand) to form horizontal
masses at the levels k and l.^
§ 18. The reader may imagine what strange harmonies and changes
of Ime must result throughout the mass of the mountain, from

> Many geologists think they are the true beds. They run across the gneissitic
folia, and I hold with De Saussure, and consider them a cleavage.

' I tried in vain to get along the ridge of the Bouchard to this junction, the edge
of the precipice between a and b (Plate 33.) being too broken ; but the point corre-
sponds so closely to that of the junction of the gneiss and protogine on the Charmoz
ridge, that, adding the evidence of the distant contour, I have no doubt as to the
general relations of the rocks.

3 De Saussure often refers to these as " assaissements." They occur, here and there,
in the aiguilles themselves.

■m

the varied prevalence of one or other of these secret inclmations
of its rocks (modified, also, as they are by perpetual deceptions
of perspective), and how completely the rigidity or parallelism
of any one of them is conquered by the fitful urgencies of the
rest,—a sevenfold action seeming to run through every atom of
crag. For the sake of clearness, I have shown in this plate merely
leading lines ; the next (Plate 35. opposite) will give some idea
of the complete aspect of two of the principal crests on the Mont
Blanc flanks, known as the Montagne de la Cote, and Montagne
de Taconay, c and t in Fig. 22. at page 166. In which note, first,
that the eminences marked a a, hh, c c, here, in the reference
figure (61.), are in each of the mountains correspondent, and

indicate certain changes in the conditions of their beds at those
points. I have no doubt the two mountains were once one mass,
and that they have been sawn asunder by the great glacier of
Taconay, which descends between them ; and similarly the Mon-
tagne de la Cote sawn from the Tapia by the glacier des Bossons,
B B in reference figure.

§ 19. Note, secondly, the general tendency in each mountain to throw
itself into concave curves towards the Mont Blanc, and descend in
rounded slopes to the valley; more or less interrupted by the direct
manifestation of the straight beds, which are indeed, in this view of

Taconay, the principal features of it. They necessarily become,
however, more prominent in the outline etching than in the scene
itself, because in reality the delicate cleavages are lost in distance
or in mist, and the effects of light bring out the rounded forms of
the larger masses; and wherever the clouds fill the hollows between,
as they are apt to do, (the glaciers causing a chillness in the ravines,
while the wind, blowing up the larger valleys, clears the edges of
the crests), the summits show themselves as in Plate 36., dividing,
with their dark frontlets, the perpetual sweep of the glaciers and
the clouds.^

§ 20. Of the aqueous curvatures of this crest, we shall have more to
say presently; meantime let us especially observe how the provi-
dential laws of beauty, acting with reversed data, arrive at similar
results in the aiguilles and crests. In the aiguilles, which are
of such hard rock that the fall of snow and trickling of streams
do not affect them, the inner structure is so disposed as to bring
out the curvatures by the mere fracture. In the crests and lower
hills, which are of softer rock, and largely influenced by external
violence, the inner structure is straight, and the necessary curva-
tures are produced by perspective, by external modulation, and
by the balancing of adverse influences of cleavage. But, as
the accuracy of an artist's eye is usually shown by his per-
ceiving the inner anatomy which regulates growth and form,
and as in the aiguilles, while we watch them, we are con-
tinually discovering new curves, so in the crests, while we watch
them, we are continually discovering new straightnesses; and
nothing more distinguishes good mountain-drawing, or mountain-
seeing, from careless and inefficient mountain-drawing, than the
observance of the marvellous^ parallelisms which exist among the
beds of the crests.

§ 21. It indeed happens, not unfrequently, that in hills composed of
somewhat soft rock, the aqueous contours will so prevail over the
straight cleavage as to leave nothing manifest at the first glance

' The aqueous curves and roundings on the nearer crest (La Cote) are peculiarly
tender, because the gneiss of which it is composed is softer in grain than that of the
Bouchard, and remains so even to the very top of the peak, a, in Fig. 61., where I
found it mixed with a yellowish and somewhat sandy quartz rock, and generally much
less protogenic than is usual at such elevations on other pai'ts of the chain.

but sweeping lines like those of waves. Fig. 43. p. 201. is the
crest of a mountain on the north of the valley of Chamouni,
known, from the rapid decay and fall of its crags, as the Aiguille
Pourri; and at first there indeed seems little distinction between
its contours and those of the summit of a sea wave. Yet I
think also, if it were a wave, we should immediately suppose
the tide was running towards the right hand; and if we
examined the reason for this supposition, We should perceive
that along the ridge the steepest falls of crag were always on
the right-hand side; indicating a tendency in them to break
rather in the direction of the line a b than any other. If we
go half-way down the Montanvert, and examine the left side of the
crest somewhat more closely, we shall find this tendency still more
definitely visible, as in Fig. 62.

§ 22. But what, then, has given rise to all those coiled plungings
of the crest hither and thither, yet with such strange unity of
motion ?

Yes. There is the cloud. How the top of the hill was first
shaped so as to let the currents of water act upon it in so varied
a way we know not, but I think that the appearance of interior

219

CHAP. XV.

II. CRESTS.

force of elevation is for the most part deceptive. The series of
beds would be found, if examined in section, very uniform in
their arrangement, only a little harder in one place, and more
delicate in another. A stream receives a slight impulse this
way or that, at the top of the hill, but increases in energy and
sweep as it descends, gathering into itself others from its sides,
and uniting their power with its own. A single knot of quartz
occurring in a flake of slate at the crest of the ridge may alter
the entire destinies of the mountain form. It may turn the little
rivulet of water to the right or left, and that little turn will be to
the future direction of the gathering stream what the touch of a
finger on the barrel of a rifle would be to the direction of the bullet.
Each succeeding year increases the importance of every determined
form, and arranges in masses yet more and more harmonious, the
promontories shaped by the sweeping of the eternal waterfalls.

§ 23. The importance of the results thus obtained by the slightest
change of direction in the infant streamlets, furnishes an inte-
resting type of the formation of human characters by habit.
Every one of those notable ravines and crags is the expression,
not of any sudden violence done to the mountain, but of its little
habits, persisted in continually. It was created with one ruling
instinct; but its destiny depended nevertheless, for effective result,
on the direction of the small and all but invisible tricklings of
water, in which the first shower of rain found its way down its
sides. The feeblest, most insensible oozings of the drops of
dew among its dust were in reality arbiters of its eternal form;
commissioned, with a touch more tender than that of a child's
finger,—as silent and slight as the fall of a half-checked tear on a
maiden's cheek,—to fix for ever the forms of peak and precipice,
and hew those leagues of lifted granite into the shapes that were to
divide the earth and its kingdoms. Once the little stone evaded,—
once the dim furrow traced,—and the peak was for ever invested
with its majesty, the ravine for ever doomed to its degradation.
Thenceforward, day by day, the subtle habit gained in power;
the evaded stone was left with wider basement; the chosen furrow
deepened with swifter-sliding wave; repentance and arrest were
alike impossible, and hour after hour saw written in larger and

rockier characters upon the sky, the history of the choice that had
been directed by a drop of rain, and of the balance that had been
turned by a grain of sand.

§ 24. Such are the principal laws, relating to the crested moun-
tains, for the expression of which we are to look to art ; and
we shall accordingly find good and intelligent mountain-drawing
distinguished from bad mountain-drawing, by an indication, first,
of the artist's recognition of some great harmony among the
summits, and of their tendency to throw themselves into tidal
waves, closely resembhng those of the sea itself; sometimes in
free tossing towards the sky, but more frequently still in the form
of breakers, concave and steep on one side, convex and less steep
on the other; secondly, by his indication of straight beds or
fractures, continually stiffening themselves through the curves in
some given direction.

§ 25. Fig- 63. is a facsimile of a piece of the background in Albert
Durer's woodcut of the binding of the great Dragon in the
Apocalypse. It is one of his most careless and rudest pieces of
drawing; yet, observe in it how notably the impulse of the

breaking wave is indicated; and note farther, how different a
thing good drawing may be from delicate drawing on the one
hand, and how different it must be from ignorant drawing on the
other. Woodcutting, in Durer's days, had reached no delicacy
capable of expressing subtle detail or aerial perspective. But all
the subtlety and aerial perspective of modern days are useless, and
even barbarous, if they fail in the expression of the essential
mountain facts.

§ 26. It will be noticed, however, that in this example of Durer's, the
recognition of straightness of line does not exist, and that for this
reason the hills look soft and earthy, not rocky.

wrnm^^m

223

'JT.

distance is exceedingly fine in its expression of mountain force ;
the two ridges of it being thrown up like the two edges of a
return wave that has just been beaten back from a rock. It is
still, however, somewhat wanting in the expression of straight-
ness, and therefore slightly unnatural. It was not people's way
in the Middle Ages to look at mountains carefully enough to
discover the most subtle elements of their structure. Yet, in
the next example, Fig. 65., the parallelism and rigidity are
definitely indicated, the crest outline being, however, less definite.

Note, also (in passing), the entire equality of the lines in all
these examples, whether turned to dark or light. All good out-
line drawing, as noticed in the chapter on finish, agrees in this
character.

§ 27. The next figure (66.) is interesting because it furnishes one of
the few instances in which Titian definitely took a suggestion from
the Alps, as he saw them from his house at Venice. It is from
an old print of a shepherd with a flock of sheep by the sea-side, in
which he has introduced a sea distance, with the Venetian church
of St. Helena, some subordinate buildings resembling those of
Murano, and this piece of cloud and mountain. The peak repre-
sented is one of the greater Tyrolese Alps, which shows itself
from Venice behind an opening in the chain, and is their culmi-
nating point. In reality the mass is of the shape given in Fig. 67.
Titian has modified it into an energetic crest, showing his feeling
for the form, but I have no doubt that the woodcut reverses Titian's
original Avork (whatever it was), and that he gave the crest the
true inclination to the right, or east, which it has in nature.

§ 28. Now, it not unfrequently happens that in Claude's distances he
introduces actual outlines of Capri, Ischia, Monte St. Angelo, the
Alban Mount, and other chains about Rome and Naples, more
or less faithfully copied from nature. When he does so, con-
fining himself to mere outline, the grey contours seen against the
distance are often satisfactory enough; but as soon as he brings
one of them nearer, so as to require any drawing within its mass,
it is quite curious to see the state of paralysis into which he is
thrown for want of any perception of the mountain anatomy.
Fig. 68. over leaf, is one of the largest hills I can find in the
Liber Veritatis (No. 86.), and it will be seen that there are only
a few lines inserted towards the edges, drawn in the direction of
the sides of the heap, or cone, wholly without consciousness of
any interior structure.

§ 29. I put below it, outlined also in the rudest way (for as I take
the shade away from the Liber Veritatis, I am bound also to take
it away from Turner), Fig. 69., a bit of the crags in the drawing
of Loch Coriskin, partly described already in § 5. of the chapter
on the Inferior Mountains in Vol. I. The crest form is, indeed,
here accidentally prominent, and developed to a degree rare even
^\dth Turner; but note, besides this, the way in which Turner
leans on the centre and" body of the hill, not on its edge;
marking its strata stone by stone, just as a good figure painter,
drawing a limb, marks the fall and rise of the joint, letting the
outline sink back softened; and compare the exactly opposite
method of Claude, holding for life to his outline, as a Greek
navigator holds to the shore.^

§ 30. Lest, however, it should be thought that I have unfairly chosen
my examples, let me take an instance, at once less singular and
more elaborate.

' It is worth while noting here, in comparing Fig. 66. and Fig. 68., how entirely
our judgment of some kinds of art depends upon knowledge, not on feeling. Any
person unacquainted with hills would think Claude's right, and Titian's ridiculous ;
but, after inquiring a little farther into the matter, we find Titian's a careless and
intense expression of true knowledge, and Claude's a slow and plausible expression of
total ignorance.

It will be observed that Fig. 69. is one of the second order of crests, d, in Fig. 204,
above. The next instance given is of the first order of crests, c, in the same figure.

We saAv in our account of Turnerian topography, Chap. ii.
§ 14. that it had been necessary for the painter, in his modifi-
cation of the view in the ravine of Faido, to introduce a passage
from among the higher peaks; which, being thus intended
expressly to convey the general impression of their character,
must sufiiciently illustrate what Turner felt that character to be.
Observe: it could not be taken from the great central aiguilles,
for none such exist at all near Faido; it could only be an expres-
sion of what Turner considered the noblest attributes of the hills
next to these in elevation,—that is to say, those which we are
now examining.

I have etched the portion of the picture which includes this
passage, opposite, on its own scale, including the whole couloir
above the gallery, and the gallery itself, with the rocks beside it.^
And now, if the reader will look back to Plate 20., which is the
outline of the real scene, he will have a perfect example, in com-
paring the two, of the operation of invention of the highest order
on a given subject, I should recommend him to put a piece of
tracing paper over the etching, Plate 37., and with his pen to
follow some of the lines of it as carefully as he can, until he
feels their complexity, and the redundance of the imaginative
power which amplified the simple theme, furnished by the natural
scene, with such detail; and then let him observe what great
mountain laws Turner has been striving to express in all these
additions.

§ 31. The cleavages which govern the whole are precisely the same
as those of the Aiguille Bouchard, only wrought into grander
combinations. That the reader may the better distinguish them,
I give the leading lines coarsely for reference in Fig. 70. over leaf.
The cleavages and lines of force are the following.

' This etching, like that of the Bolton rocks, is prepared for future mezzotint, and
looks harsh in its present state : but will mark all the more clearly several points
of structure in question. The diamond-shaped rock, however, (m, in the reference
figure,) is not so conspicuous here as it will be when the plate is finished, being
relieved in light from the mass behind, as also the faint distant crests in dark
from the sky.

BBWS

True beds or cleavage beds {g h in Aiguille Bouchard,
Plate 34.) ; here, observe, closing in retiring perspective
with exquisite subtlety, and giving the great unity of radia-
tion to the whole mass.

cleavage, the second in Aiguille Bouchard; straight and
sharp. Forming here the series of crests at b and D.

gradually into the cleavages. Fifth group in Aiguille
Bouchard. The starchy cleavage is not seen here, it being
not generally characteristic of the crests, and present in the
Bouchard only accidentally.

ness or flaws in the rock; these probably the occasion or con-
sequence of the formation of the great precipice or brow on
the right. We shall have more to say of them in Chap. xvii.

responding to g f, but wrought into the minor secondary
ravine. This secondary ravine is associated with the
opponent aiguillesque masses r s; and the cause of the
break or gap between these
and the crests b d is indi-
cated by the elbow or joint of
nearer rock, m, where the dis-
tortion of the beds or change
in their nature first takes
place. Turner's idea of the
structure of the whole mass
has evidently been that in
section it was as in Fig. 71.,

snapped asunder by elevation, with a nucleus at m,
which, allowing for perspective, is precisely on the line
of the chasm running in the direction of the arrow; but
he gives more of the curved aiguillesque fracture to these
upper crests, which are greater in elevation (and we saw,
sometime ago, that the higher the rock the harder).
And that nucleus of change at m, the hinge, as it were,
on which all these promontories of upper crest revolve,
is the first or nearest of the evaded stones, which have
determined the course of streams and nod of cliffs through-
out the chain.

§ 32. I can well believe that the reader will doubt the possibility of
all this being intended by Turner : and intended, in the ordinai-y
sense, it was not. It was simply seen, and instinctively painted,
according to the command of the imaginative dream, as the true
Griffin was, and as all noble things are. But if the reader fancies
that the apparent truth came by mere chance, or that I am
imagining purpose and arrangement where they do not exist, let
him be once for all assured that no man goes through the kind
of work which, by this time, he must be beginning to perceive I
have gone through, either for the sake of deceiving others, or
with any great likelihood of deceiving himself. He who desires
to deceive the picture-purchasing public may do so cheaply; and
it is easy to bring almost any kind of art into notice, without
climbing Alps or measuring cleavages. But any one, on the
other hand, who desires to ascertain facts,' and will refer all art
directly to nature, for many laborious years, will not at last find
himself an easy prey to groundless enthusiasms, or erroneous
fancies. Foolish people are fond of repeating a story which has
gone the full round of the artistical world,—that Turner, some
day, somewhere, said to somebody (time, place, or person never
being ascertainable), that I discovered in his pictures things which
he did himself not know were there. Turner was not a person
apt to say things of this kind; being generally, respecting all the
movements of his own mind, as silent as a granite crest; and if
he ever did say it, was probably laughing at the person to whom

he was speaking. But he might have said it in the most perfect
sincerity; nay, I am quite sure that, to a certain extent, the case
really was as he is reported to have declared, and that he neither
was aware of the value of the truths he had seized, nor understood
the nature of the instinct that combined them. And yet the truth
was assuredly apprehended, and the instinct assuredly present
and imperative; and any artists who try to imitate the smallest
portion of his work will find that no happy chances will, for
them, gather together the resemblances of fact, nor, for them,
mimic the majesty of invention.^
§ 33. happy chance—nay, no happy thought—no perfect know-

ledge—will ever take the place of that mighty unconsciousness.
I have often had to repeat that Turner, in the ordinary sense of
the words, neither knew nor thought so much as other men.
Whenever his iierception failed—that is to say, with respect to
scientific truths which produce no result palpable to the eye—
he fell into the frankest errors. For instance, in such a thing as
the relation of position between a rainbow and the sun, there is
not any definitely visible connection between them; it needs
attention and calculation to discover that the centre of the rain-
bow is the shadow of the spectator's head.^ And attention or
calculation of this abstract kind Turner appears to have been
utterly incapable of; but if he drew a piece of drapery, in which
every line of the folds has a visible relation to the points of
suspension, not a merely calculable one, this relation he will see

' An anecdote is related, more to our present purpose, and better authenticated,
inasmuch as the name of the artist to whom Turner was speaking at the time is com-
monly stated, though I do not give it here, not having asked his permission. The
story runs that this artist (one of our leading landscape painters) was complaining to
Turner that, after going to Domo d'Ossola, to find the site of a particular view which
had struck him several years before, he had entirely failed in doing so ; " it looked
different when he went back again." " What," replied Turner, " do you not know
yet, at your age, that you ought to paint your impressions ? "

' So, in the exact length or shape of shadows in general, he will often bo found
quite inaccurate ; because the irregularity caused in shadows, by the shape of what
they fall on, as well as what they fall from, renders the law of connection untraceable
by the eye or the instinct. The chief visidk thing about a shadoAV is, that it is always
of some form which nobody would have thought of; and this visible principle Turner
always seizes, sometimes wongly in calculated fact, but always so rightly as to give
more the look of a real shadow than anyone else.

to the last thread.; and thus ho traces the order of the mountain
crests to their last stone, not because he knows anything of
geology, but because he instinctively seizes the last and finest
traces of any visible law.

§ 34. He was, however, especially obedient to these laws of the
crests, because he heartily loved them. We saw in the early
part of this chapter how the crest outlines harmonized with nearly
every other beautiful form of natural objects, especially in the
continuity of their external curves. This continuity was so
grateful to Turner's heart that he would often go great lengths
to serve it. For instance, in one of his drawings of the town
of Lucerne he has first outlined the Mont Pilate in pencil,
with a central peak, as indicated by the dotted line in Fig. 72.

This is nearly true to the local fact; but being inconsistent mth
the general look of crests, and contrary to Turner's instincts, he
strikes off the refractory summit, and, leaving his pencil outline
still in the sky, touches with colour only the contour shown by
the continuous line in the figure, thus treating it just as we saw
Titian did the great Alp of the Tyrol. He probably, however,
would not have done this with so important a feature of the scene
as the Mont Pilate, had not the continuous line been absolutely
necessary to his composition, in order to oppose the peaked
towers of the town, which were his principal subject; the form
of the Pilate being seen only as a rosy shadow in the far off sky.

233

We cannot, however, yet estimate tlie importance, in his mind,
of this continuity of descending curve, until we come to the
examination of the lower hill flanks, hitherto having been con-
cerned only with their rocky summits; and before we leave those
summits, or rather the harder rocks which compose them, there
is yet another condition of those rocks to be examined; and that
the condition which is commonly the most interesting, namely,
the Precipice. To this inquiry, however, we had better devote a
separate chapter.

§ 1 The reader was, perhaps, surprised by the smalhiess of the
number to which our foregoing analysis reduced Alpine summits
bearing an ascertainably peaked or pyramidal form. He might
not be less so if I were to number the very few occasions
on which I have seen a true precipice of any considerable
height. I mean by a true precipice one by which a plumb-
line will swing clear, or without touching the face of it, if
suspended from a point a foot or two beyond the brow. Not only
are perfect precipices of this kind very rare, but even imperfect
precipices, which often produce upon the eye as majestic an
impression as if they were vertical, are nearly always curiously
low in proportion to the general mass of the hills to which
they belong. They are for the most part small steps or rents
in large surfaces of mountain, and mingled by nature among her
softer forms, as cautiously and sparingly as the utmost exertion of
his voice is, by a great speaker, with his tones of gentleness.

§ 2. Precipices, in the large plurality of cases, consist of the edge
of a bed of rock, sharply fractured, in the manner already explained
in Chap, xii., and are represented, in their connection with
aiguilles and crests, by c in Fig. 42. p. 200. When the bed
of rock slopes back-

wards from the edge,
as a Fig. 73., a con-
dition of precipice is
obtained more or less

peaked, very safe, and very grand.^ When the beds are hori-
zontal, the precipice is steeper, more dangerous, but much
less impressive. When the beds slope towards the precipice, the
front of it overhangs, and the noblest effect is obtained which is
possible in mountain forms of this kind.

§ 3. Singularly enough, the type b is in actual nature nearly always
the most dangerous of the three, and c the safest, for horizontal
beds are usually of the softest rocks, and their cliffs are caused by
some violent agency in constant operation, as chalk cliffs by the
wearing power of the sea, so that such rocks are continually
falling, in one place or another. The form a may also be assumed
by very soft rocks. But c cannot exist at all on a large scale,
unless it is built of good materials, and it will then frequently
stay in its fixed frown for ages.

§ 4. It occasionally happens that a precipice is formed among the
higher crests by the sides of vertical beds of slaty crystallines.
Such rocks are rare, and never very high, but always beautiful
in their smoothness of surface and general trenchant and firm
expression. One of the most interesting I know is that of the
summit of the Breven, on the north of the valley of Chamouni.
The mountain is formed by vertical sheets of slaty crystallines,
rather soft at the bottom, and getting harder and harder towards
the top, until at the very summit it is as hard and compact as the
granite of Waterloo Bridge, though much finer in the grain,
and breaking into perpendicular faces of rock so perfectly cut
as to feel smooth to the hand. Fig. 4. p. 109. represents, of
the real size, a bit which I broke from the edge of the cliff, the
shaded part underneath being the surface which forms the preci-
pice. The plumb-line from the brow of this cliff hangs clear
124 English feet; it is then caught by a ledge about three feet
wide, from which another precipice falls to about twice the height
of the first; but I had not line enough to measure it with from
the top, and could not get down to the ledge. When I say the
line hangs clear^ I mean, when once it is off the actual brow of

' Distinguished from a crest by being the face of a large continuous bed of rock,
not the end of a ridge.

the cliff, which is a little i-ounded for about fourteen or fifteen
feet, from a to h, in the section, Fig. 75. Then
the rock recedes in an almost unbroken concave
sweep, detaching itself from the plumb-line about
two feet at the point c (the lateral dimensions are
exaggerated to show the curve), and approaching it
again at the ledge d, which is 124 feet below a.
The plumb-line, fortunately, can be seen throughout
its whole extent from a sharp bastion
of the precipice farther on, for the face
of the cliff runs, in horizontal plan,
very nearly to the magnetic north
and south, as shown in Fig. 74.,
the plumb-line swinging at a, and
seen from the advanced point p. It
would give a similar result at any
other part of the clifl' face, but may
be most conveniently cast from the
point a, a little below, and to the north
of, the summit.

§ 5. But although the other divisions of this precipice
below the ledge which stops the plummet, gave it alto-
gether a height of about five hundred feet^, the whole
looks a mere step on the huge slope of the Breven ;
and it only deserves mention among Alpine cliffs as
one of singular beauty and decision, yet perfectly ap-
proachable and examinable even by the worst climbers; Fig. 75.
which is very rarely the case with cliffs of the same
boldness. I suppose that this is the reason for its having been
often stated in scientific works that no clifi" could be found in
the Alps from which a plumb-line would swing two hundred feet.
This can possibly be true (and even with this limitation I doubt
it) of cliffs conveniently approachable by experimental philoso-
phers. For, indeed, one way or another, it is curious how

' The contour of the whole cliff, seen from near its foot as it rises above the
shoulder of the Breven, is as at Fig. 76, opposite. The part measured is a d; but the

Nature fences out, as it were, the brows of her boldest precipices.
Wherever a plumb-line will swing, the precipice is, almost with-
out exception, of the tj^pe c in Fig. 73, the brow of it rounding
towards the edge for, perhaps, fifty or a hundred yards above,
rendering it unsafe in the highest degree for any inexperienced
person to atempt approach. But it is often possible to ascer-
tain from a distance, if the cliff can be got relieved against the
sky, the approximate degree of its precipitousness.

§ 6. It may, I think, be assumed, almost with certainty, that when-
ever a precipice is very bold and very high, it is formed by beds

precipice recedes to the summit b, on which a human figure is discernible to the
naked eye merely as a point. The hank from which the cliff rises, c, recedes as it
falls to the left; so that five hundred feet may perhaps be an under-estimate of the
height below the summit. The straight sloping lines are cleavages, across the beds.

Finally, Fig. 4. Plate 25. gives the look of the whole summit as seen from the village
of Chamouni beneath it, at a distance of about two miles, and some four or five thou-
sand feet above the spectator. It appears, then, like a not very formidable projection
of crag overhanging the great slopes of the mountain's foundation.

238

PART V.

more or less approaching horizontality, out of which it has been
cut, like the side of a haystack from which part has been removed.
The wonderfulness of this operation I have before insisted upon ;
here we have to examine the best examples of it.

As, in forms of central rook, the Aiguilles of Ohamouni, so in
notableness of lateral precipice, the Matterhorn, or Mont Cervin,
stands, on the whole, unrivalled among the Alps, being termi-
nated, on two of its sides, by precipices which produce on the
imagination nearly the effect of verticality. There is, however,
only one point at which they reach anything approaching such a
condition; and that point is wholly inaccessible either from below
or above, but sufficiently measurable by a series of observations.

§ 7. From the slope of the hill above, and to the west of, the village
of Zermatt, the Matterhorn presents itself under the figure shown
on the right hand in the opposite plate (38.). The whole height
of the mass, from the glacier out of which it rises, is about 4000
feet, and although, as before noticed, the first slope from the top
towards the right is merely a perspective
line, the part of the contour c d, Fig.
33. p. 186., which literally overhangs^
cannot be. An apparent slope, however
steep, so that it does not overpass the
vertical, may be a horizontal line; but
the moment it can be shown literally to
overhang, it must be one of two things,
—either an actually pendant face of
rock, as at a Fig. 77., or the under-
edge of an overhanging cornice of rock,
h. Of course the latter condition, on such a scale as this of the
Matterhorn, would be the more wonderful of the two; but I was
anxious to determine which of these it really was.

Fig. 77.

§ 8. My first object was to reach some spot commanding, as nearlj'
as might be, the lateral profile of the Mont Cervin. The most

' At an angle of 79° with the horizon. See the Table of angles, p. 186. The line
a e in Fig. 33. is too steep, as well as in the plate here; but the other slopes are
approximately accurate. I would have made them quite so, but did not like to alter
the sketch made on the spot.

available point for this purpose was the top of the Riffelhorn;
which, however, first attempting to climb by its deceitful western
side, and being stopped, for the moment, by the singular moat
and wall which defend its Malakhoff-Kke summit, fearing that
I might not be able ultimately to reach the top, I made the
drawing of the Cervin, on the left hand in Plate 38., from the
edge of the moat; and found afterwards the difference in aspect,
as it was seen from the true summit, so slight as not to necessitate
the trouble of making another drawing.^
§ 9 It may be noted in passing, that this wall which with its
regular fosse defends the Eiffel-
horn on its western side, and a
similar one on its eastern side,
though neither of them of any
considerable height, are curious
instances of trenchant precipice,
formed, I suppose, by slight slips or
faults of the serpentine rock. The
summit of the horn, a, Fig 78. seems
to have been pushed up in a mass
beyond the rest of the ridge, or
else the rest of the ridge to have
dropped from it on each side, at
h c, leaving the two troublesome
faces of cliff right across the craig;
hard, green as a sea wave, and
polished like the inside of a sea-

' Professor Forbes gives the bearing of the Cervin from the top of the RifPelhorn
as 351°, or N. 9° w., supposing local attraction to have caused an error of 65° to
the north-ward, which would make the true bearing n. 74° w. From the point just
under the Riffelhom summit, e, in Fig 78., at which my drawing was made, I found
the Cervin bear N. 79° w. without any allowance for attraction ; the disturbing in-
fluence would seem therefore confined, or nearly so, to the summit a. I did not know
at the time that there was any such influence traceable, and took no bearing from the
summit. For the rest, I cannot vouch for bearings as I can for angles, as their accu-
racy was of no importance to my work, and I merely noted them with a common
pocket compass and in the sailor's way (s, by w. and i w, &c.), which involves the
probability of error of from two to three degrees on either side of the true bearing.
The other drawing in plate 38. was made from a point only a degree or two to the
westward of the village of Zermatt. I have no note of the bearing; but it must be
about s. 60° or 65° w.

sliell, where the weather has not effaced the surface produced by
the slip. It is only by getting past the eastern cliff that the
summit can be reached at all, for on its two'lateral escarpments
the mountain seems quite inaccessible, being in its whole mass
nothing else than the top of a narrow wall with a raised battle-
ment, as rudely shown in perspective at e d; the flanks of the
wall falling towards the glacier on one side, and to the lower
Eiffel on the other, four or five hundred feet, not, indeed, in
unbroken precipice, but in a form quite incapable of being
scaled.^

§ 10. To return to the Cervin. The view of it given on the left
hand in Plate 38. shows the ridge in about its narrowest profile;
and shows also that this ridge is composed of beds of rock
shelving across it, apparently horizontal, or nearly so, at the top,
and sloping considerably southwards (to the spectator's left), at
the bottom. How far this slope is a consequence of the advance
of the nearest angle, giving a steep perspective to the beds, I
cannot say; my own belief would have been that a great deal
of it is thus deceptive, the beds lying as the tiles do in the
somewhat anomalous, but perfectly
conceivable house-roof. Fig. 79.
Saussure, however, attributes to
the beds themselves a very con-
siderable slope. But be this as it
may, the main facts of the thin-
ness of the beds, their comparative
horizontality, and the daring sword-
sweep by which the whole moun-
tain has been hewn out of them, are from this spot comprehensible
at a glance. Visible, I should have said ; but eternally, and to the

' Independent travellers may perhaps be glad to know the way to the top of the
Riffelhorn. I believe there is only one path ; which ascends (from the ridge of the
Riffel) on its eastern slope, until, near the summit, the low, but perfectly smooth cliff,
extending from side to side of the ridge, seems, as on the western slope, to bar all
farther advance. This cliff may, however, by a good climber, be mastered even at
the southern extremity; but it is dangerous there : at the opposite, or northern, side
of it, just at its base, is a little cornice, about a foot broad, which does not look pro-
mising at first, but widens presently; and when once it is past, there is no more
difficulty in reaching the summit.

uttermost, mcpmpreliensible. Every geologist who speaks of this
mountain seems to be struck by the wonderfuhiess of its calm
sculpture—the absence of all aspect of convulsion, and yet the
stern chiselling of so vast a mass into its precipitous isolation,
leaving no ruin nor debris near it. " Quelle force n'a-t-il pas
fallu," exclaims M. Saussure, " pour rompre, et pour halayer tout
ce qui manque ii cette pyramide ! " '' What an overturn of all
ancient ideas in Geology," says Professor Forbes, "to find a
pinnacle of 15,000 feet high [above the sea] sharp as a pyramid,
and with perpendicular precipices of thousands of feet on every
hand, to be a representative of the older chalk formation ; and
what a difficulty to conceive the nature of a convulsion (even with
unlimited power), which could produce a configuration like the
Mont Cervin rising from the glacier of Zmutt! "

§ 11. The term " perpendicular " is of course applied by the Professor
in the '' poetical " temper of Reynolds,—that is to say, in one
" inattentive to minute exactness in details ; " but the effect of
this strange Matterhorn upon the imagination is indeed so great,
that even the gravest philosophers cannot resist it; and Professor
Forbes's drawing of the peak, outlined at page 185., has evidently
been made under the influence of
considerable excitement. For fear
of being deceived by enthusiasm
also, I daguerreotyped the Cervin
from the edge of the little lake
under the crag of the Riffelhorn,
with the somewhat amazing result
shown in Fig. 80. So cautious
is Nature, even in her boldest work, so broadly does she extend
the foundations, and strengthen the buttresses, of masses which
produce so striking an impression as to be described, even by the
most careful writers, as perpendicular.

§ 12. The only portion of the Matterhorn which approaches such a
condition is the shoulder, before alluded to, forming a step of
about one-twelfth the height of the whole peak, shown by light
on its snowy side, or upper surface, in the right-hand figure
of Plate 38. Allowing 4,000 feet for the height of the peak,

241

this step or shoulder will be between 300 and 400 feet in absolute
height; and as it is not only perpendicular, but assuredly over-
hangs, both at this snow-lighted angle and at the other corner of
the mountain (seen against the sky in the same figure), I have not
the slightest doubt that a plumb-line would swing from the brow
of either of these bastions, between 600 and 800 feet, without
touching rock. The intermediate portion of the cliff which joins
them is, however, not more than vertical. I was therefore
anxious chiefly to observe the structure of the two angles, and,
to that end, to see the mountain close on that side, from the
Zmutt glacier.

§ 13. I am afraid my dislike to the nomenclatures invented by the
German philosophers has been unreasonably, though involuntarily,
complicated with that which, crossing out of Italy, one necessarily
feels for those invented by the German peasantry. As travellers
now every day more frequently visit the neighbourhood of the
Monte Rosa, it would surely be a permissible, because convenient,
poetical license, to invent some other name for this noble glacier,
whose present title, certainly not euphonious, has the additional
disadvantage of being easily confounded with that of the Zermatt
glacier, properly so called. I mean myself, henceforward, to call
it the Red glacier, because, for two or three miles above its lower
extremity, the whole surface of it is covered with blocks of reddish
gneiss, or other slaty crystalline rocks, some fallen from the
Cervin, some from the Weisshorn, some brought from the Stockhi
and Dent d'Erin, but little rolled or ground down in the transit,
and covering the ice, often four or five feet deep, with a species
of macadamization on a large scale (each stone being usually
some foot or foot and a half in diameter), anything but con-
venient to a traveller in haste. Higher up, the ice opens into
broad white fields and furrows, hard and dry, scarcely fissured at
all, except just under the Cervin, and forming a silent and solemn
causeway, paved, as it seems, with white marble from side to
side ; broad enough for the march of an army in line of battle,
but quiet as a street of tombs in a buried city, and bordered
on each hand by ghostly cliffs of that faint granite purple Avhich
seems, in its far-away height, as unsubstantial as the dark blue

that bounds it;—the whole scene so changeless and soundless;
so removed, not merely from the presence of men, but even from
their thoughts; so destitute of all life of tree or herb, and so
immeasurable in its lonely brightness of majestic death, that it
looks like a world from which not only the human, but the
spiritual, presences had perished, and the last of its archangels,
building the great mountains for their monuments, had laid
themselves down in the sunlight to an eternal rest, each in his
white shroud.

§ 14. The first point from which the Matterhorn precipices, which I
came to examine, show their structure distinctly, is about half-way
up the valley, before reaching the glacier. The most convenient
path, and access to the ice, are on the south; but it is best, in
order to Avatch the changes of the Matterhorn, to keep on the north
side of the valley; and, at the point just named, the shoulder
marked e, in Fig. 33. p. 186., is seen, in the morning sunlight, to
be composed of zigzag beds, aj)parently of
eddied sand. (Fig. 81.)

I have no doubt they once were eddied
sand; that is to say, sea or torrent drift,
hardened by fire into crystalline rock; but
whether they ever were or not, the certain
fact is, that here we have a precipice, tren-
chant, overhanging, and 500 feet in height,
cut across the thin beds which compose it as

§ 15. From this point, also, the nature of the corresponding bastion,
c d, Fig. 88., is also discernible. It is the edge of a great concave
precipice, cut out of the mountain, as the smooth hollows are
out of the rocks at the foot of a waterfall, and across which the
variously coloured beds, thrown by perspective into coi'responding
curvatures, run exactly like the seams of canvass in a Venetian
felucca's sail.

Seen from this spot, it seems impossible that the mountain
should long support itself in such a form, but the impression is
only caused by the concealment of the vast proportions of the mass
behind, whose poise is quite unalfected by this hollowing at one

point. Thenceforward, as we ascend the glacier, the Matterhorn
every moment expands in apparent width; and, having reached the
foot of the Stockhi (about a four hours' walk from Zermatt), and
getting the Cervin summit to bear s. e., I made the drawing
of it engraved opposite, which gives a true idea of the relations
between it and the masses of its foundation. The bearing stated is
that of the apparent summit only, as from this point the true
summit is not visible ; the rocks which seem to form the greatest
part of the mountain being in reality nothing but its foundations,
while the little white jagged peak, relieved against the dark
hollow just below the seeming summit, is the rock marked g in
Fig. 33. But the structure of the mass, and the long ranges
of horizontal, or nearly horizontal, beds which form its crest,
showing in black points like arrow-heads through the snow,
where their ridges are left projecting by the avalanche channels,
are better seen than at any other point I reached, together with
the sweeping and thin zones of sandy gneiss below, bending appa-
rently like a coach-spring ; and the notable point about the whole
is, that this under-bed, of seemingly the most delicate substance,
is that prepared by Nature to build her boldest precipice with, it
being this bed which emerges at the two bastions or shoulders
before noticed, and which by that projection causes the strange
oblique distortion of the whole mountain mass, as it is seen
from Zermatt.

§ 16. And our surprise will still be increased as we farther examine
the materials of which the whole mountain is composed. In many
places its crystalline slates, where their horizontal surfaces are
exposed along the projecting beds of their foundations, break
into ruin so total that the foot dashes through their loose red
flakes as through heaps of autumn leaves; and yet, just where
their structure seems most delicate, just where they seem to
have been swept before the eddies of the streams that first
accumulated them, in the most passiA^e whirls, there the after
ages have knit them into the most massive strength, and there
have hewn out of them those firm grey bastions of the Cervin,—
overhanging, smooth, flawless, unconquerable! For, unlike the
Chamouni aiguilles, there is no aspect of destruction about the

Matterhorn cliffs. They are not torn remnants of separating
spires, yielding flake by flake, and band by band, to the continual
process of decay. They are, on the contrary, an unaltered monu-
ment, seemingly sculptured long ago, the huge walls retaining
yet the forms into which they were first engravenj and standing
like an Egyptian temple,—delicate-fronted, softly-coloured, the
suns of uncounted ages rising and falling upon it continually, but
still casting the same line of shadows from east to west, still,
century after century, touching the same purple stains on the lotus
pillars; while the desert sand ebbs and flows about their feet, as
those autumn leaves of rock lie heaped and weak about the base of
the Cervin.

§ 17- Is not this a strange type, in the very heart and height of these
mysterious 'Alps—these wrinkled hills in their snowy, cold, grey-
haired old age, at first so silent, then, as we keep quiet at their
feet, muttering and whispering to us garrulously, in broken and
dreaming fits, as it were, about their childhood—is it not a strange
type of the things which "out of weakness are made strong?"
If one of those little flakes of mica-sand, hurried in tremulous
spangling along the bottom of the ancient river, too light to sink,
too faint to float, almost too small for sight, could have had a
mind given to it as it was at last borne down with its kindred
dust into the abysses of the stream, and laid, (would it not
have thought ?) for a hopeless eternity, in the dark ooze, the
most despised, forgotten, and feeble of all earth's atoms; incapable
of any use or change; not fit, down there in the diluvial darkness,
so much as to help an earth-wasp to build its nest, or feed the
first fibre of a lichen;—what would it have thought, had it
been told that one day, knitted into a strength as of im-
perishable iron, rustless by the air, infusible by the flame, out
of the substance of it, with its fellows, the axe of God should
hew that Alpine toAver; that against it—poor, helpless, mica
flake!—the wild north winds should rage in vain; beneath
it—low-fallen faica flake !—the snowy hills should lie bowed like
flocks of sheep, and the kingdoms of the earth fade away in
unregarded blue; and around it—weak, wave-drifted mica flake !
—the great war of the firmament should burst in thunder, and
yet stir it not; and the fiery arrows and angry meteors of the

night fall blunted back from it into the air; and all the stars
in the clear heaven should light, one by one as they rose, new
cressets upon the points of snow that fringed its abiding place on
the imperishable spire ?

