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THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY 
 
 AND 
 
 WORDS OF WISDOM 
 
 FROM THE WRITINGS OF 
 
 IS 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 RDITBD WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 ROSE PORTER 
 
 BOSTON 
 T) LOTHROP COMPANY 
 
 FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS 
 
 \ 
 

 i/ 
 
 Copyright, 1887, 
 
 By 
 
 D. Lotiirop Company. 
 
H 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The chief purpose of a volume of selections is, that one 
 mind may thus be made to do service for many. With an 
 author voluminous as John Ruskin, this is especially needful, 
 since otherwise some of his richest thoughts would remain hid- 
 den among sealed pages. For, while the company of thought 
 lovers and seekers is vast, time comes to many of them so 
 hedged in by the "must be" of life's work, their own re- 
 search cannot even fill a brief space amid the pleasures held 
 sacred for recreation hours. 
 
 These busy people are the ones to whom this " Spare Min- 
 ute Series " is cordially dedicated, and by whom it is no less 
 cordially welcomed. Among them may be those who will 
 ask, "Why, in this compilation, Notes on Art and kindred 
 topics have been omitted ? " I reply, ' ' Simply, because they are 
 the subjects I find most freely introduced in other volumes 
 of selections from Ruskin's writings." Hence I have confined 
 myself to his discourses on Nature, Morals, and Religion; 
 gathering for your perusal revelations of the blessed wonders 
 of sky and cloud, mountain and rock, trees, mosses, and the 
 green grass, birds of the air, and flowers, and the marvelous 
 coloring all these display, which in beauty of hue, and deli- 
 cacy of tinting as far out-pass the works of man, as "the 
 Heavens are higher than the earth." 
 
 From Nature, it is but a step to the realm where mind and 
 soul reign as King and Queen. And here you will find not 
 only jewels of mental value, and morals of beauty and truth, 
 but buds and blossoms too, of uplifting aspirations and sweet 
 tender heart charity. 
 
4 INTBODUCTION. 
 
 For verily, such treasures strew the pages of this author, 
 as thickly as stars strew mid-sky when the night is cloudless. 
 I wonder, will you take these "Thoughts of Beauty, and 
 words of Wisdom " into your minds and hearts as types of 
 the Spiritual light they emblem? If you do, full well I know 
 you will find, like the stars, they shine in companies, one 
 truth-beam swiftly kindling another, till at last they give 
 place to the clear shining of the glad Hereafter, where there 
 is neither night of doubt, sorrow or sin, for, " the Lord God 
 Is the Light thereof." 
 
 Rose Porter. 
 
JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 " John Ruskin. Born in London, England, 1819. Son of a 
 merchant, from whom he inherited a large fortune." 
 
 Thus the record reads, and, like all such records, the words 
 stand as the suggestion of infinite possibilities. 
 
 Possibilities, that in this case have rounded out into a 
 rarely full life, and one in which the familiar prophecy, " the 
 child is father of the man," is peculiarly verified. For in the 
 aged man of the present, we can see the boy of the past, as 
 plainly as in the wide-spreading branches of the oak, we can 
 trace the outline of the sapling tree. 
 
 Very charmingly Ruskin reveals this in a volume of remi- 
 niscences just now being published by John Wiley and Sons. 
 
 And for the sake of the vivid portrayal those early memo- 
 ries give of growth from youth to manhood, I pass a cluster of 
 notes from them on to you. The very opening page is a 
 glimpse into his reverential heart, showing that even at well 
 nigh " threescore years and ten " the remembrance of his early 
 home and parents fill a hallowed place in his mind, and, there- 
 fore, he tells us : "I write these few prefatory words on my 
 father's birthday, in what was once my own nursery in his old 
 house — to which he brought my mother and me, sixty-two 
 years since ; I being then four years old. What would other- 
 wise in the following pages have been little more than an old 
 man's recreation in gathering visionary flowers in the fields of 
 youth, has taken, as I write, the nobler aspect of a dutiful of- 
 fering at the grave of parents who trained my childhood to 
 all the good it could attain, and whose memory makes declin- 
 ing life cheerful in the hope of being again soon with them." 
 
 5 
 
6 JOHN BUSKIN. 
 
 What an in-look, I repeat, this gives us into the simple, 
 sweet-hearted nature of the man. And yet, from a subtle 
 mental combining of rare analytical power and perception of 
 isolated truths, that forms them into a reality of united force, 
 and then, insists on them with a certain aggressive assertion, 
 Ruskin has many a time by printed and spoken words called 
 forth the bitter hostility of critics and connoisseurs in Art 
 and Literature. Nevertheless he has won an abiding place 
 among English scholars, and is universally acknowledged as 
 the possessor of harmony and brilliancy of style, linked with 
 marked eloquence in descriptive passages, that gives even to 
 his printed words the flash of a vitality that illumines them 
 with a glow of beauty that ranks him an artist in language, 
 as well as an artist by the claim of palette and brush. 
 
 And all this is hinted in his childhood, where it runs like a 
 golden thread through the warp of the years. Catch its shin- 
 ing in the following extracts, where of the dawning of intel- 
 lectual life he tells : " I had Walter Scott's novels and the Iliad 
 — Pope's translation — for my only reading on weekdays ; on 
 Sundays their effect was tempered by Robinson Crusoe, and 
 the Pilgrim's Progress. ... I had, however, still better 
 teaching than theirs, and that, compulsorily, and every day in 
 the week. ... I have to chronicle what I owed to my 
 mother for the resolutely consistent lessons which so exer- 
 cised me in the Scriptures as to make every word of them famil- 
 iar to my ear in habitual music, yet in that familiarity rever- 
 enced, 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 thor- 
 oughly, 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 alternate 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, that she did not care about ; 
 but she made sure that as soon as I got hold of it at all, I 
 should get hold of it by the right end. 
 
JOHN BUSKIN. 7 
 
 " 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 the next day. If a name was hard, the better exercise 
 in pronunciation; if a chapter was tiresome, the better lesson 
 in patience; if loathsome, the better lesson in faith that there 
 was some use in its being so outspoken. I had to learn a few 
 verses by heart, or repeat, to make sure I had not lost, some- 
 thing of what was already known; and, with the chapters 
 thus gradually possessed from the first word to the last, I 
 had to learn the whole body of the fine old Scottish para- 
 phrases, which are good, melodious, and forceful verse : and 
 to which, I owe the first cultivation of my ear in sound. 
 
 " 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 one 
 hundred and nineteenth Psalm — has now become of all the 
 most precious to me, in its overflowing and glorious passion 
 of love for the Law of God, in opposition to the abuse of it 
 by modern preachers of what they imagine to be His Gospel." 
 To this discipline, he continues to tell us, "patient, accurate 
 and resolute, I owe not only a knowledge of the book, but 
 much of my general power of taking pains, and the best 
 part of my taste in literature." And surely it is in this early 
 training we find the germ of the later development which has 
 led lovers of Ruskin to rank him with David the Psalmist, for 
 to him, as to the sweet singer of old, God's works are God's 
 thoughts, and Ruskin thus becomes akin to inspired David, 
 so far certainly as his views of nature are concerned. 
 
 I would that we had space to follow in detail the continued 
 record of his parents' formative influence, which he acknowl- 
 edges time after time, saying, "It was more important in 
 youth, and far on into life, than any external conditions, 
 either of friendship or tutorship, whether at the University or 
 in the world." Later on he again refers to his mother's in- 
 fluence, and " her natural purity of heart and conduct which 
 led her always to take most delight in the right and clear lan- 
 guage which can only relate lovely things." He recalls, too, 
 
8 JOHN BUSKIN. 
 
 her unquestioning faith in the Bible, "which placed him as 
 soon as he could think, in the presence of the unseen world, 
 and set his active analytic power early to work on the ques- 
 tions of conscience, free-will and responsibility." And so 
 strong was this mother's control, that •' the ideas of success 
 at school or college put before him by the masters were igno- 
 ble and comfortless in comparison with his mother's regret- 
 ful blame, or simple praise." She must have been a some- 
 what stern woman, and though deeply religious, in bondage 
 to some extent too, to the " letter of the law." This we see in 
 her government of the child who Avhen not more than five 
 years old, had already learned "not to want what he was 
 never permitted to hope or imagine the possession of," and 
 who " had attained serene and secure methods of life and mo- 
 tion ; and could pass his days contentedly in tracing the squares 
 and comparing the colors of the carpet, examining the knots 
 in the wood of the floor, or counting the bricks in the oppo- 
 site houses." Thus it was that in the days of almost infancy 
 his life-long habits of observation began — till so keen grew 
 the faculty that not the least line in art, or object in nature, 
 escaped his notice. 
 
 We have dwelt long on his mother's influence. What of 
 the father's? Ruskin tells us "he had so much more con- 
 fidence in his mother's judgment than in his own, that he 
 never ventured even to help, much less to cross her in the 
 conduct of his education." Still, it was the father who be- 
 came his guide in developing what power he had of imagina- 
 tion, and early love for art, poetry, and romance. "My 
 father," he writes, "was an absolutely beautiful reader of 
 the best poetry and prose." And pleasant is the word-picture 
 of the little lad and growing youth seated in his own " sacred 
 niche, a recess beside the fireplace, and out of all inconvenient 
 heat, or hurtful draught," listening, with the eagerness of 
 an eager child, while his father read aloud to his mother even- 
 ing after evening. "Thus," he writes, " I heard all the 
 Shakespeare comedies and historical plays again and again — 
 all Scott; and all Don Quixote, at which I could then laugh to 
 ecstasy, now, it is one of the saddest, and, in some things, 
 most offensive of books to me." 
 
JOHN RUSKW. 9 
 
 It was the father too, who about the beginning of the teen- 
 period began to read him pages from Byron — who became 
 for a time the youth's master in verse, as Turner was in color. 
 
 But we must not linger over these reminiscences, pleasant 
 though their story is, and yet, I would fain note the child's 
 delight in the mid-summer holiday tour, when seated between 
 father and mother in the old-time travelling chariot, his hori- 
 zon of sight was the widest possible, and when their road 
 led through the garden-like counties of England, and some- 
 times extended northward, even far as the Scottish borders 
 — I would fain note too, "the first effort to express senti- 
 ment in rhyme; the dawning love for engraving," and of 
 such characters of surface and shade as it could give, and 
 then the violent instinct for architecture, followed by the 
 never abated geological instinct." All of these mark periods 
 in his unfolding life — but none were so full as the hour 
 when as he crossed the plane of the Rhine the " gates of the 
 hills " opened to a new life, to cease no more, except at the 
 Gates of the Hills whence one returns not." But enough — 
 save the gathering up in his own words, "what advantage 
 and mischief by the chances of life up to seven years old had 
 been irrevocably determined." " I will first count my bless- 
 ings," he writes, "as a not unwise friend once recommended 
 me to do, continually ; whereas I have a bad trick of always 
 numbering the thorns in my fingers, and not the bones in them. 
 And for best and truest beginning of all blessings, I had been 
 taught the perfect meaning of peace, in thought, act and 
 word. 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 ; I had never seen a mo- 
 ment's trouble or disorder in any household matter ; nor any- 
 thing whatever either done in a hurry, or undone in due time. 
 I had no conception of such a feeling as anxiety. ... I 
 had never done any wrong that I knew of — beyond occa- 
 sionally delaying the commitment to heart of some improving 
 sentence, that I might watch a wasp on the window-pane, or 
 a bird in the cherry-tree ; and I had never seen any grief. 
 
10 JOHN BUSKIN. 
 
 " 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 noth- 
 ing 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, this being the main prac- 
 tical faculty of my life, causing Mazzini to say of me, a year 
 or two before his death, that I had ' the most analytic mind 
 in Europe.' 
 
 ' ' Lastly, an extreme perfection in palate and all other bodily 
 senses, given by the utter prohibition of cake, wine, comforts, 
 or except in caref ulest restriction, fruit ; and by fine prepara- 
 tion 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 puz- 
 zled 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 peo- 
 ple told me was His book, not entertaining. I had no com- 
 panions 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 con- 
 sequence 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 endure. 
 
JOHN BUSKIN. 11 
 
 Danger or pain of any kind I knew not ; my strength was 
 never exercised, my patience never tried, and my courage never 
 fortified. 
 
 ' ' Thirdly, I was taught no precision nor etiquette of man- 
 ners; it was enough if, in the little society we saw, I 
 remained unobtrusive, and replied to a question without 
 shyness ; but the shyness came later, and increased as I grew 
 conscious of the rudeness arising from the want of social dis- 
 cipline, and found it impossible to acquire, in advanced life, 
 dexterity in any bodily exercise, skill in any pleasing accom- 
 plishment, or ease and tact in ordinary behavior. 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 sol- 
 diers ; and when once the obedience, if required is certain, the 
 little creature should be very early put for periods of prac- 
 tice in complete command of itself ; set on the barebacked 
 horse of its own will, and left to break it by its own strength. 
 But 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 vortices. 
 
 " 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 import- 
 ant moment for its construction, cramped indeed, but not dis- 
 ciplined, and only by protection innocent, instead of by prac- 
 tice virtuous." 
 
 And now, one more note and we bid farewell to Ruskin's 
 own analysis of the impression left by childhood's experience 
 on manhood. 
 
 " I was different, be it once more said, from other children, 
 even of my own type, not so much in the actual nature of 
 the feeling, but in the mixture of it. I had, in my little clay 
 pitcher, vialfuls, as it were, of Wordsworth's reverence, 
 Shelley's sensitiveness, Turner's accuracy, all in one. A snow- 
 drop was to me as to Wordsworth, part of the Sermon on the 
 Mount : but I never should have written sonnets to the celan- 
 
12 JOHN BUSKIN. 
 
 dine, because it was of coarse yellow, and imperfect form. 
 With Shelley, I loved blue sky and blue eyes, but never in the 
 least confused the heavens with my own poor little Psychid- 
 ion. And the reverence and passion were alike kept in their 
 places by the constructive Turnerian element. And I did not 
 weary myself in wishing that a daisy could see the beauty of 
 its shadow, but in trying to draw the shadow rightly, myself. 
 
 " But so stubborn and chemically inalterable the laws of the 
 prescription were, that now, looking back from 1886 to that 
 brook shore of 1837, whence I could see the whole of my 
 youth, I find myself in nothing whatsoever changed. Some of 
 me is dead, more of me stronger. I have learned a few 
 things, forgotten many ; in the total of me, I am but the same 
 youth !".... 
 
 That you may know something of the amount of work Rus- 
 kin has accomplished, I copy the list of his chief published 
 writings, and if you add to them his various efforts for the 
 benefit of all classes of society, men and women, rich and poor, 
 young and old, learned and unlearned, you will be able in some 
 measure to estimate the mental power and heart worth of 
 John Buskin. 
 
 1843, " Modern Painters " — republished in 1846 in a greatly 
 enlarged form, accompanied by a second volume, treating " of 
 the Imaginative and Theoretic Faculties." To this, later on, a 
 third and fourth were added, and in 1860, the work was com- 
 pleted by a fifth volume. At the time of its completion the 
 work had somewhat changed in character to a philosophical 
 treatise on landscape painting. 
 
 The contemplation and study of the most noted mediaeval 
 buildings of Continental Europe inspired Buskin to seek a gen- 
 eral reform in domestic architecture — hence his "Seven 
 Lamps of Architecture," 1849, and "The Stones of Venice," 
 1851-53, both illustrated by himself — as were the "Modern 
 Painters." 
 
 In 1851 he began " Examples of the Architecture of Venice " 
 from his own designs. Then follow other architectural 
 pamphlets, among them " The Opening of the Crystal Palace " 
 and " The Study of Architecture in our Schools." " Notes on 
 
JOHN BUSKIN. 13 
 
 the Construction of Sheep Folds," 1851, is a discussion of 
 church discipline and doctrine, rather than on church archi- 
 tecture. 
 
 Ruskin was of course in full sympathy with the pre-Raph- 
 aelite movement, claiming, as he did, that "the principles on 
 which Hunt, Millais and their followers proceeded had first 
 been enunciated in his own works," and in his pamphlet, 
 " Pre-Raphaelitism," 1851, and elsewhere, he expresses his ad- 
 miration of the new school. He has also published several 
 courses of lectures to artisans and others — among them, 
 "Architecture and Painting," "The Political Economy of 
 Art," " The Two Paths," " Sesame and Lilies," " The Ethics 
 of the Dust," "The Crown of Wild Olive," "Lectures on 
 Art," "The Eagle's Nest," " Aratra Pentelici," "Ariadne 
 Florentina," also "Elements of Perspective," "The King of 
 the Golden River," " Elements of Drawing," " Unto this Last," 
 "Time and Tide, by Weare and Tyne," "The Queen of the 
 Air," and many contributions to the Quarterly Review and 
 other periodicals. "Mornings in Florence," "Proserpine," 
 "Studies of Wayside Flowers," "Love's Meinie," "Deuca- 
 lion" and " Val d'Arno," " Munera Pulveris," " Elements of 
 Sculpture," and a periodical called " Fors Clavigera" and 
 " The Lord's Prayer in Church" belong to his later publica- 
 tions. There is also a volume of early poems, called, "Poems 
 by John Ruskin," but of his verse-making it should ever be 
 remembered it was confined to his youth, and for the most 
 part dated from Christ Church, Oxford, where, in 1839, he 
 gained the Newdigate prize for English poetry. 
 
 In the matter of public honor, in 1867, Ruskin was ap- 
 pointed Rede lecturer at Cambridge, and later he received 
 the degree of LL. D. from that University. 
 
 He was elected Slade professor of fine arts in the Univer- 
 sity of Oxford in 18G9, and in 1871 he gave live thousand 
 pounds as an endowment for a Master of Drawing in that 
 University; in this year he also founded a Museum at Shef- 
 field, to which he has since given part of his own valuable 
 library, as well as art treasures. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY 
 
 AND 
 
 WORDS OF WISDOM. 
 
 i 
 
 It is a strange thing how little in general people know 
 about the sky. It is the part of creation in which nature 
 has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the 
 sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, 
 than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in 
 which we least attend to her. There are not many of her 
 other works in which some more material or essential pur- 
 pose than the mere pleasing of man is not answered by 
 every part of their organization; but every essential purpose 
 of the sky might, so far as we know, be answered, if once 
 in three days, or thereabouts, a great ugly black rain cloud 
 were brought up over the blue, and everything well watered, 
 and so all left blue again till next time, with perhaps a film 
 of morning and evening mist for dew. And instead of this, 
 there is not a moment of any clay of our lives, when nature 
 is not producing scene after scene, picture after picture, 
 glory after glory, and working still upon such exquisite and 
 constant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is 
 quite certain it is all done for us, and intended for our per- 
 
 15 
 
16 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 petual pleasure. And every man, wherever placed, however 
 far from other sources of interest or of beauty, has this 
 doing for him constantly. The noblest scenes of the earth 
 can be seen and known but by few ; . . . but the sky is 
 for all; bright as it is, it is not "too bright, nor good, for 
 human nature's daily food " ; it is fitted in all its functions 
 for the perpetual comfort and exalting of the heart, for the 
 soothing it and purifying it from its dross and dust. Some- 
 times gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful, never 
 the same for two moments together; almost human in its 
 passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in 
 its infinity, its appeal to what is immortal in us, is as distinct 
 as its ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is 
 mortal is essential. And yet we never attend to it, we never 
 make it a subject of thought, but as it has to do with our 
 animal sensations ; we look upon all by which it speaks to us 
 more clearly than to brutes, upon all which bears witness to 
 the intention of the Supreme, that we are to receive more 
 from the covering vault than the light and the dew which 
 we share with the weed and the worm, only as a succession 
 of meaningless and monotonous accident, too common and 
 too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchfulness, or a 
 glance of admiration. If in our moments of utter idleness 
 and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last resource, which of 
 its phenomena do we speak of? One says it has been wet, 
 and another it has been windy, and another it has been warm. 
 Who, among the whole chattering crowd, can tell me of the 
 
TIIO U GHTS OF BE A UTY. 17 
 
 forms and the precipices of the chain of tall white mountains 
 that girded the horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the 
 narrow sunbeam that came out of the south, and smote upon 
 their summits until they melted and mouldered away in a 
 dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead clouds 
 when the sunlight left them last night, and the west wind 
 blew them before it like withered leaves? All has passed, 
 unregretted as unseen ; or if the apathy be ever shaken oft", 
 even for an instant, it is only by what is gross, or what is 
 extraordinary; and yet- it is not in the broad and fierce mani- 
 festations of the elemental energies, not in the clash of the 
 hail, nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the highest char- 
 acters of the sublime are developed. God is not in the earth- 
 quake, nor in the fire, but in the still small voice. They are 
 but the blunt and the low faculties of our nature, which can 
 only be addressed through lampblack and lightning. It is in 
 quiet and subdued passages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep, 
 and the calm, and the perpetual — that which must be sought 
 ere it is seen, and loved ere it is understood — things which 
 the angels work out for us daily, and yet vary eternally, 
 which are never wanting, and never repeated, which are to 
 be found always, yet each found but once ; it is through these 
 that the lesson of devotion is chiefly taught, and the blessing 
 of beauty given. ... I fully believe, little as people in 
 general are concerned with art, more of their ideas of sky 
 are derived from pictures than from reality, and that if we 
 could examine the conception formed in the minds of most 
 
18 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 educated persons when we talk of clouds, it would frequently 
 be found composed of fragments of blue and white reminis- 
 cences of the old Masters. 
 
 If there be one characteristic of the sky more valuable or 
 necessary to be rendered than another, it is that which Words- 
 worth has given in the second book of the Excursion : — 
 
 1 ' The chasm of sky above my head 
 
 Is Heaven's profoundest azure. No domain 
 
 For fickle, short-lived clouds, to occupy, 
 
 Or to pass through ; — but rather an abyss 
 
 In which the everlasting stars abide, 
 
 And whose soft gloom, and boundless depth, might tempt 
 
 The curious eye to look for them by day." 
 
 And, in his American notes, I remember Dickens notices the 
 same truth, describing himself as lying drowsily on the barge 
 deck, looking not at, but through the sky. And if you look 
 intensely at the pure blue of a serene sky, you will see that 
 there is a variety and fulness in its very repose. It is not 
 flat dead color, but a deep, quivering, transparent body of 
 penetrable air, in which you can trace or imagine short, fall- 
 ing spots of deceiving light, and dim shades, faint, veiled ves- 
 tiges of dark vapor. 
 
 " The Heavens declare the glory of God." What are the 
 Heavens? There can be no question that in the minds of the 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 19 
 
 sacred writers, the word stood naturally for the entire sys- 
 tem of cloud, and of space beyond it, conceived by them as a 
 vault set with stars. ... A child might therefore be told 
 (surely with advantage) that our beautiful word Heaven may 
 possibly have been formed from a Hebrew word, meaning 
 "the high place." .... These Heavens, then, "de- 
 clare the glory of God ; " that is the light of God, the eternal 
 glory, stable and changeless. As their orbs fail not — but 
 pursue their course for ever, to give light upon the earth — 
 so God's glory surrounds man for ever — changeless, in its 
 fulness insupportable — infinite. 
 
 * * 
 The account given of the stages of Creation in the first 
 chapter of Genesis, is in every respect clear and intelligible 
 to the simplest reader, except in the statement of the work of 
 the second clay. I suppose that this statement is passed over 
 by careless readers without an endeavor to understand it; 
 and contemplated by simple and faithful readers as a sublime 
 mystery which was not intended to be understood. But there 
 is no mystery in any other part of the chapter, and it seems 
 to me unjust to conclude that any was intended here. And 
 the passage ought to be peculiarly interesting to us, as being 
 the first in the Bible in which the heavens are named, and the 
 only one in which the word " Heaven " all important as that 
 word is to our understanding of the most precious promises 
 of Scripture, receives a definite explanation. Let us, there- 
 fore, see whether, by a little careful comparison of the verse 
 
20 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 with other passages in which the word occurs, we may not be 
 able to arrive at as clear an understanding of this portion of 
 the chapter as of the rest. 
 
 In the first place, the English word " Firmament " itself is 
 obscure and useless; because we never employ it but as a 
 synonym of Heaven ; it conveys no other distinct idea to us ; 
 and the verse, though from our familiarity with it we imag- 
 ine that it possesses meaning, has in reality no more point or 
 value than if it were written "God said, let there be some- 
 thing in the midst of the waters, and God called the some- 
 thing Heaven." 
 
 But the marginal reading, " Expansion," has definite value; 
 and the statement that, " God said, let there be an expansion 
 in the midst of the waters, and God called the expansion 
 Heaven," has an apprehensible meaning. Now, with respect 
 to this whole chapter, we must remember always that it is in- 
 tended for the instruction of all mankind, not for the learned 
 reader only ; and that, therefore, the most simple and natural 
 interpretation is the likeliest in general to be the true one. 
 An unscientific reader knows little about the manner in which 
 the volume of the atmosphere surrounds the earth ; but I im- 
 agine that he could hardly glance at the sky when rain was 
 falling in the distance, and see the level line of the bases of 
 the clouds from which the shower descended, without being 
 able to attach an instant and easy meaning to the words "Ex- 
 pansion in the midst of the waters." And if, having once 
 seized this idea, he proceeded to examine it more accurately, 
 
THO TIGHT S OF BE A UTY. 21 
 
 he would perceive at once, if he had ever noticed anything of 
 the nature of clouds, that the level line of their bases did in- 
 deed most severely and stringently divide "waters from 
 waters," that is to say, divide water in its collective and tan- 
 gible state, from water in its divided and aerial state ; or the 
 waters- which fall and flow, from those which rise and float. 
 Next, if we try this interpretation in the theological sense of 
 the word Heaven, and examine whether the clouds are spoken 
 of as God's dwelling place, we find God going before the Is- 
 raelites in a pillar of cloud ; revealing Himself in a cloud on 
 Sinai ; appearing in a cloud on the mercy seat, filling the Tem- 
 ple of Solomon with the cloud when its dedication is accepted ; 
 appearing in a great cloud to Ezekiel ; ascending into a cloud 
 before the eyes of the disciples on Mount Olivet ; and in like 
 manner returning to Judgment. "Behold, He cometh with 
 clouds, and every eye shall see Him." " Then shall they see 
 the Son of Man coming in the clouds of Heaven, with power 
 and great glory." While farther, the "clouds" and "hea- 
 vens " are used as interchangeable words in those Psalms 
 which most distinctly set forth the power of God: "He 
 bowed the heavens also, and came down; He made darkness 
 pavilions round about Him, dark waters, and thick clouds of 
 the skies." And, again; " Thy mercy, oh Lord, is in the hea- 
 vens, and Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds." And, 
 again: "His excellency is over Israel, and His strength is 
 in the clouds." Again: "The clouds poured out water, the 
 skies sent out a sound, the voice of Thy thunder was in the 
 
22 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 Heavens." Again: "Clouds and darkness are round about 
 Him, righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His 
 throne ; the Heavens declare His righteousness, and all the 
 people see His glory." 
 
 In all these passages the meaning is unmistakable, if they 
 possess definite meaning at all. We are too apt to take them 
 merely for sublime and vague imagery, and therefore grad- 
 ually to lose the apprehension of their life and power. The 
 expression, "He bowed the Heavens," for instance, is, I sup- 
 pose, received by most readers as a magnificent hyperbole, 
 having reference to some peculiar and fearful manifestation 
 of God's power to the writer of the Psalm in which the words 
 occur. But the expression either has plain meaning, or it 
 has no meaning. Understand by the term "Heavens" the 
 compass of infinite space around the earth, and the expres- 
 sion, "bowed the Heavens," however sublime, is wholly 
 without meaning ; infinite space cannot be bent or bowed. 
 But understand by the "Heavens" the veil of clouds above the 
 earth, and the expression is neither hyperbolical nor obscure ; 
 it is pure, plain, and accurate truth, and it describes God, not 
 as revealing Himself in any peculiar way to David, but doing 
 what He is still doing before our eyes day by clay. By accepting 
 the words in their simple sense, we are thus led to appre- 
 hend the immediate presence of the Deity, and His purpose 
 of manifesting Himself as near us whenever the storm-cloud 
 stoops upon its course ; while by our vague and inaccurate 
 acceptance of the words we remove the idea of His presence 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 23 
 
 far from us, into a region which we can neither see nor 
 know ; and gradually, from the close realization of a living 
 God who " maketh the clouds His chariot" we refine and ex- 
 plain ourselves into dim and distant suspicion of an inactive 
 God, inhabiting inconceivable places, and fading into the 
 multitudinous formalisms of the laws of Nature. 
 
 All errors of this kind — and in the present day we are in 
 constant and grievous danger of falling into them — arise 
 from the originally mistaken idea that man can, " By search- 
 ing, find out God — find out the Almighty to perfection ; " 
 that is to say, by help of courses of reasoning and accumula- 
 tions of Science, apprehend the nature of the Deity in a more 
 exalted and more accurate manner than in a state of compara- 
 tive ignorance ; whereas it is clearly necessary, from the be- 
 ginning to the end of time, that God's way of revealing Him- 
 self to His creatures should be a simple way, which all those 
 creatures may understand. Whether taught or untaught, 
 whether of mean capacity or enlarged, it is necessary that 
 communion with their Creator should be possible to all ; and 
 the admission to such communion must be rested, not on their 
 having a knowledge of astronomy, but on their having a 
 human soul. In order to render this communion possible, 
 the Deity has stooped from His throne, and has not only, in 
 the person of the Son, taken upon Him the veil of our human 
 flesh, but in the person of the Father, taken upon Him the 
 veil of our human thoughts, and permitted us, by His own 
 spoken authority, to conceive Him simply and clearly as a 
 
24 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 loving Father and Friend ; a being to be walked with and 
 reasoned with; to be moved by our entreaties, angered by 
 our rebellion, alienated by our coldness, pleased by our love, 
 and glorified by our labor; and, finally, to be beheld in im- 
 mediate and active presence in all the powers and changes of 
 creation. This conception of God, which is the child's, is 
 evidently the only one which can be universal, and therefore 
 the only one which for us can be true. 
 
 I would desire, therefore, to receive God's account of His 
 own creation as under the ordinary limits of human knowl- 
 edge and imagination it would be received by a simply minded 
 man. ... I suppose the heavens to mean that part of crea- 
 tion which holds equal companionship with our globe ; I under- 
 stand the " rolling of those heavens together as a scroll," to 
 be an equal and relative destruction with the " melting of the 
 elements in fervent heat ; " and I understand the making of 
 the firmament to signify that, so far as man is concerned, most 
 magnificent ordinance of the clouds ; the ordinance, that as 
 the great plain of waters was formed on the face of the earth, 
 so also a plain of waters should be stretched along the height 
 of air, and the face of the cloud answer the f ace'of the ocean ; 
 and that this upper and heavenly plain should be of waters, as 
 it were, glorified in their nature, no longer quenching the fire, 
 but now bearing fire in their own bosoms ; no longer murmur- 
 ing only when the winds raise them or rocks divide, but 
 answering each other with their own voices from pole to 
 pole ; no longer restrained by established shores, and guided 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 25 
 
 through unchanging channels, but going forth at their pleas- 
 ure like the armies of the angels and choosing their encamp- 
 ments upon the heights of the hills ; no longer hurried down- 
 wards forever, moving but to fall, nor lost in the lightless 
 accumulation of the abyss, but covering the east and west 
 with the waving of their wings, and robing the gloom of the 
 farther infinite with a vesture of clivers colors, of which the 
 threads are purple and scarlet, and the embroideries flame. 
 This, I believe, is the ordinance of the firmament; and it 
 seems to me that in the midst of the material nearness of 
 these heavens God means us to acknowledge His own imme- 
 diate presence as visiting, judging, and blessing us. "The 
 earth shook, the heavens also dropped, at the presence of 
 God." " He doth set His bow in the cloud," and thus renews, 
 in the sound of every drooping swathe of rain, His promise 
 of everlasting love. "In them hath He set a tabernacle f or 
 the sun ; " whose burning ball, which without the firmament, 
 would be seen as an intolerable and scorching circle in the 
 blackness of vacuity, is by the firmament surrounded with 
 gorgeous service, and tempered by mediatorial ministries ; by 
 the firmament of clouds the golden pavement is spread for 
 His chariot wheels at morning ; by the firmament of clouds 
 the temple is built for His presence to fill with light at noon ; 
 by the firmament of clouds the purple veil is closed at even- 
 ing round the sanctuary of His rest ; by the mists of the fir- 
 mament His implacable light is divided, and its separated 
 fierceness appeased into the soft blue that fills the depth of 
 
26 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 distance with its bloom, and the flush with w T hich the mount- 
 ains burn as they drink the overflowing of the day spring. 
 And in this tabernacling of the unendurable sun with men, 
 through the shadows of the firmament, God would seem to 
 set forth the stooping of His own majesty to men, upon the 
 throne of the firmament. As the Creator of all the worlds, 
 and the Inhabiter of eternity, we cannot behold Him: but, 
 as the Judge of the earth, and the Preserver of men, these 
 heavens are indeed His dwelling-place: " Swear not, neither 
 by heaven, for it is God's throne ; nor by the earth, for it is 
 His footstool." And all those passings to and fro of fruitful 
 shower and grateful shade, and all those visions of silver 
 palaces built about the horizon, and voices of moaning winds 
 and threatening thunders, and glories of colored robe and 
 cloven ray, are but to deepen in our hearts the acceptance 
 and distinctness, and dearness of the simple words " Our 
 Father which art in heaven." 
 
 Between the heaven and man came the cloud. Has the 
 reader any distinct idea of what clouds are ? . . . That 
 mist which lies in the morning so softly in the valley, level 
 and white, through which the tops of the trees rise as if 
 through an inundation — why is it so heavy? And why 
 does it lie so low, being j r et so thin and frail that it will melt 
 away utterly into splendor of morning, when the sun has 
 shone on it but a few moments more? Those colossal pyra- 
 mids, huge and firm, with outlines as of rocks, and strength 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 27 
 
 to bear the beating of the high sun full on their fiery flanks 
 — why are they so light — their bases high over our heads, 
 high over the heads of Alps? Why will these melt away, not 
 as the sun rises, but as he descends, and leave the stars of 
 twilight clear, while the valley vapor gains again upon the 
 earth like a shroud? 
 
 Or that ghost of a cloud, which steals by yonder clump of 
 pines ; nay, which does not steal by them, but haunts them, 
 wreathing yet round them, and yet — and yet, slowly; now 
 falling in a fair waved line like a woman's veil ; now fading ; 
 now gone ; we look away for an instant, and look back, and 
 it is again there. What has it to do with that clump of 
 pines, that it broods by them and weaves itself among their 
 branches, to and fro? Has it hidden a cloudy treasure 
 among the moss at their roots, which it watches thus? Or 
 has some strong enchanter charmed it into fond returning, or 
 bound it fast within those bars of bough? And yonder filmy 
 crescent, bent like an archer's bow above the snowy summit, 
 the highest of all the hills — that white arch which never 
 forms but over the supreme crest — how is it stayed there, re- 
 pelled apparently from the snow — nowhere touching it, the 
 clear sky seen between it and the mountain edge, yet never 
 leaving it — poised as a white bird hovers over its nest? 
 
 Or those war-clouds that gather on the horizon, dragon- 
 crested, tongued with fire ; — how is their barbed strength 
 k bridled? What bits are these they are champing with their 
 vaporous lips; flinging off flakes of black foam? Leagued 
 
28 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 leviathans of the Sea of Heaven, out of their nostrils goeth 
 smoke, and their eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. 
 The sword of him that layeth at them cannot hold the spear, 
 the dart, nor the habergeon. Where ride the captains of their 
 armies? Where are set the measures of their march? Fierce 
 murmurers, answering each other from morning until even- 
 ing — what rebuke is this which has awed them into peace? 
 what hand has reined them back by the way by which they 
 came? I know not if the reader will think at first that ques- 
 tions like these are easily answered. So far from it, I rather 
 believe that some of the mysteries of the clouds never will be 
 understood by us at all. ' ' Knowest thou the balancing of the 
 clouds?" Is the answer ever to be one of pride? "The 
 wondrous works of Him which is perfect in knowledge?" 
 
 Is our knowledge ever to be so? For my own 
 
 part I enjoy the mystery, and perhaps the reader may. I 
 think he ought. He should not be less grateful for summer 
 rain, or see less beauty in the clouds of morning, because they 
 come to prove him with hard questions ; to which, perhaps, 
 if we look close at the heavenly scroll, we may find also a 
 syllable or two of answer illuminated here and there. 
 
 # * 
 The first and most important character of clouds, is de- 
 pendent on the different altitudes at which they are formed. 
 The atmosphere may be conveniently considered as divided 
 into three spaces, each inhabited by clouds of specific char- 
 acter altogether different, though in reality, there is no dis- 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 29 
 
 tinct limit fixed between them by nature, clouds being formed 
 at every altitude, and partaking, according to their altitude, 
 more or less of the character of the upper or lower regions. 
 The clouds which I wish to consider as in- 
 cluded in the upper region, never touch even the highest 
 mountains of Europe, and may therefore be looked upon as 
 never formed below an elevation of at least fifteen thousand 
 feet ; they are the motionless multitudinous lines of delicate 
 vapor with which the blue of the open sky is commonly 
 streaked or speckled after several days of fine weather. 
 
 Their chief characters are : First, Symmetry. They are 
 nearly always arranged in some definite and evident order, 
 They thus differ from all other clouds in hav- 
 ing a plan and system ; whereas other clouds, though there 
 are certain laws which they cannot break, have yet perfect 
 freedom from anything like a relative and general system of 
 government. The upper clouds are to the lower, what sol- 
 diers on parade are to a mixed multitude ; no men walk on 
 their heads or on their hands, and so there are certain laws 
 which no clouds violate ; but there is nothing except in the 
 upper clouds resembling symmetrical discipline. Secondly, 
 Sharpness of Edge. The edges of the bars of the upper clouds 
 which are turned to the wind, are often the sharpest which the 
 sky shows; no outline whatever of any other kind of cloud, 
 however marked and energetic, ever approaches the delicate 
 decision of these edges. Thirdly, Multitude : The delicacy of 
 these vapors is sometimes carried into such an infinity of 
 
30 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 division, that no other sensation of number that the earth or 
 heaven can give is so impressive. 
 
 Fourthly, Purity of Color: They are com- 
 posed of the purest aqueous vapor, free from all foulness of 
 earthy gases, and of this in the lightest and most ethereal 
 state in which it can be, to be visible. Farther, they receive 
 the light of the sun in a state of far greater intensity than 
 lower objects, the beams being transmitted to them through 
 atmospheric air far less dense, and wholly unaffected by mist, 
 smoke, or any other impurity. Hence their colors are more 
 pure and vivid, and their white less sullied than those of any 
 other clouds. 
 
 Lastly. Variety. Variety is never so conspicuous, as when 
 it is united with symmetry. . . . Nature never lets oue 
 of the members of even her most disciplined groups of cloud 
 be like another ; but though each is adapted for the same 
 function, and in its great features resembles all the others, 
 not one, out of the millions with which the sky is checkered, 
 is without a separate beauty and character, appearing to have 
 had distinct thought occupied in its conception, and distinct 
 forces in its production ; and in addition to this perpetual in- 
 vention, visible in each member of each system, we find sys- 
 tems of separate cloud intersecting one another, the sweeping 
 lines mingled and interwoven with the rigid bars, these in 
 their turn melting into banks of sand-like ripple and flakes 
 of drifted and irregular foam ; under all, perhaps the massy 
 outline of some lower cloud moves heavily across the motion- 
 
TIIO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 3 1 
 
 less buoyancy of the upper lines, and indicates at once their 
 elevation and repose. 
 
 Such are the great attributes of the upper cloud region. 
 . . . . the upper clouds, which, owing to their quietness 
 and multitude, we may perhaps conveniently think of as the 
 "cloud-flocks." 
 
 If you watch for the next sunset, when there are a consid- 
 erable number of these cirri in the sky, you will see, especially 
 at the zenith, that the sky does not remain of the same color 
 for two inches together : one cloud has a dark side of cold 
 blue, and a fringe of milky white ; another, above it, has a 
 dark side of purple and an edge of red ; another, nearer the 
 sun, has an under-side of orange and an edge of gold; these 
 you will find mingled with, and passing into the blue of the 
 sky, which in places you will not be able to distinguish from 
 the cool gray of the darker clouds, and which will be itself 
 full of gradation, now pure and deep, now faint and feeble ; 
 and all this is clone, not in large pieces, nor on a large scale, 
 but over and over again in every square 3 r ard, so that there is 
 no single part nor portion of the whole sky which has not in 
 itself variety of color enough for a separate picture, and yet 
 no single part which is like another, or which has not some 
 peculiar source of beauty, and some peculiar arrangement of 
 color of its own. 
 
