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Noble Thoughts 
 
 of 
 
 The World's Greatest Minds 
 
 Edited by Dana Estes, M»A» 
 
 ** They arc never alone who are 
 accompanied by noble thoughts/' 
 
 — Sir Philip Sidney. 
 
.E7 
 
 THE NOBLE THOUGHT 
 SERIES 
 
 Edited by DANA ESTES, M. A. 
 
 U The Noble Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius 
 2. The Noble Thoughts of John Ruskin 
 
 Other works in preparation 
 
Noble Thoughts 
 
 of 
 
 The World^s Greatest Minds 
 
 Edited by Dana Estes, M, A. 
 
 ** They are never alone who are 
 accompanied by noble thoughts." 
 — Sir Philip Sidney. 
 
The Thoughts of 
 
 ^(obii Ruskin 
 
 Edited fay 
 
 Dana Estes^ M«A. 
 
 Boston ^ Dana Estcs & 
 Company ^ Publishers 
 
Tl? 
 
 uertARY of OONuSEfiS 
 twuOoptes ttece.<vt30 
 
 AUG . 8 )yo8 
 
 COP Y Q. ^ 
 
 si. 
 
 1 
 
 Copyright, igo8 
 By Dana Estes & Company 
 
 ^// rights reserved 
 
 COLONIAL PRESS 
 EUctrotyPed and Printed by C. H. Simonds A* Co, 
 
 Boston, U. S.A. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 No apology need be offered by the editor for 
 presenting to the public another volume of selec- 
 tions from the Works of John Rttskin* Those 
 heretofore compiled have been generally addressed 
 to the admirers of certain special forms of literary 
 work. The Noble Thoughts have been selected 
 at random throughout the whole works, wherever 
 any concisely expressed idea of an elevated and 
 practical character has hit the fancy of the editor. 
 In the strenuous times in which we live, such 
 compilations often become the companions of 
 those who would not otherwise avail themselves 
 of the gems of thought scattered through the vol- 
 umes, and in some cases, may serve as an intro- 
 duction to, and cause the reading of many of the 
 works from which they are culled. 
 
 John Ruskin was bom in London in J 81 9, and 
 died at Brantwood in 1900. He came into gen- 
 eral notice with ** Modern Painters ** and other 
 treatises on the fine arts; in later life he was best 
 known as a lecturer and essayist on ethics, edu- 
 cation, and philanthropy. He was born in Lon- 
 don, but both parents were connected with 
 Edinburgh. At Oxford he won the Newdigate 
 prize with a poem on ** Salsette and Elephanta '' 
 (J 839), and wrote a series of articles in ** London's 
 
Architectural Magazine *' on ** The Poetry of 
 Architecture," under the pen name of **Kata 
 Ph«sin/' Shortly afterward he began to write 
 his first important books, ** Modern Painters*' 
 (Vol. !♦, 1843), in which a wealth of curious 
 artistic and scientific information was set forth 
 with such literary skill as to attract immediate 
 and increasing attention. He had long been an 
 admirer of the pictures of Turner, and impatient 
 at the popular misunderstanding of what he 
 conceived to be the painter's aims in his later 
 work. This book was intended to be mainly 
 a defence and an appreciation of Turner, and was 
 a book of real force and originality. It showed 
 the beauties of nature and the claims of art in 
 a light which had never before been cast upon 
 them; it created a new department of literature — 
 the popular and picturesque treatment of aesthetics. 
 The second volume followed in J 846, discussing 
 the faculty of imagination, and appreciating the 
 great religious painters of Florence and Venice. 
 In 1856 the third and fourth volumes appeared, 
 with further analysis of Turner and the pre- 
 Raphaelite school, and of natural phenomena in 
 their relation to art; and in J 860 the series was 
 closed with Vol. V. Meanwhile Ruskin's interest 
 in architecture had produced " The Seven Lamps 
 of Architecture'' (1849) and ''The Stones of 
 Venice " (Vol. I., I85I; Vols. II. and III., 1853). 
 These books were not merely a plea for Gothic 
 forms in building, but an attempt to trace the 
 conditions of artistic craftsmanship, which the 
 author found in the social system of the middle 
 ages. This line of thought was partly developed 
 vi 
 
in ** Lectures on Architectare and Painting/' 
 given at Edinburgh in J 853; in ** The Political 
 Economy of Art ** — lectures at Manchester in 
 J857; and in '' The Two Paths/' in J859; and it 
 led him on from art history and art criticism to 
 the didactic and philanthropic utterances of his 
 later days. When the pre-Raphaelites came into 
 notice^ Ruskin took up their cause, and promoted 
 it both with his purse and his pen* Millais and 
 Rossetti were at one time his close companions, 
 and with Holman Hunt and Burne- Jones he formed 
 life-long friendships. His literary associates in 
 early days were Samuel Rogers, Miss Mitford, 
 Coventry Patmore, J. G. Lockhart, the Brownings^ 
 and from \^5l onward Thomas Carlyle, whom he 
 looked up to as his master. Carlyle's influence 
 contributed to develop his range of thought from 
 art to social and economic studies. Another 
 motive was given by his share in the practical 
 philanthropy of the Working Men's College (Great 
 Ormond Street, London), founded by F. D. 
 Maurice and his circle. Ruskin undertook the 
 art department, and carried it on with energy 
 from 1854 to \S5S. His '* Notes on the Acad- 
 emy" and other exhibitions (t 855-9) were 
 widely read, and often made or marred the for- 
 tunes of artists. "When ** Modern Painters " was 
 finished he lived for a time at Mornex, near Geneva. 
 At Chamonix, in J 860, he wrote the papers called 
 ''Unto this Last"; and in J 862, at Mornex, 
 **Munera Pulveris." These attempts to formu- 
 late a theory of political economy more in accord- 
 ance with ideal morality were ill received at the 
 time, and his various notes on geology and min- 
 
 vix 
 
cralogy were destiltory and unconvincing. In De- 
 cember, J864t John Ruskin addressed Manchester 
 audiences on the «se of books and the influence of 
 women, and published the discourses as ** Sesame 
 and Lilies ** (J 865). This event marked the open- 
 ing of a new period of activity, in which he gained 
 great popularity as a lecturer on ethics and gen- 
 eral culture. His lectures were partly sermons, 
 partly object-lessons illustrated with drawings 
 and other exhibits. They were addressed mainly 
 to the young, but were always full of suggestive 
 thought, curious information, and a strong emo- 
 tional and personal appeal. ** Sesame and Lilies ** 
 was followed by ** The Ethics of the Dust ** (1866), 
 ^'The Crown of Wild Olive'' (J 866), and *' The 
 Queen of the Air '* (1869), all lectures; and ** Time 
 and Tide by Wear and Tyne ** (J 867), a series of 
 letters giving his ideal of social institutions. In 
 1868 and 1869 he returned to his studies of archi- 
 tecture at Abbeville and Amiens, Verona and 
 Venice, and lectured upon the ancient buildings; 
 but the publication of these lectures was prevented 
 by his election in 1869 to the Slade professorship 
 of fine art at Oxford. ** Lectures on Art ** and 
 '^Aratra Pentelici '* were given in J 870, '* Lec- 
 tures on Landscape ** in 1 87 J, ** The Eagle's Nest'' 
 and ** Ariadne Florentina " in J 872, ** Love's 
 Meinie"and ^*VaI d' Arno " in J873; while at 
 the same time he was writing his monthly ** Letters 
 to the "Working Men of England," under the title 
 of ** Fors Clavigera." In \Z7\ he bought a cottage 
 — ^Brantwood, on Coniston Water — and made it 
 his headquarters. Early in 1876 he was re- 
 elected Slade professor for a third term ; but at 
 viii 
 
the end of J 879 he resigned it, and spent the next 
 fotir years chiefly at Coniston, occupied in work 
 for his St. George's Guild. This was an asso- 
 ciation for the purpose of holding land on which 
 certain rttles were to be enforced for the benefit 
 of the laborers (not a colony), and for general 
 educational and social schemes, among which the 
 St* George's (Raskin) Museum at Sheffield was 
 the most successfuh Ruskin had already initiated 
 schemes for the better housing of the working 
 classes in Marylebone, London. Other experi- 
 ments of his were the model tea-shop, road-making 
 as a substitute for athletic games at Oxford, and 
 cultivation of moorland at Coniston; also the 
 publication of his own works. He founded several 
 small museums in schools and at Coniston; pro- 
 moted art classes and home industries — notably 
 the hand-spinning and weaving of linen; and re- 
 introduced the May Queen festival at several 
 schools. In 1883 he was again re-elected Slade 
 professor at Oxford, and lectured on ** The Art 
 of England *' and next year on ** The Pleasures 
 of England.*' He resigned partly on account of 
 iU-health, but chiefly because the university had 
 voted to allow vivisection, to which he strongly 
 objected. Thereafter he wrote little more except- 
 ing chapters of autobiography, entitled ** Pras- 
 terita" (1885-9), from which the following 
 extracts have been taken^— 
 
 My father began business as a wine merchant, 
 with no capital, and a considerable amount of 
 debts bequeathed him by my grandfather. He 
 accepted the bequest, and paid them all before he 
 
 ix 
 
began to lay by anything for himself^ for which 
 his best friends called him a fool, and I, without 
 expressing any opinion as to his wisdom, which 
 I knew in such matters to be at least equal to 
 mine, have written on the granite slab over his 
 grave that he was an ** entirely honest merchant/' 
 
 Years went on, and I came to be four or five 
 years old: he could command a post-chaise and 
 pair for two months in the summer, by help of 
 which, with my mother and me, he went the round 
 of his country customers. I saw all the high- 
 roads, and most of the cross ones, of England and 
 "Wales, and great part of lowland Scotland, as far 
 as Perth, where every other year we spent the 
 whole summer; and I used to read the ** Abbot ** 
 at Kinross and the ** Monastery *' in Glen Farg, 
 which I confused with ** Glendearg,*' and thought 
 that the White Lady had as certainly lived by the 
 streamlet in that glen of the Ochils, as the Queen 
 of Scots in the island of Loch Leven* 
 
 It happened also, which was the real cause of 
 the bias of my after life, that my father had a 
 rare love of pictures. I use the word ^*rare*' 
 advisedly, having never met with another instance 
 of so innate a faculty for the discernment of true 
 art, up to the point possible without actual prac- 
 tice. Accordingly, wherever there was a gallery 
 to be seen, we stopped at the nearest town for 
 the night; and in reverentest manner I thus saw 
 nearly all the noblemen's houses in England; not 
 indeed myself at that age caring for the pictures, 
 but much for castles and ruins, feeling more and 
 more, as I grew older, the healthy delight of 
 uncovetous admiration, and perceiving, as soon 
 
 X 
 
as I could perceive any political truth at all, that 
 it was probably much happier to live in a small 
 house, and have "Warwick Castle to be astonished 
 at, than to live in "Warwick Castle, and have noth- 
 ing to be astonished atj but that, at all events, it 
 would not make Brunswick Square in the least 
 more pleasantly habitable, to puU "Warwick Castle 
 down. And, at this day, though I have kind 
 invitations enough to visit America, I could not, 
 even for a couple of months, live in a country so 
 miserable as to possess no castles. 
 
 My mother had, as she afterwards told me, 
 solemnly devoted me to God before I was born; in 
 imitation of Hannah* ** Devoting me to God ** 
 meant, as far as my mother knew herself what she 
 meant, that she would try to send me to college, 
 and make a clergyman of me: and I was accord- 
 ingly bred for ** the Church/* My father, who — 
 rest be to his soul — had the exceedingly bad habit 
 of yielding to my mother in large things and 
 taking his own way in little ones, allowed me, 
 without saying a word, to be thus withdrawn 
 from the sherry trade as an unclean thing; not 
 without some pardonable participation in my 
 mother's ultimate views for me. For, many and 
 many a year afterwards, I remember, while he 
 was speaking to one of our artist friends, who 
 admired Raphael, and greatly regretted my en- 
 deavors to interfere with that popular taste, — 
 while my father and he were condoling with each 
 other on my having been impudent enough to 
 think I could tell the public about Turner and 
 Raphael, — instead of contenting myself, as I 
 ought, with explaining the way of their souls' 
 
 xi 
 
salvation to them — and what an amiable clergy- 
 man was lost in me, — **Yes," said my father, 
 with tears in his eyes — (trtie and tender tears as 
 ever father shed) — **He would have been a 
 bishop/* 
 
 Luckily for me, my mother, tinder these distinct 
 impressions of her own duty, and with such latent 
 hopes of my future eminence, took me very early 
 to church; where, in spite of my quiet habits, 
 and my mother's golden vinaigrette, always in- 
 dulged to me there, and there only, with its lid 
 unclasped that I might see the wreathed open 
 pattern above the sponge, I found the bottom of 
 the pew so extremely dull a place to keep quiet 
 in (my best story-books being also taken away 
 from me in the morning), that — as I have some- 
 where said before — the horror of Sunday used 
 even to cast its prescient gloom as far back in 
 the week as Friday — and all the glory of Monday, 
 with church seven days removed again, was no 
 equivalent for it. 
 
 I arrived at some abstract in my own mind of 
 the Rev* Mr. Howelfs sermons; and occasionally — 
 in imitation of him, preached a sermon at home 
 over the red sofa cushions; — this performance being 
 always called for by my mother's dearest friends, 
 as the great accomplishment of my childhood. 
 The sermon was — I believe — some eleven words 
 long — very exemplary, it seems to me, in that 
 respect — and I still think must have been the 
 purest gospel, for I know it began with ** People, 
 be good.*' 
 
 I was never permitted for an instant to hope, 
 or even imagine, the possession of such things as 
 
 zii 
 
one saw in toy-shops* I had a bunch of keys to 
 play witht as long as I was capable only of pleasure 
 in what glittered and jingled; as I grew older, I 
 had a cart, and a ball; and when I was five or 
 six years old, two boxes of well-cut wooden bricks* 
 "With these modest, but I still think entirely 
 sufficient possessions, and being always summarily 
 whipped if I cried, did not do as I was hidf or 
 tumbled on the stairs, I soon attained serene and 
 secure methods of life and motion. 
 
 The group, of which our house was the quarter, 
 consisted of two precisely similar partner-couples 
 of houses, — gardens and all to match; still the 
 two highest blocks of building seen from Norwood 
 on the crest of the ridge; which, even within the 
 time I remember, rose with no stinted beauty of 
 wood and lawn above the Dulwich fields. 
 
 The house itself, three-storied, with garrets 
 above, commanded, in those comparatively smoke- 
 less days, a very notable view from its upper 
 windows, of the Norwood hills on one side, and 
 the winter sunrise over them; and of the valley 
 of the Thames, with Windsor in the distance, on 
 the other, and the summer sunset over these. 
 It had front and back garden in sufficient pro- 
 portion to its size. Possessing also a strong old 
 mulberry tree, a tall white-heart cherry tree, a 
 black Kentish one, and an almost unbroken 
 hedge, all round, of alternate gooseberry and 
 currant bush; decked, in due season (for the 
 ground was wholly beneficent), with magical 
 splendor of abundant fruit: fresh green, soft 
 amber, and rough-bristled crimson bending the 
 spinous branches; clustered pearl and pendent 
 
 Xiii 
 
tishy joyftilly discoverable under the large leaves 
 that looked like vine. 
 
 The differences of primal importance which I 
 observed between the nature of this garden, and 
 that of Eden, as I had imagined it, were, that, 
 in this one, all the fruit was forbidden; and there 
 were no companionable beasts: in other respects 
 the little domain answered every purpose of 
 Paradise to me; and the climate, in that cycle of 
 our years, allowed me to pass most of my life in 
 it. My mother never gave me more to learn than 
 she knew I could easily get learnt, if I set myself 
 honestly to work, by twelve o'clock. She never 
 allowed anything to disturb me when my task 
 was set; if it was not said rightly by twelve 
 o'clock, I was kept in till I knew it, and in general, 
 even when Latin Grammar came to supplement 
 the Psalms, I was my own master for at least an 
 hour before dinner at half-past one, and for the 
 rest of the afternoon. My mother, herself finding 
 her chief personal pleasure in her flowers, was 
 often planting or pruning beside me — at least if 
 I chose to stay beside her. I never thought of 
 doing anything behind her back which I would 
 not have done before her face; and her presence 
 was therefore no restraint to me; but, also, no 
 particular pleasure; for, from having always been 
 left so much alone, I had generally my own little 
 affairs to see after; and on the whole, by the time 
 I was seven years old was already getting too 
 independent mentally, even of my father and 
 mother; and having nobody else to be dependent 
 upon, began to lead a very small, perky, con- 
 tented, conceited, Cock-Robinson-Crusoe sort of 
 
 xiv 
 
life, in the central point which it appeared to me 
 (as it must naturally appear to geometrical ani- 
 mals) that I occupied in the universe. 
 
 This was partly the fault of my father*s modesty; 
 and partly of his pride. He had so much more 
 confidence in my mother's judgment as to such 
 matters than in his own, that he never ventured 
 even to help, much less to cross her, in the conduct 
 of my education. 
 
 I never had heard my father's or mother's voice 
 once raised in any question with each other; nor 
 seen an angry or even slightly hurt or offended 
 glance in the eyes of either. I had never heard 
 a servant scolded, nor even suddenly, passion- 
 ately, or in any severe manner, blamed. I had 
 never seen a moment's trouble or disorder in any 
 household matter; nor anything whatever either 
 done in a hurry, or undone in due time* 
 
 Next to this quite priceless gift of Peace, I had 
 received the perfect understanding of the natures 
 of Obedience and Faith. I obeyed word, or lifted 
 finger, of father or mother, simply as a ship her 
 helm; not only without idea of resistance, but 
 receiving the direction as a part of my own life 
 and force, a helpful law, as necessary to me in 
 every moral action as the law of gravity in leaping. 
 And my practice in Faith was soon complete: 
 nothing was ever promised me that was not given; 
 nothing ever threatened me that was not inflicted, 
 and nothing ever told me that was not true. 
 
 Peace, obedience, faith; these three for chief 
 good; next to these, the habit of fixed attention 
 with both eyes and mind — on which I will not 
 further enlarge at this moment, this being the 
 
 XV 
 
main practical faculty of my life, causing Mazzini 
 to say of me, in conversation authentically re- 
 ported, a year or two before his death, that I had 
 **the most analytic mind in Europe." An 
 opinion in which, so far as I am acquainted with 
 Europe, I am myself entirely disposed to concur* 
 
 Lastly, an extreme perfection in palate and all 
 other bodily senses, given by the utter prohibition 
 of cake, wine, comfits, or, except in carefullest 
 restriction, fruit; and by fine preparation of what 
 food was given me. Such I esteem the main 
 blessings of my childhood; — next, let me count 
 the equally dominant calamities. 
 