§ 18. I have thought it worth while, for the sake of these lessons,
and the other interests connected with them, to lead the reader
thus far into the examination of the principal precipices among the
Alps, although, so far as our immediate purposes are concerned,
the inquiry cannot be very fruitful or helpful to us. For rocks
of this kind, being found only in the midst of the higher snow
fields, are not only out of the general track of the landscape
painter, but are for the most part quite beyond his power—
even beyond Turner's. The waves of snow, when it becomes
a principal element in mountain form, are at once so subtle in
tone, and so complicated in curve and fold, that no skill will
express them, so as to kee]3 the whole luminous mass in any-
thing like a true relation to the rock darkness. For the distant
rocks of the upper peaks are themselves, when in light, paler than
white paper, and their true size and relation to near objects cannot
be exhibited unless they are painted in the palest tones. Yet, as
compared with their snow, they are so dark that a daguerreotype
taken for the proper number of seconds to draw the snow shadows
rightly, will always represent the rocks as coal-hlack. In order,
therefore, to paint a snowy mountain properly, we should need a
light as much brighter than white paper as white paper is brighter
than charcoal. So that although it is possible, with deep blue sky,
and purple rocks, and blue shadows, to obtain a very interesting
resemblance of snow effect, and a true one up to a certain point,
(as in the best examples of the body-colour drawings sold so
extensively in Switzerland), it is not possible to obtain any of
those refinements of form and gradation which a great artist's
eye requires. Turner felt that, among these highest hills, no
serious or perfect work could be done; and although in one or
two of his vignettes (already referred to in the first volume) he
showed his knowledge of them, his practice, in larger works, was
always to treat the snowy mountains merely as a far-away white
cloud, concentrating the interest of his picture on nearer and more
tractable objects.

247

OHAP. XVI.

§ 19. One circumstance, however, bearing upon art, we may note
before leaving these upper precipices, namely, the way in which
they illustrate the favourite expression of Homer and Dante—cut
rocks. However little satisfied we had reason to be with the
degree of affection shown towards mountain scenery by either
poet, we may now perceive, with some respect and surprise, that
they had got at one character which was in the essence of the
noblest rocks, just as the early illuminators got at the principles
which lie at the heart of vegetation. As distinguished from all
other natural forms,—from fibres which are torn, crystals which
are broken, stones v/hich are rounded or worn, animal and vege-
table forms which are grown or moulded,—the true hard rock
or precipice is notably a thing cut, its inner grain or structure
seeming to have less to do with its form than is seen in any other
object or substance whatsoever; and the aspect of subjection to
some external sculpturing instrument being distinct in almost
exact proportion to the size and stability of the mass.

§ 20. It is not so, however, with the next groups of mountain which
we have to examine—those formed by the softer slaty coherents,
when their perishable and frail substance has been raised into
cliffs in the manner illustrated by the figure at p. 149,—cliffs
whose front every frost disorganizes into filmy shale, and of which
every thunder-shower dissolves tons in the swoln blackness of
torrents. If this takes place from the top downwards, the cliff
is gradually effaced, and a more or less rounded eminence is soon
all that remains of it; but if the lower beds only decompose,
or if the whole structure is strengthened here and there by
courses of harder rock, the precipice is undermined, and remains
hanging in perilous ledges and projections until, the process having
reached the limit of its strength, vast portions of it fall at once,
leaving new fronts of equal ruggedness, to be ruined and cast down
in their turn.

The whole district of the northern inferior Alps, from the
mountains of the Eeposoir to the Gemmi, is full of precipices
of this kind; the well-known crests of the Mont Doron, and of
the Aiguille de Varens, above Sallenches, being connected by the
great cliffs of the valley of Sixt, the dark mass of the Buet, the

•1

IWlf^

■ A

Dent du Midi de Bex, and the Diablerets, witli the great amphi-
theatre of rock in whose securest recess the path of the Oemmi
hides its winding. But the most frightful and most characteristic
clilf in the whole group is the range of the Rochers des Fys,
above the Col d'Anterne. It happens to have a bed of harder
limestone at the top than in any other part of its mass ; and this
bed, protecting its summit, enables it to form itself into the most
ghastly ranges of pinnacle which I know among mountains. In
one spot the upper ledge of limestone has formed a complete
cornice, or rather bracket—for it is not extended enough to
constitute a cornice, which projects far into the air over the wall
of ashy rock, and is seen against the clouds, when they pass into
the chasm beyond, like the nodding coping-stone of a castle—only
the wall below is not less than 2,600 feet in height,—not vertical,
but steep enough to seem so to the imagination.

§ 21. Such precipices are among the most impressive as well as
the most really dangerous of mountain ranges; in many spots
inaccessible with safety either from below or from above; dark in
colour, robed with everlasting mourning, for ever tottering like a
great fortress shaken by war, fearful as much in their weakness
as in their strength, and yet gathered after every fall into darker
frowns and unhumiliating threatening; for ever incapable of com-
fort or of healing from herb or flower, nourishing no root in their
crevices, touched by no hue of life on buttress or ledge, but, to
the utmost, desolate; knowing no shaking of leaves in the wind,
nor of grass beside the stream,—no motion but their own mortal
shivering, the deathful crumbling of atom from atom in their
corrupting stones; knowing no sound of living voice or living
tread, cheered neither by the kid's bleat nor the marmot's cry;
haunted only by uninterrupted echoes from far off, wandering
hither and thither among their walls, unable to escape, and by
the hiss of angry torrents, and sometimes the shriek of a bird
that flits near the face of them, and sweeps frightened back from
under their shadow into the gulph of air : and, sometimes, when
the echo has fainted, and the wind has carried the sound of
the torrent away, and the bird has vanished, and the mouldering
stones are still for a little time,—a brown moth, opening and

shutting its wings upon a grain of dust, may be the only thing
that moves, or feels, in all the waste of weary precipice, darkening
five thousand feet of the blue depth of heaven.

§ 22. It will not be thought that there is nothing in a scene such as
this deserving our contemplation, or capable of conveying useful
lessons, if it were fitly rendered by art. I cannot myself conceive
any picture more impressive than a faithful rendering of such a
cliff would be, supposing the aim of the artist to be the utmost
tone of sad sublime. I am, nevertheless, aware of no instance
in which the slightest attempt has been made to express their
character; the reason being, partly, the extreme difficulty of the
task, partly the want of temptation in specious colour or form.
For the majesty of this kind of cliff depends entirely on its size :
a low range of such rock is as uninteresting as it is ugly; and it
is only by making the spectator understand the enormous scale
of their desolation, and the space which the shadow of their
danger oppresses, that any impression can be made upon his mind.
And this scale cannot be expressed by any artifice; the mountain
cannot be made to look large by painting it blue or faint, otherwise
it loses all its ghastliness. It must be painted in its own near
and solemn colours, black and ashen grey; and its size must bo
expressed by thorough drawing of its innumerable details—pure
quantity,—with certain points of comparison explanatory of the
whole. This is no light task; and, attempted by any man of
ordinary genius, would need steady and careful painting for three
or four months; while, to such a man, there would aj)pear to be
nothing worth his toil in the gloom of the subject, unrelieved as
it is even by variety of form ; for the soft rock of which these cliffs
are composed rarely breaks into bold masses; and the gloom of
their effect partly depends on its not doing so.

§ 23. Yet, while painters thus reject the natural, and large sub-
lime, which is ready to their hand, how strangely do they
seek after a false and small sublime. It is not that they repro-
bate gloom, but they will only have a gloom of their own making;
just as half the world will not see the terrible and sad truths
which the universe is full of, but surrounds itself with little
clouds of sulky and unnecessary fog for its own special breathing.

A portrait is not thought grand unless it has a thunder-cloud
behind it (as if a hero could not be brave in sunshine) ; a ruin is
not melancholy enough till it is seen by moonlight or twilight;
and every condition of theatrical pensiveness or of the theatrical
terrific is exhausted in setting forth scenes or persons which in
themselves are, perhaps, very quiet scenes and homely persons;
while that which, without any accessories at all, is everlastingly
melancholy and terrific, we refuse to paint,—nay, we refuse even
to observe it in its reality, while we seek for the excitement of the
very feelings it was meant to address, in every conceivable form of
our false ideal.

For instance : there have been few pictures more praised for
their sublimity than the " Deluge " of Nicolas Poussin ; of which,
nevertheless, the sublimity, such as it is, consists wholly in the
painting of everything grey and brown,—not the grey and brown
of great painters, full of mysterious and unconfessed colours, dim
blue, and shadowy purple, and veiled gold,—but the stony grey
and dismal brown of the conventionalist. Madame de Genlis,
whose general criticisms on painting are full of good sense—sin-
gularly so, considering the age in which she livedo—has the follow-
ing passage on this picture :—

" ' I remember to have seen the painting you mention; but I
ow^n I found nothing in it very beautiful.'

"' Have you ever at such times observed the colour of the
clouds attentively ?—how the dusky atmosphere obscures all objects,
makes them, if distant, disappear, or be seen with difficulty ? Had
you paid a proper attention to these effects of rain, you would
have been amazed by the exactitude with Avhich they are painted
by Poussin.' "2

§ 24. Madame de Genlis is just in her appeal to nature, but had not
herself looked carefully enough to make her appeal accurate. She

' I ought before to have mentioned Madame do Genlis as one of the few writers
whose influence was always exerted to restore to truthful feelings, and persuade to
simple enjoyments and pursuits, the persons acccssible to reason in the frivolous
world of her times.

had noticed one of the principal effects of rain, but not the other.
It is true that the dusky atmosphere " obscures all objects," but
it is also true that Nature, never intending the eye of man to be
without delight, has provided a rich compensation for this shading
of the tints with darkness, in their brightening by moisture. Every
colour, wet, is twice as brilliant as it is when dry; and when
distances are obscured by mist, and bright colours vanish from
the sky, and gleams of sunshine from the earth, the foreground
assumes all its loveliest hues, the grass and foliage revive into
their perfect green, and every sunburnt rock glows into an agate.
The colours of mountain foregrounds can never be seen in per-
fection unless they are wet; nor can moisture he entirely expressed
exce]pt hy fulness of colour. So that Poussin, in search of a
false sublimity, painting every object in his picture, vegetation
and all, of one dull grey and brown, has actually rendered it im-
possible for an educated eye to conceive it as representing rain
at all: it is a dry, volcanic darkness. It may be said, that had
he painted the effect of rain truly, the picture, composed of the
objects he has introduced, would have become too pretty for his
purpose. But his error, and the error of landscapists in general,
is in seeking to express terror by false treatment, instead of
going to Nature herself to ask her what she has appointed to be
everlastingly terrible. The greatest genius would be shown by
taking the scene in its plainest and most probable facts; not
seeking to change pity into fear, by denying the beauty of the
world that was passing away. But if it were determined to excite
fear, and fear only, it ought to have been done by imagining the
true ghastliness of the tottering cliffs of Ararat or Caucasus, as
the heavy waves first smote against the promontories that until
then had only known the thin fanning of the upper air of heaven ;
—not by painting leaves and grass slate-grey. And a new world
of sublimity might be opened to us, if any painter of power
and feeling would devote himself, for a few months, to these
solemn cliffs of the dark limestone Alps, and would only paint one
of them as it truly stands, not in rain nor storm, but in its own
eternal sadness : perhaps best on some fair summer evening, when
its fearful veil of immeasurable rock is breathed upon by warm air,

and touched with fading raj^s of purple; and all that it has of the
melancholy of ruin, mingled with the might of endurance, and the
foreboding of danger, rises in its grey gloom against the gentle
sky ; the soft wreaths of the evening clouds expiring along its ridges
one by one, and leaving it, at last, with no light but that of its own
cascades, standing like white pillars here and there along its sides,
motionless and soundless in their distance.

§ 25. Here, however, we must leave these more formidable examples
of the Alpine precipice, to examine those which, by Turner, or by
artists in general, have been regarded as properly within the sphere
of their art.

Turner had in this respect some peculiar views induced by
early association. It has already been noticed, in my pamphlet on
Pre-Raphaelitism, that his first conceptions of mountain scenery
seem to have been taken from Yorkshire; and its rounded hills,
far-winding rivers, and broken limestone scars, to have formed a
type in his mind to which he sought, as far as might be, to obtain
some correspondent imagery in all other landscape. Hence, he
almost always preferred to have a j^recipice loio clown on the hill-
side, rather than near the top; liked an extent of rounded slope
above, and the vertical cliff to the water or valley, better than the
slope at the bottom and w^all at the top, (compare Fig. 13. p. 151.);
and had his attention early directed to those horizontal, or com-
paratively horizontal, beds of rock which usually form the faces of
precipices in the Yorkshire dales ; not, as in the Matterhorn, merely
indicated by veined colouring on the surface of the smooth cliff, but
projecting, or mouldering away, in definite successions of ledges,
cornices, or steps.

§ 26. This decided love of the slope, or bank above the wall, rather
than below it, is one of Turner's most marked idiosyncrasies, and
gives a character to his composition, as distinguished from that of
other men, perhaps more marked than any which are traceable in
other features of it (except, perhaps, in his pear-shaped ideal of
trees, of which more hereafter). For when mountains are striking
to the general eye, they almost always have the high crest or wall
of cliff on the top of their slopes, rising from the plain first in
mounds of meadow-land, and bosses of rock, and studded softness

of forest ; the brown cottages peeping through grove above grove,
until just where the deep shade of the pines becomes blue or
purple in the haze of height, a red wall of upper precipice rises
from the pasture land, and frets the sky with glowing serration.
Plate 40., opposite, represents a mass of mountain just above
Villeneuve, at the head of the Lake of Geneva, in which the type
of the structure is shown with singular clearness. Much of the
scenery of western Switzerland, and characteristically the whole
of that of Savoy, is composed of mountains of this kind; the
isolated group between Chambery and Grenoble, which holds the
Grande Chartreuse in the heart of it, is constructed entirely of
such masses; and the Montague de Vergi, which in like manner
encloses the narrow meadows and traceried cloisters of the Con-
vent of the Keposoir, forms the most striking feature among all
the mountains that border the valley of the Arve between Cluse
and Geneva; while ranges of cliffs presenting precisely the same
typical characters frown above the bridge and fortress of Mont-
Meillan, and enclose, in light blue calm, the waters of the Lake
of Annecy.

§ 27. Now, although in many of his drawings Turner acknowledges
this structure, it seems always to be with some degree of reluc-
tance ; whereas he seizes with instant eagerness, and every appear-
ance of contentment, on forms of mountain which are rounded
into banks above, and cut into precipices below, as is the case in
most elevated table-lands; in the chalk coteaux of the Seine, the
basalt borders of the Rhine, and the lower gorges of the Alps; so
that while the most striking pieces of natural mountain scenery
usually rise from the plain under some such outline as that at a

Fig. 82., Turner always formed his composition, if possible, on
such an arrangement as that at h.

One reason for this is clearly the greater simplicity of the line.

"Wl

253

CHAP. XVI.

III. PRECIPICES.

The simpler a line is, so that it be" cunningly varied within its
simplicities, the grander it is; and Turner likes to enclose all his
broken crags by such a line as that at h, just as we saw the clas-
sical composer, in our first plate, enclose the griffin's beak with
breadth of wing. Nevertheless, I cannot but attribute his some-
what wilful and marked rejection of what sublimity there is in
the other form, to the influence of early affections; and sincerely
regret that the fascination exercised over him by memory should
have led him to pass so much of his life in putting a sublimity not
properly belonging to them into the coiteaux of Clairmont and
Meauves, and the vine terraces of Bingen and Oberwesel; leaving
almost unrecorded the natural sublimity, which he could never
have exaggerated, of the pine-fringed mountains of the Isere, and
the cloudy diadem of the Mont Vergi.

§ 28. In all cases of this kind, it is difficult to say how far harm and
how far good have resulted from what unquestionably has in it
something of both. It is to be regretted that Turner's studies
should have been warped, by early affection, from the Alps to the
Rhine; but the fact of his feeling this early affection, and being
thus strongly influenced by it through his life, is indicative of
that sensibility which was at the root of all his greatness. Other
artists are led away by foreign sublimities and distant interests ;
delighting always in that which is most markedly strange, and
quaintly contrary to the scenery of their homes. But Turner
evidently felt that the claims upon his regard possessed by those
places which first had opened to him the joy, and the labour, of his
life, could never be superseded; no Alpine cloud could efface, no
Italian sunbeam outshine, the memory of the pleasant dales and
days of Rokeby and Bolton ; and many a simple promontory, dim
with southern olive,—many a low cliff that stooped unnoticed over
some alien wave, was recorded by him with a love, and delicate
care, that were the shadoAvs of old thoughts and long-lost dehghts,
whose charm yet hung like morning mist above the chanting waves
of Wharfe and Greta.

§ 29. The first instance, therefore, of Turner's mountain drawing
which I endeavoured to give accurately, in this book, was from
those shores of Wharfe which, I believe, he never could revisit

PART V.

without tears; nay, which for all the latter part of his life, he
never could even speak of, but his voice faltered. "We will now
examine this instance with greater care.

It is first to be remembered that in every one of his English
or French drawings. Turner's mind was, in two great instincts, at
variance with itself. The affections of it clung, as we have just
seen, to humble scenery, and gentle wildness of pastoral life. But
the admiration of it was, more than any other artist's whatsoever,
fastened on largeness of scale. With all his heart, he was attached
to the narrow meadows and rounded knolls of England; by all
his imagination he was urged to the reverence of endless vales and
measureless hills; nor could any scene be too contracted for his
love, or too vast for his ambition. Hence, when he returned to
English scenery after his first studies in Savoy and Dauphin^,
he was continually endeavouring to reconcile old fondnesses with
new sublimities; and, as in Switzerland he chose rounded Alps
for the love of Yorkshire, so in Yorkshire he exaggerated scale,
in memory of Switzerland, and gave to Ingleborough, seen
from Hornby Castle, in great part the expression of cloudy
majesty and height which he had seen in the Alps from
Grenoble. We must continually remember these two opposite
instincts as we examine the Turnerian topography of his subject
of Bolton Abbey.

§ 30. The Abbey is placed, as most lovers of our English scenery
know well, on a little promontory of level park land, enclosed by
one of the sweeps of the Wharfe. On the other side of the river,
the flank of the dale rises in a pretty wooded brow, which the
river, leaning against, has cut into two or three somewhat bold
masses of rock, steep to the water's edge, but feathered above with
copse of ash and oak. Above these rocks, the hills are rounded
softly upwards to the moorland ; the entire height of the brow
towards the river being perhaps two hundred feet, and the rocky
parts of it not above forty or fifty, so that the general impression
upon the eye is that the hill is little more than twice the height
of the ruins, or of the groups of noble ash trees which encircle
them. One of these groups is conspicuous above the rest,
growing on the very shore of the tongue of land which projects

into the river, whose clear brown water, stealing first in mere
threads between the separate pebbles of shingle, and eddying in
soft golden lines towards its central currents, flows out of amber
into ebony, and glides calm and deep below the rock on the
opposite shore.

§ 31. Except in this stony bed of the stream, the scene possesses very
little more aspect of mountain character than belongs to some of
the park and meadow land under the chalk hills near Henley and
Maidenhead; and if it were faithfully drawn in all points, and on
its true scale, would hardly more affect the imagination of the
spectator, unless he traced, with such care as is never from any
spectator to be hoped, the evidence of nobler character in the
pebbled shore and unconspicuous rock. But the scene in reality
does affect the imagination strongly, and in a way wholly
different from lowland hill scenery. A little farther up the
valley the hmestone summits rise, and that steeply, to a height
of twelve hundred feet above the river, which foams between
them in the narrow and dangerous channel of the Strid. Noble
moorlands extend above, purple with heath, and broken into
scars and glens, and around every soft tuft of wood, and gentle
extent of meadow, throughout the dale, there floats a feeling of
this mountain power, and an instinctive apprehension of the
strength and greatness of the wild northern land.

§ 32. It is to the association of this power and border sternness with
the sweet peace and tender decay of Bolton Priory, that the
scene owes its distinctive charm. The feelings excited by both
characters are definitely connected by the melancholy tradition of
the circumstances to which the Abbey owes its origin; and yet
farther darkened by the nearer memory of the death, in the
same spot which betrayed the boy of Egremont, of another, as
young, as thoughtless, and as beloved.

And Wharfe, as he moAed along,
To matins joined a mournful voice,
Nor failed at evensong."

mountain strength with religious fear, Turner had to suggest,
or he would not have drawn Bolton Abbey. He goes down to
the shingly shore ; for the Abbey is but the child of the Wharfe ;
—it is the river, the great cause of the Abbey, which shall be
his main subject; only the extremity of the ruin itself is seen,
between the stems of the ash trees ; but the waves of the Wliarfe
are studied with a care which renders this drawing unique among
Turner's works, for its expression of the eddies of a slow mountain
stream, and of their pausing in treacherous depth beneath the
hollowed rocks.

On the opposite shore is a singular jutting angle of the shales,
forming the principal feature of the low cliffs at the water's edge.
Turner fastens on it as the only available mass; draws it with
notable care, and then magnifies it by diminishing the trees on
its top to one fifth of their real size, so that what would else
have been little more than a stony bank becomes a true pre-
cipice, on a scale completely suggestive of the heights behind.
The hill beyond is in like manner lifted into a more rounded,
but still precipitous, eminence, reaching the utmost admissible
elevation of ten or twelve hundred feet (measurable by the trees
upon it). I have engraved this entire portion of the drawing
of the real size, on the ojjposite page; the engraving of the
whole drawing, published in the England Series, is also easily
accessible.

§ 33. Not knowing accurately to what group of the Yorkshire lime-
stones the rocks opposite the Abbey belonged, or their rela-
tion to the sandstones at the Strid, I wrote to ask my kind
friend Professor Phillips, who instantly sent me a little geo-
logical sketch of the position of these " Yoredale Shales,"
adding this interesting note: " The black shales opposite the
Abbey are curiously tinted at the surface, and are contorted.
Most artists give them the appearance of solid massive rocks;
nor is this altogether wrong, especially when the natural joints
of the shale appear prominent after particular accidents; they
should, however, never be made to resemble [i.e. in solidity]
limestone or gritstone."

rocks wliich I have called slaty coherents, and correspond very
closely to those portions of the Alpine slates described in
Chapter x. § 4.; their main character is continual separation
into fine flakes, more or less of Dpte's ''iron-coloured grain; "
which, however, on - a large scale, form those somewhat solid-
looking masses to which Mr. Phillips alludes in his letter, and
which he describes, in his recently pubHshed Geology, in the
following general terms : " The
shales of this tract are usu-
ally dark, close, and fissile, and
traversed by extremely long
straight joints, dividing the rock
into rhomboidal prisms" (i. e.
prisms of the shape c, Fig. 83.,
in the section).

§ 34. Turner had, therefore, these , ^^
four things to show:—1. Flaky
division horizontally ; 2. Divi-
sion by rhomboidal joints; 3.
Massy appearance occasionally, Fig. 83.

somewhat concealing the struc-
ture ; 4. Local contortion of the beds. (See passage quoted
of Mr. Phillips's letter.)

Examine, then, the plate just given (12 a.). The cleavage of
the shales runs diagonally up from left to right; note especially
how delicately it runs up through the foreground rock, and is
insisted upon, just at the brow of it, in the angular step-like frag-
ments ; compare also the etching in the first volume. Then note
the upright pillars in the distance marked especially as rhomboidal
by being drawn with the cleavage still sloping up on the returning
side, as at a, Fig. 83., not as at b, which would be their aspect
if they were square; and then the indication of interruption
in the structure at the brow of the main cliff, where, as well as
on the nearer mass, exposure to the weather has rounded away
the cleavages.

This projection, as before mentioned, does exist at the spot;
and I believe is partly an indication of the contortion in the beds

Ivte.

alluded to by Mr. Phillips; but no one but Turner would have
fastened on it, as in anywise deserving special attention.

For the rest, no words are of any use to explain the subtle
fidelity with which the "minor roundings and cleavages have
been expressed by him. Fidelity of this kind
can only be estimated by workers : if the
reader can himself draw a bit of natural pre-
cipice in Yoredale shale, and then copy a bit
of the etching, he will find some measure of
the difference between Turner's work and
other people's, and no otherwise; although,
without any such labour, he may at once
perceive that there is a difference, and a wide
one,—so wide, that I have literally nothing
to compare the Turnerian work with in pre-
vious art. Here, however, Fig. 84, is a rock
of Claude's (Liber Veritatis, No. 91, on
the left-hand), which is something of the
shape of Turner's, and professes to be crested
in like manner with copse-wood. The reader
may " compare" as much as he likes, or
can, of it.

§ 35. In fact, as I said some time ago, the whole
landscape of Claude was nothing but a more
or less softened continuance of the old tra-
ditions of missal-painting, of which I gave
examples in the previous volume. The general notion of rock
which may be traced in the earliest work, as Figs. 1. and 2.
in Plate 10. Vol. III., is of an upright mass cut out with an
adze; as art advances, the painters begin to perceive horizontal
stratification, and, as in all the four other examples of that plate,
show something like true rendering of the fracture of . rocks in
vertical joints with superimposed projecting masses. They insist
on this t}^e, thinking it frowning or picturesque, and usually
exhibit it to more advantage by putting a convent, hermitage,
or castle on the projection of the crag. In the blue back-
grounds of the missals the projection is often wildly extravagant ;

for instance, the MS. Ad-
ditional, 11,696. Brit. Mus.,
has all its backgrounds com-
posed of blue rocks with
towers upon them, of which
Fig. 85. is a characteristic
example (magnified in scale
about one third; but, I
think, rather diminished in
extravagance of projection).
It is infinitely better drawn
than Claude's rocks ever

are, in the expression of cleavage; but certainly somewhat too
bold in standing. Then, in more elaborate work we get con-
ditions of precipice like Fig. 3. in Plate 10., which, indeed, is
not ill-drawn in many respects ;
and the book from which it is
taken shows other evidences of a
love of nature sufficiently rare at
the period, though joined quaintly
with love of the grotesque: for
instance, the writer, giving an ac-
count of the natural productions of
Saxony, illustrates his chapter with
a view of the salt-mines ; he repre-
sents the brine-spring, conducted
by a wooden trough from the rock
into an evaporating-house, where it
is received in a pan, under which
he has painted scarlet flames of fire
with singular skill; and the rock
out of which the brine flows is in
its general cleavages the best I ever
saw drawn by mediaeval art. But
it is carefully wrought to the re-
semblance of a grotesque human
head.

§ 36. This bolder quaintness of tlie missals is very slightly modified
in religious paintings of the period. Fig. 86.. by Cima da Cone-
gliano, a Venetian, No. 173. in the Louvre, compared with
Fig. 3. of Plate 10. (Flemish), will show the land of received
tradition about rocks current throughout Europe. Claude takes
up this tradition, and, merely making the rocks a little clumsier,
and more weedy, produces such conditions as Fig. 87. (Liber
Veritatis, No. 91., with Fig. 84. above); while the orthodox door
or archway at the bottom is developed into the Homeric cave,
shaded with laurels, and some ships are put underneath it, or
'seen through it, at ;impossible anchorages.

§ Fig. 87. is generally characteristic, not only of Claude, but of
the other painters of the Renaissance period, because they were
all equally fond of representing this overhanging of rocks with
buildings on the top, and weeds drooping into the air over the
edge, always thinking to get sublimity by exaggerating the pro-
jection, and never able to feel or understand the simplicity of

real rock lines : not that they were in want of examples around
them; on the contrary, though the main idea was traditional,
the modifications of it are always traceable to the lower masses
of limestone and tufa which skirt the Alps and Appennines,
and which have, in reality, long contracted habits of nodding
over their bases; being, both by Virgil and Homer, spoken of
always as " hanging" or " over-roofed" rocks. But then they
have a way of doing it rather different from the Renaissance
ideas of them. Here, for instance (Plate 41.), is a real hanging
rock, with a castle on the top of it, and (KariipEtp^Q) laurel, all
plain fact, from Arona, on the Lago Maggiore; and, I believe,
the reader, though we have not as yet said anything about lines,
will at once, on comparing it with Fig. 87., recognise the dif-
ference between the true parabolic flow of the rock-lines and the
humpbacked deformity of Claude; and, still more, the difference
between the delicate overhanging of the natural cliff, cautiously
diminished as it gets higher and the ideal danger of the Liber
Veritatis.

§ 38. And the fact is, generally, that natural cliffs are very cautious
how they overhang, and that the artist who represents them as
doing so in any extravagant degree entirely destroys the sublimity
which he hoped to increase, for the simple reason that he takes
away the whole rock-nature, or at least that part of it which
depends upon weight. The instinct of the observer refuses to
believe that the rock is ponderous when it overhangs so far,
and it has no more real effect upon him than the imagined
rocks of a fairy tale.

Though, therefore, the subject sketched opposite is sufficiently
trifling in itself, it is important as a perfect general type of
the overhanging of that kind of precipices, and of the mode
in which they are connected with the banks above. Fig. 88.
shows its abstract leading lines, consisting of one great parabolic
line X y falling to the brow, curved aqueous lines down the pre-
cipice face, and the springing lines of its vegetation opposed by
contrary curves on the farther cliff. Such an arrangement, with

' The actual extent of the projection remaining the same throughout, the angle of
suspended slope, for that very reason, diminishes as the cliff increases in height.

or without vegetation, may take place on a small or large scale;
but a bolder projection than this, except by rare accident, and on
a small scale, cannot. If the reader will glance back to Plate 37.,

and observe the arrangement of the precipices on the right hand,
he will now better understand what Turner means by them. But
the whole question of the beauty of this form, or mode of its
development, rests on the nature of the bank above the cliffs,
and of the aqueous forces that carved it; and this discussion
of the nature of banks, as it will take some time, had better be
referred to next chapter. One or two more points are, however,
to be stated here.

that these overhanging cHffs are formed at all, and why they
appear thus to be consumed away at the bottom. Sometimes, if
of soft material, they actually are so consumed by the quicker
trickling of streamlets at the base than at the summit, or by the
general action of damp in decomposing the rock. But, in the
noblest instances, such cliifs are constructed as at c in Fig. 73.
above, and the inward retirement of the precipice is the result
of their tendency to break at right angles to the beds, modified
according to the power of the rock to support itself, and the
aqueous action from above or below.

I have before alluded (in p. 161) to this somewhat perilous
arrangement permitted in the secondary strata. The danger, be
it observed, is not of the fall of the hroio of the precipice,
which never takes place on a large scale in rocks of this kind
(compare § 3. of this chapter), but of the sliding of one bed
completely away from another, and the whole mass coming down
together. But even this, though it has several times occurred in
Switzerland, is not a whit more likely to happen when the pre-
cipice is terrific than when it is insignificant. The danger results
from the imperfect adhesion of the mountain beds ; not at all from
the external form of them. A cliff, which is in aspect absolutely
awful, may hardly, in the part of it that overhangs, add one
thousandth part to the gravitating power of the entire mass of
the rocks above; and, for the comfort of nervous travellers, they
may be assured that they are often in more danger under the
gentle slopes of a pleasantly wooded hill, than under the most
terrific clifi's of the Eiger or Jungfrau.

§ 40. The most interesting examj)les of these cliffs are usually to
be seen impending above strong torrents, which, if forced originally
to run in a valley, such as a in Fig. 89., bearing the relation
there shown to the inclination of beds on each side, will not,
if the cleavage is across the beds, cut their channels straight
down, but in an inclined direction, correspondent to the cleavage,
as at h. If the operation be carried far, so as to undermine
one side of the ravine too seriously, the undermined masses
fall, partially choke the torrent, and give it a new direction
of force, or diminish its sawing power by breaking it among

265

the fallen masses, so that the cliff never becomes very high in
such an impendent form; but the trench is hewn downwards in

a direction irregularly vertical. Among the limestones on the
north side of the Valais, they being just soft enough to yield easily
to the water, and yet so hard as to maintain themselves in massy
precipices, when once hewn to the shape, there are defiles of whose
depth and proportions I am almost afraid to state what I believe
to be the measurements, so much do they differ from any which I
have seen assigned by scientific men as the limits of precipitous
formation. I can only say that my deliberate impression of the
great ravine cut by the torrent which descends from the Aletsch
glacier, about half way between the glacier and Brieg, was, that its
depth is between a thousand and ffteen hundred feet, by a breadth
of between forty and a hundred.

But I could not get to the edge of its cliffs, for the tops rounded
away into the chasm, and, of course, all actual measurement was
impossible. There are other similar clefts between the Bietsch-
horn and the Gemmi; and the one before spoken of at Ardon,
about five miles below Sion, though quite unimportant in com-
parison, presents some boldly overhanging precipices, easily
observed by the passing traveller, as they are close to the road.
The glen through which the torrent of the Trient descends into
the valley of the Rhone, near Martigny, though not above three or
four hundred feet deep, is also notable for its narrowness, and for
the magnificent hardness of the rock through which it is cut,—
a gneiss twisted with quartz into undulations like those of a
Damascus sabre, and as compact as its steel.

ravines, any more than of the apse of a Gothic cathedral, into a
picture, as their elevation cannot be drawn on a vertical plane in
£i-ont of the eye, the head needing to be thrown back, in order to
measure their height, or stooped, to penetrate their depth. But
the structure and expression of the entrance to one of them have
been made by Turner the theme of his sublime mountain-study
(Mill near the Grande Chartreuse) in the Liber Studiorum; nor
does he seem ever to have been weary of recurring, for various
precipice-subject, to the ravines of the Via Mala and St. Gothard.
I will not injure any of these—his noblest works—by giving
imperfect copies of them; the reader has now data enough whereby
to judge, when he meets with them, whether they are well done or
ill; and, indeed, all that I am endeavouring to do here, as often
aforesaid, is only to get some laws of the simplest kind understood
and accepted, so as to enable people who care at all for justice
to make a stand at once beside the modern mountain-drawing, as
distinguished from Salvator's, or Claude's, or any other spurious
work. Take, for instance, such a law as this of the general oblique
inclination of a torrent's sides. Fig. 89., and compare the Turnerian
gorge in the distance of Plate 31. here, or of the Grande Chartreuse
subject in the Liber Studiorum, and consider whether anywhere
else in art you can find similar expressions of the law.

§ 42, Well; but you have come to no conclusions in this chapter
respecting the Beauty of Precipices ; and that was your professed
business with them."

I am not sure that the idea of beauty was meant in general to
be very strictly connected with such mountain forms : one does
not, instinctively, speak or think of a " Beautiful Precipice."
They have, however, their beauty, and it is infinite; yet so
dependent on help or change from other things, on the way the
pines crest them, or the waterfalls colour them, or the clouds
isolate them, that I do not choose to dwell here on any of their
perfect aspects, as they cannot be reasoned of but by anticipating
inquiries into other materials of landscape.

Thus, I have much to say of the cliffs of Grindelwald and the
Chartreuse, but all so dependent upon certain facts belonging to
pine vegetation, that I am compelled to defer it to the next

irg.

r .

volume : nor do I much regret this ; because it seems to me that,
without any setting forth, or rather beyond all setting forth, the
Alpine precipices have a fascination about them which is sufficiently
felt by the spectator in general, and even by the artist; only they
have not been properly drawn, because people do not usually
attribute the magnificence of their efiect to the trifling details
which really are its elements ; and, therefore, in common drawings
of Swiss scenery we see all lands of efforts at sublimity by
exaggeration of the projection, or of the mass, or by obscurity, or
blueness of aerial tint,—by everything, in fact, except the one
needful thing,—plain drawing of the rock. Therefore in this
chapter I have endeavoured to direct the reader to a severe mathe-
matical estimate of precipice outline, and to make him dwell, not
on the immediately pathetic or impressive aspect of cliffs, which
all men feel readily enough, but on their internal structure. For
he may rest assured that, as the Matterhorn is built out of mica
flakes, so every great pictorial impression in scenery of this kind
is to be reached by little and little; the cliff must be built in the
picture as it was probably in reality—inch by inch ; and the work
will, in the end, have most power which was begun with most
patience. No man is fit to paint Swiss scenery until he can place
himself front to front with one of those mighty crags, in broad
daylight, with no " effect" to aid him, and work it out, boss by
boss, only with such conventionality as its infinitude renders un-
avoidable. We have seen that a literal fac-simile is impossible,
just as a literal fac-simile of the carving of an entire cathedral front
is impossible. But it is as vain to endeavour to give any concep-
tion of an Alpine cliff without minuteness of detail, and by mere
breadth of effect, as it would be to give a conception of the fa9ade8
of Eouen or Eheims, mthout indicating any statues or foliation.
When the statues and foliation are once got, as much blue mist
and thundercloud as you choose, but not before.

that, though one of the most difficult of subjects, it is one of the
kindest of sitters. A group of trees changes the colour of its
leafage from week to week, and its position from day to day; it is

___^

sometimes languid with heat, and sometimes heavy with rain ; the
torrent swells or falls in shower or sun ; the best leaves of the
foreground may be dined upon by cattle, or trampled by unwelcome
investigators of the chosen scene. But the cliff can neither be
eaten, nor trampled down; neither bowed by the shower, nor
withered by the heat: it is always ready for us when we are
inclined to labour; will always wait for us when we would rest;
and, what is best of all, will always talk to us when we are inclined
to converse. With its own patient and victorious presence, cleav-
ing daily through cloud after cloud, and reappearing still through
the tempest drift, lofty and serene amidst the passing rents of
blue, it seems partly to rebuke, and partly to guard, and partly to
calm and chasten, the agitations of the feeble human soul that
watches it; and that must be indeed a dark perplexity, or a grievous
pain, which will not be in some degree enlightened or relieved by
the vision of it, when the evening shadows are blue on its founda-
tion, and the last rays of the sunset resting on the fair height of
its golden Fortitude.

§ 1 During all our past investigations of hill form, we have been
obliged to refer continually to certain results produced by the
action of descending streams or falling stones. The actual con-
tours assumed by any mountain range towards its foot depend
usually more upon this torrent sculpture than on the original
conformation of the masses; the existing hill side is commonly
an accumulation of debris; the existing glen commonly an exca-
vated watercourse; and it is only here and there that portions of
rock, retaining impress of their original form, jut from the bank,
or shelve across the stream.

§ 2. Now this sculpture by streams, or by gradual weathering, is
the finishing work by which Nature brings her mountain forms
into the state in which she intends us generally to observe and
love them. The violent convulsion or disruption by which she
first raises and separates the masses may frequently be intended
to produce impressions of terror rather than of beauty; but the
laws which are in constant operation on all noble and enduring
scenery, must assuredly be intended to produce results grateful
to men. Therefore, as in this final pencilling of Nature's we
shall probably find her ideas of mountain beauty most definitely
expressed, it may be well that, before entering on this part of our
subject, we should recapitulate the laws respecting beauty of form
which we arrived at in the abstract.

§ 3. Glancing back to the fourteenth and fifteenth paragraphs of
the chapter on Infinity, in the second volume, and to the third
and tenth of the chapters on Unity, the reader will find that

abstract beauty of form is supposed to depend on continually varied
curvatures of line and surface, associated so as to produce an effect
of some unity among themselves, and opposed, in order to give
them value, by more or less straight or rugged lines.

The reader will, perhaps, here ask why, if both the straight
and curved lines are necessary, one should be considered more
beautiful than the other. Exactly as we consider light beautiful
and darkness ugly, in the abstract, though both are essential to
all beauty. Darkness mingled with colour gives the delight of its
depth or power; even pure blackness, in spots or chequered pat-
terns, is often exquisitely delightful; and yet we do not therefore
consider, in the abstract, blackness to be beautiful.

Just in the same way straightness mingled
with curvature, that is to say, the close approxi-
mation of part of any curve to a straight line,
gives to such curve all its spring, power, and
nobleness: and even perfect straightness, limiting
curves, or opposing them, is often pleasurable:
yet, in the abstract, straightness is always ugly,
and curvature always beautiful.

Thus, in the figure at the side, the eye will
instantly prefer the semicircle to the straight
line; the trefoil (composed of three semicircles)
to the triangle ; and the cinqfoil to the pentagon.
The mathematician may perhaps feel an oppo-
site preference; but he must be conscious that
he does so under the influence of feelings quite
different from those with which he would admire
(if he ever does admire) a picture or statue; and
that if he could free himself from those asso-
ciations, his judgment of the relative agreeable-
ness of the forms would be altered. He may
rest assured that, by the natural instinct of the
eye and thought, the preference is given in-
stantly, and always, to the curved form; and
that no human being of unprejudiced percep-
tions would desire to substitute triangles for the

IH'

§ 4. All curvature, however, is not equally agreeable; but the
examination of the laws which render one curve more beau-
tiful than another, would, if carried out to any completeness,
alone require a volume. The following few examples will be
enough to put the reader in the way of pursuing the subject
for himself.

Take any number of lines, a b, h c, c d, &c., Fig. 91., bearing
any fixed proportion to each other. In this figure, & c is one-
third longer than a b, and c d than b c; and so on. Arrange them
in succession, keeping the inclination, or angle, which each makes
with the preceding one always the same. Then a curve drawn
through the extremities of the lines will be a beautiful curve;
for it is governed by consistent laws ; every part of it is connected
by those laws with every other, yet every part is different from
every other; and the mode of its construction implies the possi-
bility of its continuance to infinity; it would never return upon
itself though prolonged for ever. These characters must be
possessed by every perfectly beautiful curve.

preceding one only by a fifth, the curve will be more contracted
and less beautiful. If we enlarge the difference, as in Fig. 93,
in which each line is treble the preceding one, the curve will

suggest a more rapid proceeding into infinite space, and will be
more beautiful. Of two curves, the same in other respects, that
which suggests the quickest attainment of infinity is always the
most beautiful.