 The originality and vigor of separate conception, in cloud 
 forms, gives to the scenery of the sky a force and a variety 
 
32 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 no less delightful than that of the changes of mountain out- 
 line in a hill district of great elevation ; and there is added to 
 this a spirit-like feeling, a capricious, mocking imagery of 
 passion and life, totally different from any effects of inanimate 
 form that the earth can show. 
 
 # * 
 
 You may take any single fragment of any cloud in the sky, 
 and you will find it put together as if there had been a year's 
 thought over the plan of it, arranged with the most studied 
 inequality — with the most delicate sjmimetry — with the most 
 elaborate contrast, a picture in itself. You may try any other 
 piece of cloud in the heaven, and you will find them every one 
 as perfect, and yet not one in the least like another. 
 
 # # 
 
 We are little apt, in watching the changes of a mountain- 
 ous range of cloud, to reflect that the masses of vapor which 
 compose it, are huger and higher than any mountain range 
 of the earth ; and the distances between mass and mass are 
 not yards of air traversed in an instant by the flying form, 
 but valleys of changing atmosphere leagues over; that the 
 slow motion of ascending curves, which we can scarcely 
 trace, is a boiling energy of exulting vapor rushing into the 
 heaven a thousand feet in a minute ; and that the toppling 
 angle whose sharp edge almost escapes notice in the multitu- 
 dinous forms around it, is a nodding precipice of storms, 
 
 three thousand feet from base to summit 
 
 Every boiling heap of illuminated mist in the nearer sky, is an 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 33 
 
 enormous mountain, fifteen or twenty thousand feet in height, 
 
 six or seven miles over an illuminated surface, furrowed by a 
 
 thousand colossal ravines, torn by local tempests into peaks 
 
 and promontories, and changing its features with the majestic 
 
 velocity of the volcano. 
 
 # 
 
 Not in her most ponderous and lightless masses will nature 
 ever leave us without some evidence of transmitted sunshine ; 
 and she perpetually gives us passages in which the vapor be- 
 comes visible only by the sunshine which it arrests and holds 
 within itself, not caught on its surface, but entangled in its 
 mass — floating fleeces, precious with the gold of Heaven; 
 and this translucency is especially indicated on the dark sides 
 even of her heaviest wreaths, which possess opalescent and 
 delicate hues of partial illumination far more dependent upon 
 the beams which pass through them than on those which are 
 reflected upon them. 
 
 Where Poussin or Claude have three similar masses, Nat- 
 ure has fifty pictures, made up each of millions of minor 
 thoughts — fifty aisles penetrating through angelic chapels 
 to the Shechinah of the blue — fifty hollow ways among be- 
 wildered hills — each with their own nodding rocks, and 
 cloven precipices, and radiant summits, and robing vapors, 
 but all unlike each other, except in beauty, all bearing wit- 
 ness to the unwearied, exhaustless operation of the Infinite 
 Mind. 
 
34 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 To the region of the rain-cloud belong all those phenomena 
 of drifted smoke, heat-haze, local mists in the morning or 
 evening; in valleys, or over water, mirage, white steaming 
 vapor rising in evaporation from moist and open surfaces, 
 and everything which visibly affects the condition of the at- 
 mosphere without actually assuming the form of a cloud. 
 These phenomena are as perpetual in all countries as they are 
 beautiful . . . through the rain-cloud, and its accessory 
 phenomena, all that is beautiful may be made manifest, and 
 all that is hurtful concealed, . . . and accordingly, Nat- 
 ure herself uses it constantly, as one of her chief means of 
 most perfect effect; not in one country, nor another, but 
 everywhere — everywhere at least, where there is anything 
 worth calling landscape. I cannot answer for the desert of 
 Sahara, but I know fehat there can be no greater mistake than 
 supposing that delicate and variable effect of mists and rain- 
 cloud are peculiar to northern climates. I have never seen 
 in any place or country effects of mist more perfect than in 
 the Campagna of Rome, and among the hills of Sorrento. 
 
 # # 
 We must understand another effect peculiar to the rain- 
 cloud, that its openings exhibit the purest blue which the 
 sky ever shows ; for as aqueous vapor always turns the sky 
 more or less gray, it follows that we never can see the azure 
 so intense as when the greater part of this vapor has just 
 fallen in rain. Then, and then only, pure blue sky becomes 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 35 
 
 visible in the first openings, distinguished especially by the 
 manner in which the clouds melt into it ; their edges passing 
 off in faint white threads and fringes, through which the blue 
 shines more and more intensely, till the last trace of vapor is 
 lost in its perfect color. It is only the upper white clouds, 
 however, which do this, or the last fragments of rain-clouds, 
 becoming white as they disappear, so that the blue is never 
 corrupted by the cloud, but only paled and broken with pure 
 white, the purest white which the sky ever shows. Thus 
 we have a melting and palpitating color, never the same for 
 two inches together, deepening, and broadening here aud 
 there into intensity of perfect azure, then drifted and dying 
 away through every tone of pure blue sky, into the snow 
 white of the filmy cloud. Over this roll the determined edges 
 of the rain-clouds, throwing it all far back, as a retired scene, 
 into the upper sky. 
 
 # 
 
 Stand upon the peak of some isolated mountain at day- 
 break, 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 
 
36 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 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, 
 iridescent with the morning light, upon the broad breasts of 
 the higher hills, whose leagues of massy undulation will melt 
 back and back into that robe of material light, until they fade 
 away, lost in its lustre, to appear again above, in the serene 
 heaven, like a wild, bright, impossible dream, foundationless 
 and inaccessible, their very bases vanishing in the unsub- 
 stantial 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 prom- 
 ontories, massy and motionless, only piled 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, with 
 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 the hori- 
 zontal 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 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 37 
 
 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 wav- 
 ing curtains of opaque rain let down to the valleys, swing- 
 ing from the burdened clouds in black, bending fringes, or 
 pacing in pale columns along the lake level, grazing its sur- 
 face with foam as they go. And then, as the sun sinks, you 
 shall see the storm drift for an insant from off the hills, leav- 
 ing 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 pene- 
 trable, 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 
 
38 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 to reel under them. And then, wait yet for one hour, until 
 the east again becomes purple, and the heaving mountains, 
 rolling against it in darkness, like waves of a wild sea, are 
 drowned one by one in the glory of its burning ; watch the 
 white glaciers blaze in their winding paths about the mount- 
 ains, like mighty serpents with scales of fire ; watch the col- 
 umnar peaks of solitary snow, kindling downward, 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 gladness, and when you are bowed down 
 with fear and love of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me 
 who has best delivered this His message unto men ! 
 
 Look at the clouds, and watch the delicate sculpture of 
 their alabaster sides, and the rounded lustre of their magnifi- 
 cent rolling. They are meant to be beheld far away ; they 
 are shaped for their place, high above your head ; approach 
 them and they form into vague mists, or whirl away in fierce 
 fragments of thunderous vapor. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 39 
 
 Without troubling ourselves at all about laws, or causes of 
 color, the visible consequences of their operation are notably 
 these — that when near us, clouds present only subdued and 
 uncertain colors ; but when far from us, and struck by the 
 sun on their under surface — so that the greater part of the 
 light they receive is reflected — they become golden, purple, 
 scarlet, and intense fiery white, mingled in all kinds of gra- 
 dations. The finest scarlets are constantly seen in broken 
 flakes on a deep purple ground of heavier cloud beyond, and 
 some of the loveliest rose-colors on clouds in the east, opposite 
 
 the sunset, or in the west in the morning A 
 
 thunder-cloud, deep enough to conceal everything behind it, is 
 often dark lead color, or sulphurous blue ; but the thin va- 
 pors crossing it, milky-white. 
 
 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 per- 
 fect passages of beauty are the most evanescent. She is con- 
 stantly doing something beautiful for us, but it is something 
 which she has not done before and will not do again : — some 
 exhibition of her general powers in particular circumstances, 
 which if we do not catch at the instant it is passing, will not 
 be repeated for us. 
 
40 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 # 
 
 The great Angel of the Sea — rain; — the Angel, observe, 
 the messenger sent to a special place on a special errand. 
 Not the diffused perpetual presence of the burden of mist, but 
 the going and returning of intermittent cloud. All turns 
 upon that intermittence. Soft moss on stone and rock ; — 
 cave-fern of tangled glen; wayside well — perennial, patient, 
 silent, clear ; stealing through its square font of rough-hewn 
 stone ; ever thus deep — no more — which the winter wreck 
 sullies not, the summer thirst wastes not, incapable of stain 
 as of decline — where the fallen leaf floats undecayed, and the 
 insect darts undefiling. Cressed brook and ever-eddying river, 
 lifted even in flood scarcely over its stepping stones, — but 
 through all sweet summer keeping tremulous music with harp- 
 strings of dark water among the silver fingering of the 
 pebbles. Far away in the south the strong river gods have 
 all hasted, and gone down to the sea. Wasted and burning, 
 white furnaces of blasting sand, their broad beds lie ghastly 
 and bare ; but here the soft wings of the Sea Angel droop 
 still with dew, and the shadows of their plumes falter on the 
 hills ; strange laughings, and glitterings of silver streamlets, 
 born suddenly, and twined about the mossy heights in trick- 
 ling tinsel, answering to them as they wave. Nor are those 
 wings colorless. We habitually think of the rain-cloud only 
 as dark and gray ; not knowing that we owe to it perhaps the 
 fairest, though not the most dazzling of the hues of heaven. 
 Often in our English mornings, the rain-clouds in the dawn 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 41 
 
 form soft level fields, which melt imperceptibly into the blue ; 
 or when of less extent, gather into apparent bars, crossing 
 the sheets of broader cloud above; and all these bathed 
 throughout in an unspeakable light of pure rose-color, and 
 purple, and amber, and blue ; not shining, but misty-soft ; the 
 barred masses, when seen nearer, composed of clusters or 
 tresses of cloud, like floss silk ; looking as if each knot were 
 a little swathe or sheaf of lighted rain. No clouds form such 
 skies, none are so tender, various, inimitable. For these are 
 the robes of love of the Angel of the Sea. To these that 
 name is chiefly given, the " spreadings of the clouds," from 
 their extent, their gentleness, their fulness of rain. Note 
 how they are spoken of in Job — "By them judgeth He the 
 people. He giveth meat in abundance. With clouds He 
 covereth the light. He hath hidden the light in His hands, 
 and commanded that it should return. He speaks of it to His 
 friend; that it is His possession, and that He may ascend 
 thereto." 
 
 That, then, is the Sea Angel's message to God's friends; 
 that the meaning of those strange golden lights and purple 
 flushes before the morning rain. The rain is sent to judge, 
 and feed us, but the light is the possession of the friends of 
 God, and they may ascend thereto, — when the tabernacle veil 
 will cross and part its rays no more. But the Angel of the 
 Sea has also another message, — in the "great rain of his 
 strength," rain of trial, sweeping away ill-set foundations. 
 Then his robe is not spread softly over the whole heaven, as 
 
42 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 a veil, but sweeps back from His shoulders, ponderous, 
 oblique, terrible — leaving his sword-arm free. 
 
 The approach of trial- storm, hurricane-storm, is indeed in its 
 vastness as the clouds of the softer rain. But it is not slow 
 nor horizontal, but swift and steep; swift with passion of 
 ravenous winds; steep as slope of some dark, hollowed hill. 
 The fronting clouds come leaning forward, one thrusting the 
 other aside, or on; impatient, ponderous, impendent like 
 globes of rock tossed by Titans — Ossa on Olympus — but 
 hurled forward all, in one wave of cloud-lava — cloud whose 
 throat is as a sepulchre. Fierce behind them rages the 
 oblique wrath of the rain, white as ashes, dense as showers 
 of driven steel ; the pillars of it full of ghastly life ; Rain- 
 Furies, shrieking as they fly; — scourging, as with whips of 
 scorpions; — the earth ringing and trembling under them, 
 heaven wailing wildly, the trees stooped blindly clown, cover- 
 ing their faces, quivering in every leaf with horror, ruin of 
 their branches flying by them like black stubble. 
 
 We may find, I think, sufficient cause for putting honor 
 upon the rain-cloud. Few of us, perhaps, have thought in 
 watching its career across our own mossy hills, or listening 
 to the murmur of the springs amidst the mountain quietness, 
 that the chief masters of the human imagination owed, and 
 confessed that they owed, the force of their noblest thoughts, 
 not to the flowers of the valley, nor the majesty of the hill, 
 but to the flying cloud. . . . The opening songs of the rain- 
 

 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 43 
 
 clouds in Aristophanes is entirely beautiful: "0 eternal 
 Clouds ! let us raise into open sight our dewy existence, from 
 the deep sounding Sea, our Father, up to the crests of the 
 wooded hills, whence we look down over the sacred land, 
 nourishing its fruits, and over the rippling of the divine 
 rivers, aud over the low murmuring bays of the deep." 
 
 Of all inorganic substances, acting in their own proper nat- 
 ure, 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 sym- 
 metry, and its crags chiselled into grace ; then as, in the form 
 of snow, it robes the mountains it has made, with that tran- 
 scendent light which we could 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, uncon- 
 querable power, the wild, various, fantastic, tameless unity 
 of the sea; what shall we compare to this mighty, this uni- 
 versal element, for glory and for beauty? or how shall we 
 follow its eternal changefulness of feeling? It is like trying 
 
 to paint a soul. 
 
 # 
 
 To paint the actual play of light on the reflective surface, 
 or to give the forms and fury of water when it begins to 
 
44 TIIO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 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 cloud-like in its motion — 
 with its variety and delicacy of color, when every ripple and 
 wreath has some peculiar passage of reflection 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. 
 
 There is hardly a roadside pond or pool which has not as 
 much landscape in it as above it. It is not the brown, muddy 
 dull thing we suppose it to be ; it has a heart like ourselves, 
 and in the bottom of that there are the boughs of the tall 
 trees, and the blades of the shaking grass, and all manner of 
 hues, of variable, pleasant light out of the sky; nay, the ugly 
 gutter, that stagnates over the drain bars, in the heart of the 
 foul city, is not altogether base ; down in that, if you will 
 look deep enough, you may see the dark, serious blue of far-off 
 sky, and the passing of pure clouds. It is at your own will 
 that you see in that despised stream, either the refuse of the 
 street, or the image of the sky — so it is with almost all other 
 things that we unkindly despise. 
 
 Stand for half an hour beside the fall of Schaff hausen, on 
 the north side where the rapids are long, and watch how the 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 45 
 
 vault of water first bends, unbroken, in pure, polished veloc- 
 ity, over the arching rocks at the brow of the cataract, cov- 
 ering them with a dome of crystal twenty feet thick — so 
 swift that its motion is unseen except when a foam globe 
 from above darts over it like a falling star; and how the 
 trees are lighted above it under all their leaves, at the instant 
 that it breaks into foam; and how all the hollows of that 
 foam burn with green fire like so much shattering chryso- 
 prase ; and how, ever and anon, startling you with its white 
 flash, a jet of spray leaps hissing out of the fall like a rocket, 
 bursting in the wind and driven away in dust, filling the air 
 with light; and how, through the curdling wreaths of the 
 restless, crashing abyss below, the blue of the water, paled 
 by the foam in its body, showers purer than the sky through 
 white rain-clouds ; while the shuddering iris stoops in tremu- 
 lous stillness over all, fading and flushing alternately through 
 the choking spray and shattered sunshine, hiding itself at 
 last among the thick golden leaves which toss to and fro in 
 sympathy with the wild water ; their dripping masses lifted 
 at intervals like sheaves of loaded corn, by some stronger 
 gush from the cataract, and bowed again upon the mossy 
 rocks as its roar dies away; the clew gushing from their 
 thick branches through drooping clusters of emerald herbage, 
 and sparkling in white threads along the dark rocks of the 
 shore, feeding the lichens which chase and checker them 
 with purple and silver. 
 
46 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 Few people, comparatively, have ever seen the effect on the 
 sea of a powerful gale continued without intermission for 
 three or four days and nights, and to those who have not, I 
 believe it must be unimaginable, not from the mere force or 
 size of surge, but from the complete annihilation of the limit 
 between sea and air. The water from its prolonged agitation 
 is beaten, not into mere creaming foam, but into masses of 
 accumulated yeast, which hangs in ropes and wreaths from 
 Wave to wave, and where one curls over to break, forms a 
 festoon like a drapery, from its edge ; these are taken up by 
 the wind, not in dissipating dust, but bodily, in writhing, 
 hanging, coiling masses, which make the air white and thick 
 as with snow, only the flakes are a foot or two long each ; 
 the surges themselves are full of foam in their very bodies, 
 underneath, making them white all through, as the water is 
 under a great cataract; and their masses, being thus half 
 water and half air, are torn to pieces by the wind whenever 
 they rise, and carried away in roaring smoke, which chokes 
 and strangles like actual water. Add to this, that when the 
 air has been exhausted of its moisture by long rain, the spray 
 of the sea is caught by it and covers its surface not merely 
 with the smoke of finely divided water, but with boiling mist ; 
 imagine also the low rain-clouds brought down to the very 
 level of the sea, as I have often seen them, whirling and fly- 
 ing in rags and fragments from wave to wave ; and finally, 
 conceive the surges themselves in their utmost pitch of power, 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 47 
 
 velocity, vastness, and madness, lifting themselves in preci- 
 pices and peaks, furrowed with their whirl of ascent, through 
 all this chaos ; and you will understand that there is indeed 
 no distinction left between the sea and air; that no object, 
 nor horizon, nor any landmark or natural evidence of position 
 is left; that the heaven is all spray, and the ocean all cloud, 
 and that you can see no farther in any direction than you 
 could see through a cataract. . . . Few people have 
 had the opportunity of seeing the sea at such a time, and 
 when they have they cannot face it. To hold by a mast or 
 a rock, and watch it, is a prolonged endurance of drowning 
 which few people have courage to go through. To those who 
 have, it is one of the noblest lessons of Nature. 
 
 Seen from the land, the curl of the breakers is somewhat 
 uniform and monotonous ; the size of the waves out at sea 
 is uncomprehended, and those nearer the eye seem to succeed 
 and resemble each other, to move slowly to the beach, and to 
 break in the same lines and forms. 
 
 Afloat even twenty yards from the shore, we receive a 
 totally different impression. Every wave around us appears 
 vast — every one different from the rest — and the breakers 
 present, now that we see them with their backs toward us, 
 the grand extended, and mixed lines of long curvation, which 
 are peculiarly expressive both of velocity and power. Reck- 
 lessness, before unfelt, is manifested in the mad, perpetual, 
 changeful, undirected motion, not of wave after wave, as it 
 
48 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 appears from the shore, but of the very same water rising and 
 falling. Of waves that successively approach and break, each 
 appears to the mind a separate individual, whose part being 
 performed, it perishes, and is succeeded by another; and 
 there is nothing in this to impress us with the idea of restless- 
 ness, any more than in any successive and continuous func- 
 tions of life and death. But it is when we perceive that it is 
 no succession of wave, but the same water constantly rising 
 and crashing, and recoiling, and rolling in again in new forms 
 and with fresh fury, that we perceive the perturbed spirit, 
 and feel the intensity of its unwearied rage. The sensation 
 of power is also trebled ; for not only is the vastness of ap- 
 parent size much increased, but the whole action is different ; 
 it is not a passive wave rolling sleepily forward until it 
 tumbles heavily, prostrated upon the beach, but a sweeping 
 exertion of tremendous and living strength, which does not 
 now appear to fall, but to burst upon the shore ; which never 
 perishes, but recoils and recovers. 
 
 Every fountain and river, from the inch-deep streamlet that 
 crosses the village lane in trembling clearness, to the massy 
 and silent march of the everlasting multitude of waters in 
 Amazon or Ganges, owe their play and purity and power to 
 the ordained elevations of the earth. Gentle or steep, ex- 
 tended or abrupt, some determined slope of the earth's sur- 
 face is of course necessary before any wave can so much as 
 overtake one sedge in its pilgrimage ; and how seldom do we 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 49 
 
 enough consider, as we walk beside the margins of our pleas- 
 ant brooks, how beautiful and wonderful is that ordinance, of 
 which every blade of grass that waves in their clear waters is 
 a perpetual sign ; that the dew and the rain fallen on the face 
 of the earth shall find no resting-place ; shall find, on the con- 
 trary, fixed channels traced for them, from the ravines of the 
 central crests down which they roar in sudden ranks of foam, 
 to the dark hollows beneath the banks of lowland pasture, 
 round which they must circle slowly among the stems and 
 beneath the leaves of the lilies ; paths prepared for them, by 
 which at some appointed rate of journey, they must evermore 
 descend, sometimes slow and sometimes swift, but never 
 pausing ; the daily portion of the earth they have to glide over 
 marked for them at each successive sunrise, the place which 
 has known them knowing them no more, and the gateways of 
 guarding mountains opened for them in cleft and chasm, none 
 letting them in their pilgrimage ; and, from far off, the great 
 heart of the sea calling them to itself! Deep calleth unto 
 deep : I know not which of the two is most wonderful — that 
 calm, gradated invisible slope of the champaign land, which 
 gives motion to the stream; or that passage cloven for it 
 through the ranks of hills, which, necessary for the health of 
 the land immediately around them, would yet, unless so supcr- 
 naturally divided, have fatally intercepted the flow of the 
 waters from far-off countries. When did the great spirit of 
 the river first knock at those adamantine gates? When did 
 the porter open to it, and cast his keys away for ever, 
 
50 THO TIGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 lapped in whirling sand? I am not satisfied — no one should 
 be satisfied — with that vague answer — the river cut its way. 
 Not so. The river found its way. 
 
 That turbid foaming of the angry waters, — that tearing 
 down of bank and rock along the flanks of its fury, — are no 
 disturbances of the kind course of nature ; they are beneficent 
 operations of laws necessary to the existence of man and to 
 the beauty of the earth. The process is continued more 
 gently, but not less effectively, over all the surface of the 
 lower undulating country ; and each filtering thread of sum- 
 mer 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. 
 
 # 
 
 All rivers small or large, agree in one character ; they like 
 to lean a little on one side ; they cannot bear to have their 
 channels deepest in the middle, but will always, if they can, 
 have one bank to sun themselves upon, and another to get 
 cool under ; one shingly shore to play over, where they may be 
 shallow, and foolish, and childlike ; and another steep shore 
 under which they can pause and purify themselves, and get 
 the strength of their waves fully together for due occasions. 
 Rivers in this way are just like wise men, who keep one side 
 of their life for play, and another for work ; and can be bril- 
 liant, and chattering, and transparent when they are at ease, 
 and yet take deep counsel on the other side when they set 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 5i 
 
 themselves to the main purpose. And rivers are just in this 
 divided, also, like wicked and good men ; the good rivers have 
 serviceable deep places all along their banks that ships can 
 sail in, but the wicked rivers go scoopingly, irre'gularty, under 
 their banks until they get full of strangling eddies, which no 
 boat can row over without being twisted against the rocks, 
 and pools like wells which no one can get out of but the 
 water-kelpie that lives at the bottom ; but wicked or good, 
 the rivers all agree in having two sides. 
 
 The river cuts its way in a ravine some five or six hundred 
 feet in depth, which winds for leagues between the gentle 
 hills, unthought of, until its edge is approached; and then 
 suddenly, through the boughs of the firs, the eye perceives, 
 beneath, the green and gliding stream, and the broad walls 
 of sandstone cliff that form its banks ; hollowed out where 
 the river leans against them, as it turns, into perilous over- 
 hanging, and on the other shore, at the same spots, having 
 little breadths of meadow between them and the water, half- 
 grown with thicket, deserted in their sweetness, inaccessible 
 from above, and rarely visited by any curious wanderers along 
 the hardly traceable foot-path which struggles for existence 
 beneath the rocks. And there the river ripples, and eddies, 
 and murmurs in an utter solitude. It is passing through the 
 midst of a thickly peopled country ; but never was stream so 
 lonely. The feeblest and most far-away torrent among the 
 high hills has its companions; the goats browse beside it; 
 
52 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 and the traveller drinks from it, and passes over it with his 
 staff; and the peasant traces a new channel for it down to 
 his mill-wheel. But this stream has no companions ; it flows 
 on in an infinite seclusion, not secret nor threatening, but a 
 quietness of sweet daylight and open air — a broad space of 
 tender and deep desolateness, dropped into repose out of the 
 midst of human labor and life ; the waves plashing lowly, 
 with none to hear them ; and the wild birds building in the 
 boughs, with none to fray them away ; and the soft, fragrant 
 herbs rising, and breathing, and fading, with no hand to 
 gather them ; — and yet all bright and bare to the clouds above, 
 and to the fresh fall of the passing sunshine and pure rain. 
 
 It was a maxim of Raffaelle's that the artist's object was to 
 make things not as Nature makes them, but as she would 
 make them ; as she ever tries to make them, but never suc- 
 ceeds, though her aim may be deduced from a comparison of 
 her effects ; just as if a number of archers had aimed unsuc- 
 cessfully at a mark upon a wall, and this mark were then re- 
 moved, we could by the examination of their arrow-marks 
 point out the probable position of the spot aimed at, with a 
 certainty of being nearer to it than any of their shots. We 
 have most of us heard of original sin, and may, perhaps, in 
 our modest moments, conjecture that we are not quite what 
 God or Nature would have us to be. Raffaelle had something 
 to mend in humanity ; I should like to have seen him mend- 
 ing a daisy, or a pease-blossom, or a moth, or a mustard-seed, 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 53 
 
 or any other of God's slightest works! If he had accom- 
 plished that, one might have found for him more respectable 
 employment, to set the stars in better order, perhaps, (they 
 seem grievously scattered as they are, and to be of all man- 
 ner of shapes and sizes, except the ideal shape, and the 
 proper size ;) or to give us a correct view of the ocean, that at 
 least seems a very irregular and improveable thing; the 
 very fishermen do not know this day how far it will reach, 
 driven up before the west wind. Perhaps some one else 
 does, but that is not our business. Let us go clown and stand 
 on the beach by the sea — the great irregular sea, and count 
 whether the thunder of it is not out of time — one — two ; 
 here comes a well formed wave at last, trembling a little at 
 the top, but on the whole, orderly. So ! Crash among the 
 shingle, and up as far as this gray pebble ! Now, stand by 
 and watch. Another : Ah, careless wave ! why couldn't you 
 have kept your crest on? It is all gone away into spray, 
 striking up against the cliffs there — I thought as much — 
 missed the mark by a couple of feet ! Another : How now, 
 impatient one ! couldn't you have waited till your friend's re- 
 flux was clone with, instead of rolling yourself up with it in 
 that unseemly manner? You go for nothing. A fourth, and 
 a goodly one at last ! "What think we of yonder slow rise, 
 and crystalline hollow, without a flaw? Steady, good wave ! 
 not so fast! not so fast! Where are you coming to? This is 
 too bad ; two yards over the mark, and ever so much of you 
 in our face besides; and a wave which we had some hope 
 
54 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 of, behind there, broken all to pieces out at sea, and laying 
 a great white tablecloth of foam all the way to the shore, 
 as if the marine gods were to dine off it ! Alas, for these 
 unhappy "arrow shots" of Nature! She will never hit her 
 mark with those unruly waves of hers, nor get one of them 
 into the ideal shape, if we wait for a thousand years. 
 
 " To dress and to keep it." 
 That, then, was to be our work. Alas ! what work have 
 we set ourselves upon instead ! How have we ravaged the 
 garden instead of kept it — feeding our war-horses with its 
 flowers, and splintering its trees into spear-shafts ! 
 
 "What infinite wonderfulness there is in vegetation, con- 
 sidered, as indeed it is, as the means by which the earth be- 
 comes the companion of man — his friend and his teacher! 
 . . . vegetation is to it as an imperfect soul, given to meet 
 the soul of man. The earth in its depths must remain dead 
 and cold, incapable except of slow crystalline change ; but at 
 its surface, which human beings look upon and deal with, it 
 ministers to them through a veil of strange intermediate 
 being; which breathes, but has no voice; moves, but cannot 
 leave its appointed place ; passes through life without con- 
 sciousness, to death without bitterness; wears the beauty 
 of youth, without its passion ; and declines to the weakness 
 of age, without its regret. And in this mystery of intermedi- 
 ate being . . . most of the lessons we need are written, 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 55 
 
 all kinds of precious grace and teaching being united in this 
 link between the Earth and Man; wonderful in universal 
 adaptation to his need, desire and discipline; God's daily 
 preparation of the earth for him, with beautiful means of 
 life. First a carpet to make it soft for him ; then, a colored 
 fantasy of embroidery thereon ; then, tall spreading of foli- 
 age to shade him from sun-heat, and shade also the fallen 
 rain, that it may not dry quickly back into the clouds, but 
 stay to nourish the springs among the moss. Stout wood to 
 bear this leafage ; easily to be cut, yet tough and light, to 
 make houses for him, or instruments (lance-shaft, or plough- 
 handle, according to his temper) useless it had been, if harder ; 
 useless, if less fibrous ; useless, if less elastic. Winter comes, 
 and the shade of leafage falls away, to let the sun warm the 
 earth ; the strong boughs remain, breaking the strength of 
 winter winds. The seeds which are to prolong the race, in- 
 numerable according to the need, are made beautiful and 
 palatable, varied into infinitude of appeal to the fancy of man, 
 or provision for his service ; cold juice, or glowing spice, or 
 balm, or incense, softening oil, preserving resin, medicine of 
 styptic, febrifuge, or lulling charm; and all these presented 
 in forms of endless change. Fragility or force, softness and 
 strength, in all degrees and aspects; unerring uprightness, 
 as of temple pillars, or undivided wandering of feeble ten- 
 drils on the ground; mighty resistances of rigid arm and 
 limb to the storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with 
 faintest pulse of summer streamlet. Roots cleaving the 
 
56 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 strength of rock, or binding the transiency of the sand ; crests 
 basking in sunshine of the desert, or hiding by dripping 
 spring and lightless cave; foliage far tossing in entangled 
 fields beneath every wave of ocean — clothing with variegated, 
 everlasting films, the peaks of the trackless mountains, or 
 ministering at cottage doors to every gentlest passion and 
 simplest joy of humanity. 
 
 The laws of the organization of the earth are distinct and 
 fixed as those of the animal frame, simpler and broader, but 
 equally authoritative and inviolable. . . . Few ever think 
 of the common earth beneath their feet, as anything posses- 
 sing specific form, or governed by steadfast principles. 
 
 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 con- 
 tinue to roll, when all that dust shall again have been min- 
 gled with ashes that never were warmed by life, or polluted 
 by sin. But for us the intelligible and substantial fact is that 
 the earth has been brought, by forces we know not of, into a 
 form fitted for our habitation. 
 
 Despise the earth, or slander it ; fix your eyes on its gloom, 
 and forget its loveliness ; and we do not thank you for your 
 languid or despairing perception of brightness in heaven. 
 But rise up actively on the earth, — learn what there is in it, 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 57 
 
 know its color and form, and the full measure and make of it, 
 and if after that you can say, ' ' heaven is bright " it will be a 
 precious truth, but not till then. 
 
 * # 
 " And God said, Let the waters which are under the heaven 
 be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land ap- 
 pear." We do not, perhaps, often enough consider the deep 
 significance of this sentence. . . . Up to that moment 
 the earth has been void, for it had been without form. The 
 command that the waters should be gathered was the com- 
 mand that the earth should be sculptured. . . . The 
 dry land appeared, not in level sands, forsaken by the surges, 
 but in range beyond range of swelling hill and iron rock, for 
 ever to claim kindred with the firmament, and be companioned 
 by the clouds of heaven. 
 
 As we read the mighty sentence — "Let the dry land ap- 
 pear," we should try to follow the finger of God, as it en- 
 graved upon the stone tables of the earth the letters and the 
 law of its everlasting form; as, gulf by gulf, the channels of 
 the deep were ploughed; and cape by cape, the lines were 
 traced with Divine foreknowledge, of the shores that were 
 to limit the nations ; and chain by chain the mountain-walls 
 were lengthened forth, and their foundations fastened for 
 ever ; and the compass was set upon the face of the depth, and 
 the fields, and the highest part of the dust of the world were 
 made ; and the right hand of Christ first strewed the snow on 
 Lebanon, and smoothed the slopes of Calvary. 
 
58 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 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 mountains, brought 
 out with fierce and convulsive energy, full of expression, 
 passion, and strength; the plains and the lower hills are the 
 repose and the effortless motion of the frame, when its mus- 
 cles lie dormant and concealed beneath the lines of its beauty, 
 yet ruling those lines in their every undulation. . . . 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 firma- 
 ment, with cities for stars, to the fiery peaks, which, with 
 heaving bosoms and exulting limbs, with the clouds drifting 
 like hair from their bright foreheads, lift up their Titan hands 
 to Heaven, saying, " I live forever ! " 
 
 There is an expression and a feeling about all the hill lines 
 of nature not to be reduced to line and rule — not to be meas- 
 ured by angles or described by compasses — not to be chipped 
 out by the geologist, or equated by the mathematician. It is 
 intangible, incalculable — a thing to be felt, not understood — 
 to be loved, not comprehended — a music of the eyes, a mel- 
 ody of the heart, whose truth is known only by its sweetness. 
 
 It is deeply necessary for all men to consider the magnifi- 
 cence of the accomplished purpose, and the depth of the wis- 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 59 
 
 dom and love which are manifested in the ordinances of the 
 hills. For observe, in order to bring the world into the form 
 which it now bears, it was not mere sculpture that was needed ; 
 the mountains could not stand for a day unless they were 
 formed of materials altogether different from those which 
 constitute the lower hills, and the surfaces of the valleys. A 
 harder substance had to be prepared for every mountain chain ; 
 yet not so hard but that it might be capable of crumbling down 
 into earth fit to nourish the Alpine forest and the Alpine 
 flower: not so hard but that, in the midst of the utmost 
 majesty of its enthroned strength, there should be seen on it 
 the seal of death, and the writing of the same sentence that 
 had gone forth against the human frame, " Dust thou art, and 
 unto dust thou shaft return." And with this perishable sub- 
 stance the most majestic forms were to be framed that were 
 consistent with the safety of man ; and the peak was to be 
 lifted, and the cliff rent, as high and as steeply as was possible, 
 in order yet to permit the shepherd to feed his flocks upon 
 the slope, and the cottage to nestle beneath their shadow. 
 
 And observe, two distinct ends were to be accomplished in 
 the doing this. It was indeed, absolutely necessary that such 
 eminences should be created, in order to fit the earth in any 
 wise for human habitation ; for without mountains the air 
 could not be purified, nor the flowing of the rivers sustained, 
 and the earth must have become for the most part desert 
 plain, or stagnant marsh. But the feeding of the rivers and 
 the purifying of the winds are the least of the services ap- 
 
60 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 pointed to the hills. To fill the thirst of the human heart for 
 the beauty of God's working, — to startle its lethargy with the 
 deep and pure agitation of astonishment, — are their higher 
 missions. They are as a great and noble architecture ; first 
 giving shelter, comfort, and rest; and covered also with 
 mighty sculpture and painted legend. It is impossible to ex- 
 amine in their connected system the features of even the most 
 ordinary mountain scenery, without concluding that it has 
 been prepared in order to unite as far as possible, and in the 
 closest compass, every means of delighting and sanctifying 
 the heart of man. 
 
 " As far as possible : " that is, as far as is consistent with 
 the fulfilment of the sentence of condemnation on the whole 
 earth. Death must be upon the hills ; and the cruelty of the 
 tempest smite them, and the brier and thorn spring up upon 
 them ; but they so smite as to bring their rooks into the fair- 
 est forms ; and so spring, as to make the very desert blossom 
 like the rose. Even among our own hills of Scotland and 
 Cumberland, though often too barren to be perfectly beauti- 
 ful, and always too low to be perfectly sublime, it is strange 
 how many deep sources of delight are^gathered into the com- 
 pass of their glens and vales ; and how, down to the most 
 secret cluster of their far-away flowers, and the idlest leap of 
 their straying streamlets, the whole heart of Nature seems 
 thirsting to give, and still to give, shedding forth her ever- 
 lasting beneficence with a profusion so patient, so passionate, 
 that our utmost observance and thankfulness are but, at last, 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 61 
 
 neglect of her nobleness, and apathy to her love. But among 
 the true mountains of the greater orders, the Divine purpose 
 of appeal at once to all the faculties of the human spirit be- 
 comes still more manifest. Inferior hills ordinarily interrupt, 
 in some degree, the richness of the valleys at their feet. . . 
 . . But the great mountains lift the lowlands on their sides. 
 Let the reader imagine, first, the appearance of the most varied 
 plain of some richly cultivated country ; let him imagine it 
 dark with graceful woods, and soft with deepest pastures ; let 
 him fill the space of it, to the utmost horizon, with innumer- 
 able and changeful incidents of scenery and life, leading pleas- 
 ant streamlets through its meadows, strewing clusters of 
 cottages beside their banks, tracing sweet foot-paths through 
 its avenues, and animating its fields with happy flocks, and slow 
 wandering spots of cattle ; and when he has wearied himself 
 with endless imagining, and left no space without some love- 
 liness of its own, let him conceive all this great plain, with its 
 infinite treasures of natural beauty and happy human life, 
 gathered up in God's hands from one edge of the horizon to the 
 other like a woven garment ; and shaken into deep falling folds, 
 as the robes droop from a king's shoulders; all its bright 
 rivers leaping into cataracts along the hollows of its fall, and 
 all its forests rearing themselves aslant against its slopes, as 
 a rider rears himself back when his horse plunges ; and all 
 its villages nestling themselves into the new windings of its 
 glens ; and all its pastures thrown into steep waves of green 
 sward, dashed with dew along the edges of their folds, and 
 
62 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 sweeping clown into endless slopes, with a cloud here and 
 there lying quietly, half on the grass, half in the air; and he 
 will have as yet, in all this lifted world, only the foundation • 
 of one of the great Alps. And whatever is lovely in the low- 
 land scenery becomes lovelier in this change ; the trees which 
 grew heavily and stiffly from the level line of plain assume 
 strange curves of strength and grace as they bend themselves 
 against the mountain side ; they breathe more freely, and toss 
 their branches more carelessly as each climbs higher, looking 
 to the clear light above the topmost leaves of its brother tree ; 
 the flowers which on the arable plain fell before the plough, 
 now find out for themselves unapproachable places, where year 
 by year they gather into happier fellowship, and fear no evil ; 
 and the streams which in the level land crept in dark eddies by 
 unwholesome banks, now move in showers of silver, and are 
 clothed with rainbows, and bring health and life wherever the 
 glance of their waves can reach. 
 
 It may not be profitless to review the three great offices 
 which mountain ranges are appointed to fulfil, in order to 
 preserve the health and increase the happiness of mankind. 
 Their first use is of course to give motion to water. And the 
 incalculable blessing of the power given to us in most valleys, 
 of reaching by excavation some point whence the water will 
 rise to the surface of the ground in perennial flow, is entirely 
 owing to the concave disposition of the beds of clay or rock, 
 raised from beneath the bosom of the valley into ranks of 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTT. 03 
 
 enclosing hills. The second great use of mountains is to 
 maintain a constant change in the currents and nature of the 
 air. . . . Mountains divide the earth not only into dis- 
 tricts, but into climates, and cause perpetual currents of air 
 to traverse their passes, and ascend or descend their ravines, 
 altering both the temperature and nature of the air as it 
 passes, in a thousand different ways ; moistening it with the 
 spray of their waterfalls, sucking it down and beating it hither 
 and thither in the pools of their torrents, closing it within 
 clefts and caves, where the sunbeams never reach, till it is as 
 cold as November mists, then sending it forth again to breathe 
 softly across the slopes of velvet fields, or to be scorched 
 among sunburnt shales, and grassless crags; then drawing 
 it back in moaning swirls through clefts of ice, and up into 
 dewy wreaths above the snow-fields; then piercing it with 
 strange electric darts and flashes of mountain fire, and toss- 
 ing it high in fantastic storm-cloud, as the dried grass is 
 tossed by the mower, only suffering it to depart at last, when 
 chastened and pure, to refresh the faded air of the far-off 
 plains. 
 
 The third great use of mountains is to cause perpetual 
 change in the soils of the earth. Without such provision 
 the ground under cultivation would in a series of years be- 
 come exhausted and require to be upturned laboriously by 
 the hand of man. " But the elevations of the earth's surface 
 provide for it a perpetual renovation. The higher mountains 
 suffer their summits to be broken into fragments and to be 
 
64 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 cast clown into sheets of massy rock, full of every substance 
 necessary for the nourishment of plants ; these fallen frag- 
 ments are again broken by frost and ground by torrents, into 
 various conditions of sand and clay — materials which are 
 distributed perpetually by the streams farther and farther from 
 the mountain's base. Every shower which swells the rivulets 
 enables their waters to carry certain portions of earth into 
 new positions, and exposes new banks of ground to be mined 
 
 in their turn. 
 