 First, that I had nothing to love. 
 
 My parents were — in a sort — visible powers of 
 nature to me, no more loved than the sun and the 
 moon: only I should have been annoyed and 
 puzzled if either of them had gone out; (how 
 much, now, when both are darkened!) — still less 
 did I love God; not that I had any quarrel with 
 Him, or fear of Him; but simply found what 
 people told me was His service, disagreeable; 
 and what people told me was His book, not enter- 
 taining. I had no companions to quarrel with, 
 neither; nobody to assist, and nobody to thank. 
 Not a servant was ever allowed to do anything 
 for me, but what it was their duty to do. The 
 evil consequence of all this was not, however, 
 what might perhaps have been expected, that I 
 grew up selfish or unaffectionate; but that, when 
 affection did come, it came with violence utterly 
 rampant and unmanageable, at least by me, who 
 never before had anything to manage. 
 
 For (second of chief calamities) I had nothing to 
 
 xvi 
 
cndtire. Danger or pain of any kind I knew not: 
 my strength was never exercised, my patience 
 never tried, and my courage never fortified* Not 
 that I was ever afraid of anything, — either ghosts, 
 thunder, or beasts; and one of the nearest ap- 
 proaches to insubordination which I was ever 
 tempted into as a child, was in passionate effort 
 to get leave to play with the lion's cubs in Womb- 
 weirs menagerie. 
 
 Thirdly. I was taught no precision nor eti- 
 quette of manners; it was enough if, in the little 
 society we saw, I remained unobtrusive, and re- 
 plied to a question without shyness. 
 
 Lastly, and chief of evils. My judgment of 
 right and wrong, and powers of independent 
 action,* were left entirely undeveloped; because 
 the bridle and blinkers were never taken off me. 
 Children should have their times of being off 
 duty, like soldiers; and when once the obedience, 
 if required, is certain, the little creature should be 
 very early put for periods of practice in complete 
 command of itself; set on the barebacked horse 
 of its own will, and left to break it by its own 
 strength. The ceaseless authority exercised over 
 my youth left me, when cast out at last into the 
 world, unable for some time to do more than drift 
 with its elements. 
 
 My present verdict, therefore, on the general 
 tenor of my education at that time, must be, that 
 it was at once too formal and too luxurious; 
 leaving my character, at the most important 
 moment for its construction, cramped indeed, 
 
 * Action, observe, I say here; in thought I was too 
 independent, as said above. 
 
 xvii 
 
bat not disciplined; and only by protection inno- 
 cent, instead of by practice virtuous. My mother 
 saw this herself, and btit too clearly, in later years; 
 and whenever I did anything wrong, stupid, or 
 hard-hearted — (and I have done many things 
 that were all three) — always said, **It is because 
 you were too much indulged/' 
 
 Among the people whom one must miss out 
 of one's life, dead, or worse than dead, by the 
 time one is 54, I can only say, for my own part, 
 that the one I practically and truly miss most, 
 next to father and mother (and putting losses of 
 imaginary good out of the question), was a 
 ** menial/* my father's nurse, and mine. She 
 was one of our many — (our many being always 
 but few) — and, from her girlhood to her old age, 
 the entire ability of her life was given to serving 
 us. She had a natural gift and specialty for 
 doing disagreeable things; above all, the service of 
 a sick-room; so that she was never quite in her 
 glory unless some of us were ill. She had also 
 some parallel specialty for saying disagreeable 
 things; and might be relied upon to give the 
 extremely darkest view of any subject, before 
 proceeding to ameliorative action upon it. And 
 she had a very creditable and republican aversion 
 to doing immediately, or in set terms, as she was 
 hid; so that when my mother and she got old 
 together, and my mother became very imperative 
 and particular about having her tea-cup set on one 
 side of her little round table, Anne would ob- 
 servantly and punctiliously put it always on the 
 other; which caused my mother to state to me, 
 every morning after breakfast, gravely, that, 
 
 xviii 
 
if ever a woman in this world was possessed by 
 the Devil, Anne was that woman. Bat in spite 
 of these momentary and petulant aspirations to 
 liberality and independence of character, poor 
 Anne remained verily servile in so«I all her days; 
 and was altogether occupied from the age of 
 J 5 to 72, in doing other people's wills instead of 
 her own, and seeking other people's good instead 
 of her own: nor did I ever hear on any occasion 
 of her doing harm to a human being, except by 
 saving two hundred and some odd pounds for her 
 relations; in consequence of which some of them, 
 after her funeral, did not speak to the rest for 
 several months. 
 
 I had Walter Scott's novels and the Iliad (Pope's 
 translation), for my only reading, when I was a 
 child, on week-days: on Sundays their effect 
 was tempered by ** Robinson Qusoe '* and the ** Pil- 
 grim's Progress " ; my mother having it deeply in 
 her heart to make an evangelical clergyman of 
 me. Fortunately, I had an aunt more evan- 
 gelical than my mother; and my aunt gave me 
 cold mutton for Sunday's dinner, which — as I 
 much preferred it hot — greatly diminished the 
 influence of the *^ Pilgrim's Progress," and the end 
 of the matter was, that I got all the noble im- 
 aginative teaching of Defoe and Bunyan, and 
 yet — am not an evangelical clergyman. 
 
 I had, however, still better teaching than theirs, 
 and that compulsorily, and every day of the week. 
 (Have patience with me in this egotism: it is 
 necessary for many reasons that you should know 
 what influences have brought me into the temper 
 in which I write to you.) 
 
 xix 
 
Walter Scott and Pope's Homer were reading of 
 my own election, b«t my mother forced me, by 
 steady daily toil, to learn long chapters of the 
 Bible by heart; as well as to read it every syllable 
 through, alotfd, hard names and all, from Genesis 
 to the Apocalypse, about once a year; and to that 
 discipline — patient, accurate, and resolute — I owe, 
 not only a knowledge of the book, which I find 
 occasionally serviceable, but much of my general 
 power of taking pains, and the best part of my 
 taste in literature. From Walter Scott's novels 
 I might easily, as I grew older, have fallen to other 
 people's novels; and Pope might, perhaps, have 
 led me to take Johnson's English, or Gibbon's, 
 as types of language; but, once knowing the 32d 
 of Deuteronomy, the n9th Psahn, the J 5th of 
 1st Corinthians, the Sermon on the Mount, and 
 most of the Apocalypse, every syllable by heart, 
 and having always a way of thinking with my- 
 self what words meant, it was not possible for 
 me, even in the foolishest times of youth, to write 
 entirely superficial or formal English, and the 
 affectation of trying to write like Hooker and 
 George Herbert was the most innocent I could have 
 fallen into* From my own masters, then, Scott 
 and Homer, I learned the Toryism which my 
 best after-thought has only served to confirm. 
 
 We scarcely ever, in our study of education, 
 ask this most essential of all questions about a 
 man, What patience had his mother or sister with 
 him? 
 
 It is only by deliberate effort that I recall the 
 long morning hours of toil, as regular as sunrise — 
 toil on both sides equal — by which, year after 
 
year, my mother forced me to leam all the Scotch 
 paraphrases by heart, and ever so many chapters 
 of the Bible besides (the eighth of ist Kings 
 being one, — try it, good reader, in a leisure hour!) 
 allowing not so much as a syllable to be missed 
 or misplaced; while every sentence was required 
 to be said over and over again till she was satis- 
 fied with the accent of it, I recollect a struggle 
 between us of about three weeks, concerning the 
 accent of the ^*oV* in the lines 
 
 '* Shall any following spring revive 
 The ashes of the urn?** 
 
 I insisting, partly in childish obstinacy, and 
 partly in true instinct for rhythm (being wholly 
 careless on the subject both of urns and their 
 contents), on reciting it, **The ashes of the urn/*^ 
 It was not, I say, till after three weeks* labor,, 
 that my mother got the accent laid upon the ashes, 
 to her mind. But had it taken three years, she 
 would have done it, having once undertaken to 
 do it. And, assuredly, had she not done it, I 
 had been simply an avaricious picture collector^ 
 or perhaps even a more avaricious money col- 
 lector, to this day; and had she done it wrongly,, 
 no after study would ever have enabled me to 
 read so much as a single line of verse. 
 
 I feel how much I owe to my mother for having 
 so exercised me in the Scriptures as to make me 
 grasp them in what my correspondent would call 
 their ** concrete whole;** and above all, taught 
 me to reverence them, as transcending all thought, 
 and ordaining all conduct. 
 
This she effected, not by her own sayings or 
 personal authority; but simply by compelling 
 me to read the book thoroughly, for myself. As 
 soon as I was able to read with fluency, she began 
 a course of Bible work with me, which never 
 ceased till I went to Oxford. She read alternately 
 verses with me, watching, at first, every intonation 
 of my voice, and correcting the false ones, till 
 she made me understand the verse, if within my 
 reach, rightly, and energetically. It might be 
 beyond me altogether; tJmt she did not care about; 
 but she made sure that as soon as I got hold of it 
 all, I should get hold of it by the right end. 
 
 In this way she began with the first verse of 
 Genesis, and went straight through to the last 
 -verse of the Apocalypse, hard names, numbers, 
 Levitical law, and all; and began again at Genesis 
 ^he next day; if a name was hard, the better the 
 exercise in pronunciation, — if a chapter was tire- 
 some, the better lesson in patience, — if loathsome, 
 the better lesson in faith that there was some use 
 in its being so outspoken. 
 
 It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible 
 which my mother thus taught me, that which 
 cost me most to learn, and which was, to my 
 child's mind, chiefly repulsive — the n9th Psalm — 
 has now become of all the most precious to me, 
 in its overflowing and glorious passion of love 
 for the Law of God: **0h, how love I Thy law! 
 it is my meditation all the day.'' 
 
 And at my present age of fifty-five, in spite of 
 some enlarged observations of what modern 
 philosophers call the Reign of Law, I perceive 
 more distinctly than ever the Reign of a Spirit 
 
of Mercy and Trtrth, — infinite in pardon and 
 purification for its wandering and faultftil chil- 
 dren, who have yet Love in their hearts; and 
 altogether adverse and implacable to its perverse 
 and lying enemies, who have resolute hatred in 
 their hearts, and resolute falsehood on their lips. 
 
 Village of Simplon, 2d September, J 876. 
 
 I am writing in the little one-windowed room 
 opening from the salle-a-manger of the Hotel 
 de la Poste; bat under some little disadvantage, 
 being disturbed partly by the invocation, as it 
 might be fancied, of calamity on the heads of 
 nations, by the howling of a frantic wind from 
 the Col; and partly by the merry clattering of 
 the knives and forks of a hungry party in the 
 salon doing their best to breakfast adequately, 
 while the diligence changes horses. 
 
 In that same room — a little earlier in the year — 
 two-and-thirty years ago, my father and mother 
 and I were sitting at one end of the long tabic 
 in the evening: and at the other end of it, a quiet, 
 somewhat severe-looking, and pale, English (as 
 we suppose) traveler, with his wife; she, and my 
 mother, working; her husband carefully com- 
 pleting some mountain outlines in his sketch- 
 book. 
 
 Those days are become very dim to me; and I 
 forget which of the groups spoke first. My father 
 and mother were always as shy as children; and 
 our busy fellow-traveler seemed to us taciturn, 
 slightly inaccessible, and even Alpestre, and, as it 
 were, hewn out of mountain flint, in his serene 
 labor. 
 
 xxiii 
 
"Whether some harmony of Scottish accent 
 struck my father's ear, or the pride he took in his 
 son's accomplishments prevailed over his own 
 shyness, I think we first ventured word across 
 the table, with view of informing the grave 
 draughtsman that we also could draw* Where- 
 upon my own sketch-book was brought out, the 
 pale traveler politely permissive* My good father 
 and mother had stopped at the Simplon for me 
 (and now, feeling miserable myself in the thin 
 air, I know what it cost them), because I wanted 
 to climb the high point immediately west of the 
 Col, thinking thence to get a perspective of the 
 chain joining the Fletschhorn to the Monte Rosa* 
 I had been drawing there the best part of the 
 afternoon, and had brought down with me careful 
 studies of the Fletschhorn itself, and of a great 
 pyramid far eastward, whose name I did not know, 
 but, from its bearing, supposed it must be the 
 Matterhorn, which I had then never seen. 
 
 I have since lost both these drawings; and if 
 they were given away, in the old times, when I 
 despised the best I did, because it was not like 
 Turner, and any friend has preserved them, I wish 
 they might be returned to me; for they would 
 be of value in Deucalion, and of greater value 
 to myself; as having won for me, that evening, 
 the sympathy and help of James Forbes. For 
 his eye grew keen, and his face attentive, as he 
 examined the drawings; and he turned instantly 
 to me as to a recognized fellow-workman, — though 
 yet young, no less faithful than himself. 
 
 He heard kindly what I had to ask about the 
 chain I had been drawing; only saying, with a 
 
 xxiv 
 
slightly proud smile, of my peak supposed to be 
 the Matterhorn, **No, — and when once you have 
 seen the Matterhorn, you will never take anything 
 else for it I*' 
 
 I repeat it again and yet again, — that I may 
 for once, if possible, make this thing assuredly 
 clear: — the inherited art-gift must be there, as 
 well as the life in some poor measure, or rescued 
 fragment, right. This art-gift of mine could not 
 have been won by any work, or by any conduct: 
 it belongs to me by birtfiright, and came from 
 the air of English country villages, and Scottish 
 hills. I will risk whatever charge of folly may 
 come on me, for printing one of my many childish 
 rhymes, written on a frosty day in Glen Farg, 
 just north of Loch Leven. It bears date Jst 
 January, J 828. I was born on the 8th of Feb- 
 ruary, 1 819; and all that I ever could be, and 
 aU that I cannot be, the weak little rhyme already 
 shows* 
 
 ^^Papa, how pretty those icicles are. 
 That are seen so near, — that are seen so far; 
 — Those dropping waters that come from the rocks 
 And many a hole, like the haunt of a fox. 
 That silvery stream that runs babbling along. 
 Making a murmuring, dancing song. 
 Those trees that stand waving upon the rock's 
 
 side. 
 And men, that, like spectres, among them glide. 
 And waterfalls that are heard from far. 
 And come in sight when very near. 
 And the water-whecl that turns slowly round. 
 Grinding the corn that — requires to be ground,— 
 
 XXV 
 
(Political Economy of the fature !) 
 
 ^And mountains at a distance seen. 
 
 And rivers winding through the plain; 
 And quarries with their craggy stones, 
 And the wind among them moans/' 
 
 So foretelling Stones of Venice. 
 
 In rough approximation of date nearest to the 
 completion of the several pieces of my past work, 
 as they are built one on the other^ — at twenty, 
 I wrote ** Modem Painters?'' at thirty, **The 
 Stones of Venice;'' at forty, '*Unto this Last;" 
 at fifty, the Inaugural Oxford lectures; and — if 
 **Fors Clavigera" is ever finished as I mean — it 
 will mark the mind I had at sixty; and leave 
 me in my seventh day of life, perhaps — ^to rest* 
 For the code of all I had to teach will then be, 
 in form, as it is at this hour, in substance, com- 
 pleted* "Modern Painters" taught the claim of 
 all lower nature on the hearts of men; of the rock, 
 and wave, and herb, as a part of their necessary 
 spirit life; in all that I now bid you to do, to dress 
 the earth and keep it, I am fulfilling what I then 
 began* 
 
 The "Stones of Venice" taught the laws of 
 constructive Art, and the dependence of all 
 human work or edifice, for its beauty, on the happy 
 life of the workman* "Unto this Last" taught 
 the laws of that life itself, and its dependence on 
 the Sun of Justice; the Inaugural Oxford lectures, 
 the necessity that it should be led, and the gracious 
 laws of beauty and labor recognized, by the upper, 
 
 xxvl 
 
no less than the lower classes of England; and 
 lastly **Fors Clavigera'' has declared the relation 
 of these to each other, and the only possible con- 
 ditions of peace and honor, for low and high, rich 
 and poor, together, in the holding of that first 
 Estate, under the only Despot, God, from which 
 whoso falls, angel or man, is kept, not mythically 
 nor disputably, but here in visible horror of 
 chains under darkness to the judgment of the 
 great day; and in keeping which service is perfect 
 freedom, and inheritance of all that a loving 
 Creator can give to His creatures, and an im- 
 mortal Father to His children. 
 
 This, then, is the message, which, knowing no 
 more as I unfold the scroll of it, what next would 
 be written there, than a blade of grass knows 
 what the form of its fruit shall be, I have been led 
 on year by year to speak even to this its end. 
 
 What I am, since I take on me the function of a 
 teacher, it is well that the reader should know, 
 as far as I can tell him. 
 
 Not an unjust person; not an unkind one; not 
 a false one; a lover of order, labor, and peace. 
 That, it seems to me, is enough to give me right 
 to say all I care to say on ethical subjects; more, 
 I could only tell definitely through details of 
 autobiography such as none but prosperous and 
 (in the simple sense of the word) faultless, lives 
 could justify — and mine has been neither. 
 
 Having said so much, I am content to leave 
 both life and work to be remembered or forgotten, 
 as their uses may deserve. 
 
 In many things I am the reverse of Conservative; 
 nay, there are some long-established things which 
 
 XKyii 
 
I hope to see changed before I die; btit I want 
 still to keep the fields of England green, and her 
 cheeks red; and that girls shotild be taught to 
 c«rtsey, and boys to take their hats off, when 
 a professor or otherwise digniiied person passes 
 by; and that kings should keep their crowns on 
 their heads, and bishops their crosiers in their 
 hands; and should duly recognize the significance 
 of the crown, and the use of the crook. 
 
 I find some of my friends greatly agitated in 
 mind about Responsibility, Free-will, and the like. 
 I settled all those matters for myself, before I was 
 ten years old, by jumping up and down an awk- 
 ward turn of four steps in my nursery stairs, and 
 considering whether it was likely that God knew 
 whether I should jump only three, or the whole 
 four at a time* Having settled it in my mind that 
 He knew quite well, though I didn't, which I 
 should do; and also whether I should fall or not 
 in the course of the performance, — though I was 
 altogether responsible for taking care not to, — 
 I never troubled my head more on the matter, 
 from that day to this. But my friends keep 
 hiizzitig and puzzling about it, as if they had to 
 order the course of the world themselves; and 
 won't attend to me for an instant, if I ask why 
 little girls have large shoes. 
 