§ 5- These three curves being all governed by the same general
law, with a difference only in dimensions of lines, together with
all the other curves so constructible, varied as they may be in-
finitely, either by changing the lengths of line, or the inclination
of the lines to each other, are considered by mathematicians only
as one curve, having this peculiar character about it, different from
that of most other infinite lines, that any portion of it is a mag-
nified repetition of the preceding portion; that is to say, the
portion between e and g is precisely what that between c and e
would look, if seen through a lens which magnified somewhat
more than twice. There is therefore a peculiar equanimity and
harmony about the look of lines of this kind, differing, I think,
from the expression of any others except the circle. Beyond the
point a the curve may be imagined to continue to an infinite degree
of smallness, always circling nearer and nearer to a point, which,
however, it can never reach.

§ 6. Again : if along the horizontal line, a b.. Fig. 94. over leaf, we
measure any number of equal distances. Ah, he, &c., and raise per-
pendiculars from the points h, c, d, &c., of which each perpendicular
shall be longer, by some given proportion (in this figure it is one-
third), than the preceding one, the curve x y, traced through their
extremities, will continually change its direction, but will advance
into space in the direction of y as long as we continue to measure
distances along the line a b, always inclining more and more to
the nature of a straight line, yet never becoming one, even if con-
tinued to infinity. It would, in like manner, continue to infinity
in the direction of x, always approaching the line a b, yet never
touching it.

§ 7. An infinite number of different lines, more or less violent in
curvature according to the measurements we adopt in designing
them, are included, or defined, by each of the laws just explained.
But the number of these laws themselves is also infinite. There
is no limit to the multitude of conditions which may be invented,

each producing a group of
curves of a certain common
nature. Some of these laws,
indeed, produce single curves,
which, like the circle, can vary
only in size; but, for the most
part, they vary also, like the
lines we have just traced, in
the rapidity of their curvature.
Among these innumerable
lines, however, there is one
source of difference in charac-
ter which divides them, infinite
as they are in number, into
two great classes. The first
class consists of those which
are limited in their course,
either ending abruptly, or re-
turning to some point from
which they set out; the
second class, of those lines
whose nature is to proceed for
ever into sj)ace. Any portion
of a circle, for instance, is, by
the law of its being, compelled,
if it continue its course, to
return to the point from which
it set out; so also any portion
of the oval curve (called an
ellipse), produced by cutting a
cylinder obliquely across. And
if a single point be marked on
the rim of a carriage wheel,
this point, as the wheel rolls
along the road, will trace a
curve in the air from one part ac
of the road to another, which

275

CHAP, XVII.

is called a cycloid, and to which the law of its existence appoints
that it shall always follow a similar course, and be terminated by
the level line on which the wheel rolls. All such curves are of
inferior beauty : and the curves which are incapable of being com-
pletely drawn, because, as in the two cases above given, the law of
their being supposes them to proceed for ever into space, are of a
higher beauty.

§ 8. Thus, in the very first elements of form, a lesson is given
us as to the true source of the nobleness and chooseableness of all
things. The two classes of curves thus sternly separated from
each other, may most properly be distinguished as the "Mortal
and Immortal Curves; " the one having an appointed term of
existence, the other absolutely incomprehensible and endless, only
to be seen or grasped during a certain moment of their course.
And it is found universally that the class to which the human
mind is attached for its chief enjoyment are the Endless or
Immortal lines.

§ 5). " Nay," but the reader answers, " what right have you to say
that one class is more beautiful than the other ? Suppose I like the
finite curves best, who shall say which of us is right ? "

No one. It is simply a question of experience. You will not,
I think, continue to like the finite curves best as you contemplate
them carefully, and compare them with the others. And if you
should do so, it then yet becomes a question to be decided by
longer trial, or more widely canvassed opinion. And when we
find on examination that every form which, by the consent of
human kind, has been received as lovely, in vases, flowing orna-
ments, embroideries, and all other things dependent on abstract
line, is composed of these infinite curves, and that Nature uses
them for every important contour, small or large, which she
desires to recommend to human observance, we shall not, I think,
doubt that the preference of such lines is a sign of healthy taste,
and true instinct.

§ 10. I am not sure, however, how far the delightfulness of such lines
is owing, not merely to their expression of infinity, but also to that
of restraint or moderation. Compare Stones of Venice, vol. iii.
chap. i. § 9., where the subject is entered into at some length.

Certainly the beauty of such curvature is owing, in a considerable
degree, to both expressions; but when the line is shar]Dly termi-
nated, perhaps more to that of moderation than of infinity. For
the most part, gentle or subdued sounds, and gentle or subdued
colours, are more pleasing than either in their utmost force; never-
theless, in all the noblest compositions, this utmost power is
permitted, but only for a short time, or over a small space.
Music must rise to its utmost loudness, and fall from it; colour
must be gradated to its extreme brightness, and descend from
it; and I believe that absolutely perfect treatment would, in
either case, permit the intensest sound and purest colour only
for a point or for a moment.

Curvature is regulated by precisely the same laws. For the
most part, delicate or slight curvature is more agreeable than
violent or rapid curvature; nevertheless, in the best compositions,
violent curvature is permitted, but permitted only over small spaces
in the curve.

§ 11. The right line is to the curve what monotony is to melody, and
what unvaried colour is to gradated colour. And as often the
sweetest music is so low and continuous as to approach a mono-
tone ; and as often the sweetest gradations so delicate and
subdued as to approach to flatness, so the finest curves are apt
to hover about the right line, nearly coinciding with it for a long
space of their curve; never absolutely losing their own curvi-
linear character, but apparently every moment on the point of
merging into the right line. When this is the case, the line
generally returns into vigorous curvature at some part of its
course, otherwise it is apt to be weak, or slightly rigid; mul-
titudes of other curves, not approaching the right line so nearly,
remain less vigorously bent in the rest of their course; so that
the quantity ^ of curvature is the same in both, though differently
distributed.

§ 12. The modes in which Nature produces variable curves on a large
scale are very numerous, but may generally be resolved into the
gradual increase or diminution of some given force. Thus, if a

chain hangs between two points a and
b, Fig. 95., the weight of chain sus-
tained by any given link increases
gradually from the central link at o,
which has only its own weight to sus-
tain, to the link at b, which sustains,
besides its own, the weight of all the
links between it and 0. This increased
weight is continually pulling the curve of
the swinging chain more nearly straight
as it ascends towards b. ; and hence
one of the most beautifully gradated
natural curves—called the catenary—of
course assumed not by chains only, but
by all flexible and elongated substances,
suspended between two points. If the
points of suspension be near each other,
we have such curves as at d ; and if,
as in nine cases out of ten will be the
case, one point of suspension is lower
than the other, a still more varied and beautiful curve is formed,
as at E. Such curves constitute nearly the whole beauty of

observe that it depends on the nature of the line, not on its magnitude : thus, in
simple circular curvature, a b, Fig. 96., being the fourth of a largo circle, and 1 c the

half of a smaller one, the quantity of the element of circular curvature in the entire
line a c is three fourths of that in any circle,—the same as the quantity in the line e f.

general contour in falling drapery, tendrils and festoons of weeds
over rocks, and such other pendent objects.^

§ 13. Again. If any object be cast into the air, the force with which
it is cast dies gradually away, and its own weight brings it down-
wards ; at jSrst slowly, then faster and faster every moment, in a
curve which, as the line of fall necessarily nears the perpendicular,
is continually approximating to a straight line. This curve—called
the parabola—is that of all projected or bounding objects.

§14. Again. If a rod or stick of any kind gradually becomes more
slender or more flexible, and is bent by any external force, the force
will not only increase in effect as the rod becomes weaker, but the
rod itself, once bent, will continually yield more willingly, and be
more easily bent farther in the same direction, and will thus show
a continual increase of curvature from its thickest or most rigid part
to its extremity. This kind of line is that assumed by boughs of
trees under wind.

§ 15. Again. "Whenever any vital force is impressed on any organic
substance, so as to die gradually away as the substance extends, an
infinite curve is commonly produced by its outline. Thus, in the
budding of the leaf, already examined, the gradual dying away of the
exhilaration of the younger ribs produces an infinite curve in the
outline of the leaf, which sometimes fades imperceptibly into a right
line,— sometimes is terminated sharply, by meeting the opposite
curve at the point of the leaf.

§ 16. Nature, however, rarely condescends to use one curve only in
any of her finer forms. She almost always unites two infinite ones,
so as to form a reversed curve for each main line, and then modu-
lates each of them into myriads of minor ones. In a single elm
leaf, such as Fig. 4. Plate 8., she uses three such—one for
the stalk, and one for each of the sides,—to regulate their general

' The catenary is not properly a curve capable of infinity, if its direction does not
alter with its length ; but it is capable of infinity, implying such alteration by the
infinite remoYal of the points of suspension. It entirely corresponds in its effect
on the eye and mind to the infinite curves. I do not know the exact nature of the
apparent curves of suspension formed by a high and weighty waterfall ; they are
dependent on the gain in rapidity of descent by the central current, where its greater
body is less arrested by the air ; and, I apprehend, are catenary in character, though
not in cause.

flow; dividing afterwards each of their broad lateral lines into
some twenty less curves by the jags of the leaf, and then again
into minor waves. Thus, in any complicated group of leaves
whatever, the infinite curves are themselves almost countless. In a
single extremity of a magnolia spray, the uppermost figure in Plate
42., including only sixteen leaves, each leaf having some three to
five distinct curves along its edge, the lines for separate study,
including those of the stems, would be between sixty and eighty.
In a single spring-shoot of laburnum, the lower figure in the
same plate, I leave the reader to count them for himself; all
these, observe, being seen at one view only, and every change of
position bringing into sight another equally numerous set of
curves. For instance, in Plate 43. is a group of four withered
leaves, in four positions, giving, each, a beautiful and well-composed
group of curves, variable gradually into the next group as the branch
is turned.

§ 17. The following Plate (44.), representing a young shoot of inde-
pendent ivy, just beginning to think it would like to get something
to cling to, shows the way in which Nature brings subtle curvature
into forms that at first seem rigid. The stems of the young leaves
look nearly straight, and the sides of the projecting points, or
bastions, of the leaves themselves nearly so ; but on examination it
will be found that there is not a stem nor a leaf-edge but is a portion
of one infinite curve, if not of two or three. The main line of the
supporting stem is a very lovely one; and the little half-opened
leaves, in their thirteenth-century segmental simplicity (compare
Fig. 9. Plate 8. in Vol. III.), singularly spirited and beautiful. It
may, perhaps, interest the general reader to know that one of the
infinite curves derives its name from its supposed resemblance to
the climbing of ivy up a tree.

§ 18. I spoke just now of " well-composed " curves,—I mean curves
so arranged as to oppose and set each other olf, and yet united by
a common law; for as the beauty of every curve depends on the
unity of its several component lines, so the beauty of each group
of curves depends on their submission to some general law. In
forms which quickly attract the eye, the law which unites the
curves is distinctly manifest; but, in the richer compositions of

Nature, cunningly concealed by delicate infractions of it;—wilful-
nesses they seem, and forgetfulnesses, which, if once the law be
perceived, only increase our delight in it by showing that it is one
of equity, not of rigour, and allows, within certain limits, a kind
of individual liberty. Thus the system of unison which regulates
the magnolia shoot, in Plate 43., is formally expressed in Fig. 97.

-ffl* "Airsrij-

Every line has its origin in the point p, and the curves generally
diminish in intensity towards the extremities of the leaves, one
or two, however, again increasing their sweep near the points.
In vulgar ornamentation, entirely rigid laws of line are always
observed; and the common Greek honeysuckle and other such
formalisms are attractive to uneducated eyes, owing to their
manifest compliance with the first conditions of unity and
symmetry, being to really noble ornamentation what the sing-song
of a bad reader of poetry, laying regular emphasis on every required
syllable of every foot, is. to the varied, irregular, unexpected, in-

imitable cadence of the voice of a person of sense and feeling recit-
ing tlie same lines,—not incognizant of tlie rhythm, but delicately
bending it to the expression of passion, and the natural sequence of
the thought.

§ 19. In mechanically drawn patterns of dress, Alhambra and common
Moorish ornament, Greek mouldings, common flamboyant traceries,
common Corinthian and Ionic capitals, and such other work, lines
of this declared kind (generally to be classed under the head of
" doggrel ornamentation ") may be seen in rich profusion; and
they are necessarily the only kind of lines which can be felt or
enjoyed by persons who have been educated without reference to
natural forms ; their instincts being blunt,
and their eyes actually incapable of perceiv-
ing the inflexion of noble curves. But the
moment the perceptions have been refined
by reference to natural form, the eye re-
quires perpetual variation and transgres-
sion of the formal law. Take the simplest
possible condition of thirteenth-century
scroll-work, Fig. 98. The law or cadence
established is of a circling tendril, termi-
nating in an ivy-leaf. In vulgar design,
the curves of the circling tendril would
have been similar to each other, and might
have been drawn by a machine, or by
some mathematical formula. But in good
design all imitation by machinery is im-
possible. No curve is like another for an

instant; no branch springs at an expected point. A cadence is
observed, as in the returning clauses of a beautiful air in music ;
but every clause has its own change, its own surprises. The
enclosing form is here stiff and (nearly) straight-sided, in order to
oppose the circular scroll-work; but on looking close it will be
found that each of its sides is a portion of an infinite curve, almost
too delicate to be traced; except the short lowest one, which is
made quite straight, to oppose the rest.

281

script, Fig. 99., merely to show the variety introduced by the old
designers between page and page. And, in general, the reader
may take it for a settled law that, whatever can be done by
machinery, or imitated by formula, is not worth doing or imitating
at all.

§ 20. The quantity of admissible transgression of law varies with the
degree in which the ornamentation involves or admits imitation
of nature. Thus, if these ivy leaves in Fig. 99. were com-
pletely drawn in light and shade, they would not be properly
connected with the more or less regular sequences of the scroll;
and in very subordinate ornament, something like complete sym-
metry may be admitted, as in bead mouldings, chequerings, &c.
Also, the ways in which the transgression may be granted
vary infinitely; in the finest compositions it is perpetual, and
yet so balanced and atoned for as always to bring about more
beauty than if there had been no transgression. In a truly fine
mountain or organic line, if it is looked at in detail, no one would
believe in its being a continuous curve, or being subjected to any
fixed law. It seems broken, and bending a thousand ways;
perfectly free and wild, and yielding to every impulse. But,
after following with the eye three or four of its impulses, we
shall begin to trace some strange order among them; every

added movement will make the ruling intent clearer; and wlien the
whole life of the line is revealed at last, it will be found to have
been, throughout, as obedient to the true law of its course as the
stars in their orbits.

beautiful lines in general. We have now to consider the particular tain line,
groups of them belonging to mountains.

The lines which are produced by course of time upon hill con- ^
tours are mainly divisible into four systems.

1. Lines of Fall. Those which are wrought out on the solid
mass by the fall of water or of stones.

2. Lines of Projection. Those which are produced in debris
by the bounding of the masses, under the influence of their falling
force.

3. Lines of Escape. Those which are produced by the spread-
ing of debris from a given point over surfaces of varied shape.

4. Lines of Rest. Those which are assumed by debris when
in a state of comparative permanence and stability.

However little the reader may be acquainted with hills, I jy^e^
believe that, almost instinctively, he will perceive that the form

impossible one; and that the form at h is not only a possible but
probable one. The lines are equally formal in both. But in a,
the curve is a portion of a circle, meeting a level line: in 6 it is an
infinite line, getting less and less steep as it ascends.

Whenever a mass of mountain is worn gradually away by
forces descending from its top, it necessarily assumes, more or
less perfectly, according to the time for which it has been exposed,
and the tenderness of its substance, such contours as those at h,
for the simple reason that every stream and every falling grain of
sand gains in velocity and erosive power as it descends. Hence,
cutting away the ground gradually faster and faster, they produce
the most rapid curvature (provided the rock be hard enough)
towards the bottom of the hill.^
§ 22. But farther: in & it will be noticed that the lines always get
steeper as they fall more and more to the right; and I should think
the reader must feel that they look more natural, so drawn, than,
as at a, in unvarying curves.

This is no less easily accounted for. The simplest typical form
under which a hill can occur is that of a cone. Let a c b. Fig.
101., have been its original contour. Then the aqueous forces

IllllllIIlTn^. B

will cut away the shaded portions, reducing it to the outline
dee. Farther, in doing so, the water will certainly have formed
for itself gullies or channels from top to bottom. These, sup-

' I am afraid of becoming tiresome by going too far into the intricacies of this
most difficult subject; but I say " towards the bottom of the hill," because, when a
certain degree of verticality is reached, a counter protective influence begins to
establish itself, the stones and waterfalls bounding away from the brow of the preci-
pice into the air, and weai'ing it at the top only. Also it is evident that when the
curvature falls into a vertical cliff, as often happens, the maximum of curvature must
be somewhere above the brow of the cliff, as in the cliff itself it has again died
into a straight line.

285

CHAP. XTII.

posing them at equal distances round the cone, will appear, in
perspective, in the lines g h i. It does not, of course, matter
whether we consider the lines in this figure to represent the bottom
of the ravines, or the ridges between, both being formed on similar
curves; but the rounded lines in Fig. 100. would be those of
forests seen on the edges of each detached ridge.

§ 23. Now although a mountain is rarely perfectly conical, and never
divided by ravines at exactly equal distances, the law which is
seen in entire simplicity in Fig. 101., applies with a sway more or
less interrupted, but always manifest, to every convex and retiring
mountain form. All banks that thus turn away from the spectator
necessarily are thrown into perspectives like that of one side of this
figure; and although not divided with equality, their irregular
divisions crowd gradually together towards the distant edge, being
then less steep, and separate themselves towards the body of the
hill, being then more steep.

§ 24. It follows, also, that not only the whole of the nearer curves
will be steeper, but, if seen from below, the steepest parts of them
will be the more important. Supposing each, instead of a curve,
divided into a sloping line and a precipitous one, the perspective of
the precipice, raising its top continually, will give the whole cone
the shape of a or h in Fig. 102., in which, observe, the precipice is
of more importance, and the slope of less, precisely in proportion
to the nearness of the mass.

■

! s"!

§ 25. Fig. 102., therefore, will be the general type of the form of a
convex retiring hill symmetrically constructed. The precipitous
part of it may vary in height or in slope according to original
conformation; but, the heights being supposed equal along the
whole flank, the contours will be as in that figure; the various

rise and fall of real height altering the perspective appearance
accordingly, as we shall see presently, after examining the other
three kinds of line.

The fragments carried down by the torrents from the flanks
of the hill are of course deposited at the base of it. But they
are deposited in various ways, of which it is most difficult to
analyze the laws; for they are thrown down under the influence
partly of flowing water, partly of their own gravity, partly of
projectile force caused by their fall from the higher summits of
the hill; while the debris itself, after it has fallen, undergoes
farther modification by surface streamlets. But in a general way
debris descending from the hill side, a h, Fig. 103., will arrange
itself in a form approximating to the concave line d c, the larger
masses remaining undisturbed at the bottom, while the smaller
are gradually carried farther and farther by surface streams.

semiSalion of' stream coming down a ravine is kept by the steep sides of its
the fragments, gj^aj^jjgi concentrated force: but it no sooner reaches the
bottom, and escapes from its ravine, than it sj)reads in all
directions, or at least tries to choose a new channel at every
flood. Let a b c, Fig. 104., be three ridges of mountain. The
two torrents coming down the ravines between them meet, at d
and e, with the heaps of ground formerly thrown down by their

§ 26.

2. Lines of
Projection.
Produced by
fragments
bounding, or
carried for-
ward from the
bases of hills.

own agency. These heaps being more or less in the form of cones,
the torrent has a tendency to divide upon their apex, like water
poured on the top of a sugar-loaf, and branch into the radiating
channels e x, e y, &c. The stronger it is, the more it is disposed
to rush straightforward, or with little curvature, as in the line e x,

with the impetus it has received in coming down the ravine ; the
weaker it is, the more readily it will lean to one side or the other,
and fall away in the lines of escape, e y or e h ; but of course
at times of highest flood it fills all its possible channels, and
invents a few new ones, of which afterwards the straightest will
be kept by the main stream, and the lateral curves occupied by
smaller branches : the whole system corresponding precisely to
the action of the ribs of the young leaf, as shown in Plate 8. of
Vol. III., especially in Fig. 6.,—the main torrent, like the main
rib, making the largest fortune, i.e., raising the highest heap of
gravel and dust.

§ 28. ^^y easily be imagined that when the operation takes place
on a large scale, the mass of earth thus deposited in a gentle slope
at the mountain's foot becomes available for agricultural purposes,
and that then it is of the greatest importance to prevent the stream
from branching into various channels at its will, and pouring
fresh sand over the cultivated fields. Accordingly, at the mouth
of every large ravine in the Alps, where the peasants know how
to live and how to work, the stream is artificially embanked, and
compelled as far as possible to follow the central line down the

.. I. s
,5.

r -

'i .

1. ■ _

287

CHAP. XVII.

iv. banks.

cone. Hence, when the traveller passes along any great valley,—
as that of the Rhone or Arve,—into which minor torrents are
poured by lateral ravines, he will find himself every now and then
ascending a hill of moderate slope, at the top of which he will
cross a torrent, or its bed, and descend by another gradual slope
to the usual level of the valley. In every such case, his road has
ascended a tongue of debris, and has crossed the embanked torrent
carried by force along its centre.

Under such circumstances, the entire tongue or heap of land
ceases of course to increase, until the bed of the confined torrent
is partially choked by its perpetual deposit. Then in some day of
violent rain the waves burst their fetters, branch at their own
will, cover the fields of some unfortunate farmer with stones and
slime, according to the torrent's own idea of the new form which
it has become time to give to the great tongue of land, carry
away the road and the bridge together, and arrange everything to
their own liking. But the road is again painfully traced among
the newly fallen debris; the embankment and bridge again built
for the stream, now satisfied with its outbreak ; and the tongue of
land submitted to new processes of cultivation for a certain series
of years. When, however, the torrent is exceedingly savage, and
generally of a republican temper, the outbreaks are too frequent
and too violent to admit of any cultivation of the tongue of land.
A few straggling alder or thorn bushes, their roots buried in
shingle, and their lower branches fouled with slime, alone relieve
with ragged spots of green the broad waste of stones and dust.
The utmost that can be done is to keep the furious stream from
choosing a new channel in every one of its fits of passion, and
remaining in it afterwards, thus extending its devastation in en-
tirely unforeseen directions. The land which it has brought
down must be left a perpetual sacrifice to its rage ; but in the
moment of its lassitude it is brought back to its central course,
and compelled to forego for a few weeks or months the luxury
of deviation.

§ 29. On the other hand, when, owing to the nature of the valley
above, the stream is gentle, and the sediment which it brings down
small in quantity, it may be retained for long years in its constant

i--

i i

1;
it

ill

path, while the sides of the bank of earth it has borne down are
clothed with pasture and forest, seen in the distance of the great
valley as a promontory of sweet verdure, along which the central
stream passes with an influence of blessing, submitting itself to
the will of the husbandman for irrigation, and of the mechanist
for toil; now nourishing the pasture, and now grinding the corn,
of the land which it has first formed, and now waters,
§ 30. I have etched above, Plate 35., a portion of the flank of the
valley of Chamouni, which presents nearly every class of line
under discussion, and will enable the reader to understand their
relations at once. It represents, as was before stated, the crests
of the Montagues de la Cote and Taconay, shown from base
to summit, with the Glacier des Bossons and its moraine. The
reference figure given at p. 217. will enable the reader to distin-
guish its several orders of curves, as follows :

h r. Aqueous curves of fall, at the base of the Tapia ; very
characteristic. Similar curves are seen in multitude on
the two crests beyond as 6 c, c b.
d e. First lines of projection. The debris falling from the glacier

and the heights above.
k, I, n. Three lines of escape. A considerable torrent (one of
whose falls is the well - known Cascade des Pelerins

' The following extract from my private diary, giving an account of the destruction
of the beauty of this waterfall in the year 1849, which I happened to witness, may be
interesting to those travellers who remember it before that period. The house spoken
of as "Joseph's," is that of the guide Joseph Coutet, in a village about a mile below
the cascade, between it and the Arve : that noticed as of the " old avalanche " is a
hollow in the forest, cleft by a great avalanche which fell from the Aiguille du Midi
in the spring of 1844. It struck down about a thousand full-grown pines, and left
an open track in the midst of the wood, fi-oni the cascade nearly down to the
village.

" Evening, Thursday, June 28th. I set out for the Cascade des Pelerins as usual;
when we reached Joseph's house, we heard a sound from the torrent like low thunder,
or like that of a more distant and heavier fall. A peasant said something to Joseph,
who stopped to listen, then nodded, and said to me, 'La cascade vient de se deborder.'
Thinking there would be time enough afterwards to ask for explanations, I pushed
up the hill almost without asking a question. When we reached the place of
the old avalanche, Joseph called to me to stop and see the torrent increase. There
was at this time a dark cloud on the Aiguille du Midi, do^vn to its base;
the upper part of the torrent was brown, the lower white, not larger than

descends from behind tlie promontory h : its natural
or proper course would be to dasli straight forward down
the line f g, and part of it does so ; but erratic branches
of it slide away round the promontory, in the lines of
escape, h, I, &c. Each row of trees marks, therefore,
an old torrent bed, for the torrent always throws heaps
of stones up along its banks, on which the pines, growing
higher than on the neighbouring ground, indicate its
course by their supremacy. When the escaped stream is
feeble, it steals quietly away down the steepest part of the
slope; that is to say, close under the promontory, at i.
If it is stronger, the impetus from the hill above shoots it
farther out, in the line k; if stronger still, at I; in each
case it curves gradually round as it loses its onward force,
and falls more and more languidly to leeward, down the
slope of the debris.
r s. A line which, perhaps, would be more properly termed of
limitation than of escape, being that of the base or
termination of the heap of torrent debris, which in shape

usual. The brown part came down, I thought, with exceeding slowness, reaching
the cascade gradually ; as it did so, tlie fall rose to about once and a half its
usual height, and in the five minutes' time that I paused (it could not be more)
turned to the colour of slate, I then pushed on as hard as I could. "W hen I reached
the last ascent I was obliged to stop for breath, but got up before the fall could
sensibly have diminished in body of water. It was then nearly twice as far cast out
from the rock as last night, and the water nearly black in colour ; and it had the
appearance, as it broke and separated at the outer part of the fall, of a shower of frag-
ments of flat slate. The reason of this appearance I could not comprehend, unless the
water was so mixed with mud that it drew out flat and unctuously when it broke ; but
so it was : instead of spray it looked like a shower of dirty flat bits of slate—only with
a lustre, as if they had been wet first. This, however, was the least of it, for the
torrent carried with it nearly as much weight of stone as water; the stones varying
in size, the average being, I suppose, about that of a hen's egg ; but I do not suppose
that at any instant the arch of water was without four or five as large as a man's fist,
and often came larger ones,—all vomited forth with the explosive power of a small
volcano, and falling in a continual shower as thick, constant, and, had it not been
mixed with the crash of the fall, as loud as a heavy fire of infantry ; they bounded and
leaped in the basin of the fall like hailstones in a thunder-shower. As we watched
the fall it seemed convulsively to diminish, and suddenly showed, as it shortened, the
rock underneath it, which I could hardly see yesterday : as I cried out to Joseph it
rose again, higher than ever, and continued to rise, till it all but reached the snow on
the rock opposite. It then became very fantastic and variable, increasing and
diminishing in the space of two or three seconds, and partially changing its directions.
After watching it for half an hour or so, I determined to try and make some memo-

corresponds exactly to the curved lip of a wave, after it
has broken, as it slowly stops upon a shallow shore.

■ Within this line the ground is entirely composed of heaps
of stones, cemented by granite dust, and cushioned with
moss, while outside of it all is smooth pasture. The
pines enjoy the stony ground particularly, and hold large
meetings upon it, but the alders are shy of it; and, when it
has come to an end, form a triumphal procession all round
its edge, following the concave line. The correspondent
curves above are caused by similar lines in which the
debris has formerly stopped.

§31- I found it a matter of the greatest difficulty to investigate the
picturesque characters of these lines of projection and escape,
because, as presented to the eye, they are always modified by
perspective; and it is almost a physical impossibility to get a
true profile of any of the slopes, they round and melt so con-
stantly into one another. Many of them, roughly measured, are
nearly circular in tendency ^; but I believe they are all portions

randa. Coutet brought me up a jug of water ; I stooped to dip my brush, when
Coutet caught my arm, saying, ' Tenez ;' at the same instant I heard a blow, like
the going off of a heavy gun, two or three miles away; I looked up, and as I did, the
cascade sank before my eyes, and fell back to the rock. Neither of us spoke for an
instant or two ; then Coutet said,' C'est une pierre, qui est logee dans le creux,' or
words to that effect: in fact, he had seen the stone come down as he called to me. I
thought also that nothing more had happened, and watched the destroyed fall only
with interest, until, as suddenly as it had fallen, it rose again, though not to its
former height ; and Coutet, stooping down, exclaimed, ' Ce n'est pas c'a, le roc est
perce ;' in effect, a hole was now distinctly visible in the cup which turned the stream,
through which the water whizzed as from a burst pipe. The cascade, however, con-
tinued to increase, until this new channel was concealed, and T was maintaining to
Coutet that he must have been mistaken (and that the water only siruc/i on the outer
rock, having changed its mode of fall above), when again it fell; and the two girls,
who had come up from the chalet, expressed their opinion at once, that the ' cascade
est finie.' This time all was plain ; the water gushed in a violent jet d'eau through
the new aperture, hardly any of it escaping above. It rose again gradually, as the
hole was choked with stones, and again fell ; but presently sprang out almost to its
first elevation (the water being by this time in much less body), and retained very
nearly the form it had yesterday, until I got tired of looking at it, and went down to
the little chalet and sat down before its door. 1 had not been there five minutes before
the cascade fell, and rose no more."

' It might be thought at first that the line to which such curves would approximate
would be the cycloid, as the line of quickest descent. But in reality the contour is
modified by perpetual sliding of the debris under the influence of rain ; and by the

291

CUAP. XVII.

iv. banks.

of infinite curves either modified by the concealment or destruction
of the lower lips of debris, or by their junction with straight lines
of slope above, throwing the longest limb of the curve upwards.
Fig. 1., in Plate 45. opposite, is a simple but complete example
from Chamouni; the various overlapping and concave lines at
the bottom being the limits of the mass at various periods, more
or less broken afterwards by the peasants, either by removing
stones for building, or throwing them back at the edges here and
there, out of the way of the plough; but even with all these
breaks, their natural unity is so sweet and perfect, that, if the
reader will turn the plate upside down, he will see I have no
diificulty (merely adding a quill or two) in turning them into a
bird's wing (Fig. 2.), a little ruffled indeed, but still graceful,
and not of such a form as one would have supposed likely to be
designed and drawn, as indeed it was, by the rage of a torrent.

But we saw in Chap. vii. § 10. that this very rage was, in
fact, a beneficent power,—creative, not destructive ; and as all
its apparent cruelty is overruled by the law of love, so all its
aj)parent disorder is overruled by the law of loveliness : the hand
of God, leading the wrath of the torrent to minister to the life of
mankind, guides also its grim surges by the laws of their delight;
and bridles the bounding rocks, and appeases the flying foam, till
they lie down in the same lines that lead forth the fibres of the
down on a cygnet's breast.

§ 32. The straight slopes with which these curves unite themselves
below, in Plate 35. (/ g in reference figure), are those spoken of
in the outset as lines of rest. But I defer to the next chapter
the examination of these, which are a separate family of lines (not
curves at all), in order to reassemble the conclusions we have now
obtained respecting curvature in mountains, and apply them to
questions of art.

And, first, it is of course not to be supposed that these sym-
metrical laws are so manifest in their operation as to force them-
selves on the observance of men in general. They are interrupted,

bounding of detached fragments with continually increased momentum. I was quite
unable to get at anything like the exjiression of a constant law among the examples I
studied in the Alps, except only the great laws of delicacy and changefulness in all
curves whatsoever.

necessarily, by every fantastic accident in the original conformation
of the hills, which, according to the hardness of their rocks, more
or less accept or refuse the authority of general law. Still, the
farther we extend our observance of hills, the more we shall be
struck by the continual roundness and softness which it seems the
object of nature to give to every form ; so that, when crags look
sharp and distorted, it is not so much that they are unrounded, as
that the various curves are more subtly accommodated to the
angles, and that, instead of being worn into one sweeping and
smooth descent, like the surface of a knoll or down, the rock is
wrought into innumerable minor undulations, its own fine anatomy
showing through all.

§ 33. Perhaps the mountain which I have drawn on the opposite page
(Plate 46.^) is, in its original sternness of mass, and in the com-
plexity of lines into which it has been chiselled, as characteristic
an instance as could be given by way of general type. It is one
of no name or popular interest, but of singular importance in
the geography of Switzerland, being the angle buttress of the
great northern chain of the Alps (the chain of the Jungfrau and
Gemmi), and forming the promontory round which the Rhone
turns to the north-west, at Martigny. It is composed of an
intensely hard gneiss (slaty crystalline), in which the plates of
mica are set for the most part

north and south, as in Fig. 105.,
and giving the point therefore,
the utmost possible strength,
which, however, cannot prevent
it from being rent gradually by
enormous curved fissures, and
separated into huge vertical flakes
and chasms, just at the lower

promontory, as seen in Plate 46., and (in plan) in Fig. 105.
The whole of the upper surface of the promontory is wrought by

' I owe Mr. Le Keux sincere thanks, and not a little admiration, for the care
and skill with which he has followed, on a much reduced scale, the detail of this
drawing.

the old glaciers into furrows and strias more notable than any I
ever saw in the Alps.

§ 34, Now observe, we have here a piece of nature's work which she
has assuredly been long in executing, and which is in peculiarly
firm and stable material. It is in her best rock (slaty crystalline),
at a point important for all her geographical purposes, and at the
degree of mountain elevation especially adapted to the observation
of mankind. We shall therefore probably ascertain as much of
Nature's mind about these things in this piece of work as she
usually allows us to see all at once.

§ 35. If the reader will take a pencil, and, laying tracing paper
over the plate, follow a few of its lines, he will (unless before
accustomed to accurate mountain-drawing) be soon amazed by the
complexity, endlessness, and harmony of the curvatures. He will
find that there is not one line in all that rock which is not an
infinite curve, and united in some intricate way with others, and
suggesting others unseen; and if it were the reality, instead of
my drawing, which he had to deal with, he would find the infinity,
in a little while, altogether overwhelm him. But even in this
imperfect sketch, as he traces the multitudinous involution of
fioAving line, passing from swift to slight curvature, or slight to
swift, at every instant, he will, I think, find enough to convince
him of the truth of what has been advanced respecting the natural
appointment of curvature as the first element of all loveliness
in form.

§ 36. " Nay, but there are hard and straight lines mingled with those
curves continually." True, as we have said so often, just as shade
is mixed with light. Angles and undulations may rise and flow
continually, one through or over the other; but the opposition is
in quantity nearly always the same, if the mass is to be pleasant
to the eye. In the example previously given (Plate 40.), the
limestone bank above Villeneuve, it is managed in a difi"erent way,
but is equal in degree ; the lower portion of the hill is of soft rock
in thin laminte ; the upper mass is a solid and firm bed, yet not
so hard as to stand all weathers. The lower portion therefore is
rounded into almost unbroken softness of bank; the upper sur-
mounts it as a rugged wall, and the opposition of the curve and

angle is just as complete as in the first example, in which one was
continually mingled with the other.

§ 37. Next, note the quantity in these hills. It is an element on
which I shall have to insist more in spealdng of vegetation; but
I must not pass it by, here, since, in fact, it constitutes one of the
essential differences between hills of first-rate magnificence, and
inferior ones. Not that there is want of quantity even in the
lower ranges, but it is a quantity of inferior things, and therefore
more easily represented or suggested. On a Highland hill side
are multitudinous clusters of fern and heather; on an Alpine one,
multitudinous groves of chestnut and pine. The number of the
things may be the same, but the sense of infinity is in the latter
case far greater, because the number is of nobler things. Indeed,
so far as mere magnitude of space occupied on the field of the
horizon is the measure of objects, a bank of earth ten feet high
may, if we stoop to the foot of it, be made to occupy just as much
of the sky as that bank of mountain at Villeneuve; nay, in many
respects its little ravines and escarpments, watched with some help
of imagination, may become very sufficiently representative to us
of those of the great mountain ; and in classing all water-worn
mountain-ground under the general and humble term of Banks, I
mean to imply this relationship of structure between the smallest
eminences and the highest. But in this matter of superimposed
quantity the distinctions of rank are at once fixed. The heap of
earth bears its few tufts of moss or knots of grass ; the Highland or
Cumberland mountain its honeyed heathers or scented ferns; but the
mass of the bank at Martigny or Villeneuve has a vineyard in every
cranny of its rocks, and a chestnut grove on every crest of them.

§ 38. This is no poetical exaggeration. Look close into that plate
(46.). Every little circular stroke in it among the rocks means,
not a clump of copse nor wreath of fern, but a walnut tree, or
a Spanish chestnut, fifty or sixty feet high. Nor are the little
curves, thus significative of trees, laid on at random. They are
not indeed counted, tree by tree, but they are most carefully
distributed in the true proportion and quantity ; or if I have erred
at all, it was from mere fatigue, on the side of sparingness. The
minute mounds and furrows scattered up the side of that great

promontory, when they are actually approached, after three or four
hours' climbing, turn into independent hills with true parks of
lovely pasture land enclosed among them, and avenue after avenue
of chestnuts, walnuts, and pines bending round their bases; while
in the deeper dingles, unseen in the drawing, nestle populous
villages, literally bound down to the rock by enormous trunks of
vine, which, first trained lightly over the loose stone roofs, have in
process of years cast their fruitful net over the whole village, and
fastened it to the ground under their purple weight and wayward
coils, as securely as ever human heart was fastened to earth by the
net of the Flatterer.

§ 39. And it is this very richness of incident and detail which
renders Switzerland so little attractive in its subjects to the
ordinary artist. Observe, this study of mine in Plate 46. does not
profess to be a 'picture at all. It is a mere sketch or catalogue of
all that there is on the mountain side, faithfully written out, but
no more than should be put down by any conscientious painter
for mere guidance, before he begins his work, properly so called;
and in finishing such a subject no trickery nor short-hand is
of any avail whatsoever; there are a certain number of trees
to be drawn; and drawn they must be, or the place will not bear
its proper character. They are not misty wreaths of soft wood
suggestible by a sweep or two of the brush; but arranged and
lovely clusters of trees, clear in the mountain sunlight, each
specially grouped, and as little admitting any carelessness of
treatment, though five miles distant, as if they were within a few
yards of us; the whole meaning and power of the scene being
involved in that one fact of quantity. It is not large merely by
multitude of tons of rock,^—the number of tons is not measurable ;
it is not large by elevation of angle on the horizon,—a house-roof
near us rises higher; it is not large by faintness of aerial per-
spective,—in a clear day it often looks as if we could touch the
summit with the hand. But it is large by this one unescapable
fact that, from the summit to the base of it, there are of timber
trees so many countable thousands. The scene differs from
subjects not Swiss by including hundreds of other scenes within
itself, and is mighty, not by scale, but by aggregation.

§ 40. And this is more especially and humiliatingly true of pine
forest. Nearly all other kinds of wood may be reduced, over
large spaces, to undetailed masses; but there is nothing but
patience for pines ; and this has been one of the principal reasons
why artists call Switzerland " unpicturesque." There may per-
haps be, in the space of a Swiss valley which comes into a
picture, from five to ten millions of well grown pines.^ Every
one of these pines must be dra^vn before the scene can be. And
a pine cannot be represented by a round stroke, nor by an
upright one, nor even by an angular one; no conventionalism will
express a pine ; it must be legitimately drawn, with a light side
and dark side, and a soft gradation from the top downwards, or
it does not look like a pine at all. Most artists think it not
desirable to choose a subject which involves the drawing of ten
millions of trees; because, supposing they could even do four or
five in a minute, and worked for ten hours a day, their picture
would still take them ten years before they had finished its
pine forests. For this, and other similar reasons, it is declared
usually that Switzerland is ugly and unpicturesque; but that
is not so; it is only that we cannot paint it. If we could, it
would be as interesting on the canvass as it is in reality; and
a painter of fruit and flowers might just as well call a human
figure unpicturesque, because it was to him unmanageable, as
the ordinary landscape-effect painter speak in depreciation of
the Alps.