 * 
 
 It is not, in reality, a degrading, but a true, large, and en- 
 nobling view of the mountain ranges of the world, if we com- 
 pare them to heaps of fertile and fresh earth, laid up by a 
 prudent gardener beside his garden beds, whence, at inter- 
 vals, he casts on them some scattering of new and virgin 
 ground. That which we so often lament as convulsion or 
 destruction is nothing else than the momentary shaking off 
 the dust from the spade. The winter floods, which inflict a 
 temporary devastation, bear with them the elements of suc- 
 ceeding fertility ; the fruitful field is covered with sand and 
 shingle in momentary judgment, but in enduring mercy; and 
 the great river, which chokes its mouth with marsh, and tosses 
 terror along its shore, is but scattering the seeds of the har- 
 vest of futurity, and preparing the seats of unborn genera- 
 tions. 
 
 I have not spoken of the local and peculiar utilities of mount- 
 ains ; I do not count the benefit of the supply of summer streams 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 65 
 
 from the moors of the higher ranges, — of the various me- 
 dicinal plants which are nested among their rocks; — of the 
 delicate pasturage which they furnish for cattle, — of the for- 
 ests in which they bear timber for shipping, — the stones they 
 supply for building, or the ores of metal which they collect 
 into spots open to discovery, and easy for working. All 
 these benefits are of a secondary or a limited nature. But 
 the three great functions which I have just described — those 
 of giving motion and change to water, air, and earth — are 
 indispensable to human existence ; they are operations to be 
 regarded with as full a depth of gratitude as the laws which 
 bid the tree bear fruit, or the seed multiply itself in the earth. 
 And thus those desolate and threatening ranges of dark 
 mountain, which, in nearly all ages of the world, men have 
 looked upon with aversion or with terror, and shrunk back 
 from as if they were haunted by perpetual images of death, 
 are, in reality, sources of life and happiness far fuller and 
 more beneficent than all the bright fruitfulness of the plain. 
 The valleys only feed; the mountains feed, and guard, and 
 strengthen us. We take our idea of f earf ulness and sublimity 
 alternately from the mountains and the sea ; but we associate 
 them unjustly. The sea wave, with all its beneficence, is yet 
 devouring and terrible ; but the silent wave of the blue mount- 
 ain is lifted towards heaven in a stillness of perpetual mercy ; 
 and the one surge, unfathomable in its darkness, the other, 
 unshaken in its faithfulness, forever bear the seal of their 
 appointed symbol, " Thy righteousness is like the great mount- 
 ains ; Thy judgments are a great deep." 
 
C>6 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 Look at the crest of the Alps, from the far-away plains over 
 which its light is cast when human souls 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 celestial 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 founda- 
 tion, and the tide of human life, shallowed upon the vast 
 aeriel 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 fret- work 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. 
 
 It has always appeared to me that there was, even in 
 healthy mountain districts, a certain degree of inevitable mel- 
 ancholy, nor could I ever escape from the feeling that here, 
 where chiefly the beauty of God's working was manifested to 
 men, warning was also given, and that to the full, of the en- 
 during of His indignation against sin. . . . And in this 
 mountain gloom, which weighs so strongly upon the human 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 67 
 
 heart that in all times hitherto, the hill defiles have been 
 either avoided in terror or inhabited in penance, there is but 
 the fulfilment of the universal law, that where the beauty and 
 wisdom of the Divine working are most manifested, there 
 also are manifested most clearly the terror of God's wrath, 
 and inevitableness of His power. . . . The hills were or- 
 dained for the help of man ; but, instead of raising his eyes to 
 the hills, from whence comethhis help, he does his idol sacri- 
 fice " upon every high hill and under every green tree." The 
 mountain of the Lord's house is established above the hills; 
 but Nadab and Abihu shall see under His feet the body of 
 heaven in his clearness, yet go down to kindle the censer 
 against their own souls. And so to the end of time it will be ; 
 to the end, that cry will still be heard along the Alpine winds, 
 "Hear, oh ye mountains, the Lord's controversy ! " Still their 
 gulfs of thawless ice, and unretarded roar of tormented 
 waves, and deathful falls of fruitless waste, and unredeemed 
 decay, must be the image of the souls of those who have 
 chosen the darkness, and whose cry shall be to the mountains 
 to fall on them, and to the hills to cover them ; and still, to 
 the end of time, the clear waters of the unfailing springs, and 
 the white pasture-lilies in their clothed multitude, and the 
 abiding of the burning peaks in their nearness to the opened 
 heaven, shall be the types, and the blessings, of those who 
 have chosen light, and of whom it is written, "The moun- 
 tains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills right- 
 eousness." 
 
68 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 As we pass beneath the hills which have been shaken by- 
 earthquake and torn by convulsion, we find that periods of 
 perfect repose succeeded those of destruction. The pools of 
 calm water lie clear beneath their fallen rocks, the water-lilies 
 gleam, and the reeds whisper among their shadows ; the vil- 
 lage rises again over the forgotten graves, and its church- 
 tower, white through the storm- twilight, proclaims a renewed 
 appeal to His protection in whose hand " are all the corners 
 of the earth, and the strength of the hills is His also." There 
 is no loveliness of Alpine valley that does not teach the same 
 lesson. It is just where "the mountain falling cometh to 
 naught, and the rock is removed out of his place," that, in 
 process of years, the fairest meadows bloom between the frag- 
 ments, the clearest rivulets murmur from their crevices among 
 the flowers, and the clustered cottages, each sheltered be- 
 neath some strength of mossy stone, now to be removed no 
 more, and with their pastured flocks around them, safe from 
 the eagle's stoop and the wolf's ravin, have written upon their 
 fronts, in simple words, the mountaineer's faith in the ancient 
 promise — 
 
 " Neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction when it com- 
 eth ; " — "For thou shalt be in league with the Stones of the 
 Field; and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee." 
 
 " How were these mountain volumes raised and how are they 
 supported? " The only answer is : " Behold the cloud." No 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. G9 
 
 eye has ever seen one of them raised on a large scale ; no in- 
 vestigation has brought completely to light the conditions 
 under which the materials which support them were prepared. 
 This only is the simple fact, that they are raised into such 
 sloping positions ; generally resting one upon another, like a 
 row of books fallen down, the last book being usually propped 
 by a piece of formless crystalline rock. . . . And yet no 
 trace of the means by which all this was effected is left. The 
 rock stands forth in its white and rugged mystery, as if 
 its peak had been born out of the blue sky. The strength 
 that raised it, and the sea that wrought upon it, have passed 
 away, and left no sign ; and we have no words wherein to de- 
 scribe their departure, no thoughts to form about their action, 
 than those of the perpetual and unsatisfied interrogation, — 
 "What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fledclest? And ye 
 mountains, that ye skipped like lambs? " 
 
 To myself, mountains are the beginning and the end of all 
 natural scenery ; .... I can look with happy admiration 
 at the lowland flowers and woods, and open skies, the hap- 
 piness is tranquil and cold, like that of examining detached 
 flowers in a conservatory, or reading a pleasant book. . . 
 
 . But the slightest rise and fall in the road — a mossy bank 
 at the side of a crag of chalk, with brambles at its brow, over- 
 hanging it, — a ripple over three or four stones in the stream 
 by the bridge, — above all a wild bit of ferny ground under a 
 fir or two, looking as if, possibly, one might see a hill if one 
 
70 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 got to the other side of the trees, will instantly give me in- 
 tense delight, because the shadow, or the hope of the hills is 
 in them. 
 
 The best image which the world can give of Paradise is in 
 the slope of the meadows, orchards, and corn-fields on the 
 sides of a great Alp, with its purple rocks and eternal 
 snows above ; this excellence not being in any wise a matter 
 referable to feeling, or individual preferences, but demon- 
 strable by calm enumeration of the number of lovely colors 
 on the rocks, the varied grouping of the trees, and quantity 
 of noble incidents in stream, crag, or cloud, presented to the 
 eye at any given moment. 
 
 * # 
 Consider the difference produced in the whole tone of a 
 landscape color by the introduction of purple, violet, and deep 
 ultramarine blue, which we owe to mountains. In an ordi- 
 nary lowland landscape we have the blue of the sky, the green 
 of grass — which I will suppose entirely fresh and bright; 
 the green of trees ; and certain elements of purple, far more 
 rich and beautiful than we generally should think, in their 
 bark and shadows as well as in ploughed fields, and dark 
 ground in general. But among mountains, in addition to all 
 this, large unbroken spaces of pure violet and purple are in- 
 troduced in their distances ; and even near, by films of cloud 
 passing over the darkness of ravines or forests, blues are 
 produced of the most subtle tenderness; these azures and 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 71 
 
 purples passing into rose-color of otherwise wholly unattain- 
 able delicacy among the upper summits, the blue of the sky 
 being at the same time purer and deeper than in the plains. 
 Nay, in some sense, a person who has never seen the rose- 
 color of the rays of dawn crossing a blue mountain twelve 
 or fifteen miles away, can hardly be said to know what ten- 
 derness in color means at all; bright tenderness he may, in- 
 deed, see in the sky or in a flower, but this grave tenderness 
 of the far-away hill-purples he cannot conceive. Together 
 with this great source of preeminence in mass of color, we 
 have to estimate the influence of the finished inlaying and 
 enamel- work of the color- jew T elry on every stone ; and that 
 of the continual variety in species of flower ; most of the 
 mountain flowers being, besides, separately lovelier than the 
 lowland ones. The wood hyacinth and wild rose are, indeed, 
 the only supreme flowers that the lowlands can generally 
 show ; and the wild rose is also a mountaineer, and more 
 fragrant in the hills, while the wood hyacinth, or grape hya- 
 cinth, at its best cannot match even the dark bell-gentian, 
 leaving the light-blue star-gentian in its uncontested queenli- 
 ness. And the Alpine rose and Highland heather are wholly 
 without similitude. The violet, lily of the valley, crocus, and 
 wood anemone are, I suppose, claimable partly by the plains 
 as well as the hills; but the large orange lily and narcissus I 
 have never seen but on hill pastures, and the exquisite oxalis 
 is preeminently a mountaineer ; the Savoyard's name for its 
 flower, "Pain du Bon Dieu," is very beautiful. To this su- 
 
72 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 premacy in mosses and flowers we have next to add an inesti- 
 mable gain in the continual presence and power of water. 
 Neither in its clearness, its color, its fantasy of motion, its 
 calmness of space, depth, and reflection, or its wrath, can 
 water be conceived by a lowlander, out of sight of sea. A 
 sea wave is far grander than any torrent — but of the sea 
 and its influences we are not now speaking ; and the sea it- 
 self, though it can be clear, is never calm, among our shores, 
 in the sense that a mountain lake can be calm. The sea seems 
 only to pause ; the mountain lake to sleep, and to dream. Out 
 of sight of the ocean, a lowlander cannot be considered ever to 
 have seen water at all. The mantling of the pools in the rock 
 shadows, with the golden flakes of light sinking down through 
 them like falling leaves, the ringing of the thin currents 
 among the shallows, the flash and the cloud of the cascade, 
 the earthquake and foam-fire of the cataract, the long lines 
 of alternate mirror and mist that lull the imagery of the hills 
 reversed in the blue of morning — all these things belong to 
 those hills as their undivided inheritance. 
 
 The mountain superiority in foliage is, on the whole, nearly 
 as complete as it is in water. . . . — the mere quantity 
 of foliage visible in the folds and promontories of a single 
 Alp being greater than that of an entire lowland landscape — 
 and to this charm of redundance is added that of clear visi- 
 bility — tree after tree being constantly shown in successive 
 height, one behind another, instead of the mere tops and 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 73 
 
 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. 
 
 # 
 
 * * 
 
 There is no effect of sky possible in the lowlands which 
 may not in equal perfection be seen among the hills; but 
 there are effects by tens of thousands, forever invisible and 
 inconceivable to the inhabitants of the plains, manifested 
 among the hills in the course of one day. The mere power 
 of familiarity with the clouds, of walking with them, and 
 above them, alters and renders clear our whole conception 
 of the baseless architecture of the sky ; and for the beauty 
 of it, there is more in a single wreath of early cloud, pacing 
 its way up an avenue of pines, or pausing among the points 
 of their fringes, than in all the white heaps that fill the 
 arched sky of the plains from one horizon to the other. And 
 of the nobler cloud manifestations — the breaking of their 
 troublous seas against the crags, their black spray sparkling 
 with lightning; or the going forth of the morning along 
 their pavements of moving marble, level-laid between dome 
 and dome of snow; — of these things there can be as little 
 imagination or understanding in an inhabitant of the plains 
 as of the scenery of another planet than his own. 
 
 # * 
 
 Of the grandeur or expression of the hills I have not 
 spoken ; how far they are great, or strong, or terrible, I do 
 
74 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 not for the moment consider, because vastness, and strength 
 and terror are not to all minds subjects of desired contem- 
 plation. . . . But loveliness of color, perfectness of 
 form, endlessness of change, wonderfulness of structure, 
 are precious to all undiseased human minds ; and the supe- 
 riority of the mountains in all these things to the lowlands is, 
 I repeat, as measurable as the richness of a painted window 
 matched with a white one, or the w T ealth of a museum com- 
 pared with that of a simply furnished chamber. They seem 
 to have been built for the human race, as at once their schools 
 and cathedrals, full of treasures of illuminated manuscript 
 for the scholar, kindly in simple lessons to the w r orker, 
 quiet in pale cloisters for the thinker, glorious in holiness for 
 the worshipper. 
 
 It will need no prolonged thought to convince us that in 
 the hills the purposes of their Maker have indeed been ac- 
 complished in such measure as, through the sin or folly of 
 men, He ever permits them to be accomplished. It may not 
 seem, from the general language held concerning them, or 
 from any directly traceable results, that mountains have had 
 serious influence on human intellect; but it will not, I think, 
 be difficult to show that their occult influence has been both 
 constant and essential to the progress of the race. 
 
 Consider, whether we can justly refuse to attribute to 
 their mountain scenery some share in giving the Greeks and 
 Italians their intellectual lead among the nations of Europe. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 75 
 
 There is not a single spot of land in either of these coun- 
 tries from which mountains are not discernible. The mount- 
 ain outlines seen from Sparta, Corinth, Athens, Rome, Flor- 
 ence, Pisa, Verona, are of consummate beauty; and whatever 
 dislike or contempt may be traceable in the mind of the 
 Greeks for mountain rnggedness, their placing the shrine of 
 Apollo under the cliffs of Delphi, and his throne upon Par- 
 nassus, was a testimony to all succeeding time that they 
 themselves attributed the best part of their intellectual in- 
 spiration to the powers of the hills. Nor would it be diffi- 
 cult to show that every great writer of either of these nations, 
 however little definite regard he might manifest for the land- 
 scape of his country, had been mentally formed and disci- 
 plined 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, with- 
 out 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. 
 
 # 
 
 # # 
 
 Mountains have always possessed the power, first, of ex- 
 citing religious enthusiasm ; secondly, of purifying religious 
 faith. These two operations are partly contrary to one an- 
 other ; for the faith of enthusiasm is apt to be impure, and 
 the mountains, by exciting morbid conditions of the imagina- 
 
76 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 tion, have caused in great part the legendary and romantic 
 forms of belief ; on the other hand, by fostering simplicity 
 of life and dignity of morals, they have purified by action 
 what they falsified by imagination. And, in fact, much of 
 the apparently harmful influence of hills on the religion of 
 the world is nothing else than their general gift of exciting 
 the poetical and inventive faculties, in peculiarly solemn 
 tones of mind. . . . Strictly speaking, we ought to con- 
 sider the superstitions of the hills, universally, as a form of 
 poetry ; regretting only that men have not yet learned how to 
 distinguish poetry from well-founded faith. And if we do 
 this, and enable ourselves thus to review, without carping or 
 sneering, the shapes of solemn imagination, which have arisen 
 among the inhabitants of Europe, we shall find on the one 
 hand, the mountains of Greece and Italy forming all the love- 
 liest dreams, first of the Pagan, then of the Christian my- 
 thology ; on the other, those of Scandinavia to be the first 
 sources of whatever mental (as well as military) power was 
 brought by the Normans into Southern Europe. Normandy 
 itself is to all intents and purposes a hill country ; composed, 
 over large extents, of granite and basalt, often rugged and 
 covered with heather on the summits, and traversed by beau- 
 tiful and singular dells, at once soft and secluded, fruitful 
 and wild. We have thus one branch of the Northern religious 
 imagination rising among the Scandinavian fiords, tempered 
 in France by various encounters with elements of Arabian, 
 Italian, Provencal, or other Southern poetry, and then react- 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 77 
 
 ing upon Southern England ; while other forms of the same 
 rude religious imagination, resting like clouds upon the 
 mountains of Scotland and Wales, met and mingled with the 
 Norman Christianity, retaining even to the latest times some 
 dark color of superstition, but giving all its poetical and 
 military pathos to Scottish poetry, and a peculiar sternness 
 and wildness of tone to the Reformed faith, in its manifes- 
 tations among the Scottish hills. 
 
 It is on less disputable ground that I may claim the reader's 
 gratitude to the mountains, as having been the centres not 
 only of imaginative energy, but of purity both in doctrine and 
 practice. The enthusism of the persecuted Covenanter, and 
 his variously modified claims to miraculous protection or 
 prophetic inspiration, hold exactly the same relation to the 
 smooth proprieties of Lowland Protestantism, that the demon- 
 combats, fastings, visions, and miracles of the mountain 
 monk or anchorite hold to the wealth and worldliness of the 
 Vatican. It might indeed happen, whether at Canterbury, 
 Rheims, or Rome, that a good bishop should occasionally 
 grasp the crozier ; and a vast amount of prudent, educated, 
 and admirable piety is to be found among the ranks of the 
 lowland clergy. But still the large aspect of the matter is 
 always among Protestants, that formalism, respectability, 
 orthodoxy, caution and propriety, live by the slow stream 
 that encircles the lowland abbey or cathedral ; and that en- 
 thusiasm, poverty, vital faith, and audacity of conduct, 
 characterize the pastor dwelling by the torrent side. In like 
 
78 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 manner, taking the large aspects of Komanism, we see that 
 its worst corruptions, its cunning, its worldliness, and its 
 permission of crime, are traceable for the most part to low- 
 land prelacy ; but its self-denials, its obediences, humilities, 
 sincere claims to miraculous power, and faithful discharges 
 of duty, are traceable chiefly to its anchorites and mountain 
 clergy. 
 
 # * 
 Mark the significance of the earliest mention of mountains 
 in the Mosaic books ; at least of those in which some Divine 
 appointment or command is stated respecting them. They 
 are first brought before us as refuges for God's people from 
 the two judgments of water and fire. The ark rests upon 
 the "mountains of Ararat; " and man, having passed through 
 that great baptism unto death, kneels upon the earth first where 
 it is nearest heaven, and mingles with the mountain clouds 
 the smoke of his sacrifice of thanksgiving. Again : from the 
 midst of the first judgment by fire, the command of the De- 
 ity to His servant is, "Escape to the mountain;" and the 
 morbid fear of the hills, which fills any human mind, after long 
 stay in places of luxury and sin, is strongly marked in Lot's 
 complaining reply: "I cannot escape to the mountain, lest 
 some evil take me." The third mention, in way of ordinance, 
 is a far more solemn one; " Abraham lifted up his eyes, and 
 saw the place afar off." "The Place," the Mountain of 
 Myrrh, or of bitterness, chosen to fulfil to all the seed of 
 Abraham, far off and near, the inner meaning of promise re- 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTT. 79 
 
 garclecl in that vow: "I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, 
 from whence cometh mine help." And the fourth is the 
 delivery of the law on Sinai. 
 
 It seemed, then, to the monks, that the mountains were ap- 
 pointed by their Maker to be to man, refuges from Judgment, 
 signs of Redemption, and altars of Sanctification and Obedi- 
 ence ; and they saw them afterwards connected, in the manner 
 the most touching and gracious, with the death, after his 
 task had been accomplished, of the first anointed Priest; the 
 death, in like manner, of the first inspired Lawgiver ; and, 
 lastly, with the assumption of His office by the Eternal 
 Priest, Lawgiver, and Saviour. 
 
 Observe the connection of these three events. Although 
 the time of the deaths of Aaron and Moses was hastened by 
 God's displeasure, we have not, it seems to me, the slightest 
 warrant for concluding that the manner of their deaths was 
 intended to be grievous or dishonorable to them. Far from 
 this : it cannot, I think, be doubted that in the denial of the 
 permission to enter the Promised Land, the whole punish- 
 ment of their sin was included ; and that as far as regarded 
 the manner of their deaths, it must have been appointed for 
 them by their Master in all tenderness and love ; and with full 
 purpose of ennobling the close of their service upon earth. 
 It might have seemed to us more honorable that both should 
 have been permitted to die beneath the shadow of the Taber- 
 nacle, the congregation of Israel watching by their side ; and 
 all whom they loved gathered together to receive the last 
 
80 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 message from the lips of the meek lawgiver, and the last 
 blessing from the prayer of the anointed priest. But it was 
 not thus they were permitted to die. Try to realize that 
 going forth of Aaron from the midst of the congregation. 
 He who had so often done sacrifice for their sin, going forth 
 now to offer up his own spirit. He who had stood, among 
 them, between the dead and the living, and had seen the 
 eyes of all that great multitude turned to him, that by his 
 intercession their breath might yet be drawn a moment more, 
 going forth now to meet the Angel of Death face to face, 
 and deliver himself into his hand. Try if you cannot walk, 
 in thought, with those two brothers, and the son, as they 
 passed the outmost tents of Israel, and turned, while yet the 
 dew lay round about the camp, towards the slopes of Mount 
 Hor; talking together for the last time, as step by step, they 
 felt the steeper rising of the rocks, and hour after hour, be- 
 neath the ascending sun, the horizon grew broader as they 
 climbed, and all the folded hills of Idumea, one by one sub- 
 dued, showed amidst then' hollows in the haze of noon, the 
 windings of that long desert journey, now at last to close. 
 But who shall enter into the thoughts of the High Priest, 
 as his eye followed those paths of ancient pilgrimage ; and, 
 through the silence of the arid and endless hills, stretching 
 even to the dim peak of Sinai, the whole history of those 
 forty years was unfolded before him, and the mystery of 
 his own ministries revealed to him ; and that other Holy 
 of Holies, of which the mountain peaks were the altars, and 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 81 
 
 the mountain clouds the veil, the Armament of his Father's 
 dwelling, opened to him still more brightly and infinitely as 
 he drew nearer his death ; until at last, on the shadeless sum- 
 mit, — from him on whom sin was to be laid no more — from 
 him, on whose heart the names of sinful nations were to 
 press their graven fire no longer, — the brother and the son 
 took breastplate and ephod, and left him to his rest. 
 
 There is indeed a secretness in this calm faith and deep 
 restraint of sorrow, into which it is difficult for us to enter ; 
 but the death of Moses himself is more easily to be conceived, 
 and had in it circumstances still more touching, as far as 
 regards the external scene. For forty years Moses had not 
 been alone. The care and burden of all the people, the weight 
 of their woe, and guilt, and death, had been upon him con- 
 tinually. The multitude had been laid upon him as if he had 
 conceived them; their tears had been his meat, night and 
 day, until he had felt as if God had withdrawn His favor from 
 him, and he had prayed that he might be slain, and not see his 
 wretchedness. And now, at last, the command came, " Get 
 thee up into this mountain. " The weary hands that had been so 
 long stayed up against the enemies of Israel, might lean again 
 upon the shepherd's staff, and fold themselves for the shep- 
 herd's prayer — for the shepherd's slumber. Not strange to 
 his feet, though forty years unknown, the roughness of the 
 bare mountain-path, as he climbed from ledge to ledge of 
 Abarim ; not strange to his aged eyes the scattered clusters 
 of the mountain herbage, and the broken shadows of the 
 
82 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 cliffs, indented far across the silence of uninhabited ravines ; 
 scenes such as those among which, with none, as now, be- 
 side him but God, he had led his flocks so often ; and which 
 he had left, how painfully! taking upon him the appointed 
 power, to make of the fenced city a wilderness, and to fill 
 the desert with songs of deliverance. It was not to embitter 
 the last hours of his life that God restored to him, for a clay, 
 the beloved solitudes he had lost ; and breathed the peace of 
 the perpetual hills around him, and cast the world in which 
 he had labored and sinned far beneath his feet, in that mist 
 of dying blue ; — all sin, all wandering soon to be forgotten 
 for ever ; the Dead Sea — a type of God's anger understood by 
 him, of all men, most clearly, who had seen the earth open 
 her mouth, and the sea his depth, to overwhelm the com- 
 panies of those who contended with his Master — laid wave- 
 less beneath him; and beyond it, the fair hills of Judah, and 
 the soft plains and banks of Jordan, purple in the evening 
 light as with the blood of redemption, and fading in their 
 distant fulness into mysteries of promise and of love. There, 
 with his unabated strength, his undimmed glance, lying down 
 upon the utmost rocks, with angels waiting near to contend 
 for the spoils of his spirit, he put off his earthly armor. We 
 do deep reverence to his companion prophet, for whom the 
 chariot of fire came down from heaven ; but was his death 
 less noble, whom his Lord Himself buried in the vales of 
 Moab, keeping, in the secrets of the eternal counsels, the 
 knowledge of a sepulchre, from which he was to be called, 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 83 
 
 in the fulness of time, to talk with that Lord, upon Hermon, 
 of the death that He should accomplish at Jerusalem? 
 
 And lastly let us turn our thoughts for a few moments to 
 the cause of the resurrection of these two prophets. We are 
 all of us too much in the habit of passing it by, as a thing 
 mystical and inconceivable, taking place in the life of Christ 
 for some purpose not by us to be understood, or, at the best, 
 merely as a manifestation of His divinity by brightness of 
 heavenly light, and the ministering of the spirits of the dead, 
 intended to strengthen the faith of His three chosen apostles. 
 And in this, as in many other events recorded by the Evangel- 
 ists, we lose half the meaning and evade the practical power 
 upon ourselves, by never accepting in its fulness the idea 
 that our Lord was " perfect man," " tempted in all things 
 like as we are." Our preachers are continually trying, in all 
 manner of subtle ways, to explain the union of the Divinity 
 with the Manhood, an explanation which certainly involves 
 first their being able to describe the nature of Deity itself, 
 or, in plain words, to comprehend Gocl. They never can ex- 
 plain, in any one particular, the union of the natures ; they 
 only succeed in weakening the faith of their hearers as to the 
 entireness of either. The thing they have to do is precisely 
 the contrary of this — to insist upon the entireness of both. 
 We never think of Christ enough as God, never enough as 
 Man; the instinctive habit of our minds being always to miss 
 of the Divinity, and the reasoning and enforced habit to 
 miss of the Humanity. We are afraid to harbor in our o^ n 
 
84 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 hearts, or to utter in the hearing of others, any thought of 
 our Lord, as hungering, tired, sorrowful, having a human 
 soul, a human will, and affected by events of human life as a 
 finite creature is ; and yet one half of the efficiency of His 
 atonement, and the whole of the efficiency of His example, de- 
 pends on His having been this to the full. 
 
 Consider, therefore, the Transfiguration as it relates to the 
 human feelings of our Lord. It was the first definite prepara- 
 tion for His death. He had foretold it to His disciples six 
 clays before ; then takes with Him the three chosen ones into 
 "an high mountain apart." From an exceeding high mount- 
 ain, at the first taking on Him the ministry of life, He had 
 beheld, and rejected the kingdoms of the earth, and their 
 glory; now, on a high mountain, He takes upon Him the 
 ministry of death. Peter and they that were with Him, as 
 in Gethsemane were heavy with sleep. Christ's work had to 
 be clone alone. 
 
 The tradition is, that the Mount of Transfiguration was the 
 summit of Tabor; but Tabor is neither a high mountain, nor 
 was it in any sense a mountain " apart; " being in those years 
 both inhabited and fortified. All the immediately preceding 
 ministries of Christ had been at Cesarea Philippi. There is 
 no mention of travel southward in the six days that inter- 
 vened between the warning given to His disciples, and the 
 going up into the hill. What other hill could it be than the 
 southward slope of that goodly mountain, Hermon, which is 
 indeed the centre of all the Promised Land, from the enter- 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 85 
 
 ing in of Hamath unto the river of Egypt ; the mount of fruit- 
 fulness, from which the springs of Jordan descended to the 
 valleys of Israel. Along its mighty forest avenues, until the 
 grass grew fair with the mountain lilies, His feet dashed in 
 the dew of Hermon, He must have gone to pray His first 
 recorded prayer about death ; and from the steep of it, be- 
 fore He knelt, could see to the South all the dwelling-places of 
 the people that had sat in darkness, and seen the great light, 
 the land of Zabulon and of Naphtali, Galilee of the nations ; — 
 could see, even with His human sight, the gleam of that lake 
 by Capernaum and Chorazin, and many a place loved by Him, 
 and vainly ministered to, whose house was now left unto 
 them desolate ; and, chief of all, far in the utmost blue, the 
 hills above Nazareth, sloping down to His old home ; hills on 
 which yet the stones lay loose, that had been taken up to cast 
 at Him, when He left them for ever. 
 
 " And as He prayed, two men stood by Him." Among the 
 many ways in which we miss the help and hold of Scripture, 
 none is more subtle than our habit of supposing that, even as 
 man, Christ was free from the Fear of Death. . How could 
 He then have been tempted as we are? since among all the 
 trials of the earth, none spring from the dust more terrible 
 than that of Fear. It had to be borne by Him, indeed, in a 
 unity, which we can never comprehend, with the fore-knowl- 
 edge of victory — as His sorrow for Lazarus, with the con- 
 sciousness of the power to restore him; but it had to be 
 borne, and that in its full earthly terror ; and the presence of 
 
86 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 it is surely marked for us enough by the rising of those two 
 at His side. When, in the desert, He was girding Himself 
 for the work of life, angels of life came and ministered unto 
 Him ; now, in the fair world, when He is girding Himself for 
 the work of death, the ministrants come to Him from the 
 grave. 
 
 But from the grave conquered. One, from that tomb under 
 Abarim, which His own hand had sealed so long ago ; the 
 other from the rest into which he had entered, without see- 
 ing corruption. There stood by Him Moses and Elias, and 
 spake of His decease. Then, when the prayer is ended, 
 the task accepted, first, since the star paused over Him at 
 Bethlehem, the full glory falls upon Him from heaven, and 
 the testimony is borne to His everlasting Sonship and power. 
 — ' ' Hear ye Him. " 
 
 If, in their remembrance of these things, and in their en- 
 deavor to follow in the footsteps of their Master, religious 
 men of by-gone days, closing themselves in the hill solitudes, 
 forgot sometimes, and sometimes feared, the duties they 
 owed to the active world, we may perhaps pardon them the 
 more easily than we ought to pardon ourselves, if we neither 
 seek any influence for good, nor submit to it unsought, in 
 scenes to which thus all the men whose writings we receive 
 as inspired, together with their Lord, retired whenever they 
 had any task or trial laid upon them needing more than their 
 usual strength of spirit. Nor, perhaps, should we have un- 
 prolitably entered into the mind of the earlier ages, if among 
 
TIIO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 87 
 
 our other thoughts, as we watch the chains of the snowy 
 mountains rise on the horizon, we should sometimes admit 
 the memory of the hour in which their Creator, among their 
 solitudes, entered on His travail for the salvation of our 
 race ; and indulge the dream, that as the naming and trem- 
 bling mountains of the earth seem to be the monuments of 
 the manifesting of His terror on Sinai — these pure and 
 white hills, near to the heaven, and sources of all good to 
 the earth, are the appointed memorials of that Light of His 
 Mercy, that fell, snow-like, on the Mount of Transfiguration. 
 
 The higher mountains have their scenes of power and vast- 
 ness, their blue precipices and cioucl-like snows ; why should 
 they also have the best and fairest colors given to their 
 foreground rocks, and overburden the human mind with won- 
 der, while the less majestic scenery, tempting us to the ob- 
 servance 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 magnitude? I be- 
 lieve the answer must be, simply, that it is not good for man 
 to live among what is most beautiful; that he is a creature 
 incapable of satisfaction by anything upon earth ; and that 
 to allow him habitually to possess, in any kind whatsoever, 
 the utmost that earth can give, is the surest way to cast him 
 into lassitude or discontent. 
 
 If the most exquisite orchestral music could be continued 
 without a pause for a series of years, and children were 
 
88 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 brought up and educated in the room in which it was per- 
 petually resounding, I believe their enjoyment of music, or 
 understanding of it would be small. And an accurately par- 
 alleled effect seems to be produced, upon the powers of contem- 
 plation, by the redundant and ceaseless loveliness of the high 
 mountain districts. The faculties are paralyzed by the abun- 
 dance, and cease to be capable of excitement, except by other 
 subjects of interest than those which present themselves to 
 the eye. So that it is, in reality, better for mankind that the 
 forms of their common landscape should offer no violent 
 stimulus to the emotions, — that the gentle upland, browned by 
 the bending furrows of the plough, and the fresh sweep of the 
 chalk down, and the narrow winding of the copse-clad dingle, 
 should be more frequent scenes of human life than the Ar- 
 cadias of cloud-capped mountain or luxuriant vale ; and that 
 while humbler sources of interest are given to each of us 
 around the homes to which we are restrained for the greater 
 part of our lives, these mightier and stronger glories should 
 become the object of adventure, — at once the cynosures of 
 the fancies of childhood, and themes of the happy memory, 
 and the winter's tale of age. 
 
 * * 
 One does not. instinctively, think or speak of a "beautiful 
 Precipice.'* They have, however, their beauty, and it is in- 
 finite. ... I commend, therefore, the precipice to the 
 artist's patience — though one of the most difficult of sub- 
 jects, it is one of the kindest of sitters. A group of trees 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 89 
 
 changes the color of its leafage from week to week, and its 
 position from clay to clay ; it is sometimes languid with heat, 
 and sometimes heavy with rain, the torrent swells or falls 
 in shower or sun ; the best leaves of the foreground may be 
 dined upon by cattle, or trampled by unwelcome investigators 
 of the chosen scene. But the cliff can neither be eaten or 
 trampled down; neither bowed by the shower or withered 
 by the heat ; it is always ready for us when we are inclined 
 to labor ; will always wait for us when we would rest ; and, 
 what is best of all, will always talk to us when we are in- 
 clined to converse. With its own patient and victorious 
 presence, cleaving daily through cloud after cloud, and reap- 
 pearing still through the tempest drift, lofty and serene amidst 
 the passing rents of blue, it seems partly to rebuke, and 
 partly to guard, and partly to calm and chasten, the agitations 
 of the feeble human soul that watches it ; and that must be 
 indeed a dark perplexity, or a greivous pain, which will not 
 be in some degree enlightened or relieved by the vision of it, 
 when the evening shadows are blue on its foundation, and 
 the last rays of the sunset resting in the fair height of its 
 golden Fortitude. 
 
 I can hardly conceive any one standing face to face with 
 one of these towers of central rock, and yet not also asking 
 himself : — " Is this indeed the actual first work of the Divine 
 Master on which I gaze? Was this great precipice shaped by 
 His finger as Adam was shaped out cf the dust? Were its 
 
90 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 clefts and ledges carved upon it by its Creator, as the letters 
 
 were in the Table of the Law, and was it thus left to bear 
 
 its eternal teaching to His beneficence among the clouds of 
 
 heaven? " 
 
 # 
 
 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 sup- 
 posing 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 beautiful in its 
 harmony with them, and more approved as a part of the In- 
 finite truth. 
 
 There are no natural objects out of which more can be thus 
 learned than out of stones. They seem to have been created 
 especially to reward a patient observer. Nearly all other ob- 
 jects in nature can be seen to some extent, without patience, 
 and are pleasant even in being half seen. Trees, clouds, and 
 rivers are enjoyable even by the careless; but the stone 
 under his foot has for carelessness nothing in it but stum- 
 bling ; no pleasure is languidly to be had out of it, nor food, 
 nor good of any kind; nothing but symbolism of the hard 
 heart, and the unfatherly gift. And yet, do but give it some 
 reverence and watchfulness, and there is bread of thought 
 in it, more than in any other lowly feature of the landscape. 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 91 
 
 For a stone, when it is examined, will be found a mountain 
 
 in miniature. The fineness of Nature's work is so great, 
 
 that, in a single block, a foot or two in diameter, she can 
 
 compress as many changes of form and structure, on a small 
 
 scale, as she needs for her mountains on a large one ; and 
 
 taking moss for forests, and grains of crystal for crags, the 
 
 surface of a stone, in by far the plurality of instances, is 
 
 more interesting than the surface of an ordinary hill, more 
 
 fantastic in form, and incomparably richer in color. 
 
 # 
 
 Two lessons are to be gathered from mountain decay . . . 
 In the first, we find the unyielding rock ; undergoing no sud- 
 den danger, and capable of no total fall, yet, in its hardness 
 of heart, worn away by perpetual trampling of torrent waves, 
 and stress of wandering storm. Its fragments, fruitless and 
 restless, are tossed into ever-changing heaps ; no labor of 
 man can subdue them to his service, nor can his utmost pa- 
 tience secure any dwelling-place among them. In this they 
 are the type of all that humanity, which, suffering under no 
 sudden punishment or sorrow, remains " stony ground," af- 
 flicted, indeed, continually by minor and vexing cares, but 
 only broken by them into fruitless ruin of fatigued life. Of 
 this ground not "corn-giving," this "rough valley, neither 
 eared nor sown," of the common world, it is said to those 
 who have set up their idols in the wreck of it. " Among the 
 smooth stones of the stream is thy portion; They, they are 
 thy lot." 
 
92 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 # # 
 A child's division of plants is into " trees and flowers." 
 . . . For our present purposes, justifiable or not, it is the 
 most suggestive and convenient. Plants are, indeed, broadly 
 referable to two great classes. The first we may, perhaps, 
 not inexpediently call Tented Plants. . . . The other great 
 class of plants we may perhaps best call Building Plants. 
 These will not live on the ground, but eagerly raise edifices 
 above it. Each works hard with solemn forethought all its 
 life. Perishing, it leaves its work in the form which will be 
 most useful to its successors — its own monument, and their 
 inheritance. These architectural edifices we call " Trees." 
 
 In crowded foliage of large trees the disposition of each 
 separate leaf is not so manifest. For there is a strange coin- 
 cidence in this between trees and communities of men. 
 When the community is small, people fall more easily into 
 their places, and take, each in his place, a firmer standing 
 than can be obtained by the individuals of a great nation. 
 The members of a vast community are separately weaker, as 
 an aspen or elm leaf is thin, tremulous, and directionless, 
 compared with the spear-like setting and firm substance of a 
 rhododendron or laurel leaf. The laurel and rhododendron 
 are like the Athenian or Florentine republics ; the aspen like 
 England — strong-trunked enough when put to proof, and 
 very good for making cart-wheels of, but shaking pale with 
 epidemic pains at every breeze. Nevertheless, the aspen has 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 93 
 
 the better of the great nation, in that if yon take it bough by 
 bough, you shall find the gentle law of respect and room-for 
 each other truly observed by the leaves in such broken way 
 as they can manage it ; but in the nation you will find every 
 one scrambling for his neighbor's place. 
 
 In many forms of flowers — foxglove, aloe, hemlock, or 
 blossom of maize — the structure of the flowering part so far 
 assimilates itself to that of a tree, that we not unnaturally 
 think of a tree only as a large flower, or large remnant of 
 flower run to seed. 
 
 Of the many marked adaptations of nature to the mind of 
 man, it seems one of the most singular, that trees intended 
 especially for the adornment of the wildest mountains should 
 be in broad outline the most formal of trees. The vine, which 
 is to be the companion of man, is waywarclly docile in its 
 growth, falling into festoons beside his cornfields, or roof- 
 ing his garden walks, or casting its shadow all summer upon 
 his door. Associated always with the trimness of cultivation, 
 it introduces all possible elements of sweet wildness. The 
 pine, placed nearly always among scenes disordered and deso- 
 late, brings into them all possible elements of order and pre- 
 cision. Lowland trees may lean to this side and that, though 
 it is but a meadow breeze that bends them, or a bank of cow- 
 slips from which their trunks lean aslope. But let storm 
 and avalanche do their worst, and let the pine find only a 
 
94 TBO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 ledge of vertical precipice to cling to, it will nevertheless 
 grow straight. Thrust a rod from its last shoot down the 
 stem ; — it shall point to the centre of the earth as long as the 
 tree lives. 
 