 I don't suppose any man, with a tongue in his 
 head, and zeal to use it, was ever left so entirely 
 unattended to, as he grew old, by his early friends; 
 and it is doubly and trebly strange to me, because 
 I have lost none of my power of sympathy with 
 them* Some are chemists; and I am always 
 glad to hear of the last new thing in elements; 
 
some are palasontoIogistSf and I am no less happy 
 to know of any lately unbtiried beast peculiar in his 
 bonesj the lawyers and clergymen can always 
 interest me with any story out of their courts 
 or parishes; — but not one of them ever asks what 
 I am about myself. If they chance to meet me 
 in the streets of Oxford, they ask whether I am 
 staying there. "When I say, yes, they ask how 
 I like it; and when I tell them I don't like it all, 
 and don't think little girls should have large shoes, 
 they tell me I ought to read the **Cours de Phi- 
 losophie Positive/' As if a man who had lived 
 to be fifty-four, content with what philosophy 
 was needful to assure him that salt was savory, 
 and pepper hot, could ever be made positive in 
 his old age, in the impertinent manner of these 
 youngsters. But positive in a pertinent and 
 practical manner, I have been, and shall be ; with 
 such stern and steady wedge of fact and act as time 
 may let me drive into the gnarled blockheadism 
 of the British mob. 
 
 You know there is a tendency in the minds of 
 many men, when they are heavily disappointed 
 in the main purposes of their life, to feel, and 
 perhaps in warning, perhaps in mockery, to 
 declare that life itself is a vanity. Because it 
 has disappointed them, they think its nature is 
 of disappointment always, or at best, of pleasure 
 that can be grasped by imagination only; that 
 the cloud of it has no strength nor fire within; 
 but is a painted cloud only, to be delighted in, 
 yet despised. But the effect of failure upon my 
 own mind has been just the reverse of this. The 
 more that my life disappointed me, the more 
 
 xxix 
 
solemn and wonderful it became to me. It be- 
 came to me not a painted cloud, but a terrible 
 and impenetrable one: not a mirage, which van- 
 ished as I drew near, b«t a pillar of darkness, 
 to which I was forbidden to draw near* For I 
 saw that both my own failure, and such success 
 in petty things as in its poor triumph seemed to 
 me worse than failure, came from the want of 
 sufficiently earnest effort to understand the whole 
 law and meaning of existence, and to bring it to 
 noble and due end; as, on the other hand, I saw 
 more and more clearly that all enduring success 
 in the arts, or in any other occupation, had come 
 from the ruling of lower purposes, not by a con- 
 viction of their nothingness, but by a solemn 
 faith in the advancing power of human nature, 
 or in the promise, however dimly apprehended, 
 that the mortal part of it would one day be swal- 
 lowed up in immortality; and that, indeed, the 
 arts themselves never had reached any vital 
 strength or honor but in the effort to proclaim 
 this immortality, and in the service either of 
 great and just religion, or of some unselfish patriot- 
 ism, and law of such national life as must be the 
 foundation of religion* 
 
 XXX 
 
NOBLE THOUGHTS OF RUSKIN 
 BEAUTY 
 
 ^NY material object which can 
 give tis pleasure in the simple 
 contemplation of its otitward 
 ^ qttalities, withotrt any direct 
 M and definite exertion of the 
 intellect, I call in some way, or 
 in some degree, beautifwL 
 
 « # 4 
 
 C[The sensation of Beatrty is not sensual 
 on the one hand, nor is it intellectual on the 
 other, but is dependent on a pure, right, and 
 open state of the heart, both for its truth and its 
 intensity, insomuch that even the right after- 
 action of the intellect upon facts of beauty so 
 apprehended, is dependent on the acuteness 
 of the heart-feeling about them* 
 
 4 m 4 
 
 ([We must be modest and cautious in the 
 pronouncing of positive opinions on the sub- 
 
 t 
 
ject of beatrty; for every one of as has peculiar 
 sources of enjoyment necessarily opened to him 
 in certain scenes and things^ sources which are 
 sealed to others; and we must be wary, on the 
 one hand, of confounding these in ourselves 
 with ultimate conclusions of taste, and so forcing 
 them upon all as authoritative; and on the 
 other, of supposing that the enjoyments, which 
 we cannot share, are shallow or unwarrantable, 
 because incommunicable. 
 
 «l 4 «l 
 
 fl There is not any matter, nor any spirit, nor 
 any creature, but it is capable of a unity of 
 some kind with other creatures, and in that 
 unity is its perfection and theirs, and a pleasure 
 also for the beholding of all other creatures that 
 can behold. So the unity of spirits is partly 
 in their sympathy, and partly in their giving 
 and taking, and always in their love; and these 
 are their delight and their strength, for their 
 strength is in their co-working and army fellow- 
 ship, and their delight is in the givrng and re- 
 ceiving of alternate and perpetual currents of 
 good, their inseparable dependency on each 
 other's being. 
 
 m 4 4 
 
 C^Its first perfection, therefore, relating to 
 vital beauty, is the kindness and unselfish ful- 
 ness of heart, which receives the utmost amount 
 of pleasure from the happiness of all things. 
 
 2 
 
C^ There is not any virttie the exercise of 
 which, even momentarily, will not impress a new 
 fairness upon the features; neither on them 
 only, btft on the whole body both the intelli- 
 gence and the moral faculties have operation, 
 for even all the movements and gestures, how- 
 ever slight, are different in their modes accord- 
 ing to the mind that governs them, and on the 
 gentleness and decision of just feeling there 
 follows a grace of action, and through continu- 
 ance of this a grace of form, which by no disci- 
 pline may be taught or attained. 
 
 4 tt # 
 
 fl Our purity of taste is best tested by its 
 universality. If we can only admire this thing 
 or that, we may be sure that our cause for 
 liking is of a finite and false nature. But if we 
 can perceive beauty in everything of God's 
 doing, we may argue that we have reached the 
 true perception of its universal laws. 
 
 « ti 4 
 
 C^ True taste is forever growing, learning, 
 reading, worshipping, laying its hand upon its 
 mouth because it is astonished, casting its shoes 
 from off its feet because it finds all ground holy, 
 lamenting over itself, and testing itself by the 
 way that it fits things. And it finds whereof to 
 feed, and whereby to grow, in all things, and 
 therefore the complaint so often made by young 
 
 3 
 
artists that they have not within their reach 
 materials, or subjects enough for their fancy, is 
 tftterly groundless, and the sign only of their 
 own blindness and inefficiency; for there is 
 that to be seen in every street and lane of every 
 city — that to be felt and found in every human 
 heart and countenance, that to be loved in 
 every road-side weed and moss-grown wall, 
 which, in the hands of faithful men, may convey 
 emotions of glory and sublimity, continual and 
 exalted* 
 
 ik ^ ^ 
 
 fl So natural is it to the human heart to 
 fix itself in hope rather than in present posses- 
 sion, and so subtle is the charm which the imag- 
 ination casts over what is distant or denied, 
 that there is often a more touching power in 
 the scenes which contain far-away promise of 
 something greater than themselves, than in those 
 which exhaust the treasures and powers of 
 Nature in an unconquerable and excellent glory, 
 leaving nothing more to be by the fancy pictured 
 or pursued* 
 
 4 4 # 
 
 fl The greatest glory of a building is not in 
 its stones, or in its gold. Its glory is in its age, 
 and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stem 
 watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even 
 of approval or condemnation, which we feel in 
 
 4 
 
walls that have long been washed by the passing 
 waves of htjmanity* 
 
 4 4 «l 
 
 f[ Of all God's gifts to the sight of man, color 
 is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn. 
 We speak rashly of gay color and sad color, 
 for color cannot at once be good and gay. All 
 good color is in some degree pensive, the loveli- 
 est is melancholy, and the purest and most 
 thoughtftfl minds are those which love color 
 the most. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 fl The imagination is never governed; it 
 is always the ruling and Divine power: and the 
 rest of the man is to it only as an instrument 
 which it sounds, or a tablet on which it writes; 
 clearly and sublimely if the wax be smooth and 
 the strings true, grotesquely and wildly if they 
 are stained and broken. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 (I All noble ornament is the expression of 
 man's delight in God's work. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 fl The function of ornament is to make you 
 happy. Now, in what are you rightly happy? 
 Not in thinking what you have done yourself; 
 not in your own pride; not in your own birth; 
 not in your own being, or your own will, but in 
 
 5 
 
looking at God; watching what He does, what 
 He is; and obeying His law, and yielding yotir- 
 self to His wilL 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 f[ Yoii are to be made happy by ornaments; 
 therefore they must be the expression of all this. 
 
PAINTING 
 
 OF '^GREATNESS OF STYLE** IN PAINTING 
 
 |HOICE of Noble Stibject.— 
 Greatness of style consists then: 
 firsts in the habitual choice of 
 subjects of thought which in- 
 volve wide interests and pro- 
 found passions, as opposed to 
 those which involve narrow in- 
 terests and slight passions* The style is greater 
 or less in proportion to the nobleness of the in- 
 terests and passions involved in the subject* 
 
 «l 4 it 
 
 tl Love of Beauty. — The second character- 
 istic of the great school of art is, that it intro- 
 duces in the conception of its subject as much 
 beauty as is possible, consistently with truth. 
 
 4 ii td 
 
 C^ Great art dwells on all that is beautiful; 
 but false art omits or changes all that is ugly* 
 Great art accepts Nature as she is, but directs 
 
 7 
 
the eyes and thottghts to what is most perfect 
 in her; false art saves itself the trouble of direc- 
 tion by removing or altering whatever it thinks 
 objectionable. 
 
 4 ii m 
 
 tl Nature has for the most part mingled 
 her inferior and nobler elements as she mingles 
 sunshine with shade, giving due use and influ- 
 ence to both, and the painter who chooses to 
 remove the shadow, perishes in the burning 
 desert he has created. 
 
 4 m 4 
 
 C^ It is only by the habit of representing 
 faithfully all things, that we can truly learn 
 what is beautiful and what is not. The ugliest 
 objects contain some element of beauty; and 
 in all, it is an element peculiar to themselves, 
 which cannot be separated from their ugliness, 
 but must either be enjoyed together with it, 
 or not at alL The more a painter accepts nature 
 as he finds it, the more unexpected beauty he 
 discovers in what he at first despised. 
 
 ^ ^ ^ 
 
 C Sincerity. — The next characteristic of 
 great art is that it includes the largest possible 
 quantity of Truth in the most perfect possible 
 harmony. If it were possible for art to give all 
 the truths of nature, it ought to do it. But 
 this is not possible. Choice must always be 
 
 8 
 
made of some facts which can be represented, 
 from among others which mast be passed by in 
 silence, or even, in some respects, misrepre- 
 sented. 
 
 ^ ^ ^ 
 
 fl The pttrsuit, by the imagination, of beatiti- 
 ftil and strange thoughts or subjects, to the 
 exclusion of painful or common ones, is called 
 among us, in these modem days, the pursuit of 
 ** the ideal; ** nor does any subject deserve more 
 attentive examination than the manner in which 
 this pursuit is entered upon by the modem 
 mind. 
 
 4 td 4 
 
 C[ Men's proper business in this world falls 
 mainly into three divisions: 
 
 4 1% 4 
 
 <[ First, to know themselves, and the existing 
 state of the things they have to do with. 
 
 1% td 4 
 
 fl Secondly, to be happy in themselves, 
 and in the existing state of things. 
 
 id 4 ^ 
 
 fl Thirdly, to mend themselves, and the 
 existing state of things, as far as either are 
 marred or mendable. 
 
 9 
 
fl Sublimity is not a specific term, — not a 
 term descriptive of the effect of a particular 
 class of ideas. Anything which elevates the 
 mind is sublime, and the elevation -of mind is 
 produced by the contemplation of greatness of 
 any kind; but chiefly, of course, by the greatness 
 of the noblest things. Sublimity is, therefore, 
 only another word for the effect of greatness 
 upon the feelings. Greatness of matter, space, 
 power, virtue, or beauty, are thus all sublime; 
 and there is perhaps no desirable quality of a 
 work of art, which in its perfection is not, in 
 some way or degree, sublime. 
 
 t<l 4 4 
 
 C Every herb and flower of the field has its 
 specific, distinct, and perfect beauty; it has its 
 peculiar habitation, expression, and function. 
 The highest art is that which seizes this specific 
 character, which developes and illustrates it, 
 which assigns to it its proper position in the 
 landscape, and which, by means of it, enhances 
 and enforces the great impression which the 
 picture is intended to convey. 
 
 tl Every kind of knowledge may be sought 
 from ignoble motives, and for ignoble ends; 
 and in those who so possess it, it is ignoble 
 knowledge; while the very same knowledge 
 is in another mind an attainment of the highest 
 
 10 
 
dignity, and conveying the greatest blessing. 
 This is the difference between the mere botanist's 
 knowledge of plants, and the great poet's or 
 painter's knowledge of them. The one notes 
 their distinctions for the sake of swelling his 
 herbarium; the other, that he may render 
 them vehicles of expression and emotion. 
 
 ^ m td 
 
 tl There is sublimity and power in every 
 field of nature from the pole to the line; and 
 though the painters of one country are often 
 better and greater, universally, than those of an- 
 other, this is less because the subjects of art 
 are wanting anywhere, than because one country 
 or one age breeds mighty and thinking men, and 
 another none. 
 
 # it ti 
 
 fl Happily for mankind, beauty and ugliness 
 are as positive in their nature as physical pain 
 and pleasure, as light and darkness, or as life 
 and death; and, though they may be denied 
 or misunderstood in many fantastic ways, the 
 most subtle reasoner will at least find that 
 color and sweetness are still attractive to him, 
 and that no logic will enable him to think the 
 rainbow sombre, or the violet scentless. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 fl The great men never know how or why 
 they do things. They have no rules, cannot 
 
 n 
 
comprehend the nattire of rules; — do not, 
 usisallYf even know, in what they do, what is 
 best or what is worst: to them it is all the same; 
 something they cannot help saying or doing* 
 
 4 it ii 
 
 C[ Admiration excited by the budding of a 
 flower is a poetical feeling, because it is im- 
 possible that this manifestation of spiritual 
 power and vital beauty can ever be enough 
 admired. 
 
 tn «i «i 
 
 <[ It is necessary to the existence of poetry 
 that the grounds of these feelings should be 
 furnished by the imagination. Poetical feeling, 
 that is to say, mere noble emotion, is not poetry. 
 It is happily inherent in all human nature 
 deserving the name, and is found often to be 
 purest in the least sophisticated. But the 
 power of assembling, by the help of the imagina- 
 tion, such images as will excite these feelings, 
 is the power of the poet or literally of the 
 '' Maker.'' 
 
 tH «l K| 
 
 fl Painting is properly to be opposed to 
 speaking or writing, but not to poetry. Both 
 painting and speaking are methods of expres- 
 sion. Poetry is the employment of either for 
 the noblest purposes. 
 
 12 
 
fl A powerfully imaginative mind seizes and 
 combines at the same instant, not only two, 
 bat all the important ideas of its poem or picture, 
 and while it works with any one of them, it is 
 at the same instant working with and modifying 
 all in their relations to it, never losing sight of 
 their bearings on each other; as the motion 
 of a snake's body goes through all parts at once, 
 and its volition acts at the same instant in coils 
 that go contrary ways* 
 
 «^ td m 
 
 €1 This faculty is indeed something that looks 
 as if man were made after the image of God* 
 It is inconceivable, admirable, altogether divine. 
 
 td 4 t« 
 
 41 Every great conception of poet and painter 
 is held and treated by imagination. Every 
 character that is so much as touched by men 
 like -^schylus, Homer, Dante, or Shakespeare, 
 is by them held by the heart; and every cir- 
 cumstance or sentence of their being, speaking, 
 or seeming, is seized by process from within, 
 and is referred to that inner secret spring of 
 which the hold is never lost for an instant; 
 so that every sentence, as it has been thought 
 out from the heart, opens for us a way down to 
 the heart, leads us to the centre, and then leaves 
 us to gather what more we may; it is the open 
 sesame of a huge, obscure, endless cave, with 
 
 13 
 
inexhatistibic treasure of pure gold scattered 
 in it; the wandering abotrt and gathering the 
 pieces may be left to any of us, all can accom- 
 plish that; but the first opening of that invisible 
 door in the rock is of the imagination only* 
 
 1% 4 td 
 
 C^ The fancy sees the otttside, and is able 
 to give a portrait of the otitside, clear, brilliant, 
 and fttll of detaih 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 tl The imagination sees the heart and inner 
 nattire, and makes them felt, btit is often 
 obsctire, mysterious, and interrupted, in its 
 giving of outer detail* 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 41 If the imagination is to be called to take 
 delight in any object, it will not be always well, 
 if we can help it, to put the real object there, 
 before it* The imagination would on the whole 
 rather have it not there; — the reality and 
 substance are rather in the imagination's way; 
 it would think a good deal more of the thing 
 if it could not see it* Hence, that strange and 
 sometimes fatal charm, which there is in all 
 things as long as we wait for them, and the 
 moment we have lost them; but which fades 
 while we possess them; — that sweet bloom of 
 all that is far away, which perishes under our 
 
toach. Yet the feeling of this is not a weakness; 
 it is one of the most glorious gifts of the human 
 mindt making the whole infinite future, and 
 imperishable past, a richer inheritance, if faith- 
 fully inherited, than the changeful, frail, fleeting 
 present; it is also one of the many witnesses 
 in us to the truth that these present and tangible 
 things are not meant to satisfy us. 
 
 ^ ^ ^ 
 
 C^ Greatness in art is not a teachable nor 
 gainable thing, but the expression of the mind 
 of a God-made great man; that teach, or 
 preach, or labor as you will, everlasting differ- 
 ence is set between one man's capacity and an- 
 other's; and that this God-given supremacy 
 is the priceless thing, always just as rare in the 
 world at one time as another. What you can 
 manufacture, or communicate, you can lower 
 the price of, but this mental supremacy is in- 
 communicable; you will never multiply its 
 quantity, nor lower its price; and nearly the 
 best thing that men can generally do is to set 
 themselves, not to the attainment, but the 
 discovery of this; learning to know gold, when 
 we see it, from iron-glance, and diamonds from 
 flint-sand, being for most of us a more profitable 
 employment than trying to make diamonds 
 out of our own charcoal. And for this God- 
 made supremacy, I generally have used, and 
 shall continue to use, the word Inspiration, not 
 
 15 
 
carelessly nor lightly, but in all logical calmness 
 and perfect reverence* 
 
 ^ ^ ^ 
 
 <^AII egotism, and selfish care, or regard, 
 are in proportion to their constancy, destructive 
 of imagination; whose play and power depend 
 altogether on our being able to forget ourselves 
 and enter like possessing spirits into the bodies 
 of things about us. 
 