§ 41. It is not probable that any subject such as we have just been
describing, involving a necessity of ten years' labour, will be
executed by the modern landscape school,—at least, until its Pre-
Raphaelitic tendencies become much more developed than they
are yet; nor was it desirable that they should have been by
Turner, whose fruitful invention would have been unwisely
arrested for a length of time on any single subject, however
beautiful. But with his usual certainty of perception, he fastened
at once on this character of " quantity," as the thing to be

' Allow ten feet square for average space to each pine ; suppose the A'allej seen
only for five miles of its length, and the pine district two miles hroad on each side—
a low estimate of breadth also ; this would give five millions.

expressed, in one way or another, in all grand mountain-drawing;
and the subjects of his on which I have chiefly dwelt in the First
Volume (chapter on the Inferior Mountains, § 16., &c.) are dis-
tinguished from the work of other painters in nothing so much as
in this redundance. Beautiful as they are in colour, graceful in
fancy, powerful in execution,—in none of these things do they
stand so much alone as in plain, calculable, quantity; he having
always on the average twenty trees or rocks where other people
have only one, and winning his victories not more by skill of
generalship than by overwhelming numerical superiority.

§ 42, I say his works are distinguished in this more than in anything
else, not because this is their highest quality, but because it is
peculiar to them. Invention, colour, grace of arrangement, we
may find in Tintoret and Veronese in various manifestation;
but the expression of the infinite redundance of natural land-
scape had never been attempted until Turner's time; and the
treatment of the masses of mountain in the Daphne and Leucippus,
Golden Bough, and Modern Italy, is wholly without precursor-
ship in art.

Nor, observe, do I insist upon this quantity merely as arithme-
tical, or as if it were j^roducible by repetition of similar things.
It would be easy to be redundant, if multiplication of the same
idea constituted fulness ; and since Turner first introduced these
types of landscape, myriads of vulgar imitations of them have
been produced, whose perpetrators have supposed themselves
disciples or rivals of Turner, in covering their hills with white
dots for forest, and their foregrounds with yellow sparklings for
herbage. But the Turnerian redundance is never monotonous.
Of the thousands of groups of touches which, with him, are
necessary to constitute a single bank of hill, not one but has some
special character, and is as much a separate invention as the whole'
plan of the picture. Perhaps this may be sufficiently understood
by an attentive examination of the detail introduced by him in his
St. Gothard subject, as shown in Plate 37.

§ 43. I do not, indeed, know if the examples I have given from
natural scenes, though they are as characteristic as I could well
choose, are enough to accustom the reader to the character of true

mountain lines, and to enable him to recognise such lines in other
instances ; but if not, at all events they may serve to elucidate
the main points, and guide to more complete examination of the
subject, if it interests him, among the hills themselves. And
if, after he has pursued the inquiry long enough to feel the
certitude of the laws which I have been endeavouring to illus-
trate, he turns back again to art, I am well assured it will be
with a strange recognition of unconceived excellence, and a
newly quickened pleasure in the unforeseen fidelity, that he will
trace the pencilling of Turner upon his hill drawings. I do
not choose to spend, in this work, the labour and time which
would be necessary to analyze, as I have done the drawing
of the St. Gothard, any other of Turner's important mountain
designs; for the reader must feel the disadvantage they are under
in being either reduced in scale, or divided into fragments : and
therefore these chapters are always to be considered merely as
memoranda for reference before the pictures which the reader may
have it in his power to examine. But this one drawing of the St.
Gothard, as it has already elucidated for us Turner's knowledge
of crest structure, will be found no less wonderful in the fulness
with which it illustrates his perception of the lower aqueous and
other curvatures. If the reader will look back to the etching of the
entire subject, Plate 21., he will now discern I beHeve, without
the necessity of my lettering them for him, the lines of fall,
rounded down from the crests until they plunge into the over-
hanging precipices; the lines of projection, where the fallen stones
extend the long concave sweep from the couloir, pushing the
torrent against the bank on the other side; in the opening of the
ravine he will perceive the oblique and parallel inclination of its
sides, following the cleavage of the beds in the diagonal line a b of
the reference figure; and, finally, in the gi-eat slope and precipice
on the right of it, he will recognise one of the grandest types
of the peculiar mountain mass which Turner always chose by
preference to illustrate, the " slope above wall " of cZ in Fig. 13.
p. 161.; compare also the last chapter, §§ 26, 27. It will be
seen, by reference to my sketch of the spot, Plate 20., that this
confirmation does actually exist there with great definiteness :

Turner has only enlarged and thrown it into more numerous
alternations of light and shade. As these could not be shown
in the etching, I have given, in the frontispiece, this passage
nearly of its real size : the exquisite greys and hlues by which
Turner has rounded and thrown it back, are necessarily lost in
the plate; but the grandeur of his simple cliff and soft curves
of sloping bank above is in some degree rendered.

We must yet dwell for a moment on the detail of the rocks
on the left in Plate 37., as they approach nearer the eye, turning
at the same time from the light. It cost me trouble to etch
this passage, and yet half its refinements are still missed; for
Turner has put his whole strength into it, and wrought out the
curving of the gneiss beds with a subtlety which could not be at
all approached in the time I had to spare for this plate. Enough,
however is expressed to illustrate the points in question.

§ 44. We have first, observe, a rounded bank, broken, at its edges,
into cleavages by inclined beds. I thought it would be well, lest
the reader should think I dwelt too much on this particular scene,
to give an instance of similar structure from another spot; and
therefore I daguerreotyped the cleavages of a slope of gneiss just
above the Cascade des Pelerins, Chamouni, corresponding in posi-
tion to this bank of Turner's. Plate 48. (facing p. 311.), copied
by Mr. Armytage from the daguerreotype, represents, neces-
sarily in a quite unprejudiced and impartial way, the structure
at present in question; and the reader may form a sufficient
idea, from this plate, of the complexity of descending curve and
foliated rent, in even a small piece of mountain foreground
where the gneiss beds are tolerably continuous. But Turner
had to add to such general complexity the expression of a more
than ordinary undulation in the beds of the St. Gothard
gneiss.

§ 45. If the reader will look back to Chapter ii. § 13., he will find
it stated that this scene is approached out of the defile of Dazio
Grande, of which the impression was still strong on Turner's

' The white spots on the brow of the little cliff are lichens, only four or five inches
broad.

mind, and where only he could see, close at hand, the nature of
the rocks in a good section. It most luckily happens that De
Saussure was interested by the rocks at the same spot, and has
given the following account of them, Voyages, § § 1801, 1802 :—

" A une lieue de Faido, Ton passe le T6sin pour le repasser
1)ient6t apres [see the old bridge in Turner's view, carried away
in mine], et Ton trouve sur sa rive droite des couches d'une roche
feuilletee, qui montent du Cote du Nord.

" On voit clairement que depuis que les granits veines ont etc
remplaces par des pierres moins solides, tantot les rochers se sont
eboules et ont ete recouverts par la terre vegetale, tantot leur
situation primitive a subi des changements irreguliers.

" § 1802. Mais bientot apres, on monte itm un chemin en cor-
niche cm dessus du Tdsin, qui se prdcijyite entre des rochers avec
la plus grande violence. Ces rochers sont la si serres, qu'il n'y
a de place que pour la riviere et pour le chemin, et memo en
quelques endroits, celui-ci est entierement pris sur le roc. Je
fis a pied cette mont6e, pour examiner avec soin ces beaux rochers,
digues de tout Vattention d\in amateur.

" Les veines de ce granit forment en plusieurs endroits des
zigzags redoubles, precisement comme ces anciennes tapisseries,
connues sous le nom de points d'Hongrie ; et la, on ne peut pas
prononcer si les veines de la pierre, sont ou ne sont pas paralleles
a ses couches. Cependant ces veines reprennent aussi dans
quelques places, une direction constante, et cette direction est bien
la meme que celle des couches. II paroit meme qu'en divers
endroits ou ces veines ont la forme d'un sigma ou d'une M
couchee g, ce sont les grandes jambes du sigma, qui ont la
direction des couches. Enfin, j'observai plusieurs couches, qui
dans le milieu du leur epaisseur paroissoient remplies de ces veines
en zigzag, tandis qu'aupres de leurs bords, on les voyoit toutes en
lignes droites."

§ 46. If the reader will now examine Turner's work at the point x
in the reference figure, and again on the stones in the fore-
ground, comparing it finally with the fragment of the rocks which

301

CHAP. XVII.

iv. banks.

happened fortunately to come into my foreground in Plate 30.,
rising towards the left, and of which I have etched the structure
with some care, though at the time I had quite forgotten Saussure's
notice of the peculiar M-shaped zigzags of the gneiss at the spot,
I believe he will have enough evidence before him, taken all
in all, to convince him of Turner's inevitable perception, and
of the entire supremacy of his mountain drawing over all that
had previously existed. And if he is able to refer, even to
the engravings (though I desire always that what I state should
be tested by the drawings only) of any others of his elaborate
hill-subjects, and will examine their details with careful refer-
ence to the laws explained in this chapter, he will find that
the Turnerian promontories and banks are ahvays simply right,
and that in all respects; that their gradated curvatures and
nodding cliffs, and redundant sequence of folded glen and
feathery glade, are, in all their seemingly fanciful beauty, literally
the most downright plainspeaking that has as yet been uttered
about hills; and differ from all antecedent work, not in being
ideal, but in being, so to speak, pictorial casts of the ground.
Such a drawing as that of the Yorkshire Richmond, looking down
the river, in the England Series, is even better than a model
of the ground, because it gives the aerial perspective, and is
better than a photograph of the ground, because it exag-
gerates no shadows, while it unites the veracities both of model
and photograph.

§ 47. Nor let it be thought that it was an easy or creditable thing to
treat mountain ground with this faithfulness in the days when
Turner executed those draAvings. In the Encyclopaedia Britannica
(Edinburgh, 1797), under article ''Drawing," the following are
the directions given for the production of a landscape :—

" If he is to draw a landscape from nature, let him take his
station on a rising ground, where he will have a large horizon,
and mark his tablet into three divisions, downwards from top to
the bottom; and divide in his own mind the landscape he is to
take into three divisions also. Then let him turn his face directly
opposite to the midst of the horizon, keeping his body fixed, and
draw what is directly before his eyes upon the middle division of

the tablet; then turn Ms head, hut not his body S to the left hand,
and delineate what he views there, joining it pro^Derly to what he
had done before; and, lastly, do the same by what is to be seen
upon his right hand, laying down everything exactly, both with
respect to distance and proportion. One example is given in
plate clxviii.

" The best artists of late, in drawing their landscapes, make
them shoot away,, one part lower than another. Those who make
their landscapes mount up higher and higher, as if they stood at
the bottom of a hill to take the prospect, commit a great error;
the best way is to get upon a rising ground, make the nearest
objects in the piece the highest, and those that are farther off
to shoot away lower and lower till they come almost level with
the line of the horizon, lessening everything proportionably to
its distance, and observing also to make the objects fainter and
less distinct the farther they are removed from the eye. He
must make all his lights and shades fall one way, and let every-
thing have its proper motion : as trees shaken by the wind, the
small boughs bending more, and the large ones less; water agitated
by the wind, and dashing against ships or boats, or falling from a
precipice upon rocks and stones, and spirting up again into the
air, and sprinkling all about; clouds also in the air now gathered
with the winds; now violently condensed into hail, rain, and the
like,—always remembering, that whatever motions are caused by
the wind must be made all to move the same way, because the
wind can blow but one way at once."

Such was the state of the public mind, and of public instruction,
at the time when Claude, Poussin, and Salvator were in the zenith
of their reputation ; such were the precepts which, even to the close
of the century, it was necessary for a young painter to comply with
during the best part of the years he gave to study. Take up one
of Turner's views of our Yorkshire dells, seen from about a hawk's
height of pause above the sweep of its river, and with it in your
hand, side by side with the old Encyclopsedia paragraph, consider

' What a comfortable, as well as intelligent, operation, sketching from nature must
have been in those days !

804

TART V.

what must have been the man's strength, who, on a sudden, passed
from such precept to such practice.

§ 48. On a sudden it was; for, even yet a youth, and retaining
profound respect for all older artists' ways of tvorJc, he followed
his own will fearlessly in choice of scene; and already in the
earliest of his coast drawings there are as daring and strange
decisions touching the site of the spectator as in his latest works ;
looldngs down and up into coves and clouds, as defiant of all
former theories touching possible perspective, or graceful com-
ponence of subject, as, a few years later, his system of colour
was of the theory of the brown tree. Nor was the step remark-
able merely for its magnitude,—for the amount of progress made
in a few years. It was much more notable by its direction.
The discovery of the true structure of hill banks had to be
made by Turner, not merely in advance of the men of his day,
but in contradiction to them. Examine the works of contempo-
rary and preceding landscapists, and it will be found that the
universal practice is to make the tops of all cliffs broken and
rugged, their bases smooth and soft, or concealed with wood.
No one had ever observed the contrary structure, the bank
rounded at the top, and broken on the flank. And yet all the
hills of any importance which are met with throughout Low-
land Europe are, properly speaking, high banks, for the most
part following the courses of rivers, and forming a step from
the high ground, of Miich the country generally consists, to the
river level. Thus almost the whole of France, though, on the
face of it, flat, is raised from 300 to 500 feet above the level of
the sea, and is traversed by valleys either formed by, or directing,
the course of its great rivers. In these valleys lie all its principal
towns, surrounded, almost without exception, by ranges of hills
covered with wood or vineyard. Ascending these hills, we find
ourselves at once in an elevated plain, covered with corn and
lines of apple trees, extending to the next river side, where we
come to the brow of another hill, and descend to the city and
valley beneath it. Our own valleys in Northumberland, York-
shire, Derbyshire, and Devonshire, are cut in the same manner
through vast extents of elevated land; the scenery which

CHAP. XVII.

interests the traveller .chiefly, as he passes through even the rpiost
broken parts of those counties, being simply that of the high
hanks which rise from the shores of the Dart or the Derwent,
the Wharfe or the Tees. In all cases, when these banks are
surmounted, the sensation is one of disappointment, as the
adventurer iinds himself, the moment he has left the edge of the
ravine, in a waste of softly undulating moor or arable land, hardly
deserving the title of hill country. As we advance into the
upper districts the fact remains still the same, although the banks
to be climbed are higher, the ravines grander, and the interme-
diate land more broken. The majesty of an isolated peak is still
comparatively rare, and nearly all the most interesting pieces of
scenery are glens or passes, which, if seen from a height great
enough to command them in all their relations, would be found
in reality little more than trenches excavated through broad
masses of elevated land, and expanding at intervals into the
wide basins which are occupied by the glittering lake or smiling
plain.

§ 49. All these facts had been entirely ignored by artists; nay,
almost by geologists, before Turner's time. He saw them at
once ; fathomed them to the uttermost, and, partly owing to early
association, partly, perhaps, to the natural pleasure of working a
new mine discovered by himself, devoted his best powers to their
illustration, passing by with somewhat less attention the condi-
tions of broken-summited rock, which had previously been the
only ones known. And if we now look back to his treatment of
the crest of Mont Pilate, in the figure given at the close of the
last chapter, we shall understand better the nature and strength
of the instinct which compelled him to sacrifice the peaked summit,
and to bring the whole mountain within a lower enclosing line.
In that figure, however, the dotted peak interferes with the
perception of the form finally determined upon, which, there-
fore, I repeat here (Fig. 106 over leaf), as Turner gave it in
colour. The eye may not at first detect the law of ascent in the
peaks, but if the height of any one of them were altered, the
general form would instantly be perceived to be less agreeable.

306

TART V.

Fig. 107. shows that they are disposed within an infinite curve,
A c, from which the last crag falls a little to conceal the law,
while the terminal line at the other extremity, A is a minor
echo of the whole contour.

§ 50. I must pause to make one exception to my general statement
that this structure had been entirely ignored. The reader was,
perhaps, surprised by the importance I attached to the fragment of
mountain background by Masaccio, given in Plate 13. of the third
volume. If he looks back to it now, his surprise will be less.
It was a complete recognition of the laws of the lines of aqueous
sculpture, asserted as Turner's was, in the boldest opposition
to the principles of rock drawing of the time. It presents even
smoother and broader masses than any which I have shown as
types of hill form; but it must be remembered that Masaccio
had seen only the softer contours of the Apennine limestone. I
have no memorandum by me of the hill lines near Florence; but
Plate 47. shows the development of limestone structure, at a spot
which has, I think, the best right to be given as an example of
the Italian hills, the head of the valley of Carrara. The white

scar on the hill side is the principal quarry; and the peaks above
deserve observation, not so much for anything in their forms, as
for the singular barrenness which was noted in the fifteenth
chapter of the last volume (§ 8.) as too often occurring in the
Apennines. Compare this plate with the previous one. The
peak drawn in Plate 46. rises at least 7,500 feet above the sea,
—yet is wooded to its top; this Carrara crag not above 5,000,^
—yet it is wholly barren.

§ 51- Masaccio, however, as we saw, Avas taken away by death before
he could give any one of his thoughts complete expression.
Turner was spared to do his work, in this respect at least,
completely. It might be thought that, having had such adverse
influence to struggle with, he would prevail against it but in
part; and, though shoAving the way to much that was new, retain
of necessity some old prejudices, and leave his successors to
pursue in purer liberty, and with happier power, the path he had
pointed out. But it was not so: he did the work so completely
on the ground which he chose to illustrate, that nothing is left for
future artists to accomplish in that kind. Some classes of scenery,
as often pointed out in the preceding pages, he was unfamiliar
with, or held in little affection, and out of that scenery, untouched
by him, new motives may be obtained ; but of such landscape as
his favourite Yorkshire Wolds, and banks of Ehenish and French
hill, and rocky mountains of Switzerland, like the St. Gothard,
already so long dwelt upon, he has expressed the power in what
I believe to be for ever a central and unmatchable way. I do
not say this with positiveness, because it is not demonstrable.
Turner may be beaten on his own ground—so may Tintoret, so
may Shakespere, Dante, or Homer : but my belief is that all these
first-rate men are lonely men; that the particular work they did
was by them done for ever in the best way; and that this work
done by Turner among the hills, joining the most intense ap-
preciation of all tenderness with delight in all magnitude, and
memory for all detail, is never to be rivalled, or looked upon in
similitude again.

' It is not one of the highest points of the Carrara chain. The chief summits are
much more jagged, and very noble. See Chap. XX. § 20.

§ 1 It is somewhat singular that the indistinctness of treatment which
has been so often noticed as characteristic of our present art shows
itself always most when there is least apparent reason for it.
Modern artists, having some true sympathy with what is vague
in nature, draw all that is uncertain and evasive without evasion,
and render faithfully whatever can be discerned in faithless mist
or mocking vapours; but having no sympathy with what is solid
and serene, they seem to become uncertain themselves in pro-
portion to the certainty of what they see; and while they render
flakes of far-away cloud, or fringes of inextricable forest, with
something like patience and fidelity, give nothing but the hastiest
indication of the ground they can tread upon or touch. It is only
in modern art that we find any complete representation of clouds,
and only in ancient art that, generally speaking, we find any careful
realization of Stones.

§ 2. This is all the more strange, because, as we saw some time
back, the ruggedness of the stone is more pleasing to the modern
than the mediaeval, and he rarely completes any picture satis-
factorily to himself unless large spaces of it are filled with
irregular masonry, rocky banks, or shingly shores : whereas the
mediaeval could conceive no desirableness in the loose and unhewn
masses; associated them generally in his mind with wicked men,
and the martyi'dom of St. Stephen ; and always threw them out of
his road, or garden, to the best of his power.

PAKT V.

e !
f

h i
feA J

If- i

■assss^tssc^iS^

Yet with all this difference in predilection, such was the
honesty of the medieval, and so firm his acknowledgment of the
necessity to jDaint completely whatever was to be painted at all,
that there is hardly a strip of earth under the feet of a saint,
in any finished work of the early painters, hut more, and better
painted, stones are to be found upon it than in an entire exhibition
§ 3. full of modern mountain scenery.

Not better painted in every respect. In those interesting and
popular treatises on the art of drawing, which tell the public
that their colours should neither be too warm nor too cold, and
that their touches should always be characteristic of the object
they are intended to represent, the directions given for the
manufacture of stones usually enforce '' crispness of outline"
and "roughness of texture." And, accordingly, in certain expres-
sions of frangibility, irregular accumulation, and easy resting
of one block upon another, together with some conditions of
lichenous or mossy texture, modern stone-painting is far beyond
the ancient; for these are just the characters which first strike
the eye, and enable the foreground to maintain its picturesque
influence, without inviting careful examination. The mediseval
painter, on the other hand, not caring for this picturesque general
effect, nor being in anywise familiar with mountain scenery, per-
ceived in stones, when he was forced to paint them, eminently
the characters which they had in common with figures; that is
to say, their curved outlines, rounded surfaces, and varieties of
delicate colour, and, accordingly, was somewhat too apt to lose
their angular and fragmentary character in a series of muscular
lines resembling those of an anatomical preparation; for, although
in large rooks the cleavable or frangible nature was the thing
that necessarily struck him most, the pebbles under his feet
were apt to be oval or rounded in the localities of almost all
the important schools of Italy. In Lombardy, the mass of the
ground is composed of nothing but Alpine gravel, consisting
of rolled oval pebbles, on the average about six inches long
by four wide—awkward building materials, yet used in ingenious
alternation with the bricks in all the lowland Italian fortresses.
Besides this universal rotundity, the qualities of stones which

Mi.y'siM

rendered them valuable to the lapidary were forced on the
painter's attention by the familiar arts of inlaying and mosaic.
Hence, in looking at a pebble, his mind was divided between
its roundnesses and its veins; and Leonardo covers the shelves
of rock under the feet of St. Anne with variegated agate ;
while Mantegna often strews the small stones about his moun-
tain caves in a polished profusion, as if some repentant martyr
princess had been just scattering her caskets of pearls into
the dust.

§ Some years ago, as I was talking of the curvilinear forms in
a piece of rock to one of our academicians, he said to me, in a
somewhat despondent accent, " If you look for curves, you will see
curves ; if you look for angles, you will see angles."

The saying appeared to me an infinitely sad one. It was the
utterance of an experienced man ; and in many ways true, for
one of the most singular gifts, or, if abused, most singular weak-
nesses, of the human mind is its power of persuading itself to see
whatever it chooses;—a great gift, if directed to the discernment
of the things needful and pertinent to its own work and being; a
great weakness, if directed to the discovery of things profitless or
discouraging. In all things throughout the world, the men who
look for the crooked will see the crooked, and the men who look
for the straight will see the straight. But yet the saying was a
notably sad one; for it came of the conviction in the speaker's
mind that there was in reality no crooked and no straight; that
all so called discernment was fancy, and that men might, with
equal rectitude of judgment, and good-deserving of their fellow-
men, perceive and paint whatever was convenient to them.

§ 5. Whereas things may always be seen truly by candid people,
though never completely. No human capacity ever yet saw the
whole of a thing; but we may see more and more of it the longer
we look. Every individual temper will see something different
in it : but supposing the tempers honest, all the differences are
there. Every advance in our acuteness of perception will show
us something new; but the old and first discerned thing will
still be there, not falsified, only modified and enriched by the
new perceptions, becoming continually more beautiful in its

§ There are no natural objects out of which more can be thus
learned than out of stones. They seem to have been created
especially to reward a patient observer. Nearly all other objects
in nature can be seen, to some extent, without patience, and are
pleasant even in being half seen. Trees, clouds, and rivers are
enjoyable even by the careless ; but the stone under his foot has
for carelessness nothing in it but stumbling: no pleasure is
languidly to be had out of it, nor food, nor good of any kind;
nothing but symbolism of the hard heart and the unfatherly gift.
And yet, do but give it some reverence and watchfulness, and there
is bread of thought in it, more than in any other lowly feature of
all the landscape.

§ 7. For a stone, when it is examined, will be found a mountain in
miniature. The fineness of Nature's work is so great, that, into a
single block, a foot or two in diameter, she can compress as many
changes of form and structure, on a small scale, as she needs for
her mountains on a large one; and, taking moss for forests, and
grains of crystal for crags, the surface of a stone, in by far the
plurality of instances, is more interesting than the surface of an
ordinary hill; more fantastic in form, and incomparably richer in
colour,—the last quality being, in fact, so noble in most stones of
good birth (that is to say, fallen from the crystalline mountain-
ranges), that I shall be less able to illustrate this part of my
subject satisfactorily by means of engraving than perhaps any
other, except the colour of skies. I saj?-, shall be less able, because
the beauty of stone surface is in so great a degree'dependent on
the mosses and lichens which root themselves upon it, that I
must place my richest examples in the section on vegetation. For
instance, in the plate opposite, though the mass of rock is large
and somewhat distant, the effect of it is as much- owing to the
white spots of silvery lichen in the centre and left, and to the
flowing lines in which the darker mosses, growing in the cranny,
have arranged themselves beyond, as to the character of the rock
itself; nor could the beauty of the whole mass be explained, if
we were to approach the least nearer, without more detailed drawing

of this vegetation. For the present I shall only give a few examples
of the drawing of stones roughly broken, or worn so as not to be
materially affected by vegetation.

§ 8. "We have already seen an example of Titian's treatment of
mountain crests as compared with Turner's; here is a parallel
instance, from Titian, of stones in the bed of a torrent (Fig. 108.),

in many ways good and right, and expressing in its writhed and
variously broken lines far more of real stone structure than the
common water-colour dash of the moderns. Observe, especially,
how Titian has understood that the fracture of the stone more or
less depends on the undulating grain of its crystalline structure,

following the cavity of the largest stone in the middle of the figure,
with concentric lines ; and compare in Plate 21- the top of Turner's
largest stone on the left.

§ 9. If the reader sees nothing in this drawing (Fig. 108.) that he
can like,—although, indeed, I would have him prefer the work of
Turner,—let him be assured that he does not yet understand on
what Titian's reputation is founded. No painter's name is oftener
in the mouth of the ordinary connoisseur, and no painter was ever
less understood. His power of colour is indeed perfect, but so is
Bonifazio's. Titian's suiwemacy above all the other Venetians,
except Tintoret and Veronese, consists in the firm truth of his
portraiture, and more or less masterly understanding of the nature
of stones, trees, men, or whatever else he took in hand to paint;
so that, without some correlative understanding in the spectator,
Titian's work, in its highest qualities, must be utterly dead and
unappealing to him.

4
I*

§ 10. I give one more example from the loAver part of the same print,
(Fig. 109.) in which a stone, with an eddy round it, is nearly as

well drawn as it can be in the simple method of the early wood-
engi-aving. Perhaps the reader will feel its truth better by
contrast with a fragment or two of modern Idealism. Here, for
instance (Fig. 110.), is a group of stones, highly entertaining in
their variety of form, out of the subject of " Christian vanquishing

Apollyon," in the outlines to the Pilgrim's Progress, published
by the Art-Union ; the idealism being here wrought to a pitch
of extraordinary brilliancy by the exciting nature of the subject.
Next (Fig. 111.) is another poetical conception, one of Flaxman's,

representing the eddies and stones of the Pool of Envy (Flax-
man's Dante), which may be conveniently compared with the
Titianesque stones and streams. And, finally, Fig. 112. repre-

815

CHAP. XVIII.

sents, also on Flaxmari's authority, those stones of an "Alpine"
character, of which Dante says that he

It seems at first curious that every one of the forms that
Flaxman has chanced upon should be an impossible one—a form
which a stone never could assume : but this is the Nemesis of false
idealism, and the inevitable one.

§ 11, The chief incapacity in the modern work is not, however, so
much in its outline, though that is wrong enough, as in the total
absence of any eifort to mark the surface roundings. It is not
the outline of a stone, however true, that will make it solid or
heavy; it is the interior markings, and thoroughly understood
perspectives of its sides. In the opposite plate the upper two
subjects are by Turner, foregrounds out of the Liber Studiorum
(Source of Arveron, and Ben Arthur); the lower, by Claude,
Liber Veritatis, No. 5. I think the reader cannot but feel that
the blocks in the upper two subjects are massy and ponderous; in
the lower, wholly without weight. If he examine their several
treatment, he will find that Turner has perfect imaginative con-

ception of every recess and projection over tlie whole surface, and
feels tlie stone as he works over it; every touch, moreover, being
full of tender gradation. But Claude, as he is obliged to hold
to his outline in hills, so also clings to it in the stones,—cannot
round them in the least, leaves their light surfaces wholly blank,
and puts a few patches of dark here and there about their edges,
as chance will have it,

§ 12. Turner's way of wedging the stones of the glacier moraine
together in strength of disorder, in the upper subject, and his
indication of the springing of the wild stems and leafage out of
the rents in the boulders of the lower one, will hardly be appre-
ciated unless the reader is fondly acquainted with the kind of
scenery in question; and I cannot calculate on this being often
the case, for few persons ever look at any near detail closely,
and perhaps least of all at the heaps of debris which so often
seem to encumber and disfigure mountain ground. But for the
various reasons just stated (§ 7.), Turner found more material
for his power, and more excitement to his invention, among
the fallen stones than in the highest summits of mountains;
and his early designs, among their thousand excellences and
singularities, as opposed to all that had preceded them, count
for not one of the least the elaborate care given to the drawing
of torrent beds, shaly slopes, and other conditions of stony ground
which all canons of art at the period pronounced inconsistent
with dignity of composition ; a convenient principle, since, of
all foregrounds, one of loose stones is beyond comparison the
most difficult to draw with any approach to realization. The
Turnerian subjects, " Junction of the Greta and Tees " (York-
shire Series, and illustrations to Scott) ; " Wycliffe, near Rokeby "
(Yorkshire); "Hardraw Fall " (Yorkshire); "Ben Arthur" (Liber
Studiorum) ; " Ulleswater " and the magnificent drawing of the
" Upper Fall of the Tees" (England Series), are sufficiently
illustrative of what I mean.

§ 13. It is not, however, only in their separate condition, as materials
of foreground, that we have to examine the effect of stones ; they
form a curiously important element of distant landscape in their
aggregation on a large scale.

M
•f

■•iW

t. ■

It will be remembered that in the course of the last chapter
we wholly left out of our account of mountain lines that group
which was called " Lines of Best." One reason for doing so
w^as that, as these lines are produced by debris in a state of
temporary repose, their beauty, or deformity, or whatever cha-
racter they may possess, is properly to be considered as belonging
to stones rather than to rocks.

§ 14. Whenever heaps of loose stones or sand are increased by the
continual fall of fresh fragments from above, or diminished by
their removal from below, yet not in such mass or mtli such
momentum as entirely to disturb those already accumulated, the
materials on the surface arrange themselves in an equable slope,
producing a straight line of profile in the bank or cone.

The heap formed by the sand falling in an hour-glass presents,
in its straight sides, the simplest result of such a condition; and
any heap of sand thrown up by the spade will show the slopes
here and there, interrupted only by knotty portions, held together
by moisture, or agglutinated by pressure,—interruptions which
cannot occur to the same extent on a large scale, unless the soil
is really hardened nearly to the nature of rock. As long as it
remains incoherent, every removal of substance at the bottom of
the heap, or addition of it at the top, occasions a sliding disturb-
ance of the whole slope, which smoothes it into rectitude of line;
and there is hardly any great mountain mass among the Alps
which does not show towards its foundation perfectly regular
descents of this nature, often two or three miles long without a
break. Several of considerable extent are seen on the left of
Plate 46.

§ 15. I call these lines of rest, because, though the bulk of the mass
may be continually increasing or diminishing, the line of the
profile does not change, being fixed at a certain angle by the
nature of the earth. It is usually stated carelessly as an angle
of about 45 degrees, but it never really reaches such a slope. I
measured carefully the angles of a very large number of slopes of
mountain in various parts of the Mont Blanc district. The few
examples given in the note below are enough to exhibit the
general fact that loose debris lies at various angles up to about

30° or 32°; debris protected by grass or pines may reach 35°,
and rocky slopes 40° or 41°, but in continuous lines of rest I
never found a steeper angle.^

§ 16. I speak of some rocky slopes as lines of rest, because, when-
ever a mountain side is composed of soft stone which splits and
decomposes fast, it has a tendency to choke itself up with the
ruins, and gradually to get abraded or ground down towards the
debris slope; so that vast masses of the sides of Alpine valleys are
formed by ascents of nearly uniform inclination, partly loose, partly
of jagged rocks, which break, but do not materially alter the
general line of the ground. In such cases the fragments usually
have accumulated without disturbance at the foot of the slope, and
the pine forests fasten the soil and prevent it from being carried
down in large masses. But numerous instances occur in which
the mountain is consumed away gradually by its own torrents, not
having strength enough to form clefts or precipices, but falling on
each side of the ravines into even banks, which slide down from
above as they are wasted below.

§ 17. By all these various expedients, Nature secures, in the midst
of her mountain curvatures, vast series of perfectly straight lines
opposing and relieving them; lines, however, which artists have

Slopes of La Cote and Taconay, from Argentiere _ - - - 27f
Profile of Breven, from near the Chapeau (a point commanding the valley

Average slope of Mon tan vert, from same point - - - - 39 j
Slope of La Cote, same point - - - - - - -36^

Eastern slope of Pain de Sucre,'seen from Vevay - - - - 33
Western ,, „ „ - - .

319

ClIAP. XVIII.

almost universally agreed to alter or ignore, partly disliking them
intrinsically, on account of their formality, and partly because the
mind instantly associates them with the idea of mountain decay.
Turner, however, saw that this very decay having its use and
nobleness, the contours which were significative of it ought no
more to be omitted than, in the portrait of an aged man, the
furrows on his hand or brow; besides, he liked the lines them-
selves, for their contrast with the mountain wildness, just as he
liked the straighmess of sunbeams penetrating the soft wayward-
ness of clouds. He introduced them constantly into his noblest
compositions; but in order to the full understanding of their
employment in the instance I am about to give, one or two more
points yet need to be noticed.

§ 18. Generally speaking, the curved lines of convex fall belong to
mountains of hard rock, over whose surfaces the fragments
hound to the valley, and which are worn by wrath of avalanches
and wildness of torrents, like that of the Cascade des Pelerins,
described in the note above. Generally speaking, the straight
lines of rest belong to softer mountains, or softer surfaces and
places of mountains, which, exposed to no violent wearing from
external force, nevertheless keep slipping and mouldering down
spontaneously or receiving gradual accession of material from
incoherent masses above them.

§ 19. It follows, farther, that where the gigantic wearing forces are
in operation, the stones or fragments of rock brought down by the
torrents and avalanches are likely, however hard, to be rounded
on all their edges; but where the straight shaly slopes are found,
the stones which glide or totter down their surfaces frequently
retain all their angles, and form jagged and flaky heaps at the
bottom.

And farther, it is to be supposed that the rocks which are
habitually subjected to these colossal forces of destruction are in
their own mass firm and secure, otherwise they would long ago.
have given way; but that where the gliding and crumbling surfaces
are found without much external violence, it is very possible that
the whole framework of the mountain may be full of flaws; and a
danger exist of vast portions of its mass giving away, or slipping

down in heaps, as the sand suddenly yields in an hourglass after
some moments of accumulation.

§ 20. Hence, generally, in the mind of any one familiar with moun-
tains, the conditions will be associated, on the one hand, of the
curved, convex, and overhanging hank or cliff, the roaring torrent,
and the rounded boulder of massive stone; and, on the other, of
the straight and even slope of bank, the comparatively quiet and
peaceful lapse of streams, and the sharp-edged and unworn look of
the fallen stones, together with a sense of danger greater, though
more occult, than in the wilder scenery.

The drawing of the St. Gothard, which we have so laboriously
analyzed, was designed, as before mentioned, from a sketch taken
in the year 1843. But with it was made another drawing. Turner
brought home in that year a series of sketches taken in the neigh-
bourhood of the pass; among others, one of the Valley of Goldau,
covered as it is by the ruins of the Rossberg. Knowing his fond-
ness for fallen stones, I chose this G-oldau subject as a companion
to the St. Gothard. The plate opposite will give some idea of the
resultant drawing.

§ 21. Some idea only. It is a subject which, like the St. Gothard,
is far too full of detail to admit of reduction; and I hope, there-
fore, soon to engrave it properly of its real size. It is, besides,
more than usually diflScult to translate this drawing into black
and white, because much of the light on the clouds is distin-
guished merely by orange or purple colour from the green greys,
which, though not darker than the warm hues, have the effect of
shade from their coldness, but cannot be marked as shade in the
engraving without too great increase of depth. Enough, how-
ever, has been done to give some idea of the elements of Turner's
design.

§ 22. Detailed accounts of the Rossberg Fall may be found in any
ordinary Swiss Guide; the only points we have to notice re-
specting it are, that the mountain was composed of an indurated
gravel, disposed in oblique beds sloping totvards the valley. A
-portion of one of these beds gave way, and half filled the valley
beneath, burying five villages, together with the principal one of
Goldau, and partially choking up a little lake, the streamlets

320

vis*

321

CHAP. XVIII.

which supplied it now forming irregular pools among the fallen
fragments. I call the rock, and accurately, indurated gravel;
but the induration is so complete that the mass breaks through
the rolled pebbles chiefly composing it, and may be considered
as a true rock, only always in its blocks rugged and form-
less when compared Avith the crystalline formations. Turner has
chosen his position on some of the higher heaps of ruin, looking
down towards the Lake of Zug, which is seen under the sunset,
the spire of the tower of Aart on its shore just relieved against the
light of the waves.

The Rossberg itself, never steep, and still more reduced in
terror by the fall of a portion of it, was not available to him as a
form explanatory of the catastrophe; and even the slopes of the
Righi on the left are not, in reality, as uninterrupted in their
slope as he has drawn them; but he felt the connection of this
structure with the ruin amidst which he stood, and brought the
long lines of danger clear against the sunset, and as straight as its
own retiring rays.

§ 23. If the reader will now glance back to the St. Gothard subject,
as illustrated in the two Plates 21. and 37., and compare it
with this of Goldau, keeping in mind the general conclusions
about the two great classes of mountain scenery which I have
just stated, he will, I hope, at last cease to charge me with
enthusiasm in anything that I have said of Turner's imagina-
tion, as always instinctively possessive of those truths which lie
deepest, and are most essentially linked together, in the expres-
sion of a scene. I have only taken two drawings (though these
of his best period) for the illustration of all the structures of the
Alps which, in the course of half a volume, it has been possible
for me to explain; and all my half-volume is abstracted in these
two di-awings, and that in the most consistent and complete way,
as if they had been made on purpose to contain a perfect summary
of Alpine truth.

§ 24. There are one or two points connected with them of yet more
touching interest. They are the last drawings which Turner
ever made with unabated power. The one of the St. Gothard,
speaking with strict accuracy, is the last drawing; for that of

-4
i

Goldau, thougli majestic to the utmost in conception, is less
carefully finished, and shows, in the execution of parts of the sky,
signs of impatience, caused by the first feeling of decline of
strength. Therefore I called the St. Gothard (Vol. III. Ch. xv.
§ 5.) the last mountain drawing he ever executed with perfect
power. But the Goldau is still a nohle companion to it,—more
solemn in thought, more sublime in colour, and, in certain points
of poetical treatment, especially characteristic of the master's
mind in earlier days. He was very definitely in the habit of
indicating the association of any subject with circumstances of
death, especially the death of multitudes, by placing it under one
of his most deeply crimsoned sunset sides. The colour of blood
is thus plainly taken for the leading tone in the storm-clouds
above the " Slave-ship." It occurs with similar distinctness in
the much earlier picture of Ulysses and Polypheme, in that of
Napoleon at St. Helena, and, subdued by softer hues, in the Old
T6meraire. The sky of this Goldau is, in its scarlet and crimson,
the deepest in tone of all that I know in Turner's drawings.
Another feeling, traceable in several of his former works, is an
acute sense of the contrast between the careless interests and idle
pleasures of daily life, and the state of those whose time for labour,
or knowledge, or delight, is passed for ever. There is evidence
of this feeling in the introduction of the boys at play in the
churchyard of Kirkby Lonsdale, and the boy climbing for his
kite among the thickets above the little mountain churchyard of
Brignal-banks ; it is in the same tone of thought that he has
placed here the two figures fishing, leaning against these shattered
flanks of rock,—the sepulchral stones of the great mountain Field
of Death.

§ 25. Another character of these two drawings, which gives them
especial interest as connected with our inquiries into mediaeval
landscape, is, that they are precisely and accurately illustrative
of the two principal ideas of Dante about the Alps. I have
already explained the rise of the first drawing out of Turner's
early study of the " Male Bolge" of the Splugen and St. Gothard.
The Goldau, on the other hand, might have been drawn in
purposeful illustration of the lines before referred to (Vol. III.

322

l-AUT V.

resulting forms.

323

chap. xviii.

Ch. XV. § 18.) as descriptive of a " loco Alpestro." I give now
Dante's own words :

" Qual'd quella ruina, che nel fianco
Di qua da Trento I'Adice percosse,
O per tremuoto, o per sostegni manco,
Clie da cima del monte, onde si mosse,
A1 piano e si la roccia discoscesa
Che alcuna via darebbe a clii su fosse ;
Cotal di quel burrato era la seesa."

That smote the flank of Adige, through some stay-
Sinking beneath it, or by earthquake rent ;
For from the summit, where of old it lay,

Plainwards the broken rock unto the feet
Of one above it might afford some way ;
Such path adown this precipice we meet." Caylet.