 The pine is trained to need nothing, and to endure every- 
 thing. It is resolvedly whole, self-contained, desiring noth- 
 ing but Tightness, content with restricted completion. Tall 
 or short, it will be straight. Small or large, it will be round. 
 . . . I wish the reader to fix his attention for a moment 
 on these two great characters of the pine, its straightness 
 and rounded perf ectness ; both wonderful, and in their issue 
 lovely. ... I say first, its straightness. Because we 
 constantly see it in the wildest scenery, we are apt to remem- 
 ber only as characteristic examples of it those which have 
 been disturbed by violent accident or disease. . . Never- 
 theless, this is not the truest or universal expression of the 
 pine's character. I said long ago, even of Turner, " Into the 
 spirit of the pine he cannot enter," . . . the pine was 
 strange to him, adverse to his delight in broad and flowing 
 line : he refused its magnificent erectness. Magnificent ! nay, 
 sometimes almost terrible. Other trees, tufting crag or hill 
 yield to the form and sway of the ground, clothe it with soft 
 compliance, are partly its subjects, partly its flatterers, partly 
 its comforters. But the pine rises in serene resistance, self- 
 contained; nor can I ever without awe stay long under a 
 great Alpine cliff, far from all house or work of man, looking 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 95 
 
 up to its companies of pine, as they stand on the inaccessible 
 juts and perilous ledges of the enormous wall, in quiet mul- 
 titudes, each like the shadow of the one beside it — upright, 
 fixed, spectral, as troops of ghosts standing on the walls of 
 Hades, not knowing each other — dumb for ever. You can- 
 not reach them, cannot cry to them: — those trees never 
 heard human voice ; they are far above all sound but of the 
 winds. No foot ever stirred fallen leaf of theirs. All com- 
 fortless they stand between the two eternities of the Vacancy 
 and the Rock; yet with such iron will, that the rock itself 
 looks bent and shattered beside them — fragile, Aveak, incon- 
 sistent compared to their dark energy of delicate life, and 
 monotony of enchanted pride: — unnumbered, unconquer- 
 able. 
 
 Then note, farther, their perfectness. The impression on 
 most people's minds must have been received more from pict- 
 ures than reality, so far as I can judge ; — so ragged they 
 think the pine ; whereas its chief character in health is green 
 and full roundness. It stands compact, like one of its own 
 cones, slightly curved on its sides, finished and quaint as a 
 carved tree in some Elizabethan garden ; and instead of be- 
 ing wild in expression, forms the softest of all forest scen- 
 ery ; for other trees show their trunks and twisting boughs ; 
 but the pine, growing either in luxuriant mass or in happy 
 isolation, allows no branch to be seen. Summit behind sum- 
 mit rise its pyramidal ranges, or down to the very grass sweep 
 the circlets of its boughs, so that there is nothing but green 
 
96 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 cone and green carpet. Nor is it only softer, but in one 
 sense more cheerful than other foliage ; for it casts only a 
 pyramidal shadow. Lowland forest arches overhead, and 
 chequers the ground with darkness ; but the pine, growing 
 in scattered groups, leaves the glades between emerald-bright. 
 Its gloom is all its own ; narrowing into" the sky, it lets the 
 sunshine strike clown to the dew. And if ever a superstitious 
 feeling comes over me among the pine-glades, it is never 
 tainted with the old German forest fear; but is only a more 
 solemn tone of the fairy enchantment that haunts our Eng- 
 glisli meadows; so that I have always called the prettiest 
 pine glade in Chamouni "Fairies' Hollow." 
 
 Notice in the pine its exquisite fineness. Other trees rise 
 against the sky in clots and knots, but this in fringes. You 
 never see the edges of it, so subtle are they ; and for this 
 reason, it alone of trees, so far as I know, is capable of the 
 fiery change noticed by Shakespeare. When the sun rises 
 behind a ridge crested with pine, provided the ridge be at a 
 distance of about two miles, and seen clear, all the trees, for 
 about three or four degrees on each side of the sun, become 
 trees of light, seen in clear flame against the darker sky, and 
 dazzling as the sun itself. I thought at first this was owing 
 to the actual lustre of the leaves; but I believe now it is 
 caused by the cloud-dew upon them, — every minutest leaf 
 carrying its diamond. It seems as if these trees, living always 
 among the clouds, had caught part of their glory from them ; 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 97 
 
 and themselves the darkest of vegetation, could yet add 
 splendof to the sun itself. Yefc» I have been more struck by 
 their character of finished delicacy at a distance from the 
 Central Alps, among the pastoral hills of the Emmenthal, or 
 lowland districts of Berne, where they are set in groups be- 
 tween the cottages, whose shingle roofs (they also of pine) 
 of deep gray blue, and lightly carved fronts, golden and 
 orange in the autumn sunshine, gleam on the banks and lawns 
 of hill-side, — endless lawns, mounded, and studded, and 
 bossed all over with deeper green hay-heaps, orderly set, like 
 jewelry. And amidst this delicate delight of cottage and 
 field, the young pines stand delicatest of all, scented as with 
 frankincense, their slender stems straight as arrows, and 
 crystal white, looking as if they would break with a touch, 
 like needles; and their arabesque of dark leaf pierced through 
 and through by the pale radiance of clear sky, opal blue, where 
 they follow each other, along the soft hill-ridges, up and 
 down. 
 
 I have watched them in such scenes with the deeper in- 
 terest, because of all trees they have hitherto had most in- 
 fluence on human character. The effect of other vegetation, 
 however great, has been divided by mingled species ; elm and 
 oak in England, poplar in France, birch in Scotland, olive in 
 Italy and Spain, share their power with inferior trees. . . . 
 But the tremendous unity of the pine absorbs and moulds the 
 life of a race. The pine shadows rest upon a nation. The 
 Northern people, century after century, lived under one or 
 
9 8 THO UGHTS F BE A UTY. 
 
 other of the two great powers of the Pine and the Sea, both 
 infinite. They dwelt amidst the forests, or they wandered on 
 the waves, and saw no end, nor any other horizon : — still the 
 dark green trees, or- the dark green waters, jagged the dawn 
 with their fringe, or their foam. And whatever elements of 
 imagination, or of warrior strength, or of domestic justice, 
 were brought down by the Norwegian and the Goth against 
 the dissoluteness or degradation of the South of Europe, were 
 taught them under the green roofs and wild penetralia of the 
 pine. 
 
 Tree-worship may have taken a dark form when associated 
 with the Draconian one ; or opposed as in Judea, to a purer 
 faith ; but in itself, I believe it is always healthy, and though 
 it retains little definite hieroglyphic power in subsequent re- 
 ligion, it becomes instead of symbolic, real; the flowers and 
 trees are themselves beheld and beloved with a half -worship- 
 ping delight, which is always noble and healthful. 
 
 A very old forest tree is a thing subject to the same laws 
 of nature as ourselves ; it is an energetic being ; liable to and 
 approaching death ; its age is written on every spring ; and 
 because we see it is susceptible of life and annihilation like 
 we are, we imagine it must be capable of the same feelings 
 and possess the same faculties, and above all other meanings 
 it is always telling us about the past, never pointing to the 
 future ; we appeal to it, as to a thing which has seen and 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 99 
 
 felt during a life similar to our own, though of ten times its 
 duration, and therefore receive from it a perpetual impres- 
 sion of antiquity. 
 
 * 
 
 The resources of trees are not developed until they have 
 difficulty to contend with ; neither their tenderness of broth- 
 erly 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 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, climb- 
 ing hand in hand among the difficult slopes, opening in sud- 
 den dances round the mossy knolls, gathering into companies 
 at rest among the fragrant fields, gliding in grave procession 
 over the heavenward ridges; nothing of this can be con- 
 ceived among the unvexed and unvaried felicities of the low- 
 land forest. 
 
 # # 
 Being . . . prepared for us in all ways, and made beau- 
 tiful, and good for food, and for building, and for instru- 
 ments of our hands, this race of plants, deserving boundless 
 affection and admiration from us, become, in proportion to 
 their obtaining it, a nearly perfect test of our being in right 
 temper of mind and way of life ; so that no one can be far 
 wrong in either who loves the trees enough, and every one 
 
100 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 is assuredly wrong in both, who does not love them, if his 
 life has brought them in his way. It is clearly possible to do 
 without them, for the great companionship of the sea and 
 sky are all that sailors need ; and many a noble heart has been 
 taught the best it had to learn between dark and stone walls. 
 Still if human life be cast among trees at all, the love borne 
 to them is a sure test of its purity. And it is a sorrowful 
 proof of the mistaken ways of the world that the " country," 
 in the simple sense of a place of fields and trees, has hitherto 
 been the source of reproach to its inhabitants, and that words 
 the " countryman," " rustic," " clown," " paysan," "villager," 
 still signify a rude and untaught person, as opposed to the 
 words " townsman" and "citizen." 
 
 Sometimes I cannot but think that the trees of the earth 
 are capable of a kind of sorrow. 
 
 I challenge the untravelled English reader to tell me what 
 an olive-tree is like ? 
 
 I know he cannot answer my challenge. He has no more 
 idea of an olive-tree than if olives grew only in the fixed 
 stars. Let him meditate a little on this one fact, and con- 
 sider its strangeness, and what a wilful and constant closing 
 of the eyes to the most important truths it indicates on the 
 part of the modern artist. Observe, a want of perception, 
 not of science. I do not want painters to tell me any scien- 
 tific facts about olive-trees. But it had been well for them to 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 101 
 
 have felt and seen the olive-tree; to have loved it for Christ's 
 sake, partly also for the helmed Wisdom's sake which was 
 to the heathen in some sort as that nobler Wisdom which 
 stood at God's right hand, when He founded the earth and 
 established the heavens. To have loved it even to the hoary 
 dimness of its delicate foliage, subdued and faint of hue, as 
 if the ashes of the Gethsemane agony had been cast upon it 
 for ever; and to have traced, line by line, the gnarled writh- 
 ings of its intricate branches, and the pointed fretwork of 
 its light and narrow leaves, inlaid on the blue field of the 
 sky, and the small rosy-white stars of its spring blossoming, 
 and the beads of sable fruit scattered by autumn along its 
 topmost boughs — the right, in Israel, of the stranger, the 
 fatherless, and the widow, — and, more than all, the softness 
 of the mantle, silver gray, and tender like the down on a 
 bird's breast, with which, far away, it veils the undulation of 
 the mountains ; these it had been well for them to have seen 
 and drawn, whatever they have left unstudied in the gallery. 
 
 Leaves are the feeders of the plant. Their own orderly 
 habits of succession must not interfere with their main busi- 
 ness of finding food. Where the sun and air are, the leaf 
 must go, whether it be out of order or not. So, therefore, 
 in any group, the first consideration with the J'oung leaves is 
 much like that of young bees, how to keep out of each other's 
 way, that every one may leave its neighbors as much free-air 
 pasture as possible, and obtain a relative freedom for itself. 
 
102 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 Every single leaf -cluster presents the general aspect of a 
 little family, entirely at unity among themselves, but obliged 
 to get their living by various shifts, concessions, and in- 
 fringements of the family rules, in order not to invade the 
 privileges of other people in their neighborhood. 
 
 The order of the leaves is one of soft and subdued conces- 
 sion. Patiently each awaits its appointed time, accepts its 
 prepared place, yields its required observance. Under every 
 oppression of external accident, the group yet follows a law 
 laid down in its own heart ; and all the members of it, whether 
 in sickness or health, in strength or languor, combine to carry 
 out this first and last heart-law ; receiving, and seeming to 
 desire for themselves and for each other, only life which they 
 may communicate, and loveliness which they may reflect. 
 
 There is an exquisite sensibility among the leaves. They 
 do not grow each to his own liking, till they run against one 
 another, and then turn back sulkily; but by a watchful in- 
 stinct, far apart, they anticipate their companions' courses, as 
 ships at sea, and in every new unfolding of their edged tis- 
 sues, guide themselves by the sense of each other's remote 
 presence and by a watchful penetration of leafy purpose in 
 the far future. So that every shadow which one casts on 
 the next, and every glint of sun which each reflects to the 
 next, and every touch which in toss of storm each receives 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 103 
 
 from the next, aid or arrest the development of their advanc- 
 ing form, and direct, as will be safest and best, the curve of 
 every fold and the current of every vein. 
 
 We find the beauty of the buildings of the leaves consists, 
 from the first step of it to the last, in its showing their per- 
 fect 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 
 pleasure, freedom, and caprice, so far as may be consistent 
 with the universal good, no beauty. 
 
 We men, sometimes, in what we presume to be humility 
 compare ourselves with leaves ; but we have as yet no right 
 to do so. The leaves may well scorn the comparison. We 
 who live for ourselves, and neither know how to use nor keep 
 the work of past time, may humbly learn — as from the ant, 
 foresight — from the leaf, reverence. The power of every 
 great people, as of every living tree, depends on its not effac- 
 ing, but confirming and concluding, the labors of its ances- 
 tors. Looking back to the history of nations, we may date 
 the beginning of their decline from the moment when they 
 ceased to be reverent in heart, and accumulative in hand 
 and brain ; from the moment when the redundant fruit of age 
 hid in them the hollowness of heart, whence the simplicities 
 of custom and sinews of tradition had withered away. Had 
 
104 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 men but guarded the righteous laws, and protected the pre- 
 cious works of their fathers, with half the industry they have 
 given to change and ravage, they would not now have been 
 seeking vainly, in millennial visions and mechanic servitudes 
 the accomplishment of the promises made to them so long 
 ago : "As the days of a tree are the days of my people, and 
 mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands ; they shall 
 not labor in vain, nor bring forth for trouble ; for they are 
 the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with 
 them." 
 
 This lesson we have to take from the leaf's life. One more 
 we may receive from its death. If ever in autumn a pensive- 
 ness falls upon us as the leaves drift by in their fading, may 
 we not wisely look up in hope to their mighty monuments ? 
 Behold how fair, how far prolonged, in arch and aisle, the 
 avenues of the valleys ; the fringes of the hills ! So stately, 
 — so eternal ; the joy of man, the comfort of all living crea- 
 tures, the glory of the earth, — they are but the monuments 
 of those poor leaves that flit faintly past us to die. Let them 
 not pass, without our understanding their last counsel and ex- 
 ample ; that we also, careless of monument by the grave, 
 may build it in the world — monument by which men may 
 be taught to remember, not where we die, but where we 
 lived. 
 
 Gather a single blade of grass, and examine for a minute, 
 quietly, its narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted green. Noth- 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A TJTY. 105 
 
 ing, as it seems there, of notable goodness or beauty. A very 
 little strength, and a very little tallness, and a few delicate 
 long lines meeting in a point, — not a perfect point neither, 
 but blunt and unfinished, by no means a creditable or appar- 
 ently much cared for example of Nature's workmanship; 
 made, as it seems, only to be trodden on to-day, and to-mor- 
 row to be cast into the oven; and a little pale and hollow 
 stalk, feeble and flaccid, leading down to the dull brown fibres 
 of roots. And yet, think of it well, and judge whether of all 
 the gorgeous flowers that beam in summer air, and of all 
 strong and goodly trees, pleasant to the eyes and good for 
 food, — stately palm and pine, strong ash and oak, scented 
 citron, burdened vine, — there be any by man so deeply loved, 
 by God so highly graced, as that narrow point of feeble 
 green. It seems to me not to have been without a peculiar 
 significance, that our Lord, when about to work the miracle 
 which, of all that He showed, appears to have been felt by the 
 multitude as the most impressive, — the miracle of the loaves, 
 — commanded the people to sit down by companies, "upon 
 the green grass." He was about to feed them with the princi- 
 ple produce of earth and the sea, the simplest representations 
 of the food of mankind. He gave them the seed of the herb ; 
 He bade them sit clown upon the herb itself, which was as 
 great a gift, in its fitness for their joy and rest, as its perfect 
 fruit, for their sustenance : thus, in this single order and act, 
 when rightly understood, indicating for evermore how the 
 Creator had entrusted the comfort, consolation, and suste- 
 
106 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 nance of man, to the simplest and most despised of all the 
 leafy families of the earth. 
 
 And well does it fulfil its mission. Consider what we owe 
 merely to the meadow grass, to the covering of the dark 
 ground by that glorious enamel, by the companies of those 
 soft, and countless, and peaceful spears. The fields ! Follow 
 but for a little time the thoughts of all that w T e ought to recog- 
 nize in those words. All spring and summer is in them, the 
 walks by silent scented paths, — the rests in noonday heat, 
 the joy of flocks and herds, — the power of all shepherd life 
 and meditation, the life of sunlight upon the world, falling in 
 emerald streaks, and falling in soft blue shadows, where else 
 it would have struck upon the dark mould, or scorching dust, 
 — pastures beside the pacing brooks — soft banks and knolls 
 of lowly hills — thymy slopes of down overlooked by the blue 
 line of lifted sea, — crisp lawns all dim with early dew, or 
 smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine, dinted by 
 happy feet, and softening in their fall the sound of loving 
 voices ; all these are summed in those simple words ; and these 
 are not all. We may not measure to the full the depth of this 
 heavenly gift, in our own land ; though still, as we think of it 
 longer, the infinite of that meadow sweetness, Shakspeare's 
 peculiar joy. would open on us more and more, yet we have it 
 but in part. Go out, in the spring time among the meadows 
 that slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to the roots of 
 their lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller gentians 
 and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep and free; and 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 107 
 
 as you follow the winding mountain paths, beneath arching 
 boughs all veiled and dim with blossom, — paths that forever 
 droop and rise over the green banks and mounds sweeping 
 down in scented undulation, steep to the blue water, studded 
 here and there with new-mown heaps, filling all the air with 
 fainter sweetness, — look up towards the higher hills, where 
 the waves of everlasting green roll silently into their long in- 
 lets among the shadows of the pines ; and we may, perhaps, 
 at last know the meaning of those quiet words of the 147th 
 Psalm, " He maketh grass to grow upon the mountains." 
 
 There are several lessons symbolically connected with this 
 subject, which we must not allow to escape us. Observe, the 
 peculiar characters of the grass, which adapt it especially for 
 the service of man, are its humility and cheerfulness. Its 
 humility, in that it seems created only for lowest service — 
 appointed to be trodden on, and fed upon. Its cheerfulness, 
 in that it seems to exult under all kinds of violence and suf- 
 fering. You roll it, and it is stronger the next day ; you mow 
 it, and it multiplies its shoots, as if it were grateful ; you 
 tread upon it, and it only sends up richer perfume. Spring 
 comes, and it rejoices with all the earth — glowing with va- 
 riegated flame of flowers, waving in soft depth of fruitful 
 strength. "Winter comes, and though it will not mock its 
 fellow plants by growing then, it will not pine and mourn, 
 and turn colorless or leafless as they. It is always green; 
 and it is only the brighter and gayer for the hoar-frost. 
 
108 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 The two characters — of humility and joy under trial — are 
 exactly those which most definitely distinguish the Chris- 
 tian from the Pagan spirit. Whatever virtue the pagan pos- 
 sessed was rooted in pride, and fruited with sorrow. It 
 began in the elevation of his own nature ; it ended but in the 
 " verde smalto " — the hopeless green — of the Elysian fields. 
 But the Christian virtue is rooted in self-debasement and 
 strengthened under suffering by gladness of hope. And re- 
 membering this, it is curious to observe how utterly without 
 gladness the Greek heart appears to be in watching the flower- 
 ing grass and what strange discords of expression arise 
 sometimes in consequence. There is one recurring once or 
 twice in Homer, which has always pained me. He says, 
 ' ' the Greek army was on the fields as thick as flowers in the 
 spring." It might be so; but flowers in spring time are not 
 the image by which Dante would have numbered soldiers on 
 the path of battle. Dante could not have thought of the 
 flowering of the grass but as associated with happiness. 
 There is a still deeper significance in a passage from Homer, 
 describing Ulysses casting himself down on the rushes and 
 the corn-giving land at the river shore, — the rushes and corn 
 being to him only good for rest and sustenance, — when we 
 compare it with that in which Dante tells us he was ordered 
 to descend to the shore of the lake as he entered Purgatory, 
 to gather a rush, and gird himself with it, it being to him the 
 emblem, not only of rest, but of humility under chastisement^ 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 109 
 
 the rush (or reecl) being the only plant which can grow there ; 
 " no plant which bears leaves, or hardens its bark, can live 
 on that shore, because it does not yield to the chastisement 
 of its waves." It cannot but strike the reader singularly how 
 deep and harmonious a significance runs through all these 
 words of Dante — how every syllable of them, the more we 
 penetrate it, becomes a seed of farther thought ! For, follow 
 up this image of girding with the reed, under trial, and see 
 to whose feet it will lead us. As the grass of the earth, 
 thought of as the herb yielding seed, leads us to the place 
 where our Lord commanded the multitude to sit down by 
 companies upon the green grass ; so the grass of the waters, 
 thought of as sustaining itself among the waters of afflic- 
 tion, leads us to the place where a stem of it was put into 
 our Lord's hand for His sceptre ; and in the crown of thorns, 
 and the rod of reed, was foreshown the everlasting truth of 
 the Christian ages — that all glory was to be begun in suffer- 
 ing, and all power in humility. 
 
 Assembling the images we have traced, and adding the 
 simplest of all, from Isaiah xl. 6, we find, the grass and 
 flowers are types, in their passing, of the passing of human 
 life, and in their excellence, of the excellence of human life ; 
 and this in a twofold way; first by their Beneficence, and 
 then, by their Endurance ; — the grass of the earth, in giving 
 the seed of corn, and in its beauty under tread of foot and 
 stroke of scythe ; and the grass of the waters, in giving its 
 freshness for our rest, and in its bending before the wave. 
 
1 10 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 But understood in the broad human and Divine sense, the 
 "herb yielding seed " includes a third family of plants, and 
 fulfils a third office to the human race. It includes the great 
 family of the lints and flaxes, and fulfils thus the three offices 
 of giving food, raiment, and rest. Follow out this ful- 
 filment; consider the association of the linen garment and 
 the linen embroidery, with the priestly office, and the furni- 
 ture of the tabernacle ; and consider how the rush has been, 
 in all time, the first natural carpet thrown under the human 
 foot. Then next observe the three virtues definitely set forth 
 by the three families of plants ; not arbitrarily, or fancifully 
 associated with them, but in all the three cases marked for 
 us by Scriptural words : "1st. Cheerfulness or joyful se- 
 renity; in the grass for food and beauty. "Consider the 
 lilies how they grow, they toil not; neither do they spin." 
 2d. Humility : in the grass for rest. " A bruised reed shall 
 He not break." 3d. Love : in the grass for clothing. " The 
 smoking flax shall He not quench." And then, finally, ob- 
 serve the confirmation of these last two images in, I suppose, 
 the most important prophecy, relating to the future state of 
 the Christian Church, which occurs in the Old Testament, 
 namely, that contained in the closing chapters of Ezckiel. The 
 measures of the Temple of God are to be taken ; and because 
 it is only by charity and humility that those measures ever 
 can be taken, the angel has " a line of flax in his hand, and 
 a measuring reed." The use of the line was to measure the 
 land, and of the reed to take the dimensions of the buildings ; 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 1 1 1 
 
 so the buildings of the church, or its labors, are to be 
 measured by humility, and its territory or land, by love. 
 
 The limits of the Church have, indeed, in later days, been 
 measured, to the world's sorrow, by another than flaxen line, 
 burning with the fire of unholy zeal, not with that of Chris- 
 tian charity ; and perhaps the best lesson which we can finally 
 take to ourselves, in leaving these sweet fields of the mediaeval 
 landscape is the memory that, in spite of all the fettered 
 habits of thought of his age," this great Dante, this inspired 
 exponent of what lay deepest at the heart of the early church, 
 placed his terrestrial paradise where there had ceased to be 
 fence or division, and where the grass of the earth was bowed 
 down, in unity of direction, only by the soft waves that bore 
 with them the forgetf ulness of evil. 
 
 The Greek delighted in the grass for its usefulness; the 
 mediaeval, as also we moderns, for its color and beauty. 
 But both dwell on it as the first element of the lovely land- 
 scape; Dante thinks the righteous spirits of the heathen 
 enough comforted in Hades by having even the image of green 
 grass put beneath their feet ; the happy resting-place in Pur- 
 gatory has no other delight than its grass and flowers; and, 
 finally, in the terrestrial paradise, the feet of Matilda pause 
 where the Lethe stream first bends the blades of grass. 
 
 Spires of the fine grasses . . . minute, granular, feath- 
 ery, or downy-seed-vessels, mingling quaint brown punctua- 
 
1 12 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 tions, and dusty tremors of dancing grain, with the bloom of 
 the nearer fields ; and casting a gossamered grayness and soft- 
 ness of plumy mist along their surfaces far away ; mysterious 
 evermore, not only with dew in the morning, or mirage at 
 noon, but with the shaking threads of fine arborescence, each 
 a little belfry of grain-bells, all a-chime. 
 
 Lichen, and mosses — Meek creatures ! the first mercy of 
 the earth, veiling with hushed softness its dintless rocks; 
 creatures full of pity, covering with strange and tender 
 honor the scarred disgrace of ruin, — laying quiet finger on the 
 trembling stones, to teach them rest. No words, that I know 
 of, will say what these mosses are. None are delicate enough, 
 none perfect enough, none rich enough. How is one to tell 
 of the rounded bosses of furred and beaming green, — the 
 starred divisions of rubied bloom, fine-filmed, as if the Rock 
 Spirits could spin porphyry as we do glass — the traceries of 
 intricate silver, and fringes of amber, lustrous, arborescent, 
 burnished through every fibre into fitful brightness and glossy 
 traverses of silken change, yet all subdued and pensive, and 
 framed for simplest, sweetest offices of grace. They will not 
 be gathered, like the flowers, for chaplet or love-token; but 
 of these the wild bird will make its nest, and the wearied child 
 his pillow. And, as the earth's first mercy, so they are its 
 last gift to us. When all other service is vain, from plant 
 and tree, the soft mosses and gray lichens take up their 
 watch by the head-stone. The woods, the blossoms, the gift- 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 1 13 
 
 bearing grasses have done their parts for a time, but these 
 do service forever. Trees for the builder's yard, flowers for 
 the bride's chamber, corn for the granary, moss for the grave. 
 Yet as in one sense the humblest, in another they are the most 
 honored of the earth-children. Unfading, as motionless, the 
 worm frets them not, and the autumn wastes not. Strong in 
 lowliness, they neither blanch in heat nor pine in frost. To 
 them, slow-fingered, constant-hearted, is entrusted the weav- 
 ing of the dark, eternal tapestries of the hills ; to them, slow- 
 pencilled, iris-dyed, the tender framing of their endless imag- 
 ery. Sharing the stillness of the unimpassioned rock, they 
 share also its endurance ; and while the winds of departing 
 spring scatter the white hawthorn blossom like drifted snow, 
 and summer dims on the parched meadow the drooping of its 
 cowslip-gold, — far above, among the mountains, the silver of 
 lichen-spots rest, star-like, on the stone , and the gathering 
 orange stain upon the edge of yonder western peak reflects 
 the sunset of a thousand years. 
 
 * # 
 Mosses seem to set themselves consentfully and deliberately 
 to the task of producing the most exquisite harmonies of color 
 in their power. They will not conceal the form of the rock, 
 but will gather over it in little brown bosses, like small cush- 
 ions of velvet made of mixed threads of dark ruby silk and 
 gold, rounded over more subdued films of white and gray, with 
 lightly crisped and curled edges like hoar frost on fallen 
 leaves, and minute clusters of upright oranges stalks with 
 
1 1 4 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 pointed caps, and fibres of deep green, and gold, and faint 
 purple passing into black, all woven together, and following 
 with unimaginable fineness of gentle growth the undulations 
 of the stone they cherish, until it is charged with color so 
 that it can receive no more ; and instead of looking rugged, 
 or cold, or stern, as anything that a rock is held to be at 
 heart, it seems to be clothed with a soft, dark, leopard's skin, 
 embroidered with arabesque of purple and silver. But in the 
 lower ranges this is not so. The mosses grow in more inde- 
 pendent spots, not in such a clinging and tender way over 
 the whole surface. 
 
 "What can we conceive of that first Eden which we might 
 not yet win back, if we chose? It was a place full of flowers, 
 we say. Well ; the flowers are always striving to grow wher- 
 ever we suffer them ; and the fairer the closer. There may in- 
 deed have been a Fall of Flowers, as a Fall of Man ; but assur- 
 edly creatures such as we are can now fancy nothing lovelier 
 than roses and lilies, which would grow for us side by side, leaf 
 overlapping leaf, till the Earth was white and red with them, 
 if we cared to have it so. 
 
 It is better to know the habits of one plant than the names 
 of a thousand; and wiser to be happily familiar with those 
 that grown in the nearest field, than arduously cognizant of 
 all that plume the isles of the Pacific, or illumine the Moun- 
 tains of the Moon. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 115 
 
 The flower is the end or proper object of the seed, not the 
 seed of the flower. The reason for seeds is that flowers may 
 be ; not the reason of flowers that seeds may be. The flower 
 itself is the creature which the spirit makes ; only, in connec- 
 tion with its perfectness, is placed the giving birth to its 
 successor. 
 
 The main fact, then, about a flower is that it is the part of 
 the plant's form developed at the moment of its intensest 
 life ; and this inner rapture is usually marked externally for 
 us by the flush of one or more of the primary colors. What 
 the character of the flower shall be, depends entirely upon 
 the portion of the plant into which this rapture of spirit has 
 been put. Sometimes the life is put into its outer sheath, 
 and then the outer sheath becomes white and pure, and full 
 of strength and grace ; sometimes the life is put into the com- 
 mon leaves just under the blossom, and they become scarlet or 
 purple ; sometimes the life is put into the stalks of the flower, 
 and they flush blue; sometimes into its outer enclosure or 
 calyx ; mostly into its inner cup ; but, in all cases, the presence 
 of the strongest life is asserted by characters in which the hu- 
 man sight takes pleasure, and which seem prepared with 
 distinct reference to us, or rather, bear, in being delightful, 
 evidence of having been produced by the power of the same 
 spirit as our own. 
 
 * * 
 Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity ; 
 children love them ; quiet, tender, contented ordinary people 
 
116 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 love them as they grow; luxurious and disorderly people 
 rejoice in them gathered. They are the cottagers' treasures; 
 and in the crowded town mark, as with a little broken frag- 
 ment of a rainbow, the windows of the workers in whose 
 
 hearts rest the covenant of peace. 
 
 * 
 
 Compare Milton's flowers in Lycidas with Perclita's. In 
 Milton it happens, I think, generally, and in the case before 
 us most certainly, that the imagination is mixed and broken 
 with fancy, and so the strength of the imagery is part of 
 iron and part of clay. 
 
 " Bring the rathe primrose, that forsaken dies, 
 
 The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, 
 
 The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, — 
 
 The glowing violet, 
 
 The musk rose, and the well-attired woodbine, 
 
 With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, 
 
 And every flower that sad embroidery wears : " 
 
 Then hear Perdita : — 
 
 "O, Proserpina, 
 Tor the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall 
 From Dis's wagon ! daffodils, 
 That come before the swallow dares, and take 
 The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim, 
 But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, 
 Or Cytherea's breath ; pale primroses, 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 117 
 
 That die unmarried, ere they can behold 
 Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady- 
 Most incident to maids ; " 
 
 Observe how the imagination in these last lines goes into 
 the very inmost soul of every flower, after having touched 
 them all at first with that heavenly timidness, the shadow of 
 Proserpina's; and gilded them with celestial gathering, and 
 never stops on their spots, or their bodily shape, while Milton 
 sticks in the stains upon them, and puts us off with that un- 
 happy freak of jet in the very flower that without this bit of 
 paper-staining, would have been the most precious to us of all. 
 " There is pansies, that's for thoughts." 
 
 # 
 
 The sympathy of very lofty and sensitive minds usually 
 reaches so far as to the conception of life in the plant, and so 
 to love, as with Shelley, of the sensitive plant, and Shakes- 
 peare always, as he taught us in the sweet voices of Ophelia 
 and Perdita, and Wordsworth always, as of the daffodils, and 
 the celendine. 
 
 " It cloth not love the shower, nor seek the cold. 
 This neither is its courage, nor its choice, 
 But its necessity in being old." 
 
 And so all other great poets — that is to say great seers ; nor 
 do I believe that any mind, however rude, is without some 
 slight perception or acknowledgment of joyfulness in breath- 
 
1 18 THO UGHTS OF BE A TJTY. 
 
 less things, as most certainly there are ; none but feel instinct- 
 ive delight in the appearance of such enjoyment. . . . 
 The pleasure afforded by every organic form is in proportion 
 to its appearance of healthy vital energy; as in a rose-bush, 
 setting aside all considerations of gradated flushing of color 
 and fair folding of line, which it shares with the cloud or the 
 snow-wreath ; we find in and through all this, certain signs 
 pleasant and acceptable as signs of life and enjoyment in the 
 particular individual plant itself. 
 
 # 
 
 I have in my hand a small red poppy which I gathered on 
 Whit Sunday on the palace of the Caesars. It is an intensely 
 simple, intensely floral, flower. All silk and flame, a scarlet 
 cup, perfect-edged all round, seen among the wild grass far 
 away, like a burning coal fallen from Heaven's altars. You 
 cannot have a more complete, a more stainless, type of flower 
 absolute ; inside and outside, all flower. No sparing of color 
 anywhere — no outside coarseness — no interior secrecies; 
 open as the sunshine that creates it ; fine-finished on both 
 sides, down to the extremest point of insertion ; and robed in 
 the purple of the Caesars. 
 
 Perhaps few people have ever asked themselves why they 
 admire a rose so much more than all other flowers. If they 
 consider, they will find, first, that red is, in a delicately gra- 
 dated state, the loveliest of all pure colors; and secondly, 
 that in the rose there is no shadow, except what is composed 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 1 19 
 
 of color. All its shadows are fuller in color than its lights, 
 
 owing to the translucency and reflective power of its leaves. 
 
 # 
 
 The bird. . . . It is little more than a 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, sub- 
 dues it, surpasses it, outruns it ; — is the air, conscious of itself, 
 conquering itself, ruling itself. Also in 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 together in its song. 
 As we may imagine the wild form of the cloud closed into the 
 perfect form of the bird's wings, so the wild voice of the cloud 
 into its ordered and commanded voice ; unwearied, rippling 
 through the clear heaven in its gladness, interpreting all in- 
 tense passion through the soft spring nights, burstiug into 
 acclaim and rapture of choir at daybreak, or lisping and 
 twittering among the boughs and hedges through heat of day, 
 like little winds that only make the cowslip bells shake, and 
 ruffle the petals of the wild rose. 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 covetousness ; 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 creatiug spirit and woven into 
 films and threads of plume; with wave on wave following 
 
120 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 and fading along breast, and throat, and opened wings, in- 
 finite as the dividing of the foam and the sifting 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. 
 And so the spirit of the Air is put into, and upon, this created 
 form ; and it becomes, through twenty centuries, the symbol 
 of divine help, descending as the Fire, to speak, but as the 
 
 Dove to bless. 
 
 * 
 
 The bird has exactly the degree of emotion, the extent of 
 science, and the command of art, which are necessary for its 
 happiness. ... It was a bullfinch's nest, which had been 
 set in the fork of a sapling tree, where it needed an extended 
 foundation. And the bird had built this storey of her nest 
 with withered stalks of clematis blossom ; and with nothing 
 else. The twigs it had interwoven lightly, leaving the 
 branches heads all at the outside, producing an intricate 
 Gothic boss of extreme grace and quaintness, apparently ar- 
 ranged with triumphant pleasure, in the art of basket mak- 
 ing, and with definite purpose of obtaining ornamental form. 
 
 Why should not our nests be as interesting things to angels, 
 as bullfinch's are to us? 
 
 I do not think it is distinctly enough felt by us that the 
 beak of a bird is not only its mouth, but its hand, or rather 
 its two hands. For, as its arms and hands are turned into 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 121 
 
 wings, all it has to depend upon, in economical and practical 
 life, is its beak. The beak, therefore, is at once its sword, 
 its carpenter's tool-box, and its dressing-case ; partly also its 
 musical instrument; all this besides its function of seizing 
 and preparing the food, in which functions alone it has to be 
 a trap, carving-knife, and teeth all in one. 
 
 The swallow . . . understand the beauty of the bird 
 which lives with you in your own houses, and which purifies 
 for you, from its insect pestilence, the air that you breathe. 
 Thus the sweet domestic thing has done, for men, at least 
 these four thousand years. She has been their companion, 
 not of the home merely, but of the hearth, and the thresh- 
 old; companion only endeared by departure, and showing 
 better her loving-kindness by her faithful return. T}-pe 
 sometimes of the stranger, she has softened us to hospitality ; 
 type always of the suppliant, she has enchanted us to mercy ; 
 and in her feeble presence, the cowardice, or the wrath, of 
 sacrilege has changed into the fidelities of sanctuary. Herald 
 of our summer, she glances through our days of gladness ; 
 numberer of our years, she would teach us to apply our hearts 
 to wisdom; — and } r et, so little have we regarded her, that 
 this very daj r , scarcely able to gather from all I can find told of 
 her enough to explain so much as the unfolding of her wings, 
 I can tell you nothing of her life — nothing of her journey- 
 ing; I cannot learn how she builds, nor how she chooses 
 the place of her wandering, nor how she traces the path of 
 
122 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 her return. Remaining thus blind and careless to the true 
 ministries of the humble creature whom God has really sent 
 to serve us, we in our pride, thinking ourselves surrounded 
 by the pursuivants of the sky, can yet only invest them with 
 majesty by giving them the calm of the bird's motion, and 
 shade of the bird's plume ; — and after all, it is well for us, 
 if, when even for God's best mercies, and in His temples 
 marble-built, we think that, " with angels and archangels, 
 and all the company of Heaven, we laud and magnify His 
 glorious name" — well for us, if our attempt be not only an 
 insult, and His ears open rather to the inarticulate and un- 
 intended praise of " the Swallow twittering from her straw- 
 built shed." 
 
 If you are not inclined to look at the wings of birds, which 
 God has given you to handle and to see, much less are you 
 to contemplate, or draw imaginations of the wings of an- 
 gels, which you can't see. Know your own world first — 
 not denying any other, but being quite sure that the place in 
 which you are now put is the place with which you are now 
 concerned; and that it will be wiser in you to think the gods 
 themselves may appear in the form of a dove, or a swallow, 
 than that, by false theft from the form of dove or swallow, 
 you can represent the aspect of gods. 
 
 Scarlet color, — or pure red, intensified by expression of 
 light, is of all the three primitive colors, that which is most 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 123 
 
 distinctive. Yellow is of the nature of simple light; blue, 
 connected with simple shade, but red is an entirely abstract 
 color. It is red to which the color blind are blind, as if to show 
 us that it was not necessary merely for the service or comfort 
 of man, but that there was a special gift or teaching in this 
 color. Observe farther that it is the color which the sun- 
 beams take in passing through the earth's atmosphere. The 
 rose of dawn and sunset is the hue of the rays passing over 
 the earth. It is also concentrated in the blood of man. 
 * * 
 I have already insisted upon the sacredness of color, and 
 its necessary connection with all pure and noble feeling . . . 
 but perhaps I have not yet insisted on the simplest and read- 
 iest to hand of all proofs — the way namely, in which God has 
 employed color in His creation as the unvarying accompani- 
 ment of all that is purest, most innocent, and most precious ; 
 while for things precious only in material uses, or danger- 
 ous, common colors are reserved. Consider for a little 
 while what sort of a world it would be if all flowers were 
 gray, all leaves black, and the sky brown. . . . Then ob- 
 serve how constantly innocent things are bright in color, I 
 do not mean that the rule is invariable . . . there are 
 beautiful colors on the leopard and tiger, and the berries of 
 the nightshade . . . but take a wider view of nature, 
 and compare generally rainbows, sunrises, roses, violets, 
 butterflies, birds, gold-fish, rubies., opals, and corals, with 
 alligators, hippopotami, lions, wolves, stinging things in 
 
121 TIIO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 general, and you will find then how the question stands be- 
 tween the colorist and chiaroscurists — which of them have 
 nature and life on their side, and which have sin and death. 
 
 Finally : the ascertainment of the sanctity of color is not 
 left to human sagacity. It is distinctly stated in Scripture. 
 Blue, purple and scarlet, with white and gold as appointed in 
 the Tabernacle ; this chord is the fixed base of all coloring 
 with the workmen of every great age ; the purple and scarlet 
 will be found constantly employed by the noble painters, in 
 various unison, to the exclusion in general of pure crimson; it 
 is the harmony described by Herodotus as used in the battle- 
 ments of Ecbatana, and the invariable base of all beautiful 
 missal-painting. ... All men completely organized and 
 justly tempered enjoy color; it is meant for the perpetual 
 comfort and delight of the human heart; it is richly bestowed 
 on the highest works of creation, and the eminent sign 
 and seal of perfection in them ; being associated with life in the 
 human body, with light in the sky, with purity and hardness 
 in the earth, — death, night, and pollution of all kinds being 
 colorless. 
 
 I trust that the time may soon come when the beneficent 
 and beautiful gifts of color may be rightly felt and wisely em- 
 ployed, and when the variegated fronts of our houses may 
 render the term "stone-color" as little definite in the mind 
 of the architect as that of "flower color" would be to the 
 horticulturist. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 125 
 
 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 expedient can reach. 
 
 # 
 
 # # 
 
 "We have been speaking of the ordinary effects of daylight 
 on ordinary colors, and we repeat that no gorgeousness of the 
 pallet can reach even these. But it is a widely different thing 
 when nature herself takes a coloring fit, and does something 
 extraordinary, something really to exhibit her power. 
 