 ^ 4 m 
 
 €1 The first test of a truly great man is his 
 humility. I do not mean, by humility, doubt of 
 his own power, or hesitation in speaking of his 
 opinions; but a right understanding of the 
 relation between what he can do and say, and 
 the rest of the world's sayings and doings. All 
 great men not only know their business, but 
 usually know that they know it; and are not 
 only right in their main opinions, but they 
 usually know that they are right in them; 
 only they do not think much of themselves on 
 that account. 
 
 tn m td 
 
 C The greatest thing a human soul ever does 
 in this world is to see something, and tell what 
 it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can 
 talk for one who can think, but thousands can 
 think for one who can see. To see clearly, is 
 poetry, prophecy, and religion, — all in one. 
 
 i6 
 
fl In the reading of a great poem, in the 
 hearing of a noble oration, it is the stibject of 
 the writer and not his skill, — his passion, not 
 his power, on which our minds are fixed* We 
 see as he sees, hut we see not him. We be- 
 come part of him, feel with him, jtfdge, behold 
 with him; birt we think of him as little as of 
 ourselves. Do we think of ^schyltts while we 
 wait on the silence of Cassandra, or of Shake- 
 speare, while we listen to the wailing of Lear ? 
 Not so. The power of the masters is known 
 by their self-annihilation. It is commensurate 
 with the degree in which they themselves appear 
 not in their work. The harp of the minstrel is 
 untruly touched, if his own glory is all that it 
 truly records. Every great writer may be at 
 once known by his guiding the mind far from 
 himself to the beauty which is not of his creation, 
 and the knowledge which is past his finding out* 
 
 4 td 4 
 
 C^ The human beauty, which, whether in its 
 bodily being or in imagined divinity, had become, 
 for the reasons we have seen, the principal ob- 
 ject of culture and sympathy to the Greeks, 
 was, in its perfection, eminently orderly, sym- 
 metrical, and tender. Hence, contemplating 
 it constantly in this state, they could not but 
 feel a proportionate fear of all that was disor- 
 derly, unbalanced, and rugged. Having trained 
 their stoutest soldiers into a strength so delicate 
 
 \7 
 
and lovely, that their white flesh, with their 
 blood upon it, should look like ivory stained 
 with ptirple; and having always around them, 
 in the motion and majesty of this beauty, 
 enough for the full employment of their imagi- 
 nation, they shrank with dread or hatred from 
 all the ruggedness of lower nature, — from the 
 wrinkled forest bark, the jagged hill-crest, 
 and irregular, inorganic storm of sky; looking 
 to these for the most part as adverse powers, 
 and taking pleasure only in such portions of the 
 lower world as were at once conducive to the 
 rest and health of the human frame, and in 
 harmony with the laws of its gentler beauty. 
 
 ^ ^ ^ 
 
 €[ A common book will often give you much 
 amusement, but it is only a noble book which 
 will give you dear friends. Remember also that 
 it is of less importance to you in your earlier 
 years, that the books you read should be clever, 
 than that they should be right. I do not mean 
 oppressively or repulsively instructive; but that 
 the thoughts they express should be just, and 
 the feelings they excite generous. It is not nec- 
 essary for you to read the wittiest or the most 
 suggestive books: it is better, in general, to hear 
 what is already known, and maybe simply said. 
 Much of the literature of the present day, though 
 good to be read by persons of ripe age, has a ten- 
 dency to agitate rather than confirm, and leaves 
 18 
 
its readers too frequently in a helpless or hopeless 
 indignation, the worst possible state into which 
 the mind of yotrth can be thrown. It may, indeed, 
 become necessary for yo«, as you advance in 
 life, to set yotir hand to things that need to be 
 altered in the world, or apply your heart chiefly 
 to what must be pitied in it, or condemned; 
 btrt, for a young person, the safest temper is 
 one of reverence, and the safest place one of 
 obscurity. Certainly at present, and perhaps 
 through all your life, your teachers are wisest 
 when they make you content in quiet virtue, 
 and that literature and art are best for you 
 which point out, in common life and familiar 
 things, the objects for hopeful labor, and for 
 humble Jove. 
 
 « # K| 
 
 <[ There is no action so slight, nor so mean, 
 but it may be done to a great purpose, and 
 ennobled therefor; nor is any purpose so great 
 but that slight actions may help it, and may be 
 so done as to help it much, most especially 
 that chief of all purposes, the pleasing of God. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 4[ I believe one of the worst symptoms of 
 modem society to be, its notion of great inferior- 
 ity, and ungentlemanliness, as necessarily be- 
 longing to the character of a tradesman. I 
 believe tradesmen may be, ought to be — often 
 
 \9 
 
are, more gentlemen than idle and useless 
 people: and I believe that art may do noble 
 work by recording in the hall of each trade, the 
 services which men belonging to that trade have 
 done for their country, both preserving the 
 portraits, and recording the important incidents 
 in the lives, of those who have made great ad- 
 vances in commerce and civilization* 
 
 4 4 1% 
 
 tl To give alms is nothing unless yotj give 
 thought also; and therefore it is written, 
 not ** blessed is he that feedeth the poor,'' but, 
 ** blessed is he that considereth the poor/* 
 And a little thought and a little kindness are 
 often worth more than a great deal of money. 
 
 tH td # 
 
 fl There is assuredly no action of our social 
 life, however unimportant, which, by kindly 
 thought, may not be made to have a beneficial 
 influence upon others; and it is impossible 
 to spend the smallest sum of money, for any 
 not absolutely necessary purpose, without a 
 grave responsibility attaching to the manner 
 of spending it^ The object we ourselves covet 
 may, indeed, be desirable and harmless, so far 
 as we are concerned, but the providing us with 
 it may, perhaps, be a very prejudicial occupa- 
 tion to some one else. And then it becomes 
 instantly a moral question, whether we are to 
 
 20 
 
indiiige o«rseIves or not* Whatever we wish to 
 hiSYf we ought first to consider not only if the 
 thing be fit for tis, hut if the manufacture of 
 it he a, wholesome and happy one; and if, on 
 the whole, the sum we are going to spend will 
 do as much good spent in this way as it would if 
 spent in any other way* It may be said that 
 we have not time to consider all this before we 
 make a purchase* But no time could be spent 
 in a more important duty; and God never 
 imposes a duty without giving the time to do 
 it* Let us, however, only acknowledge the 
 principle; — once make up your mind to allow 
 the consideration of the effect of your purchases 
 to regulate the kind of your purchase, and you 
 will soon easily find grounds enough to decide 
 upon* The plea of ignorance wiU never take 
 away our responsibilities. 
 
 it « K| 
 
 C[ The ideal of human life is a union of Spar- 
 tan simplicity of manners with Athenian sensi- 
 bility and imagination, but in actual results, we 
 are continually mistaking ignorance for simplic- 
 ity, and sensuality for refinement* 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 d In general, pride is at the bottom of all 
 great mistakes* All the other passions do occa- 
 sional good, but wherever pride puts in its word, 
 everything goes wrong, and what it might be 
 
 21 
 
desirable to do quietly and innocently, it is 
 morally dangerous to do proudly* 
 
 f^ ^ ^ 
 
 il I think that every rightly constituted 
 mind ought to rejoice, not so much in knowing 
 anything clearly, as in feeling that there is 
 infinitely more which it cannot know* None 
 but proud or weak men would mourn over this, 
 for we may always know more if we choose, by 
 working on; but the pleasure is, I think, to 
 humble people, in knowing that the journey 
 is endless, the treasure inexhaustible, — watch- 
 ing the cloud still march before them with its 
 summitless pillar, and being sure that, to the 
 end of time and to the length of eternity, the 
 mysteries of its infinity will still open farther 
 and farther, their dimness being the sign and 
 necessary adjunct of their inexhaustibleness* 
 
 tH # «l 
 
 tl In order that people may be happy in 
 their work, these three things are needed: They 
 must be fit for it: They must not do too much 
 of it: and they must have a sense of success in it 
 — not a doubtful sense, such as needs some 
 testimony of other people for its confirmation, 
 but a sure sense, or rather knowledge, that so 
 much work has been done well, and fruitfully 
 done, whatever the world may say or think 
 about it. So that in order that a man may be 
 
 22 
 
happy, it is necessary that he should not only he 
 capable of his work, btft a good judge of his 
 work, 
 
 1^ 1% td 
 
 C^ No great intellecttial thing was ever done 
 by great effort; a great thing can only be done 
 by a great man, and he does it without ef f ort, 
 
 4 4 * 
 
 <[ If a great thing can be done at all, it can 
 be done easily; when it is needed to be done, 
 there is perhaps only one man in the world 
 who can do it; but he can do it without any 
 trouble — without more trouble, that is, than 
 it costs small people to do small things; nay^ 
 perhaps, with less, 
 
 tH td ii 
 
 tl A man of genius is always far more ready 
 to work than other people, and gets so much 
 more good from the work that he does, and is 
 often so little conscious of the inherent divinity 
 in himself, that he is very apt to ascribe all his 
 capacity to his work, 
 
 td K| K| 
 
 <[ It is no man's business whether he has 
 genius or not: work he must, whatever he is, 
 but quietly and steadily; and the natural and 
 unforced results of such work will be always 
 the things that God meant him to do, and will 
 
 23 
 
be his best* No agonies nor heart-rendings will 
 enable him to do any better. If he be a great 
 man, they will be great things; if a small man, 
 small things; but always, if thus peacefully 
 done, good and right; always, if restlessly and 
 ambitiously done, false, hoUow, and despicable. 
 4 4 td 
 
 <[ I do not know anything more ludicrous 
 among the self-deceptions of well-meaning people 
 than their notion of patriotism, as requiring 
 them to limit their efforts to the good of their 
 own country; — the notion that charity is a 
 geographical virtue, and that what it is holy and 
 righteous to do for people on one bank of a river, 
 it is quite improper and unnatural to do for 
 people on the other. 
 
 4 ii td 
 
 <[ Life being very short, and the quiet hours 
 of it few, we ought to waste none of them in 
 reading valueless books; and valuable books 
 should, in a civilized country, be within the 
 reach of every one, printed in excellent form, 
 for a just price* 
 
 4 4 # 
 
 €[ I would urge upon every young woman 
 to obtain as soon as she can, by the severest 
 economy, a restricted, serviceable, and steadily 
 — however slowly — increasing, series of books 
 for use through life; making her little library, 
 
 24 
 
of all the iistmiisre in her room, the most studied 
 and decorative piece; every volume having its 
 assigned place, like a little statue in its niche. 
 
 ^ ^ ^ 
 
 €1 No man ever lived a right life who had not 
 been chastened by a woman's love, strengthened 
 by her courage, and guided by her discretion. 
 
 4 ^ « 
 
 €1 The best women are indeed necessarily 
 the most difficult to know; they are recognized 
 chiefly in the happiness of their husbands and 
 the nobleness of their children; they are only 
 to be divined, not discerned, by the stranger; 
 and, sometimes, seem ahnost helpless except 
 in their homes; yet without the help of one of 
 them the day would probably have come before 
 now when I should have written and thought 
 no more. 
 
 4 K| 4 
 
 <[ All the true literary work before you, for 
 life, must begin with obedience to that order, 
 ** Break up your fallow ground, and sow not 
 among thorns.*' Having then faithfully lis- 
 tened to the great teachers, that you may enter 
 into their Thoughts, you have yet this higher 
 advance to make; — you have to enter into 
 their Hearts. As you go to them first for clear 
 sight, so you must stay with them that you may 
 
 25 
 
share at last their jtfst and mighty Passion^ 
 Passion, or ** sensation/' I am not afraid of 
 the word; still less of the things Yoti have 
 heard many outcries against sensation, lately; 
 but, I can tell yoti, it is not less sensation we 
 want, btit more. The ennobling difference 
 between one man and another, — between one 
 animal and another, — is precisely in this, 
 that one feels more than another. If we were 
 sponges, perhaps sensation might not be easily 
 got for tfs; if we were earth-worms, liable at 
 every instant to be cat in two by the spade, 
 perhaps too mtich sensation might not be good 
 for tts, Btit, being htiman creatures, it is good 
 for tis; nay, we are only htiman in so far as we 
 are sensitive, and oar honor is precisely in pro- 
 portion to oar passion, 
 
 AAA 
 
 C[ We cannot determine what the qaeenly 
 power of women should be, antil we are agreed 
 what their ordinary power shotild be. We 
 cannot consider how education may fit them 
 for any widely extending duty, until we are 
 agreed what is their true constant duty. And 
 there never was a time when wilder words were 
 spoken, or more vain imagination permitted, 
 respecting this question — quite vital to all 
 social happiness. The relations of the womanly 
 to the manly nature, their different capacities 
 
 26 
 
of intellect or of virtue, seem never to have been 
 yet measured with entire consent* 
 
 ^ ^ ^ 
 
 €[ "We hear of the mission and of the rights 
 of Woman, as if these cotjid ever be separate 
 from the mission and the rights of Man; — as 
 if she and her lord were creatures of independent 
 kind and of irreconcilable claim. This, at least, 
 is wrong. And not less wrong — perhaps even 
 more foolishly wrong (for I will anticipate thus 
 far what I hope to prove) — is the idea that 
 woman is only the shadow and attendant image 
 of her lord, owing him a thoughtless and servile 
 obedience, and supported altogether in her 
 weakness by the preeminence of his fortitude^ 
 td 4 td 
 
 11 This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors 
 respecting her who was made to be the helpmate 
 of man. As if he could be helped effectively 
 by a shadow, or worthily by a slave! 
 
 « # « 
 
 <[ Let us try, then, whether we cannot get at 
 some clear and harmonious idea (it must be 
 harmonious if it is true) of what womanly mind 
 and virtue are in power and office, with respect 
 to man's; and how their relations, rightly 
 accepted, aid, and increase, the vigor, and honor, 
 and authority of both. 
 
 27 
 
f[ And now I mtfst repeat one thing, namely, 
 that the first use of education was to enable us 
 to consult with the wisest and the greatest men 
 on all points of earnest difficulty* That to use 
 books rightly, was to go to them for help: to 
 appeal to them, when our own knowledge and 
 power of thought failed; to be led by them into 
 wider sight, purer conception than our own, and 
 receive from them the united sentence of the 
 judges and councils of all time, against our soli- 
 tary and unstable opinion. 
 
 4 ti 4| 
 
 C^ Let us do this now. Let us see whether the 
 greatest, the wisest, the purest-hearted of all 
 ages are agreed in any wise on this point; let 
 us hear the testimony they have left respecting 
 what they held to be the true dignity of woman, 
 and her mode of help to man. 
 
 4 m « 
 
 €1 And first let us take Shakespeare. 
 m td 4 
 
 €1 Note broadly in the outset, Shakespeare 
 has no heroes; — he has only heroines. There 
 is hardly a play that has not a perfect woman 
 in it, steadfast in grave hope and errorless pur- 
 pose; Cordelia, Desdemona, Isabella, Hermione, 
 Imogene, Queen Katherine, Perdita, Sylvia, 
 Viola, Rosalind, Helena, and last, and perhaps 
 
 28 
 
loveliest, Virgilia, are all faultless; conceived 
 in the highest heroic type of humanity. 
 
 ^ 4 td 
 
 fl Then observe, secondly, 
 4 «l « 
 
 €1 The catastrophe of every play is caused 
 always by the folly or fault of a man; the re- 
 demption, if there be any, is by the wisdom and 
 virtue of a woman, and, failing that, there is 
 none. The catastrophe of King Lear is owing 
 to his own want of judgment, his impatient 
 vanity, his misunderstanding of his children; 
 the virtue of his one true daughter would have 
 saved him from all the injuries of the others, 
 unless he had cast her away from him; as it is, 
 she all but saves him. 
 
 «l 4 4 
 
 €[ Of Othello I need not trace the tale; — 
 nor the one weakness of his so mighty love; nor 
 the inferiority of his perceptive intellect to that 
 even of the second woman character in the play, 
 the Emilia who dies in wild testimony against 
 his error: — **0h, murderous coxcomb! What 
 should such a fool Do with so good a wife ? ** 
 
 4 4 i« 
 
 €1 In Romeo and Juliet, the wise and entirely 
 brave stratagem of the wife is brought to ruinous 
 issue by the reckless impatience of her husband. 
 
