The Two Paths-Love s Meinie ALSO VAL D'ARNO THE PLEASURES OF ENGLAND MORNINGS IN FLORENCE— TIME AND TIDE THE ART OF ENGLAND NOTES ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS BY JOHN RUSK IN. M.A. author of "the seven lamps of architecture," 11 the crown of wild olive," "sesame and lilies," etc, BOSTON ALDINE BOOK PUBLISHING CO. PUBLISHERS CONTENTS. THE TWO PATHS. lecture I. PAt _ The Deteriorative Power of Conventional Art over Nations, ...... LECTURE II. The Unity of Art, ..... LECTURE III. Modern Manufacture and Design, LECTURE IV. The Influence of Imagination in Architecture, . LECTURE V. The Work of Iron, in Nature, Art, and Policy, 9 54 77 103 APPENDICES, . . . . . . .135 LOVE'S MEINIE. LECTURE I. The Robin, ... . . . . .157 LECTURE II. The Swallow, ....... 180 The Relation between Michael Angelo and T into ret, 211 LOVE'S MEINIE. riGURE. PAGE 1. Long Feathers ok Robins Wing . 173 2. « " " " ... 174 3. The Swallow on the Wing . . . -194 4. A Reptilian or Dragon's Wing . . . 196 5. Section of Wing . . . . . .197 6. Wing of a Seagull, open ..... 19S 7. " " closed .... 199 ,° Outline of Wing Bones .... 200 9. Outer surface of Seagulls Wing . . 201 10. Inner " " " " 2*2 11. Tops of the four lowest feathers in figure 9, . 203 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. THE TWO PATHS. PAGE The Ideal of an Angel . . . . . .22 The Serpent beguiling Eve . . . 24 Contrast ........ 64 Symmetry ....... 64 Ornament ........ 65 Classical Architecture ..... 141 Centre piece of Balcony . . . . . .147 General Effect of Masses . . , . .147 Profile . . . . . . . .148 Teeth of the Border . . f ... 149 Border at the side of Balcony . . . .149 Outline of retracted Leaves .... 149 Nicholas the Pisan John the Pisan Shield and Apron Parted Per Pale Pax Vobiscum Marble Couchant Marble Rampant Franchise The Tyrrhene Sea Fleur de Lys Appendix VAL DARNO. LECTURE I. LECTURE II. LECTURE III. LECTURE IV. LECTURE V. LECTURE VI. LECTURE VII. LECTURE VIII. LECTURE IX. LECTURE X. PLEASURES OF ENGLAND. LECTURE I. The Pleasures of Learning. Bertha to Osburga LECTURE II. The Pleasures of Faith. Alfred to the Confessor LECTURE III. The Pleasures of Deed. Alfred to Cosur de Lion LIST OF PLATES. VAL D'ARNO. PLATE FACING PAGE The Ancient Shores of Arno, .... 239 I. The Pisan Latona, ..... 248 II. NlCCOLA PISANO'S PULPIT, . . . . 25 1 ill. The Fountain of Perugia .... 257 IV. Norman Imagery, ...... 264 V. Door of the Baptistery. Pisa . . . 305 VI. The Story of St. John. Advent . . . 308 VII. " " " " " Departure . . 308 VIII. "The Charge to Adam." Giovanni Pisano . . 314 IX. " " " " Modern Italian . 352 X. The Nativity. Giovanni Pisano . . . 364 XL " " Modern Italian . . . 374 XII. The Annunciation and Visitation . . • 376 PEE FACE. The following addresses, though spoken at different times, are intentionally connected in subject ; their aim being to set one or two main principles of art in simple light before the general student, and to indicate their practical bearing on modern design. The law which it has been my effort chiefly to illustrate is the dependence of all noble design, in any kind, on the sculpture or painting of Organic Form, This is the vital law ; lying at the root of all that I have ever tried to teach respecting architecture or any other art. It is also the law r most generally disallowed. I "believe this must be so in every subject. We are all of us willing enough to accept dead truths or blunt ones ; which can be fitted harmlessly into spare niches, or shrouded and coffined at once out of the way, we holding complacently the cemetery keys, and supposing we have learned something. But a sapling truth, with earth at its root and blossom on its branches ; or a trenchant truth, that can cut its way through bars and sods ; most men, it seems to me, dislike the sight or entertainment of, if by any means such guest or vision may be avoided. And, indeed, this is no wonder ; for one such truth, thoroughly accepted, connects itself strangely with others, and there is no saying what it may lead us to. And thus the gist of what I have tried to teach about archi- tecture has been throughout denied by my architect readers, even when they thought what I said suggestive in other par- ticulars. " Anything but that. Study Italian Gothic ? — per- haps it would be as well : build with pointed arches ? — there is no objection : use solid stone and well-burnt brick ? — by all means : but — learn to carve or paint organic form ourselves ! 4 PiljutACE. How can such a thing be asked? We are above all that The carvers and painters are our servants — quite subordinate people. They ought to be glad if we leave room for them." Well : on that it all turns. For those who will not learn to» carve or paint, and think themselves greater men because they cannot, it is wholly wasted time to read any words of mine ; in the truest and sternest sense they can read no words of mine ; for the most familiar I can use — •"form," "propor- tion," " beauty," " curvature," " colour" — are used in a sense which by no effort I can communicate to such readers ; and in no building that I praise, is the thing that I praise it for, visible to them. And it is the more necessary for me to state this fully ; be- cause so-called Gothic or Eomanesque buildings are now rising every day around us, which might be supposed by the public more or less to embody the principles of those styles, but which embody not one of them, nor any shadow or fragment of them ; but merely serve to caricature the noble buildings of past ages, and to bring their form into dishonour by leav- ing out their soul. The following addresses are therefore arranged, as I have just stated, to put this great law, and one or two collateral ones, in less mistakeable light, securing even in this irregular form at least clearness of assertion. For the rest, the question at issue is not one to be decided by argument, but by experi- ment, which if the reader is disinclined to make, all demon- stration must be useless to him. The lectures are for the most part printed as they were read, mending only obscure sentences here and there. The parts which were trusted to extempore speaking are supplied, as well as I can remember (only with an addition here and there of things I forgot to say), in the words, or at least the kind of words, used at the time ; and they contain, at all events, the substance of what I said more accurately than hurried journal reports. I must beg my readers not in general to trust to such, for even in fast speaking I try to use words carefully ; and any alteration of expression will sometimes in- volve a great alteration in meaning. A little while ago I had PREFACE. 5 to speak of an architectural design, and called it " elegant," meaning, founded on good and well " elected " models ; the printed report gave " excellent" design (that is to say, design excellingly good), which I did not mean, and should, even in the most hurried speaking, never have said. The illustrations of the lecture on iron were sketches made too roughly to be engraved, and yet of too elaborate subjects to allow of my drawing them completely. Those now sub- stituted will, however, answer the purpose nearly as well, and are more directly connected with the subjects of the preceding lectures ; so that I hope throughout the volume the student will perceive an insistance upon one main truth, nor lose in any minor direction of inquiry the sense of the responsibility which the acceptance of that truth fastens upon him ; responsi- bility for choice, decisive and conclusive, between two modes of study, which involve ultimately the development, or deaden- ing, of every power he possesses. I have tried to hold that choice clearly out to him, and to unveil for him to its far- thest the issue of his turning to the right hand or the left. Guides he may find many, and aids many ; but all these will be in vain unless he has first recognised the hour and the point of life when the way divides itself, one way leading to the Olive mountains — one to the vale of the Salt Sea. There are few cross roads, that I know of, from one to the other. Let him pause at the parting of The Two Paths. THE TWO PATHS BE T NG LECTURES ON ART, AND ITS APPLICATION TO DECORATION AND MANUFACTURE DELIVERED IN 1858-9. THE TWO PATHS. LECTUKE I. THE DETERIORATIVE POWER OF CONVENTIONAL ART OVER NATIONS* An Inaugural Lecture, Delivered at the Kensington Museum, 1 January, 1858. As I passed, last summer, for the first time, through the north of Scotland, it seemed to me that there was a peculiar painfulness in its scenery, caused by the non-manifestation of the powers of human art. I had never travelled in, nor even heard or conceived of such a country before ; nor, though I had passed much of my life amidst mountain scenery in the south, was I before aware how much of its charm depended on the little gracefulnesses and tendernesses of human work, which are mingled with the beauty of the Alps, or spared by their desolation. It is true that the art which carves and colours the front of a Swiss cottage is not of any very exalted kind ; yet it testifies to the completeness and the delicacy of the faculties of the mountaineer ; it is true that the remnants of tower and battlement, which afford foot- ing to the wild vine on the Alpine promontory, form but a 1 A few introductory words, in which, at the opening of this lecture, I thanked the Chairman (Mr. Cockerell), for his support on the occa- sion, and asked his pardon for any hasty expressions in my writings, which might have seemed discourteous towards him, or other architects whose general opinions were opposed to mine, may be found by those who care for preambles, not much misreported, in the Building Chroni- cle ; with such comments as the genius of that journal was likely to suggest to it. 10 THE TWO PATHS. small part of the great serration of its rocks ; and yet it is just that fragment of their broken outline which gives them their pathetic power, and historical majesty. And this element among the wilds of our own country I found wholly wanting. The Highland cottage is literally a heap of gray stones, choked up, rather than roofed over, with black peat and withered heather ; the only approach to an effort at decoration consists in the placing of the clods of protective peat obliquely on its roof, so as to give a diagonal arrange- ment of lines, looking somewhat as if the surface had been scored over by a gigantic claymore. And, at least among the northern hills of Scotland, elements of more ancient architectural interest are' equally absent. The solitary peel-house is hardly discernible by the windings of the stream ; the roofless aisle of the priory is lost among the enclosures of the village ; and the capital city of the Highlands, Inverness, placed where it might ennoble one of the sweetest landscapes, and by the shore of one of the love- liest estuaries in the world ; — placed between the crests of the Grampians and the flowing of the Moray Firth, as if it were a jewel clasping the folds of the mountains to the blue zone of the sea, — is only distinguishable from a distance by one architectural feature, and exalts all the surrounding landscape by no other associations than those which can be connected with its modern castellated gaol. While these conditions of Scottish scenery affected me very painfully, it being the first time in my life that I had been in any country possessing no valuable monuments or examples of art, they also forced me into the consideration of one or two difficult questions respecting the effect of art on the human mind ; and they forced these questions upon me eminently for this rea- son, that while I was wandering disconsolately among the moors of the Grampians, where there was no art to be found, news of peculiar interest was every day arriving from a country where there was a great deal of art, and art of a delicate kind, to be found. Among the models set before you in this insti- tution, and in the others established throughout the kingdom far the teaching of design, there are, I suppose, none in their POWER OF CONVENTIONAL ART. 11 kind more admirable than the decorated works of India. They are, indeed, in all materials capable of colour, wool, marble, or metal, almost inimitable in, their delicate application of divided hue, and fine arrangement of fantastic line. Nor is this power of theirs exerted by the people rarely, or without enjoyment ; the love of subtle design seems universal in the race, and is developed in every implement that they shape, and every building that they raise ; it attaches itself with the same intensity, and with the same success, to the service of superstition, of pleasure or of cruelty ; and enriches alike, with one profusion of enchanted iridescence, the dome of the pa- goda, the fringe of the girdle, and the edge of the sword. So then you have, in these two great populations, Indian and Highland — in the races of the jungle and of the moor — two national capacities distinctly and accurately opposed. On the one side you have a race rejoicing in art, and eminently and universally endowed with the gift of it ; on the other you have a people careless of art, and apparently incapable of it, their utmost effort hitherto reaching no farther than to the variation of the positions of the bars of colour in square cheq- uers. And we are thus urged naturally to enquire what is the effect on the moral character, in each nation, of this vast dif- ference in their pursuits and apparent capacities? and whether those rude chequers of the tartan, or the exquisitely fancied involutions of the Cashmere, fold habitually over the noblest hearts ? We have had our answer. Since the race of man began its course of sin on this earth, nothing has ever been done by it so significative of all bestial, and lower than bestial degradation, as the acts the Indian race in the year that has just passed by. Cruelty as fierce may indeed have been wreaked, and brutality as abominable been practised before, but never under like circumstances ; rage of prolonged war, and resentment of prolonged oppression, have made men as cruel before now ; and gradual decline into barbarism, where no examples of decency or civilization existed around them, has sunk, before now, isolated populations to the lowest level of possible humanity. But cruelty stretched to its fiercest against the gentle and unoffending, and corruption festered 12 THE TWO PATHS. to its loathsomest in the midst of the witnessing presence of a disciplined civilization, — these we could not have known to be within the practicable compass of human guilt, but for the acts of the Indian mutineer. And, as thus, on the one hand, you have an extreme energy of baseness displayed by these lovers of art ; on the other, — as if to put the question into the narrowest compass — you have had an extreme energy of virtue displayed by the despisers of art. Among all the soldiers to whom you owe your victories in the Crimea, and your aveng- ing in the Indies, to none are you bound by closer bonds of gratitude than to the men who have been born and bred among those desolate Highland moors. And thus you have the dif- ferences in capacity and circumstance between the two nations, and the differences in result on the moral habits of two na- tions, put into the most significant — the most palpable — the most brief opposition. Out of the peat cottage come faith, courage, self-sacrifice, purity, and piety, and whatever else is fruitful in the work of Heaven ; out of the ivory palace come treachery, cruelty, cowardice, idolatry, bestiality, — whatever else is fruitful in the work of Hell. But the difficulty does not close here. From one instance, of however great apparent force, it would be wholly unfair to gather any general conclusion — wholly illogical to assert that because we had once found love of art connected with moral baseness, the love of art must be the general root of moral baseness ; and equally unfair to assert that, because we had once found neglect of art coincident with noble- ness of disposition, neglect of art must be always the source or sign of that nobleness. But if we pass from the Indian peninsula into other countries of the globe ; and from our own recent experience, to the records of history, we shall still find one great fact fronting us, in stern universality— namely, the apparent connection of great success in art with subse- quent national degradation. You find, in the first place, that the nations which possessed a refined art were always subdued by those who possessed none : you find the Lydian subdued by the Mede ; the Athenian by the Spartan ; the Greek by the Roman ; the Roman by the Goth ; the Burgundian by the POWER OF CONVENTIONAL ART 13 Switzer : but you find, beyond this — that even where no attack by any external power has accelerated the catastrophe of the state, the period in which any given people reach their high- est power in art is precisely that in which they appear to sign the warrant of their own ruin ; and that, from the moment in which a perfect statue appears in Florence, a perfect picture in Venice, or a perfect fresco in Kome, from that hour forward, probity, industry, and courage seem to be exiled from their walls, and they perish in a sculpturesque paralysis, or a many- coloured corruption. But even this is not all. As art seems thus, in its delicate form, to be one of the chief promoters of indolence and sen- suality, — so, I need hardly remind you, it hitherto has ap- peared only in energetic manifestation when it was in the service of superstition. The four greatest manifestations of human intellect which founded the four principal kingdoms of art, Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, and Italian, were devel- oped by the strong excitement of active superstition in the worship of Osiris, Bel us, Minerva, and the Queen of Heaven* Therefore, to speak briefly, it may appear very difficult to show that art has ever yet existed in a consistent and thor- oughly energetic school, unless it was engaged in the propa- gation of falsehood, or the encouragement of vice. And finally, while art has thus shown itself always active in the service of luxury and idolatry, it has also been strongly di- rected to the exaltation of cruelty. A nation which lives a pastoral and innocent life never decorates the shepherd's staff or the plough-handle, but faces who live by depredation and slaughter nearly always bestow exquisite ornaments on the quiver, the helmet, and the spear. Does it not seem to you, then, on all these three counts, more than questionable whether we are assembled here in Kensington Museum to any 'good purpose? Might we not justly be looked upon with suspicion and fear, rather than with sympathy, by the innocent and unartistical public ? Are we even sure of ourselves ? Do we know what we are about ? Are we met here as honest people? or are we not rather so many Catilines assembled to devise the hasty degradation of 14 THE TWO PATHS. our country, or, like a conclave of midnight witches, to sum« mon and send forth, on new and unexpected missions, the demons of luxury, cruelty, and superstition ? I trust, upon the whole, that it is not so : I am sure that Mr. Redgrave and Mr. Cole do not at all include results of this kind in their conception of the ultimate objects of the in- stitution which owes so much to their strenuous and well directed exertions. And I have put this painful question be- fore you, only that we may face it thoroughly, and, as I hope, out-face it. If you will give it a little sincere attention this evening, I trust we may find sufficiently good reasons for our work, and proceed to it hereafter, as all good workmen should do, with clear heads, and calm consciences. To return, then, to the first point of difficulty, the relations between art and mental disposition in India and Scotland. It is quite true that the art of India is delicate and refined. But it has one curious character distinguishing it from all other art of equal merit in design — it never represents a natu- ral fact. It either forms its compositions out of meaningless fragments of colour and Sowings of line ; or if it represents any living creature, it represents that creature under some distorted and monstrous form. To all the facts and forms of nature it wilfully and resolutely opposes itself ; it will not draw a man, but an eight-armed monster ; it will not draw a flower, but only a spiral or a zigzag. It thus indicates that the people who practise it are cut off from all possible sources of healthy knowledge or natural delight ; that they have wilfully sealed up and put aside the entire volume of the world, and have got nothing to read, nothing to dwell upon, but that imagination of the thoughts of their hearts, of which w T e are told that " it is only evil con- tinually." Over the whole spectacle of creation they have thrown a veil in w r hich there is no rent. For them no star peeps through the blanket of the dark — for them neither their heaven shines nor their mountains rise — for them the flowers do not blossom — for them the creatures of field and forest do not live. They lie bound in the dungeon of their own corruption, encompassed only by doleful phantoms, or by spectral vacancy. POWER OF CONVENTIONAL ART. 15 Need I remind you what an exac^j reverse of this condition of mind, as respects the observance of nature, is presented by the people whom we have just been led to contemplate in con- trast with the Indian race ? You will find upon reflection, that all the highest points of the Scottish character are connected with impressions derived straight from the natural scenery of their country. No nation has ever before shown, in the general tone of its language — in the general current of its literature— so constant a habit of hallowing its passions and confirming its principles by direct association with the charm, or power, of nature. The writings of Scott and Burns — and yet more, of the far greater poets than Burns who gave Scot- land her traditional ballads, — furnish you in every stanza — almost in every line — with examples of this association of natural scenery with the passions ; * but an instance of its farther connection with moral principle struck me forcibly just at the time when I was most lamenting the absence of art among the people. In one of the loneliest districts of Scot- land, where the peat cottages are darkest, just at the western foot of that great mass of the Grampians which encircles the sources of the Spey and the Dee, the main road which trav- erses the chain winds round the foot of a broken rock called Crag, or Craig Ellachie. There is nothing remarkable in either its height or form ; it is darkened with a few scattered pines, and touched along its summit with a flush of heather ; but it constitutes a kind of headland, or leading promontory^ in the group of hills to which it belongs — a sort of initial let- * The great poets of Scotland, like the great poets of all other coun- tries, never write dissolutely, either in matter or method ; but with stern and measured meaning in every syllable. Here's a bit of first-rate work for example : " Tweed said to Till, 1 What gars ye rin sae still ? * Till said to Tweed, 1 Though ye rin wi' speed, And I rin slaw, Whar ye droon ae man, I droon twa.' " 16 THE TWO PATHS. ter of the mountains ; and thus stands in the mind of the ir> habitants of the district, the Clan Grant, for a type of the?* country, and of the influence of that country upon themselves. Their sense of this is beautifully indicated in the war-cry of the clan, " Stand fast, Craig Ellachie." You may think long over those few words without exhausting the deep wells of feeling and thought contained in them — the love of the native land, the assurance of their faithfulness to it ; the sub- dued and gentle assertion of indomitable courage — I may need to be told to stand, but, if I do, Craig Ellachie does. You could not but have felt, had you passed beneath it at the time when so many of England's dearest children were being defended by the strength of heart of men born at its foot, how often among the delicate Indian palaces, whose marble was pallid with horror, and whose vermilion was darkened with blood, the remembrance of its rough grey rocks and purple heaths must have risen before the sight of the High- land soldier ; how often the hailing of the shot and the shriek of battle would pass away from his hearing, and leave only the whisper of the old pine branches — 4 ' Stand fast, Craig Ellachie ! " You have, in these two nations, seen in direct opposition the effects on moral sentiment of art without nature, and of nature without art. And you see enough to justify you in suspecting — while, if you choose to investigate the subject more deeply and with other examples, you will find enough to justify you in concluding — that art, followed as such, and for its own sake, irrespective of the interpretation of nature by it, is destructive of whatever is best and noblest in human- ity ; but that nature, however simply observed, or imperfectly known, is, in the degree of the affection felt for it, protective and helpful to all that is noblest in humanity. You might then conclude farther, that art, so far as it was devoted to the record or the interpretation of nature, would be helpful and ennobling also. And you w r ould conclude this with perfect truth. Let me repeat the assertion distinctly and solemnly, as the first that I am permitted to make in this building, devoted in a wav so POWER OF CONVENTIONAL ART. 17 new and so admirable to the service of the art-students ot England — Wherever art is practised for its own sake, and the delight of the workman is in what he does and produces, in- stead of what he interprets or exhibits, — there art has an influ- ence of the most fatal kind on brain and heart, and it issues, if long so pursued, in the destruction both of intellectual power and moral principal ; whereas art, devoted humbly and self- forgetfully to the clear statement and record of the facts of the universe, is always helpful and beneficent to mankind, full of comfort, strength, and salvation. Now, when you were once well assured of this, you might logically infer another thing, namely, that when Art was oc- cupied in the function in which she was serviceable, she would herself be strengthened by the service, and when she was do- ing what Providence without doubt intended her to do, she would gain in vitality and dignity just as she advanced in use- fulness. On the other hand, you might gather, that when her agency w T as distorted to the deception or degradation of mankind, she would herself be equally misled and degraded — that she would be checked in advance, or precipitated in decline. And this is the truth also ; and holding this clue you will easily and justly interpret the phenomena of history. So long- as Art is steady in the contemplation and exhibition of natural facts, so long she herself lives and grows ; and in her own life and growth partly implies, partly secures, that of the nation in the midst of which she is practised. But a time has always hitherto come, in which, having thus reached a singular per- fection, she begins to contemplate that perfection, and to im- itate it, and deduce rules and forms from it ; and thus to for- get her duty and ministry as the interpreter and discoverer of Truth. And in the very instant when this diversion of her purpose and forgetfulness of her function take place — forget- fulness generally coincident with her apparent perfection — in that instant, I say, begins her actual catastrophe ; and by her own fall — so far as she has influence — she accelerates the ruin of the nation by which she is practised. The study, however, of the effect of art on the mind of na- 18 THE TWO PATES. tions is one rather for the historian than for us ; at all events it is one for the discussion of which we have no more time this evening. But I will ask your patience with me while I try to illustrate, in some further particulars, the dependence of the healthy state and power of art itself upon the exercise of its appointed function in the interpretation of fact. You observe that I always say interpretation, never imitation. My reason for so doing is, first, that good art rarely imitates ; it usually only describes or explains. But my second and chief reason is that good art always consists of two things : First, the observation of fact ; secondly, the manifesting of human design and authority in the way that fact is told. Great and good art must unite the two ; it cannot exist for a moment but in their unity ; it consists of the two as essen- tially as water consists of oxygen and hydrogen, or marble of lime and carbonic acid. Let us inquire a little into the nature of each of the ele^ ments. The first element, we say, is the love of Nature, lead- ing to the effort to observe and report her truly. And this is the first and leading element. Review for yourselves the history of art, and you will find this to be a manifest certainty, that no great school ever yet existed which had not for primal aim the representation of some natural fact as truly as possible. There have only yet appeared in the world three schools of perfect ar t — schools, that is to say, that did their work as well as it seems possible to do it. These are the Athenian,* Florentine, and Venetian. The Athenian proposed to itself the perfect representation of the form of the human body. It strove to do that as well as it could ; it did that as well as it can be done ; and all its greatness was founded upon and involved in that single and honest effort. The Florentine school proposed to itself the perfect expression of human emotion — the show- ing of the effects of passion in the human face and gesture. I call this the Florentine school, because, whether you take Raphael for the culminating master of expressional art in Italy, or Leonardo, or Michael Angelo, you will find that the * See below, the farther notice of the real spirit of Greek work, in the address at Bradford. POWER OF CONVENTIONAL ART. 19 whole energy of the national effort which produced those mas- ters had its root in Florence ; not at Urbino or Milan. I say. then, this Florentine or leading Italian school proposed to itself human expression for its aim in natural truth ; it strove to do that as well as it could — did it as well as it can be done — and all its greatness is rooted in that single and honest ef- fort. Thirdly, the Venetian school propose the representation of the effect of colour and shade on all things ; chiefly on the human form. It tried to do that as well as it could — did it as well as it can be done— and all its greatness is founded on that single and honest effort. Pray, do not leave this room without a perfectly clear hold- ing of these three ideas. You may try them, and toss them about afterwards, as much as you like, to see if they'll bear shaking ; but do let me put them well and plainly into your possession. Attach them to three works of art which you all have either seen or continually heard of. There's the (so- called) " Theseus " of the Elgin marbles. That represents the whole end and aim of the Athenian school — the natural form of the human body. All their conventional architecture — their graceful shaping and painting of pottery — whatsoever other art they practised — was dependent for its greatness on this sheet-anchor of central aim : true shape of living man. Then take, for your type of the Italian school, Raphael's "Dis- puta del Sacramento ; " that will be an accepted type by every- body, and will involve no possibly questionable points : the Germans will admit it ; the English academicians will admit it ; and the English purists and pre-Raphaelites will admit it. Well, there you have the truth of human expression proposed as an aim. That is the way people look when they feel this or that — when they have this or that other mental character : are they devotional, thoughtful, affectionate, indignant, or in- spired? are they prophets, saints, priests, or kings? then- whatsoever is truly thoughtful, affectionate, prophetic, priestly, kingly — that the Florentine school tried to discern, and show : that they have discerned and shown ; and all their greatness is first fastened in their aim at this central truth — the open expression of the living human soul. 20 THE TWO PATHS. Lastly, take Veronese's " Marriage in Cana " in the Louvre. There you have the most perfect representation possible of colour, and light, and shade, as they affect the external as- pect of the human form, and its immediate accessories, archi- tecture, furniture, and dress. This external aspect of noblest nature was the first aim of the Venetians, and all their great- ness depended on their resolution to achieve, and their patience in achieving it. Here, then, are the three greatest schools of the former world exemplified for you in three well-known works. The Phidian u Theseus " represents the Greek school pursuing truth of form; the "Disputa" of Raphael, the Florentine school pursuing truth of mental expression ; the " Marriage in Cana," the Venetian school pursuing truth of colour and light. But do not suppose that the law which I am stating to you — the great law of art-life — can only be seen in these, the most powerful of all art schools. It is just as manifest in each and every school that ever has had life in it at all. Whereso- ever the search after truth begins, there life begins ; whereso- ever that search ceases, there life ceases. As long as a school of art holds any chain of natural facts, trying to discover more of them and express them better daily, it may play hither and thither as it likes on this side of the chain or that ; it may de- design grotesques and conventionalisms, build the simplest buildings, serve the most practical utilities, yet all it does will be gloriously designed and gloriously done ; but let it once quit hold of the chain of natural fact, cease to pursue that as the clue to its work ; let it propose to itself any other end than preaching this living word, and think first of showing its own skill or its own fancy, and from that hour its fall is pre- cipitate — its destruction sure ; nothing that it does or designs will ever have life or loveliness in it more ; its hour has come, and there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave whither it goeth. Let us take for example that school of art over which many of you would perhaps think this law had but little power— the school of Gothic architecture. Many of us may have been in the habit of thinking of that school rather as of one of TOWER OF CONVENTIONAL ART 21 forms than of facts — a school of pinnacles, and buttresses, and conventional mouldings, and disguise of nature by mon- strous imaginings — not a school of truth at all. I think I shall be able, even in the little time we have to-night, to show that this is not so ; and that our great law holds just as good at Amiens and Salisbury, as it does at Athens and Florence. I will go back then first to the very beginnings of Gothic art, and before you, the students of Kensington, as an impan- elled jury, I will bring two examples of the barbarism out of which Gothic art emerges, approximately contemporary in date and parallel in executive skill ; but, the one, a barbarism that did not get on, and could not get on ; the other, a bar- barism that could get on, and did get on ; and you, the im- panelled jury, shall judge what is the essential difference be- tween the two barbarisms, and decide for yourselves what is the seed of life in the one, and the sign of death in the other. The first, — that which has in it the sign of death, — fur- nishes us at the same time with an illustration far too inter- esting to be passed by, of certain principles much depended on by our common modern designers. Taking up one of our architectural publications the other day, and opening it at random, I chanced upon this piece of information, put in rather curious English ; but you shall have it as it stands— " Aristotle asserts, that the greatest species of the beautiful are Order, Symmetry, and the Definite." I should tell you, however, that this statement is not given as authoritative ; it is one example of various Architectural teachings, given in a report in the Building Chronicle for May, 1857, of a lecture on Proportion ; in which the only thing the lecturer appears to have proved was that, — " The system of dividing the diameter of the shaft of a col- umn into parts for copying the ancient architectural remains of Greece and Rome, adopted by architects from Vitruvius (circa b.c. 25) to the present period, as a method for produc- ing ancient architecture, is entirely useless, for the several parts of Grecian architecture cannot be reduced or subdivided by this system ; neither does it apply to the architecture of Roma 22 THE TWO PATHS. Still, as far as I can make it out, the lecture appears ta have been one of those of which you will just at present hea* so many, the protests of architects who have no knowledge of sculpture — or of any other mode of expressing natural beauty — against natural beauty ; and their endeavour to sub- stitute mathematical proportions for the knowledge of life they do not possess, and the representation of life of which they are incapable. Now, this substitution of obedience to mathematical law for sympathy with observed life, is the first characteris- tic of the hopeless work of all ages ; as such, you will find it eminently manifested in the specimen I have to give you of the hopeless Gothic bar- barism ; the barbarism from which nothing could emerge — for which no future was possible but extinction. The Aristotelian principles of the Beautiful are, you remember, Order, Symmetry, and the Definite. Here you have the three, in perfection, applied to the ideal of an angel, in a psalter of the eighth century, existing in the li- brary of St. John's College, Cambridge.* Now, you see the characteristics of this utterly dead school are, first the wilful closing of its eyes to natural facts ; — for, however ignorant a person may be, he need only look at a human being to see that it has a mouth as well as eyes ; and secondly, the endeavour to adorn or idealize natural fact ac- cording to its own notions : it puts red spots in the middle of the hands, and sharpens the thumbs, thinking to improve them. Here you have the most pure type possible of the principles of idealism in all ages : whenever people don't look at Nature, they always think they can improve her. You will also admire, doubtless, the exquisite result of the application of our great modern architectural principle of beauty — Sym- metry, or equal balance of part by part ; you see even the eyes * I copy this woodcut from West wood's " Palseographia Sacra." POWER OF CONVENTIONAL ART. 23 are made symmetrical — entirely round, instead of irregular, oval ; and the iris is set properly in the middle, instead of — as nature has absurdly put it — rather under the upper lid. You will also observe the "principle of the pyramid" in the general arrangement of the figure, and the value of " series " in the placing of dots. From this dead barbarism we pass to living barbarism — to work done by hands quite as rude, if not ruder, and by minds as uninformed ; and yet work which in every line of it is prophetic of power, and has in it the sure dawn of day. You have often heard it said that Giotto w T as the founder of art in Italy. He was not : neither he, nor Giunta Pisano, nor Nic- colo Pisano. They all laid strong hands to the work, and brought it first into aspect above ground ; but the foundation had been laid for them by the builders of the Lombardic churches in the valleys of the Adda and the Arno. It is in the sculpture of the round arched churches of North Italy, bearing disputable dates, ranging from the eighth to the twelfth century, that you will find the lowest struck roots of the art of Titian and Raphael.* I go, therefore, to the church which is certainly the earliest of these, St. Ambrogio, of Milan, said still to retain some portions of the actual structure from which St. Ambrose excluded Theodosius, and at all events furnishing the most archaic examples of Lombardic sculpture in North Italy. I do not venture to guess their date ; they are barba- rous enough for any date. We find the pulpit of this church covered with interlacing patterns, closely resembling those of the manuscript at Cam- bridge, but among them is figure sculpture of a very differ- ent kind. It is wrought with mere incisions in the stone, of which the effect may be tolerably given by single lines in a drawing. Remember, therefore, for a moment — as character- istic of culminating Italian art — Michael Angelo's fresco of the " Temptation of Eve," in the Sistine chapel, and you will be more interested in seeing the birth of Italian art, illus- * I have said elsewhere, " the root of all art is struck in the thirteenth century." This is quite true : but of course some of the smallest fibres run lower, as in this instance. 24 THE TWO PATHS. trated by the same subject, from St. Ambrogio, of Milan, the " Serpent beguiling Eve." * Yet, in that sketch, rude and ludicrous as it is, you have the elements of life in their first form. The people who could do that were sure to get on. For, observe, the workman's whole aim is straight at the facts, as well as he can get them ; and not merely at the facts, but at the very heart of the facts. A common workman might have looked at nature for his ser- pent, but he would have thought only of its scales. But this fellow does not want scales, nor coils ; he can do without them ; he wants the serpent's heart — malice and insinuation ; — and he has actually got them to some extent. So also a common workman, even in this barbarous stage of art, might have carved Eve's arms and body a good deal better ; but this man does not care about arms and body, if he can only get at Eve's mind — show that she is pleased at being flattered, and yet in a state of uncomfortable hesitation. And some look of listening, of complacency, and of embarrassment he has verily got : — note the eyes slightly askance, the lips compressed, and the right hand nervously grasping the left arm : nothing can be declared impossible to the people who could begin thus— the world is open to them, and all that is in it ; while, on the * This cut is ruder than it should be : the incisions in the marble have a lighter effect than these rough black lines ; but it is not worth while to do it better. POWER OF CONVENTIONAL ART. 25 contrary, nothing is possible to the man who did the symmet- rical angel — the world is keyless to him ; he has built a cell for himself in which he must abide, barred up forever — there is no more hope for him than for a sponge or a madrepore. I shall not trace from this embryo the progress of Gothic art in Italy, because it is much complicated and involved with traditions of other schools, and because most of the students will be less familiar with its results than with their own northern buildings. So, these two designs indicating Death and Life in the beginnings of mediaeval art, we will take an example of the progress of that art from our northern work. Now, many of you, doubtless, have been interested by the mass, grandeur, and gloom of Norman architecture, as much as by Gothic traceries ; and when you hear me say that the root of all good work lies in natural facts, you doubtless think instantly of your round arches, with their rude cushion capi- tals, and of the billet or zigzag work by which they are sur- rounded, and you cannot see what the knowledge of nature has to do with either the simple plan or the rude mouldings. But all those simple conditions of Norman art are merely the expiring of it towards the extreme north. Do not study Nor- man architecture in Northumberland, but in Normandy, and then you will find that it is just a peculiarly manly, and practically useful, form of the whole great French school of rounded architecture. And where has that French school its origin ? Wholly in the rich conditions of sculpture, which, rising first out of imitations of the Roman bas-reliefs, cov- ered all the facades of the French early churches with one continuous arabesque of floral or animal life. If you want to study round-arched buildings, do not go to Durham, but go to Poictiers, and there you will see how all the simple deco- rations which give you so much pleasure even in their isolated application were invented by persons practised in carving men, monsters, v/ild animals, birds, and flowers, in overwhelm- ing redundance ; and then trace this architecture forward in central France, and you will find it loses nothing of its rich- ness — it only gains in truth, and therefore in grace, until just at the moment of transition into the pointed style, you have 26 THE TWO PATHS. the consummate type of the sculpture of the school given you in the west front of the Cathedral of Chartres. From that front I have chosen two fragments to illustrate it.* These statues have been long, and justly, considered as representative of the highest skill of the twelfth or earliest part of the thirteenth century in France ; and they indeed possess a dignity and delicate charm, which are for the most part wanting in later works. It is owing partly to real noble- ness of feature, but chiefly to the grace, mingled with sever- ity, of the falling lines of excessively thin drapery ; as well as to a most studied finish in composition, every part of the or- namentation tenderly harmonizing with the rest. So far as their power over certain tones of religious mind is owing to a palpable degree of non-naturalism in them, I do not praise it — the exaggerated thinness of body and stiffness of attitude are faults ; but they are noble faults, and give the statues a strange look of forming part of the very building itself, and sustaining it — not like the Greek caryatid, without effort — nor like the Renaissance caryatid, by painful or impossible effort — but as if all that was silent and stern, and withdrawn apart, and stiffened in chill of heart against the terror of earth, had passed into a shape of eternal marble ; and thus the Ghost had given, to bear up the pillars of the church on earth, all the patient and expectant nature that it needed no more in heaven. This is the transcendental view of the mean- ing of those sculptures. I do not dwell upon it. What I do lean upon is their purely naturalistic and vital power. They are all portraits — unknown, most of them, I believe, — but palpably and unmistakeably portraits, if not taken from the actual person for whom the statue stands, at all events stud- ied from some living person whose features might fairly rep- resent those of the king or saint intended. Several of them I * This part of the lecture was illustrated by two drawings, made ad« mirably by Mr. J. T. Laing, with the help of photographs from statues at Chartres. The drawings may be seen at present at the Kensington Museum : but any large photograph of the west front of Chartres will enable the reader to follow what is stated in the lecture, as far as is needful. POWER OF CONVENTIONAL ART 21 suppose to be authentic : there is one of a queen, who has evidently, while she lived, been notable for her bright black eyes. The sculptor has cut the iris deep into the stone, and her dark eyes are still suggested with her smile. There is another thing I wish you to notice specially in these statues — the way in which the floral moulding is asso- ciated with the vertical lines of the figure. You have thus the utmost complexity and richness of curvature set side by side with the pure and delicate parallel lines, and both the characters gain in interest and beauty ; but there is deeper significance in the thing than that of mere effect in composi- tion ; — significance not intended on the part of the sculptor, but all the more valuable because unintentional. I mean the close association of the beauty of lower nature in animals and flowers, with the beauty of higher nature in human form. You never get this in Greek work. Greek statues are always isolated ; blank fields of stone, or depths of shadow, relieving the form of the statue, as the world of lower nature which they despised retired in darkness from their hearts. Here, the clothed figure seems the type of the Christian spirit — in many respects feebler and more contracted — but purer; clothed in its white robes and crown, and with the riches of all creation at its side. The next step in the change will be set before you in a moment, merely by comparing this statue from the west front of Chartres with that of the Madonna, from the south transept door of Amiens.* This Madonna, with the sculpture round her, represents the culminating power of Gothic art in the thirteenth cen- tury. Sculpture has been gaining continually in the interval ; gaining, simply because becoming every day more truthful, more tender, and more suggestive. By the way, the old Douglas motto, ' ' Tender and true," may wisely be taken up again by all of us, for our own, in art no less than in other things. Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of * There are many photographs of this door and of its central statue. Its sculpture in the tympanum is farther described in the Fourth Leo ture. 28 THE TWO PATHS. all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth. I find this more and more every day : an infinitude of tenderness is the chief gift and inheritance of all the truly great men. It is sure to involve a relative intensity of disdain towards base things, and an appearance of sternness and arrogance in the eyes of all hard, stupid, and vulgar people — quite terrific to such, if they are capable of terror, and hateful to them, if they are capable of nothing higher than hatred. Dante's is the great type of this class of mind. I say the first inheritance is Tenderness — the second Truth, because the Tenderness is in the make of the creature, the Truth in his acquired habits and knowledge ; besides, the love comes first in dignity as well as in time, and that is always pure and complete : the truth, at best, imperfect. To come back to our statue. You will observe that the ar- rangement of this sculpture is exactly the same as at Chartres — severe falling drapery, set off by rich floral ornament at the side ; but the statue is now completely animated : it is no longer fixed as an upright pillar, but bends aside out of its niche, and the floral ornament, instead of being a conventional wreath, is of exquisitely arranged hawthorn. The work, how- ever, as a whole, though perfectly characteristic of the advance of the age in style and purpose, is in some subtler qualities inferior to that of Chartres. The individual sculptor, though trained in a more advanced school, has been himself a man of inferior order of mind compared to the one who worked at Chartres. But I have not time to point out to you the subtler characters by which I know this. This statue, then, marks the culminating point of Gothic art, because, up to this time, the eyes of its designers had been steadily fixed on natural truth — they had been advanc- ing from flower to flower, from form to form, from face to face, — gaining perpetually in knowledge and veracity — there- fore, perpetually in power and in grace. But at this point a fatal change came over their aim. From the statue they now began to turn the attention chiefly to the niche of the statue, and from the floral ornament to the mouldings that enclosed the floral ornament. The first result of this was, however, POWER OF CONVENTIONAL ART. 29 though not the grandest, yet the most finished of northern genius. You have, in the earlier Gothic, less wonderful con- struction, less careful masonry, far less expression of harmony of parts in the balance of the building. Earlier work always has more or less of the character of a good solid wall with irregular holes in it, well carved wherever there is room. But the last phase of good Gothic has no room to spare ; it rises as high as it can on narrowest foundation, stands in perfect strength with the least possible substance in its bars ; connects niche with niche, and line with line, in an exquisite harmony, from which no stone can be removed, and to which you can add not a pin- nacle ; and yet introduces in rich, though now more calculated profusion, the living element of its sculpture : sculpture in the quatrefoils — sculpture in the brackets — sculpture in the gargoyles — sculpture in the niches — sculpture in the ridges and hollows of its mouldings, — not a shadow without meaning, and not a light without life.* But with this very perfection of his work came the unhappy pride of the builder in what he had done. As long as he had been merely raising clumsy walls and carving them like a child, in waywardness of fancy, his delight was in the things he thought of as he carved ; but when he had once reached this pitch of constructive science, he began to think only how cleverly he could put the stones together. The question was not now with him, What can I represent ? but, How high can I build — how wonderfully can I hang this arch in air, or weave this tracery across the clouds? And the catastrophe was instant and irrevocable. Architecture became in France a mere web of waving lines, — in England a mere grating of perpendicular ones. Re- dundance was substituted for invention, and geometry for passion ; tho Gothic art became a mere expression of wanton expenditure, and vulgar mathematics ; and was swept away, as it then deserved to be swept away, by the severer pride, * The two transepts of Rouen Cathedral illustrate this style. There are plenty of photographs of them. I take this opportunity of repeat- ing what I have several times before stated, for the sake of travellers, that St. Ouen, impressive as it is, is entirely inferior to the transepts of Rouen Cathedral. 