 She has a thousand ways and means of rising above herself, 
 but incomparably the noblest manifestations of her capability 
 of color are in these sunsets among the high clouds. I speak 
 especially of the moment before the sun sinks, when his 
 light turns pure rose-color, and when this light falls upon a 
 zenith covered with countless cloud-forms of inconceivable 
 delicacy, threads and flakes of vapor, which would in common 
 daylight be pure snow white, and which give therefore fair 
 field to the tone of light. There is then no limit to the multi- 
 tude, and no check to the intensity of the hues assumed. The 
 whole sky from the zenith to the horizon becomes one molten, 
 mantling sea of color and fire; every black bar turns into 
 massy gold, every ripple and wave into unsullied, shadowless, 
 crimson, and purple, and scarlet, and colors for which there 
 
126 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 are no words in language, and no ideas in the mind, — things 
 which can only be conceived while they are visible — the 
 intense hollow blue of the upper sky melting through it all, 
 — showing here deep and pure, and lightless, there, modu- 
 lated by the filmy formless body of the transparent vapor till it 
 is lost imperceptibly in its crimson and blue. 
 
 The loveliest colors ever granted to human sight, those of 
 morning and of evening clouds before or after rain, are pro- 
 duced in minute particles of finely-divided water, or perhaps 
 sometimes ice. 
 
 There are some landscapes whose best character is spark- 
 ling, and there is a possibility of repose in the midst of bril- 
 liancy, or embracing it, as in the fields of summer sea, or 
 summer land : 
 
 " Calm and deep peace, on this high wold, 
 And in the dews that drench the furze, 
 And in the silvery gossamers, 
 That twinkle into green and gold." 
 # 
 
 There are three things to which man is born — 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. But you must not think to avoid the corruption 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 127 
 
 of these things by doing without the things themselves. Noi 
 can any life be right that has not all three. Labor without 
 joy is base. Labor without sorrow is base. Sorrow without 
 labor is base. Joy without labor is base. 
 
 These are three Material things, not only useful, but essen- 
 tial to Life. No one "knows how to live "till he has got 
 them. These are Pure Air, Water, and Earth. 
 
 There are three Immaterial things, not only useful, butes- 
 sential to Life. No one knows how to live till he has got 
 them. These are Admiration, Hope, and Love. 
 
 # 
 
 Do your own work well, whether it be for life or death. 
 Help other people at times when you can, and seek to avenge 
 no injury. — Be sure you can obey good laws before you seek 
 to alter bad ones. 
 
 * * 
 
 God has lent us the earth for our life ; it is a great entail. 
 It belongs as much to them who are to come after us, and 
 whose names are already written in the book of creation, as 
 to us ; and we have no right by anything that we do or 
 neglect to involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive 
 them of benefits which it was in our power to bequeath. . . 
 
 . of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent 
 forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the 
 grave. 
 
128 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 Every human action gains in honor, in grace, in all true 
 magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. 
 
 The directest manifestation of Deity to man is in His own 
 image, that is, in man. ... It cannot be supposed that 
 the bodily shape of man resembles any bodily shape in Deity. 
 The likeness must therefore be, or have been in the soul. 
 Had it wholly passed away, and the Divine Soul been altered 
 into a soul brutal or diabolic, I suppose we should have been 
 told of the change. But we are told nothing of the kind. 
 The verse still stands as if for our use and trust. It was 
 only death which was to be our punishment. Not change. 
 So far as we live, the image is still there ; defiled, if you 
 will ; broken, if you will ; all but effaced if you will, by death 
 and the shadow of it. But not changed. We are not made 
 now in any other image than God's. There are, indeed, the 
 two states of this image, — the earthly and heavenly, but 
 both Adamite, both human, both the same likeness; only 
 one defiled, and one pure. So that the soul of man is still a 
 mirror, wherein may be seen, darkly, the image of the mind 
 of God. 
 
 "We know no higher or more energetic life than our own ; 
 but there seems to me this great good in the idea of grada- 
 tion of life — it admits the idea of a life above us, in other 
 creatures, as much nobler than ours, as ours is nobler than 
 that of the dust. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 129 
 
 The healthy sense of progress, which is necessary to the 
 strength and happiness of men, does not consist in the 
 anxiety of a struggle to attain higher place or rank, but in 
 gradually perfecting the manner, and accomplishing the ends, 
 of the life which we have chosen, or which circumstances 
 have determined for us. 
 
 You may sum the duty of your life in the giving of praise 
 worthily, and being yourself worthy of it. Therefore in the 
 reading of all history your first purpose must be, to seek what 
 is to be praised, and disdain the rest ; and in doing so, remem- 
 ber always that the most important part of the history of a 
 man is that of his imagination. What he actually does is 
 always in great part accidental; it is at best a partial ful- 
 filment of his purpose, and what we call history is often, as 
 I have said, merely a record of the external accidents which 
 befall men getting together in large crowds. The real his- 
 tory of mankind is that of the slow advance of resolved deed 
 following laboriously just thought : and all the greatest men 
 live in their purpose and effort more than is possible for them 
 to live in reality. If you would praise them worthily, it is 
 for what they conceived and felt ; not merely for what they 
 have done. 
 
 Intense apathy in all of us is the first great mystery of life ; 
 it stands in the way of every perception, every virtue. There 
 
130 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 is no making ourselves feel enough astonished at it. That 
 the occupations, or pastimes of life should have no motive 
 is understandable, — but — that life itself should have no mo- 
 tive — that we neither care to find out what it may lead to, 
 nor to guard against its being forever taken away from us, 
 here is a mystery indeed. 
 
 # 
 
 Mighty of heart, mighty of mind — " magnanimous " — to 
 be this, is indeed to be great in life ; to become this increas- 
 ingly, is indeed, to "advance in life," — in life itself — not 
 in the trappings of it. 
 
 He only is advancing in life, whose heart is getting softer, 
 whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is 
 entering into Living peace. And the men who have this life 
 in them are the true lords or kings of the earth — they, and 
 they only. 
 
 * # 
 The two essential instincts of humanity — the love of Order 
 and the Love of kindness. By the love of order the moral 
 energy is to deal with the earth, and to dress it, and to keep 
 it ; and with all rebellious and dissolute forces in lower creat- 
 ures, or in ourselves. By the love of doing kindness it is to 
 deal rightly with all surrounding life. And then, grafted on 
 these, we are to make every other passion perfect ; so that 
 they may every one have full strength and yet be absolutely 
 under control. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 131 
 
 # 
 
 Here is a short piece of precious word revelation, for in- 
 stance, " God is Love." 
 
 Love! Yes. But what is that? Out of your own heart 
 you may know what love is. In no other possible way, — by 
 no other help or sign. All the words and sounds ever uttered, 
 all the revelations of cloud, or flame, or crystal, are utterly 
 powerless. They cannot tell you in the smallest point what 
 love means. 
 
 # * 
 
 Two great and principle passions are evidently appointed 
 by the Deity to rule the life of man — namely, the love of 
 God, and the fear of its companion death. 
 
 How many motives we have for Love — how much there 
 
 is in the universe to kindle our admiration and to claim our 
 
 gratitude . . . kindness is indeed everywhere and always 
 
 visible. 
 
 * 
 
 Love will do its own proper work ; and the only true test 
 of good or bad is ultimately strength of affection .... 
 love's misrepresentation being truer than the most mathemat- 
 ical presentation. 
 
 # 
 
 In the exact proportion in which men are educated to love, 
 to think, and to endure, they become noble, live happily, die 
 calmly ; are remembered with perpetual honor by their race, 
 and for the perpetual good of it. 
 
132 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 
 " This do, and thou shalt live," nay, in stricter and more 
 piercing sense, this be, and thou shalt love : to show mercy 
 is nothing — thy soul must be full of mercy ; to be pure in act 
 is nothing, thou shalt be pure in heart also. 
 
 There is no pure passion that can be understood or painted, 
 except by pureness of heart ; the foul or blunt feeling will see 
 itself in everything. ... it will see Beelzebub in the casting 
 out of devils, it will find its god of flies in every alabaster box 
 of precious ointment. . . . But the right Christian mind will 
 in like manner find its own image wherever it exists, it will 
 seek for what it loves, and draw it out of all dens and caves, 
 and it will believe in its being, often when it cannot see it, and 
 always turn away its eyes from beholding vanity ; and so it 
 will lie lovingly over all the faults and rough places of the 
 human heart, as the snow from heaven does over the hard, and 
 black, and broken mountain rocks, following their forms 
 truly, and yet catching light to make them fair, and that must 
 be a steep or unkindly crag indeed which it cannot cover. 
 
 The great reasoners are self-command, and trust unagitated, 
 and deep-looking Love and Faith, which as she is above Rea- 
 son, so she best holds the reins of it from her high seat ; so 
 that they err grossly who think of the right development even 
 of the intellectual type as possible, unless we look to higher 
 sources of beauty first. 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 133 
 
 # 
 
 * * 
 
 Only in 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. 
 
 # 
 
 He who loves not God, nor his brother, cannot love the 
 grass beneath his feet and the creatures that fill those spaces 
 in the universe which he needs not, and which live not for his 
 uses ; nay, he has seldom grace to be grateful even to those 
 that love him and serve him, while, on the other hand, none 
 can love God and his human brother without loving all things 
 which his Father loves, nor without looking upon them every 
 one as in that respect his brethren also, and perhaps worthier 
 than he, if in the under concords they have to fill, their part 
 is touched more truly. Wherefore it is good to read of that 
 kindness and humbleness of St. Francis of Assisi, who spoke 
 never to bird, nor to cicala, nor even to wolf and beast of prey, 
 but as his brother ; and so we find are moved the minds of all 
 good and mighty men, as in the lesson that we have from the 
 Mariner of Coleridge, and yet more truly and rightly taught 
 in the Heartleap Well. 
 
 " Never to blend our pleasure, or our pride, 
 With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels." 
 
 And again in the White Doe of Rylstone with the added 
 teaching of that gift, which we have from things beneath us, 
 
134 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 in thanks for the love they cannot equally return ; that an- 
 guish of our own, 
 
 " Is tempered and allayed by sympathies, 
 Aloft ascending and descending deep, 
 Even to the inferior kinds," 
 
 so that I know not of anything more destructive of the whole 
 theoretic faculty, not to say of the Christian character and 
 human intellect, than those accursed sports in which man 
 makes of himself cat, tiger, serpent, chaetodon and alligator 
 in one, and gathers into one continuance of cruelty for his 
 amusement all the devices that brutes sparingly and at inter- 
 vals use against each other for their necessities. 
 
 * 
 
 I would fain hold, if I might, " the faith that every flower 
 enjoys the air it breathes," neither do I ever crush or gather 
 one without some pain, yet our feeling for them has more of 
 sympathy than of actual love, as receiving from them in de- 
 light far more than we can give; for love, I think, chiefly 
 grows in giving ; at least, its essence is the desire of doing 
 good, or giving happiness. 
 
 # * 
 Color — the type of Love — Followed rashly, coarsely, un- 
 truly, for the mere pleasure of it, with no reverence, it becomes 
 a temptation, and leads to corruption. Followed faithfully, 
 with intense but reverent passion, it is the holiest of all as- 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 135 
 
 pects of material things. . . . Love when true, faithful, 
 well-fixed, is eminently the sanctifying element of human life ; 
 without it, the soul cannot reach its fullest height of holiness. 
 But if shallow, faithless, misdirected, it is also one of the 
 strongest corrupting and degrading elements of life. 
 
 * # 
 
 All things may be elevated by affection, as the spikenard of 
 Mary, and in the Song of Solomon, the myrrh upon the han- 
 dles of the lock, and that of Isaac concerning his son. . . . 
 And I can find something divine in the sweetness of wild 
 fruits, as well as in the pleasantness of the pure air, and the 
 tenderness of its natural perfumes as they come and go. 
 
 # 
 
 # # 
 
 The Christian theoria seeks not, though it accepts, and 
 touches with its own purity what the Epicurean sought, but 
 finds its food and the objects of its love everywhere, in what 
 is harsh and fearful, as well as what is kind. Nay, even in 
 all that seems coarse and commonplace ; seizing that which 
 is good, and delighting more sometimes at finding its table 
 spread in strange places, and in the presence of its enemies, 
 and its honey coming out of the rock, than if all were har- 
 monized into a less wondrous pleasure ; hating only what is 
 self-sighted and insolent of men's work, despising all that is 
 not of God's unless reminding it of God, yet able to find evi- 
 dence of Him still, where all seems forgetful of Him, and 
 to turn that into a witness of His working which was meant 
 to obscure it, and so with clear sight beholding Him forever, 
 
136 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 according to the written promise, "Blessed are the pure in 
 heart for they shall see God." 
 
 * * 
 In the early ages of Christianity there was little care taken 
 to analyze character. One momentous question was heard 
 over the whole world, " Dost thou believe in the Lord with 
 all thine heart?" . . . The love of Christ was all and in 
 all. . . . The early Christians felt that virtue, like sin, was 
 a subtle universal thing entering into every act and thought, 
 appearing outwardly in ten thousand diverse ways, diverse ac- 
 cording to the separate framework of every heart in which 
 it dwelt; but one and the same always in proceeding from 
 the love of God, as sin is one and the same in proceeding 
 from hatred of God. And in their pure, early, and practical 
 piety, they saw there was no need for codes of morality or 
 systems of metaphysics. Their virtue comprehended every- 
 thing, it was too vast and too spiritual to be defined; but 
 there was no need for its definition. For through faith, 
 working by love, they knew that all human excellence would 
 be developed in due order, but that, without faith, neither 
 reason could define, or effort reach the lowest place of Chris- 
 tian virtue. 
 
 If loving well the creatures that are like yourself, you feel 
 that you would love still more dearly, creatures better than 
 yourself — were they revealed to you; if striving with all 
 your might to mend what is evil and near you and around, 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 137 
 
 you -would fain look for a day when some Judge of all the 
 earth shall surely do right, and the little hills rejoice on every 
 side ; if parting with the companions that have given you all 
 the best joy you had on earth, you desire ever to meet their 
 eyes again, and clasp their hands, — where eyes shall no more 
 be dim nor hands fail; — if preparing yourself to lie down 
 beneath the grass in silence and loneliness, seeing no more 
 beauty, and feeling no more gladness, you would care for 
 the promise to you of a time when you shall see God's Light 
 again, and know the things you have longed to know, and 
 walk in the peace of everlasting Love, — then, the Hope of 
 these things to you is religion, the substance of them in your 
 life is faith, and in the power of them, it is promised us, that 
 the kingdoms of this world shall yet become the kingdoms of 
 our Lord and of His Christ. 
 
 # * 
 The greatest of all the mysteries of life, and the most 
 terrible, is the corruption of even the sincerest religion, 
 which is not daily founded on rational, effective, humble, and 
 helpful action. Helpful action, observe ! for there is just one 
 law, which obeyed, keeps all religions pure — forgotten, 
 makes them all false. Whenever in any religious faith, dark 
 or bright, we allow our minds to dwell upon the points in 
 which we differ from other people, we are wrong, and in the 
 devil's power. That is the essence of the Pharisee's thanks- 
 giving — "Lord, I thank Thee that I am not as other men 
 are." At every moment of our lives we should be trying to 
 
138 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 find out, not in what we differ with other people, but in what 
 we agree with them ; and the moment we find we can agree 
 as to anything that should be done kind or good, (and who 
 but fools couldn't?) then do it; push at it together; you can't 
 quarrel in a side-by-side push ; but the moment that even the 
 best men stop pushing, and begin talking, they mistake 
 their pugnacity for piety, and it's all over. 
 
 " Taking up one's cross." — It means simply that you are to 
 go the road which you see to be the straight one ; carrying 
 whatever you find is given you to carry, as well and stoutly 
 as you can ; without making faces, or calling people to come 
 and look at you. Above all, you are neither to load, or un- 
 load, yourself; nor to cut your cross to your own liking. 
 Some people think it would be better for them to have it 
 large ; and many, that tbey would carry it much faster if it 
 were small ; and even those who like it largest are usually 
 very particular about its being ornamental, and made of the 
 best ebony. But all that you have really to do is to keep 
 your back as straight as you can; and not to think about 
 what is upon it — above all, not to boast of what is upon it. 
 The real and essential meaning of "virtue " is in that straight- 
 ness of back. 
 
 Those who in modest usefulness, have accepted what 
 seemed to them here the lowest place in the kingdom of their 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 139 
 
 Father, are not I believe the least likely to receive hereafter 
 the command, then, unmistakable, 
 
 11 Friend go up higher." 
 
 * 
 * * 
 
 What are the distinctive characters of the Invisible Church ; 
 that is to say, What is it makes a person a member of this 
 Church, and how is he to be known for such? — .... 
 
 A man becomes a member of this Church only by believing 
 in Christ with all his heart ; . . . . there are certain 
 signs by which Christ's sheep may be guessed at. Not by their 
 being in any definite Fold — for many are lost sheep at times ; 
 but by their sheep-like behavior ; and a great many are indeed 
 sheep which, on the far mountain side, in their peacefulness, 
 we take for stones. To themselves, the best proof of their 
 being Christ's sheep, is to find themselves on Christ's shoul- 
 ders ; and between them, there are certain sympathies by which 
 they may in a sort recognize each other, and so become verily 
 visible to each other for mutual comfort. 
 
 We spend much time in arguing about efficacy of sacraments 
 and such other mysteries ; but we do not act upon the very 
 certain tests which are clear and visible. We know that 
 Christ's people are not thieves — not liars — not busy-bodies 
 — not dishonest — not avaricious — not wasteful — not cruel. 
 Let us then get ourselves well clear of thieves, liars, wasteful 
 people, avaricious people — cheating people — people who do 
 not pay their debts. Let us assure them that they, at least, 
 
140 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 do not belong to the Visible Church ; and having thus got that 
 Church into decent shape and cohesion, it will be time to think 
 of drawing the stake-nets closer. 
 
 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 expres- 
 sions. 
 
 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 
 
 way put under him, being given to him as especial objects of 
 
 his ministration. 
 
 * 
 
 The unity of Knowledge and Love, both devoted altogether to 
 the service of Christ and His Church, marks the true Christian 
 Minister; who I believe, wherever he has existed, has never 
 failed to receive due and fitting reverence from all men, — of 
 whatever character or opinion ; and I believe that if all those 
 who profess to be such, were such indeed, there would never be 
 question of their authority more. But, whatever influence 
 they may have over the Church, their authority never super- 
 sedes that of either the intellect or the conscience of the sim- 
 plest of its lay members. They can assist those members in 
 the search for truth, or comfort their over-worn and doubtful 
 minds ; they can even assure them that they are in the way of 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. HI 
 
 truth, or that pardon is within their reach; but they can 
 neither manifest the truth, nor grant the pardon. Truth is 
 to be discovered, and Pardon to be won for every man by him- 
 self. This is evident from innumerable texts of Scripture, but 
 chiefly from those which exhort every man to seek after 
 Truth, and which connect knowing with doing. We are to 
 seek after knowledge as silver, and search for her as for hid 
 treasures; therefore, from every man she must be naturally 
 hid, and the discovery of her is to be the reward only of per- 
 sonal search. The kingdom of God is as treasure hid in a 
 field ; and of those who profess to help us to seek for it, we 
 are not to put confidence in those who say, — " Here is the 
 treasure we have found it, and have it, and will give you some 
 of it;" but in those who say, — "we think this is a good 
 place to dig, and you will dig most easily in such and such a 
 way." 
 
 Farther it has been promised that if such earnest search be 
 made, Truth shall be discovered; as much truth, that is, as is 
 necessary for the person seeking. These, therefore, I hold for 
 two fundamental principles of religion, — that, without seek- 
 ing, truth cannot be known at all ; and that, by seeking, it may 
 be discovered by the simplest. I say, without seeking it cannot 
 be known at all. It can neither be declared from pulpits, nor 
 set down in Articles, nor in any wise " prepared and sold " in 
 packages ready for use. Truth must be ground for every 
 man by himself out of its husk, with such help as he can get, 
 indeed, but not without stern labor of his own. ... In 
 
1 42 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 what science is knowledge to be had cheap? .... and 
 do you expect to penetrate the secret of all secrets, and to 
 know that whose price is above rubies; and of which the 
 depth saith, — " It is not in me," in so easy fashion? There 
 are doubts in this matter which evil spirits darken with their 
 wings, and that is true of all such doubts which we were told 
 long ago — they can " be ended by action alone." 
 
 As surely as we live, this truth of truths can only so be dis- 
 cerned ; to those who act on what they know, more shall be 
 revealed; and thus, if any man will do His will, he shall know 
 the doctrine whether it be of God. Any man ; — not the man 
 who has most means of knowing, who has the subtlest brains, 
 or sits under the most orthodox preacher, or has his library 
 fullest of most orthodox books — but the man who strives to 
 know, who takes God at His word, and sets himself to dig up 
 the heavenly mystery, roots and all, before sunset, and the 
 night comes in which no man can work. Beside such a man, 
 God stands in more and more visible presence, and teaches 
 him that which no preacher can teach. 
 
 There are two ways of regarding a sermon, either as a 
 human composition, or a Divine message. If we look upon 
 it entirely as the first, and require our clergymen to finish it 
 with their utmost care and learning, for our better delight 
 whether of ear or intellect, we shall necessarily be led to ex- 
 pect much formality and stateliness in its delivery, and to 
 think that all is not well if the pulpit have not a golden fringe 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 143 
 
 round it, and a goodly cushion in front of it, and if the ser- 
 mon be not fairly written in a black book, to be smoothed 
 upon the cushion in a majestic manner before beginning ; all 
 this we shall duly come to expect ; but we shall at the same 
 time consider the treatise thus prepared as something to which 
 it is our duty to listen without restlessness for half an hour 
 or three quarters, but which, when this duty has been de- 
 corously performed, we may dismiss from our minds in happy 
 confidence of being provided with another when next it shall 
 be necessary. But if once we begin to regard the preacher, 
 whatever his faults, as a man sent with a message to us, which 
 it is a matter of life or death. whether we hear or refuse ; if 
 we look upon him as set in charge over many spirits in clan- 
 ger of ruin, and having allowed to him but an hour or two in 
 the seven days to speak to them ; if we make some endeavor 
 to conceive how precious those hours ought to be to him, a 
 small vantage on the side of God, after his flock has been 
 exposed for six clays together to the full weight of the world's 
 temptations, and he has been forced to watch the thorn and 
 the thistle springing in their hearts, and to see what wheat 
 has been scattered there snatched from the way-side by this 
 wild bird and the other, and at last, when breathless and weary 
 with the week's labor they give him this interval of imperfect 
 and languid hearing, he has but thirty minutes to get at the 
 separate hearts of a thousand men, to convince them of all 
 their weaknesses, to shame them for all their sins, to warn 
 them of all their dangers, to try by this way and that to stir 
 
1U THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 the hard fastenings of those doors where the Master Himself 
 has stood and knocked yet none opened, and to call at the 
 openings of those dark streets where wisdom herself hath 
 stretched forth her hands and no man regarded, — thirty 
 minutes to raise the dead in, — let us but once understand 
 and feel this, and we shall look with changed eyes upon that 
 frippery of gay furniture about the place from which the 
 message of judgment must be delivered, which either breathes 
 upon the dry bones that they may live, or, if, ineffectual, re- 
 mains recorded in condemnation, perhaps against the utterer 
 and listener alike, but assuredly against one of them. We 
 shall not so easily bear with the silk and gold upon the seat 
 of judgment, nor with ornament of oratory in the mouth of 
 the messenger; we shall wish that his words may be very 
 simple, even when they are sweetest, and the place from which 
 he speaks like a marble rock in the desert, about which the 
 people have gathered in their thirst. 
 
 We treat God with irreverence by banishing Him from our 
 thoughts, not by referring to His will on slight occasions. 
 His is not the finite authority or intelligence which cannot 
 be troubled with small things. There is nothing so small 
 but that we may honor God by asking His guidance of it, 
 or insult Him by taking it into our own hands ; and what is 
 true of the Deity is equally true of His Revelation. We use 
 it most reverently when most habitually ; our insolence is in 
 ever acting without reference to it ; our true honoring of it 
 is in its universal application. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 145 
 
 
 If a child finds itself in want of anything, it runs and asks 
 its father for it — does it call that doing its father a service? 
 If it begs for a toy or a piece of cake, does it call that serv- 
 ing its father? That with God is prayer, and He likes to 
 hear it ; He likes you to ask Him for cake when you want it ; 
 but He doesn't call that "serving Him." Begging is not 
 serving ; God likes mere beggars as little as you do. He likes 
 honest servants, not beggars. So when a child loves its 
 father very much, and is very happy, it may sing little songs 
 about him, but it doesn't call that serving its father ; neither 
 is singing songs about God serving Him. 
 
 * # 
 If we hear a man swear in the streets, we think it very 
 wrong, and say he " takes God's name in vain." But there's 
 a twenty times worse way of taking His Name in vain, than 
 that. It is to ask God for what we don't want. He doesn't 
 like that sort of prayer. If you don't want a thing don't ask 
 for it. . . . If you do not wish for His kingdom, don't 
 pray for it. But if you do, you must do more than pray for 
 it ; you must work for it. And to work for it you must know 
 what it is ; we have all prayed for it many a day without 
 thinking. Observe, it is a kingdom that is to come to us ; 
 we are not to go to it. Also it is not to be a kingdom of the 
 dead, but of the living. Also, it is not to come all at once, 
 but quietly ; nobody knows how. ' ' The kingdom of God 
 cometh not with observation." Also it is not to come out- 
 
146 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 side of us, but in the hearts of us ; " the kingdom of God is 
 within you." And, being within us, it is not a thing to be 
 seen, but to be felt ; and though it brings all substance of 
 good with it, it does not consist in that; "the kingdom of 
 God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, peace, and 
 joy in the Holy Ghost; " joy that is to say, in the holy, health- 
 ful, and helpful Spirit. Now, if you wart to work for this 
 kingdom, and to bring it, and enter into it, there's just one 
 condition to be first accepted. You must enter it as children, 
 or not at all. " Whosoever will not receive it as a little child 
 shall not enter therein." And again, "Suffer little children 
 to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the king- 
 dom of Heaven." 
 
 You have the child's character in these four things — Hu- 
 mility, Faith, Charity, and Cheerfulness. 
 
 The best prayer at the beginning of a day is that we may 
 not lose its moments. 
 
 Take for example of the Religion of our ancestors, a 
 prayer, personally and passionately offered to the Deity . . . 
 the prayer Alfred's : — 
 
 " O Thou who are the Father of that Son which has awak- 
 ened us, and yet urgeth us out of the sleep of our sins, and 
 exhorteth us that we become Thine ; to Thee, Lord, I pray, 
 who art the Supreme truth ; for all the truth that is, is truth 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 147 
 
 from Thee. Thee I implore, O Lord, who art the highest 
 wisdom. Through Thee are wise all those that are so. Thou 
 art the true life, and through Thee are living all those that 
 are so. Thou art the supreme felicity, and from Thee all 
 have become happy that are so. Thou art the highest good, 
 and from Thee all beauty springs. Thou art the intellectual 
 light, and from Thee man derives his understanding. 
 
 "To Thee, O God, I call and speak. Hear, O hear me, 
 Lord ! for Thou art my God and my Lord ; my Father and 
 my Creator; my ruler and my hope; my wealth and my 
 honor; my house, my country, my salvation, and my life! 
 Hear, hear me, O Lord! Few of Thy servants comprehend 
 Thee. But Thee alone I love, indeed above all other things. 
 Thee I seek : Thee I will follow : Thee I am ready to serve. 
 Under Thy power I desire to abide, for Thou alone art the 
 Sovereign of all. I pray Thee to command me as Thou wilt." 
 
 You see this prayer is simply the expansion of that clause 
 of the Lord's Prayer which most men eagerly omit from it, — 
 Fiat voluntas tua. In being so, it sums the Christian prayer 
 of all ages. ... If you are minded to begin each clay 
 with Alfred's prayer, — fiat voluntas tua; resolving that you 
 will stand to it, and that nothing that happens in the course 
 of the day shall displease you. Then set to any work you 
 have in hand with the sifted and purified resolution that am- 
 bition shall not mix with it, nor love of gain, nor desire of 
 pleasure more than is appointed for yo.u ; and that no anxiety 
 shall touch you as to its issue, nor any impatience nor regret 
 
1 48 THO UGHT8 OF BE A UTY. 
 
 if it fail. Imagine that the thing is being done through 
 you, not by you : that the good of it may never be known, 
 but that at least, unless by your rebellion or foolishness, there 
 can come no evil into it, nor wrong chance to it. Resolve 
 also with steady industry to do what you can for the help of 
 your country and its honor, and the honor of its God ; . . . 
 and that in all you do and feel you will look frankly for the 
 immediate help and direction, and to your own consciences, 
 expressed approval, of God. Live thus, and believe, and 
 with swiftness of answer proportioned to the frankness of 
 the trust, most surely the God of hope will fill you with all 
 joy and peace in believing. 
 
 As there is only one kind of water which quenches all 
 thirst, so there is only one kind of bread which satisfies all 
 hunger, the bread of justice or righteousness ; which hunger- 
 ing after, men shall always be filled, that being the bread of 
 Heaven. 
 
 Remember, .... that the happiness of your life, and 
 its power, and its part and rank in earth or in heaven, depend 
 on the way you pass your clays now. They are not to be sad 
 days ; far from that, the first duty of young people is to be 
 delighted and delightful ; but they are to be in the deepest 
 sense solemn clays. There is no solemnity so deep, to a 
 rightly thinking creature, as that of dawn. But not only in 
 that beautiful sense, but in all their character and method, 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 149 
 
 they are to be solemn clays. Take your Latin dictionary, and 
 look out "sollennis," and fix the sense of the word well in 
 your mind, and remember that every day of your early life is 
 ordaining irrevocably, for good or evil, the custom and prac- 
 tise of your soul ; ordaining either sacred customs of dear and 
 lovely recurrence, or trenching deeper and deeper the furrows 
 for seed of sorrow. 
 
 See that no clay passes in which you do not make yourself a 
 somewhat better creature ; and in order to do that, find out, 
 first, what you are now. 
 
 # * 
 Try to get strength of heart enough to look yourself fairly 
 in the face, in mind as well as body. I do not doubt but that 
 the mind is a less pleasant thing to look at than the face, and 
 for that very reason it needs more looking at ; so always have 
 two mirrors on your toilet table, and see that with proper 
 care you dress body and mind before them daily. After the 
 dressing is once over for the day, think no more about it ; as 
 your hair will blow about your ears, so your temper and 
 thoughts will get ruffled with the clay's work, and may need, 
 sometimes, twice dressing; but I don't want you to carry 
 about a mental pocket-comb ; only to be smooth braided al- 
 ways in the morning. 
 
 You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and 
 the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest 
 
150 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 and delicatest ways, improve yourself. Thus, from the be- 
 ginning, consider all your accomplishments as means of assist- 
 ance to others. 
 
 # 
 
 Ascertain clearly what is wrong with you ; and so far as 
 you know any means of mending it, take those means, and 
 have done; when you are examining yourself, never call 
 yourself merely a " sinner;" that is very cheap abuse, and ut- 
 terly useless. You may even get to like it, and be proud of it. 
 But call yourself a liar, a coward, a sluggard, a glutton, or an 
 evil-eyed, jealous wretch, if you indeed find yourself to be in 
 any wise any of these. Take steady means to check yourself 
 in whatever fault you have ascertained, and justly accused 
 yourself of, and as soon as you are in active way of mending, 
 you will be no more inclined to moan over an undefined cor- 
 ruption. For the rest, you will find it less easy to uproot 
 faults, than to choke them by gaining virtues. 
 
 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 imi- 
 tate it; and your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when 
 their time comes. 
 
 Perfect the day shall be, when it is of all men understood 
 that the beauty of Holiness must be in labor as well as in rest, 
 Nay ! more, if it may be, in labor ; in our strength, rather than 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A TJTY. 151 
 
 in our weakness ; and in the choice of what we shall work for 
 through the six days, and may know to be good at their even- 
 ing time, than in the choice of what we pray for on the sev- 
 enth, of reward or repose. With the multitude that keep 
 holiday, we may perhaps sometimes vainly have gone up to 
 the house of the Lord, and vainly there asked, for what we 
 fancied would be mercy ; but for the few who labor as their 
 Lord would have them, the mercy needs no seeking, and their 
 wide home no hallowing. Surely goodness and mercy shall 
 follow them, all the days of their life ; and they shall dwell in 
 
 the house of the Lord — For Ever. 
 
 # 
 
 # # 
 
 " The Grace of our Lord Christ, and the Love of God, and 
 the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with you ". . . . The 
 three things do actually exist, and can be known if you care 
 to know them, and possessed if you care to possess them : 
 First, by simply obeying the orders of the Founder of your 
 religion, all grace, graciousness, or beauty and favor of gen- 
 tle life, will be given to you in mind and body, in work and in 
 rest. The Grace of Christ exists, and can be had if you will. 
 Secondly as you know more and more of the created world, 
 you will find that the true will of its Maker is that its crea- 
 tures should be happy; — that He has made everything beau- 
 tiful in its time, and in its place, and that it is chiefly hy the 
 fault of men, when they are allowed the liberty of thwarting 
 His laws, that Creation groans or travails in pain. The Love 
 of God exists, and you may see it, and live in it if you will. 
 
152 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 Lastly a Spirit does actually exist which teaches the ant her 
 path, the bird her building, and men in an instructive and 
 marvellous way, whatever lovely arts and noble deeds are pos- 
 sible to them. Without it you can do no good thing. To the 
 grief of it you can do many bad ones. In the possession of 
 it is your peace and your power. 
 
 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 knowl- 
 edge gained for yourself. 
 
 Have you ever thought seriously of the meaning of that 
 blessing given to the peace-makers? People are always ex- 
 pecting to get peace in Heaven: but you know whatever 
 peace they get there will be ready-made. Whatever making 
 of peace they can be blest for must be on the earth here : not 
 the taking of arms against, but the building of nests amidst 
 its " sea of troubles." — Difficult enough you think? Perhaps 
 so, but I do not see that any of us try. We complain of the 
 want of many things — we want votes, we want liberty, we 
 want amusement, we want money, which of us feels or knows 
 that he wants peace? There are two ways of getting it, if you 
 do want it. The first is wholly in your own power : to make 
 yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts, . . . what fairy 
 palaces we may build of beautiful thoughts! proof against 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 153 
 
 all adversity. Bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble his- 
 tories, faithful sayings, treasure-houses of precious and rest- 
 ful thoughts, which care cannot disturb, nor pain make 
 gloomy, nor poverty take away from us — homes built with- 
 out hands for our souls to live in. 
 
 That your neighbor should, or should not, remain content 
 with his 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 possessions, self- 
 possession; and honoring themselves in the harmless pride 
 and calm pursuits of peace. 
 
 No peace was ever won from Fate by subterfuge or agree- 
 ment ; no peace is ever in store for any of us, but that which 
 we shall win by victory over shame or sin ; — victory over the 
 sin that oppresses, as well as over that which corrupts. For 
 many a year to come, the sword of every righteous nation 
 must be whetted to save or to subdue ; nor will it be by patience 
 of others' suffering, but by the offering of your own, that 
 you will ever draw nearer to the time when the great change 
 shall pass upon the iron of the earth — when men shall beat 
 their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into prim- 
 ing-hooks ; neither shall they learn war any more. 
 
154 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 Of lowly peace it is written that ' ' justice and peace have 
 kissed each other; " and that the fruit of peace is " sown in 
 peace of them that make peace ; " not " peacemakers " in the 
 common understanding — reconcilers of quarrels, but peace- 
 Creators; Givers of Calm. Which you cannot give unless 
 you first gain ! 
 
 You may assuredly find perfect peace, if you are resolved 
 to do that which your Lord has plainly required — and con- 
 tent that He should indeed require no more of you, than to 
 do Justice, to love Mercy, and to walk humbly with Him. 
 
 The world would be a place of peace, if we were all peace- 
 makers. 
 
 # # 
 
 "Work while you have light," especially while you have 
 the light of morning. There are few things more wonderful 
 to me than that old people never tell young ones how precious 
 their youth is. 
 
 # * 
 
 If there is any one point which, in six thousand years of 
 thinking about right and wrong, wise and good men have 
 agreed upon, or successively by experience discovered, it is 
 that God dislikes idle and cruel people more than any other ; 
 — that His first order is — " Work while you have light ; " 
 and His second, " Be merciful while you have mercy." 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 155 
 
 # * 
 
 God is a kind Father. He sets us all in the places where 
 He wishes us to be employed ; and that employment is truly 
 " our Father's business." He chooses work for every creature 
 which will be delightful to them, if they do it simply and 
 humbly. He gives us always strength enough, and sense 
 enough, for what He wants us to do ; if we either tire our- 
 selves or puzzle ourselves, it is our own fault. And we may 
 always be sure, whatever we are doing, that we cannot be 
 pleasing Him, if we are not happy ourselves. 
 
 "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. 
 
 * 
 
 # * 
 
 People are perpetually squabbling about what will be best 
 to do ; but they never, so far as I hear them talk, ever ask 
 what it is just to do. And it is the law of Heaven that you 
 shall not be able to judge what is wise or easy, unless you are 
 first resolved to judge what is just, and to do it. That is the 
 one thing constantly reiterated by our Master — the order of 
 all others that is given oftenest — "Do justice and judg- 
 ment." That's your Bible order; that is the "Service of 
 God " not praying or psalm-singing. 
 
 God appoints to every one of His creatures a separate mis- 
 sion, and if they discharge it honorably, if they quit them- 
 
156 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 selves like men, and faithfully follow that light which is in 
 them, withdrawing from it all cold and quenching influences, 
 there will assuredly come of it such burning as, in its appointed 
 mode and measure, shall shine before men, and be of service 
 constant and holy. — Degrees infinite of lustre there must al- 
 ways be, but the weakest among us has a gift, however seem- 
 ingly trivial, which is peculiar to him, and which, worthily 
 used, will be a gift also to his race for ever. 
 
 There is no action so slight nor so mean, but it may be done 
 to a great purpose, and ennobled thereby, nor is any purpose 
 so great but that slight actions may help it, and may be done 
 so as to help it much, most especially that chief of all pur- 
 poses, the pleasing God. 
 
 Wise work, is cheerful, as a child's work is. 
 
 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 for ever. 
 
 However mean or inconsiderable the act, there is something 
 in the well doing of it, which has fellowship with the noblest 
 forms of manly virtue; and the truth, decision, and temper- 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 157 
 
 ance which we reverently regard as honorable conditions of 
 the spiritual being, have a representative or desirable influ- 
 ence over the works of the hand, the movements of the frame, 
 and the action of the intellect. 
 
 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 
 unkind 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 unrewarded obedience, if indeed it were rendered faith- 
 fully to the command — ' ' Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do 
 — do it with thy might." 
 
 No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort; 
 a great thing can only be done by a great man, and he does it 
 without effort. I have said no great intellectual thing; for I 
 do not mean the assertion to extend to things moral. On the 
 contrary, it seems to me that just because we are intended, as 
 long as we live, to be in a state of intense moral effort, we are 
 not intended to be in intense physical or intellectual effort. 
 Our full energies are to be given to the soul's work — to the 
 great fight with the Dragon — the taking the kingdom of hea- 
 
158 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 ven by force. But the body's work, and head's work are to be 
 done quietly and comparatively without effort. 
 
 Neither limbs nor brain are ever to be strained to their ut- 
 most ; that is not the way in which the greatest quantity of 
 work is to be got out of them ; they are never to be worked 
 furiously, but with tranquility and constancy. We are to fol- 
 low the plough from sunrise to sunset, but not to pull in race- 
 boats at the twilight ; we shall get no fruit of that kind of 
 
 work, only disease of the heart. 
 
 # 
 
 # # 
 
 There is a working class — strong and happy — among both 
 rich and poor; there is an idle class — weak, wicked, and 
 miserable — among both rich and poor. 
 
 By far the greater part of the suffering and crime which ex- 
 ist arises simply from people not understanding this truism 
 — not knowing that produce or wealth is eternally connected 
 by the laws of heaven and earth with resolute labor; but 
 hoping in some way to cheat or abrogate this everlasting law 
 of life, and to feed where they have not furrowed, and be 
 warm when they have not woven. 
 
 One lesson we are invariably taught, that the work of the 
 great Spirit of Nature is as deep and unapproachable in the 
 lowest as in the noblest objects — that the Divine Mind is as 
 visible in its full energy of operation in every lowly bank and 
 mouldering stone, as in the lifting of the pillars of heaven and 
 
THO UGIITS OF BE A UTY. 159 
 
 setting the foundations of the earth; and that to the rightly 
 perceiving mind, there is the same infinity, the same majesty, 
 the same power, the same unity, and the same perfection 
 manifested in the casting of the clay as in the scattering of 
 the cloud, in the moulding of the dust as in the kindling of 
 the day-star. 
 