 29 
 
In Winter's Talc, and in Cymbelinc, the happi- 
 ness and existence of two princely households, 
 lost through long years, and imperiled to the 
 death by the folly and obstinacy of the husbands, 
 are redeemed at last by the queenly patience and 
 wisdom of the wives. In Measure for Measure, 
 the injustice of the judges, and the corrupt 
 cowardice of the brother, are opposed to the 
 victorious truth and adamantine purity of a 
 woman. In Coriolanus, the mother's counsel, 
 acted upon in time, would have saved her son 
 from all evil; his momentary forgetfulness of it is 
 his ruin; her prayer at last granted, saves him 
 — not, indeed, from death, but from the curse 
 of living as the destroyer of his country* 
 
 m K| td 
 
 tl And what shall I say of Julia, constant 
 against the fickleness of a lover who is a mere 
 wicked child ? — of Helena, against the petulance 
 and insult of a careless youth ? — of the patience 
 of Hero, the passion of Beatrice, and the cahnly 
 devoted wisdom of the " unlessoned girl,'' who 
 appears among the helplessness, the blindness, 
 and the vindictive passions of men, as a gentle 
 angel, to save merely by her presence, and de-? 
 feat the worst intensities of crime by her smile ? 
 t« td 4 
 
 <[ Observe, further, among all the principal 
 figures in Shakespeare's plays, there is only one 
 weak woman — Ophelia; and it is because she 
 
 30 
 
fails Hamlet at the critical moment, and is not, 
 and cannot in her nature be, a gtiide to him 
 when he needs her most, that all the bitter 
 catastrophe follows. Finally, though there arc 
 three wicked women among the principal figures, 
 Lady Macbeth, Regan, and Goneril, they are 
 felt at once to be frightful exceptions to the 
 ordinary laws of life; fatal in their influence 
 also in proportion to the power for good which 
 they have abandoned. 
 
 i| td tH 
 
 il Such, in broad light, is Shakespeare's 
 testimony to the position and character of 
 women in human life. He represents them as 
 infallibly faithful and wise counsellors — in- 
 corruptibly just and pure examples — strong 
 always to sanctify, even when they cannot save^ 
 
 4 Ki m 
 
 d Of any disciplined, or consistent character^ 
 earnest in a purpose wisely conceived, or dealing 
 with forms of hostile evil, definitely challenged, 
 and resolutely subdued, there is no trace in 
 Scott's conceptions of men. Whereas in his imag- 
 inations of women — in the characters of Ellen 
 Douglas, of Flora Maclvor, Rose Bradwardine, 
 Catherine Seyton, Diana Vernon, Lilias Red- 
 gauntlet, Alice Bridgenorth, Alice Lee, and 
 Jeanie Deans — with endless varieties of grace, 
 tenderness, and intellectual power, we find in all 
 
 31 
 
a q«itc infallible and inevitable sense of dignity 
 and justice; a fearless, instant, and untiring 
 self-sacrifice to even tlie appearance of duty, 
 much more to its real claims; and, finally, a 
 patient wisdom of deeply restrained affection, 
 which does infinitely more than protect its 
 objects from a momentary error; it gradually 
 forms, animates, and exalts the characters of the 
 unworthy lovers, until, at the close of the tale, 
 we are just able, and no more, to take patience 
 in hearing of their unmerited success* 
 
 m 4 4 
 
 fl So that in all cases, with Scott as with 
 Shakespeare, it is the woman who watches over, 
 teaches, and guides the youth; it is never, by 
 any chance, the youth who watches over or 
 educates his mistress* 
 
 4 # 4 
 
 (I Next, take, though more briefly, graver 
 and deeper testimony — that of the great Ital- 
 ians and Greeks. You know well the plan of 
 Dante's great poem — that it is a love-poem 
 to his dead lady, a song of praise for her watch 
 over his soul. Stooping only to pity, never to 
 love, she yet saves him from destruction — 
 saves him from helL He is going eternally 
 astray in despair; she comes down from heaven 
 to his help, and throughout the ascents of Para- 
 dise is his teacher, interpreting for him the most 
 
 32 
 
difficult truths, divine and human: and leading 
 him, with rebuke upon rebuke, from star to star* 
 
 it m m 
 
 ([ You may think, perhaps, a Greek knight 
 would have had a lower estimate of women 
 than this Christian lover. His own spiritual 
 subjection to them was indeed not so absolute; 
 but as regards their own personal character, it 
 was only because you could not have followed 
 me so easily, that I did not take the Greek 
 women instead of Shakespeare's; and instance, 
 for chief ideal types of human beauty and faith, 
 the simple mother's and wife's heart of An- 
 dromache; the divine, yet rejected wisdom 
 of Cassandra; the playful kindness and simple 
 princess-life of happy Nausicaa; the house- 
 wifely calm of that of Penelope, with its watch 
 upon the sea; the ever patient, fearless, hope- 
 lessly devoted piety of the sister and daughter, 
 in Antigone; the bowing down of Iphigenia, 
 Iamb-like and silent; and, finally, the expecta- 
 tion of the resurrection, made clear to the soul 
 of the Greeks in the return from her grave of 
 that Alcestis, who, to save her husband, had 
 passed calmly through the bitterness of death* 
 
 4 4 # 
 
 fl Now I could multiply witness upon witness 
 of this kind upon you if I had time* I would 
 take Chaucer, and show you why he wrote a 
 
 33 
 
Legend of Good Women; bat no Legend of 
 Good Men* I would take Spenser, and show 
 you how all his fairy knights are sometimes 
 deceived and sometimes vanquished; but the 
 soul of Una is never darkened, and the spear of 
 Britomart is never broken* Nay, I could go 
 back into the mythical teaching of the most 
 ancient times, and show you how the great 
 people, — by one of whose princesses it was 
 appointed that the Law-giver of all the earth 
 should be educated, rather than by his own 
 kindred; — how that great Egyptian people, 
 wisest then of nations, gave to their Spirit of 
 Wisdom the form of a woman; and into her 
 hand, for a symbol, the weaver's shuttle: and 
 how the name and the form of that spirit; 
 adopted, believed, and obeyed by the Greeks, 
 became that Athena of the olive-helm and 
 cloudy shield, to whose faith you owe, down 
 to this date, whatever you hold most precious 
 in art, in literature, or in types of national virtue. 
 
 4 m tn 
 
 €[ But I will not wander into this distant and 
 mythical element; I will only ask you to give 
 its legitimate value to the testimony of these 
 great poets and men of the world, — consistent 
 as you see it is on this head. I will ask 
 you whether it can be supposed that these 
 men, in the main work of their lives, are amusing 
 themselves with a fictitious and idle view of the 
 
 34 
 
relations between man and woman; — nay, 
 worse than fictitiotjs or idle; for a thing may 
 be imaginary, yet desirable, if it were possible; 
 btrt this, their ideal of women, is, according to 
 our common idea of the marriage relation, 
 wholly tindesirable. The woman, we say, is not 
 to guide, nor even to think, for herself* The 
 man is always to be the wiser; he is to be the 
 thinker, the rder, the superior in knowledge 
 and discretion, as in power* Is it not somewhat 
 important to make up our minds on this matter ? 
 Are all these great men mistaken, or are we? 
 Are Shakespeare and ^schylus, Dante, and 
 Homer, merely dressing dolls for us; or, worse 
 than doUs, unnatural visions, the realization 
 of which, were it possible, would bring anarchy 
 into all households and ruin into all affection ? 
 
 A ^ ^ 
 
 fl Thus much, then, respecting the relations 
 of lovers I believe you will accept. But what 
 we too often doubt is the fitness of the continu- 
 ance of such a relation throughout the whole 
 of human life* We think it right in the lover 
 and mistress, not in the husband and wife. 
 That is to say, we think that a reverent and 
 tender duty is due to one whose affection we 
 still doubt, and whose character we as yet do 
 but partially and distantly discern; and that 
 this reverence and duty are to be withdrawn 
 when the affection has become wholly and 
 
 35 
 
limitlessly our own, and the character has been 
 so sifted and tried that we fear not to entrust 
 it with the happiness of our lives. Do yoti not 
 see how ignoble this is, as well as how tinreason- 
 able? Do you not feel that marriage — when 
 it is marriage at all — is only the seal which 
 marks the avowed transition of temporary into 
 tintiring service, and of fitftil into eternal love ? 
 
 «l 4 it 
 
 t[ I have been trying, thus far, to show yoti 
 what shotild be the place, and what the power 
 of woman. Now, secondly, we ask. What kind 
 of education is to fit her for these ? 
 
 tt # 4 
 
 ([ And if yott indeed think this a true con- 
 ception of her office and dignity, it will not be 
 difficult to trace the course of education which 
 would fit her for the one, and raise her to the 
 other. 
 
 4 # ii 
 
 <[ The first of our duties to her -^ no thought- 
 ful persons now doubt this — is to secure for 
 her such physical training and exercise as may 
 confirm her health, and perfect her beauty; the 
 highest refinement of that beauty being unat- 
 tainable without splendor of activity and of 
 delicate strength. To perfect her beauty, I 
 say, and increase its power; it cannot be too 
 
 36 
 
powerftjl, nor shed its sacred light too far: only 
 remember that all physical freedom is vain to 
 produce beattty without a corresponding free- 
 dom of heart* 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 41 Do not think yoti can make a girl lovely, 
 if you do not make her happy* There is not 
 one restraint you put on a good girl's nature — ■ 
 there is not one check you give to her instincts 
 of affection or of effort — which will not be 
 indelibly written on her features, with a hard- 
 ness which is all the more painful because it takes 
 away the brightness from the eyes of innocence, 
 and the charm from the brow of virtue* 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 €[ The perfect loveliness of a woman's counte- 
 nance can only consist in that majestic peace, 
 which is founded in the memory of happy and 
 useful years, — full of sweet records; and from 
 the joining of this with that yet more majestic 
 childishness, which is still full of change and 
 promise; — opening always —- modest at once,, 
 and bright, with hope of better things to be 
 won, and to be bestowed. There is no old age 
 where there is still that promise — it is eternal 
 youth. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 C Give such a girl any true work that will 
 make her active in the dawn, and weary at 
 
 37 
 
night, with the consciousness that her fellow 
 creatures have indeed been the better for her day, 
 and the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm 
 will transform itself into a majesty of radiant 
 and beneficent peace. 
 
 1^ 4 4 
 
 C[ The moment we can use our possessions to 
 any good purpose ourselves, the instinct of 
 communicating that use to others rises side by 
 side with our power* If you can read a book 
 rightly^ you will want others to hear it; if you 
 can enjoy a picture rightly, you will want others 
 to see it. Once fix your desire on anything 
 useless, and all the purest pride and folly in 
 your heart will mix with the desire, and make 
 you at last wholly inhuman, a mere ugly lump 
 of stomach and suckers, like a cuttle-fish. 
 
 m « i« 
 
 €1 It seems to me, on the whole, that the 
 feelings of the purest and most mightily pas- 
 sioned human souls are likely to be the truest. 
 Not, indeed, if they do not desire to know the 
 truth, or blind themselves to it that they may 
 please themselves with passion; for then they 
 are no longer pure: but if, continually seeking 
 and accepting the truth as far as it is discernible, 
 they trust their Maker for the integrity of the 
 instincts he has gifted them with, and rest 
 
 38 
 
in the sense of a higher trtJth which they cannot 
 
 demonstrate, I think they will be most in the 
 
 right, so« 
 
 n^ td t% 
 
 fl The sense, to a healthy mind, of being 
 strengthened or enervated by reading, is just 
 as definite and unmistakable as the sense, to 
 a healthy body, of being in fresh or fottl air: 
 and no more arrogance is involved in forbidding 
 the reading of an unwholesome book, than in 
 a physician's ordering the windows to be opened 
 in a sick-room. There is no question whatever 
 concerning these matters, with any person who 
 honestly desires to be informed about them; — 
 the real arrogance is only in expressing judg- 
 ments, either of books or anything else, respect- 
 ing which we have taken no trouble to be in- 
 formed. 
 
 4 m id 
 
 C I have nothing to do, nor have you, with 
 what is happening in space (or possibly may 
 happen in time); we have only to attend to 
 what is happening here — and now. Yonder, 
 stars are rising. Have you ever noticed their 
 order, heard their ancient names, thought of 
 what they were, as teachers, ^ lecturers,'' in 
 that large public hall of the night, to the wisest 
 men of old? Have you ever thought of the 
 direct promise to you yourselves that you may 
 be like them if you will ? " They that be wise, 
 
 39 
 
shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; 
 and they that tarn many to righteousness, as 
 the stars, for ever and ever/' 
 
 iH ^ tt 
 
 C - 1 mtist do what I think right/' How 
 often is this sentence uttered and acted on — 
 bravely — nobly — innocently; btit always — 
 because of its egotism — erringly* You must 
 not do what you think right, but, whether you 
 or anybody think, or don't think it, what is 
 right* 
 
 # tH # 
 
 €1**1 must act according to the dictates of 
 my conscience/' 
 
 td «l K| 
 
 41 By no means, my conscientious friend, 
 unless you are quite sure that yours is not the 
 conscience of an ass* 
 
 Kl 4 m 
 
 €[ Since all noble persons hitherto existent 
 in the world have trusted in the government 
 of it by a supreme Spirit, and in that trust, or 
 faith, have performed all their great actions, 
 the history of these persons will finally mean 
 the history of their faith; and the sum of intel- 
 lectual education will be the separation of what 
 is inhuman in such faiths, and therefore perish- 
 ing, from what is human, and, for human crea- 
 tures, eternally true* 
 
 40 
 
C^ For all the arts of mankind and womankind 
 are only rightly learned, or practised, when they 
 are so with the definite purpose of pleasing or 
 teaching others. A child dancing for its own 
 delight, — a Iamb leaping, — or a fawn at play, 
 are happy and holy creatures; btit they are not 
 artists. An artist is — and recollect this defini- 
 tion (put in capitals for quick reference),-— 
 a person who has submitted to a law which it 
 was painful to obey, that he may bestow a 
 delight which it is gracious to bestow. 
 
 C Of all attainable liberties, then, be sure 
 first to strive for leave to be useful. Independ- 
 ence you had better cease to talk of, for you are 
 dependent not only on every act of people whom 
 you never heard of, who are living round you, 
 but on every past act of what has been dust 
 for a thousand years. So also, does the course 
 of a thousand years to come, depend upon the 
 little perishing strength that is in you. 
 
 ^ ii # 
 
 C Little enough, and perishing, often without 
 reward, however well spent. Understand that. 
 Virtue does not consist in doing what will be 
 presently paid, or even paid at all, to you, the 
 virtuous person. It may so chance; or may not. 
 It will be paid, some day; but the vital condition 
 
of it, as virtue, is that it shall be content in its 
 own deedf and desirous rather that the pay of 
 it, if any, should be for others. 
 
 it td m 
 
 €1 There are three material things, not only 
 useful, but essential to life. No one ** knows 
 how to live *' till he has got them. 
 
 td m 1% 
 
 C These are, pure air, water, and earth. 
 
 id id 4 
 
 41 There are three immaterial things, not only 
 useful, but essential to life. No one knows how 
 to live till he has got them also. 
 
 4 id id 
 
 C These are, admiration, hope, and love. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 <[ Admiration — the power of discerning and 
 taking delight in what is beautiful in visible 
 form, and lovely in human character? and, 
 necessarily, striving to produce what is beautiful 
 in form; and to become what is lovely in char- 
 acter. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 il Hope — the recognition, by the true fore- 
 sight, of better things to be reached hereafter, 
 whether by ourselves or others; necessarily 
 
 42 
 
isstiing in the straightforward and tindisap- 
 pointablc effort to advance, according to otjr 
 proper power, the gaining of them* 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 <I. Love, both of family and neighbor, faith- 
 ful, and satisfied* 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 C Mtisic is the nearest at hand, the most 
 orderly, the most delicate, and the most perfect, 
 of all bodily pleastjres; it is also the only one 
 which is eqtially helpful to all the ages of man, 
 
 — helpful from the nurse's song to her infant, to 
 the music, unheard of others, which often, if 
 not most frequently, haunts the death-bed of 
 pure and innocent spirits* And the action 
 of the deceiving or devilish power is in nothing 
 shown quite so distinctly among us at this day, 
 
 — not even in our commercial dishonesties, nor 
 in our social cruelties, — as in its having been 
 able to take away music, as an instrument of 
 education, altogether; and to enlist it almost 
 wholly in the service of superstition on the one 
 hand, and of sensuality on the other. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 C To know anything whatever about God, 
 you must begin by being Just. 
 
 43 
 
<I. Fix, then, this in yo«r mind as the guiding 
 principle of all fight practical labor, and source 
 of all healthful life energy, — that yottr art is to 
 be the praise of something that yoti love. It 
 may be only the praise of a shell or a stone; it 
 may be the praise of a hero; it may be the praise 
 of God; your rank as a living creature is deter- 
 mined by the height and breadth of your love; 
 but, be you small or great, what healthy art 
 is possible to you must be the expression of 
 your true delight in a real thing, better than the 
 art. 
 
 4 id 4 
 
 fl This is the main lesson I have been teach- 
 ing, so far as I have been able, through my whole 
 life. Only that picture is noble, which is painted 
 in love of the reality. It is a law which embraces 
 the highest scope of art; it is one also which 
 guides in security the first steps of it. If you 
 desire to draw, that you may represent some- 
 thing that you care for, you will advance swiftly 
 and safely. If you desire to draw, that you may 
 make a beautiful drawing, you will never make 
 one. 
 
 it m 4 
 
 <t And this simplicity of purpose is further 
 useful in closing all discussions of the respective 
 grace or admirableness of method. The best 
 painting is that which most completely repre- 
 
 44 
 
sents what it undertakes to represent, as the 
 best language is that which most clearly says 
 what it undertakes to say. 
 
 td m tn 
 
 CYou, tender and delicate women, for 
 whom, and by whose command, all true battle 
 has been, and must ever be; you would perhaps 
 shrink now, though you need not, from the 
 thought of sitting as queens above set lists 
 where the jousting game might be mortal* How 
 much more, then, ought you to shrink from the 
 thought of sitting above a theatre pit, in which 
 even a few condemned slaves were slaying each 
 other only for your delight! And do you not 
 shrink from the fact of sitting above a theatre 
 pit, where, — not condemned slaves, — but the 
 best and bravest of the poor sons of your people, 
 slay each other, — not man to man, — as the 
 coupled gladiators; but race to race, in duel 
 of generations You would tell me, perhaps, 
 that you do not sit to see this; and it is indeed 
 true, that the women of Europe — those who 
 have no heart-interest of their own at peril in 
 the contest — draw the curtains of their boxes, 
 and muffle the openings; so that from the pit 
 of the circus of slaughter, there may reach them 
 only at intervals a half-heard cry and a murmur, 
 as of the wind's sighing, when myriads of souls 
 expire. They shut out the death-cries; and 
 
 45 
 
are happy, and talk wittily among themselves* 
 That is the utter literal fact of what otir ladies 
 do in their pleasant lives* 
 
 €[ And now let me turn for a moment to yoa, 
 — wives and maidens, who are the souls of 
 soldiers; to yoti, — mothers, who have devoted 
 yotir children to the great hierarchy of war. 
 Let me ask yoti to consider what part yoti have 
 to take for the aid of those who love yoti; for 
 if yoti fail in yotir part they cannot ftilfil theirs; 
 stich absolute helpmates you are that no man 
 can stand without that help, nor labor in his 
 own strength. 
 