30 THE TWO PATHS. and purer learning, of the schools founded on classical tradi- tions. You cannot now fail to see how, throughout the history of this wonderful art — from its earliest dawn in Lombardy to its last catastrophe in France and England — sculpture, founded on love of nature, was the talisman of its existence ; wherever sculpture was practised, architecture arose — wherever that was neglected, architecture expired ; and, believe me, all you students who love this mediaeval art, there is no hope of your ever doing any good with it, but on this everlasting principle. Your patriotic associations with it are of no use ; your roman- tic associations witli it — either of chivalry or religion — are of no use ; they are worse than useless, they are false. Gothic is not an art for knights and nobles ; it is an art for the peo- ple : it is not an art for churches or sanctuaries ; it is an art for houses and homes : it is not an art for England only, but an art for the world : above all, it is not an art of form or tradition only, but an art of vital practice and perpetual re- newal. And whosoever pleads for it as an ancient or a formal thing, and tries to teach it you as an ecclesiastical tradition or a geometrical science, knows nothing of its essence, less than nothing of its power. Leave, therefore, boldly, though not irreverently, mysticism and symbolism on the one side ; cast away with utter scorn geometry and legalism on the other ; seize hold of God's hand and look full in the face of His creation, and there is nothing He will not enable you to achieve. Thus, then, you will find — and the more profound and accu- rate your knowledge of the history of art the more assuredly you will find — that the living power in all the real schools, be they great or small, is love of nature. But do not mistake me by supposing that I mean this law to be all that is necessary to form a school. There needs to be much superadded to it, though there never must be anything superseding it. The main thing which needs to be superadded is the gift of design. It is always dangerous, and liable to diminish the clearness of impression, to go over much ground in the course of one Jecture. But I dare not present you with a maimed view of POWER OF CONVENTIONAL ART. 31 tliis important subject : I dare not put off to another time, when the same persons would not be again assembled, the statement of the great collateral necessity which, as well as the necessity of truth, governs all noble art. That collateral necessity is the visible operation of human intellect in the presentation of truth, the evidence of what is properly called design or plan in the work, no less than of veracit}'. A looking-glass does not design — it receives and communicates indiscriminately all that passes before it ; a painter designs when he chooses some things, refuses others, and arranges all. This selection and arrangement must have influence over everything that the art is concerned with, great or small — over lines, over colours, and over ideas. Given a certain group of colours, by adding another colour at the side of them, you will either improve the group and render it more delightful, or injure it, and render it discordant and unintel- ligible. " Design " is the choosing and placing the colour so as to help and enhance all the other colours it is set beside. So of thoughts % in a good composition, every idea is pre- sented in just that order, and with just that force, which will perfectly connect it with all the other thoughts in the work, and will illustrate the others as well as receive illustration from them ; so that the entire chain of thoughts offered to the beholder's mind shall be received by him with as much delight and with as little effort as is possible. And thus you see design, properly so called, is human invention, consulting human capacity. Out of the infinite heap of things around us in the world, it chooses a certain number which it can thor- oughly grasp, and presents this group to the spectator in the form best calculated to enable him to grasp it also, and to grasp it with delight. And accordingly, the capacities of both gatherer and re- ceiver being limited, the object is to make everything that you offer helpful and precious. If you give one grain of weight too much, so as to increase fatigue without profit, or bulk without value — that added grain is hurtful ; if you put one spot or one syllable out of its proper place, that spot or sylla- THE TWO PATHS. ble will be destructive — how far destructive it is almost im- possible to tell : a misplaced touch may sometimes annihilate the labour of hours. Nor are any of us prepared to under- stand the work of any great master, till we feel this, and feel it as distinctly as we do the value of arrangement in the notes of music. Take any noble musical air, and you find, on exam- ining it, that not one even of the faintest or shortest notes can be removed without destruction to the whole passage in which it occurs ; and that every note in the passage is twenty times more beautiful so introduced, than it would have been if played singly on the instrument. Precisely this degree of arrangement and relation must exist between every touch* and line in a great picture. You may consider the whole as a prolonged musical composition : its parts, as separate airs connected in the story ; its little bits and fragments of colour and line, as separate passages or bars in melodies ; and down to the minutest note of the whole — down to the minutest touch, — if there is one that can be spared — that one is doing mischief. Remember therefore always, you have two characters in ■which all greatness of art consists : — First, the earnest and intense seizing of natural facts ; then the ordering those facts by strength of human intellect, so as to make them, for all who look upon them, to the utmost serviceable, memorable, and beautiful. And thus great art is nothing else than the type of strong and noble life ; for, as the ignoble person, in his dealings with all that occurs in the world about him, first sees nothing clearly, — looks nothing fairly in the face, and then allows himself to be swept away by the trampling tor- rent, and unescapable force, of the things that he would not foresee, and could not understand : so the noble person, look- ing the facts of the world full in the face, and fathoming them with deep faculty, then deals with them in unalarmecl intelli- gence and unhurried strength, and becomes, with his human intellect and will, no unconscious nor insignificant agent, in consummating their good, and restraining their evil. * Literally. I know now exaggerated this statement sounds • bat 1 mean it,— every syllable of it. --Bee Appendix IV. POWER OF CONVENTIONAL ART. 33 Thus in human life you have the two fields of rightful toil for ever distinguished, yet for ever associated ; Truth first — plan or design, founded thereon ; so in art, you have the same two fields for ever distinguished, for ever associated ; Truth first — plan, or design, founded thereon. Now hitherto there is not the least difficulty in the subject ; none of you can look for a moment at any great sculptor or painter without seeing the full bearing of these principles. But a difficulty arises when you come to examine the art of a lower order, concerned with furniture and manufacture, for in that art the element of design enters without, apparently, the element of truth. You have often to obtain beauty and dis- play invention without direct representation of nature. Yet, respecting all these things also, the principle is perfectly sim- ple. If the designer of furniture, of cups and vases, of dress patterns, and the like, exercises himself continually in the imitation of natural form in some leading division of his work ; then, holding by this stem of life, he may pass down into all kinds of merely geometrical or formal design with perfect safety, and with noble results.* Thus Giotto, being prima- rily a figure painter and sculptor, is, secondarily, the richest of all designers in mere mosaic of coloured bars and triangles ; thus Benvenuto Cellini, being in all the higher branches of metal work a perfect imitator of nature^ is in all its lower branches the best designer of curve for lips of cups and han- dles of vases ; thus Holbein, exercised primarily in the noble art of truthful portraiture, becomes, secondarily, the most ex- quisite designer of embroideries of robe, and blazonries on wall ; and thus Michael Angelo, exercised primarily in the drawing of body and limb, distributes in the mightiest masses the order of his pillars, and in the loftiest shadow the hollows of his dome. But once quit hold of this living stem, and set yourself to the designing of ornamentation, either in the ig- norant play of your own heartless fancy, as the Indian does, or according to received application of heartless laws, as the modern European does, and there is but one word for you — * This principle, here cursorily stated, is one of the chief subjects of inquiry in the following Lectures. 34 THE TWO PATHS. Death : — death of every healthy faculty, and of every noble intelligence, incapacity of understanding one great work that man has ever done, or of doing anything that it shall be help- ful for him to behold. You have cut yourselves off volunta- rily, presumptuously, insolently, from the whole teaching of your Maker in His Universe ; you have cut yourselves off from it, not because you were forced to mechanical labour for your bread — not because your fate had appointed you to wear away your life in walled chambers, or dig your life out of dusty furrows ; but, when your whole profession, your whole occu- pation — all the necessities and chances of your existence, led you straight to the feet of the great Teacher, and thrust you into the treasury of His w T orks ; w r here you have nothing to do but to live by gazing, and to grow by wondering ; — wilfully you bind up your eyes from the splendour — wilfully bind up your life-blood from its beating — wilfully turn your backs upon all the majesties of Omnipotence — wilfully snatch your hands from all the aids of love ; and what can remain for you, but helplessness and blindness, — except the worse fate than the being blind yourselves — that of becoming Leaders of the blind? Do not think that I am speaking under excited feeling, or in any exaggerated terms. I have written the words I use, that I may know what I say, and that you, if you choose, may see what I have said. For, indeed, I have set before you to- night, to the best of my power, the sum and substance of the system of art to the promulgation of which I have devoted my life hitherto, and intend to devote what of life may still be spared to me. I have had but one steady aim in all that I have ever tried to teach, namely — to declare that whatever was great in human art was the expression of man's delight in God's work. And at this time I have endeavoured to prove to you — if you investigate the subject you may more entirely prove to yourselves —that no school ever advanced far which had not the love of natural fact as a primal energy. But it is still more important for you to be assured that the conditions of life and death in the art of nations are also the conditions of POWER OF CONVENTIONAL ART 35 life and death in your own ; and that you have it, each in his power at this very instant, to determine in which direction his steps are turning. It seems almost a terrible thing to tell you, that all here have all the power of knowing at once what hope there is for them as artists ; you would, perhaps, like better that there was some unremovable doubt about the chances of the future — some possibility that you might be ad- vancing, in unconscious ways, towards unexpected successes — • some excuse or reason for going about, as students do so often, to this master or the other, asking him if they have genius, and whether they are doing right, and gathering, from his careless or formal replies, vague flashes of encouragement, or fifcfulnesses of despair. There is no need for this — no ex- cuse for it. All of you have the trial of yourselves in your own power ; each may undergo at this instant, before his own judgment seat, the ordeal by fire. Ask yourselves what is the leading motive which actuates you while you are at work. I do not ask you what your leading motive is for working — that is a different thing ; you may have families to support — par- ents to help — brides to w T in ; you may have all these, or other such sacred and pre-eminent motives, to press the morning's labour and prompt the twilight thought. But when you are fairly at the work, what is the motive then which tells upon every touch of it ? If it is the love of that which your work represents — if, being a landscape painter, it is love of hills and trees that moves you — if, being a figure painter, it is love of human beauty and human soul that moves you — if, being a flower or animal painter, it is love, and wonder, and delight in petal and in limb that move you, then the Spirit is upon you, and the earth is yours, and the fulness thereof. But if, on the other hand, it is petty self-complacency in your own skill, trust in precepts and laws, hope for academical or popu- lar approbation, or avarice of wealth, — it is quite possible that by steady industry, or even by fortunate chance, you may win the applause, the position, the fortune, that you desire ; — but one touch of true art you will never lay on canvas or on stone as long as you live. Make, then, your choice, boldly and consciously, for one THE TWO PATHS. way or other it must be made. On the dark and dangerous side are set, the pride which delights in self-contemplation — the indolence which rests in unquestioned forms — the igno- rance that despises what is fairest among God's creatures, and the dulness that denies what is marvellous in His working : there is a life of monotony for your own souls, and of misguid- ing for those of others. And, on the other side, is open to your choice the life of the crowned spirit, moving as a light in creation — discovering always — illuminating always, gaining every hour in strength, yet bowed down every hour into deeper humility ; sure of being right in its aim, sure of being irresistible in its progress ; happy in what it has securely done — happier in what, da} r by day, it may as securely hope ; happiest at the close of life, when the right hand begins to forget its cunning, to remember, that there never was a touch of the chisel or the pencil it wielded, but has added to the knowledge and quickened the happiness of mankind. LECTUKE II. THE UNITY OF ART. Part of an Address* delivered at Manchester, lUh March, 1859. It is sometimes my pleasant duty to visit other cities, in the hope of being able to encourage their art students ; but here it is my pleasanter privilege to come for encouragement my- * I was prevented, by press of other engagements, from ]3reparing this address with the care I wished ; and forced to trust to such expres- sion as I could give at the moment to the points of principal impor- tance ; reading, however, the close of the preceding lecture, which I thought contained some truths that would bear repetition. The whole was reported, better than it deserved, by Mr. Pitman, of the Manches- ter Courier, and published nearly verbatim. I have here extracted, from the published report, the facts which I wish especially to enforce ; and have a little cleared their expression ; its loose and colloquial char- acter I cannot now help, unless by re-writing the whole, which it seems not worth while to do. THE UNITY OF ART. 37 self. I do not know when I have received so much as from the report read this evening by Mr. Hammersley, bearing upon a subject which has caused me great anxiety. For I have always felt in my own pursuit of art, and in my en- deavors to urge the pursuit of art on others, that while there are many advantages now that never existed before, there are certain grievous difficulties existing, just in the very cause that is giving the stimulus to art — in the immense spread of the manufactures of every country which is now at- tending vigorously to art. We find that manufacture and art are now going on always together ; that where there is no manufacture there is no art. I know how much there is of pretended art where there is no manufacture : there is much in Italy, for instance ; no country makes so bold pretence to the production of new art as Italy at this moment ; yet no country produces so little. If you glance over the map of Europe, you will find that where the manufactures are strong- est, there art also is strongest. And yet I always felt that there was an immense difficulty to be encountered by the stu- dents who were in these centres of modern movement. They had to avoid the notion that art and manufacture were in any respect one. Art may be healthily associated with manufac- ture, and probably in future will always^ be so ; but the stu- dent must be strenuously warned against supposing that they can ever be one and the same thing, that art can ever be foL» lowed on the principles of manufacture. Each must be fol- lowed separately ; the one must influence the other, but each must be kept distinctly separate from the other. It would be well if all students would keep clearly in their mind the real distinction between those words which we use so often, "Manufacture," "Art," and "Fine Art." "Manu- facture " is, according to the etymology and right use of the word, "the making of anything by hands," — directly or indi- rectly, with or without the help of instruments or machines. Anything proceeding from the hand of man is manufacture ; but it must have proceeded from his hand only, acting mechanically, and uninfluenced at the moment by direct in- telligence. 3S THE TWO PATHS. Then, secondly, Art is the operation of the hand and the intelligence of man together ; there is an art of making ma- chinery ; there is an art of building ships ; an art of making carriages ; and so on. All these, properly called Arts, but not Fine Arts, are pursuits in which the hand of man and his head go together, 'working at the same instant. Then Fine Art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together. Eecollect this triple group ; it will help you to solve many difficult problems. And remember that though the hand must be at the bottom of everything, it must also go to the top of everything ; for Fine Art must be produced by the hand of man in a much greater and clearer sense than manu- facture is. Fine Art must always be produced by the subtlest of all machines, which is the human hand. No machine yet contrived, or hereafter contrivable, will ever equal the fine machinery of the human fingers. Thoroughly perfect art is that which proceeds from the heart, which involves all the noble emotions ; — associates with these the head, yet as in- ferior to the heart ; and the hand, yet as inferior to the heart and head ; and thus brings out the whole man. Hence it follows that since Manufacture is simply the opera- tion of the hand of man in producing that which is useful to him, it essentially separates itself from the emotions ; when emotions interfere with machinery they spoil it : machinery must go evenly, without emotion. But the Fine Arts cannot go evenly ; they always must have emotion ruling their mechanism, and until the pupil begins to feel, and until all he does associates itself with the current of his feeling, he is not an artist. But pupils in all the schools in this country are now exposed to all kinds of temptations which blunt their feelings. I constantly feel discouraged in addressing them because I know not how to tell them boldly what they ought to do, when I feel how practically difficult it is for them to do it. There are all sorts of demands made upon them in every direction, and money is to be made in every conceivable way but the right way. If you paint as you ought, and study as you ought, depend upon it the public will take no notice of you THE UNITY OF ART. 39 for a long while. If you study wrongly, and try to draw T the attention of the public upon you, — supposing you to be clever students — you will get swift reward ; but the reward does not come fast when it is sought wisely ; it is always held aloof for a little while ; the right roads of early life are very quiet ones, hedged in from nearly all help or praise. But the wrong roads are noisy, — vociferous everywhere with all kinds of de- mand upon you for art w T hich is not properly art at all ; and in the various meetings of modern interests, money is to be made in every way ; but art is to be followed only in one way. That is what I want mainly to say to you, or if not to you yourselves (for, from what I have heard from your excellent master to-night, I know you are going on all rightly), you must let me say it through you to others. Our Schools of Art are confused by the various teaching and various inter- ests that are now abroad among us. Everybody is talking about art, and writing about it, and more or less interested in it ; everybody wants art, and there is not art for everybody, and few who talk know what they are talking about ; thus stu- dents are led in all variable wa}^s, while there is only one way in which they can make steady progress, for true art is always and will be always one. Whatever changes may be made in the customs of society, whatever new machines we may invent, whatever new manufactures we may supply, Fine Art must remain what it was two thousand years ago, in the days of Phidias ; two thousand years hence, it will be, in all its prin- ciples, and in all its great effects upon the mind of man, just the same. Observe this that I say, please, carefully, for I mean it to the very utmost. There is but one rigid way of do- ing any given thing required of an artist ; there may be a hun- dred wrong, deficient, or mannered ways, but there is only one complete and right way. Whenever two artists are try- ing to do the same thing with the same materials, and do it in different ways, one of them is wrong ; he may be charm- ingly wrong, or impressively wrong — various circumstances in his temper may 'make his wrong pleasanter than any per- son's right ; it may for him, under his given limitations of knowledge or temper, be better perhaps that he should err in 40 THE TWO PATHS. his own way than try for anybody else's — but for all that his way is wrong, and it is essential for all masters of schools to know what the right way is, and what right art is, and to see how simple and how single all right art has been, since the beginning of it. But farther, not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them, without any choice, or more in- tense perception of one point than another, owing to our spe- cial idiosyncrasies. Thus, when Titian or Tintoret look at a human being, they see at a glance the whole of its nature, outside and in ; all that it has of form, of colour, of passion, or of thought ; saintliness, and loveliness ; fleshly body, and spiritual power ; grace, or strength, or softness, or whatso- ever other quality, those men will see to the full, and so paint, that, when narrower people come to look at what they have done, every one may, if he chooses, find his own special pleasure in the work. The sensualist will find sensu- ality in Titian ; the thinker will find thought ; the saint, sanc- tity ; the colourist, colour ; the anatomist, form ; and yet the picture will never be a popular one in the full sense, for none of these narrower people will find their special taste so alone consulted, as that the qualities wMch would ensure their grati- fication shall be sifted or separated from others ; they are checked by the presence of the other qualities which ensure the gratification of other men. Thus, Titian is not soft enough for the sensualist, Correggio suits him better ; Titian is not defined enough for the formalist, — Leonardo suits him better ; Titian is not pure enough for the religionist, — Raphael suits him better ; Titian is not polite enough for the man of the world, — Vandyke ^uits him better : Titian is not forcible enough for the lovers of the picturesque, — Rembrandt suits him better. So Correggio is popular with a certain set, and Vandyke with a certain set, and Rembrandt with a certain set. All are great men, but of inferior stamp, and therefore Van- dyke is popular, and Rembrandt is popular,* but nobody * And Murillo, of all true painters the narrowest, feeblest, and most superficial, for those reasons the most popular. THE UNITY OF ART. 41 cares much at heart about Titian ; only there is a strange under-current of everlasting murmur about his name, which means the deep consent of all great men that he is greater than they — the consent of those who, having sat long enough at his feet, have found in that restrained harmony of his strength there are indeed depths of each balanced power more wonderful than all those separate manifestations in in- ferior painters : that there is a softness more exquisite than Correggio's, a purity loftier than Leonardo's, a force mightier than Rembrandt's, a sanctity more solemn even than Raf- faelle's. Do not suppose that in saying this of Titian, I am return- ing to the old eclectic theories of Bologna ; for all those eclec- tic theories, observe, were based, not upon an endeavour to unite the various characters of nature (which it is possible to do), but the various narrownesses of taste, which it is impossi- ble to do. Rubens is not more vigorous than Titian, but less vigorous ; but because he is so narrow-minded as to enjoy vigour only, he refuses to give the other qualities of nature, which would interfere with that vigour and with our percep- tion of it. Again, Rembrandt is not a greater master of chia- roscuro than Titian ; — he is a less master, but because he is so narrow-minded as to enjoy chiaroscuro only, he withdraws from you the splendour of hue which would interfere with this, and gives you only the shadow in which you can at once feel it. Now all these specialties have their own charm in their own way : and there are times when the particular humour of each man is refreshing to us from its very distinctness ; but the effort to add any other qualities to this refreshing one instantly takes away the distinctiveness, and therefore the exact character to be enjoyed in its appeal to a particular humour in us. Our enjoyment arose from a weakness meet- ing a weakness, from a partiality in the painter fitting to a partiality in us, and giving us sugar when we wanted sugar, and myrrh when we wanted myrrh ; but sugar and myrrh are not meat : and when we want meat and bread, we must go to better men. 42 THE TWO PATHS. The eclectic schools endeavoured to unite these opposite partialities and weaknesses. They trained themselves under masters of exaggeration, and tried to unite opposite exaggera- tions. That was impossible. They did not see that the only possible eclecticism had been already accomplished ; — the eclecticism of temperance, which, by the restraint of force, gains higher force ; and by the self-denial of delight, gains higher delight. This you will find is ultimately the case with every true and right master ; at first, while we are tyros in art, or before we have earnestly studied the man in question, we shall see little in him ; or perhaps see, as we think, de- ficiencies ; we shall fancy he is inferior to this man in that, and to the other man in the other ; but as we go on studying him we shall find that he has got both that and the other ; and both in a far higher sense than the man who seemed to possess those qualities in excess. Thus in Turner's lifetime, when people first looked at him, those who liked rainy weather, said he was not equal to Copley Fielding ; but those who looked at Turner long enough found that lie could be much more wet than Copley Fielding, when he chose. The people who liked force, said that "Turner was not strong enough for them ; he was effeminate ; they liked De Wint, — nice strong tone ; — or Cox — great, greeny, dark masses of colour — solemn feeling of the freshness and depth of nature ; — they liked Cox — Turner was too hot for them." Had they looked long enough they would have found that he had far more force than De Wint, far more freshness than Cox when he chose, — only united with other elements ; and that he didn't choose to be cool, if nature had appointed the weather to be hot. The people who liked Prout said " Turner had not firmness of hand — he did not know enough about archi- tecture — he was not picturesque enough." Had they looked at his architecture long, they would have found that it con- tained subtle picturesquenesses, infinitely more picturesque than anything of Prout's. People who liked Callcott said that "Turner was not correct or pure enough — had no classical taste." Had they looked at Turner long enough they would have found him as severe, when he chose, as the THE UNITY OF ART. 43 greater Poussin ; — Callcott, a mere vulgar imitator of other men's high breeding. And so throughout with all thoroughly great men, their strength is not seen at first, precisely because they unite, in due place and measure, every great quality. Now the question is, whether, as students, we are to study only these mightiest men, who unite all greatness, or whether we are to study the works of inferior men, who present us with the greatness which we particularly like ? That question often comes before me when I see a strong idiosyncrasy in a student, and he asks me what he should study. Shall I send him to a true master, who does not present the quality in a prominent way in which that student delights, or send him to a man with whom he has direct sympathy ? It is a hard question. For very curious results have sometimes been brought out, especially in late years, not only by students following their own bent, but by their being withdrawn from teaching altogether. I have just named a very great man in his ow T n field — Prout. We all know his drawings, and love them : they have a peculiar character which no other archi- tectural drawings ever possessed, and which no others can possess, because all Prout's subjects are being knocked down or restored. (Prout did not like restored buildings any more than I do.) There will never be any more Prout draw T - ings. Nor could he have been what he was, or expressed with that mysteriously effective touch that peculiar delight in broken and old buildings, unless he had been withdrawn from all high art influence. You know that Prout was born of poor parents — that he was educated down in Cornwall ; — and that, for many years, all the art-teaching he had was his own, or the fishermen's. Under the keels of the fishing-boats, on the sands of our southern coasts, Prout learned all that he needed to learn about art. Entirely by himself, he felt his way to this particular style, and became the painter of pict- ures which I think we should all regret to lose. It becomes a very difficult question what that man would have been, had he been brought under some entirely wholesome artistic in- fluence. He had immense gifts of composition. I do not 44 THE TWO PATHS. know any man who had more power of invention than Prout, or who had a suhlimer instinct in his treatment of things ; but being entirely withdrawn from all artistical help, he blun- ders his way to that short-coming representation, which, by the very reason of its short-coming, has a certain charm we should all be sorry to lose. And therefore I feel embar- rassed when a student comes to me, in whom I see a strong instinct of that kind : and cannot tell whether I ought to say to him, " Give up all your studies of old boats, and keep away from the sea-shore, and come up to the Royal Academy in London, and look at nothing but Titian." It is a difficult thing to make up one's mind to say that. However, I believe, on the whole, we may wisely leave such matters in the hands of Providence ; that if we have the power of teaching the right to anybody, we should teach them the right ; if we have the power of showing them the best thing, we should show them the best thing ; there will always, I fear, be enough want of teaching, and enough bad teaching, to bring out very curious erratical results if we want them. So, if we are to teach at all, let us teach the right thing, and ever the right thing. There are many attractive qualities inconsistent with lightness ; — do not let us teach them, — let us be content to waive them. There are attractive qualities in Burns, and attractive qualities in Dickens, which neither of those writers would have pos- sessed if the one had been educated, and the other had been studying higher nature than that of cockney London ; but those attractive qualities are not such as we should seek in a school of literature. If we want to teach young men a good manner of writing, we should teach it from Shakspeare, — not from Burns ; from Walter Scott, — and not from Dickens. And I believe that our schools of painting are at present in- efficient in their action, because they have not fixed on this high principle what are the painters to whom to point ; nor boldly resolved to point to the best, if determinable. It is becoming a matter of stern necessity that they should give a simple direction to the attention of the student, and that they should say, " This is the mark you are to aim at ; and you are not to go about to the print-shops, and peep in, to see THE UNITY OF ART 45 bow this engraver does that, and the other engraver does the other, and how a nice bit of character has been caught by a new man, and why this odd picture has caught the popular attention. You are to have nothing to do with all that ; you are not to mind about popular attention just now ; but here is a thing which is eternally right and good : you are to look at that, and see if you cannot do something eternally right and good too." But suppose you accept this principle : and resolve to look to some great man, Titian, or Turner, or whomsoever it may be, as the model of perfection in art ;• — then the question is, since this great man pursued his art in Venice, or in the fields of England, under totally different conditions from those pos- sible to us now — how are you to make your study of him effective here in Manchester ? how T bring it down into patterns* and all that you are called upon as operatives to produce ? how make it the means of your livelihood, and associate inferior branches of art with this great art ? That may become a seri- ous doubt to you. You may think there is some other way of producing clever, and pretty, and saleable patterns than going to look at Titian, or any other great man. And that brings me to the question, perhaps the most vexed question of all amongst us just now, between conventional and perfect art. You know that among architects and artists there are, and have been almost always, since art became a subject of much discussion, two parties, one maintaining that nature should be always altered and modified, and that the artist is greater than nat- ure ; they do not maintain, indeed, in words, but they main- tain in idea, that the artist is greater than the Divine Maker of these things, and can improve them ; while the other party say that he cannot improve nature, and that nature on the whole should improve him. That is the real meaning of the two parties, the essence of them ; the practical result of their several theories being that the Idealists are always producing more or less formal conditions of art, and the Realists striving to produce in all their art either some image of nature, or rec- ord of nature ; these, observe, being quite different things, the image being a resemblance, and the record, something 46 THE TWO PATHS. which will give information about nature, but not necessarily imitate it.* * * * # * * * You may separate these two groups of artists more distinctly in your mind as those who seek for the pleasure of art, in the relations of its colours and lines, without caring to convey any truth with it ; and those who seek for the truth first, and then go down from the truth to the pleasure of colour and line. Marking those two bodies distinctly as separate, and thinking over them, you may come to some rather nota- ble conclusions respecting the mental dispositions which are involved in each mode of study. You will find that large masses of the art of the world fall definitely under one or the other of these heads. Observe, pleasure first and truth after- wards, (or not at all,) as with the Arabians and Indians ; or, truth first and pleasure afterwards, as with Angelico and ail other great European painters. You will find that the art whose end is pleasure only is pre-eminently the gift of cruel and savage nations, cruel in temper, savage in habits and con- ception ; but that the art which is especially dedicated to nat- ural fact always indicates a peculiar gentleness and tender- ness of mind, and that all great and successful work of that kind will assuredly be the production of thoughtful, sensitive, earnest, kind men, large in their views of life, and full of vari- ous intellectual power. And farther, when you examine the men in whom the gifts of art are variously mingled, or uni- versally mingled, you will discern that the ornamental, or pleasurable power, though it may be possessed by good men, is not in itself an indication of their goodness, but is rather, unless balanced by other faculties, indicative of violence of temper, inclining to cruelty and to irreligion. On the other hand, so sure as you find any man endowed with a keen and separate faculty of representing natural fact, so surely you will find that man gentle and upright, full of nobleness and breadth of thought, I will give you two instances, the first * The portion of the lecture here omitted was a recapitulation of that part of the previous one which opposed conventional art to natural art THE UNITY OF ART. 47 peculiarly English, and another peculiarly interesting because it occurs among a nation not generally very kind or gentle. I am inclined to think that, considering all the disadvan- tages of circumstances and education under which his genius was developed, there was perhaps hardly ever born a man with a more intense and innate gift of insight into nature than our own Sir Joshua Reynolds. Considered as a painter of individuality in the human form and mind, I think him, even as it is, the prince of portrait painters. Titian paints nobler pictures, and Vandyke had nobler subjects, but neither of them entered so subtly as Sir Joshua did into the minor varieties of human heart and temper ; and when you consider that, with a frightful conventionality of social habitude all around him, he yet conceived the simplest types of all feminine and childish loveliness ; — that in a northern climate, and with gray, and white, and black, as the principal colours around him, he yet became a colourist who can be crushed by none, even of the Venetians ; — and that with Dutch painting and Dresden china for the prevailing types of art in the saloons of his day, he threw himself at once at the feet of the great mas- ters of Italy, and arose from their feet to share their throne — I know not that in the whole history of art you can produce another instance of so strong, so unaided, so unerring an in- stinct for all that was true, pure, and noble. Now, do you recollect the evidence respecting the character of this man, — the two points of bright peculiar evidence given by the sayings of the two greatest literary men of his day, Johnson and Goldsmith ? Johnson, who, as you know, was always Reynolds' attached friend, had but one complaint to make against him, that he hated nobody: — " Reynolds," he Staid, " you hate no one living ; I like a good hater ! " Still more significant is the little touch in Goldsmith's " Retalia- tion." You recollect how in that poem he describes the vari- ous persons who met at one of their dinners at St. James's Coffee-house, each person being described under the name of some appropriate dish. You will often heai the concluding lines about Reynolds auoted — He siiiitea his trumpet," &c *, — 48 THE TWO PATHS. loss often, or at least less attentively, the preceding ones, far more important- — 1 1 Still born to improve us in every part — His pencil our faces, his manners our heart; 9 ' and never, the most characteristic touch of all, near the be rinninof : — " Our dean shall be venison, just fresh from the plains; Our Burke shall be tongue, with a garnish of brains. . To make out the dinner, full certain I am, That Rich is anchovy, and Reynolds is lamb." The other painter whom I would give you as an instance of this gentleness is a man of another nation, on the whole I suppose one of the most cruel civilized nations in the world — the Spaniards. They produced but one great painter, only one ; but he among the very greatest of painters, Velasquez. You would not suppose, from looking at Velasquez' portraits generally, that he was an especially kind or good man ; you perceive a peculiar sternness about them ; for they were as true as steel, and the persons whom he had to paint being not generally kind or good people, they were stern in expression, and Velasquez gave the sternness ; but he had precisely the same intense perception of truth, the same marvellous instinct for the rendering of all natural soul and all natural form that our Reynolds had. Let me, then, read you his character as it is given by Mr. Stirling, of Kier : — " Certain charges, of what nature we are not informed, brought against him after his death, made it necessary for his executor, Fuensalida, to refute them at a private audience granted to him by the king for that purpose. After listening to the defence of his friend, Philip immediately made answer : 'I can believe all you say of the excellent disposition of Diego Velasquez.' Having lived for half his life in courts, he was yet capable both of gratitude and generosity, and in the misfortunes, he could remember the early kindness of Oliva- res. The friend of the exile of Loeches, it is just to believe that he was also the friend of the all-powerful favourite at THE UNITY OF ART. 49 Buenretiro. No mean jealousy ever influenced his conduct to his brother artists ; he could afford not only to acknowl- edge the merits, but to forgive the malice, of his rivals. His character was of that rare and happy kind, in which high intel- lectual power is combined with indomitable strength of will, and a winning sweetness of temper, and which seldom fails to raise the possessor above his fellow-men, making his life a ' laurelled victory, and smooth success Be strewed before his feet. J " I am sometimes accused of trying to make art too moral ; yet, observe, I do not say in the least that in order to be a good painter you must be a good man ; but I do say that in order to be a good natural painter there must be strong elements of good in the mind, however warped by other parta of the character. There are hundreds of other gifts of paint- ing which are not at all involved with moral conditions, but this one, the perception of nature, is never given but under certain moral conditions. Therefore, now you have it in your choice ; here are your two paths for you : it is required of you to produce conventional ornament, and you may approach the task as the Hindoo does, and as the Arab did, without nature at all, with the chance of approximating your disposi- tion somewhat to that of the Hindoos and Arabs ; or as Sir Joshua and Velasquez did, with, not the chance, but the cer- tainty, of approximating your disposition, according to the sincerity of your effort — to the disposition of those great and good men. And do you suppose you will lose anything by approaching your conventional art from this higher side ? Not so. I called, with deliberate measurement of my expression, long ago, the decoration of the Alhambra " detestable/' not merely because indicative of base conditions of moral being, but be- cause merely as decorative work, however captivating in some respects, it is wholly wanting in the real, deep, and intense qualities of ornamental art. Noble conventional decoration belongs only to three periods. First, there is the conven- tional decoration of the Greeks, used in subordination to their 50 THE TWO PATHS. sculpture. There are then the noble conventional decoration of the early Gothic schools, and the noble conventional ara- besque of the great Italian schools. All these were reached from above, all reached by stooping from a knowledge of the human form. Depend upon it you will find, as you look more and more into the matter, that good subordinate orna- ment has ever been rooted in a higher knowledge ; and if you are again to produce anything that is noble, you must have the higher knowledge first, and descend to all lower service ; condescend as much as you like, — condescension never does any man any harm, — but get your noble standing first. So, then, without any scruple, whatever branch of art you may be inclined as a student here to follow, — whatever you are to make } r our bread by, I say, so far as you have time and power, make yourself first a noble and accomplished artist ; under- stand at least what noble and accomplished art is, and then you will be able to apply your knowledge to all service what- soever. I am now going to ask your permission to name the masters whom I think it would be well if we could agree, in our Schools of Art in England, to consider our leaders. The first and chief I will not myself presume to name ; he shall be distinguished for you by the authority of those two great painters of whom we have just been speaking — Reynolds and Velasquez. You may remember that in your Manchester Art Treasures Exhibi- tion the most impressive things were the works of those two men — nothing told upon the eye so much ; no other pictures retained it with such a persistent power. Now, I have the testimony, first of Keynolds to Velasquez, and then of Velasquez to the man whom I want you to take as the master of all your English schools. The testimony of Reynolds to Velasquez is very striking. I take it from some fragments which have just been published by Mr. William Cotton — precious fragments — of Reynolds' diaries, which I chanced upon luckily as I was coming down here : for I was going to take Velasquez' testi- mony alone, and then fell upon this testimony of Reynolds to Velasquez, written most fortunately in Reynolds' own hand— you may see the manuscript. " What we are all," said Rey- THE UNITY OF ART. 51 nolds, " attempting to do with great labor, Velasquez does at once." Just think what is implied when a man of the enor- mous power and facility that Eeynolds had, says he was " try- ing to do with great labor" what Velasquez " did at once." Having thus Eeynolds' testimony to Velasquez, I will take Velasquez' testimony to somebody else. You know that Velas- quez was sent by Philip of Spain to Italy, to buy pictures for him. He went all over Italy, saw the living artists there, and all their best pictures when freshly painted, so that he had every opportunity of judging ; and never was a man so capable of judging. He went to Eome and ordered various works of living artists ; and while there, he was one day asked by Salva- tor Eosa what he thought of Eaphael. His reply, and the ensuing conversation, are thus reported by Boschini, in curious Italian verse, which, thus translated by Dr. Donaldson, is quoted in Mr. Stirling's Life of Velasquez : — " The master " [Velasquez] "stiffly bowed his figure tall And said, 1 For Rafael, to speak the truth — I always was plain-spoken from my youth — I cannot say- 1 like his works at all.' " 'Well,' said the other" [Salvator], " 'if you can run down;' So great a man, I really cannot see What you can find to like in Italy ; To him we all agree to give the crown.' M Diego answered thus : ' I saw in Venice The true test of the good and beautiful ; First in my judgment, ever stands that school, And Titian first of all Italian men is.' " " Tizian ze quel die porta la bandiera." Learn that line by heart, and act, at all events for some time to come, upon Velasquez' opinion in that matter. Titian is much the safest master for you. Kaphael's power, such as it was, and great as it was, depended wholly upon transcendental characters in his mind ; it is " Raphaelesque," properly so called ; but Titian's power is simply the power of doing right. Whatever came before Titian, he did wholly as it ought to be 52 THE TWO PATHS. clone. Do not suppose that now in recommending Titian to you so strongly, and speaking of nobody else to-night, I am retreating in anywise from what some of you may perhaps rec- ollect in my works, the enthusiasm with which I have always spoken of another Venetian painter. There are three Vene- tians who are never separated in my mind — Titian, Veronese, and Tintoret. They all have their own unequalled gifts, and Tintoret especially has imagination and depth of soul which I think renders him indisputably the greatest man ; but, equally indisputably, Titian is the greatest painter ; and therefore the greatest painter who ever lived. You may be led wrong by Tintoret * in many respects, wrong by Raphael in more ; all that you learn from Titian will be right. Then, with Titian, take Leonardo, Rembrandt, and Albert Durer. I name those three masters for this reason : Leonardo has powers of subtle drawing which are peculiarly applicable in many ways to the drawing of fine ornament, and are very useful for all students. Rembrandt and Durer are the only men whose actual work of hand you can have to look at ; you can have Rembrandt's etchings, or Durer's engravings actually hung in your schools ; and it is a main point for the student to see the real thing, and avoid judging of masters at second-hand. As, however, in obeying this principle, you cannot often have opportunities of studying Venetian painting, it is desirable that you should have a useful standard of colour, and I think it is possible for you to obtain this. I cannot, indeed, without entering upon ground which might involve the hurting the feelings of living artists, state exactly what I believe to be the relative position of various painters in England at present with respect to power of colour. But I may say this, that in the peculiar gifts of colour which will be useful to you as students, there are only one or two of the pre-Raphaelites, and William Hunt, of the old Water Colour Society, who would be safe guides for you ; and as quite a safe guide, there is nobody but William Hunt, because the pre-Raphaelites are all more or less affected by enthusiasm and by various morbid conditions of intellect and temper ; but old William Hunt — I am sorry to say " old," but * See Appendix I. — u Right and Wrong." THE UNITY OF ART. 53 I say it in a loving way, for every year that has added to his life has added also to his skill — William Hunt is as right as the Venetians, as far as he goes, and what is more, nearly as inimitable as they. And I think if we manage to put in the principal schools of England a little bit of Hunt's work, and make that somewhat of a standard of colour, that we can ap- ply his principles of colouring to subjects of all kinds. Until you have had a work of his long near you ; nay, unless you have been labouring at it, and trying to copy it, you do not know the thoroughly grand qualities that are concentrated in it. Simplicity, and intensity, both of the highest character ; — simplicity of aim, and intensity of power and success, are involved in that man's unpretending labour. Finally, you cannot believe that I would omit my own favourite, Turner. I fear from the very number of his works left to the nation, that there is a disposition now rising to look upon his vast bequest with some contempt. I beg of you, if in nothing else, to believe me in this, that you cannot further the art of England in any way more distinctly than by giving attention to every fragment that has been left by that man. The time will come when his full power and right place will be acknowledged ; that time will not be for many a day yet : nevertheless, be assured — as far as you are inclined to give the least faith to anything I may say to you, be as- sured — that you can act for the good of art in England in no better way than by using whatever influence any of you have in any direction to urge the reverent study and yet more reverent preservation of the works of Turner. I do not say " the exhibition " of his works, for w T e are not altogether ripe for it : they are still too far above us ; uniting, as I was telling you, too many qualities for us yet to feel fully their range and their influence ; — but let us only try to keep them safe from harm, and show thoroughly and conveniently what we show of them at all, and day by day their greatness will dawn upon us more and more, and be the root of a school of art in Eng- land, which I do not doubt may be as bright, as just, and as refined as even that of Venice herself. The dominion of the sea seems to have been associated, in past time, with dominion 54 THE TWO PATHS. in the arts also : Athens had them together ; Venice had them together ; but by so much as our authority over the ocean is wider than theirs over the iEgean or Adriatic, let us strive to make our art more widely beneficent than theirs, though it cannot be more exalted ; so working out the fulfilment, in their wakening as well as their warning sense, of those great words of the aged Tintoret : "Sempre si fa il Mare Maggiore." LECTURE III. MODERN manufacture and design. A Lecture delivered at Bradford, March, 1859. It is with a deep sense of necessity for your indulgence that I venture to address you to-night, or that I venture at any time to address the pupils of schools of design intended for the advancement of taste in special branches of manufacture. No person is able to give useful and definite help towards such special applications of art, unless he is entirely familiar with the conditions of labour and natures of material involved in the work ; and indefinite help is little better than no help at all. Nay, the few remarks which I propose to lay before you this evening will, I fear, be rather suggestive of difficulties than helpful in conquering them : nevertheless, it may not be altogether unserviceable to define clearly for you (and this, at least, I am able to do) one or two of the more stern general obstacles which stand at present in the way of our success in design ; and to warn you against exertion of effort in any vain or wasteful way, till these main obstacles are removed. The first of these is our not understanding the scope and dignity of Decorative design. With all our talk about it, the very meaning of the words " Decorative art " remains confused and undecided. I want, if possible, to settle this question for you to-night, and to show you that the principles on which you MODERN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN. 55 must work are likely to be false, in proportion as they are narrow ; true, only as they are founded on a perception of the connection of all branches of art with each other. Observe, then, first — the only essential distinction between Decorative and other art is the being fitted for a fixed place ; and in that place, related, either in subordination or command, to the effect of other pieces of art. And all the greatest art which the world has produced is thus fited for a place, and subor- dinated to a purpose. There is no existing highest-order art but is decorative. The best sculpture yet produced has been the decoration of a temple front — the best painting, the deco- ration of a room. Kaphael's best doing is merely the wall-col- ouring of a suite of apartments in the Vatican, and his car- toons were made for tapestries. Correggio's best doing is the decoration of two small church cupolas at Parma ; Michael Angelo's of a ceiling in the Pope's private chapel ; Tintoret's, of a ceiling and side wall belonging to a charitable society at Venice ; while Titian and Veronese threw out their noblest thoughts, not even on the inside, but on the outside of the common brick and plaster walls of Venice. Get rid, then, at once of any idea of Decorative art being a degraded or a separate kind of art. Its nature or essence is simply its being fitted for a definite place ; and, in that place, forming part of a great and harmonious whole, in companion- ship with other art ; and so far from this being a degradation to it — so far from Decorative art being inferior to other art because it is fixed to a spot — on the whole it may be consid- ered as rather a piece of degradation that it should be port- able. Portable art — independent of all place — is for the most part ignoble art. Your little Dutch landscape, which you put over your sideboard to-day, and between the windows to- morrow, is a far more contemptible piece of work than the ex- tents of field and forest with which Benozzo has made green and beautiful the once melancholy arcade of the Campo Santo at Pisa ; and the wild boar of silver which you use for a seal, or lock into a velvet case, is little likely to be so noble a beast as the bronze boar who foams forth the fountain from under his tusks in the market-place of Florence. It is, indeed, po.?