 Every day shows me more and more the importance of the 
 Hand. Of the hand as a Servant, observe — not of the hand 
 as a Master : For there are two kinds of manual work ; one 
 in which the hand is continually receiving and obeying orders ; 
 the other in which it is acting independently, or even giving 
 orders of its own. And the dependent and submissive hand 
 is a noble hand, but the independent or imperative hand is a 
 vile one. 
 
 * 
 
 All wise work is mainly threefold in character — It is hon- 
 est, useful and cheerful. 
 
 # 
 
 * 
 
 I receive many letters from parents respecting the education 
 of their children. In the mass of these letters, I am always 
 struck by the precedence which the idea of a "position in 
 life," takes above all other thoughts in the parents',— more 
 especially in the mothers,' — minds. « ' The education befitting 
 such and such a station in life " — this is the phrase, this the 
 object, always. They never seek, as far as I can make out, 
 an education good in itself; the conception of abstract right- 
 
160 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 ness in training rarely seems reached by the writers. But an 
 education " which shall keep a good coat on my son's back; — 
 an education which shall enable him to ring with confidence 
 the visitor's bell at double-belled doors ; — education which 
 shall result ultimately in establishment of a double-belled 
 door to his own house; in a word, which shall lead to "ad- 
 vancement in life." It never seems to occur to the parents 
 that there may be an education which, in itself, is " advance- 
 ment in Life ; " — that any other than that may perhaps be ad- 
 vancement in Death ; and that this essential education might 
 be more easily got, or given, than they fancy, if they set 
 about it in the right way ; while it is for no price, and by no 
 favor to be got, if they set about it in the wrong way. 
 
 The entire difference between education and non-education 
 (as regards the merely intellectual part of it,) consists in 
 . . . . accuracy. A well-educated gentleman may not 
 know many languages, — may not be able to speak any but 
 his own, — may have read very few books. But whatever 
 language he knows, he knows precisely : whatever word he 
 pronounces he pronounces rightly; above all, he is learned 
 in the peerage of words ; knows the words of true descent 
 and ancient blood at a glance, from words of modern canaille ; 
 remembers all their ancestry — their intermarriages, dis- 
 tantest relationships, and the extent to which they were ad- 
 mitted, and offices they held, among the national noblesse of 
 words at any time, and in any country. But an uneducated 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY, 161 
 
 person may know by memory any number of languages, and 
 talk them all, and yet truly know not a word of any — not a 
 word even of his own. 
 
 This has been the real cause of failure in our efforts after 
 education hitherto — whether from above or below. There 
 is no honest desire for the thing itself. The cry for it among 
 the lower orders is b^pause they think that, when once they 
 have got it, they must become upper orders. . . . There 
 is a strange notion in the mob's mind nowadays, that every- 
 body can be uppermost ; or at least that a state of general 
 scramble, in which everybody in his turn should come to 
 the top, is a proper Utopian constitution; and that, once 
 give every lad a good education, and he cannot but come to 
 ride in his carriage. ... A man had better not know 
 how to read or write than receive education on such terms. 
 The first condition on which it can be given usefully is, 
 that it sljpuld be clearly understood to be no means of getting 
 on in the world, but a means of staying pleasantly in your 
 
 place there. 
 
 # 
 
 Education in its deepest sense is not the equalizer, but the 
 
 discerner of men. 
 
 * 
 # * 
 
 The entire object of true education is to make people not 
 merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things — not 
 merely industrious, but to love industry — not merely learned, 
 
162 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 but to love knowledge — not merely pure, but to love purity, 
 — not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice. 
 # * 
 Keverence 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. 
 
 The accent, or turn of expression of a single sentence will 
 at once mark a scholar. And this is so strongly felt, so con- 
 clusively admitted by educated persons, that a false accent 
 or mistaken syllable is enough, in the parliament of any 
 civilized nation, to assign to a man a certain degree of in- 
 ferior standing forever. 
 
 Most men's minds are indeed little better than rough heath 
 wilderness, neglected and stubborn, partly barren, partly 
 overgrown with pestilent brakes and venomous wind-sown 
 herbage of evil surmise ; so that the first thing you have to do 
 for them, and yourself, is eagerly and scornfully to set fire 
 to this; burn all the jungle into wholesome ash heaps, and 
 then plough and sow. 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." 
 
 The final result of the education I want you to give your 
 children will be, in a few words, this : They will know what 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 163 
 
 it is to see the sky. They will know what it is to breathe it, 
 and they will know best of all, what it is to behave under it, 
 as in the presence of a Father who is in Heaven. 
 
 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 ; but not in any vile, vulgar, or, by reason of smallness 
 of t3 r pe, physically injurious form, at a vile price. For we 
 none of us need many books, and those which we need ought 
 to be clearly printed, on the best paper, and strongly bound. 
 
 No person in decent circumstances would put on his table 
 bad meat, without being ashamed, so he need not have on his 
 shelves ill-printed or loosely and wretchedly-stitched books ; 
 for, though few can be rich, yet every man who honestly 
 exerts himself may, I think, still provide, for himself and his 
 family, good shoes, good gloves, strong harness for his cart 
 or carriage horses, and stout leather binding for his books. 
 And I would urge upon every young man, as the beginning of 
 due and wise provision for his household, to obtain as soon 
 as he can, by the severest economy, a restricted, serviceable, 
 and steadily — however slowly — increasing, series of books 
 for use through life ; making his little library, of all the fur- 
 niture in his room, the most studied and decorative piece ; 
 every volume having its assigned place, like a little statue in 
 
164 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 its niche, and one of the earliest and strictest lessons to the 
 children of the house being how to turn the pages of their 
 own literary possessions lightly and deliberately, with no 
 chance of tearing or dog's-ears. 
 
 All the higher circles of human intelligence are, to those 
 beneath, only momentarily and partially open. We may by 
 good fortune, obtain a glimpse of a great poet, and hear the 
 sound of his voice ; or put a question to a man of science, 
 and be answered good-humoreclly. We may intrude ten min- 
 utes' talk on a cabinet minister, answered probably with 
 words worse than silence, being deceptive ; or snatch, once 
 or twice in our lives, the privilege of throwing a bouquet in 
 the path of a princess, or arresting the kind glance of a 
 queen. And yet these momentary chances we covet; and 
 spend our years, and passions, and powers in pursuit of little 
 more than these; while, meantime, there is a society con- 
 tinually open to us, of people who will talk to us as long as 
 we like, whatever our rank or occupation ; — talk to us in 
 the best words they can choose, and with thanks if we listen 
 to them. And this society, because it is so numerous and so 
 gentle, — and can be kept waiting round us all day long, not 
 to grant audience, but to gain it ; — kings and statesmen lin- 
 gering patiently in those plainly furnished and narrow ante- 
 rooms, our bookcase shelves, — we make no account of that 
 company, — perhaps never listen to a word they would say, 
 all day long ! 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 1G5 
 
 # 
 
 You may tell me, perhaps, or think within yourselves, that 
 the apathy with which we regard this company of the noble, 
 who are praying us to listen to them, and the passion with 
 which we pursue the company, probably of the ignoble, who 
 despise us, or who have nothing to teach us, are grounded in 
 this, — that we can see the faces of the living men, and it is 
 themselves and not their sayings, with which we desire to be- 
 come familiar. But it is not so. Suppose you never were to 
 see their faces ; — suppose you could be put behind a screen 
 in the statesman's cabinet, or the princes' chamber, would 
 you not be glad to listen to their words, though you were for- 
 bidden to advance beyond the screen? And when the screen 
 is only a little less, folded in two, instead of four, and you can 
 be hidden behind the cover of the two boards that bind a 
 book, and listen, all day long, not to the casual talk, but to the 
 studied, determined, chosen addresses of the wisest of men ; 
 this station of audience, and honorable privy council you de- 
 spise ! 
 
 All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the 
 hour, and the books of all time. Mark this distinction — it is 
 not one of quality only. It is not merely the bad book that 
 does not last, and the good one that does. It is a distinction 
 of species. There are good books for the hour, and good 
 ones for all time ; bad books for the hour, and bad ones for 
 all time. I must define the two kinds. 
 
166 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 The good book of the hour, then — I do not speak of the 
 bad ones — is simply, the useful or pleasant talk of some per- 
 son whom you cannot otherwise converse with, printed for 
 you. Very useful often, telling you what you need to know ; 
 very pleasant often, as a sensible friend's pleasant talk would 
 be. These bright accounts of travels; good-humored and 
 witty discussions of questions ; lively or pathetic story-telling 
 in the form of novel ; firm fact-telling, by the real agents con- 
 cerned in the events of passing history ; — all these books of 
 the hour, multiplying among us as education becomes more 
 general, are a peculiar characteristic and possession of the 
 present age; we ought to be entirely thankful for them, and 
 entirely ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of 
 them. But we make the worst possible use, if we allow them 
 to usurp the place of true books ; for, strictly speaking, they 
 are not books at all, but merely letters or newspapers in good 
 print. Our friend's letter may be delightful, or necessary to- 
 day ; whether worth keeping or not, is to be considered. The 
 newspaper may be entirely proper at breakfast time, but as- 
 suredly it is not reading for all day. So, though bound up in 
 a volume, the long letter which gives you so pleasant an ac- 
 count of the inns, and roads, and weather last year at such a 
 place, or which tells you that amusing story, or gives you the 
 real circumstances of such and such events, however valuable 
 for occasional reference, may not be, in the real sense of the 
 word, a " book " at all, nor, in the real sense, to be " read." 
 A book is essentially not a talked thing, but a written thing ; 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 1G7 
 
 and written, not with the view of mere communication, but 
 of permanence. The book of talk is printed only because its 
 author cannot speak to thousands of people at once; if he 
 could, he would — the volume is mere multiplication of his 
 voice. You cannot talk to your friend in India ; if you could, 
 you would; you write instead; that is mere conveyance of 
 voice. 
 
 But a book is written, not to multiply the voice merely, not 
 to carry it merely, but to preserve it. The author has some- 
 thing to say which he perceives to be true and useful, or help- 
 fully beautiful. So far as he knows, no one has yet said it ; 
 so far as he knows, no one else can say it. He is bound to 
 say it, clearly and melodiously if he may; clearly, at all 
 events. In the sum of his life he finds this to be the thing, 
 or group of things, manifest to him ; — this the piece of true 
 knowledge, or sight, which his share of sunshine and earth 
 has permitted him to seize. He would fain set it down for- 
 ever ; engrave it on rock, if he could ; saying, ' ' This is the 
 best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved 
 and hated, like another ; my life was as the vapor, and is not ; 
 but this I saw and knew ; this, if anything of mine, is worth 
 your memory." This is his "writing;" it is, in his small 
 human way, and with whatever degree of true inspiration is 
 in him, his inscription, or scripture. That is a " Book." 
 
 * * 
 Whatever bit of a wise man's work is honestly and benevo- 
 lently done, that bit is his book, or his piece of art. It is 
 
16* THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 mixed always with evil fragments — ill-done, redundant, af- 
 fected work. . , . But if you read rightly, you will easily 
 
 discover the true bits, and those are the book. 
 
 # 
 
 Life is short — you have heard as much before ; — yet have 
 you measured and mapped out this short life and its possi- 
 bilities? Do you know, if you read this, that you cannot read 
 that — that what you lose to-day you cannot gain to-morrow? 
 Will you go and gossip with your house-maid, or your stable- 
 boy, when you may talk with queens and kings ; or flatter 
 yourself that it is with any worthy consciousness of your 
 own claims to respect that you jostle with the common crowd 
 for entree here, and audience there, when all the while this 
 eternal court is open to you, with its society wide as the 
 world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen, and the mighty, 
 of everyplace and time? Into that you may enter always: 
 in that you may take fellowship and rank according to your 
 wish ; from that, once entered into it, you can never be out- 
 cast but by your own fault; by your aristocracy of com- 
 panionship there, your own inherent aristocracy will be as- 
 suredly tested, and the motives with which you strive to take 
 high place in the society of the living, measured, as to all 
 the truth and sincerity that are in them, by the place you 
 desire to take in this company of the Dead. 
 
 "The place you desire," and the place you fit yourself for, 
 I must also say: because, observe, this court of the past 
 differs from all living aristocracy in this: — it is open to 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 169 
 
 labors and to merit, but to nothing else. No wealth will 
 bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive, the guardian of 
 those Elysian gates. In the deep sense, no vile or vulgar per- 
 son ever enters there. At the portieres of that silent Faubourg 
 St. Germain, there is but brief question, " Do you deserve to 
 enter?" " Pass." " Do you ask to be the companion of nobles? 
 Make yourself noble, and you shall be. Do you long for 
 the conversation of the wise? Learn to understand it, and 
 you shall hear it. But on other terms? — no. If you will 
 not rise to us, we cannot stoop to you. The living lord may 
 assume courtesy, the living philosopher explain his thought 
 to you with considerable pain; but here we neither feign 
 nor interpret ; you must rise to the level of our thoughts if 
 you would be gladdened by them, and share our feelings, if 
 you would recognize our presence." . . . You must, in a 
 word, love these people, if you are to be among them. No 
 ambition is of any use. They scorn your ambition. You 
 must love them, and show your love. . . . First, by a 
 true desire to be taught by them, and to enter into their 
 thoughts. To enter into theirs, observe; not to find your 
 own expressed by them. If the person who wrote the book 
 is not wiser than you, you need not read it ; if he be, he will 
 think differently from you in many respects. 
 
 Very ready we are to say of a book, " How good that is — 
 that's exactly what I think ! " But the right feeling is, " How 
 strange that is ! I never thought of that before, and yet I 
 see it is true ; or if I do not now, I hope I shall some day." 
 
170 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 Be sure that you. go to the author to get at his meaning, 
 not to find yours. Judge it afterwards, if you think your- 
 self qualified to do so ; but ascertain it first. And be sure 
 also, if the author is worth anything, that you will not get 
 at his meaning all at once ; — nay, that at his whole meaning 
 you will not for a long time arrive in any wise. Not that 
 he does not say what he means, and in strong words too ; 
 but he cannot say it all; and what is more strange, will not, 
 but in a hidden way and in parables, in order that he may 
 be sure you want it. I cannot quite see the reason of this, 
 nor analyze that cruel reticence in the breasts of wise men 
 which makes them always hide their deeper thought. They 
 do not give it to you by way of help, but of reward, and will 
 make themselves sure that you deserve it before they allow 
 you to reach it. But it is the same with the physical type of 
 wisdom, gold. There seems, to you and me, no reason why 
 the electric forces of the earth should not carry whatever 
 there is of gold within it at once to the mountain tops, so 
 that kings and people might know that all the gold they 
 could get was there ; and without any trouble of digging, or 
 anxiety, or chance, or waste of time, cut it away, and coin as 
 much as they needed. But Nature does not manage it so. 
 She puts it in little fissures in the earth, nobody knows where ; 
 you may dig long and find none ; you must dig painfully to 
 find any. 
 
 And it is just the same with men's best wisdom. When 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 171 
 
 you come to a good book, you must ask yourself, " Am I in- 
 clined to work as an Australian miner would? Are my pick- 
 axes and shovels in good order, and am I in good trim my- 
 self, my sleeves well up to the elbow, and my breath good, 
 and my temper? " And, keeping the figure a little longer, 
 even at cost of tiresomeness, for it is a thoroughly use- 
 ful one, the metal you are in search of being the author's 
 mind or meaning, his words are as the rock which you have 
 to crush and smelt in order to get at it. And your pickaxes 
 are your own care, wit, and learning; your smelting-furnace 
 is your own thoughtful soul. Do not hope to get at any 
 good author's meaning without those tools and that fire; 
 ' often you will need sharpest, finest chiselling, and patient- 
 est fusing, before you can gather one grain of the metal. 
 And therefore I tell you earnestly, you must get into the 
 habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself 
 of their meaning, syllable by syllable — nay, letter by letter. 
 For though it is only by reason of the opposition of letters 
 in the function of signs, to sounds in function of signs, that 
 the study of books is called "literature," and that a man 
 versed in it is called, by the consent of nations, a man of let- 
 ters, instead of a man of books, or of words, you may yet 
 connect with that accidental nomenclature this real principle : 
 — that you might read all the books in the British Museum 
 (if you could live long enough) and remain an utterly " illiter- 
 ate " uneducated person ; but that if you read ten pages of 
 a good book, letter by letter, — that is to say, with real ac- 
 
172 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 curacy, — you are for evermore in some measure an educated 
 
 person. 
 
 * 
 
 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. 
 
 * # 
 "We talk of food for the mind, as of food for the body ; now 
 a good bock contains such food inexhaustibly ; it is a provis- 
 ion for life, and for the best part of us ; yet how long most 
 people would look at the best book before they would give the 
 price of a large turbot for it ! 
 
 If public libraries were half as costly as public dinners, or 
 books cost the tenth part of what bracelets do, even foolish 
 men and women might sometimes suspect there was good in 
 reading, as well as in munching and sparkling. 
 
 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 house-wife bring the spice she needs 
 from her store. 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 1 73 
 
 Bread of flour is good ; but there is bread, sweet as honey, 
 if we would eat it, in a good book ; and the family must be 
 poor indeed, which, once in their lives, cannot, for such multi- 
 pliable barley-loaves pay their baker's bill. 
 
 * 
 
 # * 
 
 Books ! — the value of them consists first, in their power of 
 preserving and communicating the knowledge of facts — sec- 
 ondly in their power of exciting vital or noble emotions and 
 
 intellectual action. 
 
 # 
 
 The way in which common people read their Bibles is just 
 like the way that the old monks thought hedge-hogs ate 
 grapes. They rolled themselves (it was said) over and over, 
 where the grapes lay on the ground. What fruit stuck to 
 their spines, they carried off, and ate. 
 
 So your hedgehoggy readers roll themselves over and over 
 their Bibles, and declare that whatever sticks to their own 
 spines is Scripture, and that nothing else is. But you can 
 only get the skins of the texts that way. If you want their 
 juice, you must press them in cluster. 
 
 # # 
 
 What would have been the course, or issue, of Christianity, 
 had it been orally preached only, and unsupported by its poet- 
 ical literature, might be the subject of deeply instructive 
 speculation — if a historian's duty were to reflect instead of 
 record. The power of the Christian faith was, however, in 
 
1 74 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 the fact of it, always founded on the written prophecies and 
 histories of the Bible ; and on the interpretations of their 
 meaning given by the example, far more than by the precept 
 
 of the great monastic orders. 
 
 * 
 
 * # 
 
 It is a creed with a great part of the English people, that 
 they are in possession of a book which tells them, straight 
 from the lips of God all they ought to do, and need to know. 
 I have read that book with as much care as most of them , for 
 some forty years ; and am thankful that, on those who trust it, 
 I can press its pleadings. My endeavor has been uniformly to 
 make them trust it more deeply than they do ; trust it not in 
 their own favorite verses only, but in the sum of all ; trust it 
 not as a fetich, or talisman, which they are to be saved by 
 daily repetitions of, but as a Captain's order to be heard and 
 obeyed at their peril. 
 
 This book, which has been the accepted guide of the moral 
 intelligence of Europe for some one thousand and five hun- 
 dred years, enforces certain simple laws of human conduct 
 which you know have also been agreed upon in every main 
 point by all the religious and by all the greatest profane writ- 
 ers, of every age and country. This book primarily forbids 
 pride, lasciviousness, and covetousness ; and you know, that 
 all great thinkers, in every nation of mankind, have similarly 
 forbade these mortal vices. This book enjoins truth, temper- 
 ance, charity, and equity; and you know that every great 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 1 75 
 
 Egyptian, Greek, and Indian, enjoins them also. You know 
 besides, that through all the mysteries of human fate and his- 
 tory, this one great law of fate is written on the walls of cit- 
 ies, or in their dust, — written in letters of light and letters 
 of blood, — that where truth, temperance, and equity have 
 been preserved, all strength, and peace, and joy have been 
 preserved also ; — that where lying, lasciviousness, and covet- 
 ousness have been practised, there has followed an infallible, 
 and for centuries irrecoverable, ruin. And you know, lastly, 
 that the observance of this common law of righteousness, 
 commending itself to all the pure instincts of men, and fruit- 
 ful in their temporal good, is by the religious writers of every 
 nation, and chiefly in this venerated Scripture of ours, con- 
 nected with some distinct hope of better life, and righteous- 
 ness, to come. 
 
 Again and again you will indeed find the stream of the Gos- 
 pel contracting itself into narrow channels, and appearing, 
 after long concealed Alteration through veins of unmeasured 
 rock, with the bright resilience of a mountain spring. 
 
 Perhaps to my younger readers, one word may be per- 
 mitted respecting their Bible-reading in general. The Bible 
 is indeed, a deep book, when depth is required, that is to say 
 for deep people. But it is not intended, particularly, for pro- 
 found persons. And therefore the first, and generally the 
 main and leading idea of the Bible, is on its surface, written 
 
176 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 in plainest possible Greek, Hebrew, or English, needing no 
 penetration, nor amplification ; needing nothing, but what we 
 all might give — attention. 
 
 But this, which is in every one's power, and is the only 
 thing that God wants, is just the last thing any one will give 
 Him. We are delighted to ramble awa}^ into day-dreams, to 
 repeat pet verses from other places, suggested by chance 
 words ; to snap at an expression which suits our own partic- 
 ular views, or to dig up a meaning from under a verse, which 
 we should be amiably grieved to think any human being had 
 been so happy as to find before. But the plain, intended, im- 
 mediate, fruitful meaning, which every one ought to find 
 always, and especially that which depends on our seeing the 
 force of the whole passage, in due relation — this sort of sig- 
 nificance we do not look for : — it being, truly, not to be dis- 
 covered, unless we really attend to what is said, instead of to 
 our own feelings. . . . The first thing that children 
 should be taught about their Bibles is, to distinguish clearly 
 between words that they understand and words that they do 
 not ; and to put aside the words they do not understand, and 
 verses connected with them, to be asked about, or for a fu- 
 ture time; and never to think they are reading the Bible 
 when they are merely repeating phrases of an unknown 
 tongue. 
 
 The greater number of the words which are recorded in 
 Scripture, as directly spoken to men by the lips of the Deity, 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 177 
 
 are either simple revelations of His law, or special threaten- 
 ings, commands, and promises relating to special events. 
 But two passages of God's speaking, one in the Old, and one 
 in the New Testament, possess, it seems to me, a different 
 character from any of the rest, having been uttered the one 
 to effect the last necessary change in the mind of a man 
 whose piety was in other respects perfect; and the other, 
 as the first statement to all men of the principles of Chris- 
 tianity by Christ Himself — I mean the 38th to the 41st chap- 
 ters of the book of Job, and the Sermon on the Mount. Now, 
 the first of these, passages is, from beginning to end, nothing 
 else than a direction of the mind which was to be perfected 
 to humble observance to the works of God in nature. And 
 the other consists only in the inculcation of three things : 1st. 
 right conduct; 2d, looking for eternal life; 3d, trusting 
 God, through watchfulness of His dealing with His creation ; 
 and the entire contents of the book of Job, and of the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount, will be found resolvable simply into these 
 three requirements from all men — that they should act 
 rightly, hope for heaven, and watch God's wonders and 
 work in the earth ; the right conduct being always summed 
 up under the three heads of justice, mercy, and truth, and no 
 mention of any doctrinal point whatsoever occurring in either 
 piece of divine teaching. 
 
 The whole language, both of the book of Job and the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount, gives precisely the view of nature which 
 
1 78 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 is taken by the uninvestigating affection of a humble, but 
 powerful mincl. There is no dissection of muscles, or count- 
 ing of elements, but the boldest and broadest glance at the 
 apparent facts, and the most magnificent metaphor in ex- 
 pressing them. 
 
 # 
 
 The Bible is specifically distinguished from all other early 
 literature, by its delight in natural imagery ; and the dealings 
 of God with His people are calculated peculiarly to awaken 
 this sensibility within them. Out of the monotonous valley 
 of Egypt they are instantly taken into the midst of the might- 
 iest mountain scenery in the peninsula of Arabia ; and that 
 scenery is associated hi their minds with the immediate mani- 
 festation and presence of the Divine Power ; so that mount- 
 ains forever afterwards become invested with a peculiar 
 sacredness in their minds . . . and their literature is 
 full of expressions, not only testifying a vivid sense of the 
 power of nature over man, but showing that sympathy with 
 natural things themselves, as if they had human souls, which 
 is the especial characteristic of true love of the works of 
 God. . . . Consider such expressions as that tender and 
 glorious verse in Isaiah, speaking of the cedars on the mount- 
 ains as rejoicing over the fall of the king of Assyria : " Yea, 
 the fir-trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, say- 
 ing, Since thou hast gone down to the grave, no feller has 
 come up against us." See what sympathy there is here, as 
 with the very hearts of the trees themselves. So also in the 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 179 
 
 words of Christ, in His personification of the lilies, " They 
 toil not, neither do they spin." Consider such expressions as, 
 " The sea saw that, and fled. Jordan was driven back. The 
 mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs." 
 Try to find anything in profane writing like this ; and note 
 farther that the whole book of Job appears to have been 
 chiefly written, and placed in the inspired volume in order to 
 show the value of natural history, and its power on the 
 human heart. . . . The magnificent allusions to natural 
 scenery throughout the book are calculated to touch the 
 heart to the end of time. 
 
 At the central point of Jewish prosperity; you have the 
 first great naturalist the world ever saw — Solomon — not 
 permitted, indeed, to anticipate, in writing, the discoveries of 
 modern times, but so gifted as to show us that heavenly wis- 
 dom is manifested as much in the knowledge of the hyssop 
 that springeth out of the wall as in political and philosophical 
 speculation. The books of the Old Testament, as distin- 
 guished from all other early writings, are thus prepared for 
 an everlasting influence over humanity; and, finally, Christ 
 Himself, setting the concluding example to the conduct and 
 thoughts of men, spends nearly His whole life in the fields, 
 the mountains, or the small country villages of Judea. And 
 in the very closing scenes of His life, will not so much as 
 sleep within the walls of Jerusalem, but rests at the little 
 village of Bethphage, walking in the morning and returning in 
 
180 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 the evening, through the peaceful avenues of the Mount of 
 Olives, to and from His work of teaching in the temple. It 
 would thus naturally follow both from the general tone and 
 teaching of the Scriptures and from the example of our Lord 
 Himself that wherever Christianity was preached and ac- 
 cepted, there would be an immediate interest awakened in 
 the works of God as seen in the natural world. 
 
 Wheresoever the search after truth begins, there life be- 
 gins ; wheresoever that search ends, there life ceases. 
 
 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 truth, with earth at its root and 
 blossom on its branches ; or a trenchant truth that can cut 
 its way through bars and sods ; most men, it seems to me, 
 dislike the sight or entertainment of, if by any means such 
 guest or vision may be avoided. 
 
 The essence of lying is in deception, not in words ; a lie 
 may be told by silence, by equivocation, by the accent on a 
 syllable, by a glance, or the attaching a peculiar significance 
 to a sentence ; and all these kinds of lies are worse and baser 
 by many degrees than a lie plainly worded ; so that no form 
 of blind conscience is so far sunk as that which comforts it- 
 self for having deceived, because the deception was by ges- 
 ture or silence, instead of utterance; and finally, according 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 181 
 
 to Tennyson's deep and trenchant line, " A lie which is half 
 a truth is ever the worst of lies." 
 
 # 
 
 There are some faults slight in the sight of love, some er- 
 rors slight in the estimation of wisdom, but truth forgives no 
 insult, and endures no stain. 
 
 * # 
 It is not calumny nor treachery that does the largest sum of 
 
 mischief in the world But it is the glistening 
 
 and softly spoken lie ; the amiable fallacy ; the patriotic lie of 
 the historian ; the provident lie of the politician ; the zealous 
 lie of the partisan; the merciful lie of the friend; and the 
 careless lie of each man to himself, that casts that black mys- 
 tery over humanity, through which any man who pierces, we 
 thank as we would thank one who dug a well in a desert; 
 happy in that thirst for truth still remains with us, even 
 when we have wilfully left the fountains of it. 
 
 It seems to me, that the shortest way to check the darker 
 forms of deceit is to set watch more scrupulous against those 
 which have mingled unregarded and unchastisecl, with the cur- 
 rent of our life. Do not let us lie at all. Do not think of 
 one falsity as harmless, and another as slight, and another as 
 unintended. Cast them all aside ; they may be light and ac- 
 cidental ; but they are an ugly soot from the smoke of the pit, 
 for all that ; and it is better that our hearts should be swept 
 clean of them, without over care as to which is largest or 
 
1 82 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 blackest. Speaking truth is like writing fair, and comes only 
 by practice ; it is less a matter of will than of habit, and I 
 doubt if any occasion can be trivial which permits the practice 
 and formation of such a habit. . . . And seeing that of 
 all sin there is, perhaps, no one more flatly opposite to the 
 Almighty, no one more "wanting the good of virtue and of 
 being " than this of lying, it is surely a strange insolence to 
 fall into the foulness of it on light or on no temptation, and 
 surely becoming an honorable man to resolve that, whatever 
 semblances or fallacies the necessary course of his life may 
 compel him to bear or to believe, none shall disturb the seren- 
 ity of his voluntary actions, nor diminish the reality of his 
 chosen delights. 
 
 As a woman of feeling would not wear false jewels, so 
 would a builder of honor disdain false ornaments. The using 
 of them is just as downright and inexcusable as a lie. 
 
 You use that which pretends to a worth which it has not ; 
 which pretends to have cost, and to be, what it did not, and 
 is not; it is an imposition, a vulgarity, an impertinence, and 
 a sin. Nobody wants ornaments in this world, but everybody 
 wants integrity. All the fair devices that ever were fancied 
 are not worth a lie. 
 
 I would have the Spirit or Lamp of Truth clear in the hearts 
 of our artists and handicraftsmen, not as if the truthful prac- 
 tise of handicrafts could far advance the cause of Truth, but 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTT. 183 
 
 because I would fain see the handicrafts themselves urged by 
 the spurs of chivalry. . . . We may not be able to com- 
 mand good, or beautiful, or inventive architecture, but we 
 can command an honest architecture ; the meagreness of pov- 
 erty may be pardoned, the sternness of utility respected ; but 
 what is there but scorn for the meanness of deception? 
 
 * # 
 
 Truth. . . . that golden and narrow line, which the 
 very powers and virtues that lean upon it bend, which policy 
 and prudence conceal, which kindness and courtesy modify, 
 which courage overshadows with his shield, imagination cov- 
 ers with her wings, and charity dims with her tears. How 
 difficult must the maintenance of that authority be, which, 
 while it has to restrain the hostility of all the worst princi- 
 ples of man, has also to restrain the disorders of his best, 
 which is continually assaulted by the one and betrayed by the 
 other, and which regards with the same severity the lightest 
 and the boldest violations of its law. 
 
 Violate truth wilfully, in the slightest particular, or, at 
 least, get into the habit of violating it, and all kinds of fail- 
 ure and error will surround and haunt you to your fall. 
 
 # 
 
 # # 
 
 Nothing can atone for the want of truth, not the most bril- 
 liant imagination, the most playful fancy, the most pure feel- 
 ing, (supposing that feeling could be false and pure at the 
 same time :) not the most exalted conception, nor the most 
 
184 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 comprehensive grasp of intellect, can make amends for the 
 want of truth, and that for two reasons ; first, because false- 
 hood is in itself revolting and degrading ; and secondly, be- 
 cause nature is so immeasurably superior to all that the human 
 mind can conceive, that every departure from her, is a fall 
 beneath her, so that there can be no such thing as an orna- 
 mental falsehood. All falsehood must be a blot as well as a 
 sin, an injury as well as a deception. 
 
 # 
 
 It is not easy to be accurate in an account of anything how- 
 ever simple. 
 
 # 
 
 The absolute disdain of all lying belongs rather to Christian 
 chivalry than to mere high breeding. 
 
 * 
 
 Imitation is like charity, when it is done for love it is 
 lovely ; when it is done for show, hateful. 
 
 The simple statement of the truths of nature must in itself 
 be pleasing to every order of mind, because every truth of 
 nature is more or less beautiful. 
 
 There is a moral as well as material truth ; a truth of im- 
 pression as well as of form, of thought as well as of matter, 
 and the truth of impression and thought is a thousand times 
 the more important of the two. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 185 
 
 # 
 
 In order to deal with words rightly, this is the habit you 
 must form. Nearly every word in your language has been 
 first a word of some other language — of Saxon, German, 
 French, Latin, or Greek (not to speak of eastern and primi- 
 tive dialects.) And many words have been all these ; — that 
 is to say, have been Greek first, Latin next, French or Ger- 
 man next, and English last ; undergoing a certain change of 
 sense and use on the lips of each nation ; but retaining a deep 
 vital meaning which all good scholars feel in employing them, 
 even at this day. If you do not know the Greek alphabet, 
 learn it ; young or old — girl or boy — whoever you may be, 
 if you think of reading seriously learn your Greek alphabet ; 
 then get good dictionaries of all these languages, and when- 
 ever you are in doubt about a word, hunt it down patiently. 
 Read Max Mtiller's lectures thoroughly, to begin with ; and, 
 after that, never let a word escape you that looks suspicious. 
 It is severe work ; but you will find it, even at first, interest- 
 ing, and at last, endlessly amusing. And the general gain to 
 your character in power and precision, will be quite incal- 
 culable. 
 
 # * 
 Words, if they are not watched will do deadly work some- 
 times. There are masked words droning and skulking about 
 us in Europe just now, — (there never were so many, owing 
 to the spread of a shallow, blotching, blundering, infectious 
 44 information," or rather deformation, everywhere, and to 
 
186 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 the teaching of catechisms and phrases at school instead of 
 human meanings) there are masked words abroad, I say, 
 which nobody understands, but which everybody uses. . . . 
 There were never creatures of prey so mischievous, never 
 diplomatists so cunning, never poisoners so deadly, as these 
 masked words; they are the unjust stewards of all men's 
 ideas; whatever fancy or favorite instinct a man most 
 cherishes, he gives to his favorite masked word to take care 
 of for him ; the word at last comes to have an infinite power 
 over him, you cannot get at him but by its ministry. 
 
 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. 
 
 A few words well chosen and well distinguished, will do 
 work that a thousand cannot, when every one is acting, 
 equivocally, in the function of another. 
 
 It takes a whole life to learn any language perfectly. But 
 you can easily ascertain the meanings through which the Eng- 
 lish word has passed ; and those which in a good writer's 
 work it must still bear. 
 
 The derivation of Words is like that of Rivers, there is 
 one real source, usually small, unlikely, and difficult to find, far 
 up among the hills ; then, as the word flows on and comes into 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTT. 187 
 
 service, it takes on the force of other words from other 
 sources, and becomes quite another word, — often much more 
 than one word after the junction — a word as it were of many- 
 waters, sometimes both sweet and bitter. 
 
 Language, I said, is only clear when it is sympathetic. You 
 can, in truth, understand a man's word only by understanding 
 his temper. Your own word is also in an unknown tongue 
 to him unless he understands yours. And it is this which 
 makes the art of language, if any one is to be chosen sepa- 
 rately from the rest, as that which is fittest for the instrument 
 of a gentleman's education. To teach the meaning of a word 
 thoroughly is to teach the nature of the spirit that coined it ; 
 the secret of language is the secret of sympathy, and its full 
 charm is possible only to the gentle. And thus the principles 
 of beautiful speech have all been fixed by sincere and kindly 
 speech. On the laws which have been determined by sin- 
 cerity, false speech, apparently beautiful, may afterwards 
 be constructed ; but all such utterance, whether in oration 
 or poetry, is not only without permanent power, but it is 
 destructive of the principles it has usurped. So long as no 
 words are uttered but in faithfulness, so long the art of 
 language goes on exalting itself ; but the moment it is shaped 
 and chiselled on external principles, it falls into frivolity, 
 and perishes. And this truth would have been long ago 
 manifest, had it not been that in periods of advanced aca- 
 demical science there is always a tendency to deny the sin- 
 
188 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 cerity of the first masters of language. Once learn to write 
 
 gracefully in the manner of an ancient author, and we are 
 
 apt to think that he also wrote in the manner of some one 
 
 else. But no noble or right style was ever yet founded but 
 
 out of a sincere heart. 
 
 # 
 
 All great languages invariably utter great things, and com- 
 mand 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. 
 
 # 
 
 The curious thing is that, given the degree of practice, you 
 will measure well or ill with the eye in proportion to the 
 quantity of life in you. No one can measure with a glance 
 when they are tired. 
 
 Have you ever considered how much literal truth there is 
 in the words — " The light of the body is the eye. If, there- 
 fore, thine eye be evil " — and the rest? How can the eye be 
 evil? How, if evil, can it fill the whole body with darkness? 
 
 What is the meaning of having one's body full of darkness? 
 It cannot mean merely being blind. Blind, you may fall into 
 the ditch if you move ; but you may be well, if at rest. But 
 to be evil-eyed is not that worse than to have no eyes? and 
 instead of being only in darkness, to have darkness in us, 
 portable, perfect, and eternal? 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 189 
 
 # 
 
 # * 
 
 Literally, if the eye be pure, the body is pure, if the light 
 of the body be but darkness, how great is that darkness ! 
 
 * # 
 
 A cat may look at a king ; — yes ; but can it see a king when 
 it looks at him? The beasts of pre} r never seem to me to look, 
 in our sense, at all. Their eyes are fascinated by the motion 
 of anything, as a kitten's by a ball; they fasten, as if drawn 
 by an inevitable attraction, on their food. But when a cat 
 caresses you, it never looks at you. Its heart seems to be in 
 its back and paws, not its eyes. It will rub itself against 
 you, or pat you with velvet tufts instead of talons ; but you 
 may talk to it an hour together, yet not rightly catch its eye. 
 Ascend higher in the races of being — to the fawn, the dog, 
 the horse ; jou will find that, according to the clearness of 
 sight, is indeed the kindness of sight, and that at least the 
 noble eyes of humanity look through humanity, from heart 
 into heart, and with no mechanical vision. And the Light of 
 the body is the eye — yes, and in happy life, the light of the 
 
 heart also. 
 
 # 
 
 You do not see with the lens of the eye. You see through 
 
 that, and by means of that, but you see with the Soul of the 
 
 eye. 
 
 # 
 
 You ought to be glad in thinking how much more beauty 
 God has made, than human eyes can ever see. 
 
190 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 * * 
 How much need, that we should learn what eyes are ! And 
 what vision they ought to possess — Science of sight granted 
 only to clearness of soul; but granted in its fumess even to 
 mortal eyes; for though, after the skin, worms may destroy 
 their body, happy the pure in heart, for they, yet in their 
 flesh, shall see the Light of Heaven, and know the will of 
 God. 
 
 Learn to obey good laws; and in a little while, you will 
 reach the better learning — how to obey good Men, who are 
 living, breathing, unblinded law ; and to subdue base and dis- 
 loyal ones, recognizing in these the light, and ruling over 
 these in the power of the Lord of Light and Peace, whose Do- 
 minion is an everlasting Dominion, and His Kingdom from 
 generation to generation. 
 
 A good law is one that holds, whether you recognize and 
 pronounce it or not ; a bad law is one that cannot hold, how- 
 ever much you ordain and pronounce it. 
 
 When people read, " the law came by Moses, but grace and 
 truth by Christ," do they suppose the law was ungracious and 
 untrue? The law was given for a foundation; the grace (or 
 mercy) and truth for fulfilment ; — the whole forming one 
 glorious Trinity of judgment mercy and truth. And if peo- 
 ple would but read the text of their Bibles with heartier pur- 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 191 
 
 pose of understanding it, instead of superstitiously, they would 
 see that throughout the parts which they are intended to make 
 most personally their own — (the Psalms) it is always the Law 
 which is spoken of with chief joy. The Psalms respecting 
 mercy are often sorrowful, as in thought of what it cost ; but 
 those respecting the Law are always full of delight. David 
 cannot contain himself for joy in thinking of it, — he is never 
 weary of its praise ; — " How love I Thy law ! it is my medi- 
 tation all the day. Thy testimonies are my delight and my 
 counsellors. Sweeter, also, than honey and the honeycomb." 
 
 # 
 
 The Divine law, instead of being contrary to mercy, is the 
 foundation of all delight, and the guide of all fair and fortu- 
 nate existence. 
 
 # 
 
 The law is fixed and everlasting ; uttered once, abiding for 
 ever, as the sun, it may not be moved. It is "perfect convert- 
 ing the soul ; " the whole question about the soul being, 
 whether it has turned from darkness to light, acknowledged 
 this law or not, — whether it is godly or ungodly? But the 
 commandment is given momentarily to each man, according 
 to the need. It does not convert ; it guides. It does not con- 
 cern the entire purpose of the soul ; but it enlightens the eyes 
 respecting a special act. The law is, "Do this always," the 
 commandment, " Do thou this now : " often mysterious enough, 
 and through the cloud; chilling, and with strange rain of 
 tears ; yet always pure, the law converting, but the command- 
 
192 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 ment cleansing; a rod, not for guiding merely, but for 
 strengthening and tasting honey with. "Look how mine 
 eyes have been enlightened, because I have tasted a little of 
 this honey." 
 