 4 m i« 
 
 <[ I know yotir hearts, and that the truth of 
 them never fails when an hotir of trial comes 
 which yoti recognize for stich. Btit yoti know 
 not when the hotir of trial first finds yoti, nor 
 when it verily finds yoti. Yoti imagine that you 
 are only called upon to wait and to stiffer; to 
 surrender and to mourn. You know that you 
 must not weaken the hearts of your husbands 
 and lovers, even by the one fear of which those 
 hearts are capable, — the fear of parting from 
 you, or of causing you grief. Through weary 
 years of separation; through fearful expectan- 
 cies of uflinown fate; through the tenfold 
 bitterness of the sorrow which might so easily 
 
 46 
 
have been joy, and the tenfold yearning for 
 gloriotis life struck down in its prime — through 
 all these agonies you fail not, and never will faiL 
 Btit your trial is not in these* To be heroic in 
 danger is little; — you are Englishwomen* To 
 be heroic in change and sway of fortune is little; 
 — for do you not love ? To be patient through 
 the great chasm and pause of loss is little; — 
 for do you not still love in heaven ? But to be 
 heroic in happiness; to bear yourselves gravely 
 and righteously in the dazzling of the sunshine 
 of morning; not to forget the God in whom you 
 trust, when He gives you most; not to fail those 
 who trust you, when they seem to need you 
 least; this is the difficult fortitude. It is not in 
 the pining of absence, not in the peril of battle, 
 not in the wasting of sickness, that your prayer 
 should be most passionate, or your guardianship 
 most tender. Pray, mothers and maidens, for 
 your young soldiers in the bloom of their pride; 
 pray for them, while the only dangers round 
 them are in their own wayward wills; watch 
 you, and pray, when they have to face, not death, 
 but temptation* But it is this fortitude also for 
 which there is the crowning reward* Believe 
 me, the whole course and character of your 
 lovers' lives is in your hands; what you would 
 have them be, they shall be, if you not only 
 desire to have them so, but deserve to have 
 them so; for they are but mirrors in which you 
 will see yourselves imaged* If you are frivolous, 
 
 47 
 
they will he so also; if yoti have no understand- 
 ing of the scope of their duty, they also will for- 
 get it; they will listen, — they can listen, — 
 to no other interpretation of it than that uttered 
 from your Iips« Bid them be brave; — they 
 will be brave for you; bid them be cowards; 
 and how noble soever they be, they will quail 
 for you^ Bid them be wise, and they will be 
 wise for you; mock at their counsel, they will 
 be fools for you; such and so absolute is your 
 rule over them* 
 
 it «l 4 
 
 C You fancy, perhaps, as you have been told 
 so often, that a wife's rule should only be over 
 her husband's house, not over his mind. Ah, 
 no! the true rule is just the reverse of that; a 
 true wife, in her husband's house, is his servant; 
 it is in his heart that she is queen. Whatever 
 of the best he can conceive, it is her part to be; 
 whatever of highest he can hope, it is hers to 
 promise; all that is dark in him she must purge 
 into purity; all that is failing in him she must 
 strengthen into truth: from her, through all the 
 world's clamor, he must win his praise; in her, 
 through all the world's warfare, he must find 
 his peace. 
 
 4 4 K| 
 
 <t Yet, truly, if it might be, I, for one, would 
 fain join in the cadence of hammer-strokes that 
 should beat swords into ploughshares; and that 
 
 48 
 
this cannot be, is not the fault of us men. It is 
 your fault. Wholly yours. Only by your com- 
 mand, or by your permission, can any contest 
 take place among us. And the real, final reason 
 for all the poverty, misery, and rage of battle, 
 throughout Europe, is simply that you women, 
 however good, however religious, however self- 
 sacrificing for those whom you love, are too 
 selfish and too thoughtless to take pains for any 
 creature out of your own immediate circles. 
 You fancy that you are sorry for the pain of 
 others. Now I just tell you this, that if the usual 
 course of war, instead of unroofing peasants' 
 houses, and ravaging peasants' fields, merely 
 broke the china upon your own drawing-room 
 tables, no war in civilized countries would last 
 a week. I tell you more, that at whatever mo- 
 ment you chose to put a period to war, you 
 could do it with less trouble than you take any 
 day to go out to dinner. You know or at least 
 you might know if you would think, that every 
 battle you hear of has made many widows and 
 orphans. We have, none of us, heart enough 
 truly to mourn with these. But at least we 
 might put on the outer symbols of mourning 
 with them. Let but every Giristian lady who 
 has conscience toward God, vow that she will 
 mourn, at least outwardly, for His killed crea- 
 tures. Your praying is useless, and your church- 
 going mere mockery of God, if you have not 
 plain obedience in you enough for this. Let 
 
 49 
 
every lady in the tipper classes of civilized 
 Etjrope simply vow that, while any cruel war 
 proceeds, she will wear black — a mute's black, 
 with no jewel, no ornament, no excuse for, or 
 evasion into, prettiness, — I tell you again, no 
 war would last a week. 
 
 50 
 
NATURE STUDIES 
 
 |HE living inhabitation of the 
 world, — the grazing and nest- 
 ing in it, — the spiritual power 
 of the air, the rocks, the waters, 
 — to be in the midst of it, and 
 rejoice and wonder at it, and 
 help it if I could, — happier 
 if it needed no help of mine, — this was the 
 essential love of Nature in me, this the root of 
 all that I have usefully become, and the light 
 of all that I have rightly learned* 
 
 « td 4 
 
 fl As the art of life is learned, it will be found 
 at last that all lovely things are also necessary: 
 — the wild flower by the wayside, as well as 
 the tended com; and the wild birds and crea- 
 tures of the forest, as well as the tended cattle: 
 because man doth not live by bread only, but 
 also by the desert manna: by every wondrous 
 word and unknowable work of God* 
 
 4 «l 4 
 
 C Instead of supposing the love of Nature 
 necessarily connected with the faithlessness of 
 
 51 
 
the age, I believe it is connected properly with 
 the benevolence and liberty of the age; that 
 it is precisely the most healthy element which 
 distinctively belongs to us; and that out of it, 
 cultivated no longer in levity or ignorance, 
 but in earnestness and as a duty, results will 
 spring of an importance at present inconceivable; 
 and lights arise, which, for the first time in 
 man's history, will reveal to him the true nature 
 of his life, the true field for his energies, and the 
 true relations between him and his Maker* 
 
 4 4 ii 
 
 C Ideas of beauty are among the noblest 
 which can be presented to the human mind, 
 invariably exalting and purifying it according 
 to their degree; and it would appear that we 
 are intended by the Deity to be constantly 
 under their influence, because there is not one 
 single object in Nature which is not capable of 
 conveying them, and which, to the rightly 
 perceiving mind, does not present an incalculably 
 greater number of beautiful than of deformed 
 parts; there being in fact scarcely anything, 
 in pure, undiseased nature, like positive de- 
 formity, but only degrees of beauty, or such 
 slight and rare points of permitted contrast 
 as may render all around them more valuable 
 by their opposition, spots of blackness in creation, 
 to make its colors felt. 
 
 52 
 
fl Whenever people don't look at Nattire, 
 they always think they can improve her. 
 
 4 td H 
 
 C The real majesty of the appearance of the 
 thing to tis, depends apon the degree in which 
 we ourselves possess the power of understanding 
 it, — that penetrating, possession-taking power 
 of the imagination — the very life of the man, 
 considered as a seeing creature. 
 
 tH 4 4 
 
 C Examine the nature of your own emotion 
 (if you feel it) at the sight of the Alp, and you 
 will find all the brightness of that emotion hang- 
 ing, like dew on gossamer, on a curious web of 
 subtle fancy and imperfect knowledge. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 €[ By the Word, or Voice, or Breath, or 
 Spirit, the heavens and earth, and all the host 
 of them, were made; and in it they exist. It 
 is your life; and speaks to you always, so long 
 as you live nobly. ... It may come to you in 
 clouds — it may come to you in the stillness 
 of deserts. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 €1 While the divine laws of seed-time which 
 cannot be recalled, harvests which cannot be 
 
 53 
 
hastened, and winter in which no man can 
 work, compel the impatiences and coveting of 
 his heart into labor too submissive to be anxious, 
 and rest too sweet to be wanton. 
 
 ^ ^ ^ 
 
 fl The woods, which I had only looked on as 
 wilderness, fulfilled I then saw, in their beauty, 
 the same laws which guided the clouds, divided 
 the light, and balanced the wave, f* He hath 
 made everything beautiful, in his time,*' became 
 for me thenceforward the interpretation of the 
 bond between the human mind and all visible 
 things. 
 
 ^ ^ ^ 
 
 C The truths of Nature are one eternal change 
 • — one infinite variety. There is no bush on the 
 face of the globe exactly like another bush; 
 there are no two trees in the forest whose boughs 
 bend into the same network; nor two leaves on 
 the same tree which could not be told one from 
 the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly alike. 
 
 m t^ tn 
 
 C The work of the great spirit of Nature is as 
 deep and unapproachable in the lowest as in the 
 noblest objects — the Divine Mind is as visible 
 in its full energy of operation on every lowly 
 bank and mouldering stone, as in the lifting 
 of the pillars of heaven, and settling the founda- 
 
 54 
 
tion of the earth* And to the rightly perceiving 
 mind, there is the same infinity, the same 
 majesty, the same power, the same unity, and 
 the same perfection, manifest in the casting 
 of the clay as in the scattering of the cIo«d, in 
 the mouldering of the dust as in the kindling 
 of the day-star. 
 
 i« 4 4 
 
 C Men of any high mental power must be seri- 
 ous, whether in ancient or modem days; a 
 certain degree of reverence for fair scenery 
 is found in all our great writers without excep- 
 tion* 
 
 4 m # 
 
 C You may rest assured that those who do 
 not care for Nature, cannot see her. A few of 
 her phenomena lie on the surface: the nobler 
 number lie deep, and are the reward of watching, 
 and of thought. 
 
 td m Ki 
 
 C Nature keeps whatever she has done best,, 
 close sealed, until it is regarded with reverence* 
 
 m tt « 
 
 fl You may enjoy a thing legitimately because 
 it is rare, and cannot be seen often (as you do a 
 fine aurora, or a sunset, or an unusually lovely 
 flower): that is Nature's way of stimulating 
 your attention. 
 
 55 
 
tl The simplest forms of Nature are strangely 
 animated by the sense of the Divine presence; 
 the trees and flowers seem all^ in a sort, children 
 of God. 
 
 ^ ^ ^ 
 
 il There is a decisive instant in all matters; 
 and if you look languidly yoti are sure to miss 
 it. Nature seems always, somehow, trying to 
 make you miss it* ** I will see that through/' 
 you must say, ** without turning my head; '^ 
 or you won't see the trick of it at alL 
 
 4 m 4 
 
 C - Not enjoying the beauty of things/' goes 
 ever so much deeper than mere blindness. 
 
 td m 4 
 
 C^ All Nature, with one voice — with one 
 glory, is set to teach you reverence for the life 
 communicated to you from the Father of Spirits. 
 The song of birds, and their plumage; the scent 
 of flowers, their color, their very existence, are 
 in direct connection with the mystery of that 
 communicated life. 
 
 €[ Have no fear in judging between Nature 
 and Art, so only that you love both. If you 
 can love one only, then let it be Nature: you 
 are safe with her: but do not then attempt to 
 judge the Art, to which you do not care to give 
 
 56 
 
thotight, Of time. Btrt if you love both, you 
 may judge between them fearlessly; you may 
 estimate the last, by its making you remember 
 the first; and giving you the same kind of joy. 
 4 4 4 
 
 €1 Forms are not beautiful because they are 
 copied from Nature; only it is out of the power 
 of man to conceive beauty without her aid. 
 
 # m 4 
 
 <t High art consists neither in altering nor 
 in improving Nature; but in seeking throughout 
 Nature for *.* whatsoever things are lovely, and 
 whatsoever things are pure;" in loving these, 
 in displaying to the utmost of the painter's 
 power such loveliness as is in them, and directing 
 the thoughts of others to them by winning art, 
 or gentle emphasis. 
 
 ti 4 4 
 
 C The highest art in all kinds is that which 
 conveys the most truth. 
 
 4 « tH 
 
 C He who is closest to Nature is best. All 
 rules are useless, all labor is useless, if you do not 
 give facts. 
 
 tH tH 4 
 
 C All most lovely forms and thoughts are di- 
 rectly taken from natural objects. 
 
 57 
 
C The first thing we have to ask of decoration 
 is that it should indicate strong liking, and that 
 honestly. 
 
 td 4 K| 
 
 CThe second requirement in decoration 
 is a sign of otir liking the right thing* And the 
 right thing to be liked is God^s work, which He 
 made for our delight and contentment in this 
 world. And all noble ornamentation is the 
 expression of man^s delight in God's work* 
 
 « 4 4 
 
 <I This infinite universe is unfathomable, 
 inconceivable, in its whole; every human 
 creature must slowly spell out, and long con- 
 template, such part of it as may be possible for 
 him to reach; then set forth what he has learned 
 of it for those beneath him; extricating it from 
 infinity, as one gathers a violet out of the grass; 
 one does not improve either violet or grass in 
 gathering it, but one makes the flower visible; 
 and the human being has to make its power upon 
 his own heart visible also, and to givz it the 
 honor of the good thoughts it has raised up in 
 him, and to write upon it the history of his own 
 soul* 
 
 ti td « 
 
 <[ Human Art can only flourish when its 
 dew is affection; its air. Devotion; the rock 
 of its roots. Patience; and its sunshine, God* 
 
 58 
 
€1 For prolonged entertainment, no pkttire 
 can be compared with the wealth of interest 
 which may be iound in the herbage of the poor- 
 est field, or blossoms of the narrowest copse* 
 
 it 4 4 
 
 €[ AU art, and all Nattire, depend on the 
 ''disposition of masses/' Painting, sculpture, 
 music and poetry, depend equally on the ^f, pro- 
 portion,'' whether of colors, stones, notes, or 
 words. Proportion is a principle, not of archi- 
 tecture, but of existence. It is by the law of 
 proportion that stars shine, that mountains 
 stand, and rivers flow. 
 
 i« 4 4 
 
 41 The word truth, as applied to art, signifies 
 the faithful statement, either to the mind or 
 senses, of any fact of Nature. 
 
 4 td 4 
 
 <[ I would rather teach drawing that my 
 pupils may learn to love Nature, than teach 
 the looking at Nature that they may learn to 
 draw. 
 
 4 4 « 
 
 <[ The moral temper of the workman is shown 
 by his lovely forms and thoughts to express, as 
 well as by the force of his hand in expression. 
 
 59 
 
C The good architects have generally been 
 content, with God's arch, the arch of the rain- 
 bow and of the apparent heaven, and which 
 the stin shapes for us as it sets and rises. 
 
 4 4 tH 
 
 fl Good painting, like nattire's own work, is 
 Infinite, and unreducible* 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 41 Did yoii ever see one sunrise like another ? 
 does not God vary His clouds for you every 
 morning and every night ? though, indeed, there 
 is enough in the disappearing and appearing 
 of the great orb above the rolling of the world, 
 to interest all of us, one would think, for as 
 many times as we shall see it; and yet the aspect 
 is changed for us daily. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 €1 Are not all natural things, it may be asked, 
 as lovely near as far away ? Nay, not so. Look 
 at the clouds, and watch the delicate sculpture 
 of their alabaster sides, and the rounded lustre 
 of their magnificent rolling. They are meant 
 to be beheld far away; they were shaped for 
 their place, high above your head; approach 
 them, and they fuse into vague mists, or whirl 
 away in fierce fragments of thunderous vapor. 
 
 60 
 
C Never if you can help it, miss seeing the 
 sunset and the dawn. 
 
 « 4 4 
 
 C The black thing, which is one of the pretti- 
 est of the very few pretty black things in the 
 world, is called ** Toarmaline/' It may be 
 transparent, and green or red as well as black, 
 btrt this is the commonest state of it, — 
 opaque, and as black as jet. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 €1 Your power of seeing mountains cannot be 
 developed either by your vanity, your curiosity, 
 or your love of muscular exercise. It depends 
 on the cultivation of the instrument of sight 
 itself, and on the soul that uses it. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 <t One of the principal charms of mountain 
 scenery is its solitude . . . another feeling with 
 which one is impressed during a mountain 
 ramble is humility. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 C There is a sublimity and majesty in monot- 
 ony which there is not in rapid or frequent 
 variation. This is true throughout all Nature. 
 The greater part of the sublimity of the sea 
 depends on its monotony. 
 
 61 
 
C Whenever a nation is in its right mind, 
 it always has a deep sense of divinity in the gift 
 of rain from heaven; filling its heart with food 
 and gladness; and all the more when that gift 
 becomes gentle and perennial in the flowing of 
 springs* 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 <t See that no day passes in which yoti do not 
 make yourself a somewhat better creattire; and 
 in order to do that, find out, first, what you arc 
 now* 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 41 Do not think of your faults; still less of 
 others' faults; in every person who comes near 
 you, look for what is good and strong; honor 
 that; rejoice in it; and, as you can, try to 
 imitate it; and your faults will drop off, like 
 dead leaves, when their time comes. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 C Let every dawn of morning be to you as the 
 beginning of life; and every setting sun be to 
 you as its close, — then let every one of these 
 short lives leave its sure record of some kindly 
 thing done for others, some goodly strength 
 or knowledge gained for yourself. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 C What fairy palaces we may build of beauti- 
 ful thoughts! proof against all adversities. 
 62 
 
Bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble his- 
 tories, faithful sayings, treastire-hotises of pre- 
 cious and restful thoughts, which care cannot 
 disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty 
 take away from us — homes built without hands 
 for our souls to live in* 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 CL That your neighbor should, or should not, 
 remain content with fiis position is not your 
 business: but it is very much your business 
 to remain content with your own. . ♦ . We 
 need examples of people who, leaving Heaven 
 to decide whether they are to rise in the world, 
 decide for themselves that they will be happy 
 in it, and have resolved to seek — not greater 
 wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, 
 but deeper felicity; making the first of posses- 
 sions, self-possession; and honoring themselves 
 in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of peace. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 C The world would be a place of peace, if 
 we were all peace-makers. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 C "Work is only done well when it is done with 
 a will; and no man has a thoroughly sound will 
 unless he knows he is doing what he should, and 
 is in his place. 
 
 63 
 
H It is only by labor that thought can he 
 made healthy^ and only by thought that labor 
 can be made happy. 
 
 tH 4 4 
 
 C The weakest among tis has a gift, however 
 seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him, and 
 which, worthily used, will be a gift also to his 
 race forever. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 C Wise work is cheerful, as a child's work is. 
 4 4 4 
 
 fl Without the resolution in your hearts to do 
 good work, so long as your right hands have 
 motion in them; and to do it, whether the issue 
 be that you die or live, no life worthy the 
 name will ever be possible to you, while, in once 
 forming the resolution that your work is to be 
 well done, life is really won, here and forever. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 C All wise work is mainly threefold in char- 
 acter — It is honest, useful and cheerful. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 <t Education in its deeper sense is not the 
 equalizer, but the discerner of men. 
 64 
 
€1 The entire object of itxse edtrcation is to 
 make people not merely do the right things, hut 
 enjoy the right things — not merely indtistriotjs, 
 but to love industry — not merely learned, but 
 to love knowledge — not merely pure, hut to 
 love purity, — not merely just, but to hunger 
 and thirst after justice* 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 C Reverence and compassion we are to teach 
 primarily, and with these, as the bond and 
 guardian of them. Truth of spirit and word, of 
 thought and sight* Truth, earnest and passion- 
 ate, sought for like a treasure, and kept like a 
 crown. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 C Violate truth wilfully, in the slightest par- 
 ticular, or, at least, get into the habit of violating 
 it, and all kinds of failure and error will surround 
 and haunt you to your falh 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 C It is not easy to be accurate in an account 
 of anything however simple. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 C The absolute disdain of all lying belongs 
 rather to Christian chivalry than to mere high 
 breeding. 
 