« 56 THE TWO PATHS. sible that the portable picture or image may be first-rate of its kind, but it is not first-rate because it is portable ; nor are Titian's frescoes less than first-rate because they are fixed ; nay, very frequently the highest compliment you can pay to a cab- inet picture is to say — "*'It is as grand as a fresco." Keeping, then, this fact fixed in our minds, — that all art may be decorative, and that the greatest art yet produced has been decorative, — we may proceed to distinguish the orders and dignities of decorative art, thus : — I. The first order of it is that which is meant for places where it cannot be disturbed or injured, and where it can be perfectly seen ; and then the main parts of it should be, and have always been made, by the great masters, as perfect, and as full of nature as possible. You will every day hear it absurdly said that room deco- ration should be by flat patterns — by dead colours — by con- ventional monotonies, and I know not what. Now, just be assured of this — nobody ever yet used conventional art to decorate with, when he could do anything better, and knew that what he did would be safe. Nay, a great painter will always give you the natural art, safe or not. Correggio gets a commission to paint a room on the ground floor of a palace at Parma : any of our people — bred on our fine modern principles — would have covered it with a diaper, or with stripes or flourishes, or mosaic patterns. Not so Correggio : he paints a thick trellis of vine-leaves, with oval openings, and lovely children leaping through them into the room ; and lovely children, depend upon it, are rather more desirable decorations than diaper, if you can do them — but they are not quite so easily done. In like manner Tintoret has to paint the whole end of the Council Hall at Venice. An orthodox decorator would have set himself to make the wall look like a wall — Tintoret thinks it would be rather better, if he can manage it, to make it look a little like Para- dise ; — stretches his canvas right over the wail, and his clouds right over his canvas ; brings the light through his clouds- all blue and clear — zodiac beyond zodiac ; rolls away the vaporous flood from under the feet of saints, leaving them at MODERN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN. 57 last in infinitudes of light — unorthodox in the last degree, but, on the whole, pleasant. And so in all other cases whatever, the greatest decorative art is wholly unconventional — downright, pure, good painting and sculpture, but always fitted for its place; and subordi- nated to the purpose it has to serve in that place. II. But if art is to be placed where it is liable to injury — to wear and tear ; or to alteration of its form ; as, for in- stance, on domestic Utensils, and armour, and weapons, and dress ; in which either the ornament will be worn out by the usage of the thing, or will be cast into altered shape by the play of its folds ; then it is wrong to put beautiful and perfect art to such uses, and you want forms of inferior art, such as will be by their simplicity less liable to injury ; or, by reason of their complexity and eontinuousness, may show to advantage, however distorted by the folds they are cast into. And thus arise the various forms of inferior decorative art, respecting which the general law is, that the lower the place and office of the thing, the less of natural or perfect form you should have in it ; a zigzag or a chequer is thus a better, because a more consistent ornament for a cup or platter than a landscape or portrait is : hence the general definition of the true forms of conventional ornament is, that they consist in the bestowal of as much beauty on the object as shall be con- sistent with its Material, its Place, and its Office. Let us consider these three modes of consistency a little. (a.) Convention alism by cause of inefficiency of material. If, for instance, we are required to represent a human figure with stone only, we cannot represent its colour ; we reduce its colour to whiteness. That is not elevating the human body, but degrading it ; only it would be a much greater degradation to give its colour falsely. Diminish beauty as much as you will, but do not misrepresent it. So again, when we are sculpturing a face, we can't carve its eye- lashes. The face is none the better for wanting its eyelashes — it is injured by the want ; but would be much more injured by a clumsy representation of them. 5S THE TWO PATHS. Neither can we carve the hair. We must be content with the conventionalism of vile solid knots and lumps of marble, instead of the golden cloud that encompasses the fair human face with its waving mystery. The lumps of marble are not an elevated representation of hair — they are a degraded one ; yet better than any attempt to imitate hair with the incapable material. In all cases in which such imitation is attempted, instant degradation to a still lower level is the result. For the effort to imitate shows that the workman has only a base and poor conception of the -beauty of the reality — else he would know his task to be hopeless, and give it up at once ; so that all endeavours to avoid conventionalism, when the material demands it, result from insensibility to truth, and are among the worst forms of vulgarity. Hence, in the greatest Greek statues, the hair is very slightly indicated — not because the sculptor disdained hair, but because he knew what it was too well to touch it insolently. I do not doubt but that the Greek painters drew hair exactly as Titian does. Modern attempts to jDroduce finished pictures on glass result from the same base vulgarism. No man who knows what painting means, can endure a painted glass window which emulates painter's work. But he rejoices in a glowing mosaic di broken colour : for that is what the glass has the special gift and right of producing.* (b. ) Conventionalism by cause of inferiority of place. When work is to be seen at a great distance, or in dark places, or in some other imperfect way, it constantly becomes necessary to treat it coarsely or severely, in order to make it effective. The statues on cathedral fronts, in good times of design, are variously treated according to their distances : no fine execution is put into the features of the Madonna who rules the group of figures above the south transept of Rouen at 150 feet above the ground ; but in base modern work, as Milan Cathedral, the sculpture is finished without any refer- ence to distance ; and the merit of every statue is supposed * See Appendix IT., Sir Joshua. Peyriolds's disappointment. MODERN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN 59 to consist in the visitor's being obliged to ascend three hun- dred steps before he can see it. (c.) Conventionalism by cause of inferiority of office. When one piece of ornament is to be subordinated to an- other (as the moulding is to the sculpture it encloses, or the fringe of a drapery to the statue it veils), this inferior orna- ment needs to be degraded in order to mark its lower office ; and this is best done by refusing, more or less, the introduc- tion of natural form. The less of nature it contains, the more degraded is the ornament, and the fitter for a humble place ; but, however far a great workman may go in refusing the higher organisms of nature, he always takes care to retain the magnificence of natural lines ; that is to say, of the infinite curves, such as I have analyzed in the fourth volume of " Modern Painters." His copyists, fancying that they can fol- low him without nature, miss precisely the essence of all the work ; so that even the simplest piece of Greek conventional ornament loses the whole of its value in any modern imitation of it, the finer curves being always missed. Perhaps one of the dullest and least justifiable mistakes which have yet been made about my writing, is the supposition that I have attacked or despised Greek work. I have attacked Palladian work, and modern imitation of Greek work. Of Greek work itself I have never spoken but with a reverence quite infinite : I name Phidias always in exactly the same tone with which I speak of Michael Angelo, Titian, and Dante. My first statement of this faith, now thirteen years ago, was surely clear enough. "We shall see by this light three colossal images standing up side by side, looming in their great rest of spirituality above the whole world horizon. Phidias, Michael Angelo, and Dante, — from these we may go down step by step among the mighty men of every age, securely and certainly observant of di- minished lustre in every appearance of restlessness and effort, until the last trace of inspiration vanishes in the tottering affectation or tortured insanities of modern times." (" Mod- ern Painters," vol. ii,, p. 253.) This was surely plain speaking enough, and from that day to this my effort has been not less continually to make the heart of Greek work known than the CO THE TWO PATHS. heart of Gothic : namely, the nobleness of conception of form derived from perpetual study of the figure ; and my complaint of the modern architect has been not that he followed the Greeks, but that he denied the first laws of life in theirs as in ail other art. The fact is, that all good subordinate forms of ornamenta- tion ever yet existent in the world have been invented, and others as beautiful can only be invented, by men primarily exercised in drawing or carving the human figure. I will not repeat here what I have already twice insisted upon, to the students of London and Manchester, respecting the degrada- tion of temper and intellect which follows the pursuit of art without reference to natural form, as among the Asiatics : here, I will only trespass on your patience so far as to mark the inseparable connection between figure-drawing and good ornamental work, in the great European schools, and all that are connected with them. Tell me, then, first of all, what ornamental work is usually put before our students as the type of decorative perfection ? Raphael's arabesques ; are they not ? "Well, Raphael knew a little about the figure, I suppose, before he drew them. I do not say that I like those arabesques ; but there are certain qualities in them which are inimitable by modern designers ; and those qualities are just the fruit of the master's figure study. What is given the student as next to Raphael's work? Cinquecento ornament generally. Well, cinquecento gener- ally, with its birds, and cherubs, and wreathed foliage, and clustered fruit, was the amusement of men who habitually and easily carved the figure, or painted it. All the truly fine specimens of it have figures or animals as main parts of the design. "Nay, but," some anciently or medievally minded person will exclaim, " we don't want to study cinquecento. We want severer, purer conventionalism." "What will you have? Egyptian ornament ? Why, the whole mass of it is made up of multitudinous human figures in every kind of action — and magnificent action ; their kings drawing their bows in their chariots, their eheaves of arrows rattling at their shoulders ; MODERN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN. 61 the slain falling under them as before a pestilence ; their cap- tors driven before them in astonied troops ; and do you ex- pect to imitate Egyptian ornament without knowing how to draw the human figure ? Nay, but you will take Christian ornament — purest mediaeval Christian — thirteenth century ! Yes : and do you suppose you will find the Christian less hu- man ? The least natural and most purely conventional orna- ment of the Gothic schools is that of their painted glass ; and do you suppose painted glass, in the fine times, was ever wrought without figures ? We have got into the way, among our other modern wretchednesses, of trying to make windows of leaf diapers, and of strips of twisted red and yellow bands, looking like the patterns of currant jelly on the top of Christ- mas cakes ; but every casement of old glass contained a saint's history. The windows of Bourges, Chartres, or Rouen have ten, fifteen, or twenty medallions in each, and each medallion contains two figures at least, often six or seven, representing every event of interest in the history of the saint whose life is in question. Nay, but, you say those figures are rude and quaint, and ought not to be imitated. Why, so is the leafage rude and quaint, yet you imitate that. The coloured border pattern of geranium or ivy leaf is not one whit better drawn, or more like geraniums and ivy, than the figures are like fig- ures ; but you call the geranium leaf idealized — why don't you call the figures so ? The fact is, neither are idealized, but both are coventionalized on the same principles, and in the same way ; and if } t ou Avant to learn how to treat the leafage, the only way is to learn first how to treat the figure. And you may soon test your powers in this respect. Those old workmen were not afraid of the most familiar subjects. The windows of Chartres were presented by the trades of the town, and at the bottom of each window is a representation of the proceedings of the tradesmen at the business which en- abled them to pay for the window. There are smiths at the forge, curriers at their hides, tanners looking into their pits, mercers selling goods over the counter — all made into beauti- ful medallions. Therefore, whenever you want to know whether you have got any real power of composition or adap- THE TWO PATHS. tat inn in ornament, don't be content with sticking leaves to- gether by the ends, — anybody can do that ; but try to conven- tionalize a butcher's or a greengrocer's, with Saturday night customers buying cabbage and beef. That will tell you if you can design or not. I can fancy your losing patience with me altogether just now. " We asked this fellow down to tell our workmen how to make shawls, and he is only trying to teach them how to caricature." But have a little patience with me, and examine, after I have done, a little for yourselves into the history of or- namental art, and you will discover why I do this, You will discover, I repeat, that all great ornamental art whatever is founded on the effort of the workman to draw the figure, and, in the best schools, to draw all that he saw about him in liv- ing nature. The best art of pottery is acknowledged to be that of Greece, and all the power of design exhibited in it, down to the merest zigzag, arises primarily from the workman having been forced to outline nymphs and knights ; from those helmed and draped figures he holds his power. Of Egyptian ornament I have just spoken. You have everything given there that the workman saw; people of his nation employed in hunting, fighting, fishing, visiting, making love, building, cooking— everything they did is drawn, magnificently or fa- miliarly, as was needed. In Byzantine ornament, saints, or animals which are types of various spiritual power, are the main subjects ; and from the church down to the piece of en- amelled metal, figure, — figure, — figure, always principal. In Norman and Gothic work you have, with ail their quiet saints, also other much disquieted persons, hunting, feasting, fight- ing, and so on ; or whole hordes of animals racing after each other. In the Bayeux tapestry, Queen Matilda gave, as well as she could, — in many respects graphically enough, — the whole history of the conquest of England. Thence, as you increase in power of art, you have more and more finished figures, up to the solemn sculptures of Wells Cathedral, or the cherubic enrichments of the Venetian Madonna dei Mira- coli. Therefore, I will tell you fearlessly, for I know it is true, you must raise your workman up to life, or you will never get MODERN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN. 63 from liim one line of well-imagined conventionalism. We have at present no good ornamental design. We can't have it yet, and we must be patient if w 7 e want to have it. Do not hope to feel the effect of your schools at once, but raise the men as high as you can, and then let them stoop as low as you need ; no great man ever minds stooping. Encourage the students, in sketching accurately and continually from nature anything that comes in their way— still life, flowers, animals ; but, above all, figures ; and so far as you allow of airy differ- ence between an artist's training and theirs, let it be, not in w r hat they draw, but in the degree of conventionalism you re- quire in the sketch. For my own part, I should always endeavour to give thor- ough artistical training first ; but I am not certain (the experi- ment being yet untried) what results may be obtained by a truly intelligent practice of conventional drawing, such as that of the Egyptians, Greeks, or thirteenth century French, which consists in the utmost possible rendering of natural form by the fewest possible lines. The animal and bird drawing of the Egyptians is, in their fine age, quite magnificent under its conditions ; magnificent in tw 7 o ways— first, in keenest per- ception of the main forms and facts in the creature ; and, secondly, in the grandeur of line by which their forms are abstracted and insisted on, making every asp, ibis, and vulture a sublime spectre of asp or ibis or vulture power. The way for students to get some of this gift again {mine only, for I believe the fulness of the gift itself to be connected with vital superstition, and with resulting intensity of reverence ; people w r ere likely to know something about hawks and ibises, when to kill one was to be irrevocably judged to death) is never to pass a day without drawing some animal from the life, allow- ing themselves the fewest possible lines and colours to do it with, but resolving that whatever is characteristic of the ani- mal shall in some way or other be shown.* I repeat, it can- not yet be judged what results might be obtained by a nobly practised conventionalism of this kind ; but, however that * Plate 75 in Vol. V. of Wilkinson's " Ancient Egypt" will give the student an idea of how to set to work. 64 THE TWO PATHS. may be, the first fact, — the necessity of animal and figure drawing, is absolutely certain, and no person who shrinks from it will ever become a great designer. One great good arises even from the first step in figure drawing, that it gets the student quit at once of the notion of formal symmetry. If you. learn only to draw a leaf well, you are taught in some of our schools to turn it the other way, opposite to itself ; and the two leaves set opposite ways are called " a design : " and thus it is supposed possible to pro- duce ornamentation, though you have no more brains than a looking-glass or a kaleidoscope has. But if you once learn to draw the human figure, you will find that knocking two men's heads together does not necessarily constitute a good design ; nay, that it makes a very bad design, or no design at all ; and you will see at once that to arrange a group of two or moro figures, you must, though perhaps it may be desirable to bal- ance, or oppose them, at the same time vary their attitudes, and make one, not the reverse of the other, but the compan- ion of the other. I had a somewhat amusing discussion on this subject with a friend, only the other day ; and one of his retorts upon me was so neatly put, and expresses so completely all that can either be said or shown on the opposite side, that it is well worth while giving it you exactly in the form it was sent to me. My friend had been maintaining that the essence of ornament consisted in three things : — contrast, series, and symmetry. I replied (by letter) that " none of them, nor all of them together, would produce ornament. Here " — (making a ragged blot with the back of my pen on the paper) — " you have contrast : but it isn't orna- / ment : here, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6," — writing the numerals) — " You have series ; but it isn't ornament : and here," — (sketching this figure at the side) — " you have symmetry ; but it isn't ornament." My friend replied : — " Your materials were not ornament, because you did not MODERN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN 05 apply them. I send them to you back, made up into a choice sporting neckerchief : Symmetrical figure . - Unit of diaper. Contrast Corner ornaments. Series Border ornaments. Each figure is converted into a harmony by being revolved on its two axes, the whole opposed in contrasting series." My answer was — or rather was to the effect (for I must ex- pand it a little, here) — that his words, "because you did not apply them," contained the gist of the whole matter ; — that the application of them, or any other things, was precisely the essence of design ; the non-application, or wrong applica- tion, the negation of design : that his use of the poor ma- terials was in this case admirable ; and that if he could explain to me, in clear words, the principles on which he had so used them, he would be doing a very great service to all students of art. GO THE TWO PATHS. "Tell me, therefore (I asked), these main points: " 1. How did you determine the number of figures you would put into the neckerchief ? Had there been more, it would have been mean and ineffective, — a pepper-and-salt sprinkling of figures. Had there been fewer, it would have been monstrous. How did you fix the number ? " 2. How did you determine the breadth of the border and relative size of the numerals? " 3. Why are there two lines outside of the border, and one only inside ? Why are there no more lines ? Why not three and two, or three and five ? Why lines at all to separate the barbarous figures ; and why, if lines at all, not double or treble instead of single ? "4. Why did you put the double blots at the corners? Why not at the angles of the chequers, — or in the middle of the border ? " It is precisely your knowing why not to do these things, and why to do just what you have done, which constituted your power of design ; and like all the people I have ever known who had that power, you are entirely unconscious of the essential laws by which you work, and confuse other people by telling them that the design depends on symmetry and series, when, in fact, it depends entirely on your own sense and judgment." This was the substance of my last answer — to which (as I knew beforehand would be the case) I got no reply ; but it still remains to be observed that with all the skill and taste (especially involving the architect's great trust, harmony of proportion), which my friend could bring to bear on the ma- terials given him, the result is still only — a sporting necker- chief — that is to say, the materials addressed, first, to reck* lessness, in the shape of a mere blot ; then to computativeness, in a series of figures ; and then to absurdity and ignorance, in the shape of an ill-drawn caricature — such materials, how- ever treated, can only w T ork up into what will please reckless, computative, and vulgar persons, — that is to say, into a sport- ing neckerchief. The difference between this piece of orna- mentation and Correggio's painting at Parma lies simply and MODERN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN. 67 wholly in the additions (somewhat large ones), of truth and of tenderness : in the drawing being lovely as well as sym- metrical — and representative of realities as well as agreeably disposed. And truth, tenderness, and inventive application or disposition are indeed the roots of ornament — not contrast, nor symmetry. It ought yet farther to be observed, that the nobler the ma- terials, the less their symmetry is endurable, In the present case, the sense of fitness and order, produced by the repeti- tion of the figures, neutralizes, in some degree, their reckless vulgarity ; and is wholly, therefore, beneficent to them. But draw the figures better, and their repetition will become painful. You may harmlessly balance a mere geometrical form, and oppose one quatrefoil or cusp by another exactly like it. But put two Apollo Belvideres back to back, and you will not think the symmetry improves them. Whenever the materials of ornament are noble, they must be various ; and repetition of parts is either the sign of utterly bad, hopeless, and base w r ork ; or of the intended degradation of the parts in which such repetition is allowed, in order to foil others more noble. Such, then, are a few of the great principles, by the enforce- ment of which you may hope to promote the success of the modern student of design ; but remember, none of these prin- ciples will be useful at all, unless you understand them to be, in one profound and stern sense, useless.* That is to say, unless you feel that neither you nor I, nor any one, can, in the great ultimate sense, teach anybody how to make a good design. If designing could be taught, all the w r orld would learn : as all the world reads — or calculates. But. designing is not to be spelled, nor summed. My men continually come to me, in my drawing class in London, thinking I am to teach them what is instantly to enable them to gain their bread. "Please, sir, show us how to design." " Make designers of us." And * I shall endeavour for the future to put my self-contradictions in short sentences and direct terms, in order to save sagacious persons the trouble of looking for them. 63 THE TWO PATHS. you, I doubt not, partly expect me to tell you to-night how to make designers of your Bradford youths. Alas ! I could as soon tell you how to make or manufacture an ear of wheat, as to make a good artist of any kind. I can analyze the wheat very learnedly for you — tell you there is starch in it, and car- bon, and silex. I can give you starch, and charcoal, and flint ; but you are as far from your ear of wheat as you were before. All that can possibly be done for any one who wants ears of wheat is to show them where to find grains of wheat, and how to sow them, and then, with patience, in Heaven's time, the ears will come — or will perhaps come — ground and weather permitting. So in this matter of making artists — first you must find your artist in the grain ; then you must plant him ; fence and weed the field about him ; and with patience, ground and weather permitting, you may get an artist out of him— not otherwise. And what I have to speak to you about, to- night, is mainly the ground and the weatner, it being the first and quite most material question in this matter, whether the ground and weather of Bradford, or the ground and weather of England in general, — suit wheat. And observe in the outset, it is not so much what the pres- ent circumstances of England are, as what we wish to make them, that we have to consider. If you will tell me what you ultimately intend Bradford to be, perhaps I can tell you what Bradford can ultimately produce. But you must have your minds clearly made up, and be distinct in telling me what you do want. At present I don't know what you are aiming at, and possibly on consideration you may feel some doubt whether you know yourselves. As matters stand, all over England, as soon as one mill is at work, occupying two hundred hands, we try, by means of it, to set another mill at work, occupying four hundred. That is all simple and comprehensive enough — but what is it to come to ? How many mills do we want ? or do we indeed want no end of mills ? Let us entirely understand each other on this point before we go any farther. Last week, I drove from Rochdale to Bolton Abbey ; quietly, in order to see the country, and certainly it was well worth while. I never went over a more interesting twenty miles than those between MODERN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN. 69 Rochdale and Burnley. Naturally, the valley has been one of the most beautiful in the Lancashire hills ; one of the far away solitudes, full of old shepherd ways of life. At this time there are not, — I speak deliberately, and I believe quite literally, — • there are not, I think, more than a thousand yards of road to be traversed anywhere, without passing a furnace or mill. Now, is that the kind of thing you want to come to every- where ? Because, if it be, and you tell me so distinctly, I think I can make several suggestions to-night, and could make more if you give me time, which would materially advance your object. The extent of our operations at present is more or less limited by the extent of coal and ironstone, but we have not yet learned to make proper use of our clay. Over the greater part of England, south of the manufacturing dis- tricts, there are magnificent beds of various kinds of useful clay ; and I believe that it would not be difficult to point out modes of employing it which might enable us to turn nearly the whole of the south of England into a brickfield, as we have already turned nearly the whole of the north into a coal-pit. I say " nearly" the whole, because, as you are doubtless aware, there are considerable districts in the south composed of chalk renowned up to the present time for their downs and mutton. But, I think, by examining carefully into the conceivable uses of chalk, we might discover a quite feasible probability of turn- ing all the chalk districts into a limekiln, as we turn the clay districts into a brickfield. There would then remain nothing but the mountain districts to be dealt with ; but, as we have not yet ascertained all the uses of clay and chalk, still less have we ascertained those of stone ; and I think, by draining the useless inlets of the Cumberland, Welsh, and Scotch lakes, and turning them, with their rivers, into navigable reservoirs and canals, there would be no difficulty in working the whole of our mountain districts as a gigantic quarry of slate and granite, from which all the rest of the world might be sup- plied with roofing and building stone. Is this, then, what you want ? You are going straight at it at present ; and I have only to ask under what limitations I am to conceive or describe your final success ? Or shall there 70 THE TWO PATHS. be no limitations ? There are none to your powers ; every day puts new machinery at your disposal, and increases, with your capital, the vastness of your undertakings. The changes in the state of this country are now so rapid, that it would be wholly absurd to endeavour to lay down laws of art education for it under its present aspect and circumstances ; and there- fore I must necessarily ask, how much of it do you seriously intend within the next fifty years to be coal-pit, brickfield, or quarry? For the sake of distinctness of conclusion, I will suppose your success absolute : that from shore to shore the whole of the island is to be set as thick with chimneys as the masts stand in the docks of Liverpool : and there shall be no meadows in it ; no trees ; no gardens ; only a little corn grown upon the housetops, reaped and threshed by steam : that you do not leave even room for roads, but travel either over the roofs of your mills, on viaducts ; or under their floors, in tun- nels : that, the smoke having rendered the light of the sun unserviceable, you work always by the light of your own gas : that no acre of English ground shall be without its shaft and its engine ; and therefore, no spot of English ground left, on which it shall be possible to stand, without a definite and cal- culable chance of being blown off it, at any moment, into small pieces. Under these circumstances, (if this is to be the future of England,) no designing or any other development of beautiful art will be possible. Do not vex your minds, nor waste your money with any thought or effort in the matter. Beautiful art can only be produced by people who have beautiful things about them, and leisure to look at them ; and unless you pro- vide some elements of beauty for your workmen to be sur- rounded by, you will find that no elements of beauty can be invented by them. I was struck forcibly by the bearing of this great fact upon our modern efforts at ornamentation in an afternoon walk, last week, in the suburbs of one of our large manufacturing towns. I was thinking of the difference in the effect upon the designer's mind, between the scene which I then came upon, and the scene which would have presented itself to the MODERN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN. 75 eyes of any designer of the middle ages, when lie left his workshop). Just outside the town I came upon an old Eng- lish cottage, or mansion, I hardly know which to call it, set close under the hill, and beside the river, perhaps built some- where in the Charles's time, with mullioned windows and a low arched porch ; round which, in the little triangular gar- den, one can imagine the family as they used to sit in old summer times, the ripple of the river heard faintly through the sweetbrier hedge, and the sheep on the far-off wolds shin- ing in the evening sunlight. There, uninhabited for many and many a year, it had been left in unregarded havoc of ruin ; the garden-gate still swung loose to its latch ; the gar- den, blighted utterly into a field of ashes, not even a weed taking root there ; the roof torn into shapeless rents ; the shutters hanging about the windows in rags of rotten wood ; before its gate, the stream which had gladdened it now soak- ing slowly by, black as ebony, and thick with curdling scum ; the bank above it trodden into unctuous, sooty slime : far in front of it, between it and the old hills, the furnaces of the city foaming forth perpetual plague of sulphurous darkness ; the volumes of their storm clouds coiling low over a waste of grassless fields, fenced from each other, not by hedges, but by slabs of square stone, like gravestones, riveted together with iron. That was your scene for the designer's contemplation in his afternoon walk at Rochdale. Now fancy what was the scene which presented itself, in his afternoon walk, to a designer of the Gothic school of Pisa — Nino Pisano, or any of his men. On each side of a bright river he saw rise a line of brighter palaces, arched and pillared, and inlaid with deep red por- phyry, and with serpentine ; along the quays before their gates w T ere riding troops of knights, noble in face and form, dazzling in crest and shield ; horse and man one labyrinth of quaint colour and gleaming light — the purple, and silver, and scarlet fringes flowing over the strong limbs and clashing mail, like sea- waves over rocks at sunset. Opening on each side from the river were gardens, courts, and cloisters ; long successions of white pillars among wreaths of vine ; leaping 72 THE TWO PATHS. of fountains through buds of pomegranate and orange : and still along the garden-paths, and under and through the crim- son of the pomegranate shadows, moving slowly, groups of the fairest women that Italy ever saw— fairest, because purest and thoughtfullest ; trained in all high knowledge, as in ail courteous art — in dance, in song, in sweet wit, in lofty learn- ing, in loftier courage, in loftiest love — able alike to cheer, to enchant, or save, the souls of men. Above all this scenery of perfect human life, rose dome and bell-tower, burning with white alabaster and gold ; beyond dome and bell-tower the slopes of mighty hills, hoary with olive ; far in the north, above a purple sea of peaks of solemn Apennine, the clear, sharp-cloven Carrara mountains sent up their steadfast flames of marble summit into amber sky ; the great sea itself, scorching with expanse of light, stretching from their feet to the Gorgonian isles ; and over all these, ever present, near or far— seen through the leaves of vine, or imaged with ail its march of clouds in the Arno's stream, or set with its depth of blue close against the golden hair and burning cheek of lady and knight, — that untroubled and sacred sky, which was to all men, in those days of innocent faith, indeed the unquestioned abode of spirits, as the earth was of men ; and which opened straight through its gates of cloud and veils of dew into the awfulness of the eternal world ; — a heaven in which every cloud that passed was literally the chariot of an angel, and every ray of its Evening and Morning streamed from the throne of God. What think you of that for a school of design ? I do not bring this contrast before you as a ground of hopelessness in our task ; neither do I look for any possible renovation of the Eepublic of Pisa, at Bradford, in the nine- teenth century ; but I put it before you in order that you may be aware precisely of the kind of difficulty you have to meet, and may then consider with yourselves how far you can meet it. To men surrounded by the depressing and monot- onous circumstances of English manufacturing life, depend upon it, design is simply impossible. This is the most dis- tinct of all the experiences I have had in dealing with the MODERN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN. 73 modern workman. He is intelligent and ingenious in the highest degree— subtle in touch and keen in sight: but he is, generally speaking, wholly destitute of designing power. And if you want to give him the power, you must give him the materials, and put him in the circumstances for it. De- sign is not the offspring of idle fancy : it is the studied result of accumulative observation and delightful habit. Without observation and experience, no design — without peace and pleasurableness in occupation, no design — and all the lectur- ings, and teachings, and prizes, and principles of art, in the world, are of no use, so long as you don't surround your men with happy influences and beautiful things. It is impossible for them to have right ideas about colour, unless they see the lovely colours of nature unspoiled ; impossible for them to supply beautiful incident and action in their ornament, unless they see beautiful incident and action in the world about them. Inform their minds, refine their habits, and you form and refine their designs ; but keep them illiterate, uncomfortable, and in the midst of unbeautiful things, and whatever they do will still be spurious, vulgar, and valueless. I repeat, that I do not ask you nor wish you to build a new Pisa for them. We don't want either the life or the decora- tions of the thirteenth century back again ; and the circum- stances with which you must surround your workmen are those simply of happy modern English life, because the de- signs you have now to ask for from your workmen are such as will make modern English life beautiful. All that gor- geousness of the middle ages, beautiful as it sounds in description, noble as in many respects it was in reality, had, nevertheless, for foundation and for end, nothing but the pride of life — the pride of the so-called superior classes ; a pride which supported itself by violence and robbery, and led in the end to the destruction both of the arts themselves and the States in which they flourished. The great lesson of history is, that all the fine arts hitherto — having been supported by the selfish power of the noblesse, and never having extended their range to the comfort or the relief of the mass of the people — the arts, I say, thus prac- 74 THE TWO PATHS. tised, and thus matured, have only accelerated the ruin of the States they adorned ; and at the moment when, in any king- dom, you point to the triumphs of its greatest artists, you point also to the determined hour of the kingdom s decline. The names of great painters are like passing bells : in the name of Velasquez, you hear sounded the fall of Spain ; in in the name of Titian, that of Venice ; in the name of Leonardo, that of Milan ; in • the name of Raphael, that of Rome. And there is profound justice in this ; for in propor- tion to the nobleness of the power is the guilt of its use for purposes vain or vile ; and hitherto the greater the art, the more surely has it been used, and used solely, for the decora- tion of pride, * or the provoking of sensuality. Another course lies open to us. We may abandon the hope — or if you like the words better — w T e may disdain the temptation, of the pomp and grace of Italy in her youth. For us there can be no more the throne of marble — for us no more the vault of gold — but for us there is the loftier and lovelier privilege of bringing the power and charm of art within the reach of the humble and the poor ; and as the magnificence of past ages failed by its narrowness and its pride, ours may prevail and continue, by its universality and its lowliness. And thus, between the picture of too laborious England, which we imagined as future, and the picture of too luxurious Italy, which we remember in the past, there may exist — there w r ill exist, if we do our duty — an intermediate condition, neither oppressed by labour nor wasted in vanity — the con- dition of a peaceful and thoughtful temperance in aims, and acts, and arts. We are about to enter upon a period of our world's history in which domestic life, aided by the arts of peace, wall slowly, but at last entirely, supersede public life and the arts of war. For our own England, she wall not, I believe, be blasted throughout with furnaces ; nor will she be encumbered w r ith palaces. I irust she will keep her green fields, her cottages, and her homes of middle life ; but these ought to be, and I * Whether religious or profane pride, —chapel or banqueting room,— is no matter. MODERN MANUFACTURE AND DESIGN 75 trust will be enriched with a useful, truthful, substantial form of art. We want now no more feasts of the gods, nor martyr- doms of the saints ; we have no need of sensuality, no place for superstition, or for costly insolence. Let us have learned and faithful historical painting— touching and thoughtful rep- resentations of human nature, in dramatic painting ; poetical and familiar renderings of natural objects and of landscape *, and rational, deeply-felt realizations of the events which are the subjects of our religious faith. And let these things we want, as far as possible, be scattered abroad and made ac- cessible to all men. So also, in manufacture : we require work substantial rather than rich in make ; and refined, rather than splendid in design. Your stuffs need not be such as would catch the eye of a duchess ; but they should be such as may at once serve the need, and refine the taste, of a cottager. The pre- vailing error in English dress, especially among the lower orders, is a tendency to flimsiness and gaudiness, arising mainly from the awkward imitation of their superiors.* It should be one of the first objects of all manufacturers to pro- duce stuffs not only beautiful and quaint in design, but also adapted for every-day service, and decorous in humble and secluded life. And you must remember always that your business, as manufacturers, is to form the market, as much as * If their superiors would give them simplicity and economy to imitate, it would, in the issue, be well for themselves, as well as for those whom they guide. The typhoid fever of passion for dress, and all other display, which has struck the upper classes of Europe at this time, is one of the most dangerous political elements we have to deal with. Its wickedness I have shown elsewhere (Polit. Economy of Art, p. 62, et seq.) ; but its wickedness is, in the minds of most persons, a matter of no importance. I wish I had time also to show them its danger. I cannot enter here into political investigation ; but this is a certain fact, that the wasteful and vain expenses at present indulged in by the upper classes are hastening the advance of republicanism more than any other element of modern change. No agitators, no clubs, no epidemical errors, ever were, or will be, fatal to social order in any na- tion. Nothing but the guilt of the upper classes, wanton, accumulated, reckless, and merciless, ever overthrows them. Of such guilt they have now much to answer for — let them look to it in time. 70 THE TWO PATHS. to supply it. If, in shortsighted and reckless eagerness for wealth, you catch at every humour of the populace as it shapes itself into momentary demand — if, in jealous rivalry with neighbouring States, or with other producers, you try to attract attention by singularities, novelties, and gaudinesses — to make every design an advertisement, and pilfer every idea of a successful neighbour's, that you may insidiously imitate it, or pompously eclipse — no good design will ever be possi- ble to you, or perceived by you. You may, by accident, snatch the market ; or, by energy, command it ; you may obtain the confidence of the public, and cause the ruin of opponent houses ; or you may, with equal justice of fortune, be ruined by them. But whatever happens to you, this, at least, is certain, that the whole of your life will have been spent in corrupting public taste and encouraging public ex- travagance. Every preference you have won by gaudiness must have been based on the purchasers vanity ; every de- mand you have created by novelty has fostered in the con- sumer a habit of discontent ; and when you retire into in- active life, you may, as a subject of consolation for your declining years, reflect that precisely according to the extent of your past operations, your life has been successful in re- tarding the arts, tarnishing the virtues, and confusing the manners of your country. But, on the other hand, if you resolve from the first that, so far as you can ascertain or discern what is best, you will produce what is best, on an intelligent consideration of the probable tendencies and possible tastes of the people whom you supply, you may literally become more influential for all kinds of good than many lecturers on art, or many treatise-writers on morality. Considering the materials dealt with, and the crude state of art knowledge at the time, I do not know that any more wide or effective influence in public taste was ever exercised than that of the Staffordshire manufacture of pottery under William Wedgwood, and it only rests with the manu- facturer in every other business to determine whether he will, in like manner, make his wares educational instruments, or mere drugs of the market. You all should be, in a certain IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE, 77 sense, authors : you must, indeed, first catch the public eye, as an author must the public ear ; but once gain your audi- ence, or observance, and as it is in the writer's power thence- forward to publish what will educate as it amuses — so it is in yours to publish what will educate as it adorns. Nor is this surely a subject of poor ambition. I hear it said continually that men are too ambitious: alas! io me, it seems they are never enough ambitious. How many are content to be merely the thriving merchants of a state, when they might be its guides, counsellors, and rulers — wielding powers of subtle but gigantic beneficence, in restraining its follies while they sup- plied its wants. Let such duty, such ambition, be once ac- cepted in their fulness, and the best glory of European art and of European manufacture may yet be to come. The paintings of Raphael and of Buonaroti gave force to the false- hoods of superstition, and majesty to the imaginations of sin ; but the arts of England may have, for their task, to inform the soul with truth, and touch the heart with compassion. The steel of Toledo and the silk of Genoa did but give strength to oppression and lustre to pride : let it be for the furnace and for the loom of England, as they have already richly earned, still more abundantly to bestow, comfort on the indi- gent, civilization on the rude, and to dispense, through the peaceful homes of nations, the grace and the preciousness of simple adornment, and useful possession. LECTURE IV. INFLUENCE OF IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. An Address Delivered to the Members of the Architectural Association, in Lyons Inn Hall, 1857. If we were to be asked abruptly, and required to answer briefly, what qualities chiefly distinguish great artists from feeble artists, we should answer, I suppose, first, their sen- sibility and tenderness ; secondly, their imagination ; and 7S THE TWO PATHS. thirdly, their industry. Some of us might, perhaps, doubt the justice of attaching so much importance to this last char- acter, because we have all known clever men who were indo- lent, and dull men who were industrious. But though you may have known clever men who were indolent, you never knew a great man who was so ; and, during such investigation as I have been able to give to the lives of the artists whose works are in all points noblest, no fact ever looms 'so large upon me — no law remains so steadfast in the universality of its application, as the fact and law that they are all great workers : nothing concerning them is matter of more aston- ishment than the quantity they have accomplished in the given length of their life ; and when I hear a young man spoken of, as giving promise of high genius, the first question I ask about him is always — Does he work ? But though this quality of industry is essential to an artist, it does not in anywise make an artist ; many people are busy, whose doings are little worth. Neither does sensibility make an artist ; since, as I hope, many can feel both strongly and nobly, who yet care nothing about art. But the gifts which distinctively mark the artist — without which he must be feeble in life, forgotten in death— with which he may become one of the shakers of the earth, and one of the signal lights in heaven — are those of sympathy and imagination. I will not occupy your time, nor incur the risk of your dissent, by endeavouring to give any close definition of this last word. We all have a general and sufficient idea of imagination, and of its work with our hands and in our hearts : we understand it, I sup- pose, as the imaging or picturing of new things in our thoughts ; and we always show an involuntary respect for this power, wherever we can recognize it, acknowledging it to be a greater power than manipulation, or calculation, or observa- tion, or any other human faculty. If we see an old woman spinning at the fireside, and distributing her thread dexter* ously from the distaff, we respect her for her manipulation — if we ask her how much she expects to make in a year, and. she answers quickly, we respect her for her calculation — if IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 75 she is watching at the same time that none of her grand- children fall into the tire, we respect her for her observation — yet for all this she may still be a commonplace old woman enough. But if she is all the time telling her grandchildren a fairy tale out of her head, we praise her for her imagination, and say, she must be a rather remarkable old woman. Precisely in like manner, if an architect does his working** drawing well, we praise him for his manipulation — if he keeps closely within his contract, we praise him for his honest arith- metic — if he looks well to the laying of his beams, so that nobody shall drop through the floor, we praise him for his observation. But he must, somehow, tell us a fairy tale out of his head beside all this, else we cannot praise him for his imagination, nor speak of him as we did of the old woman, as being in any wise out of the common way, a rather remarkable architect. It seemed to me, therefore, as if it might interest you to-night, if we were to consider together what fairy tales are, in and by architecture, to be told — what there is for you to do in this severe art of yours " out of your heads," as well as by your hands. Perhaps the first idea which a young architect is apt to be allured by, as a head-problem in these experimental days, is its being incumbent upon him to invent a c< new style" worthy of modern civilization in general, and of England in particu- lar ; a style worthy of our engines and telegraphs ; as expan- sive as steam, and as sparkling as electricity. But, if there are any of my hearers who have been im- pressed with this sense of inventive duty, may I ask them first, whether their plan is that every inventive architect among us shall invent a new style for himself, and have a county set aside for his conceptions, or a province for his practice ? Or, must every architect invent a little piece of the new style, and all put it together at last like a dissected map? And if so, when the new style is invented, what is to be done next ? I will grant you this Eldorado of imagination — but can you have more than one Columbus ? Or, if you sail in company, and divide the prize of your discovery and the hon- our thereof, who is to come after you clustered Columbuses ? 