 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 com- 
 patible with, nay, even in some sort arises naturally out of a 
 deep internal seriousness of disposition. 
 
 The highest and healthiest state which is competent to or- 
 dinary 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. 
 
 A healthy manner of play is necessary in order to a healthy 
 manner of work. 
 
 Whatever we do to please ourselves and only for the sake 
 of the pleasure, not for an ultimate object, is "play," the 
 "pleasing thing;" not the useful thing. Play may be use- 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 193 
 
 ful in a secondary sense (nothing is indeed more useful or 
 necessary;) but the use of it depends upon its being spon- 
 taneous. 
 
 The only right principle of action here, is to consider good 
 and evil as defined by our 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. 
 
 # 
 * # 
 
 Get quit of the absurd idea that Heaven will interfere to 
 correct great errors, while allowing its laws to take their 
 course in punishing small ones. If you prepare a dish of 
 food carelessly, you do not expect Providence to make it 
 palatable; neither, if, through years of folly, you misguide 
 your own life, need you expect Divine interference to bring 
 round everything at last for the best. I tell you, positively, 
 the world is not so constituted; the consequences of great 
 mistakes are just as sure as those of small ones, and the 
 happiness of your whole life, and of all the lives over which 
 you have power, depends as literally on your own common 
 
 sense and discretion as the excellence of the feast of a day. 
 
 * 
 
 In direct contention with material evil, you will find out 
 the real nature of all evil ; you will discern by the various 
 kinds of resistance, what is really the fault, and main an- 
 tagonism to good ; also you will find the most unexpected 
 
194 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 helps and profound lessons given, and truths will come thus 
 
 down to us which the speculation of all our lives would never 
 
 have raised us up to. 
 
 * 
 
 There's playing at literature, and playing at art — very dif- 
 ferent, both, from working at literature, or working at art. 
 
 You will always find that in proportion to the earnestness 
 of our own faith, its tendency to accept a spiritual personality 
 increases; and that the most vital and beautiful Christian 
 temper rests joyfully in its conviction of the multitudinous 
 ministry of living angels varied in rank and power. 
 
 Suffering must, indeed, come, one way or another, in all 
 great critical periods ; the only question, for us, is whether we 
 will reach our ends through a chain of involuntary miseries, 
 many of them useless, and all ignoble ; or whether we will 
 know the worst at once, and deal with it by the wisely sharp 
 methods of God-sped courage. 
 
 , # , 
 
 Right is right, and wrong is wrong. It is only the fool 
 who does wrong and says he "did it for the best." And if 
 there is one sort of people in the world that the Bible speaks 
 harder of than another, it is fools. Their particular and 
 chief way of saying, " There is no God" is this, of declar- 
 ing that whatever their "public opinion" may be, is right; 
 and that God's opinion is of no consequence. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 195 
 
 * 
 
 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 degrada- 
 tion. 
 
 Without any discussion as to the personal existence or tra- 
 ditional character of evil spirits, you will find it a practical 
 fact, that external temptations and inevitable trials of temper, 
 have power against you which your health and virtue depend 
 on your resisting; that, if not resisted, the evil of them will 
 pass into your own heart, and the ordinary and vulgarized 
 phrase "the Devil" or betraying Spirit, "is in him," is the 
 most scientifically accurate which you can apply to any per- 
 son so influenced. 
 
 You know how often it is difficult to be wisely charitable, 
 to do good without multiplying the sources of evil. You 
 know that to give alms is nothing unless j r ou give thought 
 also; and that therefore it is written not " blessed is he that 
 feedeth the poor," but " blessed is he that considereth the 
 poor," and you know that a little thought, and a little kind- 
 
196 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 ness are often worth more than a great deal of money. Now 
 
 this charity of thought is not merely to be exercised toward 
 
 the poor, it is to be exercised towards all men. 
 
 # 
 
 Though you should assuredly be able to hold your own in 
 the straight ways of God, without always believing that the 
 Devil is at your side, it is a state of mind much to be dreaded, 
 that you should not know the Devil when you see him there. 
 For the probability is, that when you see him, the way you 
 are walking in is not one of God's ways at all, but is leading 
 you into quite other neighborhoods than His. On His way, 
 indeed, you may often, like Albert Diirer's Knight, see the 
 Fiend behind you, but you will find that he drops always farther 
 and farther behind ; whereas if he jogs with you at your side, 
 it is probably one of his own by-paths you are got on. And, 
 in any case, it is a highly desirable matter that you should 
 know him when you set eyes on him, which we are very far 
 from doing in these days, having convinced ourselves that the 
 graminivorous form of him, with horn and tail, is extant no 
 longer. But in fearful truth, the Presence and Power of 
 him is here; in the world, with us, and within us; mock as 
 you may; and the fight with him, for the time, sore, and 
 widely unprosperous. 
 
 As within the human heart there is always set an instinct 
 for all its real duties, — an instinct which you cannot quench, 
 but only warp and corrupt if you withdraw it from its true 
 
 I 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 197 
 
 purpose; — as there is the intense instinct of love, which, 
 rightly disciplined, maintains all the sanctities of life and, mis- 
 directed, undermines them ; and must do either the one or the 
 other ; so there is in the human heart an inextinguishable in- 
 stinct, the love of power, which, rightly directed, maintains 
 all the majesty of law and life, and misdirected, wrecks them. 
 Deep rooted in the innermost life of the heart of man, and of 
 the heart of woman, God set it there, and God keeps it there. 
 Vainly, as falsely, you blame or rebuke the desire of power ! 
 — For Heaven's sake, and for Man's sake, desire it all you 
 can. But what power? That is all the question. Power to 
 destroy? the lion's limb, and the dragon's breath? Not so. 
 Power to heal, to redeem, to guide and to guard. Power of 
 the sceptre and shield ; the power of the ro\ al hand that heals 
 in touching,— that binds the fiend and looses the captive ; the 
 throne that is founded on the rock of justice, and descended 
 from only by steps of mercy. Will you not covet such power 
 as this? 
 
 As the flower is gnawed by frost, so every human heart is 
 gnawed by faithlessness. And 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. 
 
 Who shall measure the difference between the power of 
 those who " do and teach " and who are greatest in the king- 
 dom of earth, as of heaven — and the power of those who 
 
198 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 waste and consume — whose power at the fullest, is only the 
 power of the moth and the rust. 
 
 Pure Passion and its corruption. — Whatever influence it is, 
 without or within us, which has a tendency to degrade the one 
 towards the other, is literally and accurately " Satanic." And 
 this treacherous or deceiving spirit is perpetually at work, so 
 that all the worst evil among us is a betrayed or corrupted good. 
 Take religion itself ; the desire of finding out God, and plac- 
 ing one's self in some true son's or servant's relation to Him. 
 The Devil, that is to say, the deceiving Spirit within us, or out- 
 side of us ; mixes up our own vanity with this desire; makes 
 us think that in our love to God Ave have established some con- 
 nection with Him which separates us from our f ellowmen, and 
 renders us superior to them. Then it takes but one wave of 
 the Devil's hand ; and we are burning them alive for taking 
 the liberty of contradicting us. 
 
 Take the desire of teaching — the entirely unselfish and 
 noble instinct for telling to those who are ignorant, the truth 
 we know, and guarding them from the errors we see them in 
 danger of ; — there is no nobler, no more constant instinct in 
 honorable breasts ; but let the Devil formalize, and mix the 
 pride of a prof ession with it — get foolish people entrusted 
 with the business of instruction, and make their giddy heads 
 giddier by putting them up in pulpits above a submissive 
 crowd — and you have it instantly corrupted into its own re- 
 verse ; you have an alliance against the light, shrieking at the 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 199 
 
 sun and moon, and stars, as profane spectre ; — a company of 
 the blind, beseeching those they lead to remain blind also. 
 
 Take the desire and faith of mutual help. ... let the 
 Devil put pride of caste into it. . . . let the Devil put a 
 few small personal interests into it, and you have all faithful 
 deliberation on national law rendered impossible in the parlia- 
 ments of Europe by the antagonism of parties. 
 
 Take the instinct for justice, and the natural sense of indig- 
 nation against crime ; let the Devil color it with personal pas- 
 sion, and you have a mighty race of true and tender-hearted 
 men living for centuries in such bloody feud that every note, 
 and word of their national songs, is a dirge, and every rock 
 of their hills is a grave-stone. Take the love of beauty, and 
 power of imagination, which are the source of every true 
 achievement in art ; let the Devil touch them with sensuality, 
 and they are stronger than the sword or the flame to blast 
 the cities where they were born, into ruin without hope. 
 Take the instinct of industry and ardor of commerce, which 
 are meant to be the support and mutual maintenance of man ; 
 let the Devil touch them with avarice, and you shall see the 
 avenues of the exchange choked with corpses that have died 
 of famine. 
 
 I leave you to call this deceiving Spirit what you like — or 
 to theorize about it as you like. All that I desire you to rec- 
 ognize is the fact of its being here, and the need of its being 
 fought with. ... I do not care what you call it, — whose 
 history you believe of it, — nor what you yourself can imag- 
 
200 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 ine about it; the origin, or nature, or name may be as you 
 will, but the deadly reality of the thing is with us, and war- 
 ring against us, and on our true war with it depends whatever 
 life we can win. 
 
 Passion, or "sensation." I am not afraid of the word; 
 still less of the thing. You have heard many outcries against 
 sensation lately; but I can tell you, it is not less sensation we 
 want, but more. The ennobling difference between one man 
 and another — between one animal and another, — is pre- 
 cisely in this, that one feels more than another. If we were 
 sponges, perhaps sensation might not be easily got for us ; if 
 we were earth-worms, liable at every instant to be cut in two 
 by the spade, perhaps too much sensation might not be good 
 for us. But, being human creatures, it is good for us ; nay, 
 we are only human in so far as we are sensitive, and our 
 honor is precisely in proportion to our passion. 
 
 What do you mean by " vulgarity? " You will find it a 
 fruitful subject of thought; but, briefly, the essence of all 
 vulgarity lies in want of sensation. Simple and innocent vul- 
 garity is merely an untrained and undeveloped bluntness of 
 body and mind ; but in true inbred vulgarity, there is a cleath- 
 ful callousness, which, in extremity, becomes capable of every 
 sort of bestial habit and crime, without fear, without pleasure, 
 without horror, and without pity. 
 
 It is in the blunt hand and the dead heart, in the diseased 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTT. 20 1 
 
 habit, in the hardened conscience, that men become vulgar ; 
 they are for ever vulgar, precisely in proportion as they are 
 incapable of sympathy, — of quick understanding — of all that, 
 in deep insistance on the common, but most accurate term, may 
 be called the "tact" of touch-faculty of body and soul; that 
 tact which the Mimosa has in trees, which the pure woman 
 has above all creatures; — fineness and fulness of sensation, 
 beyond reason ; — the guide and sanctifier of reason itself. 
 Reason can but determine what is true ; — it is the God-given 
 passion of humanity which alone can recognize what God 
 has made good. 
 
 True knowledge is disciplined and tested knowledge, — 
 not the first thought that comes, — so the true passion is dis- 
 ciplined and tested passion — not the first passion that comes. 
 
 No feeling possible to humanity is in itself wrong, but 
 only wrong when undisciplined. Its nobility is in its force 
 and justice ; it is wrong when it is weak, and felt for paltry 
 causes. There is a mean wonder as of a child who sees a jug- 
 gler tossing golden balls, aud this is base if you will. But do 
 you think that the wonder is ignoble, or the sensation less, 
 with which every human soul is called to watch the golden 
 balls of heaven tossed through the night by the Hand that 
 made them? There is a mean curiosity, as of a child opening 
 a forbidden door, or a servant prying into her master's busi- 
 ness ; and a noble curiosity, questioning in the front of dan- 
 
202 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 ger, the source of the great river beyond the sand — the 
 place of the great continents beyond the sea ; — a nobler 
 curiosity still, which questions the Source of the River of 
 Life, and of the space of the Continent of Heaven, — things 
 which "the angels desire to look into." So the anxiety is 
 ignoble with which you linger over the cause and catas- 
 trophe of an idle tale ; but do you think the anxiety is less 
 or greater, with which you watch, or ought to watch, the 
 dealings of fate and destiny with the life of an agonized 
 nation? Alas! it is the narrowness, selfishness, minuteness, 
 of your sensation that you have to deplore . . . sensa- 
 tion which spends itself in bouquets and speeches ; in revel- 
 lings and junketing; in sham fights and gay puppet shows, 
 while you can look on and see noble nations murdered, man 
 by man, woman by woman, child by child, without an effort, 
 or a tear. I said " minuteness " and " selfishness " of sensa- 
 tion, but in a word, I ought to have said " injustice "or " un- 
 righteous " of sensation. 
 
 * * 
 It was necessary that, in order to the understanding by 
 man of the scheme of Redemption, that scheme should be fore- 
 shown from the beginning by the type of bloody sacrifice. 
 But God had no more pleasure in such sacrifice at the time of 
 Moses than He has now ; He never accepted as a propitiation 
 for sin any sacrifice but the single one in prospective ; and 
 that we may not entertain any shadow of doubt on this subject, 
 the worthlessness of all other sacrifice than this is proclaimed 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 203 
 
 at the very time when typical sacrifice was most imperatively 
 demanded. God was a spirit, and could be worshipped only 
 in spirit and in truth, as singly and exclusively when every 
 day brought its claim of typical and material service or offer- 
 ing, as now when He asks for none but that of the heart. 
 
 * 
 
 The feelings of the purest and most mightily passioned hu- 
 man 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 ac- 
 cepting 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 in the sense of a higher truth which they can- 
 not demonstrate, I think they will be most in the right so. 
 
 * 
 
 Was the glory of the tabernacle necessary to set forth or 
 image His divine glory to the minds of His people? What! 
 purple or scarlet necessary to the people who had seen the 
 great river of Egypt run scarlet to the sea, under His con- 
 demnation? What! golden lamp and cherub necessary for 
 those who had seen the fires of heaven falling like a mantle 
 on Mount Sinai, and its golden courts opened to receive their 
 mortal lawgiver? — What! silver clasp and fillet necessary 
 when they had seen the silver waves of the Red Sea clasp 
 in their arched hollows the corpses of the horse and his 
 rider? Nay — not so. There was but one reason, and that 
 
204 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 an eternal one ; that as the covenant that He made with men 
 was accompanied with some external sign of its contin- 
 uance, and of His remembrance of it, so the acceptance of 
 that covenant might be marked and signified by use, in some 
 external sign of their love and obedience, and surrender of 
 themselves and theirs to His will ; and that their gratitude 
 to Him, and continual remembrance of Him, might have at 
 once their expression and their enduring testimony in the 
 presentation to Him, not only of the firstling of the herd and 
 fold, not only of the fruits of the earth and the tithes of time, 
 but of all treasures of wisdom and beauty ; of the thought 
 that invents, and the hand that labors; of wealth of wood 
 and weight of stone ; of the strength of iron, and of the light 
 of gold. 
 
 Was it necessary to the completeness, as a type of the 
 Levitical sacrifice, or to its utility as an explanation of 
 divine purposes, that it should cost anything to the person 
 in whose behalf it was offered? — On the contrary, the sacri- 
 fice which it foreshowed was to be God's free gift. . . . 
 Yet this costliness was generally a condition of the acceptable- 
 ness of the sacrifice — " Neither will I offer unto the Lord 
 my God of that which doth cost me nothing." — That costli- 
 ness, therefore, must be an acceptable condition in all human 
 offerings at all times ; for if it was pleasing to God once, it 
 must please Him always, unless directly forbidden by Him 
 afterwards, which it has never been. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 205 
 
 # 
 
 The less valuable offering was rejected not because it did 
 not image Christ nor fulfil the purpose of sacrifice, but because 
 it indicated a feeling that would grudge the best of its pos- 
 sessions to Him who gave them ; and because it was a bold 
 dishonoring of God in the sight of man. Whence it may be 
 infallibly concluded, that in whatever offerings we may now 
 see reason to present unto God, a condition of their accep- 
 tableness will be now, as it was then, that they should be the 
 
 best of their kind. 
 
 # 
 
 It has been said — it ought always 1 to be said, for it is true, 
 — that a better and more honorable offering is made to our 
 Master in ministry to the poor, in extending the knowledge of 
 His name, in the practice of the virtues by which that name 
 is hallowed, than in material presents to His temple. Assur- 
 edly it is so ; woe to all who think any other kind or manner of 
 offering may in any wise take the place of these ! Do the peo- 
 ple need place to pray, and calls to hear His word ? Then it 
 is no time for smoothing pillars or carving pulpits; let us 
 have enough first of walls and roofs. 
 
 Do the people need teaching from house to house, and bread 
 from day to day? Then they are deacons and ministers we 
 want, not architects. I insist on this, I plead for this ; but 
 let us examine ourselves, and see if this be indeed the reason 
 for our backwardness in the lesser work. The question is 
 not between God's house and His poor; it is not between 
 
206 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 God's house and His gospel. It is between God's house and 
 ours. Have we no tesselated colors on our floors? No fres- 
 coed fancies on our roofs? No niched statuary in our corri- 
 dors! No gilded furniture in our chambers? No costly 
 stones in our cabinets? Has even the tithe of them been of- 
 ered? They are, or they ought to be, the signs that enough 
 has been devoted to the great purpose of human steward- 
 ship, and that there remains to us what we spend in luxury; 
 but there is a greater and prouder luxury than this selfish one 
 — that of bringing a portion of such things as these into 
 sacred service, and presenting them for a memorial, that our 
 pleasure as well as our toil has been hallowed by the remem- 
 brance of Him who gave both the strength and the reward. 
 And until this has been done, I do not see how such posses- 
 sions can be retained in happiness. I do not understand the 
 feeling which would arch our own gates and pave our own 
 thresholds, and leave the Church with its narrow door and 
 foot- worn sill ; the feeling which enriches our own chambers 
 with all manner of costliness, and endures the bare walls and 
 mean compass of the temple. 
 
 The tenth part of the expense which is sacrificed in domes- 
 tic vanities, if not absolutely and meaninglessly lost in do- 
 mestic discomforts and incumbrances, would, if collectively 
 offered and wisely employed, build a marble church for every 
 town in England; such a church as it should be a joy and a. 
 blessing even to pass near in our daily ways and walks, and} 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 207 
 
 as it would bring the light into the eyes to see from afar, lift- 
 ing its fair height above the purple crowd of humble roofs. 
 
 I have said for every town ; I do not want a marble church 
 for every village ; nay, I do not want marble churches at all 
 for their own sake, but for the sake of the spirit that would 
 build them. The church has no need of any visible splendors ; 
 her power is independent of them, her purity is in some de- 
 gree opposed to them. The simplicity of a pastoral sanctuary 
 is lovelier than the majesty of an urban temple ; and it may 
 be more than questioned whether, to the people, such majesty 
 has ever been the source of any increase of effective piety; 
 but to the builders it has been, and must ever be. It is not 
 the church we want, but the sacrifice ; not the emotion of ad- 
 miration, but the act of adoration ; not the gift, but the giv- 
 ing. 
 
 There are liberties and liberties. Yonder torrent, crystal- 
 clear, and arrow-swift, with its spray leaping into the air like 
 white troops of fawns, is free enough. Lost, presently, 
 amidst bankless boundless marsh — soaking in slow shallow- 
 ness, as it will, hither and thither, listless, among the poison- 
 ous reeds and unresisting slime — it is free also. TVe may 
 choose which liberty we like — the restraint of voicef ul rock, 
 or the dumb and edgeless shore of darkened sand. 
 
 # ' % 
 
 I believe we can nowhere find a better type of a perfectly 
 free creature than in the common house fly. Not free only, 
 
208 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTT. 
 
 but brave ; and irreverent to a degree which I think no human 
 republican could by any philosophy exalt himself. There is 
 no courtesy in him ; he does not care whether it is king or 
 clown whom he teases ; and in every step of his swift mechan- 
 ical march, and in every pause of his resolute observation, 
 there is one and the same expression of perfect egotism, per- 
 fect independence and self-confidence, and conviction of the 
 world's having been made for flies. Strike at him with your 
 hand ; and to him, the mechanical fact and external aspect of 
 the matter is, what to you it would be, if an acre of red clay, 
 ten feet thick, tore itself up from the ground in one massive 
 field, hovered over you in the air for a second, and came crash- 
 ing clown with an aim. That is the exterual aspect of it ; the 
 inner aspect, to his fly's mind, is of a quite natural and unim- 
 portant occurrence — one of the momentary conditions of his 
 active life. He steps out of the way of your hand, and alights 
 on the back of it. You cannot terrify him, nor govern him, 
 nor persuade him, nor convince him. He has his own positive 
 opinion iuall matters ; not an unwise one, usually, for his own 
 ends ; — and will ask no advice of yours. He has no work to 
 do — no tyrannical instinct to obey. The earth-worm has his 
 digging; the bee her gathering and building ; the spider her 
 cunning net-work; the ant her treasury and accounts. All 
 these are comparatively slaves, or people of vulgar business. 
 But your fly, free in the air, free in the chamber — a black in- 
 carnation of caprice — wandering, investigating, flitting, 
 flirting, feasting at his will, with rich variety of choice in 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 209 
 
 feast, from the heaped sweets in the grocer's windows to 
 those of the butcher's back-yard, and from the galled place 
 on your cab-horse's-back, to the brown spot in the road, from 
 which, as the hoof disturbs him, he rises with angry repub- 
 lican buzz — what freedom is like his? 
 
 # 
 
 For captivity, again, perhaps your poor watch-dog is as 
 sorrowful a type as you will easily find. ... He has no 
 books — nothing but his own weary thoughts for company, 
 and a group of those free flies, whom he snaps at with sullen 
 ill success : his fidelity only seals his fate. . . . Yet of 
 the two, would we rather be watch-dog, or fly? 
 
 Indeed, the first point we all have to determine is, not how 
 free we are, but what kind of creatures we are. It is of small 
 importance to any of us whether we get liberty ; but of the 
 greatest that we deserve it. ... I tell you, lover of 
 liberty, there is no choice offered to you, but it is similarly 
 between life and death. You will get wiser and stronger 
 only by doing right, whether forced or not; the prime, the 
 one need is to do that, under whatever compulsion, until you 
 can do it without compulsion. And then you are a Man. 
 
 * 
 
 Your individuality was given you by God, and in your race ; 
 and if you have any, to speak of, you will want no liberty. 
 . . . But if you have no individuality, if there is no true 
 character nor true desire in you, then you will indeed want 
 to be free. . . . You ask for freedom of thought ; but 
 
210 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 if you have not sufficient grounds for thought, you have no 
 business to think ; and if you have sufficient grounds, you 
 have no business to think wrong. Only one thought is pos- 
 sible to you, if you are wise — your liberty is geometrically 
 proportionate to your folly. 
 
 How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of 
 that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty; most 
 treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms ; for the feeblest ray of 
 reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, 
 but its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in the 
 universe. There can never be. The stars have it not ; the 
 earth has it not ; the sea has it not ; and we men have the 
 mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest punish- 
 ment. 
 
 If there be any one principle more widely than another 
 confessed by every utterance or more sternly than another im- 
 printed on every atom, of the visible creation, that principle 
 is not Liberty, but Law. 
 
 "All this glory and activity of our age; what are they 
 owing to, but to our freedom of thought?" In a measure 
 they are owing — what good is in them — to the discovery 
 of many lies, and the escape from the power of evil. Not to 
 liberty, but to the deliverance from evil or cruel masters. 
 Brave men have dared to examine lies which had long been 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 2 1 1 
 
 taught, not because they were/ree-thinkers, but because they 
 were such stern and close thinkers that the lie could no longer 
 escape them. 
 
 , * 
 I know not if a day is ever to come when the nature of 
 right freedom will be understood, and when men will see 
 that to obey another man, to labor for him, yield reverence 
 to him or to his place, is not slavery. It is often the best 
 kind of liberty — liberty from care. 
 
 All redemption must begin in subjection, and in the re- 
 covery of the sense of Fatherhood and authority, as all ruin 
 and devastation begin in the loss of that sense. 
 
 At present, "advancement in life" means becoming con- 
 spicuous in life ; — obtaining a position which shall be ac- 
 knowledged by others to be respectable or honorable. We do 
 not understand by this advancement, in general, the mere mak- 
 ing of money, but the being known to have made it ; not the 
 accomplishment of any great aim, but the being seen to have 
 accomplished it. In a word, we mean the gratification of 
 our thirst for applause. That thirst, if the last infirmity of 
 noble minds, is also the first infirmity of weak ones; and, on 
 the whole, the strongest impulsive influence of average hu- 
 manity; the greatest efforts of the race have always been 
 traceable to the love of praise, as its greatest catastrophes 
 to the love of pleasure. 
 
212 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 # 
 
 It is the gratification of vanity which is, with us, the 
 stimulus of toil, and balm of repose ; so closely does it touch 
 the very springs of life, that the wounding of our vanity is 
 always spoken of (and truly) as in its measure mortal ; we 
 call it "mortification" using the same expression which we 
 should apply to a gangrenous and incurable bodily hurt. And 
 although few of us may be physicians enough to recognize 
 the various effects of this passion upon health and energy, I 
 believe most honest men know and would at once acknowl- 
 edge, its leading power with them as a motive. The seaman 
 does not commonly desire to be made captain only because 
 he knows he can manage the ship better than any other sailor 
 on board. He wants to be made captain that he may be 
 called captain. The clergjinan does not usually want to be 
 made a bishop only because he believes no other hand can, 
 as firmly as his, direct the diocese through its difficulties. 
 He wants to be made bishop primarily that he may be called 
 " My Lord." And a prince does not usually desire to en- 
 large, or a subject to gain, a kingdom, because he believes 
 that no one else can as well serve the state upon the throne ; 
 but, briefly, because he wishes to be addressed as "Your 
 Majesty," by as many lips as may be brought to such utter- 
 ance. 
 
 * # 
 There will be always a number of men who would fain set 
 themselves to the accumulation of wealth as the sole object 
 
THO UGHTS OF BEA UTY. 213 
 
 of their lives. Necessarily, that class of men is an unedu- 
 cated class, inferior in intellect, and more or less cowardly. 
 It is physically impossible for a well-educated, intellectual, 
 or brave man to make money the chief object of his thoughts ; 
 as physically impossible as it is for him to make his dinner 
 the principal object of them. All healthy people like their 
 dinners, but their dinner is not the main object of their lives. 
 So all healthily-minded people like making money — ought to 
 like it, and to enjoy the sensation of winning it, but the main 
 object of their lives is not money . . . with all brave and 
 rightly trained men, their work is first, their fee second, — 
 very important always, but still second. But in every nation, 
 as I said, there are a vast class who are ill-educated, cowardly 
 and more or less stupid. And with these people, just as cer- 
 tainly the fee is first, and the work second, as with brave 
 people the work is first and the fee second. And this is no 
 small distinction. 
 
 It is the whole distinction in a man ; distinction between 
 life and death in him, between heaven and hell for him. You 
 cannot serve two masters ; — you must serve one or other. 
 If your work is first with you, and your fee second, work is 
 your master, and the lord of work, who is God. But if your 
 fee is first with you, and your work second, fee is your mas- 
 ter, and the lord of fee, who is the Devil. 
 
 * 
 
 # * 
 
 Stupidity is always the basis of the Judas bargain. We do 
 great injustice to Iscariot, in thinking him wicked above all 
 
214 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 common wickedness. . . . He was only a common money- 
 lover, and like all money-lovers, didn't understand Christ; 
 . . . The power which money, once obtained, has over 
 the labor of the poor, so that the capitalist can take all its 
 produce to himself, except the laborer's food — that, is the 
 modern Judas's way of " carrying the bag," and bearing what 
 is put therein. 
 
 Whenever money is the principal object of life with either 
 man or nation, it is both got ill, and spent ill ; and does 
 harm both in the getting and spending ; but when it is not 
 the principal object, it and all other things will be well got, 
 and well spent. And here is the test, with every man, of 
 whether money is the principal object with him, or not. If 
 in mid-life he could pause and say, "Now I have enough to 
 live upon, I'll live upon it ; and having well earned it, I will 
 also well spend it, and go out of the world poor, as I came 
 into it," then money is not principal with him ; but if, having 
 enough to live upon in the manner befitting his character and 
 rank, he still wants to make more, and to die rich, then 
 money is the principal object with him, and it becomes a 
 curse to himself, and generally to those who spend it after 
 him. 
 
 The money power is always imperfect and doubtful ; there 
 are many things which cannot be retained by it. Many joys 
 may be given to men which cannot be bought for gold, and 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 215 
 
 many fidelities found in them which cannot be rewarded with 
 it. . . . A man's hand may be full of invisible gold, and the 
 wave of it, or the grasp, shall do more than another's with a 
 shower of bullion. This invisible gold, also, does not neces- 
 sarily diminish in spending. 
 
 * # 
 
 Twenty people can gain money for one who can use it; and 
 the vital question, for individual and for nation, is never 
 " how much do they make? " but " to what purpose do they 
 
 spend? " 
 
 * 
 
 # # 
 
 Have you observed that all Christ's main teachings, by di- 
 rect order, by earnest parable, and by His own permanent 
 emotion, regard the use and mis-use of money? We might 
 have thought, if we had been asked what a divine teacher 
 was most likely to teach, that He would have left inferior 
 persons to give directions about money ; and Himself spoken 
 only concerning faith and love, and the discipline of the 
 passions, and the guilt of the crimes of soul against soul. 
 But not so. He speaks in general terms of these. But He 
 does not speak parables about them for all men's memoiy, 
 nor permit Himself fierce indignation against them, in all 
 men's sight. The Pharisees bring Him an adulteress. He 
 writes her forgiveness on the dust of which He formed her. 
 Another, despised of all for known sin, He recognized as a 
 giver of unknown love. But He acknowledges no love in 
 buyers and sellers in His house. One would have thought 
 
216 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 there were people in that house twenty times worse than they ; 
 — Caiaphas and his like — false priests, false prayer-makers, 
 false leaders of the people — who needed putting to silence 
 or to flight, with darkest wrath. But the scourge is only 
 against the traffickers and thieves. The two most intense of 
 all the parables ; the two which lead the rest in love and ter- 
 ror (that of the Prodigal and Dives) relate, both of them, to 
 management of riches. The practical order given to the only 
 seeker of advice of whom it is recorded that Christ " loved 
 
 him " is briefly about his property. " Sell that thou hast." 
 
 # 
 
 The love of money, with the parallel, looseness in manage- 
 ment of it, is indeed the root of all evil. 
 
 * 
 
 It is easy to call yourself the chief of sinners, expecting 
 every sinner round you to decline — or return — the compli- 
 ment; but learn to measure the real degrees of your own 
 relative baseness, and to be ashamed, not in heaven's sight, 
 but in man's sight ; and redemption is indeed begun. 
 
 * 
 
 He himself has sinned . . . that is the hard lesson to 
 learn and the beginning of faithful lessons. All right and 
 fruitful humility and purging of Heart, and seeing of God, is 
 in that. 
 
 Be sure of one thing, that, however much you may know, 
 and whatever advantages you may possess, and however good 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 217 
 
 you may be, you have not been singled out, by the God who 
 made you, from all the others in the world, to be especially 
 informed respecting His own nature and character. You 
 have not been born in a luminous point upon the surface of 
 the globe, where a perfect theology might be expounded to 
 you from your youth up, and when everything you were 
 taught would be true, and everything that was enforced upon 
 you, right. Of all the insolent, all the foolish persuasions 
 that by any chance could enter and hold your empty . . . 
 heart, this is the proudest and foolishest, — that you have 
 been so much the darling of the Heavens, and favorite of the 
 Fates, as to be born in the very nick of time, and in the punc- 
 tual place, when and where pure Divine truth has been 
 sifted from the errors of the Nations. 
 
 However good you may be, you have faults; — however 
 dull you may be, you can find out what some of them are ; 
 and however slight they may be, you had better make some 
 — not too painful, but patient — effort to get quit of them. 
 
 Something which befalls you may seem a great misfor- 
 tune ; — you meditate over its effects on you personally ; and 
 begin to think that it is a chastisement, or a warning, or a 
 this or that or the other of profound significance ; and that 
 all the angels in heaven have left their business for a little 
 while, that they may watch its effects on your mind. But give 
 up this egotistic indulgence of your fancy ; examine a little 
 
218 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 what misfortunes, greater a thousandfold, are happening, 
 every second, to twenty times worthier persons; and your 
 self-consciousness will change into pity and humility; and 
 you will know yourself, so far as to understand that " there 
 hath nothing taken thee but what is common to men." 
 
 None can estimate the power manifested in victory, unless 
 they have personally measured the strength to be overcome. 
 
 There are two forms of discontent; one laborious, the 
 other indolent and complaining. We respect the man of la- 
 borious desire, but let us not suppose that his restlessness is 
 peace, or his ambition meekness. It is because of the special 
 connection of meekness with contentment that it is prom- 
 ised that the meek shall " inherit the earth." Neither covet- 
 ous men, nor the grave, can inherit anything, they can but 
 consume. Only contentment can possess. The most helpful 
 and sacred work, therefore, which can at present be clone for 
 humanity, is to teach people (chiefly by example, as all best 
 teaching must be done) not how "to better themselves," but 
 how to "satisfy themselves." . . . And, in order to teach 
 men how to be satisfied, it is necessary fully to understand 
 the art and joy of humble life, — this, at present, of all arts 
 or sciences being the one most needing study. Humble life 
 — that is to say, proposing to itself no future exaltation, but 
 only a sweet continuance ; not excluding the idea of fore- 
 sight, but wholly of fore-sorrow, and taking no thought for 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 219 
 
 coming days; so, also, not excluding the idea of providence, 
 or provision, but wholly of accumulation ; — the life of do- 
 mestic affection, and domestic peace, peace, full of sensitive- 
 ness to all elements of costless and kind pleasure ; — there- 
 fore chiefly to the loveliness of the natural world. 
 
 We 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. 
 
 * 
 
 * * 
 
 The increase of knowledge, merely as such, does not make 
 the soul larger or smaller, in the sight of God. All the knowl- 
 edge man can gain is as nothing, but that the soul, for which 
 the great scheme of redemption was laid, be it ignorant or be 
 it wise, is all in all, and in the activity, strength, health and 
 well-being of the soul lies the main difference in His sight 
 
 between one man and another. 
 
 # 
 
 # # 
 
 Observe, the difference between tasting knowledge, and 
 hoarding it. In this respect it is like food; since in some 
 measure, the knowledge of all men is laid up in granaries for 
 future use ; much of it is at any given moment dormant, not 
 fed upon or enjoyed, but in store . . . men may starve 
 in their own granaries . . . accumulate their store, 
 rather than receive nourishment from it. . . . Most of 
 us are to receive day by day our daily bread, and shall be as 
 well nourished and as fit for our daily labor, and often, also, 
 
220 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 fit for nobler and more divine labor, in feeding from the 
 barrel of meal that does not waste, and from the cruse of oil 
 that does not fail, than if our barns were filled with plenty, 
 and our presses bursting with new wine. 
 
 The safest way . . . is to assure ourselves that true 
 
 knowledge of anything or any creature is only of the good 
 
 of it ; that its nature and life are in that, and that what is 
 
 diseased, — that is to say, unnatural and mortal, — you must 
 
 cut away from it in contemplation, as you would in surgery. 
 
 # 
 
 Examine the effect of knowledge and see whether the trees 
 of knowledge and of life are one now, any more than in 
 Paradise. Feel that the real animating power of knowledge 
 is only in the moment of its being first received, when it fills 
 us with wonder and joy; a joy for which, observe, the pre- 
 vious ignorance is just as necessary as the present knowledge. 
 That man is always happy who is in the presence of some- 
 thing which he cannot know to the full, which he is always 
 going on to know. This is the necessary condition of a 
 finite creature with divinely rooted and divinely directed in- 
 telligence, this, therefore its happy state, — but, observe, a 
 state not of triumph or joy in what it knows, but of joy 
 rather in the continual discovery of new ignorance, con- 
 tinual self-abasement, continual astonishment. . . . The 
 whole difference between a man of genius and other men is 
 that the first remains in great part a child, seeing with the 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 22 1 
 
 large eyes of children, in perpetual wonder, not conscious of 
 much knowledge — conscious rather — of infinite ignorance, 
 and yet infinite power ; a fountain of eternal admiration, de- 
 light, and creative force within him meeting the ocean of 
 
 visible and governable things around him. 
 
 # 
 
 All are to be men of genius in their degree — rivulets or 
 rivers, it does not matter, so that the souls be clear and pure ; 
 not dead walls encompassing dead heaps of things known 
 and numbered, but running waters in the sweet wilderness of 
 things unnumbered and unknown, conscious only of the liv- 
 ing banks, on which they partly refresh, and partly reflect 
 the flowers, and so pass on. 
 
 Knowledge is mental food, and is exactly to the spirit what 
 food is to the body. ... It may be mixed and disguised 
 by art, till it becomes unwholesome ; it may be refined, sweet- 
 ened, and made palatable until it has lost all its power of 
 nourishment ; and even of its best kind, it may be eaten to 
 surfeiting and minister to disease and death. 
 
 * * 
 Man has the choice of stooping in science beneath himself, 
 and striving in science beyond himself; and the " Know thy- 
 self " is, for him, not a law to which he must in peace sub- 
 mit ; but a precept which of all others is the most painful to 
 understand, and humiliating; and this alike, whether it be 
 held to refer to the knowledge beneath us, or above. For, 
 
222 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 singularly enough, men are always conceited of the meanest 
 science : — 
 
 " Doth the Eagle know what is in the pit? 
 Or wilt thou go ask the Mole? " 
 
 It is just those who grope with the mole, and cling with 
 the bat, who are vainest of their sight and of their wings. 
 
 * 
 
 Do you think you can know yourself by looking into your- 
 self? Never. You can know what you are only by looking 
 
 out of yourself. 
 
 * 
 
 It is very probable, that if you could look into your heart 
 from the sun's point of view, it might appear a very black 
 hole indeed : Nay, the Sun may sometimes think good to tell 
 you that it looks so to Him ; but He will come into it, and 
 make it very cheerful for you for all that, if you don't put 
 the shutters up. 
 
 "All things," says Hooker, — "God only excepted, — be- 
 side the nature which they have in themselves, receive exter- 
 nally some perfection from other things." Hence the appear- 
 ance of separation or isolation in anything, and of self-depen- 
 dence, is an appearance of imperfection ; and all appearances 
 of connection and brotherhood are pleasant and right, both 
 as significative of perfection in the things united, and as typi- 
 cal of that Unity which we attribute to God; that Unity 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 223 
 
 which consists not in His own singleness or separation, 
 but in the necessity of His inherence in all things that 
 be, without which no creature of any kind could hold exist- 
 ence for a moment. Which necessity of Divine essence I 
 think it better to speak of as comprehensiveness, than as 
 unity, because unity is often understood in the sense of one- 
 ness or singleness, instead of universality, whereas the only 
 Unity which by any means can become grateful or an object 
 of hope to men, and whose types therefore in material things 
 can be beautiful, is that on which turned the last words and 
 prayer of Christ before His crossing of the Kedron brook. 
 11 Neither pray I for these alone, but for those also which shall 
 believe on me through their word. That they all may be one, 
 as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee." 
 
 And so there is not any matter, nor any spirit, nor any 
 creature, but it is capable of an 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 fellowship, and their 
 delight is in the giving and receiving of alternate and perpet- 
 ual currents of good, their inseparable dependency on each 
 other's being, and their essential and perfect depending on their 
 Creator's ; and so the unity of earthly creatures is their power 
 and their peace, not like the dead and cold peace of undisturbed 
 
224 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 stones and solitary mountains, but the living peace of trust, and 
 the living power of support, of hands that hold each other 
 and are still ; and so the unity of matter is, in its noblest 
 form, the organization of it which builds it up into temples 
 for the spirit, and in its lower form, the sweet and strange 
 affinity, which gives it the glory of its orderly elements, and 
 the fair variety of change and assimilation that turns the 
 dust into the crystal, and separates the waters that be above 
 the firmament from the waters that be beneath; and in its 
 lowest form, it is the working and walking and clinging to- 
 gether that gives their power to the winds, and its syllables 
 and soundings to the air, and their weight to the waves, and 
 their burning to the sunbeams, and their stability to the mount- 
 ains, and to every creature whatsoever operation is for its 
 glory and for others good. 
 