§ 26. Finally, there are two lessons to be gathered from the opposite
conditions of mountain decay, represented in these designs, of
perhaps a wider range of meaning than any which were suggested
even by the states of mountain strength. In the first, we find
the unyielding rock, undergoing no sudden danger, and capable of
no total fall, yet, in its hardness of heart, worn away by perpetual
trampling of torrent waves, and stress of wandering storm. Its
fragments, fruitless and restless, are tossed into ever-changing
heaps : no labour of man can subdue them to his service, nor can
his utmost patience secure any dwelling-place among them. In
this they are the t3T3e of all that humanity which, suffering
under no sudden punishment or sorrow, remains " stony ground,"
afflicted, indeed, continually by minor and vexing cares, but only
broken by them into fruitless ruin of fatigued life. Of this ground
not " corn-giving,"-

-this " rough valley, neither cared nor sown,"^
of the common world, it is said, to those who have set up their
idols in the wreck of it—

" Among the smooth stones of the stream is thy portion. They,
they are thy lot."^

' Deut. xxi. 4. So Amos, vi. 12.: " Shall horses run upon the rock; will one plow
here with oxen ? "
' Is. Ivii. 5, 6.

But, as we pass beneath the hills which have been shaken by
earthquake and torn by convulsion, we find that periods of perfect
repose succeed those of destruction. The pools of calm .water
lie clear beneath their fallen rocks, the water-lilies gleam, and
the reeds whisper among their shadows; the village rises again
over the forgotten graves, and its church - tower, white through
the storm - twilight, proclaims a renewed appeal to His protec-
tion in whose hand ''are all the corners of the earth, and the
strength of the hills is His also." There is no loveliness of
Alpine valley that does not teach the same lesson. It is just
where ''the mountain falling cometh to nought, and the rock is
removed out of his place," that, in process of years, the fairest
meadows bloom between the fragments, the clearest rivulets
murmur from their crevices among the flowers, and the clustered
cottages, each sheltered beneath some strength of mossy stone,
now to be removed no more, and with their pastured flocks around
them, safe from the eagle's stoop and the wolf's ravin, have
written upon their fronts, in simple words, the mountaineer's
faith in the ancient promise—

" For thou shalt be in league with the Stones of the Field ;
and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee."

t. We have now cursorily glanced over those conditions of mountain
structure which appear constant in duration, and universal in
extent ; and we have found them, invariably, calculated for the
delight, the advantage, or the teaching of men; prepared, it seems,
so as to contain, alike in fortitude or feebleness, in kindliness or
in terror, some beneficence of gift, or profoundness of counsel.
We have found that where at first all seemed disturbed and acci-
dental, the most tender laws were appointed to produce forms of
perpetual beauty; and that where to the careless or cold observer
all seemed severe or purposeless, the well-being of man has been
chiefly consulted, and his rightly directed powers, and sincerely
awakened intelligence, may find wealth in every falling rock, and
wisdom in every talking wave.

It remains for us to consider what actual effect upon the human
race has been produced by the generosity, or the instruction of the
hills; how far, in past ages, they have been thanked, or listened
to ; how far, in coming ages, it may be well for us to accept them
for tutors, or acknowledge them for friends.

§ 2 What they have already taught us may, one would think, be
best discerned in the midst of them,—in some place where they
have had their own way with the human soul ; where no veil
has been drawn between it and them, no contradicting voice
has confused their ministries of sound, or broken their pathos
of silence : where war has never streaked their streams with
bloody foam, nor ambition sought for other throne than their
cloud-courtiered pinnacles, nor avarice for other treasure than.

year by year, is given to their uiilaborious rocks, in budded jewels,
and mossy gold.

§ 3- I do not know any district possessing a more pure or un-
interrupted fulness of mountain character (and that of the
highest order), or which appears to have been less disturbed by
foreign agencies, than that which borders the course of the Trient
between Valorsine and Martigny. The paths which lead to it
out of the valley of the Khone, rising at first in steep circles
among the walnut trees, like winding stairs among the pillars of a
Gothic tower, retire over the shoulders of the hills into a valley
almost unknown, but thickly inhabited by an industrious and
patient population. Along the ridges of the rocks, smoothed by
old glaciers into long, dark, billowy swellings, like the backs of
plunging dolphins, the peasant watches the slow colouring of the
tufts of moss and roots of herb which, little by little, gather a
feeble soil over the iron substance; then, supporting the narrow
strip of clinging ground with a few stones, he subdues it to the
spade; and in a year or two a little crest of corn is seen waving
upon the rocky casque. The irregular meadows run in and out
like inlets of lake among these harvested rocks, sweet with per-
petual streamlets, that seem always to have chosen the steepest
places to come down, for the sake of the leaps, scattering their
handfuls of crystal this way and that, as the wind takes them, with
all the grace, but with none of the formalism, of fountains; dividing
into fanciful change of dash and spring, yet with the seal of their
granite channels upon them, as the lightest play of human speech
may bear the seal of past toil, and closing back out of their spray to
lave the rigid angles, and brighten with silver fringes and glassy
films each lower and lower step of sable stone; until at last, gathered
altogether again,—except, perhaps, some chance drops caught on the
apple-blossom, where it has budded a little nearer the cascade than
it did last spring,—they find their way down to the turf, and lose
themselves in that, silently ; with quiet depth of clear water furrow-
ing among the grass blades, and looking only like their shadow, but
presently emerging again in little startled gushes and laughing
hurries, as if they had remembered suddenly that the day was too
short for them to get down the hill.

MiiiM

Green field, and glowing rock, and glancing streamlet, all slope
together in the sunshine towards the brows of ravines, where the
pines take up their own dominion of saddened shade; and with
everlasting roar in the twilight, the stronger torrents thunder
down, pale from the glaciers, filling all their chasms with enchanted
cold, beating themselves to pieces against the great rocks that they
have themselves cast down, and forcing fierce way beneath their
ghastly poise.

The mountain paths stoop to these glens in forky zigzags,
leading to some grey and narrow arch, all fringed under its shudder-
ing curve with the ferns that fear the light; a cross of rough-hewn
pine, iron-bound to its parapet, standing dark against the lurid
fury of the foam. Far up the glen, as we pause beside the cross,
the sky is seen through the openings in the pines, thin with excess
of light; and, in its clear, consuming flame of white space, the
summits of the rocky mountains are gathered into solemn crowns
and circlets, all flushed in that strange, faint silence of possession
by the sunshine which has in it so deep a melancholy; full of
power, yet as frail as shadows; lifeless, like the walls of a
sepulchre, yet beautiful in tender fall of crimson folds, like the
veil of some sea spirit, that lives and dies as the foam flashes ;
fixed on a perpetual throne, stern against all strength, lifted above
all sorrow, and yet effaced and melted utterly into the air by
that last sunbeam that has crossed to them from between the two
golden clouds.

§ 4. High above all sorrow: yes; but not unwitnessing to it.
The traveller on his happy journey, as his foot springs from the
deep turf and strikes the pebbles gaily over the edge of the
mountain road, sees with a glance of delight the clusters of nut-
brown cottages that nestle among those sloping orchards, and glow
beneath the boughs of the pines. Here, it may well seem to him,
if there be sometimes hardship, there must be at least innocence
and peace, and fellowship of the human soul with nature. It is
not so. The wild goats that leap along those rocks have as much
passion of joy in all that fair work of God as the men that toil
among them. Perhaps more. Enter the street of one of those
villages, and you will find it foul with that gloomy foulness that

is suffered only by torpor, or by anguish of soul. Here, it is
torpor — not absolute suffering — not starvation or disease, but
darkness of calm enduring; the spring known only as the time
of the scythe, and the autumn as the time of the siclde, and
the sun only as a warmth, the wind as a chill, and the moun-
tains as a danger. They do not understand so much as the
name of beauty, or of knowledge. They understand dimly that
of virtue. Love, patience, hospitality, faith,—these things they
know. To glean their meadows side by side, so happier; to
bear the burden ujd the breathless mountain flank, unmurmur-
ingly ; to bid the stranger drink from their vessel of milk; to see
at the foot of their low deathbeds a pale figure upon a cross,
dying also, patiently;—in this they are different from the cattle
and from the stones, but in all this unrewarded as far as concerns
the present life. For them, there is neither hope nor passion of
spirit; for them neither advance nor exultation. Black bread,
rude roof, dark night, laborious day, weary arm at sunset; and
life ebbs away. No books, no thoughts, no attainments, no rest;
except only sometimes a little sitting in the sun under the church
wall, as the bell tolls thin and far in the mountain air; a pattering
of a few prayers, not understood, by the altar rails of the dimly
gilded chapel, and so back to the sombre home, with the cloud
upon them still unbroken—that cloud of rocky gloom, born out
of- the wild torrents and ruinous stones, and unlightened, even in
their religion, except by the vague promise of some better thing
unknown, mingled with threatening, and obscured by an unspeak-
able horror,—a smoke, as it were, of martyrdom, coiling up with
the incense, and, amidst the images of tortured bodies and lament-
ing spirits in hurtling flames, the very cross, for them, dashed
more deeply than for others, with gouts of blood.

§ Do not let this be thought a darkened picture of the life of
these mountaineers. It is literal fact. No contrast can be more
painful than that between the dwelling of any well-conducted
English cottager, and that of the equally honest Savoyard.
The one, set in the midst of its dull flat fields and uninte-
resting hedgerows, shows in itself the love of brightness and
beauty; its daisy-studded garden-beds, its smoothly swept brick

829

CHAP. XIX.

path to the threshold, its freshly sanded floor and orderly shelves
of household furniture, all testify to energy of heart, and happi-
ness in the simple course and simple possessions of daily life. The
other cottage, in the midst of an inconceivable, inexpressible
beauty, set on some sloping bank of golden sward, with clear
fountains flowing beside it, and wild flowers, and noble trees, and
goodly rocks gathered round into a perfection as of Paradise,
is itself a dark and ijlague-like stain in the midst of the gentle
landscape. Within a certain distance of its threshold the ground
is foul and cattle-trampled ; its timbers are black with smoke, its
garden choked with weeds and nameless refuse, its chambers
empty and joyless, the light and wind gleaming and filtering
through the crannies of their stones. All testifies that to its
inhabitant the world is labour and vanity; that for him neither
flowers bloom, nor birds sing, nor fountains glisten; and that his
soul hardly differs from the gi-ey cloud that coils and dies upon
his hills, except in having no fold of it touched by the sunbeams.

§ 6. Is it not strange to reflect, that hardly an evening passes in
London or Paris, but one of those cottages is painted for the
better amusement of the fair and idle, and shaded with pasteboard
pines by the scene-shifter; and that good and kind people,—
poetically-minded, — delight themselves in imagining the happy
life led by peasants who dwell by Alpine fountains, and kneel to
crosses upon peaks of rock ? that nightly we lay down our gold,
to fashion forth simulacra of peasants, in gay ribands and white
bodices, singing sweet songs, and bowing gracefully to the pic-
turesque crosses; and all the while the veritable peasants are
kneeling, songlessly, to veritable crosses, in another temper than
the Idnd and fair audiences deem of, and assuredly with another
kind of answer than is got out of the opera catastrophe; an answer
having reference, it may be, in dim futurity, to those very
audiences themselves ? If all the gold that has gone to paint the
simulacra of the cottages, and to put new songs in the mouths of
the simulacra of the peasants, had gone to brighten the existent
cottages, and to put new songs in the mouths of the existent
peasants, it might in the end, perhaps, have turned out better so,
not only for the peasant, but for even the audience. For that

form of the False Ideal has also its correspondent True Ideal,
—consisting not in the naked beauty of statues, nor in the gauze
flowers and crackling tinsel of theatres, but in the clothed and
fed beauty of living men, and in the lights and laughs of happy
homes. Night after night, the desire of such an ideal springs
up in every idle human heart; and night after night, as far as
idleness can, we work out this desire in costly lies. We paint
the faded actress, build the lath landscape, feed our benevolence
with fallacies of felicity, and satisfy our righteousness with
poetry of justice. The time will come when, as the heavy-folded
curtain falls upon our own stage of life, we shall begin to com-
prehend that the justice we loved was intended to have been done
in fact, and not in poetry, and the felicity we sympathised in, to
have been bestowed and not feigned. We talk much of money's
worth, yet perhaps may one day be surprised to find that what
the wise and charitable European public gave to one night's
rehearsal of hypocrisy,—to one hour's pleasant warbling of Linda
or Lucia,—would have filled a whole Alpine valley with happiness,
and poured the waves of harvest over the famine of many a
Lammermoor.^

' As I was correcting this sheet for press, the morning paper containing the account
of the burning of Covent Garden theatre furnished the following financial statements,
bearing somewhat on the matter in hand ; namely,

- 25,465

10,048
51,502

lAl

Mr. Albano afterwards corrccted this statement, substituting 27,000 for 40,000;
and pei'haps the other sums may also have been exaggerated, but I leave the reader to
consider what an annual expenditure of from 30,000 to 50,000/. might effect in prac-
tical idealism in general, whether in Swiss valleys or elsewhere. I am not one of
those who regard all theatrical entertainment as wrong or harmful. I only regret
seeing our theatres so conducted as to involve an expense which is worse than useless,
in leading our audiences to look for mere stage effect, instead of good acting, good

§ 7. '' Nay," perhaps the reader answers, ''it is vain to hope that
this could ever be. The perfect beauty of the ideal must always
be fictitious. It is rational to amuse ourselves with the fair imagi-
nation ; but it would be madness to endeavour to put it into practice,
in the face of the ordinances of Nature. Real shepherdesses must
always be rude, and real peasants miserable; suffer us to turn
away our gentle eyes from their coarseness and their pain, and
to seek comfort in cultivated voices and purchased smiles. We
cannot hew dovm the rocks, nor turn the sands of the torrent into
gold."

§ This is no answer. Be assured of the great truth—that what
is impossible in reality, is ridiculous in fancy. If it is not in
the nature of things that peasants should be gentle and happy,
then the imagination of such peasantry is ridiculous, and to

singing, or good sense. If we really loved music, or the drama, we should be content
to hear well-managed voices, and see finished acting, without paying live or six
thousand pounds to dress the songsters or decoratc the stage. Simple but well-
chosen dresses, and quiet landscape exquisitely painted, would have far more effect on
the feelings of any sensible audience than the tinsel and extravagance of our common
scenery ; and our actors and actresses must have little respect for their own powers, if
they think that dignity of gesture is dependent on the flash of jewellery, or the pathos
of accents connected with the costliness of silk. Perfect execution of music by a
limited orchestra is far more delightful, and far less fatiguing, than the irregular roar
and hum of multitudinous mediocrity ; and finished instrumentation by an adequate
number of performers, exquisite acting, and sweetest singing, might be secured for the
public at a fourth part of the cost now spent on operatic absurdities. There is no
occasion whatever for dccoration of the house ; it is, on the contrary, the extreme of
vulgarity. No person of good taste ever goes to a theatre to look at the fronts of the
boxes. Comfortable and roomy seats, perfect cleanliness, decent and fitting curtains
and other furniture, of good stuff, but neither costly nor tawdry, and convenient, but
not dazzling, light, are the proper requirements in the furnishing of an opera-house.
As for the persons who go there to look at each other—to show their dresses—to yawn
away waste hours—to obtain a maximum of momentary excitement—or to say they
were there, at next day's three o'clock breakfast (and it is only for such persons that
glare, cost, and noise are necessary), I commend to their consideration, or at least to
such consideration as is possible to their capacities, the suggestions in the text. But
to the true lovers of the drama I would submit, as another subject of inquiry, whether
they ought not to separate themselves from the mob, and provide, for their own modest,
quiet, and guiltless entertainment, the truth of heartfelt impersonation, and the melody
of the unforced and delicate voice, without extravagance of adjunct, unhealthy lateness
of hours, or appeal to degraded passions. Such entertainment might be obtained at
infinitely smaller cost, and yet at a price which would secure honourable and pcrma-
iient remuneration to every performer ; and I. am mistaken in my notion of the best
actors, if they would not rather play at a house where people went to hear and to feel,
than weary themselves, even for four times the pay, before an audience insulting in its
listlessness and ignorant in its applause.

delight in such imagination, wrong; as delight in any kind of false-
hood is always. But if in the nature of things it he possible that
among the wildness of hills the human heart should be refined,
and if the comfort of dress, and the gentleness of language, and
the joy of progress in knowledge, and of variety in thought, are
possible to the mountaineer in his true existence, let us strive
to write this true poetry upon the rocks before we indulge it
in our visions, and try whether, among all the fine arts, one of
the finest be not that of painting cheeks with health rather than
rouge.

§ 9. '' But is such refinement possible ? Do not the conditions of the
mountain peasant's life, in the plurality of instances, necessarily
forbid it ? "

As bearing sternly on this question, it is necessary to examine
one peculiarity of feeling which manifests itself among the
European nations, so far as I have noticed, irregularly,—appear-
ing sometimes to be the characteristic of a particular time, some-
times of a particular race, sometimes of a particular locality, and to
involve at once much that is to be blamed and much that is praise-
worthy. I mean the capability of enduring, or even delighting
in, the contemplation of objects of terror—a sentiment which
especially influences the temper of some groups of mountaineers,
and of which it is necessary to examine the causes, before we can
form any conjecture whatever as to the real effect of mountains on
human character.

§ 10. For instance, the unhappy alterations which have lately taken
place in the town of Lucerne have still spared two of its ancient
bridges; both of which, being long covered walks, appear, in past
times, to have been to the population of the town what the Mall
was to London, or the Gardens of the Tuileries are to Paris. For
the continual contemplation of those who sauntered from pier to
pier, pictures were painted on the woodwork of the roof. These
pictures, in the one bridge, represent all the important Swiss
battles and victories; in the other they are the well-known series
of which Longfellow has made so beautiful a use in the Golden
Legend, the Dance of Death.

if!
11?

for the establishment of a new "promenade" m some flomishing
modern town, would receive a proposal to adorn such promenade
with pictures of the Dance of Death !

§ II. Now just so far as the old bridge at Lucerne, with the pure,
deep, and blue water of the. Reuss eddying down between its
piers, and with the sweet darkness of green hills, and far-away
gleaming of lake and Alps alternating upon the eye on either
side; and the gloomy lesson frowning in the shadow, as if the
deep tone of a passing-bell, overhead, were mingling for ever with
the plashing of the river as it glides by beneath ; just so far, I
say, as this differs from the straight and smooth strip of level
dust, between two rows of round-topped acacia trees, wherein the
inhabitants of an English watering-place or French fortified
town take their delight,— so far I believe the life of the old
Lucernois, with all its happy waves of light, and mountain
strength of will, and solemn expectation of eternity, to have
differed from the generality of the lives of those who saunter
for their habitual hour up and down the modern promenade.
But the gloom is not always of this noble kind. As we penetrate
farther among the hills we shall find it becoming very painful.
We are walking, perhaps, in a summer afternoon, up the valley
of Zermatt (a German valley), the sun shining brightly on grassy
knolls and through fringes of pines, the goats leaping hai:>pily,
and the cattle bells ringing sweetly, and the snowy mountains
shining like heavenly castles far above. We see, a little way
off, a small white chapel, sheltered behind one of the flowery
hillocks of mountain turf; and we approach its little window,
thinking to look through it into some quiet home of prayer;
but the window is grated with iron, and open to the winds, and
when we look through it, behold—a heap of white human bones
mouldering into whiter dust!

So also in that same sweet valley, of which I have just been
speaking, between Chamouni and the Valais, at every turn of
the pleasant pathway, where the scent of the thyme lies richest
upon its rocks, we shall see a little cross and shrine set under
one of them ; and go up to it, hoping to receive some happy
thought of the Redeemer, by whom all these lovely things were

made, and still consist. But when we come near—behold, beneath
the cross, a rude picture of souls tormented in red tongues of
hell fire, and pierced by demons.

§ 12. As we pass towards Italy the appearance of this gloom
deepens; and when we descend the southern slope of the Alps
we shall find this bringing forward of the image of Death
associated with an endurance of the most painful aspects of
disease ; so that conditions of human suffering, which in any
other country would be confined in hospitals, are permitted to
be openly exhibited by the wayside; and with this exposure of
the degraded human form is farther connected an insensibility
to ugliness and imperfection in other things; so that the ruined
wall, neglected garden, and uncleansed chamber, seem to unite
in expressing a gloom of spirit possessing the inhabitants of
the whole land. It does not appear to arise from poverty, nor
careless contentment with little : there is here nothing of Irish
recklessness or humour ; but there seems a settled obscurity
in the soul,—a chill and plague, as if risen out of a sepulchre,
which partly deadens, partly darkens, the eyes and hearts of
men, and breathes a leprosy of decay through every breeze and
every stone. " Instead of well-set hair, baldness, and burning
instead of beauty."

Nor are definite proofs wanting that the feeling is independent
of mere poverty or indolence. In the most gorgeous and costly
palace garden the statues will be found green with moss, the
terraces defaced or broken; the palace itself, partly coated with
marble, is left in other places rough with cementless and jagged
brick, its iron balconies bent and rusted, its pavements over-
grown with grass. The more energetic the effort has been to
recover from this state, and to shake off all appearance of poverty,
the more assuredly the curse seems to fasten on the scene, and
the unslaked mortar, and unfinished wall, and ghastly desolation
of incompleteness entangled in decay, strike a deeper despondency
into the beholder.

§ 13. The feeling would be also more easily accounted for if it
appeared consistent in its regardlessness of beauty,—if what was
done were altogether as inefficient as what was deserted. But

f,
lir
i"'

the balcony, though rusty and broken, is delicate in design, and
supported on a nobly carved slab of marble; the window, though
a mere black rent in ragged plaster, is encircled by a garland
of vine and fronted by a thicket of the sharp leaves and aurora-
coloured flowers of the oleander; the courtyard, overgrown by
mournful grass, is terminated by a bright fresco of gardens and
fountains ; the corpse, borne with the bare face to heaven, is
strewn with flowers ; beauty is continually mingled with the
shadow of death.

§ 14. So also is a kind of merriment,—not true cheerfulness, neither
careless or idle jesting, but a determined effort at gaiety, a
resolute laughter, mixed with much satire, grossness, and practical
buffoonery, and, it always seemed to me, void of all comfort or
hope,—with this eminent character in it also, that it is capable
of touching with its bitterness even the most fearful subjects,
so that as the love of beauty retains its tenderness in the pre-
sence of death, this love of jest also retains its boldness, and the
skeleton becomes one of the standard masques of the Italian
comedy. When I was in Venice, in 1850, the most popular
piece of the comic opera was " Death and the Cobbler," in which
the point of the plot was the success of a village cobbler as a
physician, in consequence of the appearance of Death to him
beside the bed of every patient who was not to recover ; and
the most applauded scene in it was one in which the physician,
insolent in success, and swollen with luxury, was himself taken
down into the abode of Death, and thrown into an agony of terror
by being shown lives of men, under the form of wasting lamps, and
his own ready to expire.

§ 15. I have also not the smallest doubt that this endurance or
affronting of fearful images is partly associated with indecency,
partly with general fatuity and weakness of mind. The men who
applauded loudest when the actress put on, in an instant, her
mask representing a skull, and when her sharp and clear " Sono la
Morte " rang through the theatre, were just those whose disgust-
ing habits rendered it impossible for women to pass through
some of the principal streets in Venice,—just those who formed
the gaping audience, when a mountebank offered a new quack

medicine on the Riva clei Scliiavoni. And, as fearful imagery is
associated witli the weakness of fever, so it seems to me that
imbecility and love of terror are connected by a mysterious link
throughout the whole life of man. There is a most touching
instance of this in the last days of Sir Walter Scott, the publication
of whose latter works, deeply to be regretted on many accounts,
was yet, perhaps, on the whole, right, as affording a means of
studying the conditions of the decay of overwrought human intel-
lect in one of the most noble of minds. Among the many signs
of this decay at its uttermost, in Castle Dangerous, not one of the
least notable was the introduction of the knight who bears on his
black armour the likeness of a skeleton.

§ 16. The love of horror which is in this manner connected with
feebleness of intellect, is not, however, to be confounded with that
shown by the vulgar in general. The feeling which is calculated
upon in the preparation of pieces full of terror and crime, at our
lower theatres, and which is fed with greater art and elegance
in the darker scenery of the popular French novelists, however
morally unhealthy, is not unnatural; it is not the result of an
apathy to such horror, but of a strong desire for excitement in
minds coarse and dull, but not necessarily feeble. The scene of
the murder of the jeweller in the '' Count of Monte Cristo,"
or those with the Squelette in the " Mysteres de Paris," appeal to
instincts which are as common to all mankind as those of thirst
and hunger, and which are only debasing in the exaggerated
condition consequent upon the dulness of other instincts higher
than they. And the persons who, at one period of their life, might
take chief pleasure in such narrations, at another may be brought
into a temper of high tone and acute sensibility. But the love
of horror respecting which we are now inquiring appears to be
an unnatural and feeble feeling; it is not that the person needs
excitement, or has any such strong perceptions as would cause
excitement, but he is dead to the horror, and a strange evil
influence guides his feebleness of mind rather to fearful images
than to beautiful ones,—as our disturbed 'dreams are sometimes
filled with ghastlinesses which seem not to arise out of any con-
ceivable association of our waking ideas, but to be a vapour out

ii!

Is» ■

of the very chambers of the tomb, to which the mind, in its palsy,
has approached.

§ 17. But even this imbecile revelling in terror is more comprehen-
sible, more apparently natural, than the instinct which is found
frequently connected with it, of absolute joy in ugliness. In
some conditions of old German art we find the most singular
insisting upon what is in all respects ugly and abortive, or fright-
ful ; not with any sense of sublimity in it, neither in mere foolish-
ness, but with a resolute choice, such as I can completely account
for on no acknowledged principle of human nature. For in the
worst conditions of sensuality there is yet some perception of
the beautiful, so that men utterly depraved in principle and habits
of thought will yet admire beautiful things, and fair faces. But
in the temper of which I am now speaking there is no preference
even of the lower forms of loveliness ; no effort at painting fair
limbs or passionate faces, no evidence of any human or natural
sensation,—a mere feeding on decay and rolling in slime, not
apparently or conceivably with any pleasure in it, but under some
fearful possession of an evil spirit.

§18. The most wonderful instance of this feeling at its uttermost
which I remember, is the missal in the British Museum, Harl.
MSS. 1892. The drawings of the principle subjects in it appear
to have been made first in black, by Martin Schongauer (at all
events by some copyist of his designs), and then another workman
has been employed to paint these drawings over. No words can
describe the intensity of the " plague of the heart" in this
man; the reader should examine the manuscript carefully if he
desires to see how low human nature can sink. I had written a
description of one or two of the drawings in order to give some
conception of them to persons not able to refer to the book; but
the mere description so saddened and polluted my pages that I
could not retain it. I will only, therefore, name the principal
characteristics which belong to the workman's mind.

§ 19. First, Perpetual tampering with death, whether there be occa-
sion to allude to it or not,—especially insisting upon its associa-
tions with corruption. I do not pain the reader by dwelling on the
details illustrative of this feeling.

Secondly, Delight in dismemherment, dislocation, and dis-
tortion of attitude. Distortion, to some extent, is a universal
characteristic of the German fifteenth and sixteenth century art;
that is to say, there is a general aptitude for painting legs across,
or feet twisted round, or bodies awkwardly bent, rather than
anything in a natural position ; and Martin Schongauer himself
exhibits this defect in no small degree. But here the finishing
workman has dislocated nearly every joint which he has exposed,
besides knitting and twisting the muscles into mere knots of
cordage.

What, however, only amounts to dislocation in the limbs
of the human figures, becomes actual dismemberment in the
animals. Fig. 113. is a
faithful copy of a tree
with two birds, one on its
bough, and one above it,
seen in the background,
behind a soldier's mace,
in the drawing of the Be-
trayal. In the engraving
of this subject, by Schon-
gauer himself, the mace
does not occur; it has been
put in by the finishing
workman, in order to give
greater expression of sa-
vageness to the boughs of the tree, which, joined with the spikes
of the mace, form one mass of disorganized angles and thorns,
while the birds look partly as if being torn to pieces, and partly
like black spiders.

In the painting itself the sky also is covered with little detached
and bent white strokes, by way of clouds, and the hair of the
figures torn into ragged locks, like wood rent by a cannon shot.

This tendency to dismember and separate everthing is one
of the eminent conditions of a mind leaning to vice and ugliness ;
just as to coimect and harmonize everything is that of a mind
leaning to virtue and beauty. It is shown down to the smallest

TART V.

1 is'

is!

t'i

<ii

! |l

details; as, for instance, in the sjDotted backgrounds, which,
instead of being chequered with connected pat-
terns, as in the noble manuscripts (see Vol. III. c ^ 0 D
Plate 7.), are covered with disorderly dashes ^

Fig. 114. And one of the borders is composed ^ Q ^ ^ ^
of various detached heads, cut off at the neck ^ ^ ^ u
or shoulders without the slightest endeavour to pj^ ^^^
conceal or decorate the truncation. All this, of
course, is associated with choice of the most abominable features
in the countenance.

§ 20. Thirdlj^ Pure ignorance. Necessarily such a mind as this
must be incapable of perceiving the truth of any form; and
therefore together with the distortion of all studied form is asso-
ciated the utter negation or imperfection of that which is less
studied.

Fourthly, Delight in blood. I cannot use the words which
would be necessary to describe the second ^ painting of the
Scourging, in this missal. But I may generally notice that the
degree in which the peculiar feeling we are endeavouring to
analyze is present in any district of Eoman Catholic countries,
may be almost accurately measured by the quantity of blood
represented on the crucifixes.

The person employed to repaint, in the Campo Santo of Pisa,
the portion of Orcagna's pictures representing the Inferno, has
furnished a very notable example of the same feeling; and it must
be familiar to all travellers in countries thoroughly subjected to
modern Komanism, a thing as different from thirteenth-century
Romanism as a prison from a prince's chamber.

Lastly, Utter absence of inventive power. The only ghastli-
ness which this workman is capable of is that of distortion. In
ghastly combination he is impotent; he cannot even understand
it or copy it when set before him, continually destroying any that
exists in the drawings of Schongauer.

' There are, unusually, two paintings of this subjcct, the first representing the
pre]mrations for the scourging, the second its close,

mind of tlie painter of tliis missal, and it possesses these in com-
plete abstraction from nearly all others, showing, in deadly purity,
the nature of the venom which in ordinary cases is tempered hy
counteracting elements. There are even certain feelings, evil
enough themselves, but more natural than these, of which the
slightest mingling would here be a sort of redemption. Vanity,
for instance, would lead to a more finished execution, and more
careful copying from nature, and of course subdue the ugliness
by fidelity ; love of pleasure would introduce occasionally a grace-
ful or sensual form; malice would give some point and meaning
to the bordering grotesques, nay, even insanity might have given
them some inventive horror. But the pure mortiferousness of this
mind, capable neither of patience, fidelity, grace, or wit, in any
place, or from any motive,—this horrible apathy of brain, which
cannot ascend so high as insanity, but is capable only of putre-
faction, save us the task of all analysis, and leave us only that of
examining how this black aqiaa Tophana mingles with other
conditions of mind.

§ 22. For I have led the reader over this dark ground, because it
was essential to our determination of the influence of moun-
tains that we should get what data we could as to the extent
in other districts, and derivation from other causes, of the horror
which at first we might have been led to connect too arbitrarily
with hill scenery. And I wish that my knowledge permitted
me to trace it over wider ground, for the observations hitherto
stated leave the question still one of great difficulty. It might
appear, to a traveller crossing and recrossing the Alps between
Switzerland and Italy, that the main strength of the evil lay on
the south of the chain, and was attributable to the peculiar circum-
stances and character of the Italian nation at this period. But
as he examined the matter farther he would note that in the
districts of Italy generally supposed to be healthy, the evidence of
it was less, and that it seemed to gain ground in places exposed to
malaria, centralizing itself in the Val d'Aosta. He would then,
perhaps, think it inconsistent with justice to lay the blame on the
mountains, and transfer his accusation to the marshes, yet would
be compelled to admit that the evil manifested itself most where

Ili

i.:
J'

i;'
'H

II •

these marshes were siirrrouuded by hills. He would next, probably,
suppose it produced by the united effect of hardship, solitude, and
unhealthy air; and be disposed to find fault with the mountains,
at least so far as they required painful climbing and laborious
agriculture ;—but would again be thrown into doubt by remember-
ing that one main branch of the feeling,—the love of ugliness,
seemed to belong in a peculiar manner to Northern Germany. If
at all familiar with the art of the North and South, he would
perceive that the endurance of ugliness, which in Italy resulted
from languor or depression (while the mind yet retained some
apprehension of the difference between fairness and deformity, as
above noted in § 12.), was not to be confounded with that absence
of perception of the Beautiful, which introduced a general hard-
featuredness of figure into all German and Flemish early art, even
when Germany and Flanders were in their brightest national
health and power. And as he followed out in detail the com-
parison of all the purest ideals north and south of the Alps, and
perceived the perpetual contrast existing between the angular and
bony sanctities of the one latitude, and the drooping graces and
pensive pieties of the other, he would no longer attribute to the
ruggedness, or miasma, of the mountains the origin of a feeling
which showed itself so strongly in the comfortable streets of
Antwerp and Nuremberg, and in the unweakened and active
intellects of Van Eyck and Albert Durer.
c 93 As I think over these various difficulties, the following con- Conditions

elusions seem to me deducible from the data 1 at present possess, the Mountain
I am in no wise confident of their accuracy, but they may assist
the reader in pursuing the inquiry farther.

imagination is necessary before this kind of disease is possible. It tellect.
does not seize on merely stupid peasantries, but on those which
belong to intellectual races, and in whom the faculties of imagina-
tion and the sensibilities of heart were originally strong and tender.
In flat land, with fresh air, the peasantry may be almost mindless,
but not infected with this gloom.

II. In the second place, I think it is closely connected with the Romanism.
Komanist religion, and that for several causes.

A. The habitual use of bad art (ill-made dolls and bad pictures),
in the services of religion, naturally blunts the delicacy of the senses,
by requiring reverence to be paid to ugliness, and familiarizing the
eye to it in moments of strong and pure feeling; I do not think we
can overrate the probable evil results of this enforced discordance
between the sight and imagination.

B. The habitually dwelling on the penances, tortures, and
martyrdoms of the Saints, as subjects of admiration and sympathy,
together with much meditation on Purgatorial suffering; rendered
almost impossible to Protestants by the greater fearfulness of such
reflections, when the punishment is supposed eternal.

C. Idleness, and neglect of the proper duties of daily life, during
the large number of holidays in the year, together >vith want of
proper cleanliness, induced by the idea that comfort and happy
purity are less pleasing to God than discomfort and self-degra-
dation. This indolence induces much despondency, a larger
measure of real misery than is necessary under the given circum-
stances of life, and many forms of crime and disease besides.

D. Superstitious indignation. I do not know if it is as a result
of the combination of these several causes, or if under a separate
head, that I should class a certain strange awe which seems to
attach itself to Romanism like its shadow, differing from the coarser
gloom which we have been examining, in that it can attach itself to
minds of the highest purity and keenness, and, indeed, does so to
these more than to inferior ones. It is an indefinable pensiveness,
leading to great severity of precept, mercilessness in punishment,
and dark or discouraging thoughts of God and man.^

il'f

k'l

m i

It is connected partly with a greater belief in the daily presence
and power of evil spirits than is common in Protestants (except the
more enthusiastic, and also gloomy, sects of Puritans), connected
also with a sternness of belief in the condemnatory power and duty
of the Church, leading to persecution, and to less tempered indig-
nation at oppositions of opinion than characterizes the Protestant

'i
i

J.«1

' This character has, 1 think, been traced in the various writings of Mrs. Sherwood
better than in any others ; she has a peculiar art of making it felt, and of striking the
deep tone of it as from a passing-bell, contrasting it with the most cheerful, loYely,
and sincere conditions of Protestantism.

mind ordinarily, wliich, tliougli waspish and bitter enough,. is not
Hable to the peculiar heart-burning caused in a Papist by any
insult to his Church, or by the aspect of what he believes to
be heresy.

§ 24. For all these reasons, I think Romanism is very definitely
connected with the gloom we are examining, so as without fail to
produce some measure of it in all persons who sincerely hold that
faith; and if such effect is ever not to be traced, it is because the
Romanism is checked by infidelity. The atheism or dissipation
of a large portion of the population in crowded capitals prevents
this gloom from being felt in full force ; but it resumes its
power, in mountain solitudes, over the minds of the comparatively
ignorant and more suffering peasantry; so that it is not an evil
inherent in the hills themselves, but one result of the continuance
in them of that old religious voice of warning, which, encouraging
sacred feeling in general, encourages also whatever evil may essen-
tially belong to the form of doctrine preached among them.

health. Cheerfulness is just as natural to the heart of a man in
strong health as colour to his cheek; and wherever there is habitual
gloom, there must be either bad air, unwholesome food, improperly
severe labour, or erring habits of life. Among mountains, all
these various causes are frequently found in combination. The
air is either too bleak, or it is impure ; generally the peasants
are exposed to alternations of both. Great hardship is sustained
in various ways, severe labour undergone during summer, and a
sedentary and confined life led during winter. Where the gloom
exists in less elevated districts, as in Germany, I do not doubt,
though I have not historical knoAvledge enough to prove this, that
it is partly connected with habits of sedentary life, protracted
study, and general derangement of the bodily system in conse-
quence ; when it exists in the gross form exhibited in the manu-
script above examined, I have no doubt it has been fostered by
habits of general vice, cruelty, and dissipation.

imagine, indicative of a certain want of cultivation in the race
among Avhom it is found, perhaps without corporal or mental

weakness, but produced by rudeness of life, absence of examples of
beautiful art, defects in the mould of the national features, and
such other adversities, generally belonging to northern nations as
opposed to southern. Here, however, again my historical know-
ledge is at fault, and I must leave the reader to follow out the
question for himself, if it interests him. A single example may
be useful to those who have not time for investigation, in order
to show the kind of difference I mean.

Fig. 115. is a St. Peter, from a German fifteenth-century MS.,
of good average execution; and Fig. 116. a Madonna, either of
the best English, or second-rate French, work, from a service-
book executed in 1290. The reader will, I doubt not, perceive
at once the general gi-ace and tenderness of sentiment in the
lines of the drapery of the last, and the comparatively delicate
tj^ie of features. The hardnesses of line, gesture, and feature in
the German example, though two centuries at least later, are, I
think, equally notable. They are accompanied in the rest of the
MS. by an excessive coarseness in choice of ornamental subject :
beneath a female figure t^^pical of the Church, for instance, there

Ik > • ^

, If

i -1\

is painted a carcass, just butchered, and hung up with skewers
through the legs.

§ 27. V. In many high mountain districts, not only are the inha-
bitants likely to be hurt by hardship of life, and retarded by
roughness of manners, but their eyes are familiarized with certain
conditions of ugliness and disorder, produced by the violence of
the elements around them. Once accustomed to look upon these
conditions as inevitable in nature, they may easily transfer the

idea of inevitableness and fitness to the same appearances in their
own houses. I said that mountains seem to have been created to
show us the perfection of beauty; but we saw in the tenth chapter
that they also show sometimes the extreme of ugliness : and to
the inhabitants of districts of this kind it is almost necessary to
their daily comfort that they should view without dislike aspects
of desolation which would to others be frightful. And can we
blame them, if, when the rivers are continually loading their fields
Avith heaps of black slime, and rolling, in time of flood, over the
thickets on their islets, leaving, when the flood is past, every leaf
and bough dim with granite-dust,—never more to be green through

all the parching of summer; when the landslip leaves a ghastly
scar among the grassy mounds of the hill side;—^the rocks above
are torn by their glaciers into rifts and wounds that are never
healed; and the ice itself blackened league after league with loose
ruin cast upon it as if out of some long and foul excavation ;—can
we blame, I say, the peasant, if, beholding these things daily as
necessary appointments in the strong nature around him, he is
careless that the same disorders should appear in his household
or his farm; nor feels discomforted, though his walls should be full
of fissures like the rocks, his furniture covered with dust like the
trees, and his garden like the glacier in unsightliness of trench and
desolation of mound ?

§ 28. Under these five heads are embraced, as far as I am able to
trace them, the causes of the temper which we are examining;
and it will be seen that only the last is quite peculiar to mountain
and marsh districts, although there is a somewhat greater proba-
bility that the others also may be developed among hills more
than in plains. When, by untoward accident, all are associated,
and the conditions described under the fifth head are very distinct,
the result is even sublime in its painfulness. Of places subjected
to such evil influence, none are quite so characteristic as the town
of Sion in the Valais. In the first place (see § 23.), the material
on which it works is good ; the race of peasantry being there
both handsome and intelligent, as far as they escape the adverse
influences around them ; so that on a fete-day or a Sunday,
when the families come down from the hill chalets, where the
air is healthier, many very pretty faces may be seen among the
younger women, set ofli" by somewhat more pains in adjustment
of the singular Valaisan costume than is now usual in other
cantons of Switzerland.