30 THE TWO PATHS. to what fortunate islands of style are your architectural && scendants to sail, avaricious of new lands? When our desired style is invented, will not the best we can all do be simply— to build in it ? — and cannot you now do that in styles that are known? Observe, I grant, for the sake of your argument what perhaps many of you know that I would not grant other- wise — than a new style can be invented. I grant you not only this, but that it shall be wholly different from any that was ever practised before. We will suppose that capitals are to be at the bottom of pillars instead of the top ; and that but- tresses shall be on the tops of pinnacles instead of at the bot- tom ; that you roof your apertures with stones which shall neither be arched nor horizontal ; and that you compose your decoration of lines which shall neither be crooked nor straight. The furnace and the forge shall be at your service : you shall draw out your plates of glass and beat out your bars of iron till you have encompassed us all, — if your style is of the prac- tical kind, — with endless perspective of black skeleton and blinding square, — or if your style is to be of the ideal kind — you shall wreathe your streets with ductile leafage, and roof them with variegated crystal — you shall put, if you will, all London under one blazing dome of many colours that shall light the clouds round it with its flashing, as far as to the sea. And still, I ask you, What after this ? Do you suppose those imaginations of yours will ever lie down there asleep beneath the shade of your iron leafage, or within the coloured light of your enchanted dome? Not so. Those souls, and fancies, and ambitions of yours, are wholly infinite ; and, whatever may be done by others, you will still want to do something for yourselves ; if you cannot rest content with Palladio, nei- ther will you with Paxton : all the metal and glass that ever were melted have not so much weight in them as will clog the wings of one human spirit's aspiration. If you will think over this quietly by yourselves, and can get the noise out of your ears of the perpetual, empty, id]e, incomparably idiotic talk about the necessity of some novelty in architecture, you will soon see that the very essence of a Style, properly so called, is that it should be practised for IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 81 ages, and applied to all purposes ; and that so long as any given style is in practice, all that is left for individual imagina- tion to accomplish must be within the scope of that style, not in the invention of a new one. If there are any here, there- fore, who hope to obtain celebrity by the invention of some strange way of building which must convince all Europe into its adoption, to them, for the moment, I must not be under" stood to address myself, but only to those who would be con- tent with that degree of celebrity which an artist may enjoy who works in the manner of his forefathers ; — which the builder of Salisbury Cathedral might enjoy in England, though he did not invent Gothic ; and which Titian might enjoy at Venice, though he did not invent oil painting. Addressing myself then to those humbler, but wiser, or rather, ovAy wise students who are content to avail themselves of some system of building already understood, let us consider together what room for the exercise of the imagination may be left to us under such conditions. And, first, I suppose it will be said, or thought, that the architect's principal field for exercise of his invention must be in the disposition of lines, mouldings, and masses, in agreeable proportions. Indeed, if you adopt some styles of architecture, you cannot exercise invention in any other way. And I admit that it requires genius and special gift to do this rightly. Not by rule, nor by study, can the gift of graceful proportionate design be obtained ; only by the intuition of genius can so much as a single tier of facade be beautifully arranged ; and the man has just cause for pride, as far as our gifts can ever be a cause for pride, who finds himself able, in a design of his own, to rival even the simplest arrangement of parts in one by Sanmicheli, Inigo Jones, or Christopher Wren. Invention, then, and genius being granted, as necessary to accomplish this, let me ask you, What, after all, with this special gift and genius, you ham accomplished, when you have arranged the lines of a. building beautifully ? In the first place you will not, I think, tell me that the beauty there attained is of a touching or pathetic kind. A well-disposed group of notes in music will make you some- 82 THE TWO PATHS. times weep and sometimes laugh. You can express the depth of all affections by those dispositions of sound : you can give courage to the soldier, language to the lover, consolation to the mourner, more joy to the joyful, more humility to the devout. Can you do as much by your group of lines ? Do you suppose the front of Whitehall, a singularly beautiful one, ever inspires the two Horse Guards, during the hour they sit opposite to it, with military ardour? Do you think that the lovers in our London walk down to the front of Whitehall for consolation when mistresses are unkind ; or that any person wavering in duty, or feeble in faith, was ever confirmed ill purpose or in creed by the pathetic appeal of those har- monious architraves ? You will not say so. Then, if they cannot touch, or inspire, or comfort any one, can your archi- tectural proportions amuse any one ? Christmas is just over ; you have doubtless been at many merry parties during the period. Can 3 r ou remember any in which architectural pro- portions contributed to the entertainment of the evening? Proportions of notes in music were, I am sure, essential to your amusement ; the setting of flowers in hair, and of ribands on dresses, were also subjects of frequent admiration with you, not inessential to your happiness. Among the juvenile members of your society the proportion of currants in cake, and of sugar in comfits, became subjects of acute interest ; and, when such proportions were harmonious, motives also of gratitude to cook and to confectioner. But did you ever see either young or old amused by the architrave of the door ? Or otherwise interested in the proportions of the room than as they admitted more or fewer friendly faces ? Nay, if all the amusement that there is in the best proportioned architect- ure of London could be concentrated into one evening, and you were to issue tickets for nothing to this great propor- tional entertainment ; — how do you think it would stand be- tween you and the Drury pantomine? You are ; then, remember, granted to be people of genius — great and admirable ; and you devote your lives to your art, but you admit that you cannot comfort anybody, you cannot encourage anybody, you cannot improve anybody, and you IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 83 cannot amuse anybody. I proceed then farther to ask, Can you inform anybody ? Many sciences cannot be considered as highly touching or emotional ; nay, perhaps not specially amusing; scientific men may sometimes, in these respects, stand on the same ground with you. As far as we can judge by the results of the late war, science helps our soldiers about as much as the front of Whitehall ; and at the Christmas par- ties, the children wanted no geologists to tell them about the behaviour of bears and dragons in Queen Elizabeth's time. Still, your man of science teaches you something ; he may be dull at a party, or helpless in a battle, he is not always thab ; but he can give you, at all events, knowledge of noble facts, and open to you the secrets of the earth and air. Will your architectural proportions do as much ? Your genius is granted, and your life is given, and what do you teach us? — Nothing, I believe, from one end of that life to the other, but that two and two make four, and that one is to two as three is to six. You cannot, then, it is admitted, comfort any one, serve or amuse any one, nor teach any one. Finally, I ask, Can you be of Use to any one ? ' ' Yes, " you reply ; " certainly we are of some use * — w T e architects — in a climate like this, where it always rains/' You are of use certainly ; but, pardon me, only as builders — not as proportionalists. We are not talking of building as a protection, but only of that special work which your genius is to do ; not of building substantial and comfortable houses like Mr. Cubitt, but of putting beautiful facades on them like Inigo Jones. And, again, I ask — Are you of use to any one ? Will your proportions of the facade heal the sick, or clothe the naked? Supposing you devoted your lives to be mer- chants, you might reflect at the close of them, how many, fainting for want, you had brought corn to sustain ; how many, infected with disease, you had brought balms to heal ; how widely, among multitudes of far-away nations, you had scat- tered the first seeds of national power, and guided the first rays of sacred light. Had you been, in fine, anything else in the world but architectural designers, you might have been of some use or good to people. Content to be petty tradesmen, ioxx would have saved tha tir~3 of mankind : — \*o i i^h-handed. 84 THE TWO PATHS. daily labourers, 3-011 would have added to their stock of food or of clothing. But, being men of genius, and devoting your lives to the exquisite exposition of this genius, on what achieve- ments do you think the memories of your old age are to fasten ? Whose gratitude will surround you with its glow, or on what accomplished good, of that greatest kind for which men show no gratitude, will your life rest the contentment of its close ? Truly, I fear that the ghosts of proportionate lines will be thin phantoms at your bedsides — very speechless to you ; and that on all the emanations of your high genius you will look back with less delight than you might have done on a cup of cold water given to him who was thirsty, or to a single mo- ment when you had " prevented with your bread him that fied. 5 ' Do not answer, nor think to answer, that with your great works and great payments of workmen in them, you would do this ; I know you would, and will, as Builders ; but, I re- peat, it is not your building that I am talking about, but your brains ; it is your invention and imagination of whose profit I am speaking. The good done through the building,, observe, is done by your employers, not by you — you share in the* benefit of it. The good that you personally must do is by your designing ; and I compare you with musicians who do good by their pathetic composing, not as they do good by employ- ing fiddlers in the orchestra ; for it is the public who in reality do that, not the musicians. So clearly keeping to this one question, what good we architects are to do by our genius ; and having found that on our proportionate system we can do no good to others, will you tell me, lastly, what good we can do to ourselves? Observe, nearly every other liberal art or profession has some intense pleasure connected with it, irrespective of any good to others. As lawyers, or physicians, or clergymen, you would have the pleasure of investigation, and of historical reading, as part of your work : as men of science you would be rejoicing in curiosity perpetually gratified respecting the laws and facts of nature : as artists you would have delight in watching the external forms of nature : as day labourers or IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 85 petty tradesmen, supposing you to undertake such work with as much intellect as you are going to devote to your designing, you would find continued subjects of interest in the manufac- ture or the agriculture which you helped to improve ; or in the problems of commerce which bore on your business. But your architectural designing leads you into no pleasant jour- neys, — into no seeing of lovely things, — no discerning of just laws, — no warmths of compassion, no humilities of veneration, no progressive state of sight or soul. Our conclusion is — must be — that you will not amuse, nor inform, nor help any- body ; you will not amuse, nor better, nor inform yourselves ; you will sink into a state in which you can neither show, nor feel, nor see, anything, but that one is to two as three is to six. And in that state what should we call ourselves ? Men ? I think not. The right name for us would be — numerators jmd denominators. Vulgar Fractions. Shall we, then, abandon this theory of the soul of architect- ure being in proportional lines, and look whether we can find anything better to exert our fancies upon ? May we not, to begin with, accept this great principle — that, as our bodies, to be in health, must be generally exer- cised, so our minds, to be in health, must be generally culti- vated ? You would not call a man healthy who had strong arms but was paralytic in his feet ; nor one who could walk well, but had no use of his hands ; nor one who could see well, if he could not hear. You would not voluntarily reduce your bodies to any such partially developed state. Much more, then, you would not, if you could help it, reduce your minds to it. Now, your minds are endowed with a vast num- ber of gifts of totally different uses— limbs of mind as it were, which, if you don't exercise, you cripple. One is curiosity ; that is a gift, a capacity of pleasure in knowing ; which if you destroy, you make yourselves cold and dull. Another is sym- pathy ; the power of sharing in the feelings of living creatures, which if you destroy, you make yourselves hard and cruel. Another of your limbs of mind is admiration ; the power of enjoying beauty or ingenuity, which, if you destroy, you make yourselves base and irreverent. Another is wit ; or the power 86 THE TWO FATES. of playing with the lights on the many sides of truth ; which if you destroy, you make yourselves gloomy, and less useful and cheering to others than you might be. So that in choos- ing your way of work it should be your aim, as far as possible, to bring out all these faculties, as far as they exist in you ; not one merely, nor another, but all of them. And the way to bring them out, is simply to concern yourselves attentively with the subjects of each faculty. To cultivate sympathy you must be among living creatures, and thinking about them ; and to cultivate admiration, you must be among beautiful things and looking at them. All this sounds much like truism, at least I hope it does, for then you will surely not refuse to act upon it ; and to con- sider farther, how, as architects, you are to keep yourselves in contemplation of living creatures and lovely things. You all probably know the beautiful photographs which have been published within the last year or two of the porches of the Cathedral of Amiens. I hold one of these up to you, (merely that you may know what I am talking about, as of course you cannot see the detail at this distance, but you will recognise the subject.) Have you ever considered how much sympathy, and how much humour, are developed in filling this single doorway f with these sculptures of the history of Si Hon ore (and, by the way, considering how often we Eng- lish are now driving up and down the Eue St. Honore, we may as well know as much of the saint as the old architect cared to tell us). You know in all legends of saints who ever were bishops, the first thing you are told of them is that they didn't want to be bishops. So here is St. Honore, who doesn't want to be a bishop, sitting sulkily in the corner ; he hugs his book with both hands, and won't get up to take his cro- sier ; and here are all the city aldermen of Amiens come to poke him up ; and all the monks in the town in a great puzzle what they shall do for a bishop if St. Honore won't be ; and here's one of the monks in the opposite corner who is quite cool about it, and thinks they'll get on well enough without * The tympanum of the south transept door ; it Is to" be found gener- ally among all collections of architectural photographs. IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 87 St. Honor e, — you see that in bis face perfectly. At last St. Honore consents to be bishop, and here he sits in a throne, and has his book now grandly on his desk instead of his knees, and he directs one of his village curates how to find relics in a wood ; here is the wood, and here is the village curate, and here are the tombs, with the bones of St. Victo- rien and Gentien in them. After this, St. Honore performs grand mass, and the mira- cle occurs of the appearance of a hand blessing the wafer, which occurrence afterwards w T as painted for the arms of the abbey. Then St. Honore dies ; and here is his tomb with his statue on the top ; and miracles are being performed at it — a deaf man having his ear touched, and a blind man grop- ing his way up to the tomb with his dog. Then here is a great procession in honour of the relics of St. Honore ; and under his coffin are some cripples being healed ; and the coffin itself is put above the bar which separates the cross from the lower subjects, because the tradition is that the figure on the crucifix of the Church of St. Firmin bowed its head in token of acceptance, as the relics of St. Honore passed beneath. Now just consider the amount of sympathy with human nature, and observance of it, shown in this one bas-relief ; the sympathy with disputing monks, with puzzled aldermen, with melancholy recluse, with triumphant prelate, with palsy- stricken poverty, with ecclesiastical magnificence, or miracle- working faith. Consider how much intellect was needed in the architect, and how much observance of nature before he could give the expression to these various figures — cast these multitudinous draperies — design these rich and quaint frag- ments of tombs and altars — weave with perfect animation the entangled branches of the forest. But you will answer me, all this is not architecture at all — it is sculpture. Will you then tell me precisely where the the separation exists between one and the other ? We will begin at the very beginning. I will show you a piece of what you will certainly admit to be a piece of pure architecture ; * * See Appendix III., " Classical Architecture." 88 THE TWO PATHS. it is drawn on the back of another photograph, another of these marvellous tympana from Notre Dame, which you call, I suppose, impure. Well, look on this picture, and on this. Don't laugh ; you must not laugh, that's very improper ot you, this is classical architecture. I have taken it out of the essay on that subject in the " Encyclopaedia Britannica." Yet I suppose none of you would think yourselves particu- larly ingenious architects if you had designed nothing more than this ; nay, I will even let you improve it into any grand proportion you choose, and add to it as many windows as you choose ; the only thing I insist upon in our specimen of pure architecture is, that there shall be no mouldings nor orna- ments upon it. And I suspect you don't quite like your ar- chitecture so " pure " as this. We want a few mouldings, you will say — just a few. Those who want mouldings, hold up their hands. We are unanimous, I think. Will, you, then, design the profiles of these mouldings yourselves, or will you copy them ? If you wish to copy them, and to copy them always, of course I leave you at once to your authorities, and your imaginations to their repose. But if you wish to design them yourselves, how do you do it ? You draw the profile according to your taste, and you order your mason to cut it. Nov/, will you tell me the logical difference between drawing the profile of a moulding and giving that to be cut, and drawing the folds of the drapery of a statue and giving those to be cut. The last is much more difficult to do than the first ; but degrees of difficulty constitute no specific differ- ence, and you will not accept it, surely, as a definition of the difference between architecture and sculpture, that " archi- tecture is doing anything that is easy, and sculpture anything that is difficult." It is true, also, that the carved moulding represents nothing, and the carved drapery represents something ; but you will not, I should think, accept, as an explanation of the difference between architecture and sculpture, this any more than the other, that " sculpture is art which has meaning, and archi- tecture art which has none." Where, then, is your difference ? In this, perhaps, you wilJ IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 89 say ; that whatever ornaments we can direct ourselves, and get accurately cut to order, we consider architectural. The ornaments that we are obliged to leave to the pleasure of the workman, or the superintendence of some other designer, we consider sculptural, especially if they are more or less ex- traneous and incrusted — not an essential part of the build* ing. Accepting this definition, I am compelled to reply, that it is in effect nothing more than an amplification of my first one — that whatever is easy you call architecture, whatever is diffi- cult you call sculpture. For you cannot suppose the arrange- ment of the place in which the sculpture is to be put is so diffi- cult or so great a part of the design as the sculpture itself. For instance : you all know the pulpit of Niccolo Pisano, in the baptistry at Pisa. It is composed of seven rich relievi, surrounded by panel mouldings, and sustained on marble shafts. Do you suppose Niccolo Pisano's reputation — such part of it at least as rests on this pulpit (and much does) — depends on the panel mouldings, or on the relievi ? The panel mould- ings are by his hand ; he would have disdained to leave even them to a common workman ; but do you think he found any difficulty in them, or thought there was any credit in them ? Having once done the sculpture, those enclosing lines were mere child's play to him ; the determination of the diameter of shafts and height of capitals was an affair of minutes ; his work was in carving the Crucifixion and the Baptism. Or, again, do you recollect Orcagna's tabernacle in the church of San Michele, at Florence ? That, also, consists of rich and multitudinous bas-reliefs, enclosed in panel mould- ings, with shafts of mosaic, and foliated arches sustaining the canopy. Do you think Orcagna, any more than Pisano, if his spirit could rise in the midst of us at this moment, would tell us that he had trusted his fame to the foliation, or had put his soul's pride into the panelling ? Not so ; he would tell you that his spirit was in the stooping figures that stand round the couch of the dying Virgin. Or, lastly, do you think the man who designed the proces- sion on the portal of Amiens was the subordinate workman? 90 TEE TWO, PATHS. that there was an architect over him, restraining him within certain limits, and ordering of him his bishops at so much a mitre, and his cripples at so much a crutch ? Not so. Here, on this sculptured shield, rests the Master's hand ; this is the centre of the Master's thought ; from this, and in subordina- tion to this, waved the arch and sprang the pinnacle. Hav- ing done this, and being able to give human expression and action to the stone, all the rest — the rib, the niche, the foil, the shaft — were mere toys to his hand and accessories to his conception : and if once you also gain the gift of doing this, if once you can carve one fronton such as you have here, I tell you, you w T ould be able — so far as it depended on your inven- tion — to scatter cathedrals over England as fast as clouds rise from its streams after summer rain. Nay, but perhaps you answer again, our sculptors at present do not design cathedrals, and could not. No, they could not ; but that is merely because we have made architecture so dull that they cannot take any interest in it, and, therefore, do not care to add to their higher knowledge the poor and com- mon knowledge of principles of building. You have thus separated building from sculpture, and you have taken away the power of both ; for the sculptor loses nearly as much by never having room for the development of a continuous work, as you do from having reduced your work to a continuity of mechanism. You are essentially, and should always be, the same body of men, admitting only such difference in operation as there is between the w r ork of a painter at different times, who sometimes labours on a small picture, and sometimes on the frescoes of a palace gallery. This conclusion, then, we arrive at, must arrive at ; the fact being irrevocably so : — that in order to give your imagination and the other powers of your souls full play, you must do as all the great architects of old time did — you must yourselves be your sculptors. Phidias. Michael Angelo, Orcagna, Pisano, Giotto, — which of these men, do you think, could not use his chisel? You say, "It is difficult; quite out of your way." I know it is ; nothing that is great is easy ; and nothing that is great, so long as you study building without sculpture, can IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 91 be in your way. I want to put it in your way, and you to find your way to it. But, on the other hand, do not shrink from the task as if the refined art of perfect sculpture were always required from you. For, though architecture and sculpture are not separate arts, there is an architectural manner of sculp- ture : and it is, in the majority of its applications, a compar- atively easy one. Our great mistake at present, in dealing with stone at all, is requiring to have all our work too refined ; it is just the same mistake as if we were to require all our book illustrations to be as fine work as Raphael's. John Leech does not sketch so well as Leonardo da Vinci ; but do you think that the public could easily spare him; or that he is wrong in bringing out his talent in the way in which it is most effect- ive ? Would you advise him, if he asked your advice, to give up his wood-blocks and take to canvas ? I know you would not ; neither would you tell him, I believe, on the other hand, that because he could not draw as well as Leonardo, therefore he ought to draw nothing but straight lines with a ruler, and circles with compasses, and no figure-subjects at all. That would be some loss to you ; would it not ? You would all be vexed if next week's Punch had nothing in it but proportion- ate lines. And yet, do not you see that you are doing pre- cisely the same thing with your powers of sculptural design that he would be doing with his powers of pictorial design, if he gave you nothing but such lines. You feel that you cannot carve like Phidias ; therefore you will not carve at all, but only draw mouldings ; and thus all that intermediate power which is of especial value in modern days, — that popu- lar power of expression which is within the attainment of thousands, — and would address itself to tens of thousands, — is utterly lost to us in stone, though in ink and paper it has become one of the most desired luxuries of modern civili- zation. Here, then, is one part of the subject to which I would espe- cially invite your attention, namely, the distinctive character which may be wisely permitted to belong to architectural sculpture, as distinguished from perfect sculpture on one side, and from mere geometrical decoration on the other. 92 THE TWO rATIlS. And first, observe what an indulgence we have in the dis» tance at which most work is to be seen. Supposing we were able to carve eyes and lips with the most exquisite precision, it would all be of no use as soon as the work was put far above the eye ; but, on the other hand, as beauties disappear by be- ing far withdrawn, so will faults ; and the mystery and con- fusion which are the natural consequence of distance, while they would often render your best skill but vain, will as often render your worst errors of little consequence ; nay, more than this, often a deep cut, or a rude angle, will produce in certain positions an effect of expression both startling and true, which you never hoped for. Not that mere distance will give ani- mation to the work, if it has none in itself ; but if it has life at all, the distance will make that life more perceptible and powerful by softening the defects of execution. So that you are placed, as workmen, in this position of singular advantage, that you may give your fancies free play, and strike hard for the expression that you want, knowing that, if you miss it, no one will detect you ; if you at all touch it, nature herself will help you, and with every changing shadow and basking sunbeam bring forth new phases of your fancy. But it is not merely this privilege of being imperfect which belongs to architectural sculpture. It has a true privilege of imagination, far excelling all that can be granted to the more finished work, which, for the sake of distinction, I will call, — ■ and I don't think we can have a much better term — " furniture sculpture ; " sculpture, that is, which can be moved from place to furnish rooms. For observe, to that sculpture the spectator is usually brought in a tranquil or prosaic state of mind ; he sees it as- sociated rather with what is sumptuous than sublime, and under circumstances which address themselves more to his comfort than his curiosity. The statue which is to be pa- thetic, seen between the flashes of footmen's livery round the dining-table, must have strong elements of pathos in itself ; and the statue which is to be awful, in the midst of the gossip of the drawing-room, must have the elements of awe wholly in itself. But the spectator is brought to your IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 93 work already in an excited and imaginative mood. He has been impressed by the cathedral wall as it loomed over the low streets, before he looks up to the carving of its porch — and his love of mystery has been touched by the silence and the shadows of the cloister, before he can set himself to decipher the bosses on its vaulting. So that when once he begins to observe your doings, he will ask nothing better from you, nothing kinder from you, than that you would meet this imaginative temper of his half way ; — that you would farther touch the sense of terror, or satisf}- the expecta- tion of things strange, which have been prompted by the mystery or the majesty of the surrounding scene. And thus, your leaving forms more or less undefined, or carrying out your fancies, however extravagant, in grotesqueness of shadow or shape, will be for the most part in accordance with the temper of the observer ; and he is likely, therefore, much more willingly to use his fancy to help your meanings, than his judgment to detect your faults. Again. Remember that when the imagination and feelings are strongly excited, they will not only bear with strange things, but they will look into minute things with a delight quite unknown in hours of tranquillity. You surely must remember moments of your lives in which, under some strong excitement of feeling, all the details of visible objects presented themselves with a strange intensity and insistauce, whether you would or no ; urging themselves upon the mind, and thrust upon the eye, with a force of fascination which you could not refuse. Now, to a certain extent, the senses get into this state whenever the imagination is strongly excited. Things trivial at other times assume a dignity or significance which we cannot explain ; but which is only the more attrac« tive because inexplicable : and the powers of attention, quick- ened by the feverish excitement, fasten and feed upon the minutest circumstances of detail, and remotest traces of intention. So that what would at other times be felt as more or less mean or extraneous in a work of sculpture, and which would assuredly be offensive to the perfect taste in its moments of languor, or of critical judgment, will be grateful, and even 94 THE TWO PATHS. .-sublime, when it meets this frightened inquisitiveness, this fas- cinated watchfulness, of the roused imagination. And this is a>l for your advantage ; for, in the beginnings of your sculp- ture, you will assuredly find it easier to imitate minute cir- cumstances of costume or character, than to perfect the anat- omy of simple forms or the flow of noble masses ; and it will be encouraging to remember that the grace you cannot per- fect, and the simplicity you cannot achieve, would be in great part vain, even if you could achieve them, in their appeal to the hasty curiosity of passionate fancy ; but that the sympathy which would be refused to your science will be granted to your innocence : and that the mind of the general observer, though wholly unaffected by the correctness of anatomy or propriety of gesture, will follow you with fond and pleased concurrence, as you carve the knots of the hair, 'and the pat- terns of the vesture. Farther yet. We are to remember that not only do the associated features of the larger architecture tend to excite the strength of fancy, but the architectural laws to which }^ou are obliged to submit your decoration stimulate its ingenuity. Every crocket which you are to crest with sculpture, — every foliation which you have to fill, presents itself to the specta- tor's fancy, not only as a pretty thing, but as a problematic thing. It contained, he perceives immediately, not only a beauty which you wished to display, but a necessity which you were forced to meet ; and the problem, how to occupy such and such a space with organic form in any probable way, or how to turn such a boss or ridge into a conceivable image of life, becomes at once, to him as to you, a matter of amusement as much as of admiration. The ordinary condi- tions of perfection in form, gesture, or feature, are willingly dispensed with, when the ugly dwarf and ungainly goblin have only to gather themselves into angles, or crouch to carry corbels ; and the want of skill which, in other kinds of work, would have been required for the finishing of the parts, will at once be forgiven here, if you have only disposed in- geniously what you have executed roughly, and atoned for the rudeness of your hands by the quickness of your wits. IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE-. 95 Hitherto, however, we have been considering only the cir- cumstances in architecture favourable to the development of the poivers of imagination. A yet more important point for us seems, to me, the place which it gives to all the objects of imagination. For, I suppose, you will not wish me to spend any time in proving, that imagination must be vigorous in proportion to the quantity of material which it lias to handle ; and that, just as we increase the range of what we see, we increase the richness of what we can imagine. Granting this, consider what a field is opened to your fancy merely in the subject matter which architecture admits. Nearly every other art is severely limited in its subjects — the landscape painter, for in- stance, gets little help from the aspects of beautiful humanity ; the historical painter, less, perhaps, than he ought, from the accidents of wild nature ; and the pure sculptor, still less, from the minor details of common life. But is there anything within range of sight, or conception, which may not be of use to you, or in which your interest may not be excited with ad- vantage to your art ? From visions of angels, down to the least important gesture of a child at play, whatever may be conceived of Divine, or beheld of Human, may be dared or adopted by you : throughout the kingdom of animal life, no creature is so vast, or so minute, that you cannot deal with it, or bring it into service ; the lion and the crocodile will couch about your shafts ; the moth and the bee will sun themselves upon your flowers ; for you, the fawn will leap ; for you, the snail be slow ; for you, the dove smooth her bosom ; and the hawk spread her wings toward the south. All the wide world of vegetation blooms and bends for you ; the leaves tremble that you may bid them be still under the marble snow ; the thorn and the thistle, which the earth casts forth as evil, are to you the kindliest servants ; no dying petal, nor drooping tendril, is so feeble as to have no more help for you ; no robed pride of blossom so kingly, but it will lay aside its purple to receive at your hands the pale immortality. Is there anything in common life too mean, — in common things too trivial, — to be ennobled by your touch ? As there 90 THE TWO PATHS. is nothing in life, so there is nothing in lifelessness which has not its lesson for you, or its gift; and when you aro tired of watching the strength of the plume, and the tender- ness of the leaf, you may walk down to your rough river shore, or into the thickest markets of your thoroughfares, and there is not a piece of torn cable that will not twine into a perfect moulding ; there is not a fragment of cast-away mat- ting, or shattered basket-work, that will not work into a chequer or capital. Yes: and if you gather up the very sand, and break the stone on which you tread, among its fragments of all but invisible shells you will find forms that will take their place, and that proudly, among the starred traceries of your vaulting ; and you, who can crown the mountain with its fortress, and the city with its towers, are thus able also to give beauty to ashes, and worthiness to dust. Now, in that your art presents all this material to you, you have already much to rejoice in. But you have more to re- joice in, because all this is submitted to you, not to be dis- sected or analyzed, but to be sympathized with, and to bring out, therefore, what may be accurately called the moral part of imagination. We saw that, if we kept ourselves among lines only, we should have cause to envy the naturalist, be - cause he was conversant with facts ; but you will have little to envy now, if you make yourselves conversant with the feel- ings that arise out of his facts. For instance, the naturalist coming upon a block of marble, has to begin considering im- mediately how far its purple is owing to iron, or its whiteness to magnesia ; he breaks his piece of marble, and at the close of his day, has nothing but a little sand in his crucible and some data added to the theory of the elements. But you ap- proach your marble to sympathize with it, and rejoice over its beauty. You cut it a little indeed ; but only to bring out its veins more perfectly ; and at the end of your day's work you leave your marble shaft with joy and complacency in its perfectness, as marble. When you have to watch an animal instead of a stone, you differ from the naturalist in the same wa} r . He may, perhaps, if he be an amiable naturalist, take delight in having living creatures round him ; — still, the ma- IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 97 jor part of his work is, or lias been, in counting feathers, separating fibres, and analyzing structures. But your work is always with the living creature ; the thing you have to gel at in him is his life, and ways of going about things. It does not matter to you how many cells there are in his bones, or how many filaments in his feathers ; what you want is his moral character and way of behaving himself ; it is just that which your imagination, if healthy, will first seize — just that which your chisel, if vigorous, will first cut. You must get the storm spirit into your eagles, and the lordliness into your lions, and the tripping fear into your fawns ; and in order to do this, you must be in continual sympathy with every fawn of them ; and be hand-in-glove with all the lions, and hand- in-claw with all the hawks. And don't fancy that you will lower yourselves by sympathy with the lower creatures ; you cannot sympathize rightly with the higher, unless you do with those : but you have to sympathize with the higher, too — with queens, and kings, and martyrs, and angels. Yes, and above all, and more than all, with simple humanity in all its needs and ways, for there is not one hurried face that passes you in the street that will not be impressive, if you can only fathom it. All history is open to you, all high thoughts and dreams that the past fortunes of men can suggest, all fairy land is open to you — no vision that ever haunted forest, or gleamed over hill-side, but calls you to understand how it came into men's hearts, and may still touch them ; and all Paradise is open to you — yes, and the work of Paradise ; for in bringing all ihis, in perpetual and attractive truth, before the eyes of your fellow-men, you have to join in the employ- ment of the angels, as well as to imagine their companies. And observe, in this last respect, what a peculiar impor- tance, and responsibility, are attached to your work, when you consider its permanence, and the multitudes to whom it is addressed. We frequently are led, by wise people, to con- sider what responsibility may sometimes attach to words, which yet, the chance is, will be heard by few, and forgotten as soon as heard. But none of your words will be heard by few, and none will be forgotten, for five or six hundred years, 98 THE TWO PATHS. if you build well You will talk to all who pass by ; and all those little sympathies, those freaks of fancy, those jests in sione, those workings-out of problems in caprice, will occupy mind after mind of utterly countless multitudes, long after you are gone. You have not, like authors, to plead for a hearing, or to fear oblivion. Do but build large enough, and carve boldly enough, and all the world will hear you ; they cannot choose but look. I do not mean to awe you by this thought ; I do not mean that because you will have so many witnesses and watchers, you are never to jest, or do anything gaily or lightly ; on the 'contrary, I have pleaded, from the beginning, for this art of yours, especially because it has room for the w r hole of your character — if jest is in you, let the jest be jested ; if math- ematical ingenuity is yours, let your problem be put, and your solution worked out, as quaintly as you choose ; above all, see that your work is easily and happily done, else it will never make anybody else happy ; but while you thus give the rein to all your impulses, see that those impulses be headed and centred by one noble impulse ; and let that be Love — triple love — for the art which you practise, the creation in which you move, and the creatures to whom you minister. I. I say, first, Love for the art which you practise. Be as- sured that if ever any other motive becomes a leading one in your mind, as the principal one for exertion, except your love of art, that moment it is all over with your art. I do not say you are to desire money, nor to desire fame, nor to desire position ; you cannot but desire all three ; nay, you may — if you are willing that I should use the word Love in a dese- crated sense — love ail three ; that is, passionately covet them, yet you must not covet or love them in the first place. Men of strong passions and imaginations must always care a great deal for anything they care for at all ; but the whole question is one of first or second. Does your art lead you, or your gain lead you ? You may like making money exceedingly ; but if it come to a fair question, whether you are to make five hundred pounds less by this business, or to spoil your building, and you choose to spoil your building, there's m IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 99 end of you. So you may be as thirsty for fame as a cricket is for cream ; but, if it come to a fair question, whether you are to please the mob, or do the thing as you know it ought to be done ; and you can't do both, and choose to please the mob, it's all over with you — there's no hope for you ; nothing that you can do will ever be worth a man's glance as he passes by. The test is absolute, inevitable — Is your art first with you ? Then you are artists ; you may be, after you have made your money, misers and usurers ; you may be, after you have got your fame, jealous, and proud, and wretched, and base : but yet, as long as you won't spoil your ivork, you are artists. On the other hand — Is your money first with you, and your fame first with you ? Then, you may be very charitable with your money, and very magnificent with your money, and very graceful in the way you wear your reputation, and very court- eous to those beneath you, and very acceptable to those above you ; but you are not artists. You are mechanics, and drudges. II. You must love the creation you work in the midst of. For, wholly in proportion to the intensity of feeling which you bring to the subject you have chosen, will be the depth and justice of our perception of its character. And this depth of feeling is not to be gained on the instant, when you want to bring it to bear on this or that. It is the result of the gen- eral habit of striving to feel rightly ; and, among thousands of various means of doing this, perhaps the one I ought spe- cially to name to you, is the keeping 3 r ourselves clear of petty and mean cares. Whatever you do, don't be anxious, nor fill your heads with little chagrins and little desires. I have just said, that you may be great artists, and yet be miserly and jealous, and troubled about many things. So you may be ; but I said also that the miserliness or trouble must not be in your hearts all day. It is possible that you may get a habit of saving money ; or it is possible, at a time of great trial, you may yield to the temptation of speaking unjustly of a rival, — and you will shorten your powers and dim your sight even by this ; — but the thing that you have to dread far more than any such unconscious habit, or any such momentary fall — is the constancy of small emotions ; — the anxiety whether 100 THE TWO PATHS. Mr. So-and-so will like your work ; whether such and such a workman will do all that you want of him, and so on ; — not wrong feeling's or anxieties in themselves, but impertinent, and wholly incompatible with the full exercise of your imag- ination. Keep yourselves, therefore, quiet, peaceful, with your eyes open. It doesn't matter at all what Mr. So-and-so thinks of your work ; but it matters a great deal what that bird is doing up there in its nest, or how that vagabond child at the street corner is managing his game of knuckle-down. And remem- ber, you cannot turn aside from your own interests, to the birds' and the children's interests, unless you have long before got into the habit of loving and watching birds and children ; so that it all comes at last to the forgetting yourselves, and the living out of yourselves, in the calm of the great world, or if you will, in its agitation ; but always in a calm of your own bringing. Do not think it wasted time to submit your- selves to any influence which may bring upon you any noble feeling. Rise early, always watch the sunrise, and the way the clouds break from the dawm ; you will cast your statue- draperies in quite another than your common way, when the remembrance of that cloud motion is with you, and of the scarlet vesture of the morning. Live always in the spring- time in the country ; you do not know what leaf-form means, unless you have seen the buds burst, and the young leaves breathing low in the sunshine, and wondering at the first shower of rain. But above all, accustom yourselves to look for, and to love, all nobleness of gesture and feature in the human form ; and remember that the highest nobleness is usually among the aged, the poor, and the infirm ; you will find, in the end, that it is not the strong arm of the soldier, nor the laugh of the young beauty, that are the best studies for you. Look at them, and look at them reverently ; but be assured that endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty ; and that it is not in the high church pews, where the gay dresses are, but in the church free seats, where the widows' weeds are, that you may see the faces that will tit best between the angels' wings, in the church porch. IMAGINATION IN ARCHITECTURE. 101 HI. And therefore, lastly, and chiefly, you must love the creatures to whom you minister, your fellow-men ; for, if you do not love them, not only will you be little interested in the passing events of life, but in all your gazing at hu- manity, you will be apt to be struck only by outside form, and not by expression. It is only kindness and tender- ness which will ever enable you to see what beauty there is in the dark eyes that are sunk with weeping, and in the paleness of those fixed faces which the earth's adversity has compassed about, till they shine in their patience like dying watchfires through twilight. But it is not this only which makes it needful for you, if you would be great, to be also kind ; there is a most important and all-essential reason in the very nature of your own art. So soon as you desire to build largely, and with addition of noble sculpture, you will find that your work must be associative. You cannot carve a whole cathedral yourself — you can carve but few and simple parts of it. Either your own work must be disgraced in the mass of the collateral inferiority, or you must raise your fellow-designers to correspondence of power. If you have genius, you will your- selves take the lead in the building you design ; you will carve its porch and direct its disposition. But for all subsequent advancement of its detail, you must trust to the agency and the invention of others ; and it rests with you either to repress what faculties your workmen have, into cunning subordination to your own ; or to rejoice in discovering even the powers that may rival you, and leading forth mind after mind into fellow- ship with your fancy, and association with your fame. I need not tell you that if you do the first — if you endeavour to depress or disguise the talents of your subordinates — you are lost ; for nothing could imply more darkly and decisively than this, that your art and your work were not beloved by you ; that it was your own prosperity that you were seeking, and your own skill only that you cared to contemplate. I do not say that you must not be jealous at all ; it is rarely in human nature to be wholly without jealousy ; and you may be forgiven for going some day sadly home, when you find some youth, unpractised and unapproved, giving the life-stroke to 102 THE TWO PATHS. his work which you, after years of training, perhaps, cannot reach ; but your jealousy must not conquer — your love of your building must conquer, helped by your kindness of heart. See — I set no high or difficult standard before you. I do not say that you are to surrender your pre-eminence in mere un- selfish generosity. But I do say that you must surrender your pre-eminence in your love of your building helped by your kindness ; and that whomsoever you find better able to do what will adorn it than you, — that person you are to give place to ; and to console yourselves for the humiliation, first, by your joy in seeing the edifice grow more beautiful under his chisel, and secondly, by your sense of having done kindly and justly. But if you are morally strong enough to make the kindness and justice the first motive, it will be better ; — best of all, if you do not consider it as kindness at all, but bare and stern justice ; for, truly, such help as we can give each other in this world is a debt to each other ; and the man who perceives a superiority or a capacity in a subordinate, and neither confesses, nor assists it, is not merely the with- holder of kindness, but the committer of injury. But be the motive what you will, only see that you do the thing ; and take the joy of the consciousness that, as your art em- braces a wider field than all others— and addresses a vaster multitude than all others — and is surer of audience than all others — so it is profounder and holier in Fellowship than all others. The artist, when his pupil is perfect, must see him leave his side that he may declare his distinct, perhaps oppo- nent, skill. Man of science wrestles with man of science for priority of discovery, and pursues in pangs of jealous haste his solitary inquiry. You alone are called by kindness, — by necessity, — by equity, to fraternity of toil ; and thus, in those misty and massive piles which rise above the domestic roofs of our ancient cities, there was — there may be again — a mean- ing more profound and true than any that fancy so commonly has attached to them. Men say their pinnacles point to heaven. "Why, so does every tree that buds, and every bird that rises as it sings. Men say their aisles are good for worship. Why, so is every mountain glen, and rough sea-shore. But this they IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY. 103 have of distinct and indisputable glory, — that their mighty walls were never raised, and never shall be, but by men who love and aid each other in their weakness ; — that all their in- terlacing strength of vaulted stone has its foundation upon the stronger arches of manly fellowship, and all their changing grace of depressed or lifted pinnacle owes its cadence and completeness to sweeter symmetries of human soul. LECTURE V. THE WORK OF IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY. A Lecture Delivered at Tunbridge Wells, February, 1858. When first I heard that you wished me to address } r ou this evening, it was a matter of some doubt with me whether I could find any subject that would possess any sufficient in- terest for you to justify my bringing you out of your comfort- able houses on a winter's night. When I venture to speak about my own special business of art, it is almost always be- fore students of art, among whom I may sometimes permit myself to be dull, if I can feel that I am useful : but a mere talk about art, especially without examples to refer to (and I have been unable to prepare any careful illustrations for this lecture), is seldom of much interest to a general audience. As I was considering what you might best bear with me in speaking about, there came naturally into my mind a subject connected with the origin and present prosperity of the town you live in ; and, it seemed to me, in the out-branchings of it, capable of a very general interest. When, long ago (I am afraid to think how long), Tunbridge Wells was my Switzer- land, and I used to be brought down here in the summer, a sufficiently active child, rejoicing in the hope of clambering sandstone cliffs of stupendous height above the common, there used sometimes, as, I suppose, there are in the lives of all children at the Wells, to be dark days in my life — days of condemnation to the pantiles and band — -under which calam- 104 THE TWO PATHS. ities my only consolation used to be in watching, at every turn in my walk, the welling forth of the spring over the orange rim of its marble basin. The memory of the clear water, sparkling over its saffron stain, came back to me as the strongest image connected with the place ; and it struck me that you might not be unwilling, to-night, to think a little over the full significance of that saffron stain, and of the power, in other ways and other functions, of the steelly ele- ment to which so many here owe returning strength and life ; — chief as it has been always, and is yet more and more mark- edly so day by day, among the precious gifts of the earth. The subject is, of course, too wide to be more than suggest- ively treated ; and even ray suggestions must be few, and drawn chiefly from my own fields of work ; nevertheless, I think I shall have time to indicate some courses of thought which you may afterwards follow oat for yourselves if they in- terest you ; and so I will not shrink from the full scope of the subject which I have announced to you — the functions oi Iron, in Nature, Art, and Policy. Without more preface, I will take up the first head. I. Iron in Nature. — You all probably know that the ochreous stain, which, perhaps, is often thought to spoil the basin of your spring, is iron in a state of rust : and when you see rusty iron in other places you generally think, not only that it spoils the places it stains, but that it is spoiled itself — that rusty iron is spoiled iron. For most of our uses it generally is so ; and because wo cannot use a rusty knife or razor so well as a polished one, we suppose it to be a great defect in iron that it is subject to rust. But not at all. On the contrary, the most perfect and useful state of it is that ochreous stain ; and therefore it is endowed with so ready a disposition to get itself into that state. It is not a fault in the iron, but a virtue, to be so fond of getting rusted, for in that condition it fulfils its most im- portant functions in the universe, and most kindly duties to mankind. Nay, in a certain sense, and almost a literal one, we may say that iron rusted is Living ; but when pure or polished, Dead. You all probably know that in the mixed IRON, IN NATURE, AR7\ AND POLICY. 