 65 
 
tl Imitation is like charity, when it is done 
 for love it is lovely; when it is done for show, 
 hateful. 
 
 4 4 «( 
 
 <J The simple statement of the trtiths of 
 nature mtist in itself be pleasing to every order 
 of mind, because every truth of nature is more or 
 less beautiful. 
 
 4 « 4 
 
 <[ All great languages invariably utter great 
 things, and command them; they cannot be 
 mimicked but by obedience; the truth of them 
 is inspiration because it is not only vocal but 
 vital, and you can only learn to speak as those 
 men spoke, by learning what those men were. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 C You ought to be glad in thinking how 
 much more beauty God has made, than human 
 eyes can ever see. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 C A good law is one that holds, whether you 
 recognize and pronounce it or not; a bad law 
 is one that cannot hold, however much you 
 ordain and pronounce iU 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 fl The only right principle of action here, is 
 to consider good and evil as defined by our 
 66 
 
natural sense of both; and to strive to promote 
 the one, and to conquer the other, with as hearty 
 endeavor as if there were, indeed, no other 
 world than this. 
 
 td td 4 
 
 C^ Consider whether we ought not to be more 
 in the habit of seeking honor from out descend- 
 ants than from our ancestors; thinking it better 
 to be nobly remembered than to be nobly bom; 
 and striving so to live. 
 
 4 4 i| 
 
 <t What the woman is to be within her gates, 
 as the centre of order, the balm of distress, and 
 the mirror of beatrty, that she is also to be with- 
 out her gates, where order is more difficult, 
 distress m.ore imminent, loveliness more rare. 
 
 1% 4 tH 
 
 C Beauty has been appointed by the Deity 
 to be one of the elements by which the human 
 soul is continually sustained; it is therefore to be 
 found more or less in all natural objects, but in 
 order that we may not satiate ourselves with it, 
 and weary of it, it is rarely granted to us in its 
 utmost degree. 
 
 «l it ti 
 
 C Do you think you can know yourself by 
 looking into yourself? Never. You can know 
 what you are only by looking out of yourself. 
 
 67 
 
C However good yoti may be, yoti have 
 fatilts; — however ddl yo« may be, yoxs can 
 find otit what some of them are; and however 
 slight they may be, yoti had better make some 
 
 — not too painf til, btit patient — effort to get 
 qtiit of them» 
 
 m 1% 4 
 
 fl None can estimate the power manifested in 
 victory, tmless they have personally meastired 
 the strength to be overcome. 
 
 1% « tH 
 
 il Twenty people can gain money for one 
 who can tjse it; and the vital qtiestion, for indi- 
 vidtial and for nation, is never ** how mtich do 
 they make ? *' but ** to what ptirpose do they 
 
 spend ? '" 
 
 4 « td 
 
 41 If there be any one principle more widely 
 than another confessed by every titterance or 
 more sternly than another imprinted on every 
 atom, of the visible creation, that principle 
 is not Liberty, hxst Law. 
 
 4 4 # 
 
 <[ True knowledge is disciplined and tested 
 knowledge, — not the first thought that comes, 
 
 — so the true passion is disciplined and tested 
 passion — not the first passion that comes. 
 
 68 
 
<t Go to nattire in all singleness of heart, 
 and walk with her laboriously and trustingly^ 
 having no other thought but how best to pene- 
 trate her meaning; rejecting nothing, selecting 
 nothing, and scorning nothing* 
 
 td « K| 
 
 C Stand upon the peak of some isolated 
 mountain at daybreak, when the night-mists 
 first rise from off the plains, and watch their 
 white and lake-like fields as they float in level 
 bays and winding gulfs about the islanded 
 summits of the lower hills, untouched yet by 
 more than dawn, colder and more quiet than a 
 windless sea under the moon of midnight* 
 "Watch when the first sunbeam is sent upon the 
 silver channels, how the foam of their undulating 
 surface parts and passes away; and down under 
 their depths the glittering city and green pasture 
 lie like Atlantis, between the white paths of 
 winding rivers; the flakes of light falling every 
 moment faster and broader among the starry 
 spires, as the wreathed surges break and vanish 
 above them, and the confused crests and ridges 
 of the dark hills shorten their gray shadows upon 
 the plain* Wait a little longer, and you shall 
 see those scattered mists rallying in the ravines 
 and floating up toward you, along the winding 
 valleys, till they couch in quiet masses, irides- 
 cent with the morning light, upon the broad 
 breasts of the higher hills, whose leagues of 
 
 69 
 
massy tindtjlation will melt back and back into 
 that robe of material lights tmtil they fade away, 
 lost in its lustre, to appear again above, in the 
 serene heaven, like a wild, bright, impossible 
 dream, foandationless and inaccessible, their 
 very bases vanishing in the unsubstantial and 
 mocking blue of the deep lake below* Wait 
 yet a little longer, and you shall see those mists 
 gather themselves into white towers, and stand 
 like fortresses along the promontories, massy and 
 motionless, only piling with every instant higher 
 and higher into the sky, and casting longer 
 shadows athwart the rocks; and out of the pale 
 blue of the horizon you will see forming and 
 advancing a troop of narrow, dark, pointed 
 ■vapors, which will cover the sky, inch by inch, 
 ^ith their gray network, and take the light off 
 the landscape with an eclipse which will stop 
 the singing of the birds and the motion of the 
 leaves together? and then you will see horizontal 
 bars of black shadow forming under them, and 
 lurid wreaths create themselves, you know not 
 how, along the shoulders of the hills; you never 
 see them form, but when you look back to a 
 place which was clear an instant ago, there is a 
 cloud on it, hanging by the precipices, as a hawk 
 pauses over his prey. And then you will hear 
 the sudden rush of the awakened wind, and you 
 will see those watch-towers of vapor swept away 
 from their foundations, and waving curtains 
 of opaque rain let down to the valleys, swinging 
 70 
 
from the burdened clouds in black, bending 
 fringes, or pacing in pale columns along the lake 
 level, grazing its surface into foam as they go* 
 And then, as the sun sinks, you shall see the 
 storm drift for an instant from off the hills, 
 leaving their broad sides smoking, and loaded 
 yet with snow-white, torn, steam-like rags of 
 capricious vapor, now gone, now gathered 
 again; while the smouldering sun, seeming not 
 far away, but burning like a red-hot ball beside 
 you, and as if you could reach it, plunges through 
 the rushing wind and rolling cloud with headlong 
 fall, as if it meant to rise no more, dyeing all the 
 air about it with blood. And then you shall 
 hear the fainting tempest die in the hollow of 
 the night, and you shall see a green halo kindling 
 on the summit of the eastern hills, brighter — 
 brighter yet, till the large white circle of the slow 
 moon is lifted up among the barred clouds, step 
 by step, line by line; star after star she quenches 
 with her kindling light, setting in their stead 
 an army of pale, penetrable, fleecy wreaths in the 
 heaven, to give light upon the earth, which 
 move together, hand in hand, company by com- 
 pany, troop by troop, so measured in their unity 
 of motion, that the whole heaven seems to roll 
 with them, and the earth to reel under them. 
 And then wait yet for one hour, until the east 
 again becomes purple, and the heaving moun- 
 tains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves 
 of a wild sea, are drowned one by one in the 
 
 7J 
 
glory of its burning; watch the white glaciers 
 blaze in their winding paths about the moun- 
 tains, like mighty serpents, with scales of fire; 
 watch the columnar peaks of solitary snow, 
 kindling downwards, chasm by chasm, each in 
 itself a new morning; their long avalanches 
 cast down in keen streams brighter than the 
 lightning, sending each his tribute of driven snow, 
 like altar smoke, up to the heaven; the rose- 
 light of their silent domes flushing that heaven 
 about them and above them, piercing with purer 
 light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, 
 casting a new glory on every wreath as it passes 
 by, until the whole heaven — one scarlet canopy 
 ' — is interwoven with a roof of waving flame, 
 and tossing, vault beyond vault, as with the 
 drifted wings of many companies of angels; 
 and then, when you can look no more for glad- 
 ness, and when you are bowed down with fear 
 and love of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me 
 who has best delivered this His message unto 
 
 men! 
 
 td td 4 
 
 C Though Nature is constantly beautiful, she 
 does not exhibit her highest powers of beauty 
 constantly, for then they would satiate us and 
 pall upon the senses. It is necessary to their 
 appreciation that they should be rarely shown. 
 Her finest touches are things which must be 
 watched for; her most perfect passages of beauty 
 
 72 
 
are the most evanescent^ She is constantly 
 doing something beatitiftfl for tis, but it is some- 
 thing which she has not done before and will 
 not do again; — some exiiibition of her general 
 powers in particular circumstances, which if 
 we do not catch at the instant it is passing, 
 will not be repeated for us* Now, they are these 
 evanescent passages of perfected beauty, these 
 perpetually varied examples of utmost power, 
 which the artist ought to seek for and arrest. 
 
 # i| 4 
 
 €[ Mountains are, to the rest of the body of 
 the earth, what violent muscular action is to 
 the body of man* The muscles and tendons of 
 its anatomy are, in the mountain, brought out 
 with fierce and convulsive energy, full of expres- 
 sion, passion, and strength; the plains and the 
 lower hills are the repose and the effortless 
 motion of the frame, when its muscles lie dor- 
 mant and concealed beneath the lines of its 
 beauty; yet ruling those lines in their every 
 undulation. This, then, is the first grand 
 principle of the truth of the earth. The spirit 
 of the hills is action; that of the lowlands, 
 repose; and between these there is to be found 
 every variety of motion and of rest; from the 
 inactive plain, sleeping like the firmament, with 
 cities for stars, to the fiery peaks, which, with 
 heaving bosoms and exulting limbs, with the 
 
 73 
 
clotids drifting like hair from their bright fore- 
 heads, lift up their Titan hands to Heaven, say- 
 ing, if I live forever! '' 
 
 4 td ii 
 
 C I believe that it is not good for man to live 
 among what is most beatitifal; — that he is a 
 creattfre incapable of satisfaction by anything 
 upon earth; and that to allow him habitually to 
 possess, in any kind whatsoever, the utmost 
 that earth can give, is the surest way to cast 
 him into lassitude or discontents 
 
 ^ ^ ^ 
 
 C The resources of trees are not developed 
 until they have difficulty to contend with; 
 neither their tenderness of brotherly love and 
 harmony, till they are forced to choose their 
 ways of various life where there is contracted 
 room for them, talking to each other with their 
 restrained branches* The various action of 
 trees rooting themselves in inhospitable rocks, 
 stooping to look into ravines, hiding from the 
 search of glacier winds, reaching forth to the 
 rays of rare sunshine, crowding down together 
 to drink at sweetest streams, climbing hand in 
 hand among the difficult slopes, opening in 
 sudden dances round the mossy knolls, gathering 
 into companies at rest among the fragrant 
 fields, gliding in grave procession over the 
 
 74 
 
heavenward ridges, — nothing of this can be 
 conceived among the anvexed and unvaried 
 felicities of the lowland forest: while to all these 
 direct sources of greater beatrty are added, first 
 the power of redundance, — the mere quality 
 of foliage visible in the folds and on the promon- 
 tories of a single Alp being greater than that 
 of an entire lowland landscape (unless a view 
 from some cathedral tower); and to this charm 
 of redundance, that of clearer visibility, — tree 
 after tree being constantly shown in successive 
 height, one behind another, instead of the mere 
 tops and flanks of masses, as in the plains; and 
 the forms of multitudes of them continually 
 defined against the clear sky, near and above, 
 or against white clouds entangled among their 
 branches, instead of being confused in dimness 
 of distance* 
 
 4 4 K| 
 
 C Painting, or art generally, as such, with 
 all its technicalities, difficulties, and particular 
 ends, is nothing but a noble and expressive lan- 
 guage, invaluable as the vehicle of thought, 
 but by itself nothing* He who has learned what 
 is commonly considered the whole art of paint- 
 ing, that is, the art of representing any natural 
 object faithfully, has as yet only learned the 
 language by which his thoughts are to be ex- 
 pressed* He has done just as much towards 
 being that which we ought to respect as a great 
 
 75 
 
painter, as a man who has learned how to express 
 himself grammatically and melodiously has 
 towards being a great poet. The language is, 
 indeed, more difficult of acquirement in the one 
 case than in the other, and possesses more power 
 of delighting the sense, while it speaks to the 
 intellect, but it is, nevertheless, nothing more 
 than language, and all those excellences which 
 are pecuSar to the painter as such, are merely 
 what rhythm, melody, precision and force are 
 in the words of the orator and the poet, necessary 
 to their greatness, but not the tests of their 
 greatness. It is not by the mode of representing 
 and saying, but by what is represented and said, 
 that the respective greatness either of the painter 
 or the writer is to be finally determined. 
 
 # m # 
 
 C The fruit of Earth, and its waters, and its 
 light — such as the strength of the pure rock 
 can grow — such as the unthwarted sun in his 
 season brings — these are your inheritance. 
 
 Id td td 
 
 <t Perhaps the great monotone gray of Nature 
 and of Time is a better color than any that the 
 human hand can give* 
 
 id td id 
 
 C It is with interest and reverence to be 
 noted as a physical truth that in a state of 
 76 
 
joyftil and healthy excitement the eye becomes 
 more highly sensitive to the beairty of color, 
 and especially to the blue and red rays, while 
 in depression and disease all colors become dim 
 to us* 
 
 4 4 i| 
 
 C. Color is, in brief terms, the type of love* 
 Hence it is especially connected with the blos- 
 soming of the earth; and again, with its fruits; 
 also, with the spring and fall of the leaf, and with 
 the morning and evening of the day, in order 
 to show the waiting of love abotrt the birth and 
 death of man. 
 
 tH «l 4 
 
 tl The Greek liked purple, as a general source 
 of enjoyment better than any other color, and 
 so all healthy persons who have eye for color, 
 and are unprejudiced about it do. 
 
 td 4 4 
 
 €[ If human life be cast among trees at all, the 
 love borne to them is a sure test of its purity. 
 
 4 t(| td 
 
 <[ Throughout all the freedom of her wildest 
 foliage, Nature is resolved on expressing an 
 encompassing limit: and marking a unity in the 
 whole tree, caused not only by the rising of its 
 
 77 
 
branches from a common root, btrt by their 
 joining in one work, and being bound by a com- 
 mon law. 
 
 ti td m 
 
 C Lovely flowers growing in the open air, are 
 the proper gtiides of men to the places which 
 their Maker intended them to inhabit. 
 
 ^ ^ ^ 
 
 C Flowers, like everything else that is lovely 
 in the visible world, are only to be seen rightly 
 with the eyes which the God who made them 
 gave iss; and neither with microscopes nor 
 spectacles. . ♦ . The trse of the great mechanical 
 powers may indeed sometimes be compatible 
 with the due exercise of otir own; but the tise 
 of instruments for exaggerating the powers of 
 sight necessarily deprives us of the best pleas- 
 ures of sight. A flower is to be watched as it 
 grows, in its association with the earth, the air, 
 and the dew; its leaves are to be seen as they 
 expand in sunshine; its colors, as they em- 
 broider the field, or illumine the forest. Dissect 
 or magnify them, and all you discover or learn 
 at last will be that oaks, roses, and daisies, are 
 all made of fibres and bubbles; and these, again, 
 of charcoal and water; but for all their peeping 
 and probing, nobody knows how. 
 
 78 
 
€L Some fifty years ago the poet Goethe dis- 
 covered that all the parts of plants had a kind of 
 common nature^ and would change into each 
 other* Now this was a true discovery, and a 
 notable one; and you will find, that, in fact, all 
 plants are composed of essentially two parts — 
 the leaf and root — one loving the light, the 
 other darkness; one liking to be clean, the other 
 to be dirty; one liking to grow for the most part 
 tip, the other for the most part down; and each 
 having faculties and purposes of its own* But 
 the pure one, which loves the light, has, above 
 all things, the purpose of being married to an- 
 other leaf, and having child-leaves, and children's 
 children of leaves, to make the earth fair for- 
 ever* And when the leaves marry, they put 
 on wedding-robes, and are more glorious than 
 Solomon in all his glory, and they have feasts 
 of honey, and we call them ** Flowers/' 
 
 td 4 td 
 
 €[ Your garden is to enable you to obtain 
 such knowledge of plants as you may best 
 use in the country in which you live, by com- 
 municating it to others; and teaching them to 
 take pleasure in the green herb, given for meat, 
 and the colored flower, given for joy. 
 
 4 id 4 
 
 €1 Perhaps few people have ever asked them- 
 selves why they admire a rose so much more 
 
 79 
 
than all other flowers* If they consider, they 
 will find, first that red is, in a delicately gradated 
 state, the loveliest of all pure colors: and sec- 
 ondly, that in the rose there is no shadow, 
 except what is composed of colon 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 fl Flowers seem intended for the solace of 
 ordinary humanity; children love them; quiet, 
 tender, contented ordinary people love them as 
 they grow; luxurious and disorderly people 
 rejoice in them gathered. They are the cot- 
 tager's treasure; and in the crowded town, 
 mark, as with a little broken fragment of rain- 
 bow, the windows of the workers in whose heart 
 rests the covenant of peace. Passionate or 
 religious minds contemplate them with fond, 
 feverish intensity; the affection is seen severely 
 calm in the works of many old religious painters, 
 and mixed with more open and true country 
 sentiment in those of our own pre-Raphaelites. 
 To the child and the girl, the peasant and the 
 manufacturing operative, to the grisette and 
 the nun, the lover and monk, they are precious 
 always. But to the men of supreme power and 
 thoughtfulness, precious only at times; sym- 
 bolically and pathetically often to the poets, but 
 rarely for their own sake* 
 
 80 
 
<t God paints the clotids and shapes the moss- 
 fibres, that men may be happy in seeing Him 
 at His work. 
 
 it i« 4 
 
 <[ Consider the art of singing, and the sim- 
 plest perfect master of it (up to the limits of his 
 nature) whom yoti can find — a skylark* From 
 him you may learn what it is to ** sing for joy/* 
 
 ^ ^ ^ 
 
 fl No air is sweet that is silent: it is only 
 sweet when ftiU of low currents of undersotind 
 — triplets of birds, and murmur and chirp of 
 insects* 
 
 ^ ^ ^ 
 
 C Note the quivering or vibration of the air 
 • • ♦ first, and most intense, in the voice and 
 throat of the bird: which is the air incarnate. 
 ... Is it not strange to think of the influence 
 of this one power . ♦ . vibration? . . . How 
 much of the repose — how much of the wrath, 
 folly, and misery of men, has literally depended 
 on this one power of the air: — on the sound of 
 the trumpet and the bell — on the lark's song, 
 and the bee's murmur. 
 