§ 29. Secondly, it is a bishopric, and quite the centre of Eomanism
in Switzerland, all the most definite Romanist doctrines being
evidently believed sincerely, and by a majority of the population ;
Protestantism having no hold upon them at all; and republican
infidelity, though active in the councils of the commune, having
as yet, so far as I could see, little influence in the hearts of house-
holds. The prominence of the Valais among Roman Catholic

states has always been considerable. The Cardinal of Sion was,
of old, one of the personages most troublesome to the Venetian
ambassadors at the English Court.^

§ 30. Thirdly, it is in the midst of a marshy valley, pregnant with
various disease; the water either stagnant, or disgorged in wild
torrents charged with earth; the air, in the morning, stagnant also,
hot, close, and infected; in the afternoon, rushing up from the
outlet at Martigny in fitful and fierce whirlwind; one side of the
valley in almost continual shade, the other (it running east and
west) scorched by southern sun, and sending streams of heat into
the air all night long from its torrid limestones ; while less trace-
able plagues than any of these bring on the inhabitants, at a
certain time of life, violent aifections of goitre, and often, in
infancy, cretinism. Agriculture is attended with the greatest
difficulties and dependencies; the land which the labour of a
life has just rendered fruitful, is often buried in an hour; and
the carriage of materials, as well as the traversing of land on the
steep hill sides, attended with extraordinary fatigue.

§ 31. Owing to these various influences, Sion, the capital of the
district, presents one of the most remarkable scenes for the study
of the particular condition of human feeling at present under
consideration that I know among mountains. It consists of
little more than one main street, winding round the roots of two
ridges of crag, and branching, on the side towards the rocks, into
a few narrow lanes, on the other, into spaces of waste ground,
of which part serve for military exercises, part are enclosed in
an uncertain and vague way; a ditch half-filled up, or wall half-
broken down, seeming to indicate their belonging, or having been
intended to belong, to some of the unfinished houses which are
springing up amidst their weeds. But it is difficult to say, in
any part of the town, what is garden-ground or what is waste ;
still more, what is new building and what old. The houses
have been for the most part built roughly of the course lime-
stone of the neighbouring hills, then coated with plaster, and

' See " Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII." (Dispatches of the Venetian
ambassador Giustinian, translated by Mr. Rawdon Brown,) 1854.

painted, in imitation of Palladian palaces, with grey architraves
and pilasters, having draperies from capital to capital. With
this false decoration is curiously contrasted a great deal of grace-
ful, honest, and original ironwork, in bulging balconies, and
floreted gratings of huge windows, and branching sprays, for any
and every purpose of support or guard. The plaster, with its
fresco, has in most instances dropped away, leaving the houses
peeled and scarred; daubed into uncertain restoration with new
mortar, and in the best cases thus left; but commonly fallen
also, more or less, into ruin, and either roofed over at the first
story when the second has fallen, or hopelessly abandoned;—not
pulled down, but left in white and ghastly shells to crumble into
heaps of limestone and dust, a pauper or two still inhabiting
where inhabitation is possible. The lanes wind among these
ruins ; the blue sky and mountain grass are seen through the
windows of their rooms and over their partitions, on which old
gaudy papers flaunt in rags: the weeds gather, and the dogs
scratch about their foundations ; yet there are no luxuriant
weeds, for their ragged leaves are blanched with lime, crushed
under perpetually falling fragments, and worn away by listless
standing of idle feet. There is always mason's work doing,
always some fresh patching and whitening; a dull smell of
mortar, mixed with that of stale foulness of every kind, rises
with the dust, and defiles every current of air; the corners are
filled with accumulations of stones, partly broken, with crusts of
cement sticking to them, and blotches of nitre oozing out of their
pores. The lichenous rocks and sunburnt slopes of grass stretch
themselves hither and thither among the wreck, curiously traversed
by stairs and walls and half-cut paths, that disappear below starkly
black arches, and cannot be followed, or rise in windings round
the angles, and in unfenced slopes along the fronts, of the two
masses of rock which bear,- one the dark castle, the other the
old church and convent of Sion; beneath, in a rudely inclosed
square at the outskirts of the town, a still more ancient
Lombardic church raises its grey tower, a kind of esplanade
extending between it and the Episcopal palace, and laid out
as a plot of grass, intersected by gravel walks; but the grass.

in strange sympathy with the inhabitants, will not grow as
grass, but chokes itself with a network of grey weeds, quite
wonderful in its various expression of thorny discontent and
savageness ; the blue flower of the borage, which mingles with
it in quantities, hardly interrupting its character, for the violent
black spot in the centre of its blue takes away the tenderness of the
flower, and it seems to have grown there in some supernatural
mockery of its old renown of being good against melancholy.
The rest of the herbage is chiefly composed of the dwarf mallow,
the wild succory, the wall-rocket, goose-foot, and milfoil ^; plants,
nearly all of them, jagged in the leaf, broken and dimly clus-
tered in flower, haunters of waste ground and places of outcast
refuse.

Bej^ond this plot of ground the Episcopal palace, a half-
deserted, barrack-like building, overlooks a neglected vineyard,
of which the clusters, black on the under side, Rnow-white on the
other with lime-dust, gather around them a melancholy hum of
flies. Through the arches of its trelliswork the avenue of the
great valley is seen in descending distance, enlarged with line
beyond line of tufted foliage, languid and rich, degenerating at
last into leagues of grey Maremma, wild with the thorn and the
willow ; on each side of it, sustaining themselves in mighty slopes
and unbroken reaches of colossal promontory, the great mountains
secede into supremacy through rosy depths of burning air, and
the crescents of snow gleam over their dim summits, as—if there
could be Mourning, as once there was War, in Heaven—a line of
waning moons might be set for lamps along the sides of some
sepulchral chamber in the Infinite.

§ 32. I know not how far this universal grasp of the sorrowful spirit
might be relaxed if sincere energy were directed to amend the
ways of life of the Valaisan. But it has always appeared to me
that there was, even in more healthy mountain districts, a certain
degree of inevitable melancholy; nor could I ever escape from
the feeling that here, where chiefly the beauty of God's working

' Malva rotundifolia, Cichorium Intybus, Sisymbrium tenuifolium, Chenopodium
urbicum, Achillea Millefolium.

was manifested to men, warning was also given, and that to the
full, of the enduring of his indignation against sin.

It seems one of the most cunning and frequent of self-decep-
tions to turn the heart away from this warning and refuse to
acknowledge anything in the fair scenes of the natural creation
but henificence. Men in general lean towards the light, so far
as they contemplate such things at all, most of them passing "hy
on the other side," either in mere plodding pursuit of their own
work, irrespective of what good or evil is around them, or else
in selfish gloom, or selfish delight, resulting from their own
circumstances at the moment. Of those who give themselves to
any true contemplation, the plurality, being humble, gentle, and
kindly hearted, look only in nature for what is lovely and kind ;
partly, also, God gives the disposition to every healthy human
mind in some degree to pass over or even harden itself against
evil things, else the suffering would be too great to be borne ;
and humble people, with a quiet trust that everything is for
the best, do not fairly represent the facts to themselves, think-
ing them none of their business. So, what between hard-
hearted people, thoughtless people, busy people, humble people,
and cheerfully minded people,—giddiness of youth, and pre-
occupations of age,—philosophies of faith, and cruelties of folly,
—priest and Levite, masquer and merchantman, all agreeing to
keep their own side of the way,—the evil that God sends to warn
us gets to be forgotten, and the evil that He sends to be mended
by us gets left unmended. And then, because people shut
their eyes to the dark indisputableness of the facts in front
of them, their Faith, such as it is, is shaken or uprooted by
every darkness in what is revealed to them. In the present
day it is not easy to find a well-meaning man among our
more earnest thinkers, -who will not take upon himself to dispute
the whole system of redemption, because he cannot unravel
the mystery of the punishment of sin. But can he unravel
the mystery of the punishment of no sin ? Can he entirely
account for all that happens to a cab-horse ? Has he ever looked
fairly at the fate of one of those beasts as it is dying,—measured
the work it has done, and the reward it has got,—put his hand

upon the bloody wounds tlirougii which its bones are piercing,
and so looked up to Heaven with an entire understanding of
Heaven's ways about the horse ? Yet the horse is a fact—no
dream — no revelation among the myrtle trees by night; and the
dust it dies upon, and the dogs that eat it, are facts; — and
yonder happy person, whose the horse was till its knees were
broken over the hurdles, who had an immortal soul to begin with,
and wealth and peace to help forward his immortality; who has
also devoted the powers of his soul, and body, and wealth, and
peace, to the spoiling of houses, the corruption of the innocent,
and the oppression of the poor; and has, at this actual moment
of his prosperous life, as many curses waiting round about him
in calm shadow, with their death's-eyes fixed upon him, biding
their time, as ever the poor cab-horse had launched at him in
meaningless blasphemies, when his failing feet stumbled at the
stones,—this happy person shall have no stripes,—shall have only
the horse's fate of annihilation ; or, if other things are indeed
reserved for him. Heaven's kindness or omnipotence is to be
doubted therefore.

§ 33. We cannot reason of these things. But this I know—and this
may by all men be known—that no good or lovely thing exists in
this world without its correspondent darkness; and that the
universe presents itself continually to mankind under the stern
aspect of warning, or of choice, the good and the evil set on the
right hand and the left.

And in this mountain gloom, which weighs so strongly upon
the human heart that in all time hitherto, as we have seen, the
hill defiles have been either avoided in terror or inhabited
in penance, there is but the fulfilment of the universal law, that
where the beauty and wisdom of the Divine working are most
manifested, there also are manifested most clearly the terror of
God's wrath, and inevitableness of His power.

Nor is this gloom less wonderful so far as it bears witness to
the error of human choice, even when the nature of good and evil
is most definitely set before it. The trees of Paradise were fair;
but our first parents hid themselves from God " in medio ligni
Paradisi,"—in the midst of the trees of the garden. The hills

were ordained for the help of man ; but, instead of raising his
eyes to the hills, from whence cometh his help, he does his idol
sacrifice ''upon every high hill and under every green tree."
The mountain of the Lord's house is established above the hills;
but Nadab and Abihu shall see under His feet the body of
heaven in his clearness, yet go down to kindle the censer against
their own souls. And so to the end of time it will be; to the
end, that cry will still be heard along the Alpine winds, " Hear,
oh ye mountains, the Lord's controversy ! " Still, their gulfs
of thawless ice, and unretarded roar of tormented waves, and
deathful falls of fruitless waste, and unredeemed decay, must bo
the image of the souls of those who have chosen the darkness,
and whose cry shall be to the mountains to fall on them, and to
the hills to cover them ; and still, to the end of time, the clear
waters of the unfailing springs, and the white pasture-lilies in
their clothed multitude, and the abiding of the burning peaks in
their nearness to the opened heaven, shall be the types, and the
blessings, of those who have chosen light, and of whom it is
written, " The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the
little hills, righteousness."

ill

352

PART V.

the mountain gloom.

§1.1 HAViE dwelt, in the foregoing chapter, on the sadness of the
hills with the greater insistance that I feared my own excessive
love for them might lead me into too favourable interpretation
of their influences over the human heart; or, at least, that the
reader might accuse me of fond prejudice, in the conclusions
to which, finally, I desire to lead him concerning them. For, to
myself, mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural
scenery; in them, and in the forms of inferior landscape that lead
to them, my affections are wholly bound up; and though I can
look with happy admiration at the lowland flowers, and woods,
and open skies, the happiness is tranquil and cold, like that of
examining detached flowers in a conservatory, or reading a plea-
sant book; and if the scenery be resolutely level, insisting upon
the declaration of its own flatness in all the detail of it, as in
Holland, or Lincolnshire, or Central Lombardy, it appears to me
like a prison, and I cannot long endure it. But the slightest rise
and fall in the road,—a mossy bank at the side of a crag of chalk,
with brambles at its brow, overhanging it,—a ripple over three or
four stones in the stream by the bridge,—above all, a wild bit
of ferny ground under a fir or two, looking as if, possibly, one
might see a hill if one got to the other side of the trees, will
instantly give me intense delight, because the shadow, or the hope,
of the hills is in them.

§ 2. And thus, although there are few districts of Northern Europe,
however apparently dull or tame, in which I cannot find pleasure,

though the whole of Northern France (except Champagne), dull as
it seems to most travellers, is to me a perpetual Paradise; and,
putting Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, and one or two such other
perfectly flat districts aside, there is not an English county which
I should not find entertainment in exploring the cross-roads of,
foot by foot; yet all my best enjoyment would be owing to the
imagination of the hills, colouring, with their far-away memories,
every lowland stone and herb. The pleasant French coteau, green
in the sunshine, delights me, either by what real mountain cha-
racter it has in itself (for in extent and succession of promontory
the flanks of the French valleys have quite the sublimity of true
mountain distances), or by its broken ground and rugged steps
amoilg the vines, and rise of the leafage above, against the blue
sky, as it might rise at Vevay or Como. There is not a wave of
the Seine but is associated in my mind with the first rise of the
sandstones and forest pines of Fontainebleau; and with the hope
of the Alps, as one leaves Paris with the horses' heads to the
south-west, the morning sun flashing on the bright waves at
Charenton. If there be no hope or association of this kind,
and if I cannot deceive myself into fancying that perhaps at the
next rise of the road there may be seen the film of a blue hill
in the gleam of sky at the horizon, the landscape, however beau-
tiful, produces in me even a kind of sickness and pain; and the
whole view from Kichmond Hill or Windsor Terrace,—nay, the
gardens of Alcinous, with their perpetual summer,—or of the
Hesperides (if they were flat, and not close to Atlas), golden apples
and all,—I would give away in an instant, for one mossy granite
stone a foot broad, and two leaves of lady-fern.^

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

Ibl

■h
U

I-

l»i

rsf

p'»

miim

§ 3. I know that this is in great part idiosyncrasy ; and that I must
not trust to my own feelings, in this respect, as representative of
the modern landscape instinct; yet I know it is not idiosyncrasy,
in so far as there may be proved to be indeed an increase of
the absolute beauty of all scenery in exact proportion to its
mountainous character, providing that character be healthily
mountainous. I do not mean to take the Col de Bon Homme
as representative of hills, any more than I would take Romney
Marsh as representative of plains ; but putting Leicestershire
or Staffordshire fairly beside Westmoreland, and Lombardy or
Champagne fairly beside the Pays de Vaud or the Canton Berne,
I find the increase in the calculable sum of elements of beauty
to be steadily in proportion to the increase of mountainous cha-
racter ; and that the best image which the world can give of
Paradise is in the slope of the meadows, orchards, and corn-fields
on the sides of a great Alp, with its purple rocks and eternal
snows above ; this excellence not being in any wise a matter
referable to feeling, or individual preferences, but demonstrable
by calm enumeration of the number of lovely colours on the
rocks, the varied grouping of the trees, and quantity of noble
incidents in stream, crag, or cloud, presented to the eye at any
given moment.

§ 4. For consider, first, the difference produced in the whole tone
of landscape colour by the introductions of purple, violet, and
deep ultramarine blue, which we owe to mountains. In an ordi-
nary lowland landscape we have the blue of the sky; the green of
grass, which I will suppose (and this is an unnecessary concession
to the lowlands) entirely fresh and bright; the green of trees;
and certain elements of purple, far more rich and beautiful than
■ we generally should think, in their bark and shadows (bare hedges
and thickets, or tops of trees, in subdued afternoon sunshine, are
nearly perfect purple, and of an exquisite tone), as well as in
ploughed fields, and dark ground in general. But among moun-
tains, in addition to all this, large unbroken spaces of pure violet
and purple are introduced in their distances; and even near, by
films of cloud passing over the darkness of ravines or forests, blues
are produced of the most subtle tenderness ; these azures and

■ purples 1 passing into rose-colour of otherwise wholly unattainable
delicacy among the upper summits, the blue of the shy being at
the same time purer and deeper than in the plains. Nay, in some
sense, a person who has never seen the rose-colour of the rays
of dawn crossing a blue mountain twelve or fifteen miles away,
can hardly be said to know what tenderness in colour means at
all; hight tenderness he may, indeed, see in the shy or in a
flower, but this grave tenderness of the far-away hill-purples he
cannot conceive.

§ Together with this great source of pre-eminence in mass of
colour, we have to estimate the influence of the finished inlaying
and enamel-work of the colour-jewellery on every stone; and that
of the continual variety in species of flower ; most of the mountain
flowers being, besides, separately lovelier than the lowland ones.
The wood hyacinth and wild rose are, indeed, the only supreme
flowers that the lowlands can generally show; and the wild rose
is also a mountaineer, and more fragrant in the hills, while the
wood hyacinth, or grape hyacinth, at its best, cannot match even
the dark-bell gentian, leaving the light-blue star-gentian in its
uncontested queenliness, and the Alpine rose and Highland heather
wholly without similitude. The violet, lily of the valley, crocus,
and wood anemone are, I suppose, claimable partly by the plains
as well as the hills; but the large orange hly and narcissus I
have never seen but on hill pastures, and the exquisite oxalis is
pre-eminently a mountaineer.^

§ 6. To this supremacy in mosses and flowers we have next to add
an inestimable gain in the continual presence and power of water.
Neither in its clearness, its colour, its fantasy of motion, its calm-
ness of space, depth, and reflection, or its wrath, can water be

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

^ The Savoyard's name for its flower, " Pain du Bon Dieu," isA'cry beautiful; from,
I believe, the supposed resemblance of its white and scattered blossom to the fallen
manna.

w
n

r'-

Ti il

conceived by a lowlaiider, out of siglit of sea. A sea wave is far
grander than any torrent—but of the sea and its influences we
are not now speaking; and the sea itself, though it can be clear,
is never calm, among our shores, in the sense that a mountain lake
can be calm. The sea seems only to pause; the mountain lake to
sleep, and to dream. Out of sight of the ocean a lowlander cannot
be considered ever to have seen water at all. The mantling of the
pools in the rock shadows, with the golden flakes of light sinking
down through them like falling leaves, the ringing of the thin
currents among the shallows, the flash and the cloud of the
cascade, the earthquake and foam-fire of the cataract, the long
lines of alternate mirror and mist that lull the imagery of the
hills reversed in the blue of morning,—all these things belong
to those hills as their undivided inheritance.

§ 7. To this supremacy in wave and stream is joined a no less
manifest pre-eminence in the character of trees. It is possible
among plains, in the species of trees which properly belong to
them, the poplars of Amiens, for instance, to obtain a serene
simplicity of grace, which, as I said, is a better help to the
study of gracefulness, as such, than any of the wilder groupings
of the hills; so also, there are certain conditions of symmetrical
luxuriance developed in the park and avenue, rarely rivalled in
their way among mountains ; and yet the mountain superiority
in foliage is, on the whole, nearly as complete as it is in water:
for exactly as there are some [expressions in the broad reaches
of a navigable lowland river, such as the Loire or Thames, not,
in their way, to be matched among the rock rivers, and yet for
all that a lowlander cannot be said to have truly seen the element
of water at all; so even in his richest parks and avenues he
cannot be said to have truly seen trees. For the resources of
trees are not developed until they have difficulty to contend
with; neither their tenderness of brotherly love and harmony,
till they are ■ forced to choose their ways of various life where
there is contracted room for them, talking to each other with
their restrained branches. The various action of trees rooting
themselves in inhospitable rocks, stooping to look into ravines,
hiding from the search of glacier winds, reaching forth to the

357

rays of rare sunshine, crowding down together to drink at
sweetest streams, climbing hand in hand among the difficult
slopes, opening in sudden dances round the mossy knolls, gather-
ing into companies at rest among the. fragrant fields, gliding in
grave procession over the heavenward ridges,—nothing of this
can he conceived among the unvexed and unvaried felicities of
the lowland forest: while to all these direct sources of greater
beauty are added, first the power of redundance, — the mere
quantity of foliage visible in the folds and on the promontories
of a single Alp being greater than that of an entire lowland
landscape (unless a view from some cathedral tower) ; and to
this charm of redundance, that of clearer visibility,—tree after
tree being constantly shown in successive height, one behind
another, instead of the mere tops and flanks of masses, as in the
plains; and the forms of multitudes of them continually defined
against the clear sky, near and above, or against white clouds
entangled among their branches, instead of being confused in
dimness of distance.

§ 8. Finally, to this supremacy in foliage we have to add the still
less questionable supremacy in clouds. There is no effect of sky
possible in the lowlands which may not in equal perfection be
seen among the hills; but there are e£fects by tens of thousands,
for ever invisible and inconceivable to the inhabitant of the plains,
manifested among the hills in the course of one day. The mere
power of familiarity with the clouds, of walking with them and
above them, alters and renders clear our whole conception of the
baseless architecture of the sky; and for the beauty of it, there is
more in a single wreath of early cloud, pacing its way up an avenue
of pines, or pausing among the points of their fringes, than in all
the white heaps that fill the arched sky of the plains from one
horizon to the other. And of the nobler cloud manifestations,—
the breaking of their troublous seas against the crags, their black
spray sparlding with lightning ; or the going forth of the morning
along their pavements of moving marble, level-laid between dome
and dome of snow ;—of these things there can be as little imagina-
tion or understanding in an inhabitant of the plains as of the
scenery of another planet than his own.

§ 9- And, observe, all these superiorities are matters plainly measur-
able and calculable, not in any wise to be referred to estimate of
sensation. Of the grandeur or expression of the hills I have not
spoken; how far they are great, or strong, or terrible, I do not
for the moment consider, because vastness, and strength, and
terror, are not to all minds subjects of desired contemplation. It
may make no difference to some men whether a natural object be
large or small, whether it be strong or feeble. But loveliness
of colour, perfectness of form, endlessness of change, wonderful-
ness of structure, are precious to all undiseased human minds ;
and the superiority of the mountains in all these things to the
lowland is, I repeat, as measurable as the richness of a painted
window matched with a white one, or the wealth of a museum
compared with that of a simply furnished chamber. They seem
to have been built for the human race, as at once their schools
and cathedrals ; full of treasures of illuminated manuscript for the
scholar, kindly in simple lessons to the worker, quiet in pale
cloisters for the thinker, glorious in holiness for the worshipper.
And of these great cathedrals of the earth, with their gates of
rock, pavements of cloud, choirs of stream and stone, altars of
snow, and vaults of purple traversed by the continual stars,—of
these, as we have seen, it was written, nor long ago, by one of the
best of the poor human race for whom they were built, wondering
in himself for whom their Creator could have made them, and
thinking to have entirely discerned the Divine intent in them—
" They are inhabited by the Beasts."

§ 10. Was it then indeed thus with us, and so lately ? Had man-
kind offered no worship in their mountain churches ? Was all
that granite sculpture and floral painting done by the angels in
vain ?

Not so. It will need no prolonged thought to convince us
that in the hills the purposes of their Maker have indeed been
accomplished in such measure as, through the sin or folly of men,
He ever permits them to be. accomplished. It may not seem, from
the general language held concerning them, or from any directly
traceable results, that mountains have had serious influence on
human intellect; but it will not, I think, be difficult to show that

their occult influence has been both constant and essential to the
progress of the race.
§ 11. Consider, first, whether we can justly refuse to attribute to
their mountain scenery some share in giving the Greeks and
Italians their intellectual lead among the nations of Europe.

There is not a single spot of land in either of these countries
from which mountains are not discernable; almost always they
form the principal feature of the scenery. The mountain out-
lines seen from Sparta, Corinth, Athens, Eome, Florence, Pisa,
Verona, are of consummate beauty; and whatever dislike or con-
tempt may be- traceable in the mind of the Greeks for mountain
ruggedness, their placing the shrine of Apollo under the cliffs
of Delphi, and his throne upon Parnassus, was a testimony to
all succeeding time that they themselves attributed the best part
of their intellectual inspiration to the power of the hills. Nor
would it be difficult to show that every great writer of either of
those nations, however little" definite regard he might manifest
for the landscape of his country, had been mentally formed and
disciplined by it, so that even such enjoyment as Homer's of the
ploughed ground and poplar groves owes its intensity and delicacy
to the excitement of the imagination produced, without his own
consciousness, by other and grander features of the scenery to
which he had been accustomed from a child; and differs in every
respect from the tranquil, vegetative, and prosaic affection with
which the same ploughed land and poplars would be regarded by
a native of the Netherlands.

The vague expression which I have just used—"intellectual
lead," may be expanded into four great heads; lead in Eeligion,
Art and Literature, War, and Social Economy,
§12. It will be right to examine our subject eventually under
these four heads; but I shall limit myself, for the present, to
some consideration of the first two, for a reason presently to be
stated.

,;3

4 ,!(i

Ist. Influence
of jiioimtains
on religious
temperament.

I. We have before had occasion to note the peculiar awe with
which mountains were regarded in the middle ages, as bear-
ing continual witness against the frivolity or luxury of the
world. Though the sense of this influence of theirs is perhaps

.tiSS.

more clearly expressed by the mediseYal Christians than by any
other sect of religionists, the influence itself has been constant
in all time. Mountains have always possessed the power, first,
of exciting religious enthusiasm; secondly, of purifying religious
faith. These two operations are partly contrary to one another:
for the faith of enthusiasm is apt to be i??ipure, and the moun-
tains, by exciting morbid conditions of the imagination, have
caused in great part the legendary and romantic forms of belief;
on the other' hand, by fostering simplicity of life and dignity of
morals, they have purified by action what they falsified by imagi-
nation. But, even in their first and most dangerous influence,
it is not the mountains that are to blame, but the human heart.
AVhile we inourn over the fictitious shape given to the religious
visions of the anchorite, we may envy the sincerity and the depth
of the emotion from which they spring: in the deep feeling, we
have to acknowledge the solemn influences of the hills; but for
the erring modes or forms of thought, it is human wilfulness,
sin, and false teaching, that are answerable. Wo are not to deny
the nobleness of the imagination because its direction is illegi-
timate, nor the pathos of the legend because its circumstances
are groundless; the ardour and abstraction of the spiritual life
are to be honoured in themselves, though the one may be mis-
guided and the other deceived; and the deserts of Osma, Assisi,
and Monte Viso are still to be thanked for the zeal they gave,
or guarded, whether we find it in St. Francis and St. Dominic,
or in those whom God's hand hid from them in the clefts of
the rocks.

§ 13. And, in fact, much of the apparently harmful influence of hills
on the religion of the world is nothing else than their general
gift of exciting the poetical and inventive faculties, in peculiarly
solemn tones of mind. Their terror leads into devotional casts of
thought; their beauty and wildness prompt the invention at the
same time; and where the mind is not gifted with stern reasoning
powers, or protected by purity of teaching, it is sure to mingle
the invention with its creed, and the vision with its prayer.
Strictly speaking, we ought to consider the superstitions of the
hills, universally, as a form of poetry; regretting only that men

have not yet learned how to distinguish poetry from well-founded
faith. And if we do this, and enable ourselves thus to review,
without carping or sneering, the shapes of solemn imagination
which have arisen among the inhabitants of Europe, we shall find,
on the one hand, the mountains of Greece and Italy forming all
the loveliest dreams, first of the Pagan, then of the Christian
mythology; on the other, those of Scandinavia to be the first
sources of whatever mental (as well as military) power was
brought by the Normans into Southern Europe. Normandy itself
is to all intents and purposes a hill country; composed, over large
extents, of granite and basalt, often rugged and covered with
heather on the summits, and traversed by beautiful and singular
dells, at once soft and secluded, fruitful and wild. We have thus
one branch of the Northern religious imagination rising among the
Scandinavian fiords, tempered in France by various encounters
with elements of Arabian, Italian, Provengal, or other Southern
poetry, and then reacting upon Southern England; while other
forms of the same rude religious imagination, resting like clouds
upon the mountains of Scotland and Wales, met and mingled with
the Norman Christianity, retaining even to the latest times some
dark colour of superstition, but giving all its poetical and military
pathos to Scottish poetry, and a peculiar sternness and wildness
of tone to the Pteformed faith, in its manifestations among the
Scottish hills.

§ 14. It is on less disputable ground that I may claim the reader's
gratitude to the mountains, as having been the centres not only
of imaginative energy, but of purity both in doctrine and practice.
The enthusiasm of the persecuted Covenanter, and his variously
modified claims to miraculous protection or prophetic inspiration,
hold exactly the same relation to the smooth proprieties of
lowland Protestantism, that the demon-combats, fastings, visions,
and miracles of the mountain monk or anchorite hold to the
wealth and worldliness of the Vatican. It might indeed happen,
whether at Canterbury, Rheims, or Rome, that a good bishop
should occasionally grasp the crozier; and a vast amount of
prudent, educated, and admirable piety is to be found among the
ranks of the lowland clergy. But still the large aspect of the

matter is always, among Protestants, that formalism, respect-
ability, orthodoxy, caution, and propriety, live by the slow stream
that encircles the lowland abbey or cathedral; and that enthusiasm,
poverty, vital faith, and audacity of conduct, characterize the
I pastor dwelling by the torrent side. In like manner, taking the

large aspects of Romanism, we see that its worst corruptions, its
cunning, its worldliness, and its permission of crime, are traceable
for the most part to lowland prelacy; but its self-denials, its
obediences, humilities, sincere claims to miraculous power, and
faithful discharges of pastoral duty, are traceable chiefly to its
anchorites and mountain clergy.
§ 15. It is true that the Lady Poverty" of St. Francis may
share the influence of the hills in the formation of character;
and that, since the clergy who have little interest at court or
conclave are those who in general will be driven to undertake
the hill services, we must often attribute to enforced simplicity
of life, or natural bitterness of feeling, some of the tones of
thought which we might otherwise have ascribed to the influence
of mountain scenery. Such causes, however, affect the lowland
as much as the highland religious character in all districts far
from cities; but they do not produce the same effects. The
curate or hermit of the field and fen, however simple his life,
or painful his lodging, does not often attain the spirit of the hill
pastor or recluse : we may find in him a decent virtue or a con-
tented ignorance, rarely the prophetic vision or the martyr's
passion. Among the fair arable lands of England and Belgium,
extends an orthodox Protestantism or Catholicism ; prosperous,
creditable, and drowsy; but it is among the purple moors of the
highland border, the ravines of Mont Gendvre, and the crags of
the Tyrol, that we shall find the simplest Evangelical faith, and
the purest Romanist practice.
§ 16. Of course the inquiry into this branch of the hill influence is
partly complicated with that into its operation on domestic habits
and personal character, of which hereafter: but there is one
curious witness borne to the general truth of the foregone con-
clusions, by an apparently slight, yet very significant circum-
stance in art. We have seen, in the preceding volume, how

difficult it was sometimes to distinguish between honest painters,
who truly chose to paint sacred subjects because they loved them,
and the affected painters, who took sacred subjects for their own
pride's sake, or for merely artistical delight. Amongst other
means of arriving at a conclusion in this matter, there is one
helpful test which may be applied to their various works, almost
as easily and certainly as a foot-rule could be used to measure
their size; and which remains an available test, down to the date
of the rise of the Claudesque landscape schools. Nearly all the
genuine religious painters use steei:) mountain distances. All the
merely artistical ones, or those of intermediate temper, in propor-
tion as they lose the religious element, use flat or simply architec-
tural distances. Of course the laAV is liable to many exceptions,
chiefly dependent on the place of birth and early associations of
painters ; but its force is, I think, strongly shown in this ;—that,
though the Flemish painters never showed any disposition to
paint, for its oivn sake, other scenery than of their own land
(compare Vol. III. Chap xiii. § 20.), the sincerely religious ones
continually used Alpine distances, bright with snow. In like
manner Giotto, Perugino, Angelico, the young Eaphael, and
John Bellini, always, if, with any fitness to their subject, they can
introduce them, use craggy or blue mountain distances, and this
with definite expression of love towards them ; Leonardo, conven-
tionally, as feeling they were necessary for his sacred subjects,
while yet his science and idealism had destroyed his mountain
sincerity; Michael Angelo, wholly an artist, and Eaphael in later
years, show no love of mountains whatever, while the relative
depths of feeling in Tintoret, Titian, and Veronese, are precisely
measurable by their affection to mountains. Tintoret, though born
in Venice, yet, because capable of the greatest reaches of feeling, is
the first of the old painters who ever drew mountain detail rightly ^:
Titian, though born in Cadore, and recurring to it constantly, yet
being more worldly-minded, uses his hills somewhat more con-
ventionally, though still in his most deeply felt pictures, such
as the St. Jerome in the Brera, giving to the rocks and forests a

' See reference to his painting of stones in the last note to § 28. of the chapter on
Imagination Penetrative, Vol. II.

365

OIAP. XX.

consummate nobleness; and Veronese, in his gay grasp of the
outside aspects of the world, contentedly includes his philosophy
within porticos and pillars, or at the best overshadows it with
a few sprays of laurel.

§ 17. The test fails, however, utterly when applied to the later or
transitional landscape schools, mountains being there introduced
in mere wanton savageness by Salvator, or vague conventionalism
by Claude, Bergham, and hundreds more. This need not, however,
in the least invalidate our general conclusions : we surely know
already that it is possible to misuse the best gifts, and pervert
the purest feelings ; nor need we doubt the real purpose, or, on
honest hearts, the real effect, of mountains, because various insti-
tutions have been founded among them by the banditti of Calabria,
as well as by St. Bruno.

§ 18. I cannot leave this part of my subject without recording a
slight incident, which happened to myself, singularly illustrative
of the religious character of the Alpine peasant when under
favourable circumstances of teaching. I was coming down one
evening from the Rochers de Naye, above Montreux, having been
at work among the limestone rocks, where I could get no water,
and both weary and thirsty. Coming to a spring at a turn of
the path, conducted, as usual, by the herdsmen into a hollowed
pine-trunk, I stooped to it and drank deeply: as I raised my
head, drawing breath heavily, some one behind mo said, " Celui
qui boira de cette eau-ci, aura encore soif." I turned, not under-
standing for the moment what was meant; and saw one of the
hill-peasants, probably returning to his chalet from the market-
place at Vevay or Villeneuve. As I looked at him Avith an
uncomprehending expression, he went on with the verse :—
" Mais celui qui boira de I'eau que je lui donnerai, n'aura
jamais soif."

I doubt if this would have been thought of, or said, by even
the most intelligent lowland peasant. The thought might have
occurred to him, but the frankness of address, and expectation
of being at once understood without a word of preparative expla-
nation, as if the language of the Bible were familiar to all men,
mark, I think, the mountaineer.

on artistical
power,

§ 19. We were next to examine the influence of hills on the artistical
of mmmtainr P^^er of the human race. Which power, so far as it depends on
the imagination, must evidently he fostered by the same influences
which give vitality to religious vision. But, so far as artistical
productiveness and skill are concerned, it is evident that the
mountaineer is at a radical and insurmountable disadvantage.
The strength of his character depends upon the absence of luxury ;
but it is eminently by luxury that art is supported. We are not,
therefore, to deny the mountain influence, because we do not
find finished frescoes on the timbers of chalets, or delicate bas-
reliefs on the bastion which protects the mountain church from
the avalanche; but to consider how far the tone of mind shown
by the artists labouring in the loAvland is dependent for its inten-
sity on the distant influences of the hills, whether during the
childhood of those born among them, or under the casual con-
templation of men advanced in life.
§ 20. Glancing broadly over the strength of the mediteval—that is to
say, of the peculiar and energetic—art of Europe, so as to discern,
through the clear flowing of its waves over France, Italy, and
England, the places in the pool where the fountain-heads are,
and where the sand dances, I should first point to Normandy
and Tuscany. From the cathedral of Pisa, and the sculpture of
the Pisans, the course is straight to Giotto, Angelico and Kaphael,
—to Orcagna and Michael Angelo ;—the Venetian school, in many
respects mightier, being, nevertheless, subsequent and derivative.
From the cathedrals of Caen and Coutances the course is straight
to the Gothic of Chartres and Notre-Dame of Paris, and thence
forward to all French and English noble art, whether ecclesiastical
or domestic. Now the mountain scenery about Pisa is precisely
the most beautiful that surrounds any great Italian city, owing
to the wonderful outlines of the peaks of Carrara. Milan and
Verona have indeed finer ranges in sight, but rising farther in
the distance, and therefore not so directly afi'ecting the popular
mind. The Norman imagination, as already noticed, is Scan-
dinavian in origin, and fostered by the lovely granite scenery of
Normandy itself. But there is, nevertheless, this great differ-
ence between French art and Italian, that the French paused

strangely at a certain point, as the Norman liills are truncated
at the summits, v/hile the Italian rose steadily to a vertex, as
the Carrara hills to their crests. Let us observe this a little
more in detail.

§ 21. The sculpture of the Pisans was taken up and carried into
various perfection by the Lucchese, Pistojans, Sienese, and
Florentines. All these are inhabitants of truly mountain cities,
Florence being as completely among the hills as Inspruck is,
only the hills have softer outlines. Those around Pistoja and
Lucca are in a high degree majestic. Giotto was born and bred
among these hills. Angelico lived upon their slope. The moun-
tain towns of Perugia and Urbino furnish the only important
branches of correlative art ; for Leonardo, however individually
great, originated no new school ; he only carried the executive
delicacy of landscape detail so far beyond other painters as to
necessitate my naming the fifteenth-century manner of landscape
after him, though he did not invent it; and although the school
of Milan is distinguished by several peculiarities, and definitely
enough separable from the other schools of Italy, all its pecu-
liarities are mannerisms, not inventions.

Correggio, indeed, created a new school, though he himself is
almost its only master. I have given in the preceding volume the
mountain outline seen from Parma. But the onl}^ entirely great
group of painters after the Tuscans are the Venetians, and they
are headed by Titian and Tintoret, on whom we have noticed the
influence of hills already ; and although we cannot trace it in Paul
Veronese, I will not quit the mountain claim upon him; for I
believe all that gay and gladdening strength of his was fed by the
breezes of the hills of Garda, and brightened by the swift glancing
of the waves of the Adige.^

367

§ 22. Observe, however, before going farther, of all the painters
we have named, the one who obtains most executive perfection
is Leonardo, who on the whole lived at the greatest distance from
the hills. The two who have most feeling are Giotto and Angelico,

' In saying this I do not, o£ course, forget the influence of the sea on the Pisans
and Venetians ; but that is a separate subject, and must be examined in the next
volume.

both hill-bred. And generally, I believe, we shall find that the hill
country gives its inventive depth of feeling to art, as in the work of
Orcagna, Perugino, and Angelico, and the plain country executive
neatness. The executive precision is joined with feeling in
Leonardo, who saw the Alps in the distance; it is totally
unaccompanied by feeling in the pure Dutch schools, or schools
of the dead flats.

§ 23. i do not know if any writer on art, or on the development of
national mind, has given his attention to what seems to me one of
the most singular phenomena in the history of Europe,—the pause
of the English and French in pictorial art after the fourteenth
century. From the days of Henry III. to those of Elizabeth,
and of Louis IX. to those of Louis XIY., the general intellect
of the two nations was steadily on the increase. But their art
intellect was as steadily retrograde. The only art work that
France and England have done nobly is that which is centralized
by the Cathedral of Lincoln, and the Sainte Chapelle. We had
at that time {ice—French and English—but the French first)
the incontestable lead among European nations ; no thirteenth-
century work in Italy is comparable for majesty of conception,
or wealth of imaginative detail, to the cathedrals of Chartres,
Rheims, Eouen, Amiens, Lincoln, Peterborough, Wells, or Lich-
field. But every hour of the fourteenth century saw French and
English art in precipitate decline, Italian in steady ascent; and
by the time that painting and sculpture had developed themselves
in an approximated perfection, in the work of Ghirlandajo and
Mino of Fesole, we had in France and England no workman,
in any art, deserving a workman's name; nothing but sldlful
masons, with more or less love of the picturesque, and re-
dundance of undisciplined imagination, flaming itself away in
wild and rich traceries, and crowded bosses of grotesque figure
sculpture, and expiring at last in barbarous imitation of the
perfected skill and erring choice of Renaissance Italy. Painting
could not decline, for it had not reached any eminence; the
exquisite arts of illumination and glass design had led to no
effective results in other materials; they themselves, incapable of
any higher perfection than they had reached in the thirteenth

.Is-

.'.I

century, perished in the vain endeavour to emulate pictorial excel-
lence, bad drawing being substituted, in books, for lovely writing,
and opaque precision, in glass, for transparent power; nor in any
single department of exertion did artists arise of such calibre or

literature, we were gradually and steadily advancing in power up
to the time of Shakespere; the Italians, on the contrary, not
advancing after the time of Dante.

§ 24. Of course I have no space here to pursue a question such
as this; but I may state my belief that one of the conditions
involved in it was the mountain influence of Italian scenery,
inducing a disposition to such indolent or enthusiastic reverie, as
could only express itself in the visions of art; while the com-
paratively flat scenery and severer climate of England and France,
fostering less enthusiasm, and urging to more exertion, brought
about a practical and rational temperament, progressive in policy,
science, and literature, but wholly retrograde in art; that is to
say (for great art may be properly so defined), in the Art of
Dreaming.

§ 2.5. in. In admitting this, we seem to involve the supposition srd. inHucnco
1 • • n . . , „ 11 • J • 1 i mouiitiiins

literary power; but for this also the mountain influence is still
necessary, only in a subordinate degree. It is true, indeed, that
the Avon is no mountain torrent, and that the hills round the vale
of Stratford are not sublime ; true, moreover, that the cantons
Berne or Uri have never yet, so far as I know, produced a great
poet; but neither, on the other hand, has Antwerp or Amsterdam.
And, I believe, the natural scenery which will be found, on
the whole, productive of most literary intellect is that mingled
of hill and plain, as all available light is of flame and darkness ;
the flame being the active element, and the darkness the tem-
pering one.