105 air we breathe, the part of it essentially needful to us is called oxygen ; and that this substance is to all animals, in the most accurate sense of the word, "breath of life." The nervous power of life is a different thing ; but the supporting element of the breath, without which the blood, and therefore the life, cannot be nourished, is this oxygen. Now it is this very s*ame air which the iron breathes when it gets rusty. It takes the oxygen from the atmosphere as eagerly as we do, though it uses it differently. The iron keeps all that it gets ; we, and other animals, part w r ith it again ; but the metal absolutely keeps what it has once received of this aerial gift ; and the ochreous dust which we so much despise is, in fact, just so much nobler than pure iron, in so far as it is iron and the air. Nobler, and more useful — for, indeed, as I shall be able to show you presently — the main service of this metal, and of all other metals, to us, is not in making knives, and scissors, and pokers, and pans, but in making the ground we feed from, and nearly all the substances first needful to our existence. For these are all nothing but metals and oxygen — metals with breath put into them. Sand, lime, clay, and the rest of the earths— potash and soda, and the rest of the alkalies — are all of them metals which have undergone this, so to speak, vital change, and have been rendered fit for the service of man by permanent unity with the purest air which he himself breathes. There is only one metal which does not rust readily ; and that, in its influence on Man hitherto, has caused Death rather than Life ; it will not be put to its right use till it is made a pavement of, and so trodden under foot. Is there not something striking in this fact, considered largely as one of the types, or lessons, furnished by the in- animate creation ? Here you have your hard, bright, cold, lifeless metal — good enough for swords and scissors — but not for food. You think, perhaps, that your iron is wonderfully useful in a pure form, but how would you like the world, if all your meadows, instead of grass, grew nothing but iron wire — it all your arable ground^ instead of being made of sand a&ti clay, were suddenly turned into fiat surfaces of steel — if ilia whole earth, instead of its green and glowing sphere, rich 106 THE TWO PATHS. with forest and flower, showed nothing but the image of the vast furnace of a ghastly engine — a globe of black, lifeless, excoriated metal ? It would be that, — probably it was once that ; but assuredly it would be, were it not that all the sub- stance of which it is made sucks and breathes the brilliancy of the atmosphere; and as it breathes, softening from its merciless hardness, it falls into fruitful and beneficent dust ; gathering itself again into the earths from which we feed, and the stones with which we build ; — -into the rocks that frame the mountains, and the sands that bind the sea. Hence, it is impossible for you to take up the most insig- nificant pebble at your feet, without being able to read, if you like, this curious lesson in it. You look upon it at first as if it were earth only. Nay, it answers, " I am not earth — I am earth and air in one ; part of that blue heaven which you love, and long for, is already in me ; it is all my life — without it I should be nothing, and able for nothing ; I could not min- ister to you, nor nourish you — I should be a cruel and help- less thing ; but, because there is, according to my need and place in creation, a kind of soul in me, I have become capable of good, and helpful in the circles of vitality. " Thus far the same interest attaches to all the earths, and all the metals of which they are made ; but a deeper interest, and larger beneficence belong to that ochreous earth of iron which stains the marble of your springs. It stains much be- sides that marble. It stains the great earth wheresoever you can see it, far and wide — it is the colouring substance ap- pointed to colour the globe for the sight, as well as subdue it to the service of man. You have just seen your hills covered with snow, and, perhaps, have enjoyed, at first, the contrast of their fair white with the dark blocks of pine woods ; but have you ever considered how you would like them always white — not pure white, but dirty white — the white of thaw, with all the chill of snow in it, but none of its brightness ? That is what the colour of the earth would be without its iron ; that would be its colour, not here or there only, but in all places, and at all times. Follow out that idea till you get it in some detail. Think first of your pretty gravel walks iu IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY. 10? your gardens, yellow and fine, like plots of sunshine between the flower-beds ; fancy them all suddenly turned to the colour of ashes. That is what they would be without iron ochre. Think of your winding walks over the common, as warm to the eye as they are dry to the foot, and imagine them all laid down suddenly with gray cinders. Then pass beyond the common into the country, and pause at the first ploughed field that you see sweeping up the hill sides in the sun, with its deep brown furrows, and wealth of ridges all a-glow, heaved aside by the ploughshare, like deep folds of a mantle of russet velvet — fancy it all changed suddenly into grisly furrows in a field of mud. That is what it would be without iron. Pass on, in fancy, over hill and dale, till you reach the bending line of the sea shore ; go down upon its breezy beach — watch the white foam flashing among the amber of it, and all the blue sea embayed in belts of gold : then fancy those circlets of far sweeping shore suddenly put into mounds of mourning — all those golden sands turned into gray slime, the fairies no more able to call to each other, " Come unto these yellow sands ; " but, " Gome unto these drab sands. " That is what they would be, without iron. Iron is in some sort, therefore, the sunshine and light of landscape, so far as that light depends on the ground ; but it is a source of another kind of sunshine, quite as important to us in the way we live at present — sunshine, not of landscape^ but of dwelling-place. In these days of swift locomotion I may doubtless assume that most of my audience have been somewhere out of Eng- land — have been in Scotland, or France, or Switzerland. Whatever may have been their impression, on returning to their own country, of its superiority or inferiority in other respects, they cannot but have felt one thing about it — the comfortable look of its towns and villages. Foreign towns are often very picturesque, very beautiful, but they never have quite that look of warm self-sufficiency and wholesome quiet with which our villages nestle themselves down among the green fields. If you will take the trouble to examine into the sources of this impression, you will find that by far the greater 108 till: two paths. part of that warm and satisfactory appearance depends upon the rich scarlet colour of the bricks and tiles. It does not belong to the neat building — very neat building has an un- fortable rather than a comfortable look — but it depends on the warm building ; our villages are dressed in red tiles as our old Women are in red cloaks ; and it does not matter how worn the cloaks, or how bent and bowed the roof may be, so long as there are no holes in either one or the other, and the sobered but unextinguishable colour still glows in the shadow of the hood, and burns among the green mosses of the gable. And w r hat do you suppose dyes your tiles of cottage roof ? You don't paint them. It is nature who puts all that lovely vermilion into the clay for you ; and all that lovely vermilion is this oxide of iron. Think, therefore, what your streets of towns would become — ugly enough, indeed, already, some of them, but still comfortable-looking — if instead of that warm brick red, the houses became all pepper-and-salt colour. Fancy your country villages changing from that homely scarlet of theirs which, in its sweet suggestion of laborious peace, is as honourable as the soldiers' scarlet of laborious battle — sup- pose ail those cottage roofs, I say, turned at once into the colour of unbaked clay, the colour of street gutters in rainy weather. That's what they would be, without iron. There is, however, yet another effect of colour in our Eng- lish country towns which, perhaps, you may not all yourselves have noticed, but for which you must take the word of a sketcher. They are not so often merely warm scarlet as they are warm purple ;— a more beautiful colour still : and they owe this colour to a mingling with the vermilion of the deep grayish or purple hue of our fine Welsh slates on the more respectable roofs, made more blue still by the colour of in- tervening atmosphere. If you examine one of these Welsh slates freshly broken, you will find its purple colour clear and vivid ; and although never strikingly so after it has been long exposed to weather, it always retains enough of the tint to give rich harmonies of distant purple in opposition to the green of our woods and fields. Whatever brightness or power there is in the hue is entirely owing to the oxide of iron. IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY. 109 Without it the slates would either be pale stone colour, or cold gray, or black. Thus far we have only been considering the use and pleas- antness of iron in the common earth of clay. But there are three kinds of earth which in mixed mass and prevalent quantity, form the world. Those are, in common language, the earths of clay, of lime, and of flint. Many other elements are mingled with these in sparing quantities ; but the great frame and substance of the earth is made of these three, so that wherever you stand on solid ground, in any country of the globe, the thing that is mainly under your feet will be either clay, limestone, or some condition of the earth of flint, mingled with both. These being what we have usually to deal with, Nature seems to have set herself to make these three substances as interest- ing to us, and as beautiful for us, as she can. The clay, being a soft and changeable substance, she doesn't take much pains about, as we have seen, till it is baked ; she brings the colour into it only when it receives a permanent form. But the limestone and flint she paints, in her own way, in their native state : and her object in painting them seems to be much the same as in her painting of flowers ; to draw us, careless and idle human creatures, to watch her a little, and see what she is about — that being on the whole good for us, — her children. For Nature is always carrying on very strange work with this limestone and flint of hers : laying down beds of them at the bottom of the sea ; building islands out of the sea ; filling chinks and veins in moun- tains with curious treasures ; petrifying mosses, and trees, and shells ; in fact, carrying on all sorts of business, subterranean or submarine, which it would be highly de- sirable for us, who profit and live by it, to notice as it goes on. And apparently to lead us to do this, she makes picture- books for us of limestone and flint ; and tempts us, like foolish children as we are, to read her books by the pretty colours in them. The pretty colours in her limestone-book^ form those variegated marbles which all mankind have taken delight to polish and build with from the beginning of time ; 110 THE TWO PATHS. and the pretty colours in her flint-books form those agates jaspers, cornelians, bloodstones, onyxes, cairngorms, chryso- prases, which men have in like manner taken delight to cut, and polish, and make ornaments of, from the beginning of time ; and yet, so much of babies are they, and so fond of looking at the pictures instead of reading the book, that 1 question . whether, after six thousand years of cutting and polishing, there are above two or three people out of any given hundred, who know, or care to know, how a bit of agate or a bit of marble was made, or painted. How it was made, may not be always very easy to say ; but with what it was painted there is no manner of question. All those beautiful violet veinings and variegations of the marbles of Sicily and Spain, the glowing orange and amber colours of those of Siena, the deep russet of the Eosso antico, and the blood-colour of all the precious jaspers that enrich the tem- ples of Italy ; and, finally, all the lovely transitions of tint in the pebbles of Scotland and the Ehine, which form, though not the most precious, by far the most interesting portion of our modern jewellers' work ; — all these are painted by nature with this one material only, variously proportioned and ap- plied — the oxide of iron that stains your Tunbridge springs. But this is not all, nor the best part of the work of iron. Its service in producing "these beautiful stones is only rendered to rich people, who can afford to quarry and polish them. But Nature paints for all the world, poor and rich together : and while, therefore, she thus adorns the innermost rocks of her hills, to tempt your investigation, or indulge your luxury, — she paints, far more carefully, the outsides of the hills, which are for the eyes of the shepherd and the ploughman. I spoke just now of the effect in the roofs of our villages of their purple slates : but if the slates are beautiful even in their flat and formal rows on house-roofs, much more are they beautiful on the rugged crests and flanks of their native mountains. Have you ever considered, in speaking as we do so often of distant blue hills, what it is that makes them blue ? To a certain extent it is distance ; but distance alone will not do it. Many hills look white, however distant. That IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY. Ill lovely dark purple colour of our Welsh and Highland hills is owing, not to their distance merely, but to their rocks. Some of their rocks are, indeed, too dark to be beautiful, being black or ashy gray ; owing to imperfect and porous structure. But when you see this dark colour dashed with russet and blue, and coming out in masses among the green ferns, so purple that you can hardly tell at first whether it is rock or heather, then you must thank your old Tunbridge friend, the oxide of iron. But this is not all. It is necessary for the beauty of hill scenery that Nature should colour not only her soft rocks, but her hard ones : and she colours them with the same thing, only more beautifully. Perhaps you have wondered at my use of the word " purple," so often of stones ; but the Greeks, and still more the Romans, who had profound respect for purple, used it of stone long ago. You have all heard of " porphyry " as among the most precious of the harder mas- sive stones. The colour which gave it that noble name, as well as that which gives the flush to all the rosy granite of Egypt — yes, and to the rosiest summits of the Alps themselves — is still owing to the same substance — your humble oxide of iron. And last of all : A nobler colour than all these — the noblest colour ever seen on this earth — one which belongs to a strength greater than that of the Egyptian granite, and to a beauty greater than that of the sunset or the rose — is still mysteriously con- nected with the presence of this dark iron. I believe it is not- ascertained on what the crimson of blood actually depends ; but the colour is connected, of course, with its vitality, and that vitality with the existence of iron as one of its substantial elements. Is it not strange to find this stern and strong metal mingled so delicately in our human life, that we cannot even blush without its help ? Think of it, my fair and gentle hearers ; how terrible the alternative — sometimes you have actually no choice but to be brazen-faced, or iron-faced ! In this slight review of some of the functions of the metal, you observe that I confine myself strictly to its operations as 112 THE TWO PATHS. a colouring element. I should only confuse your conception of the facts, if I endeavoured to describe its uses as a sub- stantial element, either in strengthening rocks, or influencing vegetation by the decomposition of rocks. I have not, there- fore, even glanced at any of the more serious uses of the metal in the economy of nature. But what I wish you to carry clearly away with you is the remembrance that in all these uses the metal would be nothing without the air. The pure metal has no power, and never occurs in nature at all except in meteoric stones, whose fall no one can account for, and which are useless after they have fallen : in the necessary work of the world, the iron is invariably joined with the oxygen, and would be capable of no service or beauty what- ever without it. II Iron in Art. — Passing, then, from the offices of the metal in the operations of nature to its uses in the hands of man, you must remember, in the outset, that the type which has been thus given you, by the lifeless metal, of the action of body and soul together, has noble antitype in the operation of all human power. All art worthy the name is the energy — neither of the human body alone, nor of the human soul alone, but of both united, one guiding the other : good craftsman- ship and work of the fingers, joined w r ith good emotion and work of the heart. There is no good art, nor possible judgment of art, w T hen these two are not united ; yet we are constantly trying to separate them. Our amateurs cannot be persuaded but that they may produce some kind of art by their fancy or sensi- bility, without going through the necessary manual toil. That is entirely hopeless. Without a certain number, and that a very great number, of steady acts of hand — a practice as care- ful and constant as would be necessary to learn any other manual business — no drawing is possible. On the other side, the w T orkman, and those who employ him, are continually try- ing to produce art by trick or habit of fingers, without using their fancy or sensibility. That also is hopeless. Without mingling of heart-passion with hand-power, no art is possible.* * No tine art, that is. See the previous definition of fine art at p. 38, IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY. 113 The highest art unites both in their intensest degrees : the action of the hand at its finest, with that of the heart at its fullest, Hence it follows that the utmost power of art can only be given in a material capable of receiving and retaining the in- fluence of the subtlest touch of the human hand. That hand is the most perfect agent of material power existing in the universe ; and its full subtlety can only be shown when the material it works on, or with, is entirely yielding. The chords of a perfect instrument will receive it, but not of an imperfect one ; the softly bending point of the hair pencil, and soft melting of colour, will receive it, but not even the chalk or pen point, still less the steel point, chisel, or marble. The hand of a sculptor may, indeed, be as subtle as that of a painter, but all its subtlety is not bestowable nor expressible : the touch of Titian, Correggio, or Turner/' is a far more marvellous piece of nervous action than can be shown in anything but colour, or in the very highest conditions of executive expression in mu- sic. In proportion as the material worked upon is less delicate, the execution necessarily becomes lower, and the art with it. This is one main principle of all work. Another is, that what- ever the material you choose to work with, your art is base if it does not bring out the distinctive qualities of that material. The reason of this second law is, that if you don't want the qualities of the substance you use, you ought to use some other substance : it can be only affectation, and desire to dis- play your skill, that lead you to employ a refractory substance, and therefore your art will all be base. Glass, for instance, is eminently, in its nature, transparent. If you don't want transparency, let the glass alone. Do not try to make a win- dow look like an opaque picture, but take an opaque ground to begin with. Again, marble is eminently a solid and massive substance. Unless you w T ant mass and solidity, don't work in marble. If you wish for lightness, take wood ; if for freedom, take stucco ; if for ductility, take glass. Don't try to carve feathers, or trees, or nets, or foam, out of marble. Carve white limbs and broad breasts only out of that. * See Appendix IV., < k Subtlety of Hand." 114 THE TWO PATHS. So again, iron is eminently a ductile and tenacious substance ■ — tenacious above all things, ductile more than most. When you want tenacity, therefore, and involved form, take iron. It is eminently made for that. It is the material given to the sculptor as the companion of marble, with a message, as plain as it can well be spoken, from the lips of the earth-mother, "Here's for you to cut, and here's for you to hammer. Shape this, and twist that. What is solid and simple, carve out ; what is thin and entangled, beat out. I give you all kinds of forms to be delighted in ; — fluttering leaves as well as fair bodies ; twisted branches as well as open brows. The leaf and the branch you may beat and drag into their imagery : the body and brow you shall reverently touch into their imagery. And if you choose rightly and work rightly, what you do shall be safe afterwards. Your slender leaves shall not break off in my tenacious iron, though they may be rusted a little with an iron autumn. Your broad surfaces shall not be unsmoothed in my pure crystalline marble — no decay shall touch them. But if you carve in the marble what will break with a touch, or mould in the metal what a stain of rust or verdigris will spoil, it is your fault — not mine." These are the main principles in this matter ; which, like nearly all other right principles in art, we moderns delight in contradicting as directly and specially as may be. We con- tinually look for, and praise, in our exhibitions the sculpture of veils, and lace, and thin leaves, and all kinds of impossible things pushed as far as possible in the fragile stone, for the sake of showing the sculptor's dexterity.* On the other hand, * I do not mean to attach any degree of blame to the effort to repre- sent leafage in marble for certain expressive purposes. The later works of Mr. Munro have depended for some of their most tender thoughts on a delicate and skilful use of such accessories. And in general, leaf sculpture is good and admirable, if it renders, as in Gothic work, the grace and lightness of the leaf by the arrangement of light and shadow — supporting the masses well by strength of stone below ; but all carv- ing is base which proposes to itself slightness as an aim, and tries to imi- tate the absolute thinness of thin or slight things, as much modern wood carving does. I saw in Italy, a year or two ago, a marble sculpture of birds' nests. IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY. 115 #e cast our. iron into bars — brittle, though an inch thick — » sharpen them at the ends, and consider fences, and other work, made of such materials, decorative ! I do not believe it would be easy to calculate the amount of mischief done to our taste in England by that fence iron-work of ours alone. If it were asked of us by a single characteristic, to distinguish the dwell- ings of a country into two broad sections ; and to set, on one side, the places where people were, for the most part, simple, happy, benevolent, and honest ; and, on the other side, the places where at least a great number of the people were so- phisticated, unkind, uncomfortable, and unprincipled, there is, I think, one feature that you could fix upon as a positive test : the uncomfortable and unprincipled parts of a country would be the parts where people lived among iron railings, and the comfortable and principled parts where they had none. A broad generalization, you will say ! Perhaps a little too broad ; yet, in all sobriety, it will come truer than you think. Con- sider every other kind of fence or defence, and you will find some virtue in it ; but in the iron railing none. There is, first, your castle rampart of stone — somewhat too grand to be con- sidered here among our types of fencing ; next, your garden or park wall of brick, which has indeed often an unkind look on the outside, but there is more modesty in it than unkind- ness. It generally means, not that the builder of it wants to shut you out from the view of his garden, but from the view of himself : it is a frank statement that as he needs a certain portion of time to himself, so he needs a certain portion of ground to himself, and must not be stared at when he digs there in his shirt-sleeves, or plays at leapfrog with his boys from school, or talks over old times with his wife, walking up and down in the evening sunshine. Besides, the brick wall has good practical service in it, and shelters you from the east wind, and ripens your peaches and nectarines, and glows in autumn like a sunny bank. And, moreover, your brick wall, if you build it properly, so that it shall stand long enough, is a beautiful thing when it is old, and has assumed its grave purple red, touched with mossy green. Next to your lordly wall, in dignity of enclosure, comes 116 THE TWO PATHS. your close-set wooden paling, which is more objectionable, be* cause it commonly means enclosure on a larger scale than people want. Still it is significative of pleasant parks, and well-kept field walks, and herds of deer, and other such aris- tocratic pastoralisms, which have here and there their proper place in a country, and may be passed without any discredit Next to your paling, comes your low stone dyke, your mountain fence, indicative at a glance either of w 7 ild hill coun- try, or of beds of stone beneath the soil ; the hedge of the mountains — delightful in all its associations, and yet more in the varied and craggy forms of the loose stones it is built of ; and next to the low stone wall, your lowland hedge, either in trim line of massive green, suggested of the pleasances of old Elizabethan houses, and smooth alleys for aged feet, and quaint labyrinths for young ones, or else in fair entanglement of eglantine and virgin's bower, tossing its scented luxuriance along our country waysides ; — how many such you have here among your pretty hills, fruitful with black clusters of the bramble for boys in autumn, and crimson hawthorn berries for birds in winter. And then last, and most difficult to class among fences, comes your handrail, expressive of all sorts of things ; sometimes having a knowing and vicious look, which it learns at race-courses ; sometimes an innocent and tender lock, which it learns at rustic bridges over cressy brooks ; and sometimes a prudent and protective look, which it learns on passes of the Alps, where it has posts of granite and bars of pine, and guards the brows of cliffs and the banks of torrents. So that in all these kinds of defence there is some good, pleasant, or noble meaning. But w T hat meaning has the iron railing ? Either, observe, that you are living in the midst of such bad characters that you must keep them out by main force of bar, or that you are yourself of a character requiring to be kept inside in the same manner. Your iron railing al- ways means thieves outside, or Bedlam inside ; it can mean nothing else than that. If the people outside were good for anything, a hint in the way of fence would be enough for them ; but because they are violent and at enmity with you, you are forced to put the close bars and the spikes at the top* IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY, 117 Last summer I was lodging* for a little while in a cottage in the country, and in front of my low window there were, first some beds of daisies, then a row of gooseberry and currant bushes, and then a low wall about three feet above the ground, covered with stone-cress. Outside, a corn-field, with its green ears glistening in the sun, and a field path through it, just past the garden gate. From my window I could see every peasant of the village who passed that way, with basket on arm for market, or spade on shoulder for field. When I was in- clined for society, I could lean over my wall, and talk to any- body ; when I was inclined for science, I could botanize all along the top of my wall — there were four species of stone- cress alone growing on it ; and when I was inclined for exer- cise, I could jump over my wall, backwards and forwards. That's the sort of fence to have in a Christian country ; not a thing which you can't walk inside of without making yourself look like a wild beast, nor look at out of your window in the morning without expecting to see somebody impaled upon it in the ni^ht. And yet farther, observe that the iron railing is a useless fence — it can shelter nothing, and support nothing ; you can't nail your peaches to it, nor protect your flowers with it, nor make anything whatever out of its costly tyranny ; and be- sides being useless, it is an insolent fence ; — it says plainly to everybody who passes — "You may be an honest person,— but, also, you may be a thief : honest or not, you shall not get in here, for I am a respectable person, and much above you ; you shall only see what a grand place I have got to keep you out of — look here, and depart in humiliation." This, however, being in the present state of civilization a frequent manner of discourse, and there being unfortunately many districts where the iron railing is unavoidable, it yet re- mains a question whether you need absolutely make it ugly, no less than significative of evil. You must have railings round your squares in London, and at the sides of your areas; but need you therefore have railings so ugly that the constant sight of them is enough to neutralise the effect of all the schools of art in the kingdom ? You need not. Far from 118 THE TWO PATHS. such necessity, it is even in your power to turn all your police force of iron bars actually into drawing masters, and natural historians. Not, of course, without some trouble and some expense ; you can do nothing much worth doing, in this world, without trouble, you can get nothing much worth hav- ing without expense. The main question is only — what is worth doing and having : — Consider, therefore, if this be not. Here is your iron railing, as yet, an uneducated monster ; a sombre seneschal, incapable of any words, except his per- petual "Keep out ! " and " Away with you ! " Would it not be worth , some trouble and cost to turn this ungainly ruffian porter into a well-educated servant ; who, while he was severe as ever in forbidding entrance to evilly- disposed people, should yet have a kind word for well-disposed people, and a pleasant look, and a little useful information at his command, in case he should be asked a question by the passers-by ? "We have not time to-night to look at many examples of ironwork ; and those I happen to have by me are not the best; ironwork is not one of my special subjects of study ; so that I only have memoranda of bits that happened to come into picturesque subjects which I was drawing for other reasons. Besides, external ironwork is more difficult to find good than any other sort of ancient art ; for when it gets rusty and broken, people are sure, if they can afford it, to send it to the old iron shop, and get a fine new grating instead ; and in the great cities of Italy, the old iron is thus nearly all gone : the best bits I remember in the open air were at Brescia ; — fantastic sprays of laurel-like foliage rising over the garden gates ; and there are a few fine fragments at Verona, and some good trellis- work enclosing the Scala tombs ; but on the w T hole, the most interesting pieces, though by no means the purest in style, are to be found in out-of-the-way provincial towns, where people do not care, or are unable, to make polite altera- tions. The little town of Bellinzona, for instance, on the south of the Alps, and that of Sion on the north, have both of them complete schools of ironwork in their balconies and vineyard gates. That of Bellinzona is the best, though not very old — I suppose most of it of the seventeenth century ; still it is very IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY, 119 quaint and beautiful. Here, for example, (see frontispiece), are two balconies, from two different houses ; one has been a cardinal's, and the hat is the principal ornament of the bal- cony ; its tassels being wrought with delightful delicacy and freedom ; and catching the eye clearly even among the mass of rich wreathed leaves. These tassels and strings are pre- cisely the kind of subject fit for ironwork — noble in ironwork, they would have been entirely ignoble in marble, on the grounds above stated. The real plant of oleander standing in the window enriches the whole group of lines very happily. The other balcony, from a very ordinary-looking house in the same street, is much more interesting in its details. It is shown in the plate as it appeared last summer, with convol- vulus twined about the bars, the arrow T -shaped living leaves mingled among the leaves of iron ; but you may see in the centre of these real leaves a cluster of lighter ones, wmich are those of the ironwork itself. This cluster is worth giving a little larger to show its treatment. Fig. 2 (in Appendix V.) is the front view of it : Fig. 4, its profile. It is composed of a large tulip in the centre ; then two turkscap lilies ; then two pinks, a little conventionalized ; then two narcissi ; then two nonde- scripts, or, at least, flowers I do not know ; and then two dark buds, and a few leaves. I say, dark buds, for all these flow T ers have been coloured in their original state. The plan of the group is exceedingly simple : it is all enclosed in a pointed arch (Fig. 3, Appendix V.) : the large mass of the tulip form- ing the apex ; a six-foiled star on each side ; then a jagged star ; then a five-foiled star ; then an unjagged star or rose ; finally a small bud, so as to establish relation and cadence through the whole group. The profile is very free and fine, and the upper bar of the balcony exceedingly beautiful in effect ; — none the less so on account of the marvellously sim- ple means employed. A thin strip of iron is bent over a square rod ; out of the edge of this strip are cut a series of triangular openings — widest at top, leaving projecting teeth of iron (Appendix, Fig. 5) ; then each of these projecting pieces gets a little sharp tap with the hammer in front, which 120 THE TWO PATHS. beaks its edge inwards, tearing it a little open at the same time, and the thing is done. The common forms of Swiss ironwork are less naturalistic than these Italian balconies, depending more on beautiful ar- rangements of various curve ; nevertheless, there has been a rich naturalist school at Fribourg, where a few bell-handles are still left, consisting of rods branched into laurel and other leafage. At Geneva, modern improvements have left nothing ; but at Annecy, a little good work remains ; the bal- cony of its old hotel de ville especially, with a trout of the lake— presumably the town arms — forming its central orna- ment. I might expatiate all night — if you would sit and hear me — on the treatment of such required subject, or introduction of pleasant caprice by the old workmen ; but we have no more time to spare, and I must quit this part of our subject — ■ the rather as I could not explain to you the intrinsic merit of such ironwork without going fully into the theory of curvi- linear design ; only let me leave with you this one distinct as- sertion—that the quaint beauty and character of many natural objects, such as intricate branches, grass, foliage (especially thorny branches and prickly foliage), as well as that of many animals, plumed, spined, or bristled, is sculpturally expressible in iron only, and in iron would be majestic and impressive in the highest degree ; and that every piece of metal work you use might be, rightly treated, not only a superb decoration, but a most valuable abstract of portions of natural forms, holding in dignity precisely the same relation to the painted representation of plants, that a statue does to the painted form of man. It is difficult to give you an idea of the grace and interest which the simplest objects possess when their forms are thus abstracted from among the surrounding of rich circumstance which in nature disturbs the feebleness of our attention. In Plate 2, a few blades of common green grass, and a wild leaf or two — just as they were thrown by nature, — are thus abstracted from the associated redundance of the forms about them, and shown on a dark ground : every cluster of herbage would furnish fifty such groups, and every such IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY. 121 group would work into iron (fitting it, of course, rightly to its service) with perfect ease, and endless grandeur of result. III. Iron in Policy. — Having thus obtained some idea of the use of iron in art, as dependent on its ductility, I need not, certainly, say anything of its uses in manufacture and commerce ; w T e all of us know enough, — perhaps a little too much — about them. So I pass lastly to consider its uses in policy ; dependent chiefly upon its tenacity — that is to say, on its power of bearing a pull, and receiving an edge. These powers, which enable it to pierce, to bind, and to smite, ren- der it fit for the three great instruments, by which its politi- cal action may be simply typified ; namely, the Plough, the Fetter, and the Sword. On our understanding the right use of these three instru- ments, depend, of course, all our power as a nation, and all our happiness as individuals. I. The Plough. — I say, first, on our understanding the right use of the plough, with which, in justice to the fairest of our labourers, we must always associate that feminine plough — the needle. The first requirement for the happi- ness of a nation is that it should understand the function in this world of these two great instruments : a happy nation may be defined as one in which the husband's hand is on the plough, and the housewife's on the needle ; so in due time reaping its golden harvest, and shining in golden vesture : and an unhappy nation is one which, acknowledging no use of plough nor needle, will assuredly at last find its storehouse empty in the famine, and its breast naked to the cold. Perhaps you think this is a mere truism, which I am wast- ing your time in repeating. I wish it were. By far the greater part of the suffering and crime which exist at this moment in civilized Europe, arises simply from people not understanding this truism — not knowing that prod- uce or wealth is eternally connected by the laws of heaven and earth with resolute labour ; but hoping in some way to cheat or abrogate this everlasting law of life, and to feed where they have not furrowed, and be warm where they have not woven. 122 THE TWO PATHS. I repeat, nearly all our misery and crime result from this one misapprehension. The law of nature is, that a certain quantity of work is necessary to produce a certain quantity of good, of any kind whatever. If you want knowledge, you must toil for it : if food, you must toil for it ; and if pleasure, you must toil for it. But men do not acknowledge this law, or strive to evade it, hoping to get their knowiedge, and food, and pleasure for nothing ; and in this effort they either fail of getting them, and remain ignorant and miserable, or they obtain them by making other men work for their bene- fit ; and then they are tyrants and robbers. Yes, and worse than robbers. I am not one who in the least doubts or dis- putes the progress of this century in many things useful to mankind ; but it seems to me a very dark sign respecting U3 that we look with so much indifference upon dishonesty and cruelty in the pursuit of wealth. In the dream of Nebuchad- nezzar it was only the feet that were part of iron and part of clay ; but many of us are now getting so cruel in our avarice, that it seems as if, in us, the heart were part of iron, and part of clay. From what I have heard of the inhabitants of this town, I do not doubt but that I may be permitted to do here what I have found it usually thought elsewhere highly improper and absurd to do, namely, trace a few Bible sentences to their practical result. You cannot but have noticed how often in those parts of the Bible which are likely to be oftenest opened when people look for guidance, comfort, or help in the affairs of daily life, namely, the Psalms and Proverbs, mention is made of the guilt attaching to the Oppression of the poor. Observe : not the neglect of them, but the Oppression of them : the word is as frequent as it is strange. You can hardly open either of those books, but somewhere in their pages you will find a de- scription of the wicked man's attempts against the poor : such as — " He doth ravish the poor when he getteth him into his net" '? He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages ; his eyes are privily set against the poor." IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY. 123 "In his pride he doth persecute the poor, and blesseth the covetous, whom God abhorreth." " His mouth is full of deceit and fraud ; in the secret places doth he murder the innocent. Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread ? They have drawn out the sword, and bent the bow, to cast down the poor and needy." "They are corrupt, and speak wickedly concerning oppres- sion." " Pride compasseth them about as a chain, and violence as a garment." " Their poison is like the poison of a serpent. Ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth." Yes : c: Ye weigh the violence of your hands : " — weigh these words as well, The last things we ever usually think of weighing are Bible words. We like to dream and dispute over them ; but to weigh them, and see what their true con- tents are — anything but that. Yet, weigh these ; for I have purposely taken all these verses, perhaps more striking to you read in this connection, than separately in their places, out of the Psalms, because, for all people belonging to the Estab- lished Church of this country these Psalms are appointed les- sons, portioned out to them by their clergy to be read once through every month. Presumably, therefore, whatever por- tions of Scripture we may pass by or forget, these at all events, must be brought continually to our observance as useful for direction of daily life. Now, do we ever ask ourselves what the real meaning of these passages may be, and who these wicked people are, who are " murdering the innocent? " You know it is rather singular language this ! — rather strong lan- guage, we might, perhaps, call it — hearing it for the first time. Murder ! and murder of innocent people ! — nay, even a sort of cannibalism. Eating people, — yes, and God's people, too- — eating My people as if they were bread ! swords drawn, bows bent, poison of serpents mixed ! violence of hands weighed, measured, and trafficked with as so much coin ! where is all this going on ? Do you suppose it was only going on in the time of David, and that nobody but Jews ever murder the 124 TEE TWO PATHS. poor? If so, it would surely be wiser not to mutter and mumble for our daily lessons what does not concern us ; but if there be any chance that it may concern us, and if this de- scription, in the Psalms, of human guilt is at all generally ap- plicable, as the descriptions in the Psalms of human sorrow are, may it not be advisable to know wherein this guilt is being committed round about us, or by ourselves ? and when we take the words of the Bible into our mouths in a congrega- tional way, to be sure whether we mean merely to chant a piece of melodious poetry relating to other people— (we know not exactly to whom) — or to assert our belief in facts bearing somewhat stringently on ourselves and our daily business. And if you make up your minds to do this no longer, and take pains to examine into the matter, you will find that these strange words, occurring as they do, not in a few places only, but almost in every alternate psalm and every alternate chap- ter of proverb, or prophecy, with tremendous reiteration, were not written for one nation or one time only ; but for all nations and languages, for all places and all centuries ; and it is as true of the wicked man now as ever it was of Nabal or Dives, that "his eyes are set against the poor." Set against the poor, mind you. Not merely set away from the poor, so as to neglect or lose sight of them, but set against, so as to afflict and destroy them. This is the main point I want to fix your attention upon. You will often hear sermons about neglect or carelessness of the poor. But neglect and carelessness are not at all the points. The Bible hardly ever talks about neglect of the poor. It always talks of oppression of the poor — a very different matter. It does not merely speak of passing by on the other side, and binding up no wounds, but of drawing the sword and ourselves smiting the men down. It does not charge us with being idle in the pest- house, and giving no medicine, but with being busy in the pesfc-house, and giving much poison. May we not advisedly look into this matter a little, even to- night, and ask first, Who are these poor ? No country is, or ever will be, without them : that is to bay, without the class which cannot, on the average, do more IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY. 125 by its labour than provide for its subsistence, and which hag no accumulations of propert}' laid by on any considerable scale. Now there are a certain number of this class whom we cannot oppress with much severity. An able-bodied and in- telligent workman — sober, honest, and industrious, will almost always command a fair price for his work, and lay by enough in a few years to enable him to hold his own in the labour market. But all men are not able-bodied, nor intelligent, nor industrious ; and you cannot expect them to be. Nothing appears to me at once more ludicrous and more melancholy than the way the people of the present age usually talk about the morals of labourers. You hardly ever address a labour- ing man upon his prospects in life, without quietly assuming that he is to possess, at starting, as a small moral capital to begin with, the virtue of Socrates, the philosophy of Plato, and the heroism of Epaminondas. "Be assured, my good man, " — you say to him, — " that if you work steadily for ten hours a day all your life long, and if you drink nothing but water, or the very mildest beer, and live on very plain food, and never lose your temper, and go to church every Sunday, and always remain content in the position in which Provi- dence has placed you, and never grumble nor swear ; and al- ways keep your clothes decent, and rise early, and use every opportunity of improving yourself, you will get on very well; and never come to the parish. " All this is exceedingly true ; but before giving the advice so confidently, it would be well if we sometimes tried it prac- tically ourselves, and spent a year or so at some hard manual labour, not of an entertaining kind — ploughing or digging, for instance, with a very moderate allowance of beer ; nothing but bread and cheese for dinner ; no papers nor muffins in the morning ; no sofas nor magazines at night ; one small room for parlour and kitchen ; and a large family of children always in the middle of the floor= If we think we could, un- der these circumstances, enact Socrates or Epaminondas en- tirely to our own satisfaction, we shall be somewhat justified in requiring the same behaviour from our poorer neighbours ; but if not, we should surely consider a little whether among 126 THE TWO PATHS. the various forms of the oppression of the poor, we may noi rank as one of the first and likeliest — the oppression of ex~ pectin g too much from them. But let this pass ; and let it be admitted that we can neve* be guilty of oppression towards the sober, industrious, intelli- gent, exemplary labourer. There will always be in the work] some who are not altogether intelligent and exemplary ; we shall, I believe, to the end of time find the majority somewhat unintelligent, a little inclined to be idle, and occasionally, on Saturday night, drunk ; we must even be prepared to hear of reprobates who like skittles on Sunday morning better than prayers ; and of unnatural parents who send their children out to beg instead of to go to school. Now these are the kind of people whom you can oppress, and whom you do oppress, and that to purpose, — and with all the more cruelty and the greater sting, because it is just their own fault that puts them into your power. You know the words about wicked people are, " He doth ravish the poor when he getteth him into his net." This getting into the net is constantly the fault or folly of the sufferer — his own heed- lessness or his own indolence ; but after he is once in the net, the oppression of him, ^nd making the most of his distress, are ours. The nets which we use against the poor are just those worldly embarrassments which either their ignorance or their improvidence are almost certain at some time or other to bring them into : then, just at the time when we ought to hasten to help them, and disentangle them, and teach them how to manage better in future, we rush forward to pillage them, and force all we can out of them in their ad- versity. For, to take one instance only, remember this is liter- ally and simply what we do, whenever we buy, or try to buy, cheap goods — goods offered at a price which we know cannot be remunerative for the labour involved in them. Whenever we buy such goods, remember we are stealing somebody's labour. Don't let us mince the matter. I say, in plain Saxon, stealing — taking from him the proper reward of his work, and putting it into our own pocket. You know well enough that the thing could not have been offered you at that price, un- IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY. 127 less distress of some kind had forced the producer to part with it. You take advantage of this distress, and you force as much out of him as you can under the circumstances. The old barons of the middle ages used, in general, the thumb- screw to extort property ; we moderns use, in preference, hun- ger or domestic affliction : but the fact of extortion remains precisely the same. Whether we force the man's property from him by pinching his stomach, or pinching his fingers, makes some difference anatomically ; — morally, none whatso- ever : we use a form of torture of some sort in order to make him give up his property ; we use, indeed, the man's own anxieties, instead of the rack ; and his immediate peril of starvation, instead of the pistol at the head ; but otherwise we differ from Front de Boeuf, or Dick Turpin, merely in be- ing less dexterous, more cowardly, and more cruel. More cruel, I say, because the fierce baron and the redoubted high- wayman are reported to have robbed, at least by preference, only the rich ; we steal habitually from the poor. W e buy our liveries, and gild our prayer-books, with pilfered pence out of children's and sick men's wages, and thus ingeniously dispose a given quantity of Theft, so that it may ; produce the largest possible measure of delicately distributed suffering. But this is only one form of common oppression of the poor ■ — only one way of taking our hands off the plough handle, and binding another's upon it. This first way of doing it is the economical way — the way preferred by prudent and virtuous people. The bolder way is the acquisitive way : — the way of speculation. You know we are considering at present the various modes in which a nation corrupts itself, by not acknowledging the eternal connection between its plough and its pleasure ; — by striving to get pleasure, without working for it. Well, I say the first and commonest way of doing so is to try to get the product of other people's work, and enjoy it ourselves, by cheapening their labour in times of distress : then the second way is that grand one of watching the chances of the market ; — the way of speculation. Of course there are some speculations that are fair and honest — speculations made with our own money, and which do not involve in their sue- 123 TnE two paths. cess the loss, by others, of what we gain. But generally mod- ern speculation involves much risk to others, with chance of profit only to ourselves : even in its best conditions it is merely one of the forms of gambling or treasure hunting ; it is either leaving the steady plough and the steady pilgrimage of life, to look for silver mines beside the way ; or else it is the full stop beside the dice-tables in Vanity Fair — investing all the thoughts and passions of the soul in the fall of the cards, and choosing rather the wild accidents of idle fortune than the calm and accumulative rewards of toil. And this is destructive enough, at least to our peace and virtue. But is usually destructive of far more than our peace, or our virtue. Have you ever de- liberately set yourselves to imagine and measure the suffering, the guilt, and the mortality caused necessarily by the failure of any large-dealing merchant, or largely-branched bank ? Take it at the lowest possible supposition — count, at the few- est you choose, the families whose means of support have been involved in the catastrophe. Then, on the morning- after the intelligence of ruin, let us go forth amongst them in earnest thought ; let us use that imagination which we waste so often on fictitious sorrow, to measure the stern facts of that multitudinous distress ; strike open the private doors of their chambers, and enter silently into the midst of ttoe domestic misery ; look upon the old men, who had reserved for their failing strength some remainder of rest in the evening-tide of life, cast helplessly back into its trouble and tumult ; look upon the active strength of middle age suddenly blasted into incapacity — its hopes crushed, and its hardly earned rewards snatched away in the same instant — at once the heart with- ered, and the right arm snapped ; look upon the piteous chil- dren, delicately nurtured, whose soft eyes, now large with wonder at their parents' grief, must soon be set in the dimness of famine ; and, far more than all this, look forward to the length of sorrow beyond — to the hardest labour of life, now to be undergone either in all the severity of unexpected and inexperienced trial, or else, more bitter still, to be begun again, and endured for the second time, amidst the ruins of cherished hopes and the feebleness of advancing years, em- IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY. 129 bittered by the continual sting and taunt of the inner feeling that it has all been brought about, not by the fair course of appointed circumstance, but by miserable chance and wanton treachery ; and, last of ail, look beyond this — to the shattered destinies of those who have faltered under the trial, and sunk past recovery to despair. And then consider whether the hand which has poured this poison into all the springs of life be one whit less guiltily red with human blood than that which literally pours the hemlock into the cup, or guides the dagger to the heart ? We read with horror of the crimes of a Borgia or a Tophana ; but there never lived Borgias such as live now in the midst of us. The cruel lady of Ferrara slew only in the strength of passion — she slew only a few, those who thwarted* her purposes or who vexed her soul ; she slew sharply and suddenly, embittering the fate of her victims with no foretastes of destruction, no prolongations of pain ; and, finally and chiefly, she slew, not without remorse, nor without pit} 7 . But we, in no storm of passion — in no blindness of wrath, — we, in calm and clear and untempted selfishness, pour our poison — not for a few only, but for multitudes ; — not for those who have wronged us, or resisted, — but for those who have trusted us and aided : — we, not with sudden gift of mer- ciful and unconscious death, but with slow waste of hunger and weary rack of disappointment and despair ; — we, last and chiefly, do our murdering, not with any pauses of pity or scorching of conscience, but in facile and forgetful calm of mind — and so, forsooth, read day by day, complacently, as if they meant any one else than ourselves, the words that for- ever describe the wicked : " The poison of asps is under their lips, and their feet are swift to shed blood" You may indeed, perhaps, think there is some excuse for many in this matter, just because the sin is so unconscious ; that the guilt is not so great when it is unapprehended, and that it is much more pardonable to slay heedlessly than pur- posefully. I believe no feeling can be more mistaken, and that in reality, and in the sight of heaven ', the callous indiffer- ence which pursues its own interests at any cost of life, though it does not definitely adopt the purpose of sin, is a 130 THE TWO PATHS. state of mind at once more heinous and more hopeless than the wildest aberrations of ungoverned passion. There may be, in the last case, some elements of good and of redemption still mingled in the character ; but, in the other, few or none. There may be hope for the man who has slain his enemy in anger ; hope even for the man who has betrayed his friend in fear ; but what hope for him who trades in unregarded blood, and builds his fortune on unrepented treason ? But, however this may be, and wherever you may think yourselves bound in justice to impute the greater sin, be as- sured that the question is one of responsibilities only, not of facts. The definite result of all our modern haste to be rich is assuredly, and constantly, the murder of a certain number of persons by our hands every year. I have hot time to go into the details of another — on the whole, the broadest and terriblest way in which we cause the destruction of the poor — i namely, the way of luxury and waste, destroying, in improvi- dence, what might have been the support of thousands ; * but if you follow out the subject for yourselves at home — and what I have endeavoured to lay before you to-night will only be useful to you if you do — you will find that wherever and whenever men are endeavouring to make money hastily, and to avoid the labour which Providence has appointed to be the only source of honourable profit ; — and also wherever and whenever they permit themselves to spend it luxuriously, without reflecting how far they are misguiding the labour of others ; — there and then, in either case, they are literally and infallibly causing, for their own benefit or their own pleasure, a certain annual number of human deaths ; that, therefore, f The analysis of this error will "be found completely carried out in my lectures on the political economy of art. And it is an error worth analyzing ; for until it is finally trodden under foot, no healthy political, economical, or moral action is possible in any state. I do not say this impetuously or suddenly, for I have investigated this subject as deeply, and as long, as my own special subject of art ; and the principles of political economy which I have stated in those lectures are as sure as the principles of Euclid. Foolish readers doubted their certainty, be- cause I told them I had " never read any books on Political Economy.' 