 C The perfect and simple grace of bird form, 
 in general, has rendered it a favorite subject with 
 early sculptors, and with these schools which 
 
loved form more than action* • . ♦ Half the 
 ornaments, at least, in Byzantine architecture, 
 and a third of that of Lombardic, is composed 
 of birds, either pecking at frtiit, or flowers, 
 or standing on either side of a flower or vase, or 
 alone, as generally the symbolical peacock* 
 Btrt how mtich of our general sense of grace or 
 power of motion, of serenity, peacefulness, and 
 spirituality, we owe to these creatures it is 
 impossible to conceive: their wings supplying 
 us with almost the only means of representation 
 of spiritual motion which we possess and with 
 an ornamental form of which the eye is never 
 weary, however meaningless or endlessly re- 
 peated. 
 
 K| # K| 
 
 C The Bird. — It is little more than the drift 
 of the air brought into form by plumes; the air 
 is in all its quills, it breathes through its whole 
 frame and flesh, and glows with air in its flying, 
 like blown flame: it rests upon the air, subdues 
 it, surpasses it, outraces it: — is the air, con- 
 scious of itself, conquering itself, ruling itself. 
 
 Ki m m 
 
 €i Also, into the throat of the bird is given 
 the voice of the air. All that in the wind itself 
 is weak, wild, useless in sweetness, is knit to- 
 gether in its song. As we may imagine the wild 
 form of the cloud closed into the perfect form 
 
 82 
 
of the bird's wings, so the wild voice of the 
 cloiid into its ordered and commanded voice; 
 unwearied, rippling through the clear heaven 
 in its gladness, interpreting all intense passion 
 through the soft spring nights, bursting into 
 acclaim and rapture of choir at daybreak, or 
 lisping and twittering among the boughs and 
 hedges through the heat of the day, like little 
 winds that only make the cowslip bells shake, 
 and ruffle the petals of the wild rose. 
 
 4 4 « 
 
 €[ Also upon the plumes of the bird are put 
 the colors of the air: on these the gold of the 
 cloud that cannot be gathered by any covetous- 
 ness: the rubies of the clouds — the vermilion 
 of the cloud-bar, and the flame of the cloud- 
 crest, and the snow of the cloud, and its shadow, 
 and the melted blue of the deep wells of the sky 
 — all these, seized by the creating spirit, and 
 woven by Athena herself into films and threads 
 of plume; with wave on wave following, and 
 fading along breast, and throat, and opened 
 wings, infinite as the dividing of the foam and 
 the shifting of the sea-sand; — even the white 
 down of the cloud seeming to flutter up between 
 the stronger plumes, seen, but too soft for touch* 
 
 K| td 4 
 
 C And so the Spirit of the Air is put into, and 
 upon this created form; and it becomes, through 
 
 83 
 
twenty centtiries, the symbol of divine help, 
 descending, as the Fire to speak, but as the 
 Dove, to bless* 
 
 «l 4 4 
 
 il Every work of right art has a tendency to 
 reproduce the ethical state which first developed 
 it. Music, which of all the arts is most directly 
 ethical in origin, is also the most direct in power 
 of discipline; the first, the simplest, the most 
 effective of all instruments of moral instruction, 
 while in the failure and betrayal of its functions, 
 it becomes the subtlest aid of moral degradation. 
 Music is thus, in her health, the teacher of per- 
 fect order, and is the voice of the obedience of 
 angels, and the companion of the course of the 
 spheres of heaven; and in her depravity she is 
 also the teacher of perfect disorder and disobedi- 
 ence, and the Gloria in Excelsis becomes the 
 Marseillaise. 
 
 K| 4 # 
 
 <I Of all inorganic substances, acting in their 
 own proper nature, and without assistance or 
 combination, water is the most wonderful. If 
 we think of it as the source of all the change- 
 fulness and beauty which we have seen in 
 clouds; then as the instrument by which the 
 earth was modelled into symmetry, and its 
 crags chiselled into grace; then as^ in the form 
 of snow, it robes the mountains it has made, 
 with that transcendent light which we could 
 
 84 
 
not have conceived if we had not seen: then 
 as it exists in the form of the torrent — in the 
 iris which spans it^ in the morning mist which 
 rises from it, in the deep crystalline pools which 
 mirror its hanging shore, in the broad lake and 
 glancing river; finally, in that which is to all 
 human minds the best emblem of unwearied, 
 unconquerable power, the wild, various, fantastic 
 tameless unity of the sea; what shall we com- 
 pare to this mighty, this universal element, for 
 glory and for beauty? or how shall we follow 
 its eternal changefulness of feeling? It is like 
 trying to paint a souL 
 
 Kl td K| 
 
 CTo paint the actual play of light on the 
 reflective surface, or to give the forms and fury 
 of water when it begins to show itself — to 
 give the flashing and rocket-like velocity of a 
 noble cataract, or the precision and grace of 
 the sea waves, so exquisitely modelled, though 
 so mockingly transient — so mountainous in its 
 form; yet so cloudlike in its motion — with its 
 variety and delicacy of color, when every ripple 
 and wreath has some peculiar passage of reflec- 
 tion upon itself alone, and the radiating and 
 scintillating sunbeams are mixed with the dim 
 hues of transparent depth and dark rock below; 
 to do this perfectly, is beyond the power of 
 man; to do it even partially has been granted 
 to but one or two* 
 
 85 
 
fl That ttirbid foaming of the angry waters, — 
 that tearing down of bank and rock along the 
 flanks of its fury, — are no disturbances of the 
 kind coarse of nature; they are beneficent 
 operations of laws necessary to the existence of 
 man and to the beauty of the earth. The process 
 is continued more gently, but not less effectively, 
 over all the surface of the lower undulating 
 country; and each filtering thread of summer 
 rain which trickles through the short turf 
 of the uplands is bearing its own appointed 
 burden of earth to be thrown down on some 
 new natural garden in the dingles below* 
 
 « it ^ 
 
 <[ The laws of the organization of the earth 
 are distinct and fixed as those of the animal 
 frame, simpler and broader, but equally authori- 
 tative and inviolable. ♦ ♦ . Few ever think of 
 the common earth beneath their feet, as any- 
 thing possessing specific form, or governed by 
 steadfast principles. 
 
 4 1(1 td 
 
 f[ The earth, as a tormented and trembling 
 ball, may have rolled in space for myriads of 
 ages before humanity was formed from its dust; 
 and as a devastated ruin it may continue to roll, 
 when all that dust shall again have been mingled 
 with ashes that never were warmed by life, or 
 polluted by sin. But for us the intelligible and 
 
 86 
 
substantial fact is that the earth has been 
 brought, by forces we know not of, into a form 
 fitted for oar habitation. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 C Look at the crest of the Alps, from the 
 far-away plains over which its light is cast 
 when human sotils hold communion with it by 
 the myriads. The child looks up to it in the 
 dawn, and the husbandman in the burden and 
 heat of the day, and the old man in the going 
 down of the sun, and it is to them all as the celes- 
 tial city on the world's horizon; dyed with the 
 depth of heaven, and clothed with the calm 
 of eternity. Thus was it set for holy dominion, 
 by Him who marked for the sun his journey, and 
 bade the moon know her going down. It was 
 built for its place in the far-off sky; approach it, 
 and as the sound of the voice of man dies away 
 about its foundation, and the tide of human 
 life, shallowed upon the vast aerial shore, is at 
 last met by the Eternal, ** Here shall thy waves 
 be stayed,'' the glory of its aspect fades into 
 blanched fearfulness; its purple walls are rent 
 into grisly rocks, its silver fretwork saddened 
 into wasting snow, the storm brands of ages 
 are on its heart, the ashes of its own ruin lie 
 solemnly on its white raiment. 
 4 4 4 
 
 C Consider, whether we can justly refuse to 
 attribute to their mountain scenery some share 
 
 87 
 
in giving the Greeks and Italians their intellec- 
 ttial lead among the nations of Europe* 
 
 # 4 td 
 
 C There is not a single spot of land in either 
 of these countries from which mountains are 
 not discernible. The mountain outlines seen 
 from Sparta, Corinth, Athens, Rome, Florence, 
 Pisa, Verona, are of consummate beauty; and 
 whatever dislike or contempt may be traceable 
 in the mind of the Greeks for mountain tugged- 
 ness, their placing the shrine of Apollo under 
 the cliffs of Delphi, and his throne upon Parnas- 
 sus, was a testimony to all succeeding time that 
 they themselves attributed the best part of their 
 intellectual inspiration to the powers of the hills. 
 Nor would it be difficult to show that every 
 great writer of either of these nations, however 
 little definite regard he might manifest for the 
 landscape of his country, had been mentally 
 formed and disciplined by it, so that even such 
 enjoyment as Homer's of the ploughed ground 
 and poplar groves owes its intensity and delicacy 
 to the excitement of the imagination produced, 
 without his own consciousness, by other and 
 grander features of the scenery to which he had 
 been accustomed from a child; and differs in 
 every respect from the tranquil, vegetative, and 
 prosaic affection with which the same ploughed 
 land and poplars would be regarded by a native 
 of the Netherlands. 
 
C The higher mountains have their scenes of 
 power and vastness, their blue precipices and 
 clottdlike snows; why should they also have 
 the best and fairest colors given to their fore- 
 ground rocks, and overburden the human mind 
 with wonder, while the less majestic scenery, 
 tempting us to the observance of details for 
 which amidst the higher mountains we had no 
 admiration left, is yet in the beauty of those very 
 details, as inferior as it is in its scale of magni- 
 tude? I believe the answer must be, simply, 
 that it is not good for man to live among what is 
 most beautiful; that he is a creature incapable 
 of satisfaction by anything upon earth; and that 
 to allow him habitually to possess, in any kind 
 whatsoever, the utmost that earth can give, 
 is the surest way to cast him into lassitude or 
 discontent. 
 
 td ^ 4 
 
 C No human capacity ever yet saw the whole 
 of a thing; but we may see more and more of it 
 the longer we look. Every individual temper 
 will see something different in it; but supposing 
 the tempers honest, all the differences are there. 
 Every advance in our acuteness of perception 
 will show us something new; but the old and 
 first discerned things will still be there, not 
 falsified, only modified and enriched by the 
 new perceptions, becoming continually more 
 
 89 
 
bcautiftfl in its harmony with them, and more 
 approved as a part of the Infinite trtJth^ 
 
 4 td td 
 
 C We find the beauty of the buildings of the 
 leaves consists, from the first step of it to the 
 last, in its showing their perfect fellowship; 
 and a single aim uniting them under circum- 
 stances of various distress, trial and pleasure. 
 Without the fellowship, no beauty; without the 
 steady purpose, no beauty; without trouble, 
 and death, no beauty; without individual pleas- 
 ure, freedom, and caprice, so far as may be con- 
 sistent with the universal good, no beauty. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 €[ There is no climate, no place, and scarcely 
 an hour, in which nature does not exhibit color 
 which no mortal effort can imitate or approach. 
 For all our artificial pigments are, even when 
 under the same circumstances, dead and lifeless 
 beside her living color; the green of a growing 
 leaf, the scarlet of a fresh flower, no art nor expe- 
 dient can reach. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 €1 The loveliest colors ever granted to human 
 sight, those of morning and of evening clouds 
 before or after rain, are produced in minute 
 particles of finely divided water, or perhaps 
 sometimes ice. 
 
 90 
 
C There are three things to which man is 
 bom — labor and sorrow and joy. Each of these 
 three things has its baseness and its nobleness. 
 There is base labor, and noble labor. There is 
 base sorrow, and noble sorrow. There is base 
 joy, and noble joy. Bat yoti mtist not think to 
 avoid the corrtiption of these things by doing 
 withotrt the things themselves. Nor can any 
 life be right that has not all three. Labor with- 
 out joy is base. Labor without sorrow is base. 
 Sorrow without labor is base. Joy without 
 labor is base. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 C Only iti proportion as we draw near to 
 God, and are made in measure like unto Him, 
 can we increase our possession of charity, of 
 which the entire essence is in God only. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 C I do not say it is possible for men to agree 
 with each other in their religious opinions, but 
 it is certainly possible for them to agree with 
 each other upon their religious expressions. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 C There is not a moment of a man's active 
 life in which he may not be indirectly preaching, 
 and teaching both strangers and friends; his 
 children, his servants, and all who are in any 
 
 9\ 
 
way ptrt tmder him, being given to him as 
 especial objects of his ministration. 
 
 ^ ftk ^ 
 
 <t The best prayer at the beginning of a day 
 is that we may not lose its moments. 
 
 «l «l «l 
 
 C Ascending from lowest to highest, through 
 every scale of human industry, that industry 
 worthily followed, gives peace. Ask the laborer 
 in the field, at the forge, or in the mine; ask the 
 patient, delicate-fingered artisan, or the strong- 
 armed, fiery-hearted worker in bronze and in 
 marble, and with the colors of light; and none 
 of these who are true workmen, will ever tell 
 you, that they have found the law of heaven an 
 tmkind one — that in the sweat of their face 
 they should eat bread, till they return to the 
 ground; nor that they ever found it an unre- 
 warded obedience, if indeed it were rendered 
 faithfully to the command — ii Whatsoever thy 
 hand f indeth to do rr- do it with thy might*^' 
 
 4 4 « 
 
 C If a man spends lavishly on his library, you 
 call him mad — a biblio-maniac. But you 
 never call any one a horse-maniac, though men 
 ruin themselves every day by their horses, and 
 you do not hear of people ruining themselves by 
 their books, 
 
 92 
 
C We talk of food for the mind, as of food 
 for the body; now a good book contains stich 
 food inexhaustibly; it is a provision for life, and 
 for the best part of as; yet how long most people 
 wodd look at the best book before they would 
 give the price of a large turbot for it! 
 
 K| m td 
 
 C No book is worth anything which is not 
 worth much; nor is it serviceable, until it has 
 been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved 
 again; and marked, so that you can refer to the 
 passages you want in it, as a soldier can seize the 
 weapon he needs in an armory, or a housewife 
 bring the spice she needs from her store. 
 
 tft «l # 
 
 d Books! — the value of them consists first, 
 in their power of preserving and communicating 
 the knowledge of facts — secondly in their power 
 of exciting vital or noble emotions and intel- 
 lectual action. 
 
 ^ ^ ^ 
 
 tl "Wheresoever the search after truth begins, 
 there life begins; wheresoever that search ends, 
 there life ceases. 
 
 4 id 4 
 
 C We are all of us willing enough to accept 
 dead truths or blunt ones; which can be fitted 
 harmlessly into spare niches. . . . But a sapling 
 
 93 
 
truth, with earth at its root and blossom on its 
 branches; or a trenchant truth that can ctit 
 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. 
 
 # m it 
 
 C Let the accent of words be watched by 
 all means, but let their meaning be watched 
 more closely still, and fewer will do the work* 
 
 ti 4 ^ 
 
 C A few words well chosen and well distin- 
 guished, will do work that a thousand cannot, 
 when every one is acting, equivocally, in the 
 function of another. 
 
 K| 1% 4 
 
 C The Divine law, instead of being contrary 
 to|mercy, is the foundation of all delight, and 
 the guide of all fair and fortunate existence. 
 « * td 
 
 C It is one thing to indulge in playful rest, 
 and another to be devoted to the pursuit of 
 pleasure; and gaiety of heart during the reaction 
 after hard labor, and quickened by satisfaction 
 in the accomplished duty or perfected result, is 
 altogether compatible with, nay, even in some 
 sort arises naturally out of a deep internal seri- 
 ousness of disposition. 
 
 94 
 
C The highest and healthiest state which is 
 competent to ordinary humanity appears to be 
 that which, accepting the necessity of recreation 
 and yielding to the impulse of natural delight 
 springing out of health and innocence, does 
 indeed, condescend often to playfulness, but 
 never without such deep love of God, of truth, 
 and of humanity as shall make even its slightest 
 word reverent, its idlest fancies profitable, and 
 its keenest satire indulgent^ 
 
 4 4 td 
 
 €[ A healthy manner of play is necessary in 
 order to a healthy manner of work* 
 
 tl Every faculty of man's soul, and every 
 instinct of it by which he is meant to live, is 
 exposed to its own special form of corruption; 
 and whether within Man, or in the external world, 
 there is a power or condition of temptation 
 which is perpetually endeavoring to reduce every 
 glory of his soul, and every power of his life, to 
 such corruption as is possible to them. And 
 the more beautiful they are, the more fearful 
 is the death which is attached as a penalty to 
 their degradation. 
 
 4 4 4 
 
 €[ As the flower is gnawed by frost, so every 
 human heart is gnawed by faithlessness. And 
 
 95 
 
as surely — as irrevocably — as the fruit-bud 
 falls before the east wind, so fails the power of 
 the kindest human heart if you meet it with 
 poison* 
 
 m « 1% 
 
 C The feelings of the purest and most might- 
 ily passioned human souls are likely to be the 
 truest. Not, indeed, if they do not desire to 
 know the truth, or blind themselves to it that 
 they may please themselves with passion; for 
 then they are no longer pure; but if continually 
 seeking and accepting the truth as far as it is 
 discernible, they trust their Maker for the in- 
 tegrity of the instincts He has gifted them with, 
 and rest in the sense of a higher truth which 
 they cannot demonstrate, I think they will be 
 most in the right so. 
 
 4 4 K| 
 
 C Ve should be afraid of doing wrong, and of 
 that only, otherwise, if we only don't do wrong 
 for fear of being punished, we have done wrong 
 in our hearts already. 
 
 4 « K| 
 
 C Let us beware that our rest become not the 
 rest of stones, which so long as they are torrent- 
 tossed, and thunder-stricken, maintain their 
 
 96 
 
majesty, but when the stream is silent, and the 
 storm passed, suffer the grass to cover them, 
 and the lichen to feed on them, and are ploughed 
 down into dust* 
 
 97 
 
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