§ 2G. In noting such evidence as bears upon this subject, the readei
must always remember that the mountains are at an unfair dis-
advantage, in being much out of the way of the masses of men
employed in intellectual pursuits. The position of a city is dictated
by military necessity or commercial convenience : it rises, flourishes,

and absorbs into its activity whatever leading intellect is in the
surrounding population. The persons who are able and desirous
to give their children education naturally resort to it; the best
schools, the best society, and the strongest motives assist and
excite those born within its walls; and youth after youth rises
to distinction out of its streets, while among the blue mountains,
twenty miles away, the goatherds live and die in unregarded lowli-
ness. And yet this is no proof that the mountains have little effect
upon the mind, or that the streets have a helpful one. The men
who are formed by the schools, and polished by the society of the
capital, may yet in many ways have their powers shortened by
the absence of natural scenery; and the mountaineer, neglected,
ignorant, and unambitious, may have been taught things by the
clouds and streams which he could not have learned in a college,
or a coterie.

§ 27. And in reasoning about the eifect of mountains we are there-
fore under a difficulty like that which would occur to us if we
had to determine the good or bad effect of light on the human
constitution, in some place where all corporal exercise was neces-
sarily in partial darkness, and only idle people lived in the light.
The exercise might give an advantage to the occupants of the
gloom, but we should neither be justified in therefore denying
the preciousness of light in general, nor the necessity to the
workers of the few rays they possessed; and thus I suppose the
hills around Stratford, and such glimpses as Shakespere had of
sandstone and pines in Warwickshire, or of chalk cliffs in Kent,
to have been essential to the development of his genius. This
supposition can only be proved false by the rising of a Shakespere
at Rotterdam or Bergen-op-Zoom, which I think not probable;
whereas, on the other hand, it is confirmed by myriads of colla-
teral evidences. The matter could only be tested by placing for
half a century the British universities at Keswick and Bedd-
gelert, and making Grenoble the capital of France; but if,
throughout the history of Britain and France, we contrast the
general invention and pathetic power, in ballads or legends, of
the inhabitants of the Scottish Border with those manifested in
Suffolk or Essex; and similarly the inventive power of Nor-

maiidy, Provence, and the Beamois with that of Champagne or
Picardy, we shall o'btam some convincing evidence respecting the
operation of hills on the masses of mankind, and be disposed to
admit, with less hesitation, that the apparent inconsistencies in
the effect of scenery on greater minds proceed in each case from
specialities of education, accident, and original temper, which it
would he impossible to follow out in detail. Sometimes onty, when
the original resemblance in character of intellect is very marked
in two individuals, and they are submitted to definitely contrary
circumstances of education, an approximation to evidence may
be obtained. Thus Bacon and Pascal appear to be men naturally
very similar in their temper and powers of mind. One, born in
York House, Strand, of courtly parents, educated in court atmo-
sphere, and replying, almost as soon as he could speak, to the
queen asking how old he was—'' Two years younger than
Your Majesty's happy reign! "—has the world's meanness and
cunning engrafted into his intellect, and remains smooth, serene,
unenthusiastic, and in some degree base, even with all his sincere
devotion and universal wisdom ; bearing, to the end of life, the
likeness of a marble palace in the street of a great city, fairly
furnished within, and bright in wall and battlement, yet noisome
in places about the foundations. The other, born at Clermont, in
Auvergne, under the shadow of the Puy de Dome, though taken
to Paris at eight years old, retains for ever the impress of his
birthplace; pursuing natural philosophy with the same zeal as
Bacon, he returns to his own mountains to put himself under
their tutelage, and by their help first discovers the great rela-
tions of the earth and the air : struck at last with mortal disease ;
gloomy, enthusiastic, and superstitious, with a conscience burning
like lava, and inflexible like iron, the clouds gather about the
majesty of him, fold after fold; and, with his spirit buried in
ashes, and rent by earthquake, yet fruitful of true thought and
faithful affection, he stands like that mound of desolate scoria that
crowns the hill ranges of his native land, with its sable summit far
in heaven, and its foundations green with the ordered garden and
the trellised vine.

analysis of individual characters, it is time for us to leave it;
noting only one or two points respecting Shakespere, whom I
doubt not, the reader was surprised to find left out of all our
comparisons in the preceding volume. He seems to have been
sent essentially to take universal and equal grasp of the human
nature; and to have been removed, therefore, from all influences
which could in the least warp or bias his thoughts. It was
necessary that he should lean no way; that he should contem-
plate, with absolute equality of judgment, the life of the court,
cloister, and tavern, and be able to sympathize so completely
with all creatures as to deprive himself, together with his per-
sonal identity, even of his conscience, as he casts himself into
their hearts. He must be able to enter into the soul of Falstaff
or Shylock with no more sense of contempt or horror than
Falstaff or Shylock themselves feel for or in themselves; other-
wise his own conscience and indignation would make him unjust
to them ; he would turn aside from something, miss some good,
or overlook some essential palliation. He must be utterly without
anger, utterly without purpose; for if a man has any serious
purpose in life, that which runs counter to it, or is foreign to it,
will be looked at frowningly or carelessly by him. Shakespere was
forbidden of Heaven to have any iMns. To do any good or get
any good, in the common sense of good, was not to be within
his permitted range of work. Not, for him, the founding of
institutions, the preaching of doctrines, or the repression of
abuses. Neither he, nor the sun, did on any morning that they
rose together, receive charge from their Maker concerning such
things. They were both of them to shine on the evil and good ;
both to behold unoflfendedly all that was upon the earth, to burn
unappalled upon the spears of kings, and undisdaining, upon the
reeds of the river.

§ 29. Therefore, so far as nature had influence over the early training
of this man, it was essential to his perfectness that the nature
should be quiet. No mountain passions were to be allowed in
him. Inflict upon him but one pang of the monastic conscience;
cast upon him but one cloud of the mountain gloom ; and his
serenity had been gone for ever—his equity—his infinity. You

would have made another Dante of him; and all that he would
have ever uttered about poor, soiled, and frail humanity would
have been the quarrel between Sinon and Adam of Brescia,—
si^eedily retired from, as not worthy a man's hearing, nay, not
to be heard without heavy fault. All your Falstaffs, Slenders,
Quicklys, Sir Tohys, Lances, Touchstones, and Quinces, would
have been lost in that. Shakespere could be allowed no moun-
tains ; nay, not even any supreme natural beauty. He had to
be left mth his Idngcups and clover; — pansies—the passing
clouds—the Avon's flow—and the undulating hills and woods
of Warwick; nay, he was not to love even these in any ex-
ceeding measure, lest it might make him in the least overrate
their power upon the strong, full-fledged minds of men. He
makes the quarrelling fairies concerned about them; poor lost
Ophelia find some comfort in them; fearful, fair, wise-hearted
Perdita trust the speaking of her good will and good hostess-
ship to them; and one of the brothers of Imogen confide his
sorrow to them,—rebuked instantly by his brother for " wench-
like words; but any thought of them in his mighty men I do
not find: it is not usually in the nature of such men; and if he

While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
I'll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack
The flower that's like thy face—pale primrose, nor
The azured harebell—like thy veins ; no, nor
The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander,
Outsweetened not thy breath. The ruddoek would
With charitable bill bring thee all this ;
Yea, and fuiTed moss besides, when flowers are none,
To winter-ground thy corse.
Qui. Prithee, have done.

Imogen herself, afterwards, in deeper passion, will give weeds—not flowers,—and
something more :

With wildwood leaves, and weeds, I have strewed his grave,
And on it said a century of prayers.
Such as I can, twice o'er, I'll weep, and sigh,
And, leaving so his service, follow you."

had loved the flowers the least better himself, he would assuredly
have been offended at this, and given a botanical turn of mind to
Caesar, or Otliello.

§ 30. And it is even among the most curious proofs of the necessity
to all high imagination that it should paint straight from the life,
that he has not given such a turn of mind to some of his great
men;—Henry the Fifth, for instance. Doubtless some of my
readers, having been accustomed to hear it repeated thoughtlessly
from mouth to mouth that Shakespere conceived the spirit of
all ages, were as much offended as surprised at my saying that
he only painted human nature as he saw it in his own time.
They will find, if they look into his work closely, as much anti-
quarianism as they do geography, and no more. The commonly
received notions about the things that had been, Shakespere took
as he found them, animating them with pure human nature, of
any time and all time ; but inquiries into the minor detail of
temporary feeling, he despised as utterly as he did maps; and
wheresoever the temporary feeling was in anywise contrary to that
of his own day, he errs frankly, and paints from his own time.
For instance in this matter of love of flowers; we have traced
already, far enough for our general purposes, the mediaeval inte-
rest in them, whether to be enjoyed in the fields, or to be used
for types of ornamentation in dress. If Shakespere had cared to
enter into the spirit even of the early fifteenth century, he would
assuredly have marked this affection in some of his knights, and
indicated, even then, in heroic tempers, the peculiar respect for
loveliness of dress which we find constantly in Dante. But he
could not do this; he had not seen it in real life. In his time
dress had become an affectation and absurdity. Only fools, or
wise men in their weak moments, showed much concern about it;
and the facts of human nature which appeared to him general
in the matter were the soldier's disdain, and the coxcomb's care
of it. Hence Shakespere's good soldier is almost always in plain
or battered armour; even the speech of Vernon in Henry the
Fourth, which, as far as I remember, is the only one that bears
fully upon the beauty of armour, leans more upon the spirit
and hearts of men—" bated, like eagles having lately bathed; "

and has an under-current of slight contempt running through
the following line, "Glittering in golden coats, like images;''
while the beauty of the young Harry is essentially the beauty
of fiery and perfect youth, answering as much to the Greek, or
Roman, or Elizabethan knight as to the mediaeval one; whereas
the definite interest in armour and dress is opposed by Shakespere
in the French (meaning to depreciate them), to the English rude
soldierliness:

" My lord constable, the armour that I saw in your tent to-night, are those stars,
or suns, upon it ? "

while Henry, half proud of his poorness of array, speaks of armorial
splendour scornfully; the main idea being still of its being a gilded
show and vanity—

This is essentially Elizabethan. The quarterings on a knight's
shield, or the inlaying of his armour, would never have been
thought of by him as mere " gayness or gilt" in earlier days.^
In like manner, throughout every scale. of rank or feeling,
from that of the French knights down to Falstaff's " I looked
he should have sent me two-and-twenty yards of satin, as I
am true knight, and he sends me security ! " care for dress is
always considered by Shakespere as contemptible; and Mrs.
Quickly distinguishes herself from a true fairy by her solicitude
to scour the chairs of order—and " each fair instalment, coat, and
several crest; " and the association in her mind of the flowers in
the fairy rings with the

" Sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery,
Buckled below fair knighthood's bending knee ; "

' If the reader thinks that in Henry the Fifth's time the Elizabethan temper
might already have been manifesting itself, let him compare the English herald's
speech, act 2. scene 2. of King John ; and by way of specimen of Shakcspere's
historical care, or regard of mediaeval character, the large use of artillery in the
previous scene.

while the true fairies, in field simplicity, are only anxious to
" sweep the dust behind the door; " and

Note the expression "Field dew consecrate." Shakespere loved
courts and camps; but he felt that sacredness and peace were in
the dew of the Fields only.

§31. There is another respect in which he was wholly incapable
of entering into the spirit of the middle ages. He had no great
art of any kind around him in his own country, and was, conse-
quently, just as powerless to conceive the general influence of
former art, as a man of the most inferior calibre. Therefore it was,
that I did not care to quote his authority respecting the power of
imitation, in the second chapter of the preceding volume. If it had
been needful to add his testimony to that of Dante (given in § 5.),
I might have quoted multitudes of passages wholly concurring
with that, of which the " fair Portia's counterfeit," with the follow-
ing lines, and the implied ideal of sculpture in the Winter's Tale,
are wholly unanswerable instances. But Shakespere's evidence
in matters of art is as narrow as the range of Elizabethan art in
England, and resolves itself wholly into admiration of two things,
—mockery of life (as in this instance of Hermione as a statue), or
absolute splendour, as in the close of Romeo and Juliet, where
the notion of gold as the chief source of dignity of aspect, coming
down to Shakespere from the times of the Field of the Cloth of
Gold, and, as I said before, strictly Elizabethan, would interfere
seriously with the pathos of the whole passage, but for the sense
of sacrifice implied in it :

F!i

Uf I-

§ 32. And observe, I am not giving these examples as proof of any
smallness in Shakespere, but of his greatness; that is to say, of
his contentment, like every other great man who ever breathed,
to paint nothing but ivhat he saiv ; and therefore giving perpetual

evidence that his sight was of the sixteenth, and not of the
thirteenth centurj", beneath all the broad and eternal humanity
of his imagination. How far in these modern days, emptied of
splendour, it may be necessary for great men having certain sym-
pathies for those earlier ages, to act in this difierently from all
their predecessors ; and how far they may succeed in the resuscita-
tion of the past by habitually dwelling in all their thoughts among
vanished generations, are questions, of all practical and present
ones concerning art, the most difficult to decide; for already
in poetry several of our truest men have set themselves to this
task, and have indeed put more vitality into the shadows of the
dead than most others can give the presences of the living. Thus
Longfellow, in the Golden Legend, has entered more closely into
the temper of the Monk, for good and for evil; than ever yet
theological writer or historian, though they may have given their
life's labour to the analysis: and, again, Robert Browning is
unerring in every sentence he writes of the Middle Ages; always
vital, right, and profound; so that in the matter of art, with
which we have been specially concerned, there is hardly a principle
connected with the mediaeval temper, that he has not struck upon
in those seemingly careless and too rugged rhymes of his. There
is a curious instance, by the way, in a short poem referring to
this very subject of tomb and image sculpture; and illustrating
just one of those phases of local human character which, though
belonging to Shakespere's own age, he never noticed, because
it was specially Italian and un-English; connected also closely
with the influence of mountains on the heart, and there-
fore with our immediate inquiries. I mean the kind of
admiration with which a southern artist regarded the stone
he worked in; and the pride which populace or priest took
in the possession of precious mountain substance, worked into
the pavements of their cathedrals, and the shafts of their
tombs.

§ 33. Observe, Shakespere, in the midst of architecture and tombs
of wood, or freestone, or brass, naturally thinks of gold as the
best enriching and ennobling substance for them;—in the midst
also of the fever of the Renaissance he writes, as every one else did,

in praise of precisely the most vicious master of that school—
Giulio Eomano; but the modern poet, living much in Italy, and
quit of the Renaissance influence, is able fully to enter into the
Italian feeling, and to see the evil of the Renaissance tendency, not
because he is greater than Shakespere, but because he is in another
element, and has seen other things. I miss fragments here and
there not needed for my purpose in the passage quoted, without
putting asterisks, for I weaken the poem enough by the omissions,
without spoiling it also by breaks.

" As here I lie
In this state chamber, dying by degrees,
Hours, and long hours, in the dead night, I ask,
Do I live—am I dead ? Peace, peace, seems all :
St. Praxed's ever was the church for peace.
And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought
With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know ;
Old Gandolf ^ cozened me, despite my care.
Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner south
He graced his carrion with.
Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence
One sees the pu]i)it o' the epistle side,
And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats ;
And up into the aery dome where live
The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk.
And I shall fill my slab of basalt there,
And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest.
With those nine columns round me, two and two.
The odd one at my feet, where Anselm^ stands ;
Peach-blossom marble all.
Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years :
Man goeth to the grave, and where is he ?
Did I say basalt for my slab, sons ? Black—
'Tvvas ever antique-black ^ I meant! How else
Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath ?
The bass-relief in bronze ye promised me,
Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance
Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so.
The Saviour at his sermon on the mount,

' " Nero Antico " is more familiar to our ears ; but Browning does right in trans-
lating it ; as afterwards " cipollino " into " onion-stone." Our stupid habit of using
foreign words without translation is continually losing us half the force of the foreign
language. How many travellers hearing the term " cipollino " recognize the intended
sense of a stone splitting into concentric coats, like an onion ?

St. Praxed in a glory, and one Pan,
And Mioses witli the tables . . . but I know
Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee,
Child of my bowels, Anselm ? Ah, ye hope
To revel down my villas while I gasp,
Bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine.
Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at !
Nay, boys, ye love me—all of jasper, then !
There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world—
And have I not St. Praxed's ear to pray
Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts.
That's if ye carve my epitaph aright,
Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tnlly's every word,
No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line—
Tully, my masters ? Ulpian serves his need."

§ 34, I know no other piece of modern English, prose or poetry, in
which there is so much told, as in these lines, of the Renaissance
spirit,—its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance
of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin. It is nearly
all that I said of the central Renaissance in thirty pages of the
" Stones of Venice " put into as many lines. Browning's being
also the antecedent work. The worst of it is that this kind of
concentrated writing needs so much solution before the reader can
fairly get the good of it, that people's patience fails them, and
they give the thing up as insoluble; though, truly, it ought to be
to the current of common thought like Saladin's talisman, dipped
in clear water, not soluble altogether, but making the element
medicinal.

§ 35. It is interesting, by the way, with respect to this love of stones
in the Italian mind, to consider the difference necessitated in the
English temper merely by the general domestic use of wood instead
of marble. In that old Shakesperian England, men must have
rendered a grateful homage to their oak forests, in the sense of
all that they owed to their goodly timbers in the wainscot and
furniture of the rooms they loved best, when the blue of the
frosty midnight was contrasted, in the dark diamonds of the lattice,
with the glowing brown of the warm, fire-lighted, crimson-tapestried
walls. Not less would an Italian look with a grateful regard
on the hill summits, to which he owed, in the scorching of his
summer noonday, escape into the marble corridor or crypt palpi-
tating only with cold and smooth variegation of the unfevered

mountain veins. In some sort, as, both in om* stubbornness
and our comfort, we not unfitly describe ourselves tj^jically
as Hearts of Oak, the Italians might in their strange and
variegated mingling of passion, like purple colour, with a cruel
sternness, like white rock, truly describe themselves as Hearts
of Stone.

§ 36. Into this feeling about marble in domestic use, Shakespere,
having seen it even in northern luxury, could partly enter, and
marks it in several passages of his Italian plays. But if the
reader still doubts his limitation to his own experience in all
subjects of imagination, let him consider how the removal from
mountain influence in his youth, so necessary for the perfection
of his lower human sympathy, prevented him from ever render-
ing with any force the feelings of the mountain anchorite, or
indicating in any of his monks the deep spirit of monasticism.
Worldly cardinals or nuncios he can fathom to the uttermost;
but where, in all his thoughts, do we find St. Francis, or Abbot
Samson? The " Friar" of Shakespere's plays is almost the only
stage conventionalism which he admitted; generally nothing more
than a weak old man, who lives in a cell, and has a rope about
his waist.

§ .37. While, finally, in such slight allusions as he makes to mountain
scenery itself, it is very curious to observe the accurate limitation
of his sympathies to such things as he had known in his youth;
and his entire preference of human interest, and of courtly and
kingly dignities, to the nobleness of the hills. This is most
marked in Cymbeline, where the term " mountaineer " is, as with
Dante, always one of reproach; and the noble birth of Arviragus
and Guiderius is shown by their holding their mountain cave as

" We are beastly ; subtle as the fox, for prey ;
Like warlike as tlie wolf, for what we cat :
Oar valour is to cliasc what flies ; our cage
We make our choir, as doth the prisoned bird."

A few phrases occur here and there which might justify the
supposition that he had seen high mountains, but never implying
awe or admiration. Thus Demetrius :

" These things seem small and indistinguishable,
Like far off mountains, turned into clouds."

" Taurus snow," and the " frosty Caucasus," are used merely
as types of purity or cold; and though the avalanche is once
spoken of as an image of power, it is with instantly following
depreciation ::

" Eush on his host, as doth the melted snow
Upon tlie vallies, whose low vassal scat
The Alps doth spit, and void his rheum upon."

§ 38. There was only one thing belonging to hills that Shakespere
seemed to feel as noble—the pine tree, and that was because he had
seen it in Warwickshire, clumps of pine occasionally rising on little
sandstone mounds, as at the place of execution of Piers Gaveston,
above the lowland woods. He touches on this tree fondly again
and again :

" As rough,
Their royal blood enchafcd, as the rud'st wind,
Tliat by his top doth take the mountain pine.
And make him stoop to the vale."

" The strong based promontory
Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up
The pine and cedar."

Where note his observance of the peculiar horizontal roots of
the pine, spurred as it. is by them like the claw of a bird, and
partly propped, as the aiguilles by those rock promontories at
their bases which I have always called their spurs, this observ-
ance of the pine's strength and animal-like gi'asp being the chief
reason for his choosing it, above other trees, for Ariel's prison.
Again :

" You may as well forbid the mountain pines
To wag their high tops, and to make no noise
When they are fretted with the gusts of heaven."

" But when, from under tliis terrestrial ball,
He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines."

We may judge, by the impression which this single feature
of hill scenery seems to have made on Shakespere's mind, because
he had seen it in his youth, how his whole temper would have
been changed if he had lived in a more sublime country, and how
essential it was to his power of contemplation of mankind that he
should be removed from the sterner influences of nature. For
the rest, so far as Shakespere's work has imperfections of any
kind,—the trivialness of many of his adopted plots, for instance,
and the comparative rarity with Avhich he admits the ideal of an
enthusiastic virtue arising out of principle; virtue being with
him, for the most part, founded simply on the affections joined
with inherent purity in his women, or on mere manly pride and
honour in his men ^;—in a word, whatever difference, involving
inferiority, there exists between him and Dante, in his concep-
tions of the relation between this world and the next, we may

. i

' I mean that Shnkespere almost always imjilies a total difference in nature between
one human being and another ; one being from the birth, pure and affectionate, another
base and cruel; and he displays each, in its sj^herc, as having the nature of dove,
wolf, or lion, never much implying the government or change of nature by any
external principle. There can be no question that in the main he is right in this view
of human nature ; still, the other form of virtue does exist occasionally, and was never,
as far as I recollect, taken much note of by him. And with this stern view of humanity,
Shakespere joined a sorrowful view of Fate, closely resembling that of the ancients.
He is distinguished from Dante eminently by his always dwelling on last causes
instead of first causes. Dante invariably points to the moment of the soul's choice
which fixed its fate, to the instant of the day when it read no farther, or determined
to give bad advice about Penestrino. But Shakespere always leans on the force of
Fate, as it urges the final evil ; and dwells with infinite bitterness on the power of the
wicked, and the infinitude of result dependent seemingly on little things. A fool
brings the last piece of news from Verona, and the dearest lives of its noble houses
are lost; they might have been saved, if the sacristan had not stumbled as he walked.
Othello mislays his handkerchief, and there remains nothing for him but death.
Hamlet gets hold of the wrong foil, and the rest is silence. Edmund's runner is a
moment too late at the prison, and the feather will not move at Cordelia's lips.
Salisbury a moment too late at the tower, and Arthur lies on the stones dead. Goneril
and lago have on the whole, in this world, Shakespere sees, much of their own way,
though they come to a bad end. It is a pin that Death pierces the king's fortress wall
with ; and Carelessness and Folly sit sceptred and dreadful, side by side with the pin-
armed skeleton.

partly trace, as we did the difference between Bacon and Pascal,
to the less noble character of the scenes around him in his
youth; and admit that, though it was necessary for his special
work that he should be put, as it were, on a level with his race,
on those plains of Stratford, we should see in this a proof,
instead of a negation, of the mountain power over human intel-
lect. For breadth and perfectness of condescending sight, the
Shakesperian mind stands alone; but in ascending sight it is
limited. The breadth of grasp was innate ; the stoop and slight-
ness of it was given by the circumstances of scene : and the
difference between those careless masques of heathen gods, or
unbelieved, though mightily conceived visions of fairy, witch, or
risen spirit, and the earnest faith of Dante's vision of Paradise,
is the true measure of the difference in influence between the
willowy banks of Avon, and the purple hills of Arno.

§ 39. Our third inquiry, into the influence of mountains on domestic
and military character, was, we said, to be deferred; for this
reason, that it is too much involved with the consideration of
the influence of simple rural life in unmountainous districts, to
be entered upon with advantage until we have examined the
general beauty of vegetation, whether lowland or mountainous.
I hope to pursue this inquiry, therefore, at the close of the next
volume; only desiring, in the meantime, to bring one or two
points connected with it under the consideration of our English
travellers.

§ 40. For, it will be remembered, we first entered on this subject
in order to obtain some data as to the possibility of a Practical
Ideal in Swiss life, correspondent, in some measure, to the poetical
ideal of the same, which so largely entertains the European public.
Of which possibility, I do not think, after what we have even
already seen of the true effect of mountains on the human mind,
there is any reason to doubt, even if that ideal had not been
presented to us already in some measure, in the older life of the
Swiss republics. But of its possibility, under present circumstances,
there is, I grieve to say, the deepest reason to doubt; and that
the more, because the question is not whether the mountaineer
can be raised into a happier life by the help of the active nations

of the jDlains; but whether he can yet be protected from the
infection of the folly and vanity of those nations. I urged, in the
preceding chapter, some consideration of what might be accom-
plished, if we chose to devote to the help, what we now devote
to the mockery, of the Swiss. But I would that the enlightened
population of Paris and London were content with doing nothing;
—that they were satisfied with expenditure upoii their idle plea-
sures, in their idle way; and would leave the Swiss to their own
mountain gloom of unadvancing independence. I believe that
every franc now spent by travellers among the Alps tends more
or less to the undermining of whatever special greatness there
is in the Swiss character; and the persons I met in Switzer-
land, whose position and modes of life rendered them best able
to give me true information respecting the present state of their
country, among many causes of national deterioration, spoke with
chief fear of the influx of English wealth, gradually connecting
all industry with the wants and ways of strangers, and inviting
all idleness to depend upon their casual help; thus gradually
resolving the ancient consistency and pastoral simplicity of the
mountain life into the two irregular trades of innkeeper^ and
mendicant.

§ 41. I could say much on this subject if I had any hope of doing
good by saying anything. But I have none. The influx of
foreigners into Switzerland must necessarily be greater every
year, and the greater it is, the larger, in the crowd, will be the
majority of persons whose objects in travelling will be, first, to
get as fast as possible from place to place, and, secondly, at every
place where they arrive, to obtain the kind of accommodation and
amusement to which they are accustomed in Paris, London,
Brighton, or Baden. Railroads are already projected round the
head of the Lake of Geneva, and through the town of Fribourg;

' Not the old hospitable innkeeper, who honoured his guests and was honoured
by them, than whom I do not know a more useful or worthy character ; but the
modern innkeeper, proprietor of a building in the shape of a factory, making up three
hundred beds; who necessarily regards his guests in the light of Numbers 1, 2,
3—300, and is too often felt or apprehended by them only as a presiding influence of
extortion.

the head of the Lake of Geneva being precisely and accurately
the one spot of Europe whose character, and influence on human
mind, are special; and unreplaceable if destroyed, no other spot
resembling, or being in any wise comparable to it, in its peculiar
way: while the town of Fribourg is in like manner the only
mediaeval mountain town of importance left to us ; Inspruck and
such others being wholly modern, while Fribourg yet retains
much of the aspect it had in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen-
turies. The valley of Chamouni, another spot also unique in its
way, is rapidly being turned into a kind of Cremorne Gardens;
and I can foresee, within the perspective of but few years, the
town of Lucerne consisting of a row of symmetrical hotels
round the foot of the lake, its old bridges destroyed, an iron
one built over the Reuss, and an acacia promenade carried along
the lake-shore, with a Gerraan band playing under a Chinese
temple at the end of it, and the enlightened travellers, repre-
sentatives of European civilization, performing before the Alps,
in each afternoon summer sunlight, in their modern manner, the
Dance of Death.

§ 42. All this is inevitable ; and it has its good as well as its evil
side. I can imagine the zealous modernist replying to me that
when all this is happily accomplished, my melancholy peasants of
the valley of Trient will be turned into thriving shopkeepers,
the desolate streets of Sion into glittering thoroughfares, and the
marshes of the Valais into prosperous market-gardens. I hoj)e so ;
and indeed am striving every day to conceive more accurately,
and regulate all my efforts by the expectation of, the state of
society, not now, I suppose, much more than twenty years in
advance of us, when Europe, having satisfactorily effaced all
memorials of the past, and reduced itself to the likeness of
America, or of any other new country (only with less room for
exertion), shall begin to consider what is next to be done, and to
what newness of arts and interests may best be devoted the wealth
of its marts, and the strength of its multitudes. Which antici-
pations and estimates, however, I have never been able, as yet, to
' carry out mth any clearness, being always arrested by the confused
notion of a necessity for solitude, disdain of buying and selling,
vol. iv, c c

and other elements of that old mediaeval and mountain gloom, as
in some way connected with the efforts of nearly all men who
have either seen far into the destiny, or been much helpful to the
souls, of their race. And the grounds of this feeling, whether
right or wrong, I hope to analyze more fully in the next volume ;
only noting, finally, in this, one or two points for the consideration
of those among us with whom it may sometimes become a ques-
tion, whether they will help forward, or not, the turning of a
sweet mountain valley into an abyss of factory-stench and toil,
or the carrying of a line of traffic through some green place of
shepherd solitude.

§ 43. For, if there be any truth in the impression which I have
always felt, and just now endeavoured to enforce, that the moun-
tains of the earth are its natural cathedrals, or natural altars,
overlaid with gold, and bright with broidered work of flowers,
and with their clouds resting on them as the smoke of a continual
sacrifice, it may surely be a question with some of us, whether
ttie tables of the moneychanger, however fit and commendable
they may be as furniture in other places, are precisely the things
which it is the whole duty of man to get well set up in the
mountain temple.

§ 44 And perhaps it may help to the better determination of this
question, if we endeavour, for a few patient moments, to bear
with that weakness of our forefathers in feeling an aice for the
hills; and, divesting ourselves, as far as may be, of our modern
experimental or exploring activity, and habit of regarding moun-
tains chiefly as places for gymnastic exercise, try to understand
the temper, not indeed altogether exemplary, but yet having
certain truths and dignities in it, to which we owe the founding
of the Benedictine and Carthusian cloisters in the thin Alpine air.
And this monkish temper we may, I suppose, best understand
by considering the aspect under which mountains are repre-
sented in the Monk's book. I found that in my late lectures,
at Edinburgh, I gave great offence by supposing, or implying,
that scriptural expressions could have any force as bearing upon
modern practical questions; so that I do not now, nor shall I
any more, allude to such expressions as in any wise necessarily

r-
< !

bearing on the worldly business of the practical Protestant, but only
as necessary to be glanced at in order to understand the temper of
those old monks, who had the awkward habit of understanding the
Bible literally; and to get any little good which momentary
sympathy with the hearts of a large and earnest class of men may
surely bring to us.

§ 45. The monkish view of mountains, then, already alluded to \
was derived wholly from that Latin Vulgate of theirs; and,
speaking as a monk, it may perhaps be permitted me to mark
the significance of the earliest mention of mountains in the
Mosaic books; at least, of those in which some Divine appoint-
ment or command is stated respecting them. They are first
brought before us as refuges for God's people from the two judg-
ments of water and fire. The ark rests upon " the mountains
of Ararat; " and man, having passed through that great baptism
unto death, kneels upon the earth first where it is nearest heaven,
and mingles with the mountain clouds the smoke of his sacrifice
of thanksgiving. Again: from the midst of the first judgment
by fire, the command of the Deity to His servant is, " Escape to
the mountain ; " and the morbid fear of the hills, which fills any
human mind after long stay in places of luxury and sin, is strangely
marked in Lot's complaining reply: • " I cannot escape to the
mountain, lest some evil take me." The third mention, in way
of ordinance, is a far more solemn one: " Abraham lifted up his
eyes, and saw the place afar off." " The Place," the Mountain of
Myrrh, or of bitterness, chosen to fulfil to all the seed of Abraham,
far off and near, the inner meaning of promise regarded in that
vow: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh
mine help."

§ 4f). It seemed, then, to the monks, that the mountains were
appointed by their Maker to be to man, refuges from Judgment,
signs of Kedemption, and altars of Sanctification and obedience;
and they saw them afterwards connected, in the manner the
most touching and gracious, with the death, after his task had

387

been accomi^lished, of the first anointed Priest; the death, in like
manner, of the first inspired Lawgiver; and, lastly, with the
assumption of his office by the Eternal Priest, Lawgiver, and
Saviour.

Observe the connection of these three events. Although the
time of the deaths of Aaron and Moses was hastened by God's
displeasure, we have not, it seems to me, the slightest warrant for
concluding that the manner of their deaths was intended to be
grievous or dishonourable to them. Far from this : it cannot, I
think, be doubted that in the denial of the permission to enter the
Promised Land, the whole punishment of their sin was included ;
and that as far as regarded the manner of their deaths, it must
have been appointed for them by their Master in all tenderness
and love; and with full purpose of ennobling the close of their
service upon the earth. It might have seemed to us more
honourable that both should have been permitted to die beneath
the shadow of the Tabernacle, the congregation of Israel watching
by their side; and all whom they loved gathered together to
receive the last message from the lips of the meek lawgiver, and
the last blessing from the prayer of the anointed priest. But it
was not thus they were permitted to die. Try to realize that
going forth of Aaron from the midst of the congregation. He
who had so often done sacrifice for their sin, going forth now to
offer up his own spirit. He who had stood, among them, between
the dead and the living, and had seen the eyes of all that great
multitude turned to him, that by his intercession their breath
might yet be drawn a moment more, going forth now to meet the
Angel of Death face to face, and deliver himself into his hand.
Try if you cannot walk, in thought, with those two brothers,
and the son, as they passed the outmost tents of Israel, and
turned, while yet the dew lay round about the camp, towards the
slopes of Mount Hor; talking together for the last time, as
step by step, they felt the steeper rising of the rocks, and hour
after hour, beneath the ascending sun, the horizon grew broader
as they climbed, and all the folded hills of Idumea, one by one
subdued, showed amidst their hollows in the haze of noon, the
windings of that long desert journey, now at last to close. But

who shall enter into the thoughts of the High Priest, as his eye
followed those paths of ancient pilgrimage; and, through the
silence of the arid and endless hills, stretching even to the dim
peak of Sinai, the whole history of those forty years was unfolded
before him, and the mystery of his own ministries revealed to him ;
and that other Holy of Holies, of which the mountain peaks were
the altars, and the mountain clouds the veil, the firmament of his
Father's dwelhng, opened to him still more brightly and infinitely
as he drew nearer his death; until at last, on the shadeless summit,
—from liim on whom sin was to be laid no more—from him, on
whose heart the names of sinful nations were to press their graven
fire no longer,—the brother and the son took breastplate and ephod,
and left him to his rest.

§ 47. There is indeed a secretness in this calm faith and deep restraint
of sorrow, into which it is difficult for us to enter; but the death
of Moses himself is more easily to be conceived, and had in it
circumstances still more touching, as far as regards the influence
of the external scene. For forty years Moses had not been alone.
The care and burden of all the people, the weight of their woe, and
guilt, and death, had been upon him continually. The multitude
had been laid upon him as if he had conceived them; their tears
had been his meat, night and day, until he had felt as if God
had withdrawn His favour from him, and he had prayed that he
might be slain, and not see his wretchedness.^ And now, at
last, the command came, " Get thee up into this mountain." The
weary hands that had been so long stayed up against the enemies
of Israel, might lean again upon the shepherd's staif, and fold
themselves for the shepherd's prayer—for the shepherd's slumber.
Not strange to his feet, though forty years unknown, the roughness
of the bare mountain-path, as he climbed from ledge to ledge
of Abarim; not strange to his aged eyes the scattered clusters
of the mountain herbage, and the broken shadows of the cliffs,
indented far across the silence of uninhabited ravines ; scenes such
as those among which, with none, as now, beside him but God,
he had led his flocks so often; and which he had left, how

painfully! taking ui3on him the appointed power, to make of
the fenced city a wilderness, and to fill the desert with songs
of deliverance. It was not to embitter the last hours of his life
that God restored to him, for a day, the beloved solitudes he
had lost; and breathed the peace of the perpetual hills around
him, and cast the world in which he had laboured and sinned
far beneath his feet, in that mist of dying blue ;—all sin, all
wandering, soon to be forgotten for ever; the Dead Sea—a type
of God's anger understood by him, of all men, most clearly,
who had seen the earth open her mouth, and the sea his depth,
to overwhelm the companies of those w^ho contended with his
Master—laid waveless beneath him ; and beyond it, the fair hills
of Judah, and the soft plains and banks of Jordan, purple in
the evening light as with the blood of redemption, and fading
in their distant fulness into mysteries of promise and of love.
There, with his unabated strength, his undimmed glance, lying
down upon the utmost rocks, with angels waiting near to contend
for the spoils of his spirit, he put oif his earthly armour. We do
deep reverence to his companion prophet, for whom the chariot of
fire came down from heaven; but was his death less noble, whom
his Lord Himself buried in the vales of Moab, keeping, in the
secrets of the eternal counsels, the knowledge of a sepulchre, from
which he was to be called, in the fulness of time, to talk with that
Lord, upon Hermon, of the death that He should accomplish at
Jerusalem ?

And lastly, let us turn our thoughts for a few moments to the
cause of the resurrection of these two prophets. We are all
of us too much in the habit of passing it by, as a thing mys-
tical and inconceivable, taking place in the life of Christ for
some purpose not by us to be understood, or, at the best, merely
as a manifestation of his divinity by brightness of heavenly
light, and the ministering of the spirits of the dead, intended to
strengthen the faith of His three chosen apostles. And in this, as
in many other events recorded by the Evangelists, we lose half
the meaning, and evade the practical power upon ourselves, by
never accepting in its fulness the idea that our Lord was " perfect
man," "tempted in all things like as we are." Our preachers are

JI
! i|

continually trying, in all manner of subtle ways, to explain the
union of the Divinity with the Manhood, an explanation which
certainly involves first their being able to describe the nature of
Deity itself, or, in plain words, to comprehend God. They never
can explain, in any one particular, the union of the natures; they
only succeed in weakening the faith of their hearers as to the
entireness of either. The thing they have to do is precisely the
contrary of this—to insist upon the entireness of both. We never
think of Christ enough as God, never enough as Man; the iu'
stinctive habit of our minds being always to miss of the Divinity,
and the reasoning and enforced habit to miss of the Humanity.
We are afraid to harbour in our own hearts, or to utter in the
hearing of others, any thought of our Lord, as hungering, tired,
sorrowful, having a human soul, a human will, and affected by
events of human life as a finite creature is; and yet one half of
the efficiency of His atonement, and the whole of the efficiency
of His example, depend on His having been this to the full.

§ 48. Consider, therefore, the Transfiguration as it relates to the
human feelings of our Lord, It was the first definite preparation
for His death. He had foretold it to His disciples six days
before; then takes with Him the three chosen ones into "an
high mountain apart." From an exceeding high mountain, at
the first taking on Him the ministry of life, he had beheld,
and rejected the kingdoms of the earth, and their glory: now,
on a high mountain. He takes upon Him the ministry of death.
Peter and they that were with him, as in Gethsemane, were heavy
with sleep. Christ's work had to be done alone.

The tradition is, that the Mount of Transfiguration was the
summit of Tabor; but Tabor is neither a high mountain, nor was
it in any sense a mountain "ajyart;" being in those years both
inhabited and fortified. All the immediately preceding ministries
of Christ had been at Cesarea Philippi. There is no mention
of travel southward in the six days that intervened between the
warning given to His disciples, and the going up into the hill.
What other hill could it be than the southward slope of that
goodly mountain, Hermon, which is indeed the centre of all the
Promised Land, from the entering in of Hamath unto the river of

Egypt ; the mount of fruitfulness, from which the springs of
Jordan descended to the valleys of Israel. Along its mighty
forest avenues, until the grass grew fair with the mountain lilies,
His feet dashed in the dew of Hermon, He must have gone to
pray His first recorded prayer about death; and from the steep
of it, before He knelt, could see to the south all the dwelling-
■place' of the people that had sat in darkness, and seen the great
•light, the land of Zabulon and of Naphtali, Galilee of the nations ;
—could see, even with His human sight, the gleam of that lake
by Capernaum and Ohorazin, and many a place loved by Him,
and vainly ministered to, whose house was now left unto them
desolate ; and, chief of all, far in the utmost blue, the hills
above Nazareth, sloping down to His old home : hills on which
yet the stones lay loose, that had been taken up to cast at Him,
when He left them for ever.

§49. "And as he prayed, two men stood by him." Among the
many ways in which we miss the help and hold of Scripture,
none is mOre subtle than our habit of supposing that, even as
man, Christ was free from the Fear of Death. How could He
then have been tempted as we are ? since among all the trials
of the earth, none spring from the dust more terrible than that
Fear. It had to be borne by Him, indeed, in a unity, which we
can never comprehend, Avith the foreknowledge of victory,—as
His sorrow for Lazarus, with the consciousness of the power to
restore him ; but it had to be borne, and that in its full earthly
terror; and the presence of it is surely marked for us enough by
the rising of those two at His side. When, in the desert. He
was girding Himself for the work of life, angels of life came and
ministered unto Him; now, in the fair world, when He is girding
Himself for the work of death, the ministrants come to Him from
the grave.