1 Did they suppose I had got my knowledge of art by reading books ? IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY. 131 the choice given to every man born into this world is, simply, whether he will be a labourer, or an assassin ; and that who- soever has not his hand on the Stilt of the plough, has it on the Hilt of the dagger. It would also be quite vain for me to endeavour to follow out this evening the lines of thought which would be sug- gested by the other two great political uses of iron in the Fetter and the Sword : a few words only I must permit my- self respecting both. 2. The Fetter. — As the plough is the typical instrument of industry, so the fetter is the typical instrument of the restraint or subjection necessary in a nation — either literally, for its evil-doers, or figuratively, in accepted laws, for its wise and good men. You have to choose between this figurative and literal use ; for depend upon it, the more laws you accept, the fewer penalties you will have to endure, and the fewer punish- ments to enforce. For wise laws and just restraints are to a noble nation not chains, but chain mail — strength and defence, though something also of an incumbrance. And this neces- sity of restraint, remember, is just as honourable to man as the necessity of labour. You hear every day greater numbers of foolish people speaking about liberty, as if it*were such an honourable thing : so far from being that, it is, on the whole, and in the broadest sense, dishonourable, and an attribute of the lower creatures. No human being, however great or powerful, was ever so free as a fish. There is always some- thing that he must, or must not do ; while the fish may do whatever he likes. All the kingdoms of the world put to- gether are not half so large as the sea, and all the railroads and wheels that ever were, or will be, invented are not so easy as fins. You will find, on fairly thinking of it, that it is his Kestraint which is honourable to man, not his Liberty ; and, what is more, it is restraint which is honourable even in the lower animals. A butterfly is much more free than a bee ; but you honour the bee more, just because it is subject to certain laws which fit it for orderly function in bee society. And throughout the world, of the two abstract things, liberty and restraint, restraint is always the more honourable. It is 132 TEE TWO PATHS. true, indeed, that in these and all other matters you nevel can reason finally from the abstraction, for both liberty and restraint are good when they are nobly chosen, and both are bad when they are basely chosen ; but of the two, I repeat, it is restraint which characterizes the higher creature, and betters the lower creature : and, from the ministering of the arch- angel to the labour of the insect, — from the poising of the planets to the gravitation of a grain of dust, — the power and glory of all creatures, and all matter, consist in their obedience, not in their freedom. The Sun has no liberty — a dead leaf has much. The dust of which you are formed has no liberty. Its liberty will come — with its corruption. And, therefore, I say boldly, though it seems a strange thing to say in England, that as the first power of a nation consists in knowing how to guide the Plough, its second pow- er consists in knowing how to wear the Fetter : — 3. The Sword. — And its third power, which perfects it as a nation, consist in knowing how to wield the sword, so that the three talismans of national existence are expressed in these three short words — Labour, Law, and Courage. This last virtue w 7 e at least possess ; and all that is to be alleged against us is that we do not honour it enough. I do not mean honour by acknowledgment of service, though some- times we are slow in doing even that. But we do not honour it enough in consistent regard to the lives and souls of our soldiers. How wantonly we have wasted their lives you have seen lately in the reports of their mortality by disease, which a little care and science might have prevented ; but we regard their souls less than their lives, by keeping them in ignorance and idleness, and regarding them merely as instruments of battle. The argument brought forward for the maintenance of a standing army usually refers only to expediency in the case of unexpected war, whereas, one of the chief reasons for the maintenance of an army is the advantage of the military system as a method of education. The most fiery and head- strong, who are often also the most gifted and generous of your youths, have always a tendency both in the lower and upper classes to offer themselves for your soldiers : others, IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY, 133 weak and unserviceable in a civil capacity, are tempted or en- trapped into the army in a fortunate hour for them : out of this fiery or uncouth material, it is only a soldier's discipline which can bring the full value and power. Even at present, by mere force of order and authority, the army is the salva- tion of myriads ; and men who, under other circumstances, would have sunk into lethargy or dissipation, are redeemed into noble life by a service which at once summons and directs their energies. How much more than this military education is capable of doing, you will find only when you make it edu- cation indeed. We have no excuse for leaving our private soldiers at their present level of ignorance and want of refine- ment, for we shall invariably find that, both among officers and men, the gentlest and best informed are the bravest ; still less have we excuse for diminishing our army, either in the present state of political events, or, as I believe, in any other conjunction of them that for many a year will be possible in this world. You may, perhaps, be surprised at my saying this ; perhaps surprised at my implying that war itself can be right, or nec- essary, or noble at -all. Nor do I speak of all war as neces- sary, nor of all war as noble. Both peace and war are noble or ignoble according to their kind and occasion. No man has a prof ounder sense of the horror and guilt of ignoble war than I have : I have personally seen its effects, upon nations, of un- mitigated evil, on soul and body, with perhaps as much pity, and as much bitterness of indignation, as any of those whom you will hear continually declaiming in the cause of peace. But peace may be sought in two ways. One way is as Gideon sought it, when he built his altar in Ophrah, naming it, THE TWO PATHS. Then the artists who are named as " admitting question of right and wrong," are those who from some mischance of cir- cumstance or short-coming in their education, do not always do right, even with relation to their own aims and powers. Take for example the quality of imperfection in drawing form. There are many pictures of Tintoret in which the trees are drawn with a few curved flourishes of the brush instead of leaves. That is (absolutely) wrong. If you copied the tree as a model, you would be going very wrong indeed. But it is relatively, and for Thitoret's purposes, right. In the nature of the superficial work you will find there must have been a cause for it. Somebody perhaps wanted the picture in a hurry to fill a dark corner. Tintoret good-naturedly did all he could — painted the figures tolerably — had five minutes left only for the trees, when the servant came. u Let him wait another five minutes." And this is the best foliage we can do in the time. Entirely, admirably, unsurpassably right, under the conditions. Titian would not have worked under them, but Tintoret was kinder and humbler ; yet he may lead you wrong if you don't understand him. Or, perhaps, another day, somebody came in while Tintoret was at work, who tor- mented Tintoret. An ignoble person ! Titian would have have been polite to him, and gone on steadily with his trees. Tintoret cannot stand the ignobleness ; it is unendurably re- pulsive and discomfiting to him. " The Black Plague take him— and the trees, too ! Shall such a fellow see me paint ! " And the trees go all to pieces. This, in you, would be mere ill-breeding and ill-temper. In Tintoret it was one of the necessary conditions of his intense sensibility ; had he been capable, then, of keeping his temper, he could never have done his greatest works. Let the trees go to pieces, by all means ; it is quite right they should ; he is always right. But in a background of Gainsborough you would find the trees unjustifiably gone to pieces. The carelessness of form there is definitely purposed by him ; — adopted as an advisable thing ; and therefore it is both absolutely and relatively wrong ; — it indicates his being imperfectly educated as a painter, and not having brought out all his powers. It may APPENDICES. still happen that the man whose work thus partially errone- ous is greater far, than others who have fewer faults. Gains- borough's and Reynolds' wrongs are more charming than al- most anybody else's right. Still, they occasionally are wrong — but the Venetians and Velasquez,'" never. I ought, perhaps, to have added in that Manchester address (only one does not like to gay things that shock people) some words of warning against painters likely to mislead the stu- dent. For indeed, though here and there something may be gained by looking at inferior men, there is always more to be gained by looking at the best ; and there is not time, with all the looking of human life, to exhaust even one great painter's instruction. How then shall we dare to waste our sight and thoughts on inferior ones, even if we could do so, which we rarely can, without danger of being led astray ? Nay, strictly speaking, what people call inferior painters are in general no painters. Artists are divided by an impassable gulf into the men who can paint, and who cannot. The men who can paint often fall short of what they should have done ; — are repressed, or defeated, or otherwise rendered inferior one to another: still there is an everlasting barrier between them and the men who cannot paint — who can only in various popular ways pre- tend to paint. And if once you know the difference, there is always some good to be got by looking at a real painter — seldom anything but mischief to be got out of a false one ; but do not suppose real painters are common. I do not speak of living men ; but among those who labour no more, in this England of ours, since it first had a school, we have had only five real painters ; — Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hogarth, Rich- ard Wilson, and Turner. The reader may, perhaps, think I have forgotten Wiikie. No. I once much overrated him as an expressional draughts- man, not having then studied the figure long enough to be able to detect superficial sentiment. But his colour I have never praised ; it is entirely false and valueless. And it would be unjust to English art if I did not here express my regret * At least after his style was formed ; early pictures, like the Adora- tion of the Magi in our Gallery, are of little value. 13S THE TWO PATER that the admiration of Constable, already harmful enough in England, is extending even into France. There was, perhaps, the making, in Constable, of a second or third-rate painter, if any careful discipline had developed in him the instincts which, though unparalleled for narrowness, were, as far as they went, true. But as it is, he is nothing more than an industrious and innocent amateur blundering his way to a superficial expression of one or two popular aspects of com- mon nature. And my readers may depend upon it, that all blame which I express in this sweeping way is trustworthy. I have often had to repent of over-praise of inferior men ; and continually to repent of insufficient praise of great men ; but of broad condemnation, never. For I do not speak it but after the most searching examination of the matter, and under stern sense of need for it : so that whenever the reader is entirely shocked by what I say, he may be assured every word is true.* It is just because it so much offends him, that it was neces- sary : and knowing that it must offend him, I should not have ventured to say it, without certainty of its truth. I say " cer- tainty," for it is just as possible to be certain whether the drawing of a tree or a stone is true or false, as whether the drawing of a triangle is ; and what I mean primarily by say- ing that a picture is in all respects worthless, is that it is in all respects False : which is not a matter of opinion at all, but a matter of ascertainable fact, such as I never assert till I have ascertained. And the thing so commonly said about my writ- ings, that they are rather persuasive than just; and that though my "language" may be good, I am an unsafe guide in art criticism, is, like many other popular estimates in such mat- ters, not merely untrue, but precisely the reverse of the truth ; it is truth, like reflections in water, distorted much by the shaking receptive surface, and in every particular, upside * He must, however, be careful to distinguish blame — however strongly expressed, of some special fault or error in a true painter, — from these general statements of inferiority or worthlessness. Thus he will find me continually laughing at Wilson's tree-painting ; not because Wilson could not paint, but because he had never looked at a tree. APPENDICES. 139 down. For my " language," until within the last six or seven years, was loose, obscure, and more or less feeble ; and still, though I have tried hard to mend it, the best I can do is in- ferior to much contemporary work. No description that I have ever given of anything is worth four lines of Tennyson ; and in serious thought, my half-pages are generally only worth about as much as a single sentence either of his, or of Carlyle's. They are, I well fcrust, as true and necessary ; but they are neither so concentrated nor so well put. But I am an entirely safe guide in art judgment : and that simply as the necessary result of my having given the labour of life to the determination of facts, rather than to the following of feelings or theories. Not, indeed, that my work is free from mistakes ; it admits many, and always must admit many, from its scat- tered range ; but, in the long run, it will be found to enter sternly and searchingly into the nature of what it deals with, and the kind of mistake it admits is never dangerous, consist- ing, usually, in pressing the truth too far. It is quite easy, for instance, to take an accidental irregularity in a piece of architecture, which less careful examination would never have detected at all, for an intentional irregularity ; quite possible to misinterpret an obscure passage in a picture, which a less earnest observer would never have tried to interpret. But mistakes of this kind — honest, enthusiastic mistakes — are never harmful ; because they are always made in a true direc- tion, — falls forward on the road, not into the ditch beside it ; and they are sure to be corrected by the next comer. But the blunt and dead mistakes made by too many other writers on art— the mistakes of sheer inattention, and want of sym- pathy- — are mortal. The entire purpose of a great thinker may be difficult to fathom, and we may be over and over again more or less mistaken in guessing at his meaning ; but the real, profound, nay, quite bottomless, and unredeemable mis- take, is the fool's thought — that he had no meaning. I do not refer, in saying this, to any of my statements re- specting subjects w T hich it has been my main work to study : as far as I am aware, I have never yet misinterpreted any picture of Turner's, though often remaining blind to the half 140 THE TWO PATHS. of what he had intended : neither have I as yet found any- thing to correct in my statements respecting Venetian archi- tecture ; * but in casual references to what has been quickly seen, it is impossible to guard wholly against error, without losing much valuable observation, true in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, and harmless even when erroneous. APPENDIX n. REYNOLDS* DISAPPOINTMENT. It is very fortunate that in the fragment of Mason's MSS., published lately by Mr. Cotton in his " Sir Joshua Keynolds 5 Notes," j record is preserved of Sir Joshua's feelings respect- ing the paintings in the window of New College, which might otherwise have been supposed to give his full sanction to this mode of painting on glass. Nothing can possibly be more curious, to my mind, than the great paintei's expectations ; or his having at all entertained the idea that the qualities of colour which are peculiar to opaque bodies could be obtained in a transparent medium ; but so it is : and with the simplic- ity and humbleness of an entirely great man he hopes that Mr. Jervas on glass is to excel Sir Joshua on canvas. Hap- pily, Mason tells us the result. With the copy Jervas made of this picture he was griev- ously disappointed. 6 1 had frequently,' he said to me, c pleased myself by reflecting, after I had produced what I thought a brilliant effect of light and shadow on my canvas, how greatly that effect would be heightened by the trans- parency which the painting on glass would be sure to pro- duce. It turned out quite the reverse.'" * The subtle portions of the Byzantine Palaces, given in precise meas- urements in the second volume of the " Stones of Venice, ' were alleged by architects to be accidental irregularities. They will be found, by every one who will take the pains to examine them, most assuredly and indisputably intentional, — and not only so, but one of the principal subjects of the designers care. f Smith, Soho Square, 1859. APPENDICES. 141 APPENDIX in. CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE. This passage in the lecture was illustrated by an enlargement of the woodcut, Fig. 1 ; but I did not choose to disfigure the middle of this book with it. It is copied from the 49th plate of the third edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Edin- burgh, 1797), and represents an English farmhouse arranged Fig. 1. on classical principles. If the reader cares to consult the work itself, he will find in the same plate another composi- tion of similar propriety, and dignified by the addition of a pediment, beneath the shadow of which "a private gentleman who has a small family may find conveniency." APPENDIX IV. SUBTLETY OF HAND. I had intended in one or other of these lectures to have spoken at some length of the quality of refinement in Colour, but found the subject would lead me too far. A few words 142 THE TWO PATHS. are, however, necessary in order to explain some expressions in the text. " Refinement In colour " is indeed a tautological expression, for colour, in the true sense of the word, does not exist until it is refined. Dirt exists, — stains exist, — and pigments exist, easily enough in all places ; and are laid on easily enough by all hands ; but colour exists only where there is tenderness, and can be laid on only by a hand which has strong life in it. The law concerning colour is very strange, very noble, in some sense almost awful. In every given touch laid on canvas, if one grain of the colour is inoperative, and does not take its full part in producing the hue, the hue will be imperfect. The grain of colour which does not work is dead. It infects all about it with its death. It must be got quit of, or the touch is spoiled. We acknowledge this instinctively in our use of the phrases "dead colour," "killed colour," "foul colour." Those words are, in some sort, literally true. If more colour is put on than is necessary, a heavy touch when a light one would have been enough, the quantity of colour that was not wanted, and is overlaid by the rest, is as dead, and it pollutes the rest. There will be no good in the touch. The art of painting, properly so called, consists in laying on the least possible colour that will produce the required re- sult, and this measurement, in all the ultimate, that is to say, the principal, operations of colouring, is so delicate that not one human hand in a million has the required lightness. The final touch of any painter properly so named, of Correggio — ■ Titian --Turner — or Reynolds — would be always quite invisi- ble to any one watching the progress of the w r ork, the films of hue being laid thinner than the depths of the grooves in mother-of-pearl. The work may be swift, apparently careless, nay, to the painter himself almost unconscious. Great painters are so organized that they do their best work without effort ; but analyze the touches afterwards, and you will find the struct- ure and depth of the colour laid mathematically demonstrable to be of literally infinite fineness, the last touches passing away at their edges by untraceable gradation. The very essence of APPENDICES. 143 a master's work may thus be removed by a picture-cleaner in ten minutes. Observe, however, this thinness exists only in portions of the ultimate touches, for which the preparation may often have been made with solid colours, commonly, and literally, called " dead colouring," but even that is alwa} r s subtle if a master lays it — subtle at least in drawing, if simple in hue ; and far- ther, observe that the refinement of work consists not in lay- ing absolutely little colour, but in always laying precisely the right quantity. To lay on little needs indeed the rare light- ness of hand ; but to lay much, — yet not one atom too much, and obtain subtlety, not by withholding strength, but by pre- cision of pause, — that is the master's final sign-manual — power, knowledge, and tenderness ail united. A great deal of colour may often be wanted ; perhaps quite a mass of it, such as shall project from the canvas ; but the real painter lays this mass of its required thickness and shape with as much precision as if it were a bud of a flower which he had to touch into blos- som ; one of Turner's loaded fragments of white cloud is mod- elled and gradated in an instant, as if it alone were the sub- ject of the picture, when the same quantity of colour, under another hand, would be a lifeless lump. The following extract from a letter in the Literary Gazette of 13th November, 1858, which I was obliged to write to de- fend a questioned expression respecting Turner's subtlety of hand from a charge of hyperbole, contains some interesting and conclusive evidence on the point, though it refers to pencil and chalk drawing only : — " I must ask } r ou to allow me yet leave to reply to the ob- jections you make to two statements in my catalogue, as those objections would otherwise diminish its usefulness. I have asserted that, in a given drawing (named as one of the chief in the series), Turner's pencil did not move over the thousandth of an inch without meaning ; atid you charge this expression with extravagant hyperbole. On the contrary, it is much within the truth, being merely a mathematically accurate description of fairly good execution in either drawing or engraving. It is only necessary to measure a piece of any ordinary good work to 1U THE TWO PATHS. ascertain this. Take, for instance, Finden's engraving at the 180th page of Rogers' poems ; in which the face of the figure, from the chin to the top of the brow, occupies just a quarter of an inch, and the space between the upper lip and chin as nearly as possible one-seventeenth of an inch. The whole mouth occupies one-third of this space, say one-fiftieth of an inch, and within that space both the lips and the much more difficult inner corner of the mouth are perfectly drawn and rounded, with quite successful and sufficiently subtle expression. Any artist will assure you that in order to draw a mouth as well as this, there must be more than twenty gradations of shade in the touches ; that is to say, in this case, gradations changing, with meaning, within less than the thousandth of an inch. "But this is mere child's play compared to the refinement of a first-rate mechanical work — much more of brush or pencil drawing by a master's hand. In order at once to furnish you with authoritative evidence on this point, I wrote to Mr. Kings- ley, tutor of Sidney-Sussex College, a friend to whom I always have recourse when I want to be precisely right in any matter ; for his great knowledge both of mathematics and of natural science is joined, not only with singular powers of delicate experimental manipulation, but with a keen sensitiveness to beauty in art. His answer, in its final statement respecting Turner's work, is amazing even to me, and will, I should think, be more so to your readers. Observe the successions of meas- ured and tested refinement : here is No. 1 : — " ' The finest mechanical work that I know, which is not optical, is that done by Nobert in the way of ruling lines. I have a series ruled by him on glass, giving actual scales from •000024 and -000016 of an inch, perfectly correct to these places of decimals, and he has executed others as fine as *000012, though I do not know how far he could repeat these last with accuracy.' " This is No. 1, of precision. Mr. Kingsley proceeds to No. 2 :— " ' But this is rude w r ork compared to the accuracy necessary for the construction of the object-glass of a microscope such as Rosse turns out.' APPENDICES. 145 "I am sorry to omit the explanation which follows of the ten lenses composing such a glass, ' each of which must be exact in radius and in surface, and all have their axes coinci- dent : * but it w r ould not be intelligible without the figure by which it is illustrated ; so I pass to Mr. Kingsley's No. 3 : — "'I am tolerably familiar/ he proceeds, 'with the actual grinding and polishing of lenses and specula, and have pro- duced by ray own hand some by no means bad optical work, and I have copied no small amount of Turner's w r ork, and I dill look with awe at the combined delicacy and precision of his hand ; it beats optical work out of siaHT. In optical work, as in refined drawing, the hand goes beyond the eye, and one has to depend upon the feel ; and when one has once learned what a delicate affair touch is, one gets a horror of all coarse work, and is ready to forgive any amount of feebleness, sooner than that boldness which is akin to impudence. In optics the distinc- tion is easily seen when the work is put to trial ; but here too, as in drawing, it requires an educated eye to tell the differ- ence when the work is only moderately bad ; but with s 'f bold " work, nothing can be seen but distortion and fog : and I heartily wish the same result would follow the same kind of handling in drawing ; but here, the boldness cheats the un- learned by looking like the precision of the true man. It is very strange how much better our ears are than our eyes in this country : if an ignorant man were to be " bold " with a violin, he would not get many admirers, though his boldness was far below that of ninety-nine out of a hundred drawings one sees.' " The words which I have put in italics in the above extract are those which w r ere surprising to me. I knew that Turner's was as refined as any optical work, but had no idea of its go- ing beyond it. Mr. Kingsley's word ' awe' occurring just be- fore, is, however, as I have often felt, precisely the right one. When once we begin at all to understand the handling of any truly great executor, such as that of any of the three great Ve- netians, of Correggio, or Turner, the awe of it is something greater than can be felt from the most stupendous natural scenery. For the creation of such a system as a high human intelligence, endowed with its ineffably perfect instruments of 140 THE TWO PATHS. eye and hand, is a far more appalling manifestation of Infinita Power, than the making either of seas or mountains. " After this testimony to the completion of Turner's work, I need not at length defend myself from the charge of hyper- bole in the statement that, ' as far as I know, the galleries of Europe may be challenged to produce one sketch * that shall equal the chalk study No. 45, or the feeblest of the memoranda in the 71st and following frames ; ? which memoranda, how- ever, it should have been observed, are stated at the 44th page to be in some respects ' the grandest w r ork in grey that he did in his life.' For I believe that, as manipulators, none but the four men whom I have just named (the three Vene- tians and Correggio) were equal to Turner ; and, as far as I know, none of those four ever put their full strength into sketches. But whether they did or not, my statement in the catalogue is limited by my own knowledge : and, as far as I can trust that knowledge, it is not an enthusiastic statement, but an entirely calm and considered one. It may be a mistake but it is not a hyperbole." APPENDIX V. I can only give, to illustrate this balcony, fac-similes of rough memoranda made on a single leaf of my note-book, with a tired hand ; but it may be useful to young students to see them, in order that they may know the difference between notes made to get at the gist and heart of a thing, and notes made merely to look neat. Only it must be observed that the best characters of free drawing are always lost even in the most careful fac- simile ; and I should not show even these slight notes in wood- cut imitation, unless the reader had it in his power, by a * A sketch, observe, — not a finished drawing. Sketches are only proper subjects of comparison with each other when they contain about the same quantity of work : the test of their merit is the quantity of truth told with a given number of touches. The assertion in the Cata- logue which this letter was written to defend, was made respecting th* sketch of Rome, No, 101. APPENDICES. 147 glance at the 21st or 35th plates in Modern Painters (and yet better, by trying to copy a piece of either of them), to ascer- tain how far I can draw or not. I refer to these plates, be- cause, though I distinctly stated in the preface that they, to- gether with the 12th, 20th, 34th, and 37th, were executed on the steel by my own hand, (the use of the dry point in the foregrounds of the 12th and 21st plates being moreover wholly different from the common processes of etching) I 'find it constantly assumed that they were engraved for me — as if direct lying in such matters were a thing of quite common usage. Fig. 2 is the centre-piece of the balcony, but a leaf-spray is Fig. 2. omitted on the right-hand side, having been too much buried among the real leaves to be drawn. Fig. 3 shows the intended general ef- fect of its masses, the five-leaved and six- leaved flowers being clearly distinguish- able at any distance. p IG< 3. Fig. 4 is its profile, rather carefully drawn at the top, to show the tulip and turkscap lily leaves. Underneath there is a plate of iron beaten into broad thin leaves, which gives the 148 THE TWO PATHS, centre of the balcony a gradual sweep outwards, like the side of a ship of war. The central profile is of the greatest im- Fig. 4. portance in ironwork, as the flow of it affects the curves of the whole design, not merely in surface, as in marble carving, but in their intersections, when the side is seen through the front. The lighter leaves, b b, are real bindweed. APPENDICES, 149 Fig. 5 shows two of the teeth of the border, illustrating their irregularity of form, which takes place quite to the ex- tent indicated. Fig. 6 is the border at the side of the balcony, showing the most interesting circumstance in the treatment of the whole, namely, the enlargement and retraction of the teeth of the cornice, as it approaches the wall. This treatment of the Fig. 5. Fig. 6. whole cornice as a kind of wreath round the balcony, having its leaves flung loose at the back, and set close at the front, as a girl would throw a wreath of leaves round her hair, is pre- cisely the most finished indication of a good workman's mind to be found in the whole thing. Fig. 7 shows the outline of the retracted leaves accurately. Fig. 7. It was noted in the text that the whole of this ironwork had been coloured. The difficulty of colouring ironwork rightly, and the necessity of doing it in some way or other, have been the principal reasons for my never having entered heartily into this subject ; for all the ironwork I have ever seen look beautiful was rusty, and rusty iron will not answer modern purposes. Nevertheless it may be painted, but it needs some one to do it who knows w r hat painting means, and few of us do — certainly none, as yet, of our restorers of deco* ration or writers on colour. 150 THE TWO FATES. It is a marvellous thing to me that book after book should appear on this last subject, without apparently the slightest consciousness on the part of the writers that the first necessity of beauty in colour is gradation, as the first necessity of beauty in line is curvature, — or that the second necessity in colour is mystery or subtlety, as the second necessity in line is softness. Colour ungradated is wholly valueless ; colour unmysterious is wholly barbarous. Unless it looses itself and melts away towards other colours, as a true line loses itself and melts away towards other lines, colour has no proper ex- istence) in the noble sense of the word. What a cube, or tetrahedron, is to organic form, ungradated and unconfused colour is to organic colour ; and a person who attempts to ar- range colour harmonies without gradation of tint is in pre- cisely the same category, as an artist who should try to com- pose a beautiful picture out of an accumulation of cubes and parallelopipeds. The value of hue in all illuminations on painted glass of fine periods depends primarily on the expedients used to make the colours palpitate and fluctuate ; inequality of brill- iancy being the condition of brilliancy, just as inequality of accent is the condition of power and loveliness in sound. The skill with which the thirteenth century illuminators in books, and the Indians in shawls and carpets, use the minutest atoms of colour to gradate other colors, and confuse the eye, is the first secret in their gift of splendour : associated, however, with so many other artifices which are quite instinctive and unteachable, that it is of little use to dwell upon them. Deli- cacy of organization in the designer given, you will soon have all, and without it, nothing. However, not to close my book with desponding w T ords, let me set down, as many of us like such things, five Laws to which there is no exception what- ever, and which, if they can enable no one to produce good colour, are at least, as far as they reach, accurately condem- natory of bad colour. 1, All good colour is gradated. A blush rose (or, better still, a blush itself), is the type of lightness in arrangement of pure hue. APPENDICES. 151 2. All harmonies of colour depend for their vitality on the action and helpful operation of every particle of colour, they contain. 3. The final particles of colour necessary to the complete- ness OF A COLOUR HARMONY ARE ALWAYS INFINITELY SMALL ; either laid by immeasurably subtle touches of the pencil, or pro- duced by portions of the colouring substance, however dis- tributed, which are so absolutely small as to become at the in- tended distance infinitely so to the eye. 4. No COLOUR HARMONY IS OF HIGH ORDER UNLESS IT INVOLVES indescribable tints. It is the best possible sign of a colour when nobody w r ho sees it knows what to call it, or how to give an idea of it to any one else. Even among simple hues the most valuable are those which cannot be defined ; the most precious purples will look brown beside pure purple, and purple beside pure brown ; and the most precious greens will be called blue if seen beside pure green, and green if seen beside pure blue. 5. The flner the eye for colour, the less it will require to gratify it intensely. But that little must be supremely good and pure, as the finest notes of a great singer, which are so near to silence. And a great colourist will make even the ab- sence of colour lovely, as the fading of the perfect voice makes silence sacred. LOVE'S MEINIE LECTURES ON GREEK AND ENGLISH BIRDS GIVEN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD AD YIOE. I publish these lectures at present roughly, in the form in which they were delivered, — (necessarily more brief and broken than that which may be permitted when time is not limited,) — because I know that some of their hearers wished to obtain them for immediate reference. Ultimately, I hope, they will be completed in an illustrated volume, containing at least six lectures, on the Robin, the Sw T allow, the Chough, the Lark, the Swan, and the Sea-gull. But months pass by me now, like days ; and my work remains only in design. I think it better, therefore, to let the lectures appear separately, with provisional wood-cuts, afterwards to be bettered, or replaced by more finished engravings. The illustrated volume, if ever finished, will cost a guinea ; but these separate lectures a shil- ling, or, if long, one shilling and sixpence each. The guinea's worth will, perhaps, be the cheaper book in the end ; but I shall be glad if some of my hearers feel interest enough in the subject to prevent their waiting for it. The modern vulgarization of the word " advertisement " renders, I think, the use of c advice ' as above, in the sense of the French ' avis ' (passing into our old English verb ' avise ') on the whole, preferable. Brantwood, June, 1873. LOVE'S MEINIE. u II etoit tout couvert d'oisiaulx." Romance of the frosE. LECTUEE I. THE ROBIN. 1. Among the more splendid pictures in the Exhibition of the Old Masters, this year, you cannot but remember the Vandyke portraits of the two sons of the Duke of Lennox. J think you cannot but remember it, because it would be diffi- cult to find, even among the works of Vandyke, a more strik- ing representation of the youth of our English noblesse ; nor one in which the painter had more exerted himself, or with better success, in rendering the decorous pride and natural grace of honourable aristocracy. Vandyke is, however, inferior to Titian and Velasquez, in that his effort to show this noblesse of air and persons 7 nay always be detected ; also the aristocracy of Vandyke's day vere already so far fearful of their own position as to feel anxiety that it should be immediately recognized. And the effect of the painter's conscious deference, and of the equally conscious pride of the bo^s, as they stood to be painted, has been some- what to shorten the power of the one, and to abase the dig- nity of the other. And thus, in the midst of my admiration of the youths' beautiful faces, and natural quality of majesty, set off by all splendours of dress and courtesies of art, I could not forbear questioning with myself what the true value was, in the scales of creation, of these fair human beings who set so high a value on themselves ; and, — as if the only answer, 158 LOVE'S ME1NIE. — the words kept repeating themselves in my ear, " Ye are of more value than many sparrows." 2. Passeres, arpovOoi, — the things that open their wings, and are not otherwise noticeable ; small birds of the land and wood ; the food of the serpent, of man, or of the stronger creatures of their own kind, — that even these, though among the simplest and obscurest of beings, have yet price in the eyes of their Maker, and that the death of one of them cannot take place but by His permission, has long been the subject of declamation in our pulpits, and the ground of much senti- ment in nursery education. But the declamation is so aim- less, and the sentiment so hollow, that, practically, the chief interest of the leisure of mankind has been found in the de- struction of the creatures which they professed to believe even the Most High would not see perish without pity ; and, in re- cent days, it is fast becoming the only definition of aristoc- racy, that the principal business of its life is the killing of sparrows. Sparrows, or pigeons, or partridges, what does it matter? " Centum mille perdrices plumbo confecit ; " * that is, indeed, too often the sum of the life of an English lord ; much ques- tionable now, if indeed of more value than that of many spar- rows. 3. Is it not a strange fact, that, interested in nothing so much for the last two hundred years, as in his horses, he yet left it to the farmers of Scotland to relieve draught horses from the bearing-rein ; f is it not one equally strange that, master of the forests of England for a thousand years, and of its libraries for three hundred, he left the natural history of birds to be written by a card-printer's lad of Newcastle? Written, and not written, for indeed we have no natural his- tory of birds written yet. It cannot be written but by a scholar and a gentleman ; and no English gentleman in re- cent times has ever thought of birds except as flying targets, or flavourous dishes. The only piece of natural history worth the name in the English language, that I know of, is in the * The epitaph on Count Zachdarni, in " Sartor Resartus." f Sir Arthur Helps. "Animals and their Masters,'' p. 67. THE ROBIN. 159 few lines of Milton on the Creation. The only example of a proper manner of contribution to natural history is in White's Letters from Selborne. You know I have always spoken of Bewick as pre-eminently a vulgar or boorish person, though of splendid honour and genius ; his vulgarity shows in noth- ing so much as in the poverty of the details he has collected, with the best intentions, and the shrewdest sense, for English ornithology. His imagination is not cultivated enough to enable him to choose, or arrange. 4. Nor can much more be said for the observations of mod- ern science. It is vulgar in a far worse way, by its arrogance and materialism. In general, the scientific natural history of a bird consists of four articles, — first, the name and estate of the gentleman w 7 hose gamekeeper shot the last that was seen in England ; secondly, two or three stories of doubtful origin, printed in every book on the subject of birds for the last fifty years ; thirdly, an account of the feathers, from the comb to the rump, with enumeration of the colours which are never more to be seen on the living bird by English eyes ; and, lastly, a discussion of the reasons why none of the twelve names which former naturalists have given to the bird are of any further use, and why the present author has given it a thirteenth, which is to be universally, and to the end of time, accepted. 5. You may fancy this is caricature ; but the abyss of con- fusion produced by modern science in nomenclature, and the utter void of the abyss when you plunge into it after any one useful fact, surpass all caricature. I have in my hand thirteen plates of thirteen species of eagles ; eagles all, or hawks all, or falcons all — whichever name you choose for the great race of the hook-headed birds of prey — some so like that you can't tell the one from the other, at the distance at which I show them to you, all absolutely alike in their eagle or falcon character, having, every one, the falx for its beak, and every one, flesh for its prey. Do you suppose the unhappy student is to be allowed to call them all eagles, or all falcons, to begin with, as would be the first condition of a wise nomenclature, establishing resemblance by specific name, before marking 100 LOVE'S MEINIE. variation by individual name ? No such luck. I hold you up the plates of the thirteen birds one by one, and read you their names off the back : — The first is an Aquila. The second, a Halisetus. The third, a Milvus. The fourth,. a Pandion. The fifth, an Astur. The sixth, a Falco. The seventh, a Pernis. The eighth, a Circus. The ninth, a Buteo. The tenth, an Archibuteo. The eleventh, an Accipiter. The twelfth, an Erythropus. And the thirteenth, a Tinnunculus. There's a nice little lesson to entertain a parish schoolboy with, beginning his natural history of birds ! 6. There are not so many varieties of robin as of hawk, but the scientific classifiers are not to be beaten. If they cannot find a number of similar birds to give different names to, they will give two names to the same one. Here are two pictures of your own redbreast, out of the two best modern works on ornithology. In one, it is called " Motacilla rubecula;" in the other, Eubecula familiaris." 7. It is indeed one of the most serious, as one of the most absurd, weaknesses, of modern naturalists to imagine that any presently invented nomenclature can stand, even were it adopted by the consent of nations, instead of the conceit of individuals. It will take fifty years' digestion before the re- cently ascertained elements of natural science can permit the arrangement of species in any permanently (even over & limited period) nameable order ; nor then, unless a great man is born to perceive and exhibit such order. In the meantime, the simplest and most descriptive nomenclature is the best. Every one of these birds, for instance, might be called falco in Latin, hawk in English, some word being added to dis- tinguish the genus, which should describe its principal aspect THE ROBUST. 161 or habit. Falco montium, Mountain Hawk ; Falco silvarum, Wood Hawk ; Falco procellarum, Sea Hawk ; and the like. Then, one descriptive epithet would mark species. Falco montium, aureus, Golden Eagle ; Falco silvarum, apivorus, Honey Buzzard ; and so on ; and the naturalists of Vienna, Paris, and London should confirm the names of known creat- ures, in conclave, once every half century, and let them so stand for the next fifty years. 8. In the meantime, you yourselves, or, to speak more generally, the young rising scholars of England,— all of you who care for life as well as literature, and for spirit, — even the poor souls of birds, — as well as lettering of their classes in books, — you, with all care, should cherish the old Saxon- English and Norman-French names of birds, and ascertain them with the most affectionate research — never despising even the rudest or most provincial forms : all of them will, some day or other, give you clue to historical points of in- terest. Take, for example, the common English name of this low-flying falcon, the most tameable and affectionate of his tribe, and therefore, I suppose, fastest vanishing from field and wood, the buzzard. The name comes from the Latin "buteo," still retained by the ornithologists; but, in its original form, valueless, to you. But when you get it com- fortably corrupted into Provencal " Busac," (whence gradually the French busard, and our buzzard,) you get from it the de- lightful compound " busacador," " adorer of buzzards" — meaning, generally, a sporting person ; and then you have Dante's Bertrand de Born, the first troubadour of war, bear- ing witness to you how the love of mere hunting and falconry was already, in his day, degrading the military classes, and, so far from being a necessary adjunct of the noble disposition of lover or soldier, was, even to contempt, showing itself separate from both. " Le ric home, cassador, M'enneion, e l buzacador. Parian de volada, d'austor, Ne jamais d'armas, ni d'amor." 162 LOVE'S ME1NTE. The rich man, the chaser, Tires me to death ; and the adorer of buzzards. They talk of covey and hawk, And never of arms, nor of love. " Cassador," of course, afterwards becomes " chasseur," and "austor" "vautour." But after you have read this, and fa initialized your ear with the old word, how differently Milton's phrase will ring to you, — "Those who thought no better of the Living God than of a buzzard idol," — and how literal it becomes, when we think of the actual difference between a member of Parliament in Milton's time, and the Busacador of to-day ; — and all this freshness and value in the reading, observe, come of your keeping the word which great men have used for the bird, instead of letting the anatomists blunder out a new one from their Latin dictionaries. 9. There are not so many nameable varieties, I just now said, of robin as of falcon ; but this is somewhat inaccurately stated. Those thirteen birds represented a very large proportion of the entire group of the birds of prey, which in my sevenfold classi- fication I recommended you to call universally, " hawks." The robin is only one of the far greater multitude of small birds which live almost indiscriminately on grain or insects, and which I recommended you to call generally " sparrows ; " but of the robin itself, there are two important European varieties — one red-breasted, and the other blue-breasted. 10. You probably, some of you, never heard of the blue- breast ; very few, certainly, have seen one alive, and, if alive, certainly not wild in England. Here is a picture of it, daintily done,* and you can see the pretty blue shield on its breast, perhaps, at this distance. Vain shield, if ever the fair little thing is wretched enough to set foot on English ground ! I find the last that was seen was shot at Margate so long ago as 1842, — and there seems to be no official record of any visit before that, since Mr. Thomas Embledon shot one on Newcastle town moor in 1816. But this rarity of visit to us is strange ; other birds have no such * Mr. Gould's, in his " Birds of Gr*a* Britain,-'* THE ROBIN". 163 clear objection to being shot, and really seem to come to Eng- land expressly for the purpose. And yet this blue-bird — (one can't say " blue robin " — I think we shall have to call him "bluet," like the cornflower) — stays in Sweden, where it sings so sweetly that it is called "a hundred tongues." 11. That, then, is the utmost which the lords of land, and masters of science, do for us in their watch upon our feathered suppliants. One kills them, the other writes classifying epi- taphs. We have next to ask what the poets, painters, and monks have done. The poets — among whom I affectionately and reverently class the sweet singers of the nursery, mothers and nurses- have done much ; very nearly all that I care for your thinking of. The painters and monks, the one being so greatly under the influence of the other, we may for the present class to- gether; and may almost sum their contributions to ornithology in saying that they have plucked the wings from birds, to make angels of men, and the claws from birds, to make devils of men. If you were to take away from religious art these two great helps of its — I must say, on the whole, very feeble — imagina- tion ; if you were to take from it, I say, the power of putting wings on shoulders, and claws on fingers and toes, how won- derfully the sphere of its angelic and diabolic characters would be contracted ! Eeduced only to the sources of expression in face or movements, you might still find in good early sculpt* ure very sufficient devils ; but the best angels would resolve themselves, I think, into little more than, and not often into so much as, the likenesses of pretty women, with that grave and (I do not say it ironically) majestic expression which they put on, when, being very fond of their husbands and children, they seriously think either the one or the other have misbe- haved themselves. 12. And it is not a little discouraging for me, and may well make you doubtful of my right judgment in this endeavour to lead you into closer attention to the bird, with its wings and claws still in its own possession ;— it is discouraging, I say, to 164: LOVE S MEINIE. observe that the beginning of such more faithfrD d,nd accurate observation in former art, is exactly coeval with the commence- ment of its decline. The feverish and ungraceful natural history of Paul, called, " of the birds," Paolo degli Uccelli, produced, indeed, no harmful result on the minds of his con- temporaries ; they watched in him, with only contemptuous admiration, the fantasy of zoological instinct which filled his house with painted dogs, cats, and birds, because he was too poor to fill it with real ones. Their judgment of this morbidly naturalistic art was conclusively expressed by the sentence of Donatello, when going one morning into the Old Market, to buy fruit, and finding the animal painter uncovering a pict- ure, which had cost him months of care, (curiously symbolic in its subject, the infidelity of St. Thomas, of the investigatory fingering of the natural historian,) " Paul, my friend," said Donatello, " thou art uncovering the picture just when thou shouldst be shutting it up." 13. No harm, therefore, I repeat, but, on the contrary, some wholesome stimulus to the fancy of men like Luca and Dona- tello themselves, came of the grotesque and impertinent zoology of Uccello. But the fatallest institutor of proud modern anatomical and scientific art, and of all that has polluted the dignity, and darkened the charity, of the greater ages, was Antonio Polla- juolo of Florence. Antonio (that is to say) the Poulterer — so named from the trade of his grandfather, and with just so much of his grandfather's trade left in his own disposition, that being set by Lorenzo Ghiberti to complete one of the ornamental festoons of the gates of the Florentine Baptistery, there, (says Vasari) "Antonio produced a quail, which may still be seen, and is so beautiful, nay, so perfect, that it wants nothing but the power of flight." 14. Here, the morbid tendency was as attractive as it was subtle. Ghiberti himself fell under the influence of it ; allowed the borders of his gates, with their fluttering birds and bossy fruits, to dispute the spectators' favour with the re- ligious subjects they enclosed ; and, from that day forward, minuteness and muscularity were, with curious harmony of THE ROBIN. 