But from the grave conquered. One, from that tomb under
Abarim, which His own hand had sealed so long ago ; the
other, from the rest into which he had entered, without seeing
corruption. There stood by Him Moses and Elias, and spake
of His decease.

the star paused over Him at Bethlehem, the full glory falls upon
Him from heaven.,, and the testimony is borne to his everlasting
Sonship and power. " Hear ye him."

If, in their remembrance of these things, and in their endea-
vour to follow in the footsteps of their Master, religious men of
bygone days, closing themselves in the hill solitudes, forgot some-
times, and sometimes feared, the duties they owed to the active
world, we may perhaps pardon them more easily than we ought
to pardon ourselves, if we neither seek any influence for good
nor submit to it unsought, in scenes to which thus all the men
whose writings we receive as inspired, together with their Lord,
retired whenever they had any task or trial laid upon them
needing more than their usual strength of spirit. Nor, perhaps,
should we have unprofitably entered into the mind of the earlier
ages, if among our other thoughts, as we watch the chains of
the snowy mountains rise on the horizon, we should sometimes
admit the memory of the hour in which their Creator, among their
solitudes, entered on His travail, for the salvation of our race;
and indulge the dream, that as the flaming and trembling moun-
tains of the earth seem to be the monuments of the manifesting
of His terror on Sinai,—these pure and white hills, near to the
heaven, and sources of all good to the earth, are the appointed
memorials of that Light of His Mercy, that fell, snow-like, on the
Mount of Transfiguration.

: g

1«

mm.

The reader may perhaps be somewhat confused 'by the different tone with
which, in various passages of these volumes, I have spoken of the dignity
of Expression. He must remember that there are three distinct schools
of expression, and that it is impossible, on every occasion when the term
is used, to repeat the definition of the three, and distinguish the school
spoken of.

There is, first, the Great Expressional School, consisting of the
sincerely thoughtful and affectionate painters of early times, masters of
their art, as far as it was known in their days. Orcagna, John Bellini,
Perugino, and Angelico, are its leading masters. All the men who com-
pose it are, without exception, colourisls. The modern Pre-Raphaelites
belong to it.

Secondly, the Pseudo-Expressional School, wholly of modern develop-
ment, consisting of men who have never mastered their art, and are
probably incapable of mastering it, but who hope to substitute senti-
ment for good painting. It is eminently characterized by its contempt
of colour, and may be most definitely distinguished as the School
of Clay.

Thirdly, the Grotesque Expressional School, consisting of men who,
having peculiar powers of observation for the stronger signs of character
in anything, and sincerely delighting in them, lose sight of the associated
refinements or beauties. This school is apt, more or less, to catch
at faults or strangenesses; and, associating its powers of observation
with wit or malice, produces the wild, gay, or satirical grotesque in
early sculpture, and in modern times, our rich and various popular
caricature.

I took no note of this branch of art in the chapter on the Grotesque
Ideal; partly because I did not wish to disturb the reader's mind in
our examination of the great imaginative grotesque, and also because I
did not feel able to give a distinct account of this branch, having never
thoroughly considered the powers of eye and hand involved in its finer
examples. But assuredly men of strong intellect and fine sense are
found among the caricaturists, and it is to them that I allude in saying
that the most subtle expression is often attained by " slight studies ; "
while it is of the pseudo-expressionalist, or "high art" school that I
am speaking, when I say that expression may " sometimes be elabo-
rated by the toil of the dull; " in neither case meaning to depreciate
the work, wholly different in every way, of the great expressional
schools.

I regret that I have not been able, as yet, to examine with care the
powers of mind involved in modern caricature. They are, however,
always partial and imperfect; for the very habit of looking for the
leading lines by the smallest possible number of which the expression may
be attained, warps the power of general attention, and blunts the
perception of the delicacies of the entire form and colour. Not that
caricature, or exaggeration of points of character, may not be occasionally
indulged in by the greatest men—as constantly by Leonardo ; but then
it will be found that the caricature consists, not in imperfect or violent
drawing, but in delicate and perfect drawing of strange and exaggerated
forms quaintly combined : and even thus, I believe, the habit of looking
for such conditions will be found injurious ; I strongly suspect its
operation on Leonardo to have been the increase of his non-natural
tendencies in his higher works. A certain acknowledgment of the
ludicrous element is admitted in corners of the pictures of Veronese
—in dwarfs or monkeys ; but it is never caricatured or exaggerated.
Tintoret and Titian hardly admit the element at all. They admit the
noble grotesque to the full, in all its quaintness, brilliancy, and awe ;
but never any form of it depending on exaggeration, partiality, or
fallacy.'

I believe, therefore, whatever wit, delicate appreciation of ordinary
character, or other intellectual power may belong to the modern masters
of caricature, their method of study for ever incapacitates them from
passing beyond a certain point, and either reaching any of the perfect
forms of art themselves, or understanding them in others. Generally
speaking, their power is limited to the use of the pen or pencil—they
cannot touch colour without discomfiture ; and even those whose work

Kil

is of higher aim, and wrought habitually in colour, are prevented by
their pursuit of jnqiM'it expression from understanding noble expression.
Leslie furnishes several curious examples of this defect of perception in
his late work on Art; — talking, for instance, of the ''insipid faces of
Francia."

On the other hand, all the I'eal masters of caricature deserve honour in
this respect, that their gift is peculiarly their own—innate and incommuni-
cable. No teaching, no hard study, will ever enable other people to equal,
in their several ways, the works of Leech or Cruikshank ; whereas, the
power of pure drawing is communicable, within certain limits, to every one
who has good sight and industry. I do not, indeed, know how far, by
devoting the attention to points of character, caricaturist skill may be
laboriously attained; but certainly the power is, in the masters of the
school, innate from their childhood.

Farther. It is evident that many subjects of thought may be dealt
with by this kind of art which are inapproachable by any other, and that
its influence over the popular mind must always be great; hence it may
often happen that men of strong purpose may rather express themselves in
this way (and continue to make such expression a matter of earnest
study), than turn to any less influential, though more dignified, or even
more intrinsically meritorious, branch of art. And when the powers of
quaint fancy are associated (as is frequently the case) with stern under-
standing of the nature of evil, and tender human sympathy, there
results a bitter, or pathetic spirit of grotesque, to which mankind at. the
present day owe more thorough moral teaching than to any branch of art
whatsoever.

In poetry, the temper is seen, in perfect manifestation, in the works of
Thomas Hood ; in art, it is found both in various works of the Grermans,
—their finest, and their least thought of; and more or less in the works
of George Cruikshank', and in many of the illustrations of our popular
journals. On the whole, the most impressive examples of it, in poetry and
in art, which I remember are the Song of the Shirt, and the woodcuts of
Alfred Rethel, before spoken of. A correspondent, though coarser work
appeared some little time back in Punch, namely, the " General F^vrier
turned Traitor."

The reception of the woodcut last named was in several respects a
curious test of modern feeling. For the sake of the general reader, it
may be well to state the occasion and character of it. It Avill bo

' Taken all in all, the works of Cruikshank have the most sterling value of any
belonging to this class, produced in England,

remembered by all that early in the winter of 1854-5, so fatal by
its inclemency, and by our own improvidence, to our army in the
Crimea, the late Emperor of Eussia said, or was reported to have said,
that " his best commanders. General January and General February,
were not yet come." The word, if ever spoken, was at once base, cruel,
and blasphemous ; base, in precisely reversing the temper of all true
soldiers, so nobly instanced by the son of Saladin, when he sent, at the
very instant of the discomfiture of his own army, two horses to Coeur
de Lion, whose horse had been killed under him in the melee ; cruel,
inasmuch as he ought not to have exulted in the thought of the death,
by slow ■ suffering, of brave men ; blasphemous, inasmuch as it con-
tained an appeal to Heaven of which he knew the hypocrisy. He
himself died in February ; and the woodcut of which I speak repre-
sented a skeleton in' soldier's armour, entering his chamber, the driven
sleet white on its cloak and crest; laying its hand on his heart as he
lay dead.

There were some points to be regretted in the execution of the design,
but the thought was a grand one ; the memory of the word spoken, and
of its answer, could hardly in any more impressive way have been recorded
for the people ; and I believe that to all persons accustomed to the earnest
forms of art, it contained a profound and touching lesson. The notable
thing was, however, that it offended all persons not in earnest, and was
loudly cried out against by the polite formalism of society. This fate
is, I believe, the almost inevitable one of thoroughly genuine work, in
these days, whether poetry or painting ; but what added to the singularity
in this case was that coarse heartlessness was even more offended than
polite heartlessness. Thus, Blackwood's Magazine,—which from the
time that, with grace, judgment, and tenderness peculiarly its own, it bid
the dying Keats "back to his gallipots,'" to that in which it partly

h A

• " The notice in Blackwood is still more scurrilous ; tlie circumstance of Keats
having been brought up a surgeon is the staple o£ the jokes of the piece. He is told
' it is a better and wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet.'
Millies' Life of Keats, \o\. i- p. 200., and compare pp. 193, 194. It may perhaps be said
that I attach too much importance to the evil of base criticism ; but those who think
so have never rightly understood its scope, nor the reach of that stern saying of
Johnson's (Idler, No. 3. April 29, 1758): "Little does he (who assumes the character
of a critic) think how many harmless men he involves in his own guilt, by teaching
them to be noxious without malignity, and to repeat objections which they do not
understand." And truly, not in this kind only, but in all things whatsoever, there is
not, to my mind, a more woful or wonderful matter of thought than the power
of a fool. In the world's affairs there is no design so great or good but it will
take twenty wise men to help it forward a few inclies, and a single fool c.an stop
it ; there is no evil so great or so terrible but that, after a multitude of counsellors

arrested the last efforts, and shortened the life of Turner, had with an
infallible instinct for the wi'ong, given what pain it could, and withered
what strength it could, in every great mind that was in anywise within
its reach ; and had made itself, to the utmost of its power, frost and
disease of the heart to the most noble spirits of England,—took upon
itself to be generously offended at this triumphing over the death of
England's enemy, because, " by proving that he is obliged to undergo the
common lot of all, his brotherhood is at once reasserted.i" He was not,
then, a brother while he was alive ? or is our brother's blood in general
not to be acknowledged by us till it rushes up against us from the
ground ? I know that this is a common creed, whether a peculiarly wise
or Christian one may be doubted. It may not, indeed, be well to triumph
over the dead, but perhaps it is less well that the world so often tries
to triumph over the living. And as for exultation over a fallen foe
(though there was none in the mind of the man who drew that monarch
dead), it may be remembered that there have been worthy persons,
before now, guilty of this great wickedness,—nay, who have even fitted
the words of their exultation to timbrels, and gone forth to sing them
in dances. There have even been those—women, too,—who could make
a mock at the agony of a mother weeping over her lost son, when that
son had been the enemy of their country ; and their mock has been
preserved, as worthy to be read by human eyes. " The mother of Sisera
looked out at a window, ' Hath he not sped ? ' " I do not say this
was right, still less that it was wrong; but only that it would be well
for us if we could quit our habit of thinking that what we say of the
dead is of more weight than what we say of the living. The dead
either know nothing, or know enough to despise both us and our insults,
or adulation.

"Well, but," it is answered, "there will always be this weakness in
our human nature; we shall for ever, in spite of reason, take pleasure
in doing funereal honour to the corpse, and writing sacredness to memory
upon marble." Then, if you are to do this,—if you are to put off
your kindness until death,—why not, in God's name, put off also your
enmity ? and if you choose to write your lingering affections upon stones,

have taken means to avert it, a single fool will bring it down. Pestilence, famine, and
the sword, are given into the fool's hand as the arrows into the hand of the giant: and
if he were fairly set forth in the right motley, the web of it should be sackcloth and
sable ; the bells on his cap, passing bells; his badge, a bear robbed of her whelps ;
and his bauble, a sexton's spade.

' By the way, this doubt of the possibility of an emperor's death till he proves it, is
a curious fact in the history of Scottish metaphysics in the nineteenth century.

OP"

■S: 1?

wreak also your delayed anger upon clay. This would bo just, and,
'in the last case, little as you think it, generous. The true baseness is
in the bitter reverse—the strange iniquity of our folly. Is a man to
be praised, honoured, pleaded for ? It might do harm to praise or plead
for him while he lived. Wait till he is dead. Is he to be maligned,
dishonoured, and discomforted ? See that you do it while he is alive.
It would be too ungenerous to slander him when he could feel malice
no more ; too contemptible to try to hurt him when he was past anguish.
Make yourselves busy, ye unjust, ye lying, ye hungry for pain 1 Death
is near. This is your hour, and the power of darkness. Wait, ye just,
ye merciful, ye faithful in love ! Wait but for a little while, for this is
not your rest.

" Well, but," it is still answered, " is it not, indeed, ungenerous to
speak ill of the dead, since they cannot defend themselves ?"

Why should they ? If you speak ill of them falsely, it concerns
you, not them. Those lies of thine will " hurt a man as thou art,"
assuredly they will hurt thyself; but that clay, or the delivered soul of
it, in no wise. Ajacean shield, seven-folded, never stayed lance-thrust
as that turf will, with daisies pied. What you say of those quiet ones is
.wholly and utterly the world's affair and yours. The lie will, indeed,
cost its proper price, and work its appointed work ; you may ruin living
myriads by it,—you may stop the progress of centuries by it,—you may
have to pay your own soul for it,—but as for ruffling one corner of
the folded shroud by it, think it not. The dead have none to defend
them ! Nay, they have two defenders, strong enough for the need—
God, and the worm.

[S.\

I AM well aware how insufficient, and, in some measure, how dis-
putable, the account given in the preceding chapters of the cleavages
of the slaty crystallines must appear to geologists. But I had several
reasons, good or bad as they may be, for treating the subject in such a
manner. The first was, that considering the science of the artist as
eminently the science of aspects (see Vol. III. Chap. xvii. § 43.), I
kept myself, in all my investigations of natural objects, as much as

possible in the state of an uninformed spectator of the outside of things,
receiving simply what impressions the external phenomena first induce.
For the natural tendency of accurate science is to make the possessor of
it look for, and eminently see, the things connected with his special
pieces of knowledge ; and as all accurate science must be sternly limited,
his sight of nature gets limited accordingly. I observed that all our
young figure-painters were rendered, to all intents and purposes, hlitul
by their knowledge of anatomy. They saw only certain muscles and
bones, of which they had learned the positions by rote, but could not,
on account of the very prominence in their minds of these bits of
fragmentary knowledge, see the real movement, colour, rounding, or any
other subtle quality of the human form. And I was quite sure that
if I examined the mountain anatomy scientifically, I should go wrong,
in like manner, touching the external aspects. Therefore in beginning
the inquiries of which the results are given in the preceding pages,
I closed all geological books, and set myself, as far as I could, to see
the Alps in a simple, thoughtless, and untheorizing manner; but to
see them, if it might be, thoroughly. If I am wrong in any of the
statements made after this kind of examination, the very fact of this
error is an interesting one, as showing the kind of deception which
the external aspects of hills are calculated to induce in an unprejudiced
observer; but, whether wrong or right, I believe the results I have
given are those which naturally would strike an artist, and ought to
strike him, just as the apparently domical form of the sky, and radiation
of the sun's light, ought to be marked by him as pictorial phenomena,
though the sky is not domical, and though the radiation of sunbeams
is a perspective deception. There are, however, one or two points on
which my opinions might seem more adverse to the usual positions
of geologists than they really are, owing to my having left out
many qualifyimj statements for fear of confusing the reader. These
I must here briefly touch upon. And, first, I know that I shall be
questioned for not having sufficiently dwelt upon slaty cleavages running
transversely across series of beds, and for generally speaking as if the
slaty crystalline rocks were merely dried beds of micaceous sand, in
which the flakes of mica naturally lay parallel with the beds, or only
at such an angle to them as is constantly assumed by particles of
drift. Now the reason of this is simply that my own mountain expe-
rience has led me always among rocks which induced such an impres-
sion ; that, in general, artists seeking for the noblest hill scenery, will
also get among such rocks, and that therefore I judged it best to
explain their structure completely, merely alluding (in Chap. x. § 7.)

to the curious results of cross cleavage among the softer slates, and
leaving the reader to pursue the inquiry, if he cared to do so;
although, in reality, it matters very little to the artist whether the
slaty cleavage be across the beds or not, for to him the cleavage itself
is always the important matter; and the stratification, if contrary to
it, is usually so obscure as to be naturally, and therefore properly, lost
sight of. And touching the disputed question whether the micaceous
arrangements of metamorphic rocks are the results of subsequent crys-
tallization, or of aqueous deposition, I had no special call to speak :
the whole subject appeared to me only more mysterious the more I
examined it; but my own impressions were always strongly for the
aqueous deposition : nor in such cases as that of the beds of the Mat-
terhorn (drawn in Plate 39.), respecting which, somewhat exceptionally,
I have allowed myself to theorize a little, does the matter appear to
me disputable.

And I was confirmed in this feeling by De Saussure; the only
writer whose help I did not refuse in the course of these inquiries.
His I received, for this reason—all other geological writers whose
works I had examined were engaged in the maintenance of some
theory or other, and always gathering materials to support it. But I
found Saussure had gone to the Alps as I desired to go myself, only
to look at them, and describe them as they were, loving them heartily
—loving them, the positive Alps, more than himself, or than science,
or than any theories of science ; and I found his descriptions, there-
fore, clear, and trustworthy; and that when I had not visited any
place myself, Saussure's report upon it might always be received
without question.

Not but that Saussure himself has a pet theory, like other human
beings; only it is quite subordinate to his love of the Alps. He is a
steady advocate of the aqueous crystallization of rocks, and never loses a
fair opportunity of a blow at the Huttonians; but his opportunities are
always fair, his description of what he sees is wholly impartial; it is
only when he gets home and arranges his papers that he puts in the little
aqueously inclined paragraphs, and never a paragraph without just cause.
He may, perhaps, overlook the evidence on the opposite side; but in the
Alps the igneous alteration of the rocks, and the modes of their upheaval,
seem to me subjects of intense difficulty and mystery, and as such
Saussure always treats them ; the evidence for the original depositioii by
water of the slaty crystallines appears to him, as it does to me, often
perfectly distinct.

«■SP!

I have founded my account of the slaty crystallines:—" Fid61e ^ mon
principe, de ne regarder comme des couches, dans les montagnes schis-
teuses, que les divisions paralleles aux feuillets des schistes dont elles
sont composees."—Voyacjes, § 1747. I know that this is an arbitrary,
and in some cases an assuredly false, principle ; but the assumption
of it by De Saussure proves all that I want to prove, — namely,
that the beds of the slaty crystallines are in the Alps in so largo a
plurality of instances correspondent in direction to their folia, as to
induce even a cautious reasoner to assume such correspondence to be
universal.

The next point, however, on which I shall be opposed, is one on
which I speak with far less confidence, for in this Saussure himself
is against me,—namely, the parallelism of the beds sloping under
the Mont Blanc. Saussure states twice, §§ G56. G77., that they
are arranged in the form of a fan. I can only repeat that every
measurement and every drawing I made in Chamoum led me to
the conclusions stated in the text, and so I leave the subject to
better investigators; this one fact being indisputable, and the only
one on which for my purpose it is necessary to insist, that, whether
in Chamouni the beds be radiant or not, to an artist's eye they are
usually parallel; and throughout the Alps no phenomenon is more
constant than the rounding of surfaces across the extremities of beds
sloping outwards, as seen in my plates 37. 40. and 48., and this
especially in the most majestic mountain masses. Compare De Saus-
sure of the Grimsel, § 1712. : " Toujours il est bien remarquable quo
ces feuillets, verticaux au sommet, s'inclinent ensuite, comme a Cha-
mouni, centre le dehors de la montagne : " and again of the granite
at Guttannen, § 1679 : " Ces couches ne sont pas tout-a-fait verticales;,
elles s'appuyent un pen centre le Nord-Est, on, comme a Chamouni,
contre le dehors de la montagne." Again, of the "quartz micace " of
Zuniloch, § 1723. : " Ces rochers sont en couches a peu pres verti-
cales, dont les plans courent du Nord-Est au Sud-Ouest, en s'appuyant,
suivant Vusage, contre I'exterieur de la montagne, ou contre la vallee.
Again, on the Pass of the G-ries, § 1738. : " Le rocher presente des
couches d'un schiste micace raye comme une etoffe ; comme, de I'autre
cote, ils surplombent vers le dehors de.la montagne." Without refer-
ring to other passages, I think Saussure's simple words, " suivant
I'usage," ai-e enough to justify my statement in Chap. xiv. § 3.; only
the reader must of course always remember that every conceivable
position of beds takes place in the Alps, and all I mean to assert
generally is, that where the masses are most enormous and impressive,

and formed of slaty crystalline rocks, there the run of the beds up, as
it were, from within the mountain to its surface will, in all proba-
bility, become a notable feature in the scene as regarded by an artist.
One somewhat unusual form assumed by horizontal beds of slaty
crystallines, or of granite, is described by Saussure with unusual
admiration; and the passage is worth extracting, as bearing on the
terraced ideal of rocks in the middle ages. The scene is in the Val
Formazza.

" Independamment de Tinteret que ces couches presentent au geo-
logiste sous un nombre de rapports qu'il seroit trop long et peut-etre
inutile de detailler, elles presentent, meme pour le peintre, un superbe
tableau. Je n'ai jamais vu de plus beaux rochers, et distribues en plus
grandes masses; ici, blancs; la, noircis par les lichens; la, peints de
ces belles couleurs variees que nous admirions au Grimsel, et entre-
meles d'arbres, dont les uns couronnent le faite de la moutagne, et
d'autres sont inegalement jetes sur les comiches qui en separent les
couches. Vers le bas de la montagne I'ceil se repose sur de beaux
vergers, dans des prairies dont le terrein est inegal et varie, et sur
de magnifiques chataigniers, dont les branches etendues ombragent les
rochers contre lesquels ils croissent. En general, ces granits en couches
horizontales rendent ce pays charmant; car, quoiqu'il y ait, comme je
I'ai dit, des couches qui forment des saillies, cependant elles sont pour
I'ordinaire arrangees en gradins, ou en grandes assises posees en re-
culement les unes derriere les autres, et les bords de ces gradins sont
converts de la plus belle verdure, et d'arbres distribues de la maniere
la plus pittoresque. On voit meme des montagnes tres-elevees, qui
ont la forme de pain de sucre, et qui sont entour^es et couronnees,
jusqu'a leur sommet, de guirlandes d'arbres assis sur les intervalles
des couches, et qui forment I'effet du monde le plus singulier." —^
Voyages, § 1758.

Another statement, which I made generally, referring, for those quali-
fications which it is so difficult to give without confusing the reader,
to this Appendix, was that of the usually greater hardness of the tops of
mountains as compared with their flanks. My own experience among the
Alps has furnished me with few exceptions to this law; but there is a
very interesting one, according to Saussure, in the range of the Furca
del Bosco. {Voyages, § 1779.)

Lastly, at page 189. of this volume, I have alluded to the various
cleavages of the aiguilles, out of which one only has been explained and
illustrated. I had not intended to treat the subject so partially ; and had
actually prepared a long chapter, explaining the relations of five different

''' • Vi

and important systems of cleavage in the Chamouni aiguilles. When it
was wi'itten, however, I found it looked so repulsive to readers in general,
and proved so little that was of interest even to readers in particular,
that I cancelled it, leaving only the account of what I might, perhaps,
not unjustifiably (from the first representation of it in the Liber Stu-
diorum) call Turner's cleavage. The following passage, which was the
introduction to the chapter, may serve to show that I have not ignored
the others, though I found, after long examination, that Turner's was the
principal one:—

"One of the principal distinctions between these• crystalline masses
and stratified rocks, with respect to their outwardly apparent structure,
is the subtle complexity and number of ranks in their crystalline
cleavages. The stratified masses have always a simply intelligible
organization; their beds lie in one direction, and certain fissures and
fractures of those beds lie in other clearly ascertainable directions;
seldom more than two or three distinct directions of these fractures
being admitted. But if the traveller will set himself deliberately to
watch the shadows on the aiguilles of Chamouni as the sun moves round
them, he will find that nearly every quarter of an hour a new set of
cleavages becomes visible, not confused and orderless, but a series of
lines inclining in some one definite direction, and that so positively,
that if he had only seen the aiguille at that moment he would assuredly
have supposed its internal structure to be altogether regulated by the
lines of bed or cleavage then in sight. Let him, however, wait for
another quarter of an hour, and he will see those lines fade entirely
away as the sun rounds them ; anj^ another set, perhaps quite adverse
to them, and assuredly lying in another direction, will as gradually become
visible, to die away in their turn, and be succeeded by a third scheme
of structure.

" These ' dissolving views ' of the geology of the aiguilles have often
thrown me into despair of ever being able to give any account of their
formation ; but just in proportion as I became aware of the infinite com-
plexity of their framework, the one great fact rose into more prominent
and wonderful relief,—that through this inextricable complexity there
was always manifested some authoritative principle. It mattered not at
what hour of the day the aiguilles were examined, at that hour they
had a system of structure belonging to the moment. No confusion nor
anarchy ever appeared amidst their strength, but an ineffiible order,
only the more perfect because incromprehensible. They differed from
lower mountains, not merely in being more compact, but in being more
disciplined.

isi^ «^-^ntes tSCWi

" For, observe, the lines which cause these far-away effects of shadow,
are not, as often in less noble rocks, caused by real cracks through
the body of the mountain; for, were this so, it would follow, from
what has just been stated, that these aiguilles were cracked through
and through in every direction, and therefore actually weaker, instead
of stronger, than other rocks. But the appearance of fracture is entirely
external, and the sympathy or parallelism of the lines indicates, not an
actual splitting through the rock, but a mere disposition in the rock
to split harmoniously when it is compelled to do so. Thus, in the
shell-like fractures on the flank of the Aiguille Blaitifere, the I'ock is
not actually divided, as it appears to be, into successive hollow plates.
Go up close to the inner angle between one bed of rock and the next,
and the whole mass will be found as firmly united as a piece of glass.
There is absolutely no crack between the beds,—no, not so much as
would allow the blade of a penknife to enter for a quarter of an inch ^;
but such a subtle disposition to symmetry of fracture in the heart of
the solid rock, that the next thunderbolt which strikes on that edge
of it will rend away a shell-shaped fragment or series of fragments ;
and will either break it so as to continue the line of one of the existing
sides, or in some other line parallel to that. And. yet this resolved-
ness to break into shell-shaped fragments running north and south is
only characteristic of the rock at this spot, and at certain other spots
where similar circumstances have brought out this peculiar humour.
Forty yards farther on it will be equally determined to break in another
direction, and nothing will persuade it to the contrary. Forty yards
farther it will change its mind again, and face its beds round to another
quarter of the compass ; and yet all these alternating caprices are each
parts of one mighty continuous caprice, which is only masked for a time;

' The following extract from my diary refers to the only instance in which I
remember any apijearancc of a spring, or welling of water through inner fissures, in
the aiguilles.

" 20th August. A scencled the moraine till I reached the base of Blaiti«-e ; the
upper part of the moraine excessively loose and edgy ; covered with fresh snow ; tlie
rocks were wreathed in mist, and a light sleet, composed of small grains of kneaded
snow, kept beating in rny face ; it was bitter cold too, though the thermometer was at
43°, but the wind was like that of an English December thaw. I got to the base of
tlio aiguille, however, one of the most grand and sweeping bits of granite I have ever
seen ; a small gurgling streamlet, escaping from a fissure not wide enough to let in
iny hand, made a strange hollow ringing in the compact rock, and came welling out
over its ledges with the sound, and successive wave, of water out of a narrow-necked
bottle, coj'ering the rock with ice (which must have been frozen there last night) two
inches thick. I levelled the Breven top, and found it a little beneath me ; the Charmoz
glacier on the left, sank from the moraine in broken fragments of neve, and swept back
under the dark walls of the Charmo/,, lost in cloud."

406

fis threads of one colour are in a patterned stuff by threads of another;
and thus from a distance, precisely the same cleavage is seen repeated
again and again in different places, forming a systematic structure ; while,
other groups of cleavages will become visible in their turn, either as we
change our place of observation, or as the sunlight changes the direction
of its fall."

One part of these rocks, I think, no geologist interested in this
subject should pass without examination ; viz., the little spur of Blaitiere
drawn in Plate 29., Fig. 3. It is seen, as thei-e shown, from the
moraine of the Charmoz glacier, its summit bearing s. 40° w.; and its
cleavage beds leaning to the left or s.e., against the Aiguille Blaitiere.
If, however, we go down to the extremity of the rocks themselves,
on the right, we shall find that all those thick beams of rock are
actually smvn into vertical timbers by another cleavage, sometimes so
fine as to look almost slaty, directed straight s.e., against the aiguille,
as if, continued, it would saw it through and through; finally, cross
the spur and go down to the glacier below, between it and the Aiguille
du Plan, and the bottom of the spur will be found presenting the
most splendid mossy surfaces, through which the true gneissitic
cleavage is faintly traceable, dipping at riyht angles to the beds in
Fig. 8., or under the Aiguille Blatiere, thus concurring with the beds
of La Cote.

I forgot to note that the view of this Aiguille Blatiere, given in
Plate 39., was taken from the station marked q in the reference figure,
p. 166. ; and the sketch of the Aiguille du Plan at p. 191., from the
station marked r in the same figure, a highly interesting point of
observation in many respects ; while the course of transition from the
protogine into gneiss presents more remarkable phenomena on the
descents from that point r to the Tapia, t, than at any other easily
accessible spot.

Various interesting descriptions of granite cleavage will be found in
Dc Saussure, chiefly in his accounts of the Grimsel and St. Gothard.
The following summary of his observations on their positions of beds
(§ 1774.), may serve to show the reader how long I should have
detained him if I had endeavoured to give a description of all the
attendant phenomena :—" II est aussi bien curieux de voir ces gneiss,
et ces granits veines, en couches verticales a Guttannen; melangees
d'horizontales et de verticalcs au Lauteraar ; toutes verticales au Grimsel
et au Gries; toutes horizontales dans le Val Formazza, et enfin pour
la troisieme fois verticales a la sortie des Alpes a I'entree du Lac

In the Preface to the third volume I alluded to the conviction, daily gaining
ground upon me, of the need of a more accurately logical education of our
youth. Truly among the most pitiable and practically hurtful weaknesses
of the modern English mind, its usual inability to grasp the connection
between any two ideas which have elements of opposition in them, as well
as of connection, is perhaps the chief. It is shown with singular fatality
in the vague efforts made by our divines to meet the objections raised by
free-thinkers, bearing on the nature and origin of evil; but there is hardly
a sentence written on any matter requiring careful analysis, by writers who
have not yet begun to perceive the influence of their own vanity (and
there are too many such among divines), which will not involve some half-
lamentable, half-ludicrous, logical flaw,—such flaws being the invariable
consequence of a man's straining to say anything in a learned instead of
an intelligible manner.

Take a sentence, for example, from J. A. James's "Anxious Inquirer: "
—"It is a great principle that subjective religion, or in otheriwords,
religion in us, is produced and sustained by fixing the mind on objective
religion, or the facts and doctrines of the Word of God." ^

Cut entirely out the words I have put in italics, and the sentence has
a meaning (though not by any means an important one). But by its
verbosities it is extended into pure nonsense; for "facts" are neither
"objective" nor "subjective religion ; they are not religion at all. The
belief of them, attended with certain feelings, is religion ; and it must
always be religion "in us," for in whom else should it be? (unless in
angels; which would not make it less " subjective "). It is just as rational
to call doctrines " objective religion," as to call entreaties " objective
compassion ; " and the only real fact of any notability deducible from the
sentence is, that the witer desired earnestly to say something profound,
and had nothing profound to say.

To this same defect of intellect must, in charity, be attributed many
of the wretched cases of special pleading which we continually hear from
the pulpit. In the year 1853, I heard, in Edinburgh, a sermon from a
leading and excellent Presbyterian clergyman, on a subject generally
grateful to Protestant audiences, namely, the impropriety and wickedness

' If these two unlucky words get much more hold in the language, we shall soon
have our philosophers refusing to call their dinner " dinner," but speaking of it always
as their " objective appetite."

of Fasting. The preacher entirely denied that there was any authority for
fasting in the New Testament; declared that there were many feasts
appointed, hut no fasts ; insisted with great energy on the words " forbid-
ding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats," «fee., as descriptive
of Eomanism, and neve)- once, throughout a long sermon, ventured so much
as a single syllable that might recall to his audience's recollection the
existence of such texts as Matthew iv. 2. and vi. 16., or Mark ix. 29. I
have heard many sermons from Roman Catholic priests, but I never
yet heard, in the strongest holds of Romanism, any so monstrous an
instance of special pleading ; in fact, it never could have occurred in a
sermon by any respectable Roman Catholic divine ; for the Romanists are
trained to argument from their youth, and are always to some extent
plausible.

It is of course impossible to determine, in such cases, how far the
preacher, having conscientiously made up his mind on the subject by
foregoing thought, and honestly desiring to impress his conclusion on his
congregation, may think his object will be best, and even justifiably
attained, by insisting on all that is in favour of his position, and trusting
to the weak heads of his hearers not to find out the arguments for the
contrary; fearing that if he stated, in any proportionate measure, the
considerations on the other side, he might not be able, in the time allotted
to him, to bring out his conclusion fairly. This, though I hold it an
entirely false view, is nevertheless a comprehensible and pardonable one,
especially in a man familiar with the reasoning capacities of the public ;
though those capacities themselves owe half their shortcomings to being
so unworthily treated. But, on the whole, and looking broadly at the
way the speakers and teachers of the nation set about their business,
there is an almost fathomless failure in the results, owing to the general
admission of special pleading as an art to he taught to youth. The main
thing which we ought to teach our youth is to see something,—all that the
eyes which Grod has given them are capable of seeing. The sum of what
we do teach them is to say something. As far as I have experience of
instruction, no man ever dreams of teaching a boy to get to the root
of a matter; to think it out; to get quit of passion and desire in the
process of thinking; or to fear no face of man in plainly asserting the
ascertained result. But to say anything in a glib and graceful manner,
—to give an epigrammatic turn to nothing,—to quench the dim per-
ceptions of a feeble adversary, and parry cunningly the home thrusts of a
strong one,'—to invent blanknesses in speech for breathing time, and
slipperinesses in speech for hiding time,—to polish malice to the deadliest
edge, shape profession to the seemliest shadow, and mask self-intoi-est

under the fairest pretext,—all these skills we teach definitely, as the
main arts of business and life. There is a strange significance in the
admission of Aristotle's Rhetoric at our universities as a class-book.
Cheating at cards is a base profession enough, but truly it would be
wiser to print a code of gambler's legerdemain, and give that for a class-
book, than to make the legerdemain of human speech, and the clever
shuffling of the black spots in the human heart, the first study of our
politic youth. Again, the Ethics of Aristotle, though containing some
shrewd talk, interesting for an old reader, are yet so absurdly illogical
and sophistical, that if a young man has once read them with any faith,
it must take years before he recovers from the induced confusions of
thought and false habits of argument. If there were the slightest dexterity
or ingenuity in maintaining the false theory, there might be some excuse
for retaining the Ethics as a school-book, provided only the tutor were
careful to point out, on first opening it, that the Christian virtues,—
namely, to love with all the heart, soul, and strength ; to fight, not as
one that beateth the air ; and to do with might whatsoever the hand
findeth to do,—could not in anywise be defined as "habits of choice in
moderation." But the Aristotelian quibbles are so shallow, that I look
upon the retention of the book as a confession by our universities that
, they consider practice in shallow quibbling one of the essential disciplines
of youth. Take, for instance, the distinction made between " Envy "
and " Rejoicing at Evil " {'pQovoc and hinxaipiKaKia), in the second book of
the Ethics, viz. that envy is grieved when any one meets with good-
fortune ; but "the rejoicer at evil so far misses of grieving, as even to
rejoice " (the distinction between the good and evil, as subjects of the
emotion, being thus omitted, and merely the verbal opposition of grief
and joy caught at); and conceive the result, in the minds of most youths,
of being forced to take tricks of words such as this (and there are too
many of them in even the best Greek writers) for subjects of daily study
and admiration; the theory of the Ethics being, besides, so hopelessly
untenable, that even quibbling will not always face it- out,—nay, will not
help it in exactly the first and most important example of virtue which
Aristotle has to give, and the very one which we might have thought his
theory would have fitted most neatly ; for defining " temperance" as a
mean, and intemperance as one relative extreme, not being able to find an
opposite extreme, he escapes with the apology that the kind of person who
sins in the other extreme " has no precise name ; because, on the whole,
he does not exist! "

* I know well the common censure by which objections to such futilities
of so-called education are met, by the men who have been ruined by

■4'

them,—the common plea that anything does to " exercise the mind upon."
It is an utterly false one. The human soul, in youth, is not a* machine
of which you can polish the cogs with any kelp or brickdust near at
hand ; and, having got it into working order, and good, empty, and oiled
serviceableness, start your immortal locomotive, at twenty-five years old
or thirty, express from the Strait Gate, on the Narrow Eoad. The
whole period of youth is one essentially of formation, edification, instruc-
tion, I use the words with their weight in them; intaking of stores,
establishment in vital habits, hopes, and faiths. There is not an hour
of it but is trembling with destinies,—not a moment of which, once
past, the appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow
struck on the cold iron. Take your vase of Venice glass out of the
furnace, and strew chaif over it in its transparent heat, and recover that
to its clearness and rubied glory when the north wind has blown upon
it; but do not think to strew chalF over the child fresh- from Grod's
presence, and to bring the heavenly colours back to him—at least in
this world.

J s '' V '

f -

Frontispiece. The Gates of the Hills .	Drawn by . J. M. W. Turner.	Engraved by . J. cousen
Plate 18. The Transition from Ghirlandajo to Clande	Facing page . Ghirlandajo and Claude J. H. Le Keux . 2
19. The Pieturesqne of "Windmills	. Stanjield and Turner	. J. H. lie Keux .	7
20. The Pass of Taido. 1. Simple Topography	. The Author .	. The Author .	22
21. The Pass of Paido. 2. Tnrnerian Topography J. M. W. Turner .		. The Author .	22
22. Turner's earliest Nottiiigham .	. J. M. W. Turner.	. T. Boys .	28
23. Turner's latest Nottingham .	. J. M. W. Turner .	. T. Boys .	28
24. The Towers of Pribourg ....	. The Author .	. j. c. Armytage	32
25. Things in General.....	The Author .	. J. H. Le Keux .	33
26. The Law of Evanescence	. The Author .	. R, P. Cuff	71
27. The Aspen under Idealization	. Turner, .	. j. CoUSEN	/ t
28. The Aspen TJnldealized ....	. The Author .	. J. C. Armytage	78
29, Aiguille Strncture.....	The Author .	. J. C. Armytage	164
■ 30. The Ideal of Aiguilles ....	The Author, Sfc. .	. R. P. Cuff	181
31. The Aiguille Blaitiere ....	7"he Author .	. J. C. Armytage	189
32. Aiguille-drawing.....	. Turner, §-c. .	. J. H. LE KEUX .	196
33. Contours of Aiguille Bouchard	. The Author .	. R. P. Cuff	209
34. Cleavage of Aiguille Bouchard	. The Author .	. The Author .	216
35. Crest of La Cote and Taconay	. The Author .	. The Author .	217

XH LIST OF	PLATES.
Plate 36. Crest of La Cote......	Drawn by The Author .	Engraved by Facing page . T. Lupton . 218
37. Crests of the Slaty Crystallines	J. M. W. Turner .	. The Authoe .	227
38. The Cervin, from the East, and North-east .	The Author .	. J. C. Armytage	238
39. The Cervin from the North-west	The Author .	. J. C. Akmytage	244
40. The Mountains of Villeneuve . . . .	The Author .	. J. H. Le Keux .	253
12.A. The Shores of Wharfe . . . .	J. M. W. Turner .	. Thos. Lupton .	257
41. The Rocks of Arona.....	The Author .	. J. H. Le Kedx .	262
42. Leaf Curvature. Magnolia and Laburnum .	The Author .	. R. P. Cuff	279
43. Leaf Curvature. Dead Laurel	The Author .	. R. P. Cuff	279
44. Leaf Curvature. Young Ivy . . . .	The Author .	. E. P. Cuff	279
45. Debris Curvature......	The Author .	. R. P. Cuff	292
46. The Buttresses of an Alp . . . .	The Author .	. J. H. Le Keux .	293
47. The QuaiTy of Carrara.....	The Author .	. J. H. Le Keux .	306
48. Bank of Slaty Crystallines . . . .	Daguerreotype	. J. C. Aemytage	311
49. Truth and Untruth of Stones ....	Turner and Claude	. Thos. Lupton .	315
50. Goldau........	J. M. W. Turner .	. J. cousen .	320

Natuke.	Kbmbkandt.	Tuknek.	Veronese.
0	0	0	0
10	1	10	10
20	3	20	20
30	5	24	30
40	7	26	32
50	10	27	34
60	13	28	36
70	17	30	37
80	20	32	38 .
90	30	36	39
100	40	40	40