165 evil, delighted in together ; and the lancet and the microscope, in the hands of fools, were supposed to be complete substi- tutes for imagination in the souls of wise men : so that even the best artists are gradually compelled, or beguiled, into compliance with the curiosity of their day ; and Francia, in the city of Bologna, is held to be a " kind of god, more particu- larly " (again I quote Vasari) 4 c after he had painted a set of caparisons for the Duke of Urbino, on which he depicted a great forest all on fire, and whence there rushes forth an im- mense number of every kind of animal, with several human figures. This terrific, yet truly beautiful representation, was all the more highly esteemed for the time that had been ex- pended on it in the plumage of the birds, and other minutia? in the delineation of the different animals, and in the diversity of the branches and leaves of the various trees seen therein ; " and thenceforward the catastrophe is direct, to the ornitho- logical museums which Breughel painted for gardens of Eden, and to the still life and dead game of Dutch celebrities. 15. And yet I am going to invite you to-day to examine, down to almost microscopic detail, the aspect of a small bird, and to invite you to do this, as a most expedient and sure step in your study of the greatest art. But the difference in our motive of examination will entirely alter the result. To paint birds that we may show how mi- nutely we can paint, is among the most contemptible occupa- tions of art. To paint them, that we may show how beautiful they are, is not indeed one of its highest, but quite one of its pleasantest and most useful ; it is a skill within the reach of every student of average capacity, and which, so far as ac- quired, will assuredly both make their hearts kinder, and their lives happier. Without further preamble, I will ask you to look to-day, more carefully than usual, at your well-known favourite, and to think about him with some precision. 16. And first, "Where does he come from ? I stated that my lectures were to be on English and Greek birds ; but we are apt to fancy the robin all our own. How exclusively, do you suppose, he really belongs to us ? You would think this was 166 LOVE'S MEIJSiIE. the first point to be settled in any book about him. I have hunted all my books through, and can't tell you how much he is our own, or how far he is a traveller. And, indeed, are not all our ideas obscure about migration itself ? You are broadly told that a bird travels, and how wonderful it is that it finds its way ; but you are scarcely ever told, or led to think, what it really travels for — whether for food, for warmth, or for seclusion — and how the travelling is connected with its fixed home. Birds have not their town and country houses, — their villas in Italy, and shooting boxes in Scotland. The country in which they build their nests is their proper home, — the country, that is to say, in which they pass the spring and summer. Then they go south in tbe winter, for food and warmth ; but in what lines, and by what stages ? The general definition of a migrant in this hemi- sphere is a bird that goes north to build its nest, and south for the winter ; but, then, the one essential point to know about it is the breadth and latitude of the zone it properly in- habits, — that is to say, in which it builds its nest ; next, its habit of life, and extent and line of southing in the winter ; and, finally, its manner of travelling. 17. Now, here is this entirely familiar bird, the robin. Quite the first thing that strikes me about it, looking at it as a painter, is the small effect it seems to have had on the minds of the southern nations. I trace nothing of it definitely, either in the art or literature of Greece or Italy. I find, even, no definite name for it ; you don't know if Lesbia's "passer " had a red breast, or a blue, or a brown. And yet Mr. Gould says it is abundant in all parts of Europe, in all the islands of the Mediterranean, and in Madeira and the Azores. And then he says— (now notice the puzzle of this), — " In many parts of the Continent it is a migrant, and, contrary to what obtains with us, is there treated as a vagrant, for there is scarcely a coun- try across the water in which it is not shot down and eaten. " "In many parts of the Continent it is a migrant. " In what parts — how far — in what manner ? 18. In none of the old natural history books can I find any account of the robin as a traveller, but there is, for once, some THE ROBIK 167 sufficient reason for their reticence. He has a curious fancy in his manner of travelling. Of all birds, you would think he was likely to do it in the cheerfulest way, and he does it in the saddest. Do you chance to have read, in the Life of Charles Dickens, how fond he was of taking long walks in the night and alone ? The robin, en voyage, is the Charles Dickens of birds. He always travels in the night, and alone ; rests, in the day, wherever day chances to find him; sings a little, and pretends he hasn't been anywhere. He goes as far, in the winter, as the north-west of Africa ; and in Lombardy, arrives from the south early in March ; but does not stay long, going on into the Alps, where he prefers wooded and wild districts. So, at least, says my Lombard informant. I do not find him named in the list of Cretan birds ; but even if often seen, his dim red breast was little likely to make much impression on the Greeks, who knew the flamingo, and had made it, under the name of Phoenix or Phcenicopterus, the centre of their myths of scarlet birds. They broadly em- braced the general aspect of the smaller and more obscure species, under the term $ovOos, which, as I understand their use of it, exactly implies the indescribable silky brown, the groundwork of all other colour in so many small birds, which is indistinct among green leaves, and absolutely identifies it- self with dead ones, or w r ith mossy stems. 19. I think I show it you more accurately in the robin's back than I could in any other bird; its mode of transition into more brilliant colour is, in him, elementarily simple ; and although there is nothing, or rather because there is nothing, in his plumage, of interest like that of tropical birds, or even of our own game-birds, I think it will be desirable for you to learn first from the breast of the robin what a feather is. Once knowing that, thoroughly, we can further learn from the swallow what a wing is ; from the chough what a beak is ; and from the falcon what a claw is. I must take care, however, in neither of these last two par- ticulars, to do injustice to our little English friend here ; and before we come to his feathers, must ask you to look at hia bill and his feet. 168 LOVE'S METWIE. 20. I do not think it is distinctly enough felt by us that the beak of a bird is not only its mouth, but its hand, or rather its two hands. For, as its arms and hands are turned into wings, all it has to depend upon, in economical and practical life, is its beak. The beak, therefore, is at once its sword, its carpenter's tool-box, and its dressing-case ; partly also its musical instrument ; all this besides its function of seizing and preparing the food, in which functions alone it has to be a trap, carving-knife, and teeth, all in one. 21. It is this need of the beak's being a mechanical tool w^hich chiefly regulates the form of a bird's face as opposed to a four-footed animal's. If the question of food w r ere the only one, w r e might wonder why there were not more four-footed creatures living on seeds than there are ; or why those that do — field-mice and the like — have not beaks instead of teeth. But the fact is that a bird's beak is by no means a perfect eat- ing or food-seizing instrument. A squirrel is far more dexter- ous with a nut than a cockatoo ; and a dog manages a bone incomparably better than an eagle. But the beak has to do so much more ! Pruning feathers, building nests, and the in- cessant discipline in military arts, are all to be thought of, as much as feeding. Soldiership, especially, is a much more imperious necessity among birds than quadrupeds. Neither lions nor wolves ha- bitually use claws or teeth in contest with their own species ; but birds, for their partners, their nests, their hunting- grounds, and their personal dignity, are nearly always in con- tention ; their courage is unequalled by that of any other race of animals capable of comprehending danger ; and their per- tinacity aud endurance have, in all ages, made them an example to the brave, and an amusement to the base, among mankind. 22. Nevertheless, since as sword, as trowel, or as pocket- comb, the beak of the bird has to be pointed, the collection oi seeds may be conveniently entrusted to this otherwise pene- trative instrument, and such food as can only be obtained by probing crevices, splitting open fissures, or neatly and mi- nutely picking things hp, is allotted, pre-eminently, to the bird species. THE ROBIN, 1G9 The food of the robin, as you know, is very miscellaneous. Linnaeus says of the Swedish one, that it is "delectatus euonymi baccis," — " delighted with dogwood berries," — the dogwood growing abundantly in Sweden, as once in Forfar- shire, where it grew, though only a bush usually in the south, with trunks a foot or eighteen inches in diameter, and the tree thirty feet high. But the Swedish robin's taste for its berries is to be noted by you, because, first, the dogwood berry is commonly said to be so bitter that it is not eaten by birds (Loudon, "Arboretum/' ii., 497, 1.) ; and, secondly, be- cause it is a pretty coincidence that this most familiar of household birds should feed fondly from the tree which gives the housewife her spindle, — the proper name of the dogwood in English, French, and German being alike " Spindle-tree." It feeds, however, with us, certainly, most on worms and insects. I am not sure how far the following account of its mode of dressing its dinners may depend on : I take it from an old book on Natural History, but find it, more or less, confirmed by others : It takes a worm by one extremity in its beak, and beats it on the ground till the inner part comes away. Then seizing it in a similar manner by the other end, it entirely cleanses the outer part, which alone it eats." One's first impression is that this must be a singularly un- pleasant operation for the worm, however fastidiously delicate and exemplary in the robin. But I suppose the real meaning- is, that as a worm lives by passing earth through its body, the robin merely compels it to quit this — not ill-gotten, indeed, but now quite unnecessary — wealth. We human creatures, who have lived the lives of worms, collecting dust, are served by Death in exactly the same manner. 23. You will find that the robin's beak, then, is a very pret- tily representative one of general bird power. As a weapon, it is very formidable indeed ; he can kill an adversary of his own kind with one blow of it in the throat ; and is so pugna- cious, "valde pugnax," says Linnaeus, "ut non una arbor duos capiat erithacos," — "no single tree can hold two cock- robins ; " and for precision of seizure, the little flat hook at the end of the upper mandible is one of the most delicately 170 LOVE'b MEINIE. formed points of forceps which you can find among the grain eaters. But I pass to one of his more special perfec- tions. 24 He is very notable in the exquisite silence and precis- ion of his movements, as opposed to birds who either creak in flying, or waddle in walking. " Always quiet," says Gould, "for the silkiness of his plumage renders his movements noiseless, and the rustling of his wings is never heard, any more than his tread on earth, over which he bounds with amazing sprightliness." You know how much importance I have always given, among the fine arts, to good dancing. If you think of it, you will, find one of the robin's very chief in- gratiatory faculties is his dainty and delicate movement, — his footing it featly here and there. Whatever prettiness there may be in his red breast, at his brightest he can always be outshone by a brickbat. But if he is rationally proud of any- thing about him, I should think a robin must be proud of his legs. Hundreds of birds have longer and more imposing ones — but for real neatness, finish, and precision of action, com- mend me to his fine little ankles, and fine little feet ; this long stilted process, as you know, corresponding to our ankle-bone. Commend me, I say, to the robin for use of his ankles — he is, of all birds, the pre-eminent and characteristic Hopper ; none other so light, so pert, or so swift. 25. We must not, however, give too much credit to his legs in this matter. A robin's hop is half a flight ; he hops, very essentially, with wings and tail, as well as with his feet, and the exquisitely rapid opening and quivering of the tail-feathers certainly give half the force to his leap. It is in this action that he is put among the motacillse, or wagtails ; but the orni- thologists have no real business to put him among them. The swing of the long tail-feathers in the true wagtail is entirely consequent on its motion, not impulsive of it — the tremulous shake is after alighting. But the robin leaps with wing, tail, and foot, all in time, and all helping each other. Leaps, I say ; and you check at the word ; and ought to check : you look at a bird hopping, and the motion is so much a matter of course, you never think how it is done. But do you think THE ROBIN. 171 you would find it easy to hop like a robin if you had two — all but wooden — legs, like this ? 26. I have looked wholly in vain through all my books on birds, to find some account of the muscles it uses in hopping, and of the part of the toes with which the spring is given. I must leave you to find out that for yourselves ; it is a little bit of anatomy which I think it highly desirable for you to know, but which it is not my business to teach you. Only observe, this is the point to be made out. You leap yourselves, with the toe and ball of the foot ; but, in that power of leaping, you lose the faculty of grasp ; on the contrary, with your hands, you grasp as a bird with its feet. But you cannot hop on your hands. A cat, a leopard, and a monkey, leap or grasp with equal ease ; but the action of their paws in leaping is, I imagine, from the fleshy ball of the foot ; while in the bird, characteristically ya[xij/C)vv^ this fleshy ball is reduced to a boss or series of bosses, and the nails are elongated into sickles or horns ; nor does the springing power seem to depend on the development of the bosses. They are far more developed in an eagle than a robin ; but you know how unpardonably and preposterously awkward an eagle is when he hops. When they are most of all developed, the bird walks, runs, and digs well, but leaps badly. 27. I have no time to speak of the various forms of the ankle itself, or of the scales of armour, more apparent than real, by which the foot and ankle are protected. The use of this lecture is not either to describe or to exhibit these varieties to you, but so to awaken your attention to the real points of character, that, when you have a bird's foot to draw, you may do so with intelligence and pleasure, knowing whether you want to express force, grasp, or firm ground pressure, or dex- terity and tact in motion. And as the actions of the foot and the hand in man are made by every great painter perfectly expressive of the character of mind, so the expressions of rapacity, cruelty, or force of seizure, in the harpy, the gryphon, and the hooked and clawed evil spirits of early religious art, can only be felt by extreme attention to the original form. 172 LOVE'S MEIN1E. 28. And now I return to our main question, for the robin's breast to answer, "What is a feather?" You know something about it already ; that it is composed of a quill, with its lateral filaments, terminating generally, more or less, in a point ; that these extremities of the quills, lying over each other like the tiles of a house, allow the wind and rain to pass over them with the least possible resistance, and form a protection alike from the heat and the cold ; which, in structure much resembling the scale-armour assumed by man for very different objects, is, in fact, intermediate, exactly, between the fur of beasts and the scales of fishes ; having the minute division of the one, and the armour- like symmetry and succession of the other. 29. Not merely symmetry, observe, but extreme flatness. Feathers are smoothed down, as a field of corn by wind with rain ; only the swathes laid in beautiful order. They are fur, so structurally placed as to imply, and submit to, the perpetu- ally swift forward motion. In fact, I have no doubt the Dar- winian theory on the subject is that the feathers of birds once stuck up all erect, like the bristles of a brush, and have only been blown flat by continual flying. Nay, we might even sufficiently represent the general man- ner of conclusion in the Darwinian system by the statement that if you fasten a hair-brush to a mill-wheel, w T ith the handle forward, so as to develop itself into a neck by moving always in the same direction, and within continual hearing of a steam- whistle, after a certain number of revolutions the hair-brush will fall in love with the whistle ; they will marry, lay an egg, and the produce will be a nightingale. . 30. Whether, however, a hog's bristle can turn into a feather or not, it is vital that you should know the present difference between them. The scientific people will tell you that a feather is composed of three parts — the down, the laminae, and the shaft. But the common-sense method of stating the matter is that a feather is composed of two parts, a shaft with lateral fila- ments. For the greater part of the shaft's length, these fila- ments are strong and nearly straight, forming, by their attach- THE ROBIN. 173 ment, a finely warped sail, like that of a windmill. But towards the root of the feather they suddenly become weak, and confusedly flexible, and form the close down which im- mediately protects the bird's body. To show you the typical arrangement of these parts, I choose, as I have said, the robin ; because, both in his power of flying, and in his colour, he is a moderate and balanced bird ; — not turned into nothing but wings, like a swallow, or nothing but neck and tail, like a peacock. And first for his flying power. There is one of the long feathers of robin's wing, and here (Fig. 1) the analysis of its form. B [Fig. 1. — Twice the size of reality.] 31. First, in pure outline (a), seen from above, it is very nearly a long oval, but with this peculiarity, that it has, as it were, projecting shoulders at a 1 and a 2. I merely desire you to observe this, in passing, because one usually thinks of the contour as sweeping unbroken from the root to the point. I have not time to-day to enter on any discussion of the reason for it, which will appear when we examine the placing of the wing-feathers for their stroke. Now, I hope you are getting accustomed to the general method in which I give you the analysis of all forms — leaf, or feather, or shell, or limb. First, the plan ; then the pro- file ; then the cross-section. I take next, the profile of my feather (b, Fig. 1), and find 174 LOVE'S MEINIE. that it is twisted as the sail of a windmill is, but more dis* tinctly, so that you can alw r ays see the upper surface of the feather at its root, and the under at its end. Every primary wing-feather, in the fine flyers, is thus twisted ; and is best described as a sail striking with the power of a scymitar, but with the flat instead of the edge. 32. Further, you remember that on the edges of the broad side of feathers you find always a series of undulations, irreg- ularly sequent, and lapping over each other like waves on sand. You might at first imagine that this appearance was owing to a slight ruffling or disorder of the filaments ; but it A fi Fig. 2. is entirely normal, and, I doubt not, so constructed, in order to ensure a redundance of material in the plume, so that no accident or pressure from wind may leave a gap anywhere. How this redundance is obtained you will see in a moment by bending any feather the wrong way. Bend, for instance, this plume, b, Fig. 2, into the reversed curve, a, Fig. 2 ; then all the filaments of the plume become perfectly even, and there are no waves at the edge. But let the plume return into its proper form, b, and the tissue being now contracted into a smaller space, the edge waves are formed in it instantly. Hitherto, I have been speaking only of the filaments ar- THE ROBW. 175 ranged for the strength and continuity of the energetic plume ; they are entirely different when they are set together for dec- oration instead of force. After the feather of the robin's wing let us examine one from his breast. 33. I said, just now, he might be at once outshone by a brickbat. Indeed, the day before yesterday, sleeping at Lichfield, and seeing, the first thing when I woke in the morning, (for I never put down the blinds of my bedroom windows,) the not uncommon sight in an English country town of an entire house-front of very neat, and very flat, and very red bricks, with very exactly squared square windows in it ; and not feeling myself in anywise gratified or improved by the spectacle, I was thinking how in this, as in all other good, the too much destroyed all. The breadth of a robin's breast in brick-red is delicious, but a whole house-front of brick-red as vivid, is alarming. And yet one cannot gener- alize even that trite moral with any safety — for infinite breadth of green is delightful, however green ; and of sea or sky, how- ever blue. You must note, however, that the robin's charm is greatly helped by the pretty space of grey plumage which separates the red from the brown back, and sets it off to its best advan- tage. There is no great brilliancy in it, even so relieved ; only the finish of it is exquisite. 34. If you separate a single feather, you will find it more like a transparent hollow shell than a feather (so delicately rounded the surface of it), — grey at the root, where the down is,—- tinged, and only tinged, with red at the part that over- laps and is visible ; so that, when three or four more feathers have overlapped it again, all together, with their joined red, are just enough to give the colour determined upon, each of them contributing a tinge. There are about thirty of these glowing filaments on each side, (the whole being no larger across than a well-grown currant,) and each of these is itself another exquisite feather, with central quill and lateral webs, whose filaments are not to be counted. The extremity of these breast plumes parts slightly into two, as you see in the peacock's, and many other such decora* 176 LOVE'S MEINIE. live ones. The transition from the entirely leaf-like shape of the active plume, with its oblique point, to the more or less symmetrical dualism of the decorative plume, corresponds with the change from the pointed green leaf to the dual, or heart-shaped, petal of many flowers. I shall return to this part of our subject, having given you, I believe, enough of detail for the present. 35. I have said nothing to-day of the mythology of the bird, though I told you that would always be, for us, the most im- portant part of its natural history. But I am obliged, some- times, to take what we immediately want, rather than what, ultimately, w r e shall need chiefly. In the second place, you probably, most of you, know more of the mythology of the robin than I do, for the stories about it are all northern, and I know scarcely any myths but the Italian and Greek. You will find under the name " Bobin," in Miss Yonge's exhaustive and admirable " History of Christian Names," the various titles of honour and endearment connected with him, and with the general idea of redness, — from the bishop called " Bright Bed Fame," who founded the first great Christian church on the Rhine, (I am afraid of your thinking I mean a pun, in connection with robins, if I tell you the locality of ifc,) down through the Hoods, and Roys, and Grays, to Robin Good- fellow, and Spenser's " Hobbinol," and our modern "Hob," joining on to the " goblin," which comes from the old Greek Ko/?a,\os. But I cannot let you go without asking you to compare the English and French feeling about small birds, in Chaucer's time, with our own on the same subject. I say English and French, because the original French of the Ro- mance of the Rose show 7 s more affection for birds than even Chaucer's translation, passionate as he is, always, in love for any one of his little winged brothers or sisters. Look, how- ever, either in the French or English, at the description of the coming of the God of Love, leading his carol-dance, in the garden of the Rose. His dress is embroidered with figures of flowers and of beasts ; but about him fly the living birds. The French is : THE ROBIN. 177 II etoit tout convert d'oisiaulx De rossignols et de papegaux De calendre, et de mesangel. II semblait que ce fut une angle Qui fuz tout droit venuz du ciel. 36. There are several points of philology in this transitional French, and in Chaucer's translation, which it is well worth your patience to observe. The monkish Latin " angelus," you see, is passing through the very unpoetical form " angle," into " ange ; " but, in order to get a rhyme with it in that angular form, the French troubadour expands the bird's name, " mes- ange," quite arbitrarily, into " mesangel." Then Chaucer, not liking the " mes " at the beginning of the word, changes that unscrupulously into " arch ; " and gathers in, though too shortly, a lovely bit from another place about the nightingales flying so close round Love's head that they strike some of the leaves off his crown of roses ; so that the English runs thus : But nightingales, a full great rout That flien over his head about, The leaves felden as they flien And he was all with birds wrien, With popinjay, with nightingale, With chelaundre, and with wodewale, With finch, with lark, and with archangel. He seemed as he were an angell, That down were comen from Heaven clear. Now, when I first read this bit of Chaucer, without referring to the original, I was greatly delighted to find that there was a bird in his time called an archangel, and set to work, with brightly hopeful industry, to find out what it was. I was a little discomfited by finding that in old botany the word only meant " dead-nettle," but was still sanguine about my bird, till I found the French form descend, as you have seen, into a mesangel, and finally into mesange, which is a provincialism from /xetor, and means, the smallest of birds — or, specially here, — a titmouse. I have seldom had a less expected or more ig- nominious fall from the clouds. 37. The other birds, named here and in the previous de- 178 LOVE'S ME1NIE. scription of the garden, are introduced, as far as I can judge, nearly at random, and with no precision of imagination like that of Aristophanes ; but with a sweet childish delight in crowding as many birds as possible into the smallest space. The popinjay is always prominent ; and I want some of you to help me (for I have not time at present for the chase) in hunting the parrot down on his first appearance in Europe* Just at this particular time he contested favour even w T ith the falcon ; and I think it a piece of good fortune that I chanced to draw for you, thinking only of its brilliant colour, the pop- injay, which Carpaccio allows to be present on the grave occa- sion of St. George's baptizing the princess and her father. 38. And, indeed, as soon as the Christian poets begin to speak of the singing of the birds, they show T themselves in quite a different mood from any that ever occurs to a Greek. Aristophanes, with infinitely more skill, describes, and partly imitates, the singing of the nightingale ; but simply as beauti- ful sound. It " fills the thickets with honey ; " and if in the often-quoted — just because it is not characteristic of Greek lit- erature — passage of the Coloneus, a deeper sentiment is shown, that feeling is dependent on association of the bird-voices with deeply pathetic circumstances. But this troubadour finds his heart in heaven by the power of the singing only : — Trop parfoisaient beau servise Ciz oiselles que je vous devise. II cliantaient un chant ytel Com fussent angle esperitel. We want a moment more of word-chasing to enjoy this. cc Oiseau," as you know, comes from " avis ; " but it had at this time got " oisel " for its singular number, of which the terminating " sel " confused itself with the " selle," from " an- cilla " in domisella and demoiselle ; and the feminine form " oiselle " thus snatched for itself some of the delightfulness be- longing to the title of a young lady. Then note that "esperitel " does not here mean merely spiritual, (because all angels are spiritual,) but an " angle esperitel " is an angel of the air. So the Ronm. 179 that, in English, we could only express the meaning in w,ne such fashion as this — They perfected all their service of Love, These maiden birds that i tell you of. They sang such a song, so finished-fair, As if they were angels, born of the air. 39. Such were the fancies, then, and the scenes, in which Englishmen took delight in Chaucer's time. England was then a simple country ; we boasted, for the best kind of riches, our birds and trees, and our wives and children. We have now grown to be a rich one ; and our first pleasure is in shoot- ing our birds ; but it has become too expensive for us to keep our trees. Lord Derby, whose crest is the eagle and child — you will find the northern name for it, the bird and bantling, made classical by Scott — is the first to propose that wood- birds should have no more nests. We must cut down all our trees, he says, that we may effectively use the steam-plough ; and the effect of the steam-plough, I find by a recent article in the "Cornhill Magazine,' 5 is that an English labourer must not any more have a nest, nor bantlings, neither ; but may only expect to get on prosperously in life, if he be perfectly skilful, sober, and honest, and dispenses, at least until he is forty-fiVe, with the "luxury of marriage." 40. Gentlemen, you may perhaps have heard me blamed for making no effort here to teach in the artizans' schools. But I can only say that, since the future life of the English labourer or artizan (summing the benefits to him of recent philosophy and economy) is to be passed in a country without angels and without birds, without prayers and without songs, without trees and without flowers, in a state of exemplary sobriety, and (extending the Catholic celibacy of the clergy into celibacy of the laity) in a state of dispensation with the luxury of marriage, I do not believe he will derive either profit or entertainment from lectures on the Fine Arts. 180 LOVE'S ME1N1K LECTURE n. THE SWALLOW. 41. We are to-day to take note of the form of a creature which gives us a singular example of the unity of what artists call beauty, with the fineness of mechanical structure, often mistaken for it. You cannot but have noticed how little, dur- ing the years of my past professorship, I have introduced any questions as to the nature of beauty. I avoided them, partly because they are treated of at length in my books ; and partly because they are, in the last degree, unpractical. We are born to like or dislike certain aspects of things ; nor could I, by any arguments, alter the defined tastes which you received at your birth, and which the surrounding circumstances of life have enforced, without any possibility of your voluntary resistance to them. And the result of those surrounding cir- cumstances, to-day, is that most English youths would have more pleasure in looking at a locomotive than at a swallow ; and that many English philosophers would suppose the pleas- ure so received to be through a new sense of beauty. But the meaning of the word " beauty " in the fine arts, and in classical literature, is properly restricted to those very qualities in which the locomotion of a swallow differs from that of an engine. 42. Not only from that of an engine ; but also from that of animals in w T hose members the mechanism is so complex as to give them a resemblance to engines. The dart of the common house-fly, for instance, in full strength, is a more wonderful movement than that of a swallow. The mechanism of it is not only more minute, but the swiftness of the action so much greater, that the vibration of the wing is invisible. But though a schoolboy might prefer the locomotive to the swal- low, he would not carry his admiration of finely mechanical velocity into unqualified sympathy with the workmanship of the God of Ekron ; and would generally suppose that flies THE SWALLOW. 181 were made only to be food for the more graceful fly-catcher, — • whose finer grace you will discover, upon reflection, to be owing to the very moderation and simplicity of its structure, and to the subduing of that infinitude of joints, claws, tissues, veins, and fibres which inconceivably vibrate in the micro- scopic * creature's motion, to a quite intelligible and simple balance of rounded body upon edged plume, maintained not without visible, and sometimes fatigued, exertion, and raising the lower creature into fellowship with the volition and the virtue of humanity. 43. With the virtue, I say, in an exceedingly qualified sense ; meaning rather the strength and art displayed in over- coming difficulties, than any distinct morality of disposition. The bird has kindly and homely qualities ; but its principal " virtue," for -us, is its being an incarnate voracity, and that it moves as a consuming and cleansing power. You sometimes hear it said of a humane person that he would not kill a fly : from 700 to 1000 flies a day are a moderate allowance for a baby swallow. 44. Perhaps, as I say this, it may occur to some of you to think, for the first time, of the reason of the bird's name. For it is very interesting, as a piece of language study, to con- sider the different power on our minds, — nay the different sweetness to the ear, — which, from association, these same two syllables receive, when we read them as a noun, or as a verb. Also, the word is a curious instance of the traps which are continually open for rash etymologists. At first, nothing Would appear more natural than that the name should have been given to the bird from its reckless function of devour- ing. But if you look to your Johnson, you will find, to your better satisfaction, that the name means " bird of porticos,'* or porches, from the Gothic " swale ; " " subdivale," — so that it goes back in thought as far as Virgil's, " Et nunc porticibus vacuis, nunc humida circum, stagna sonat." Notice, in pass- ing, how a simile of Virgil's, or any other great master's, will probably tell in two or more ways at once. Juturna is com- * I call it so because the members and action of it cannot be seen with the unaided eye. 182 LOVES ME IN IE. pared to the swallow, not merely as winding and turning swiftly in her chariot, but as being a water-nymph by birth, — " Stagnis quae, fluminibusque sonoris, praesidet." How many different creatures in one the swallow is by birth, as a Virgil- ian simile is many thoughts in one, it would take many more lectures than one to show you clearly ; but I will indicate them with such rough sketch as is possible. 45. It belongs, as most of you know, to a family of birds called Fissi-rostres, or literally, split-beaks. Split heads would be a better term, for it is the enormous width of mouth and power of gaping which the epithet is meant to express. A dull sermon, for instance, makes half the congregation " fissi- rostres." The bird, however, is most vigilant when its mouth is widest, for it opens as a net to catch whatever comes in its way, — hence the French, giving the whole family the more literal name, " Gobble-fly " — Gobe-mouche, extend the term to the open-mouthed and too acceptant appearance of a sim- pleton. 46. Partly in order to provide for this width of mouth, but more for the advantage in flight, the head of the swallow is rounded into a bullet shape, and sunk down on the shoulders, with no neck whatever between, so as to give nearly the aspect of a conical rifle bullet to the entire front of the body ; and, indeed, the bird moves more like a bullet than an arrow — de- pendent on a certain impetus of weight rather than on sharp penetration of the air. I say dependent on, but I have not yet been able to trace distinct relation between the shapes of birds and their powers of flight. I suppose the form of the body is first determined by the general habits and food, and that nature can make any form she chooses volatile ; only one point I think is always notable, that a complete master of the art of flight must be short-necked, so that he turns altogether, if he turns at all. You don't expect a swallow to look round a corner before he goes round it ; he must take his chance. The main point is, that he may be able to stop himself, and turn, in a moment. 47. The stopping, on any terms, is difficult enough to un- derstand : nor less so, the original gaining of the pace. We THE SWALLOW, 183 always think of flight as if the main difficulty of it were only in keeping up in the air ; — but the buoyancy is conceivable enough, the far more wonderful matter is the getting along. You find it hard work to row yourself at anything like speed, though your impulse-stroke is given in a heavy element, and your return-stroke in a light one. But both in birds and fishes, the impelling stroke and its return are in the same ele- ment ; and if, for the bird, that medium yields easily to its impulse, it secedes as easily from the blow that gives it. And if you think what an effort you make to leap six feet, with the earth for a fulcrum, the dart either of a trout or a swallow, with no fulcrum but the water and air they penetrate, will seem to you, I think, greatly marvellous. Yet of the mode in which it is accomplished you will as yet find no undisputed account in any book on natural history, and scarcely, as far as I know, definite notice even of the rate of flight. What do you suppose it is ? We are apt to think of the migration of a swallow, as we should ourselves of a serious journey. How long, do you think, it would take him, if he flew uninterrupt- edly, to get from here to Africa ? 48. Michelet gives the rate of his flight (at full speed, of course,) as eighty leagues an hour. I find no more sound au- thority ; but do not doubt his approximate accuracy ; * still how curious and how provoking it is that neither White of Selborne, Bewick, Yarrell, nor Gould, says a word about this, one should have thought the most interesting, power of the bird.f Taking Michelet's estimate — eighty French leagues, roughly two hundred and fifty miles, an hour — we have a thousand miles in four hours. That is to say, leaving Devonshire after an early breakfast, he could be in Africa to lunch. * I wrote this some time ago, and the endeavour I have since made to verify statements on points of natural history which I had taken on trust have given me reason to doubt everybody's accuracy. The ordi- nary flight of the swallow does not, assuredly, even in the dashes, reach anything like this speed. f Incidentally suggestive sentences occur in the history of Selborne, but its author never comes to the point, in this case. 184 love's me mm 49. He could, I say, if his flight were constant ; but though there is much inconsistency in the accounts, the sum of testi- mony seems definite that the swallow is among the most fatiguable of birds. " When the weather is hazy," (I quote Yarrell) " they will alight on fishing-boats a league or two from land, so tired that when any one tries to catch them, they can scarcely fly from one end of the boat to the other. I have no time to read to you the interesting evidence on this point given by Yarrell, but only that of the brother of "White of Selborne, at Gibraltar. "My brother has always found/' he himself writes, "that some of his birds, and par- ticularly the swallow kind, are very sparing of their pains in crossing the Mediterranean : for when arrived at Gibraltar, they do not ' set forth their airy caravan, high over seas,' but scout and hurry along in little detached parties of six or seven in a company ; and sweeping low, just over the surface of the land and water, direct their course to the opposite continent at the narrowest passage they can find." 50. You will observe, however, that it remains an open question whether this fear of the sea may not be, in the swal- low, like ours of the desert. The commissariat department is a serious one for birds that eat a thousand flies a day when just out of the egg ; and it is possible that the weariness of swallows at sea may depend much more on fasting than flying. Captain (or Admiral?) Sir Charles Wager says that "one spring-time, as he came into soundings in the English Chan- nel, a great flock of swallows came and settled on all his rig- ging ; every rope was covered ; they hung on one another like a swarm of bees ; even the decks were filled with them. They seemed almost famished and spent, and were only feath- ers and bone ; but, being recruited with a night's rest, took their flight in the morning." 51. Now I detain you on this point somewhat, because it is intimately connected with a more important one. I told you we should learn from the swallow what a wing was. Few other birds approach him in the beauty of it, or apparent power. And yet, after all this care taken about it, he gets tired ; and instead of flying, as we should do in his place all THE SWALLOW. 185 over the world, and tasting the flavor of the midges in every marsh which the infinitude of human folly has left to breed gnats instead of growing corn, — he is of all birds, character- istically, except when he absolutely can't help it, the stayer at home ; and contentedly lodges himself and his family in an old chimney, when he might be flying all over the world. At least you would think, if he built in an English chimney this year, he would build in a French one next. But no. Michelet prettily says of him, " He is the bird of return." If you will only treat him kindly, year after year, he comes back to the same niche, and to the same hearth, for his nest. To the same niche ; and builds himself an opaque walled house within that. Think of this a little, as if you heard of it for the first time. 52. Suppose you had never seen a swallow ; but that its general habit of life had been described to you, and you had been asked, how you thought such a bird would build its nest. A creature, observe, whose life is to be passed in the air ; whose beak and throat are shaped with the fineness of a net for the catching of gnats ; and whose feet, in the most perfect of the species, are so feeble that it is called the Footless Swal- low, and cannot stand a moment on the ground with comfort. Of all land birds, the one that has least to do with the earth ; of all, the least disposed, and the least able, to stop to pick anything up. What will it build with ? Gossamer, we should sav , — thistledown, — anything it can catch floating, like flies. But it builds with stiff clay. 53. And observe its chosen place for building also. You would think, by its play in the air, that not only of all birds, but of all creatures, it most delighted in space and freedom. You would fancy its notion of the place for a nest would be the openest field it could find ; that anything like confinement would be an agony to it ; that it w r ould almost expire of horror at the sight of a black hole. And its favourite home is down a chimney. 54. Not for your hearth's sake, nor for your company's. Do not think it. The bird will love you if you treat it kindly ; is as frank and friendly as bird can be ; but it does not, more 186 LOVE'S ME IN IE. than others, seek your society. It comes to your house be cause in no wild wood, nor rough rock, can it find a cavity close enough to please it. It comes for the blessedness of im- prisonment, and the solemnity of an unbroken and constant shadow, in the tower, or under the eaves. Do you suppose that this is part of its necessary economy, and that a swallow could not catch flies unless it lived in a hole? Not so. This instinct is part of its brotherhood with another race of creatures. It is given to complete a mesh in the reticulation of the orders of life. 55. t have already given you several reasons for my wish that you should retain, in classifying birds, the now rejected order of Picae. I am going to read you a passage from Hum- boldt, which shows you what difficulties one may get into for want of it. You will find in the second volume of his personal narrative, an account of the cave of Caripe in New Andalusia, which is inhabited by entirely nocturnal birds, having the gaping mouths of the goat-sucker and the swallow, and yet feeding on fruit. Unless, which Mr. Humboldt does not tell us, they sit under the trees outside, in the night time, and hold their mouths open, for the berries to drop into, there is not the smallest occasion for their having wide mouths, like swallows. Still less is there any need, since they are fruit eaters, for their living in a cavern 1,500 feet out of daylight. They have only, in consequence, the trouble of carrying in the seeds to feed their young, and the floor of the cave is thus covered, by the seeds they let fall, with a growth of unfortunate pale plants, which have never seen day. Nay, they are not even content with the darkness of their cave ; but build their nests in the funnels with which the roof of the grotto is pierced like a sieve ; live actually in the chimney, not of a house, but of an Egyptian sepulchre ! The colour of this bird, of so remark- able taste in lodging, Humboldt tells us, is "of dark bluish- grey, mixed with streaks and specks of black. Large white spots, which have the form of a heart, and which are bordered THE SWALLOW. 187 with black, mark the head, the wings, and the tail. The spread of the wings, which are composed of seventeen or eighteen quill feathers, is three feet and a half. Suppressing, with Mr. Cuvier, the order of Picae, we must refer this ex- traordinary bird to the Sparrows" 56. We can only suppose that it must be, to our popular sparrows, what the swallow of the cinnamon country is to our subordinate swallow. Do you recollect the cinnamon swal- lows of Herodotus, who build their mud nests in the faces of the cliffs where Dionusos was brought up, and where nobody can get near them ; and how the cinnamon merchants fetch them joints of meat, which the unadvised birds, flying up to their nests with, instead of cinnamon, — nest and all come down together, — the original of Sindbad's valley-of-diamond story ? 57. Well, Humboldt is reduced, by necessities of recent classification, to call a bird three feet and a half across the wings, a sparrow. I have no right to laugh at him, for I am just going, myself, to call the cheerfullest and brightest of birds of the air, an owl. All these architectural and sepul- chral habits, these Egyptian manners of the sand-martin, dig- ging caves in the sand, and border-trooper's habits of the chimney swallow, living in round towers instead of open air, belong to them as connected with the tribe of the falcons through the owls ! and not only so, but with the mammalia through the bats ! A swallow is an emancipated owl, and a glorified bat ; but it never forgets its fellowship with night. 58. Its ancient fellowship, I had nearly written ; so natural is it to think of these similarly-minded creatures, when the feelings that both show are evidently useless to one of them, as if the inferior had changed into the higher. The doctrine of development seems at first to explain all so pleasantly, that the scream of consent with which it has been accepted by men of science, and the shriller vociferation of the public's gregarious applause, scarcely permit you the power of antag- onist reflection. I must justify to-day, in graver tone than usual, the terms in which I have hitherto spoken, — it may have been thought with less than the due respect to my audi- ence, — of the popular theory. 188 LOVE'S ME IN IE. 59. Supposing that the octohedrons of galena, of gold, and of oxide of iron, were endowed with powers of reproduction, and perished at appointed dates of dissolution or solution, you would without any doubt have heard it by this time as- serted that the octohedric form, which was common to all, indicated their descent from a common progenitor ; and it would have been ingeniously explained to you how the angu- lar offspring of this eight-sided ancestor had developed them- selves, by force of circumstances, into their distinct metallic perfections ; how the galena had become grey and brittle under prolonged subterranean heat, and the gold yellow and ductile, as it was rolled among the pebbles of amber-coloured streams. 60. By the denial to these structures of any individually reproductive energy, you are forced to accept the inexplicable (and why expect it to be otherwise than inexplicable ?) fact, of the formation of a series of bodies having very similar aspects, qualities, and chemical relations to other substances, which yet have no connection whatever with each other, and are governed, in their relation with their native rocks, by entirely arbitrary laws. It has been the pride of modern chemistry to extricate herself from the vanity of the alchemist, and to admit, with resignation, the independent, though ap- parently fraternal, natures, of silver, of lead, of platinum, — aluminium, — potassium. Hence, a rational philosophy would deduce the probability that when the arborescence of dead crystallization rose into the radiation of the living tree, and sentient plume, the splendour of nature in her more exalted power would not be restricted to a less variety of design ; and the beautiful caprice in which she gave to the silver its frost, and to the opal its fire, w 7 ould not be subdued under the slow influences of accident and time, when she wreathed the swan with snow, and bathed the dove in iridescence. That the infinitely more exalted powers of life must exercise more inti- mate influence over matter than the reckless forces of cohe- sion ; — and that the loves and hatreds of the now conscious creatures would modify their forms into parallel beauty and degradation, we might have anticipated by reason, and we THE SWALLOW. 189 ought long since to have known by observation. But this law of its spirit over the substance of the creature involves, necessarily, the indistinctness of its type, and the existence of inferior and of higher conditions, which whole seras of hero- ism and affection — whole geras of misery and misconduct, con- firm into glory, or confuse into shame. Collecting the causes of changed form, in lower creatures, by distress, or by adapta- tion, — by the disturbance or intensifying of the parental strength, and the native fortune — the wonder is, not that species should sometimes be confused, but that the greater number of them remain so splendidly, so manifestly, so eter- nally distinct ; and that the vile industries and vicious curios- ities of modem science, while they have robbed the fields of England of a thousand living creatures, have not created in them one. 61. But even in the paltry knowledge we have obtained, what unanimity have we ? — what security ? Suppose any man of ordinary sense, knowing the value of time, and the relative importance of subjects of thought, and that the whole scientific world was agog concerning the origin of species, desired to know first of all — what was meant by a species. He would naturally look for the definition of species first among the higher animals, and expect it to be best defined in those which were best known. And being referred for satisfaction to the 220th page of the first volume of Mr. Dar- win's "Descent of Man," he would find this passage : — "Man has been studied more carefully than any other organic being, and yet there is the greatest possible diversity among capable judges, whether he should be classed as a sin- gle species or race, or as two (Virey), as three (Jacquinot), as four (Kant), five (Blumenbach), six (Buffon), seven (Hunter), eight (Agassiz), eleven (Pickering), fifteen (BorySt. Vincent), sixteen (Desmouiins), twenty-two (Morton), sixty (Crawford), or as sixt3^-three according to Burke." And in the meantime, while your men of science are thus vacillating, in the definition of the species of the only animal they have the opportunity of studying inside and out, between one and sixty-three ; and disputing about the origin, in past 190 LOVE'S ME1NIE. ages, of what they cannot define in the present one ; and de< ciphering the filthy heraldries which record the relation of humanity to the ascidian and the crocodile, you have ceased utterly to distinguish between the two species of man, ever- more separate by infinite separation : of whom the one, capa- ble of loyalty and of love, can at least conceive spiritual natures which have no taint from their own, and leave behind them, diffused among thousands on earth, the happiness they never hoped, for themselves, in the skies ; and the other, capable only of avarice, hatred, and shame, who in their lives are the companions of the swine, and leave in death nothing but food for the worm and the vulture. G2. Now I have first traced for you the relations of the creature we are examining to those beneath it and above, to the bat and to the falcon. But you will find that it has still others to entirely another world, As you watch it glance and skim over the surface of the waters, has it never struck you what relation it bears to the creatures that glance and glide under their surface ? Fly-catchers, some of them, also, — fly-catchers in the same manner, with wide mouth ; while in motion the bird almost exactly combines the dart of the trout with the dash of the dolphin, to the rounded forehead and projecting muzzle of which its own bullet head and bill exactly correspond. In its plunge, if you watch it bathing, yon may see it dip its breast just as much under the water as a porpoise shows its back above. You can only rightly de- scribe the bird by the resemblances, and images of what it seems to have changed from, — then adding the fantastic and beautiful contrast of the unimaginable change. It is an owl that has been trained by the Graces. It is a bat that loves the morning light. It is the aerial reflection of a dolphin. It is the tender domestication of a trout. 63. And yet be assured, as it cannot have been all these creatures, so it has never, in truth, been any of them. The transformations believed in by the rnythologists are at least spiritually true ; you cannot too carefully trace or too accu- rately consider them. But the transformations believed in by the anatomist are as yet proved true in no single instance, THE SWALLOW. 191 and in no substance, spiritual or material ; and I cannot too often, or too earnestly, urge you not to waste your time in guessing what animals may once have been, while you remain in nearly total ignorance of what they are. 64. Do you even know distinctly from each other, — (for that is the real naturalist's business ; instead of confounding them with each other), — do you know distinctly the five great species of this familiar bird ? — the swallow, the house-martin, the sand-martin, the swift, and the Alpine swift? — or can you so much as answer the first question which would suggest it- self to any careful observer of the form of its most familiar species, — yet which I do not find proposed, far less answered, in any scientific book,— namely, why a swallow has a swallow- tail? It is true that the tail feathers in many birds appear to be entirely, — even cumbrously, decorative ; as in the peacock, and birds of paradise. But I am confident that it is not so in the swallow, and that the forked tail, so defined in form and strong in plume, has indeed important functions in guid- ing the flight ; yet notice how surrounded one is on all sides with pitfalls for the theorists. The forked tail reminds you at once of a fish's ; and yet, the action of the two creatures is wholly contrary. A fish lashes himself forward with his tail, and steers with his fins ; a swallow lashes himself forward with his fins, and steers with his tail ; partly, not necessarily, because in the most dashing of the swallows, the swift, the fork of the tail is the least developed. And I never watch the bird for a moment without finding myself in some fresh puzzle out of which there is no clue in the scientific books. I want to know, for instance, how the bird turns. What does it do with one wing, what with the other? Fancy the pace that has to be stopped ; the force of bridle-hand put out in an instant. Fancy how the wings must bend with the strain ; what need there must be for the perfect aid and work of every feather in them. There is a problem for you, stu- dents of mechanics, — How does a swallow turn ? You shall see, at all events, to begin with, to-day, how it gets along. 192 LOVE'S ME IN IE. 65. I say you shall see ; but indeed you have often seen, and felt, — at least with your hands, if not with your shoul- ders, — when you chanced to be holding the sheet of a sail. I have said that I never got into scrapes by blaming people wrongly ; but I often do by praising them wrongly. I never praised, without qualification, but one scientific book in my life (that I remember) — this of Dr. Pettigrew's on the Wing ;* — and now I must qualify my praise considerably, discover- ing, when I examined the book farther, that the good doctor had described the motion of a bird as resembling that of a kite, without ever inquiring what, in a bird, represented that somewhat important part of a kite, the string. You will, however, find the book full of important observations, and illustrated by valuable drawings. But the point in question * "On the Physiology of Wings." Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Vol. xxvi. , Part ii. I cannot sufficiently express either my wonder or regret at the petulance in which men of science are con- tinually tempted into immature publicity, by their rivalship with each other. Page after page of this book, which, slowly digested and taken counsel upon, might have been a noble contribution to natural history, is occupied with dispute utterly useless to the reader, on the question of the priority of the author, by some months, to a French savant, in the statement of a principle which neither has yet proved ; while page after page is rendered worse than useless to the reader by the author's passionate endeavour to contradict the ideas of unquestionably previous investigators. The problem of flight was, to all serious purpose, solved by Borelli in 1680, and the following passage is very notable as an ex- ample of the way in which the endeavour to obscure the light of former ages too fatally dims and distorts that by which modern men of science walk, themselves. " Borelli, and all who have written since his time, are unanimous in affirming that the horizontal transference of the body of the bird is due to the perpendicular vibration of the wings, and to the yielding of the posterior or flexible margins of the wings in an up- ward direction, as the wings descend. I" (Dr. Pettigrew) "am, how- ever, disposed to attribute it to the fact (1st), that the icings, both when elevated and depressed, leap forwards in curves, those curves uniting to form a continuous waved track ; (2nd), to the tendency which the body of the bird has to siting forwards, in a more or less horizontal direction, when once set in motion ; (3rd), to the construction of the wings ; they are elastic helices or screws, which twist and untwist while they vibrate, and tend to bear upwards and onwards any weight suspended from them ; (4th), to the reaction of the air on the under surfaces of the wings ; (5th), THE SWALLOW. 193 you must settle for yourselves, and you easily may. Some of you, perhaps, knew, in your time, better than the doctor, how a kite stopped ; but I do not doubt that a great many of you also know, now, what is much more to the purpose, how a ship gets along. I will take the simplest, the most natural, the most beautiful of sails, — the lateen sail of the Mediter- ranean. 66. I draw it rudely in outline, as it would be set for a side-wind on the boat you probably know best, — the boat of burden on the Lake of Geneva (Fig. 3), not confusing the drawing by adding the mast, whicfa, you know, rakes a little, carrying the yard across it. (a). Then, with your permis- sion, I will load my boat thus, with a few casks of Vevay vintage — and, to keep them cool, we will put an awning over to the ever-varying poicer with which the icings are urged, this being greatest at the beginning of the down-stroke, and least at the end of the up one ; (6th), to the contraction of the voluntary muscles and elastic ligaments, and to the effect produced by the various inclined surfaces formed by the wings during their oscillations ; (7th), to the weight of the bird — weight itself, when acting upon wings, becoming a propelling power, and so contributing to horizontal motion." I will collect these seven reasons for the forward motion, in the gist of them, which I have marked by italics, that the reader may better judge of their collective value. The bird is carried forward, according to Dr. Pettigrew — 1. Because its wings leap forward. 2. Because its body has a tendency to swing forward. 3. Because the wings are screws so constructed as to screw upwards and onwards any body suspended from them. 4. Because the air reacts on the under surfaces- of the wings. 5. Because the wings are urged with ever-varying power. 6. Because the voluntary muscles contract. 7. Because the bird is heavy. What must be the general conditions of modern science, when it is possible for a man of great experimental knowledge and practical in- genuity, to publish nonsense such as this, becoming, to all intents and purposes, insane, in the passion of his endeavour to overthrow the statements of his rival ? Had he merely taken patience to consult any elementary scholar in dynamics, he would have been enabled to under- stand his own machines, and develop, with credit to himself, what had been rightly judged or noticed by others. 194 LOVE'S MEIN1E. them, so (6). Next, as we are classical scholars, instead of this rustic stem of the boat, meant only to run easily on a flat shore, we will give it an Attic e^oXov (c). (We have no busi- ness, indeed, yet, to put an e^oXov oh a boat of burden, but I hope some day to see all our ships of war loaded with bread and wine, instead of artillery.) Then I shade the entire form (c) ; and, lastly, reflect it in the water (d) — and you have seen something like that before, besides a boat, haven't you ? a b c d Fig. 3. There is the gist of the whole business for you, put in very small space ; with these only differences : in a boat, the air strikes the sail ; in a bird, the sail strikes the air : in a boat, the force is lateral, and in a bird downwards ; and it has its sail on both sides. I shall leave you to follow out the mechanical problem for yourselves, as far as the mere resolu- THE SWALLOW. 195 tion of force is concerned. My business, as a painter, is only with the exquisite organic weapon that deals with it. 67. Of which you are now to note farther, that a bird is required to manage his wing so as to obtain two results with one blow: — he has to keep himself up, as well as to get along. But observe, he only requires to keep himself up because he has to get along. The buoyancy might have been given at once, if nature had wanted that only ; she might have blown the feathers up with the hot air of the breath, till the bird rose in air like a cork in water. But it has to be, not a buoyant cork, but a buoyant bullet. And therefore that it may have momentum for pace, it must have weight to carry ; and to carry that weight, the wings must deliver their blow with effective vertical, as well as oblique, force. Here, again, you may take the matter in brief sum. What- ever is the ship's loss is the bird's gain ; whatever tendency the ship has to leeway, is all given to the bird's support, so that every atom * of force in the blow is of service. 68. Therefore you have to construct your organic weapon, so that this absolutely and perfectly economized force may be distributed as the bird chooses at any moment. That, if it wants to rise, it may be able to strike vertically more than obliquely ; — if the order is, go a-head, that it may put the oblique screw on. If it wants to stop in an instant, that it may be able to throw its wings up full to the wind ; if it wants to hover, that it may be able to lay itself quietly on the wind with its wings and tail, or, in calm air, to regulate their vibration and expansion into tranquillity of gliding, or of pausing power. Given the various proportions of weight and wing ; the conditions of possible increase of muscular force and quill-strength in proportion to size ; and the different objects and circumstances of flight, — you have a series of ex- quisitely complex problems, and exquisitely perfect solutions, which the life of the youngest among you cannot be long * I don't know what word to use for an infinitesimal degree or divided portion of force : one can't properly speak of a force being cut into pieces ; but I can think of no other word than atom. 196 LOVES MEINIE. enough to read through so much as once, and of which the future infinitudes of human life, however granted or ex- tended, never will be fatigued in admiration. 69. I take the rude outline of sail in Fig. 3, and now con- sidering it as a jib of one of our own sailing vessels, slightly exaggerate the loops at the edge, and draw curved lines from them to the opposite point, Fig. 4 ; and I haye a reptilian or dragon's wing, which would, with some ramification of the supporting ribs, become a bat' s or moth's ; that is to say, an extension of membrane between the ribs (as in an umbrella), which will catch the wind, and flutter upon it, like a leaf ; but cannot strike it to any purpose. The flying squirrel drifts like a falling leaf ; the bat flits like a black rag torn at the edge. To give power, we must have plumes that can strike, as with the flat of a sword-blade ; and to give perfect power, these must be laid over each other, so that each may support the one below it. I use the word below advisedly : w r e have to strike down, The lowest feather is the one that first meets the ad- verse force. It is the one to be supported. Now for the manner of the support. You must all know w 7 ell the look of the machicolated parapets in mediaeval cas- tles. You know they are carried on rows of small, projecting buttresses constructed so that, though the uppermost stone, far-projecting, would break easily under any shock, it is sup- ported by the next below, and so on, down to the wall. Now in this figure I am obliged to separate the feathers by white spaces, to show you them distinctly. In reality they are set as close to each other as can be, but putting them as close as I can, you get a or b, Fig. 5, for the rough section of the wing*, thick towards the bird's head, and curved like a sickle, so that in striking down it catches the air, like a reap- ing-hook, and in rising up, it throws off the air like a pent- house. 70. The stroke w r ould therefore be vigorous, and the re THE SWALLOW. 197 covery almost effortless, were even the direction of both actu- ally vertical. Bat they are vertical only with relation to the bird's body. In space they follow the forward flight, in a softly curved line ; the downward stroke being* as effective as the bird chooses, the recovery scarcely encounters resistance in the softly gliding ascent. Thus, in Fig. 5, (I can only ex- plain this to readers a little versed in the elements of mechan- ics,) if b is the locus of the centre of gravit}^ of the bird, moving in slow flight in the direction of the arrow, w is the locus of the leading feather of its wing, and a and b, roughly, the successive positions of the wing in the down-stroke and recovery. a 6 Fig. 5. 71. I say the down-stroke is as effective as the bird chooses ; that is to say, it can be given with exactly the quantity of im- pulse, and exactly the quantity of supporting power, required at the moment. Thus, when the bird wants to fly slowly, the wings are fluttered fast, giving vertical blows ; if it wants to pause absolutely in still air, (this large birds cannot do, not be- ing able to move their wings fast enough,) the velocity becomes vibration, as in the humming-bird : but if there is wind, any of the larger birds can lay themselves on it like a kite, their own weight answering the purpose of the string, while they keep the wings and tail in an inclined plane, giving them as much gliding ascent as counteracts the fall. They nearly all, how- ever, use some slightly gliding force at the same time ; a single stroke of the wing, with forward intent, seeming enough to enable them to glide on for half a minute or more without stirring a plume. A circling eagle floats an inconceivable time without visible stroke : (fancy the pretty action of the inner wing, backing air instead of water, which gives exactly the 198 LOVE'S MEINIE. breadth of circle he chooses). But for exhibition of the com- plete art of flight, a swallow on rough water is the master of masters. A seagull, with all its splendid power, generally has its work cut out for it, and is visibly fighting ; but the swal- low plays with wind and wave as a girl plays with her fan, and there are no words to say how many things it does with its wings in any ten seconds, and does consum- mately. The mystery of its dart remains always in- explicable to me ; no eye can trace the bending of bow that sends that living arrow. But the main structure of the noble weapon we may with little pains un- derstand. 72. In the sections a and b of Fig. 5, I have only represented the quills of the outer part of the wing. The relation of these, and of the inner quills, to the bird's body may be very simply shown c VB Kg. 6 is a rude sketch, j typically representing the wing of any bird, but actually founded chiefly on the seagull's. It is broadly composed of two fans, a and b. The outmost fan, a, is carried by the bird's hand ; of which I rudely sketch the contour of the bones at a. The innermost fan, b, is carried by the bird's fore-arm, from wrist to elbow, b. The strong humerus, c, corresponding to our arm from THE SWALLOW. 199 shoulder to elbow, has command of the whole instrument. No feathers are attached to this bone ; but covering and pro- tecting ones are set in the skin of it, completely filling, when the active wing is open, the space between it and the body. But the plumes of the two great fans, a and b, are set into the bones ; in Fig. 8, farther on, are shown the projecting knobs on the main arm bone, set for the reception of the quills, which make it look like the club of Hercules. The connection of the still more powerful quills of the outer fan with the bones of the hand is quite beyond all my poor anatomical perceptions, and, happily for me, also beyond needs of artistic investigation. Fig. 7. 73. The feathers of the fan a are called the primaries. Those of the fan b, secondaries. Effective actions of flight, whether for support or forward motion, are, I believe, all executed with the primaries, every one of which may be briefly described as the strongest scymitar that can be made of quill substance ; flexible within limits, and elastic at its edges — carried by an elastic central shaft — twisted like a windmill sail — striking with the flat, and recovering with the edge. The secondary feathers are more rounded at the ends, and frequently notched ; their curvature is reversed to that of the primaries ; they are arranged, when expanded, somewhat in the shape of a shallow cup, with the hollow of it downwards, holding the air therefore, and aiding in all the pause and buoyancy of flight, but little in the activity of it. Essentially they are the brooding and covering feathers of the wing ; ex- 200 LOVE'S ME IN IE. quisitely beautiful — as far as I have yet seen, most beautiful — in the bird whose brooding is of most use to us ; and which has become the image of all tenderness. "How often would I have gathered thy children . . . and ye would not." 74. Over these two chief masses of the plume are set others which partly complete their power, partly adorn and protect Fig. 8. them ; but of these I can take no notice at present. All that I want you to understand is the action of the two main masses, as the wing is opened and closed. Fig. 7 roughly represents the upper surface of the main feathers of the wing closed. The secondaries are folded over the primaries ; and the primaries shut up close, with their THE SWALLOW. 201 outer edges parallel, or nearly so. Fig. 8 roughly shows the outline of the bones, in this position, of one of the larger pigeons.* 75. Then Fig. 9 is (always sketched in the roughest way) the outer, Fig. 10 the inner, surface of a seagull's wing in this position. Next, Fig. 11 show r s the tops of the four lowest feathers in Fig. 9, in mere outline ; a separate (pulled off, so that they can be set side by side), b shut up close in the folded wing, c opened in the spread wing. Fig. 9. 76. And now, if you will yourselves watch a few birds in flight, or opening and closing their wings to prune them, you will soon know as much as is needful for our art purposes ; and, which is far more desirable, feel how very little we know, to any purpose, of even the familiar creatures that are our companions. Even what we have seen to-day f is more than appears to - I find even this mere outline of anatomical structure so interferes with the temper in which I wish my readers to think, that I shall with- draw it in my complete edition. f Large and somewhat carefully painted diagrams were shown at the lecture, which I cannot engrave but for my complete edition. 202 LOVE'S MEWIE. have been noticed by the most careful painters of the great schools ; and you will continually fancy that I am inconsistent with myself in pressing you to learn, better than they, the anatomy of birds, while I violently and constantly urge you to refuse the knowledge of the anatomy of men. But you will find, as my system developes itself, that it is absolutely consistent throughout. I don't mean, by telling you not to study human anatomy, that you are not to know how many fingers and toes you have, nor how you can grasp and walk Fig. 10. with them ; and, similarly, when you look at a bird, I wish you to know how many claws and wing-feathers it has, and how it grips and flies with them. Of the bones, in either, I shall show you little ; and of the muscles, nothing but what can be seen in the living creature, nor, often, even so much. 77. And accordingly, when I now show you this sketch of my favourite Holbein, and tell you that it is entirely disgrace- ful he should not know what a wing was, better, — I don't mean that it is disgraceful he should not know the anatomy of it, but that he should never have looked at it to see how the feathers lie. THE SWALLOW. 203 Now Holbein paints men gloriously, but never looks at birds ; Gibbons, the woodcutter, carves birds, but can't men ; — of the two faults the last is the worst ; but the right is in A B Fig. 11. looting at the whole of nature in due comparison, and with universal candour and tenderness. 78. At the whole of nature, I say, not at super-nature — at LOVE'S MEINIE. what you suppose to be above the visible nature about you. If you are not inclined to look at the wings of birds, which God has given you to handle and to see, much less are you to contemplate, or draw imaginations of, the wings of angels, which you can't see. Know your own world first — not deny- ing any other, but being quite sure that the place in which you are now put is the place with which you are now con- cerned ; and that it will be wiser in you to think the gods themselves may appear in the form of a dove, or a swallow, than that, by false theft from the form of dove or swallow, you can represent the aspect of gods. 79. One sweet instance of such simple conception, in the end of the Odyssey, must surely recur to your minds in con- nection with our subject of to-day, but you may not have no- ticed the recurrent manner in which Homer insists on the thought. When Ulysses first bends and strings his bow, the vibration of the chord is shrill, " like the note of a swallow." A poor and unwarlike simile, it seems ! But in the next book, when Ulysses stands with his bow lifted, and Telem- achus has brought the lances, and laid them at his feet, and Athena comes to his side to encourage him, — do you recollect the gist of her speech ? " You fought," she says, " nine years for the sake of Helen, and for another's house : — now, re- turned, after all those wanderings, and under your own roof, for it, and its treasures, will you not fight, then?" And she herself flies up to the house-roof, and thence, in the form of the swallow, guides the arrows of vengeance for the viola- tion of the sanctities of home. 80. To-day, then, I believe verily for the first time, I have been able to put before you some means of guidance to un- derstand the beauty of the bird which lives with you in your own houses, and which purifies for you, from its insect pesti- lence, the air that you breathe. Thus the sweet domestic thing has done, for men, at least these four thousand years. She has been their companion, not of the home merely, but of the hearth, and the threshold ; companion only endeared by de- parture, and showing better her loving-kindness by her faith- ful return. Type sometimes of the stranger, she has softened THE SWALLOW, 205 us to hospitality ; type always of the suppliant, she has en- chanted ns to mercy ; and in her feeble presence, the coward- ice, or the wrath, of sacrilege has changed into the fidelities of sanctuary. Herald of our summer, she glances through our days of gladness ; numberer of our years, she would teach us to apply our hearts to wisdom ;— and yet, so little have we re- garded her, that this very day, scarcely able to gather from all I can find told of her enough to explain so much as the unfolding of her wings, I can tell you nothing of her life — nothing of her journeying : I cannot learn how she builds, nor how she chooses the place of her wandering, nor how she traces the path of her return. Remaining thus blind and careless to the true ministries of the humble creature whom God has really sent to serve us, we in our pride, thinking ourselves surrounded by the pursuivants of the sky, can yet only invest them with majesty by giving them the calm of the bird's motion, and shade of the bird's plume : — and after all, it is well for us, if, when even for God's best mercies, and in His temples marble-built, we think that, " with angels and arch- angels, and all the company of Heaven, we laud and magnify His glorious name " — well for us, if our attempt be not only an insult, and His ears open rather to the inarticulate and un- intended praise, of " the Swallow, twittering from her straw- built shed." THE RELATION BETWEEN MICHAEL ANGELO AND TINTORET SEVENTH OF THE COURSE OF LECTURES ON SCULPTURE, DELIVERED AT OXFORD, 1870-71. I have printed this Lecture separately, that strangers visiting the Galleries may be able to use it for reference to the draw- ings. But they must observe that its business is only to point out what is to be blamed in Michael Angelo, and that it assumes the facts of his power to be generally known. Mr. Tyrwhitt's statement of these, in his " Lectures on Christian Art," will put the reader into possession of all that may justly be alleged in honour of him. Corpus Gh mti College, Ut May, 1872. THE RELATION" BETWEEN MICHAEL ANGELO AND TINTORET. The Seventh of the Course of Lectures on Sculpture delivered at Oxford, 1870-71. In preceding lectures on sculpture I have included references to the art of painting, so far as it proposes to itself the same object as sculpture, (idealization of form) ; and I have chosen for the subject of our closing inquiry, the works of the two masters who accomplished or implied the unity of these arts. Tintoret entirely conceives his figures as solid statues : sees them in his mind on every side ; detaches each from the other by imagined air and light ; and foreshortens, interposes, or involves them, as if they were pieces of clay in his hand. On the contrary, Michael Angelo conceives his sculpture partly as if it were painted ; and using (as I told you formerly) his pen like a chisel, uses also his chisel like a pencil ; is some- times as picturesque as Kembrandt, and sometimes as soft as Correggio. It is of him chiefly that I shall speak to-day ; both because it is part of my duty to the strangers here present to indicate for them some of the points of interest in the drawings form- ing part of the University collections ; but still more, because I must not allow the second year of my professorship to close, without some statement of the mode in which those collec- tions may be useful or dangerous to my pupils. They seem at present little likely to be either ; for since I entered on my 212 THE RELATION BETWEEN duties, no student has ever asked me a single question re- specting these drawings, or, so far as I could see, taken the slightest interest in them. There are several causes for this which might be obviated — there is one which cannot be. The collection, as exhibited at present, includes a number of copies which mimic in vari- ously injurious ways the characters of Michael Angelo's own work ; and the series, except as material for reference, can be of no practical service until these are withdrawn, and placed by themselves. It includes, besides, a number of original drawings which are indeed of value to any laborious student of Michael Angelo's life and temper ; but which owe the greater part of this interest to their being executed in times of sickness or indolence, when the master, however strong, was failing in his purpose, and, however diligent, tired of his work. It will be enough to name, as an example of this class, the sheet of studies for the Medici tombs, No. 45, in which the lowest figure is, strictly speaking, neither a study nor a working drawing, but has either been scrawled in the feverish languor of exhaustion, which cannot escape its sub- ject of thought ; or, at best, in idly experimental addition of part to part, beginning with the head, and fitting muscle af- ter muscle, and bone after bone to it, thinking of their place only, not their proportion, till the head is only about one twentieth part of the height of the body : finally, something between a face and a mask is blotted in the upper left-hand corner of the paper, indicative, in the weakness and frightful- ness of it, simply of mental disorder from overwork ; and there are several others of this kind, among even the better drawings of the collection, which ought never to be exhibited to the general public. It would be easy, how T ever, to separate these, with the ac- knowledged copies, from the rest ; and, doing the same with the drawings of Raphael, among which a larger number are of true value, to form a connected series of deep interest to artists, in illustration of the incipient and experimental methods of design practised by each master. I say, to artists. Incipient methods of design are not, and MICHAEL ANGELO AND T1NT0RET. 213 ought not to be, subjects of earnest inquiry to other people : and although the re-arrangement of the drawings would ma- terially increase the chance of their gaining due attention, there is a final and fatal reason for the want of interest in them displayed by the younger students ;— namely, that these designs have nothing whatever to do with present life, with its passions, or with its religion. What their historic value is, and relation to the life of the past, I will endeavour, so far as time admits, to explain to-day. The course of Art divides itself hitherto, among all nations of the world that have practised it successfully, into three great periods. The first, that in which their conscience is undeveloped, and their condition of life in many respects savage ; but, nevertheless, in harmony with whatever conscience they pos- sess. The most powerful tribes, in this stage of their intel- lect, usually live by rapine, and under the influence of vivid, but contracted, religious imagination. The early predatory activity of the Normans, and the confused minglings of relig- ious subjects with scenes of hunting, war, and vile grotesque, in their first art, will sufficiently exemplify this state of a people ; having, observe, their conscience undeveloped, but keeping their conduct in satisfied harmony with it. The second stage is that of the formation of conscience by the discovery of the true laws of social order and personal virtue, coupled with sincere effort to live by such laws as they are discovered. All the Arts advance steadily during this stage of national grow T th, and are lovely, even in their deficiencies, as the buds of flowers are lovely by their vital force, swift change, and continent beauty. The third stage is that in which the conscience is entirely formed, and the nation, finding it painful to live in obedience to the precepts it has discovered, looks about to discover, also, a compromise for obedience to them. In this condition of mind its first endeavour is nearly always to make its religion pompous, and please the gods by giving them gifts and en- tertainments, in which it may piously and pleasurably share 214 TEE RELATION BETWEEN itself ; so that a magnificent display of the powers of art it has gained by sincerity, takes place for a few years, and is then followed by their extinction, rapid and complete exactly in the degree in which the nation resigns itself to hypocrisy. The works of Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Tintoret, be- long to this period of compromise in the career of the great- est nation of the world ; and are the most splendid efforts yet made by human creatures to maintain the dignity of states with beautiful colours, and defend the doctrines of theology with anatomical designs. Farther, and as an universal principle, we have to remem- ber that the Arts express not only the moral temper, but the scholarship, of their age ; and we have thus to study them under the influence, at the same moment of, it may be, de- clining probity, and advancing science. Now in this the Arts of Northern and Southern Europe stand exactly opposed. The Northern temper never accepts the Catholic faith with force such as it reached in Italy. Our sincerest thirteenth century sculpture is cold and formal com- pared with that of the Pisani ; nor can any Northern poet be set for an instant beside Dante, as an exponent of Catholic faith : on the contrary, the Northern temper accepts the scholarship of the Reformation with absolute sincerity, while the Italians seek refuge from it in the partly scientific and completely lascivious enthusiasms of literature and painting, renewed under classical influence. We therefore, in the north, produce our Shakespeare and Holbein ; they their Petrarch and Raphael. And it is nearly impossible for you to study Shakespeare or Holbein too much, or Petrarch and Raphael too little. I do not say this, observe, in opposition to the Cathohc faith, or to any other faith, but only to the attempts to sup- port whatsoever the faith may be, by ornament or eloquence, instead of action. Every man who honestly accepts, and acts upon, the knowledge granted to him by the circumstances of his time, has the faith which God intends him to have ; — as- suredly a good one, whatever the terms or form of it -- - every man who dishonestly refuses, or interestedly disobeys the MICHAEL ANGELO AND TINTORET. 215 knowledge open to him, holds a faith which God does not mean him to hold, and therefore a bad one, however beauti- ful or traditionally respectable. Do not, therefore, I entreat you, think that I speak with any purpose of defending one system of theology against another ; least of all, reformed against Catholic theology. There probably never was a system of religion so destructive to the loveliest arts and the loveliest virtues of men, as the modern Protestantism, which consists in an assured belief in the Divine forgiveness of all your sins, and the Divine correct- ness of all your opinions. But in their first searching and sincere activities, the doctrines of the Keformation produced the most instructive art, and the grandest literature, yet given to the world ; while Italy, in her interested resistance to those doctrines, polluted and exhausted the arts she already pos- sessed. Her iridescence of dying statesmanship — her magnif- icence of hollow piety, were represented in the arts of Venice and Florence by two mighty men on either side — Titian and Tin tore t, — Michael Angelo and Raphael. Of the calm and brave statesmanship, the modest and faithful religion, which had been her strength, I am content to name one chief representative artist at Venice, John Bellini. Let me now T map out for you roughly, the chronological re- lations of these five men. It is impossible to remember the minor years, in dates ; I will give you them broadly in decades, and you can add what finesse afterwards you like. Recollect, first, the great year 1480. Twice four's eight— you can't mistake it. In that year Michael Angelo was five years old ; Titian, three years old ; Raphael, within three years of being born. So see how easily it comes. Michael Angelo five years old — and you divide six between Titian and Raphael, — three on each side of your standard year, 1480. Then add to 1480, forty years — an easy number to recollect, surely ; and you get the exact year of Raphael's death, 1520. In that forty years all the new effort, and deadly catastro- phe took place. 1480 to 1520. Now, you have only to fasten to those forty years, the life 21G THE RELATION BETWEEN of Bellini, who represents the best art before them, and of Tintoret, who represents the best art after them. I cannot fit you these on with a quite comfortable exact- ness, but with very slight inexactness I can fit them firmly. John Bellini was ninety years old when he died. He lived fifty years before the great forty of change, and he saw the forty, and died. Then Tintoret is bora ; lives eighty * years after the forty, and closes, in dying, the sixteenth century, and the great arts of the world. Those are the dates, roughly ; now for the facts connected with them. John Bellini precedes the change, meets, and resists it vic- toriously to his death. . Nothing of flaw or failure is ever to be discerned in him. Then Baphael, Michael Angelo, and Titian, together, bring about the deadly change, playing into each other's hands — Michael Angelo being the chief captain in evil ; Titian, in nat- ural force. Then Tintoret, himself alone nearly as strong as all the three, stands up for a last fight, for Venice, and the old time. He all but wins it at first ; but the three together are too strong for him. Michael Angelo strikes him down ; and the arts are ended. "II disegno di Michel Agnolo." That fatal motto was his death-warrant. And now, having massed out my subject, I can clearly sketch for you the changes that took place from Bellini, through Michael Angelo, to Tintoret. The art of Bellini is centrally represented by two pictures at Venice : one, the Madonna in the Sacristy of the Frari, with two saints beside her, and two angels at her feet ; the second, the Madonna with four Saints, over the second altar of San Zaccaria. In the first of these, the figures are under life size, and it represents the most perfect kind of picture for rooms ; in * If you like to have it with perfect exactitude, recollect that Bellini died at true ninety, — Tintoret at eighty-two ; that Bellini's death was four years before Raphael's and that Tintoret was born four years before Bellini's death. MICHAEL ANGELO AND TINTORET. 217 which, since it is intended to be seen close to the spectator, every right kind of finish possible to the hand may be wisely lavished ; yet which is not a miniature, nor in any wise petty, or ignoble. In the second, the figures are of life size, or a little more, and it represents the class of great pictures in which the boldest execution is used, but all brought to entire comple- tion. These two, having every quality in balance, are as far as my present knowledge extends, and as far as I can trust my judgment, the two best pictures in the world. Observe respecting them — First, they are both wrought in entirely consistent and per- manent material. The gold in them is represented by paint- ing, not laid on with real gold. And the painting is so se- cure, that four hundred years have produced on it, so far as I can see, no harmful change whatsoever, of an} 7 kind. Secondly, the figures in both are in perfect peace. No ac- tion takes place except that the little angels are playing on musical instruments, but with uninterrupted and effortless gesture, as in a dream. A choir of singing angels by La Rob- bia or Donatello would be intent on their music, or eagerly rapturous in it, as in temporary exertion : in the little choirs of cherubs by Luini in the Adoration of the Sheperds, in the Cathedral of Como, we even feel by their dutiful anxiety that there might be danger of a false note if they were less atten- tive. But Bellini's angels, even the youngest, sing as calmly as the Fates weave. Let me at once point out to you that this calmness is the attribute of the entirely highest class of art : the introduction of strong or violently emotional incident is at once a confes- sion of inferiority. Those are the two first attributes of the best art. Faultless workmanship, and perfect serenity ; a continuous, not mo- mentary, action, — or entire inaction. You are to be interested in the living creatures ; not in what is happening to them. Then the third attribute of the best art is that it compels you to think of the spirit of the creature, and therefore of its face, more than of its body. 218 THE RELATION BETWEEN And the fourth is that in the face, you shall be led to see only beauty or joy ; — never vileness, vice, or pain. Those are the four essentials of the greatest art. I repeat them, they are easily learned. 1. Faultless and permanent workmanship. 2. Serenity in state or action. 3. The Face principal, not the body. 4. And the Face free from either vice or pain. It is not possible, of course, always literally to observe the second condition, that there shall be quiet action or none ; but Bellini's treatment of violence in action you may see ex- emplified in a notable way in his St. Peter Martyr. The sol- dier is indeed striking the sword down into his breast ; but in the face of the Saint is only resignation, and faintness of death, not pain — that of the executioner is impassive ; and, while a painter of the later schools would have covered breast and sword with blood, Bellini allows no stain of it ; but pleases himself by the most elaborate and exquisite painting of a soft crimson feather in the executioner's helmet. Now the changes brought about by Michael Angelo — and permitted, or persisted in calamitously, by Tintoret — are in the four points these : 1st. Bad workmanship. The greater part of all that these two men did is hastily and incompletely done ; and all that they did on a large scale in colour is in the best qualities of it perished. 2nd. Violence of transitional action. The figures flying, — falling, — striking, or biting. Scenes of pTuclgment, — battle, — martyrdom, — massacre ; anything that fs in the acme of instantaneous interest and violent gesture. They cannot any more trust their public to care for anything but that. 3rd. Physical instead of mental interest. The body, and its anatomy, made the entire subject of interest : the face, shad- owed, as in the Puke Lorenzo,* unfinished, as in the Twilight, * Julian, rather. See Mr. Tyrwhitt's notice of the lately discovered error, in his Lectures on Christian Art. MICHAEL ANGELO AND TINTORET. 219 or entirely foreshortened, backshortened, and despised, among labyrinths of limbs, and mountains of sides and shoulders. 4th. Evil chosen rather than good. On the face itself, in- stead of joy or virtue, at the best, sadness, probably pride, often sensuality, and always, by preference, vice or agony as the subject of thought. In the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo, and the Last Judgment of Tintoret, it is the wrath of the Dies Irse, not its justice, in which they delight ; and their only passionate thought of the coming of Christ in the clouds, is that all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Those are the four great changes wrought by Michael An- gelo. I repeat them : 111 work for good. Tumult for Peace. The Flesh of Man for his Spirit. And the Curse of God for His Blessing. Hitherto, I have massed, necessarily, but most unjustly, Michael Angelo and Tintoret together, because of their com- mon relation to the art of others. I shall now proceed to distinguish the qualities of their own. And first as to the general temper of the two men. Nearly every existing work by Michael Angelo is an attempt to execute something beyond his power, coupled with a fevered desire that his power may be acknowledged. He is always matching himself either against the Greeks whom he cannot rival, or against rivals whom he cannot forget. He is proud, yet not proud enough to be at peace ; melancholy, yet not deeply enough to be raised above petty pain ; and strong be- yond all his companion workmen, yet never strong enough to command his temper, or limit his aims. Tintoret, on the contrary, works in the consciousness of supreme strength, which cannot be wounded by neglect, and is only to be thwarted by time and space. He knows pre- cisely all that art can accomplish under given conditions ; de- termines absolutely how much of what can be done, he will himself for the moment choose to do ; and fulfils his purpose with as much ease as if, through his human body, were work- ing the great forces of nature. Not that he is ever satisfied 220 THE RELATION BETWEEN with what lie has done, as vulgar and feeble artists are satisfied. He falls short of his ideal, more than any other man ; but not more than is necessary ; and is content to fall short of it to that degree, as he is content that his figures, however well painted, do not move nor speak. He is also entirely uncon- cerned respecting the satisfaction of the public. He neither cares to display his strength to them, nor convey his ideas to them ; when he finishes his work, it is because he is in the humour to do so ; and the sketch which a meaner painter would have left incomplete to show how cleverly it was begun, Tin tore t simply leaves because he has done as much of it as he likes. Both Raphael and Michael Angelo are thus, in the most vital of all points, separate from the great Venetian. They are always in dramatic attitudes, and always appealing to the public for praise. They are the leading athletes in the gym- nasium of the arts ; and the crowd of the circus cannot take its eyes away from them, while the Venetian walks or rests with the simplicity of a wild animal ; is scarcely noticed in his occasionally swifter motion ; when he springs, it is to please himself ; and so calmly, that no one thinks of estimating the distance covered. I do not praise him wholly in this. I praise him only for the well-founded pride, infinitely nobler than Michael Ange- lo's. You do not hear of Tintoret's putting any one into hell because they had found fault with his work. Tintoret would as soon have thought of putting a dog into hell for laying his paws on it. But he is to be blamed in this — that he thinks as little of the pleasure of the public, as of their opinion. A great painter's business is to do what the public ask of him, in the way that shall be helpful and instructive to them. His relation to them is exactly that of a tutor to a child ; he is not to defer to their judgment, but he is carefully to form it ; — not to consult their pleasure for his own sake, but to consult it much for theirs. It was scarcely, however, possible that this should be the case between Tintoret and his Venetians ; he could not paint for the people, and in some respects he was happily protected by his subordination to the senate. Raphael MICHAEL ANGELO AND TIN TO RET. 221 and Michael Angelo lived in a world of court intrigue, in which it w T as impossible to escape petty irritation, or refuse themselves the pleasure of mean victory. But Tintoret and Titian, even at the height of their reputation, practically lived as craftsmen in their workshops, and sent in samples of their w T ares, not to be praised or cavilled at, but to be either taken or refused. I can clearly and adequately set before you these relations between the great painters of Venice and her senate — rela- tions which, in monetary matters, are entirely right and exem- plary for all time— by reading to you two decrees of the Senate itself, and one petition to it. The first document shall be the decree of the Senate for giving help to John Bellini, in finishing the compartments of the great Council Chamber ; granting him three assistants — one of them Victor Carpaccio. The decree, first referring to some other business, closes in these terms : * " There having moreover offered his services to this effect our most faithful citizen, Zuan Beliin, according to his agree- ment employing his skill and all speed and diligence for the completion of this work of the three pictures aforesaid, pro- vided he be assisted by the under written painters. "Be it therefore put to the ballot, that besides the afore- said Zuan Beliin in person, who will assume the superintend- ence of this work, there be added Master Victor Scarpaza, with a monthly salary of five ducats ; Master Victor, son of the late Mathio, at four ducats per month ; and the painter, Hieronymo, at two ducats per month ; they rendering speedy and diligent assistance to the aforesaid Zuan Beliin for the painting of the pictures aforesaid, so that they be completed well and carefully as speedily as possible. The salaries of the which three master painters aforesaid, with the costs of col- ours and other necessaries, to be defrayed by our Salt office with the monies of the great chest. "It being expressly declared that said pensioned painters be tied and bound to work constantly and daily, so that said * From the invaluable series of documents relating to Titian and Lis times, extricated by Mr. Rawdon Brown from the archives of Venice, and arranged and translated by him. 222 THE RELATION BETWEEN three pictures may be completed a3 expeditiously as possible ; the artists aforesaid being pensioned at the good pleasure of this Council. This decree is the more interesting to us now, because it is the precedent to which Titian himself refers, when he first of- fers his services to the Senate. The petition which I am about to read to you, was read to the Council of Ten, on the last day of May, 1513, and the original draft of it is yet preserved in the Venice archives. " 'Most Illustrious Council of Ten. " 'Most Serene Prince and most Excellent Lords. " 'I, Titian of Serviete de Cadore, having from my boyhood upwards set myself to learn the art of painting, not so much from cupidity of gain as for the sake of endeavouring to ac- quire some little fame, and of being ranked amongst those who now profess the said art. " ' And altho heretofore, and likewise at this present, I have been earnestly requested by the Pope and other potentates to go and serve them, nevertheless, being anxious as your Seren- ity's most faithful subject, for such I am, to leave some memo- rial in this famous city ; my determination is, should the Signory approve, to undertake, so long as I live, to come and paint in the Grand Council with my ivhole soul and ability ; commencing, provided your Serenity think of it, with the bat- tle-piece on the side towards the " Piazza," that being the most difficult ; nor down to this time has any one chosen to assume so hard a task. " C I, most excellent Lords, should be better pleased to re- ceive as recompense for the work to be done by me, such acknowledgments as may be deemed sufficient, and much less ; but because, as already stated by me, I care solely for my honour, and mere livelihood, should your Serenity approve, you will vouchsafe to grant me for my life, the next brokers- patent in the German factory,* by whatever means it may be- " Ayes. . . . " Noes. . . . " Neutrals 23 3 0 * Fondaco de Tedesclii. I saw the last wrecks of Giorgione's frescoes ©n the outside of it in 1845. MICHAEL ANGELO AND TINTOHET. 223 come vacant ; notwithstanding other expectancies ; with the terms, conditions, obligations, and exemptions, as in the case of Messer Zuan Bellini ; besides two youths whom I pui^ose bringing with me as assistants ; they to be paid by the Salt office ; as likewise the colours and all other requisites, as con- ceded a few months ago by the aforesaid most Illustrious Council to the said Messer Zuan ; for I promise to do such work and with so much speed and excellency as shall satisfy your Lordships to whom I humbly recommend myself/ " "This proposal," Mr. Brown tells us, "in accordance with the petitions presented by Gentil Bellini and Alvise Vivarini, was immediately put to the ballot," and carried thus — the decision of the Grand Council, in favour of Titian, being, ob- serve, by no means unanimous : — Immediately follows on the acceptance of Titian's services, this practical order : " We, Chiefs of the most Illustrious Council of Ten, tell and inform you Lords Proveditors for the State ; videlicet the one who is cashier of the Great Chest, and his successors, that for the execution of what has been decreed above in the most Illustrious Council aforesaid, you do have prepared all necessaries for the above written Titian according to his petition and demand, and as observed with regard to Juan Bellini, that he may paint ut supra ; paying from month to month the two youths whom said Titian shall present to you at the rate of four ducats each per month, as urged by him because of their skill and sufficiency in said art of painting, tho' we do not mean the payment of their salary to commence until they begin work ; and thus will you do. Given on the 8th of June, 1513." That is the way, then, great workmen wish to be paid, and that is the way wise men pay them for their work. The per- fect simplicity of such patronage leaves the painter free to do precisely what he thinks best : and a good painter always produces his best, with such license. "Ayes. . . , " Noes " Neutrals 10 6 0 224 THE ItisL AVION BETWEEN And now I shall take the four conditions of change in sue cession, and examine the distinctions between the two mas- ters in their acceptance of, or resistance to, them. I. The change of good and permanent workmanship forbad and insecure workmanship. You have often heard quoted the saying of Michael Angelo, that oil-painting was only fit for women and children. He said so, simply because he had neither the skill to lay a single touch of good oil-painting, nor the patience to over- come even its elementary difficulties. And it is one of my reasons for the choice of subject in this concluding lecture on Sculpture, that I may, with direct ref- erence to this much quoted saying of Michael Angelo, make the positive statement to you, that oil-painting is the Art of arts ; * that it is sculpture, drawing, and music, all in one, in- volving the technical dexterities of those three several arts ; that is to say — the decision and strength of the stroke of the chisel ; — the balanced distribution of appliance of that force necessary for gradation in light and shade ; — and the pas- sionate felicity of rightly multiplied actions, all unerring, which on an instrument produce right sound, and on canvas, living colour. There is no other human skill so great or so wonderful as the 'skill of fine oil-painting; and there is no other art whose results are so absolutely permanent. Music is gone as soon as produced — marble discolours, — fresco fades, — glass darkens or decomposes — painting alone, well guarded, is practically everlasting. Of this splendid art Michael Angelo understood nothing ; he understood even fresco, imperfectly. Tintoret understood both perfectly ; but he — when no one would pay for his col* ours, (and sometimes nobody would even give him space of wall to paint on) — used cheap blue for ultramarine ; and he worked so rapidly, and on such huge spaces of canvas, that between damp and dry, his colours must go, for the most * I beg that this statement may be observed with attention. It is of great importance, as in opposition to the views usually held respecting the grave schools of painting. MICHAEL ANGICLO ANU TINTORET. 225 part ; but any complete oil-painting of bis stands as well as one of Bellini's own : while Michael Angelo's fresco is defaced already in every part of it, and Lionardo's oil-painting is all either gone black, or gone to nothing. II. Introduction of dramatic interest for the sake of excite- ment. I have already, in the Stones of Venice, illustrated Tintoret's dramatic power at so great length, that I will not, to-day, make any farther statement to justify my assertion that it is as much beyond Michael Angelo's as Shakspeare's is bej^ond Milton's — and somewhat with the same kind of differ- ence in manner- Neither can I speak to-day, time not per- mitting me, of the abuse of their dramatic power by Venetian or Florentine ; one thing only I beg you to note, that with full half of his strength, Tintoret remains faithful to the serenity of the past ; and the examples I have given you froni his work in 3, 50,* are, one, of the most splendid drama, and the other of the quietest portraiture , ever attained by the arts of the middle ages. Note also this respecting his picture of the Judgment, that, in spite of all the violence and wildness of the imagined scene, Tintoret has not given, so far as I remember, the spectacle of any one soul under infliction of actual pain. In all previous representations of the Last Judgment there had at least been one division of the picture set apart for the representation of torment ; and even the gentle Angelico shrinks from no ortho- dox detail in this respect : but Tintoret, too vivid and true in imagination to be able to endure the common thoughts of hell, represents indeed the wicked in ruin, but not in agony. They are swept down by flood and whirlwind — the place of them shall know them no more, but not one is seen in more than the natural pain of swift and irrevocable death. IIL I pass to the third condition ; the priority of flesh to spirit, and of the body to the face. * The upper photograph in S. 50 is, however, not taken from the great Paradise, which is in too dark a position to be photographed, buf from a study of it existing in a private gallery, and every way inferior. I have vainly tried to photograph portions of the picture itself. 226 THE RELATION BETWEEN In this alone, of the four innovations, Michael Angelo and Tintoret have the Greeks with them ; — in this, alone, have they any right to be called classical. The Greeks gave them no excuse for bad workmanship ; none for temporary passion ; none for the preference of pain. Only in the honour done to the body may be alleged for them the authority of the ancients. You remember, I hope, how often in my preceding lectures I had to insist on the fact that Greek sculpture was essentially a7rp6