 Of the appearance of unity, as of unity itself, there are 
 several kinds which it will be found convenient to consider 
 separately. Thus there is the unity of different and separate 
 things, subjected to one and the same influence, which may 
 be called subjectional unity, and this is the unity of the 
 clouds, as they are driven by the parallel winds, or as they 
 are ordered by the electric currents, and this is the unity of 
 the sea waves, and this of the bending and undulation of the 
 forest masses, and in creatures capable of will it is the unity 
 of will or inspiration. And there is unity of origin, which 
 we may call original unity, which is of things arising from 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 225 
 
 one spring and source, and speaking always of their brother- 
 hood, and this in matter is the unity of the branches of the 
 trees, and of the petals and starry rays of flowers, and of the 
 beams of light, and in spiritual creatures it is their filial re- 
 lation to Him from whom they have their being. And there 
 is unity of sequence, which is that of things that form links 
 in chains, and steps in ascent, and stages in journeys, and 
 this, in matter, is the unity of communicable forces in their 
 continuance from one thing to another, and it is the passing 
 upwards and downwards of beneficent effects among all 
 things, and it is the melody of sounds, and the beauty of con- 
 tinuous lines, and the orderly succession of motions and 
 times. And in spiritual creatures it is their own constant 
 building up by true knowledge and continuous reasoning to 
 higher perfection, and the singleness and straightforward- 
 ness of their tendencies to more complete communion with 
 God. And there is the unity of membership, which Ave may 
 cal^essential unity, which is the unity of things separately 
 imperfect into a perfect whole, and this is the great unity of 
 which other unities are but parts and means ; it is in matter 
 the harmony of sounds and consistency of bodies, and among 
 spiritual creatures, their love and happiness and very life in 
 
 God. 
 
 # 
 
 As opposed to passion, changefulness, or laborious exer- 
 tion, repose is the especial and separating characteristic of 
 the eternal mind and power : it is the " I Am " of the Creator 
 
223 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 opposed to the "I become" of all creatures; it is the sign 
 alike of the supreme knowledge which is incapable of sur- 
 prise, the supreme power which is incapable of labor, the 
 supreme volition which is incapable of change; it is the 
 stillness of the beams of the eternal chambers laid upon the 
 variable waters of ministering creatures. 
 
 The desire of rest planted in the heart is no sensual nor 
 unworthy one, but a longing for renovation, and for escape 
 from a state where every phase is mere preparation for an- 
 other equally transitory, to one in which permanence shall 
 have become possible through perfection. Hence the great 
 call of Christ to men, that call on which St. Augustine fixed 
 essential expression of Christian hope, is accompanied by the 
 promise of rest ; and the death bequest of Christ to men is 
 peace. 
 
 Repose, as it is expressed in material things, is either a 
 simple appearance of permanence and quietness, as in the 
 massy forms of a mountain or rock, accompanied by the 
 lulling effect of all mighty sight and sound, which all feel and 
 none define, or else it is repose proper, the rest of things in 
 which there is vitality or capability of motion actual or im- 
 agined ; and with respect to these the expression of repose 
 is greater in proportion to the amount and sublimity of the 
 action which is not taking place, as well as to the intensity 
 of the negation of it. Thus we speak not of repose in a 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 227 
 
 stone, because the motion of a stone has nothing in it of 
 energy nor vitality, neither its repose of stability. But hav- 
 ing once seen a great rock come clown a mountain side, we 
 have a noble sensation of its rest, now bedded immovably 
 among the under fern, because the power and fearfulness of 
 its motion were great, and its stability and negation of mo- 
 tion are now great in proportion. Hence the imagination, 
 w T hich delights in nothing mere than the enhancing of the 
 characters of repose, effects this usually by either attributing 
 to things visibly energetic an ideal stability, or to things 
 visibly stable an ideal activity or vitality. Hence Words- 
 worth, of the cloud, which in itself having too much of 
 changef ulness for his purpose, is spoken of as one, "that 
 heareth not the loucl winds when they call, and moveth alto- 
 gether, if it move at all." And again of children, which, 
 that it may remove from them the child restlessness, the 
 imagination conceives as rooted flowers "Beneath an old 
 gray oak as violets lie." On the other hand, the scattered 
 rocks which have not, as such, vitality enough for rest, are 
 gifted with it by the living image ; they ' • lie couched around 
 as like a flock of sheep. " 
 
 Thus we see repose demands for its expression the im- 
 plied capability of its opposite, energy, and this even in its 
 lower manifestations in rocks and stones and trees. By com- 
 paring the modes in which the mind is disposed to regard 
 the boughs of a fair and vigorous tree, motionless in the sum- 
 mer air, with the effect produced by one of these same boughs 
 
228 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 hewn square and used for threshold or lintel, the reader will at 
 once perceive the connection of vitality with repose and the 
 part they both bear in beauty. But that which in lifeless things 
 ennobles them by seeming to indicate life, ennobles higher 
 creatures by indicating the exaltation of their earthly vitality 
 into a Divine vitality ; and raising the life of sense into the life 
 of faith — faith, whether we receive it in the sense of adher- 
 ence to resolution, obedience to law, regardfulness of promise, 
 in which from all time it has been the test as the shield of 
 the true being and life of man, or in the still higher sense of 
 truthfulness in the presence, kindness, and word of God : in 
 which form it has been exhibited under the Christian dis- 
 pensation. For whether in one form or other form, whether 
 the faithfulness of men whose path is chosen and portion 
 fixed, in the following and receiving of that path and portion, 
 as in the Thermopylae camp ; or the happier faithfulness of 
 children in the good giving of their Father, and of subjects in 
 the conduct of their king, as in the " Stand still, and see the 
 salvation of God " of the Red Sea shore, there is rest and peace- 
 fulness, the " standing still" in both, the quietness of action 
 determined, of spirit unalarmecl, of expectation unimpatient ; 
 beautiful, even when based only as of old, on the self-com- 
 mand and self-possession, the persistent dignity or the uncal- 
 culating love of the creature, but more beautiful yet when the 
 rest is one of humility instead of pride, and the trust no 
 more in the resolution we have taken, but in the Hand we 
 hold. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 229 
 
 Hence I think there is no desire more intense or more ex- 
 alted than that which exists in all rightly disciplined minds 
 for the evidences of repose. 
 
 About the river of human life there is a wintry wind, 
 though a heavenly sunshine ; the iris colors its agitation, the 
 frost fixes upon its repose. 
 
 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 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. 
 
 Any material object which can give us pleasure in the sim- 
 ple contemplation of its outward qualities, without any direct 
 and definite exertion of the intellect, I call in some way or in 
 some degree, beautiful. . . . Observe, I do not mean by 
 excluding direct exertion of the intellect from ideas of beauty 
 that beauty has no effect upon nor connection with the intel- 
 lect. All our moral feelings are so interwoven with our intel- 
 lectual powers, that we cannot affect the one, without in some 
 degree, addressing the other ; and in all high ideas of beauty 
 it is more than probable that much of the pleasure depends on 
 delicate and untraceable perceptions of fitness, propriety, and 
 relation, which are purely intellectual, and through which we 
 arrive at our noblest ideas of what is commonly and rightly 
 
230 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 called ' ' intellectual beauty. " But there is yet no immediate ex- 
 ertion of the intellect ; that is to say, if a person, receiving even 
 the noblest ideas of simple beauty, be asked why he likes the 
 object exciting them, he will not be able to give any distinct 
 reason, nor to trace in his mind any formal thought to which 
 he can appeal as a source of pleasure. He will say that the 
 thing gratifies, fills, hallows, exalts his mind, but he will not 
 
 be able to say why, or how. 
 
 * 
 
 Ideas of Beauty are among the noblest which can be pre- 
 sented 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 perceiv- 
 ing 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 deformity, 
 but only degrees of beauty, or such slight and rare points of 
 permitted contrast as may render all around them more val- 
 uable by their opposition ; spots of blackness in creation, to 
 make its colors felt. But although everything in Nature is 
 more or less beautiful, every species of object has its own 
 kind and degree of beauty ; some being in their own nature 
 more beautiful than others, and few, if any individuals, pos- 
 sessing the utmost beauty of which the species is capable. 
 This utmost degree of specific beauty, necessarily co-existent 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 231 
 
 with the utmost perfection of the object in other respects, is 
 the ideal of the object. 
 
 The sensation of Beauty 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 in- 
 tellect upon facts of beaut}*- so apprehended, is dependent on 
 the acuteness of the heart-feeling about them ; and thus the 
 apostolic words come true, in this minor respect as in all 
 others, that men are alienated from the life of God, " through 
 the ignorance that is in them, having the understanding dark- 
 ened, because of the hardness of their hearts; " for we do in- 
 deed see constantly that men having naturally acute percep- 
 tions of the beautiful, yet not receiving it with a pure heart, 
 nor with their hearts at all, never comprehend it, nor receive 
 good from it, but make it a mere minister to their desires, 
 and accompaniment and seasoning of lower sensual pleasures, 
 until all their emotions take the same earthly stamp, and the 
 sense of beauty sinks into the servant of lust. 
 
 That which is required in order to the attainment of accu- 
 rate conclusions respecting the essence of the beautiful, is 
 nothing more than earnest, loving, and unselfish attention to 
 our impression of it, by which those which are shallow, false, 
 or peculiar to times and temperaments may be distinguished 
 from those that are eternal. 
 
232 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 # 
 
 We must be modest and cautious in the pronouncing of pos- 
 itive opinions on the subject of beauty; for every one of us 
 has peculiar sources of enjoyment necessarily opened to him 
 in certain scenes and things, sources which are sealed to 
 
 others. 
 
 * 
 
 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. 
 
 There is not any soul so sunk but that it shall in some 
 measure feel the impression of mental beauty in the human 
 features, and detest in others its own likeness, and in itself 
 despise that which of itself it has made. 
 
 There is not any virtue the exercise of which, even momen- 
 tarily, will not impress a new fairness upon the features, 
 neither on them only, but on the whole body, both the in- 
 telligence and moral faculties have operation, for even all the 
 movements and gestures, however slight, are different in their 
 modes according to the mind that governs them, and on the 
 gentleness and decision of just feeling there follows a grace 
 of action, and through continuance of this a grace of form, 
 which by no discipline may be taught or attained. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 233 
 
 * 
 
 Of the sweetness which that higher serenity — of hap- 
 piness — and the dignity which that higher authority — of 
 Divine law, and not human reason — can and must stamp on 
 the features, it would be futile to speak at length, for I sup- 
 pose that both are acknowledged on all hands, and that there 
 is not any beauty but theirs to which men pay long obedience ; 
 at all events, if not by sympathy discovered, it is not in words 
 explicable with what divine lines and lights the exercise of 
 godliness and charity will mould and gild the hardest and 
 coldest countenance, neither to what darkness their departure 
 will consign the loveliest. 
 
 There is a certain period of the soul culture when it begins 
 to interfere with some of the characters of typical beauty 
 belonging to the bodily frame, the stirring of the intellect 
 wearing down the flesh, and the moral enthusiasm burning 
 its way out to heaven, through the emaciation of the earth- 
 en vessel; and that there is, in this indication of subduing 
 of the mortal by the immortal part, an ideal glory of perhaps 
 a purer and higher range than that of the more perfect ma- 
 terial form. We conceive, I think, more nobly of the weak 
 presence of Paul, than of the fair and ruddy countenance of 
 David. 
 
 The perfect loveliness of a woman's countenance can only 
 consist in that majestic peace, which is founded in the mem- 
 
234 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 ory of happy and useful years — full of sweet records ; and 
 from the joining of this with that yet more majestic childish- 
 ness, which is still full of change and promise ; — opening al- 
 ways—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. 
 
 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. 
 
 This is the true nature of home — it is the place of Peace ; 
 the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, 
 doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not 
 home; so far as the anxieties of the outer life penetrate 
 into it, and the inconsistently-minded, unknown, unloved, or 
 hostile society of the outer world is allowed by either hus- 
 band or wife to cross the threshold, it ceases to be home ; it 
 is then only a part of that outer world which you have roof eel 
 over, and lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place, 
 a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched over by 
 Household Gods, before whose faces none may come but those 
 whom tlie}^ can receive with love, — so far as it is this, and 
 roof and fire are types only of a nobler shade and light, — 
 shade as of the rock in a weary land, and light as of the Pharos 
 in the stormy sea ; — so far it vindicates the name, and fulfils 
 the praise, of home. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 235 
 
 And wherever a true wife comes, this home is always 
 round her. The stars only may be over her head ; the glow- 
 worm in the night-cold grass may be the only fire at her foot ; 
 but home is yet wherever she is ; and for a noble woman it 
 stretches far round her, better than ceiled with cedar, or 
 painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet light far, for 
 those who else were homeless. This, then, I believe to be, 
 — will you not admit it to be, — the woman's true place and 
 power? But do you not see that to fulfil this, she must — as 
 far as one can use such terms of a human creature — be in- 
 capable of error? So far as she rules, all must be right or 
 nothing is. She must be enduringly, incorruptibly good ; in- 
 stinctively, infallibly wise — wise, not for self -development, 
 but for self-renunciation; wise, not that she may set herself 
 above her husband, but that she may never fail from his 
 side ; wise, not with the narrowness of insolent and loveless 
 pride, but with the passionate gentleness of an infinitely va- 
 riable, because infinitely applicable, modesty of service — the 
 true changef ulness of woman. In that great sense — "La 
 donna elmobile," not " Quel pimn al vento;" no, nor yet 
 " Variable as the shade, by the light quivering aspen made ; " 
 but variable as the light, manifold in fair and serene division, 
 that it may take the color of all that it falls upon, and 
 exalt it. 
 
 Generally we are under an impression that a man's duties 
 are public, and a woman's private. But this is not altogether 
 
236 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 so. A man has a personal work or clnty, relating to his own 
 home, and a public work or duty, which is the expansion of 
 the other, relating to the State. So a woman has a personal 
 work and duty, relating to her own home, and a public work 
 and duty which is also the expansion of that. . . . The 
 man's work for his own home is, to secure its maintenance, 
 progress and defence ; the woman's to secure its order, com- 
 fort, and loveliness. 
 
 If men lived like men indeed, their houses would be temples 
 — temples which we should hardly dare to injure, and in 
 which it would make us holy to be permitted to live ; and 
 there must be a strange dissolution of natural affection, a 
 strange unthankfulness for all that homes have given and par- 
 ents taught, a strange consciousness that we have been unfaith- 
 ful to our father's honor, or that our own lives are not such as 
 would make our dwellings sacred to our children, when each 
 man would fain build to himself, and build for the little revo- 
 lution of his own life. . . . Our God is a household gocl, 
 as well as a heavenly one. He has an altar in every man's 
 dwelling. 
 
 A woman, in any rank of life, ought to know whatever her 
 husband is likely to know, but to know it in a different way. 
 His command of it should be foundational and progressive, 
 hers, general and accomplished for daily and helpful use. 
 Not but that it would often be wiser in men to learn things in 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 237 
 
 a womanly sort of way, for present use, and to seek for 
 the discipline and training of their mental powers in such 
 branches of study as will be afterwards fittest for social ser- 
 vice ; but, speaking broadly, a man ought to know any language 
 or science he learns, thoroughly, while a woman ought to know 
 the same language, or science, only so far as may enable her 
 to sympathize in her husband's pleasures, and in those of his 
 best friends. 
 
 * * 
 Consider whether we ought not to be more in the habit of 
 seeking honor from our descendants than from our ancestors ; 
 thinking it better to be nobly remembered than to be nobly 
 born ; and striving so to live, that our son and our son's sons, 
 for ages to come, might still lead their children to the doors 
 out of which we had been carried to the grave, saying: 
 " Look ! this was his home, this was his chamber." 
 
 # 
 
 There is a wide difference between elementary knowledge 
 and superficial knowledge — between a firm beginning and a 
 feeble smattering. A woman may always help her husband 
 by what she knows, however little ; by what she half -knows, 
 or mis-knows, she will only tease him. 
 * * # 
 
 What the woman is to be within her gates, as the centre of 
 order, the balm of distress, and the mirror of beauty, that she 
 is also to be without her gates, where order is more difficult, 
 distress more imminent, loveliness more rare. 
 
238 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 * # 
 
 Lady means " bread-giver " or " loaf -giver," and Lord means 
 " maintainer of laws," and both titles have reference, not to 
 the law which is maintained in the house, nor to the bread 
 which is given to the household ; but to law maintained for 
 the multitude, and to bread broken among the multitude. So 
 that a Lord has a legal claim only to his title in so far as he is 
 the maintainer of the justice of the Lord of Lords ; and a Lady 
 has legal claim to her title, only so far as she communicates 
 that help to the poor representatives of her Master, which 
 women once, ministering to Him of their substance, were per- 
 mitted to extend to that Master Himself ; and where she is 
 known, as He Himself once was, in breaking of bread. 
 
 # * 
 
 If there were to be any difference between a girl's education 
 and a boy's, I should say that of the two the girl should be 
 earlier led, as her intellect ripens faster, into deep and seri- 
 ous subjects ; and that her range of literature should be not 
 more, but less frivolous, calculated to add the qualities of 
 patience and seriousness to her natural poignancy of thought 
 and quickness of wit, and also to keep her in a lofty and 
 pure element of thought. 
 
 We are foolish, and without excuse foolish in speaking of 
 the " superiority" of one sex to the other, as if they could be 
 compared in similar things. — Each has what the other has 
 not; each completes the other, and is completed by the other : 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 239 
 
 they are in nothing alike, and the happiness and perfection of 
 both depends on each asking and receiving from the other 
 what the other only can give. 
 
 # # 
 The man's power is active, progressive, defensive. He is 
 eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender. 
 His intellect is for speculation and invention ; his energy for 
 adventure, for war, and for conquest, wherever war is just, 
 wherever conquest necessary. But the woman's power is for 
 rule, not for batMe, — and her intellect is not for invention or 
 creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement and decision. 
 She sees the qualities of things, their claims and their places. 
 Her great function is Praise ; she enters into no contest, but 
 infallibly judges the crown of contest. By her office and 
 place, she is protected from all danger and temptation. The 
 man, in his rough work in open world, must encounter all 
 peril and trial: — to him, therefore, the failure, the offence, 
 the inevitable error ; often he must be wounded, or subdued, 
 often misled, and always hardened. But he guards the woman 
 from all this ; within his house, as ruled by her, unless she 
 herself has sought it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no 
 cause of error or offence. 
 
 The best women are indeed necessarily the most difficult to 
 know ; they are recognized chiefly in the happiness of their 
 husband and the nobleness of their children ; they are only to 
 be divined, not discerned by the stranger. 
 
240 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 There never was a time when wilder words were spoken, 
 or more vain imagination permitted, respecting this ques- 
 tion ; — the relation of the womanly to the manly nature, — their 
 different capacities 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 could 
 ever be separated from the mission and the rights of Man ; 
 as if she and her lord were creatures of independent kind 
 and of irreconcilable claims. This, at least, is wrong. And not 
 less wrong — perhaps even more foolishly wrong — 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. 
 
 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 of what womanly mind and virtue are in 
 power and office with respect to man's; and how their re- 
 lations, rightly accepted, aid, and increase, the vigor, and 
 honor, and authority of both. . . . 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 dig- 
 nity of woman, and her mode of help to man. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 241 
 
 And first let us take Shakespeare. 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 purpose : Cordelia, Desdemona, Isabella, 
 Hermione, Imogen, Queen Katherine, Perdita, Sylvia, Viola, 
 Rosalind, Helena, and last and perhaps loveliest, Virgilia, are 
 all faultless; conceived in the highest heroic type of hu- 
 manity. . . . The catastrophe of every play is caused 
 always by the folly or fault of a man; the redemption, 
 if there be any, is by the wisdom and virtue of a woman, and 
 
 failing that, there is none. 
 
 # 
 
 Observe, among all the principal figures in Shakespeare's 
 plays, there is only one weak woman — Ophelia; and it is 
 because she fails Hamlet at the critical moment, and is not 
 and cannot in her nature be, a guide to him when he needs 
 her most, that all the bitter catastrophe follows. Finally, 
 though there are 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. Such, in broad light, is 
 Shakespeare's testimony to the position and character of 
 woman in human life. He represents them as infallibly 
 faithful and wise counsellors, — incorruptibly just and pure 
 examples — strong always to sanctify, even when they can- 
 not save. 
 
242 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 I ask you next to receive the witness of "Walter Scott . . . 
 note — in his imaginations of woman — with endless varieties 
 of grace, tenderness, and intellectual power, we find in all a 
 quite infallible and inevitable sense of dignity and justice : a 
 fearless, instant, untiring self-sacrifice to even the appearance 
 of duty, much more to its real claims. . . . Next take 
 graver and deeper testimony — that of the great Italians and 
 Greeks. ... I could multiply witness upon witness if 
 I had time — I would take Chaucer, and show you why he 
 wrote a Legend of Good Women ; but 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 Lawgiver of all the earth should be edu- 
 cated, rather than by his own kindred ; how that great Egyp- 
 tian people, wisest then of nations, gave to their Spirit of 
 Wisdom the form of a woman ; and into her hand, for a sym- 
 bol, the weaver's shuttle ; and how the name and the form of 
 that spirit, adopted, believed, and obeyed by the Greeks, be- 
 came 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. ... I ask you to give its legitimate value to the 
 testimony of these great poets and men of the world. . . . 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 243 
 
 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 relations between man and 
 woman. . . . Are Shakespeare and Eschylus, Dante and 
 Homer, merely dressing dolls for us ; or worse than dolls, 
 unnatural visions, the realization of which, were it possible, 
 would bring anarchy into all households and ruin into all 
 affections? Nay, if you could suppose this, take lastly the 
 evidence of facts, given by the human heart itself. In all 
 Christian ages which have been remarkable for their purity 
 or progress, there has been absolute yielding of obedient 
 devotion, by the lover, to his mistress. I say obedient — not 
 merely enthusiastic and worshipping in imagination, but en- 
 tirely subject, receiving from the beloved woman, however 
 young, not only the encouragement, the praise, and the re- 
 ward of all toil, but so far as any choice is open, or any ques- 
 tion difficult of decision, the direction of all toil . . . the 
 first and necessary impulse of every truly taught and knightly 
 heart is this of blind service to its lady ; that where that true 
 faith and captivity are not, all wayward and wicked passions 
 must be ; and that in this rapturous obedience to the single 
 love of his youth, is the sanctification of all man's strength, 
 and the continuance of all his purposes. . . . You can- 
 not think that the buckling on of the knight's armor by his 
 lady's hand was a mere caprice of romantic fashion. It is 
 the type of an eternal truth — that the soul's armor is never 
 well set to the heart unless a woman's hand has braced it; 
 
244 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 and it is only when she braces it loosely that the honor of 
 manhood fails. . . . This much respecting the relations 
 of lovers I believe you will accept. But what we too often 
 doubt is the fitness of the continuance 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 affections 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 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 you not see how ignoble 
 this is? as well as how unreasonable? — Do you not feel that 
 marriage — when it is marriage at all — is only the seal 
 which needs the vowed transition of temporary into untir- 
 ing service, and of fitful into eternal love? 
 
 Have you ever considered what a deep under meaning there 
 lies, or at least may be read, if we choose, in our custom of 
 strewing flowers before those whom we think most happy? — 
 Do you suppose it is merely to deceive them into the hope that 
 happiness is always to fall thus in showers at their feet? that 
 wherever they pass they will tread on herbs of sweet 
 scent, and that the rough ground will be made smooth for 
 them by depths of roses? So surely as they believe that they 
 will have instead, to walk on bitter herbs, and thorns ; and 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 245 
 
 the only softness for their feet will be of snow. But it is not 
 thus intended they should believe ; there is a better meaning in 
 that old custom. The path of a good woman is indeed strewn 
 with flowers ; but they rise behind her steps, not before them. 
 " Her feet have touched the meadows, and left the daisies 
 rosy." — You think that only a lover's fancy; — false and 
 vain! How if it could be true? You think this also, per- 
 haps, only a poet's fancy — 
 
 ' ' Even the light harebell raised its head, 
 Elastic from her airy tread " — 
 
 But it is little to say of a woman, that she only does not de- 
 stroy Avhere she passes. She should revive; the harebell 
 should bloom, not stoop, as she passes. You think I am going 
 into wild hyperbole? — Pardon me, not a whit, — I mean 
 what I say in calm English, spoken in resolute truth. You 
 have heard it said — (and I believe there is more than fancy 
 even in that saying, but let it pass for a fanciful one) that 
 flowers only flourish rightly in the garden of some one who 
 loves them. I know you would like that to be true ; you would 
 think it to be a pleasant magic if you could flush your flowers 
 into brighter bloom by a kind look upon them; nay, more, if 
 your look had the power, not only to cheer, but to guard them 
 — if you could bid the black blight turn away ; and the knotted 
 caterpillar spare ; if you could bid the dew fall upon them iu 
 the drought, and say, to the South wind, in frost — " Come, 
 thou South, and breathe upon my garden, that the spices of it 
 
246 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 may flow out." This you would think a great thing ! And do 
 you think it not a greater thing, that all this (and how much 
 more than this) you can clo, for fairer flowers than these 
 
 — flowers that could bless you for having blessed them, and 
 will love you for having loved them ; — flowers that have 
 eyes like yours, and thoughts like yours, and lives like yours ; 
 which once saved, you save forever ! Is this only a little 
 power? — Far among the moorlands and the rocks, far in the 
 darkness of the terrible streets, — these feeble flowerets are 
 lying, with all their fresh leaves torn, and their stems broken 
 
 — will you never go down to them, nor set them in order in 
 their little fragrant beds, nor fence them in their shuddering 
 from the fierce wind? Shall morning follow morning, for 
 you, but not for them ? .... No dawn rise to breathe 
 upon these living banks of wild violet, and woodbine and 
 rose ; nor call to you, through your casement, — call — (not 
 giving you the name of the English poet's lady, but the name 
 of Dante's great Matilda, who on the edge of happy Lethe, 
 stands wreathing flowers with flowers) saying : — 
 
 " Come into the garden, Maud, 
 
 Tor the black bat, night, has flown, 
 
 And the woodbine spices are waftecl abroad, 
 
 And the musk of the roses blown ! " 
 
 Will you not go down among them? Among those sweet liv- 
 ing things, whose new courage, sprung from the earth with 
 the deep color of heaven upon it, is starting up in strength of 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 247 
 
 goodly spire ; and whose purity, washed from the dust, is open- 
 ing, bud by bud, into the flower of promise — and still they 
 turn to you, and for you, "The Larkspur listens — I hear, I 
 hear! and the Lily whispers — I wait." Did you notice that 
 I missed two lines, when I read j^ou that first stanza; and 
 think that I had forgotten them? — Hear them now : — 
 
 " Come into the garden, Maud, 
 For the black bat, night, has flown ; 
 Come into the garden, Maud, 
 I am here at the gate, alone." 
 
 Who is it, think you, who stands at the gate of this sweeter 
 garden, alone, waiting for you? Did you ever hear not of a 
 Maud, but a Madeleine, who went down to her garden in the 
 dawn, and found one waiting at the gate, whom she supposed 
 to be the gardener? Have you not sought Him often: — 
 sought Him in vain, all through the night : — sought Him in 
 vain at the gate of that old garden where the fiery sword is 
 set? He is never there, but at the gate of this garden He is 
 waiting always — waiting to take your hand — ready to go 
 down to see the fruits of the valley, to see whether the vine 
 has flourished, and the pomegranate budded. There you shall 
 see with Him the little tendrils of the vines that His hand is 
 guiding — there you shall see the pomegranate springing where 
 His hand cast the sanguine seed: — more; you shall see the 
 troops of the angel keepers, that, with their wings wave away 
 the hungry birds from the pathsides where He has sown — 
 
248 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 and call to each other between the vineyard rows, " Take us 
 the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines, for our vines 
 have tender grapes." Oh — you queens — you queens ! among 
 the hills and happy greenwood of this land of yours, shall the 
 foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, and in your 
 cities, shall the stones cry out against you, that they are the 
 only pillows where the Son of Man can lay His head? 
 
 * * 
 You fancy perhaps, 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 ; what- 
 ever 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 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. 
 
 * 
 
 A Myth, in its simplest definition, is a story with a meaning 
 
 attached to it, other than it seems to have at first ; and the 
 
 fact that it has such a meaning is generally marked by some 
 
 of its circumstances being extraordinary, or in the common 
 
 use of the word, unnatural. 
 
 * 
 
 To the mean person the myth always meant little ; to the 
 noble person, much : and the greater their familiarity with it, 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 249 
 
 the more contemptible it became to the one, and the more 
 sacred to the other ; until vulgar commentators explained it 
 entirely away, while Virgil made it the crowning glory of his 
 choral hymn to Hercules : 
 
 "Around thee, powerless to infect thy soul, 
 Rose, in his crested crowd, the Lerna worm." 
 
 And although, in any special toil of the hero's life, the moral 
 interpretation was rarely with definiteness attached to its 
 event, yet in the whole course of the life, not only a symbolical 
 meaning, but the warrant for the existence of a real spiritual 
 power, was apprehended of all men. Hercules was no dead 
 hero, to be remembered only as a victor over monsters of the 
 past — harmless now, as slain. He was the perpetual type 
 and mirror of heroism, and its present and living aid against 
 every ravenous form of human trial and pain. 
 
 In all the most beautiful and enduring myths, we shall find, 
 not only a literal story of a real person, — not only a parallel 
 imagery of moral principle, — but an underlying worship of 
 natural phenomenon, out of which both have sprung, and in 
 which both for ever remain rooted. 
 
 In nearly every myth of importance, you have to discern these 
 three structural parts — the root and the two branches : — 
 the root, in physical existence, sun or sky, or cloud, or sea; 
 
250 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 then the personal incarnation of that ; becoming a trusted and 
 companionable deity, with whom you may walk hand in 
 hand, as a child with its brother or its sister ; and, lastly, the 
 moral significance of the image, which is in all the great 
 myths eternally and beneficently true. 
 
 You cannot make a myth unless you have something to 
 make it of. You cannot tell a secret which you don't know. 
 If the myth is about the sky, it must have been made by some- 
 body who had looked at the sky. If the myth is about jus- 
 tice and fortitude, it must have been made by some one who 
 knew what it was to be just or patient. According to the 
 quantity of understanding in the person will be the quantity 
 of significance in his fable. . . . And the real meaning 
 of any myth is that which it has at the noblest age of the 
 nation among whom it is current. ... As the intelligence 
 and passion of the race develop, they cling to and nourish 
 their beloved and sacred legend; leaf by leaf it expands 
 under the touch of more pure affections, and more delicate 
 imagination, until at last the perfect fable burgeons out into 
 symmetry of milky stem, and honied bell. 
 
 # # 
 The first of requirements, for the right reading of myths, 
 is the understanding of the nature of all true vision by noble 
 persons; namely, that it is founded in constant laws com- 
 mon to all human nature ; that it perceives, however darkly, 
 things which are for all ages true ; — that we can only under- 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 251 
 
 stand it so far as we have some perception of the same truth : 
 — and that its fulness is developed and manifested more and 
 more by the reverberation of it from minds of the same 
 mirror-temper, in succeeding ages. You will understand 
 Homer better by seeing his reflection in Dante, as you may 
 trace new forms and softer colors in a hill-side, redoubled 
 by a lake. 
 
 You must always be prepared to read Greek legends as you 
 trace threads through figures on a silken damask ; the same 
 thread runs through the web, but it makes part of different 
 figures. 
 
 * * 
 
 Examine— the natural myths in the groups of the plants 
 which would be used at any country dinner, over which 
 Athena would, in her simplest household authority, cheer- 
 fully rule. Suppose Horace's favorite dish of beans, with 
 the bacon; potatoes; some savory stuffing of onions and 
 herbs with the meat; celery, and a radish or two, with the 
 cheese ; nuts and apples for dessert, and brown bread. 
 
 The beans are from earliest time the most important and 
 interesting of the seeds of the great tribe of plants from 
 which came the Latin and French name for all kitchen vege- 
 tables — things that are gathered with the hand — podded 
 seeds that cannot be reaped, or beaten, or shaken down, but 
 must be gathered green. " Leguminous " plants, all of them 
 having flowers like butterflies, seeds in pods, — smooth and 
 
252 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 tender leaves, divided into many minor ones ; — strange ad- 
 juncts of tendril, for climbing (and sometimes of thorn) : — ■ 
 exquisitely sweet, yet pure, scents of blossom, and almost 
 always harmless, if not serviceable, seeds. It is of all tribes 
 of plants, the most definite ; its blossoms being entirely limited 
 in their parts, and not passing into other forms. It is also 
 the most usefully extended in range and scale ; familiar in 
 the height of the forest — acacia, laburnum, Judas-tree ; fa- 
 miliar in the sown field — bean and vetch and pea ; familiar 
 in the pasture — in every form of clustered clover and sweet 
 trefoil tracery; the most entirely serviceable and human of 
 all orders of plants. Next in the potato, we have the scarcely 
 innocent underground stem of one of a tribe set aside for 
 evil ; having the deadly nightshade for its queen, and includ- 
 ing the henbane, the witch's mandrake, and the worst nat- 
 ural curse of modern civilization — tobacco. And the strange 
 thing about this tribe is, that though thus set aside for evil, 
 they are not a group distinctly separate from those that are 
 happier in function. . . . The nightshades are, in fact, 
 primroses with a curse upon them — and a sign set in their 
 petals, by which the deadly and condemned flowers may al- 
 ways be known from the innocent ones. . . . Next in the 
 celery and radish you have the two great groups of umbelled 
 and cruciferous plants; alike in conditions of rank among 
 herbs . . . both of them mean and poor in the blossom 
 . . . both of them having the most curious influence on 
 human character in the temperate zones of the earth, from 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 253 
 
 the days of the parsley crown, and hemlock drink, and 
 mocked Euripidean chervil, until now . . . plants that 
 are of some humble beauty and of endless use, when they are 
 chosen and cultivated . . . reaching some subdued de- 
 lightf ulness in the lady's smock and the wallflower : — for 
 the most part, they have every floral quality meanly, and in 
 vain, — they are white, without purity; golden, without pre- 
 ciousness ; redundant, without riches ; devidecl, without fine- 
 ness ; massive, without strength ; and slender, without grace. 
 Yet think over the useful vulgarity of theirs ; and of the re- 
 lations of German and English peasant character to its food 
 of kraut and cabbage, and you will begin to feel what pur- 
 poses of the forming spirit are in these distinctions of 
 species. 
 
 Next we take the nuts and apples, — the nuts represent- 
 ing one of the groups of catkined trees, whose blossoms are 
 only tufts and dust; and the other, the rose tribe, in which 
 fruit and flower alike have been the types, to the highest 
 races of men, of all passionate temptation, or pure delight, 
 from the coveting of Eve to the crowning of the Madonna. 
 . . . We must go on to the humblest group of all, yet the 
 most wonderful, that of the grass, which has given us our 
 bread ; and from that we will go back to the herbs. 
 
 The vast family of plants, which, under rain, make the earth 
 green for man, and, under sunshine, give him bread, and, in 
 their springing in the early year, mixed with their native 
 flowers, have given us the thought and word of " Spring," 
 
254 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 divide themselves broadly into three great groups — the 
 grasses, sedges, and rushes. The grasses are essentially a 
 clothing for healthy and pure ground, watered by occasional 
 rain, but in itself dry, and fit for all cultivated pasture and 
 corn. . . . The sedges are essentially the clothing of 
 waste and more or less poor or uncultivable soils — coarse in 
 their structure. . . . 
 
 In both the sedges and grasses the blossom has a common 
 structure, though undeveloped in the sedges, but composed 
 always of groups of double husks, which have mostly a spi- 
 nous process in the centre, sometimes projecting into a long 
 awn or beard ; this central process being characteristic also 
 of the ordinary leaves of mosses, as if a moss were a kind of 
 ear of corn made permanently green on the ground, and with 
 a new and distinct fructification. But the rushes differ wholly 
 from the sedge and grass in their blossom structure. It is 
 not a dual cluster, but a twice threefold one, so far separated 
 from the grasses, and closely connected with a higher order 
 of plants, to which let me give the general name of Drosidse 
 or dew-plant — plants delighting in interrupted moisture. . . 
 
 Now observe you are to divide the whole family of the 
 herbs of the field into three great groups — dew-plants, sedges, 
 and grasses — the Drosidae are divided into five great orders 
 — lilies, asphodels, amaryllids, irids and rushes. 
 
 No tribes of flowers have had so great, so varied, or so 
 healthy an influence on man as the Drosidae or dew-plants — 
 depending not so much on the whiteness of some of their 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 255 
 
 blossoms, or the radiance of others, as on the strength and 
 delicacy of the substance of their petals ; enabling them to 
 take forms of faultless elastic curvature, either in cups, as 
 the crocus, or expanding bells, as the true lily — or heath- 
 like bells, as the hyacinth, or bright and perfect stars, like 
 the Star of Bethlehem, or, when they are affected by the strange 
 reflex of the serpent nature which forms the labiate group of 
 all flowers, closing into forms of exquisitely fantastic symme- 
 try in the gladiolus. Put by their side their Nereid sisters, 
 the water-lilies, and you have in them the origin of the love- 
 liest forms of ornamental design, and the most powerful 
 floral myths yet recognized among human spirits, born by the 
 streams of Ganges, Nile, Arno, and Avon. 
 
 For consider a little what each of these tribes have been to 
 the spirit of man. First in their nobleness ; the Lilies gave 
 the lily of the Annunciation ; the Asphodels, the flower of the 
 Elysian fields ; the Irids, the fleur-de-lys of chivalry ; and the 
 Amaryllids, Christ's lily of the field : while the rush, trodden 
 always under foot, became the emblem of humility. Then 
 take each of the tribes, and consider the extent of their 
 lower influence. Perdita's — "The crown imperial, lilies of 
 all kinds," are the first tribe ; which, giving the type of per- 
 fect purity in the Madonna's lily, have, by their lovely form, 
 influenced the entire decorative design of Italian sacred art; 
 while ornament of war was continually enriched by the curves 
 of the triple petals of the Florentine " Giglio " and French 
 fleur-de-lys ; so that it is impossible to count their influence 
 
256 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 for good in the middle ages, partly as a symbol of womanly 
 character, and partly of the utmost brightness and refinement 
 of chivalry in the city which was the flower of cities. 
 
 Afterwards, the group of the turban-lilies, or tulips did 
 some mischief — their splendid stains having made them the 
 favorite caprice of florists: — but they may be pardoned all 
 such guilt for the pleasure they have given in cottage gardens, 
 and are yet to give, when lowly life may again be possible 
 among us ; and the crimson bars of the tulips in their trim 
 beds, with their likeness in crimson bars of morning above 
 them, and its dew glittering heavy, globed in their glossy cups, 
 may be loved better than the grey nettles of the ash heap, un- 
 der grey sky, unveined by vermilion or by gold. . . . 
 
 . . . . The star-group, of the squills, garlics, and on- 
 ions, has always caused me great wonder. I cannot under- 
 stand why its beauty, and serviceableness, should have been 
 associated with the rank scent which has been really among 
 the most powerful means of degrading peasant life, and sepa- 
 rating it from that of the higher classes. 
 
 The belled group of the hyacinth and convallaria, is as del- 
 icate as the other is coarse: the unspeakable azure light 
 along the ground of the wood hyacinth in English spring; 
 the grape hyacinth, which is in South France, as if a cluster 
 of grapes and a hive of honey had been distilled and com- 
 pressed together into one small boss of celled and beaded blue ; 
 the lilies of the valley everywhere, in each sweet and wild re- 
 cess of rocky lands ; count the influence of these on childish 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 257 
 
 and innocent life ; then measure the mythic power of the hya- 
 cinth and asphodel as connected with Greek thoughts of im- 
 mortality; finally take their useful and nourishing power in 
 ancient and modern peasant life, and it will be strange if you 
 do not feel what fixed relation exists between the agency of 
 the creating spirit in them, and in us who live by them. . . 
 . The golden lily and crocus, together with the asphodel, 
 retain always the old Greeks' fondest thoughts — they are the 
 only " golden" flowers that are to burn on the trees and float 
 on the streams of paradise. 
 
 The spirit of these Draconidse seems to pass more or less 
 into other flowers, whose forms are properly pure vases ; but it 
 affects some of them slightly — others not at all. It never 
 strongly affects the heaths ; never once the roses ; but it enters 
 like an evil spirit into the buttercup, and turns it into a lark- 
 spur, with a black, spotted, grotesque centre, and a strange, 
 broken blue, gorgeous and intense, yet impure, glittering on 
 the surface as if it were strewn with broken glass and stained 
 or darkening irregularly into red. And then at last the ser- 
 pent charlh changes the ranunculus into monks-hood; and 
 makes it poisonous. It enters into the forget-me-not, and 
 the star of heavenly turquoise is corrupted into the viper's 
 bugloss, darkened with the same strange red as the lark- 
 spur, and fretted into a fringe of thorn ; it enters together 
 with a strange insect-spirit, into the asphodels, and they 
 change into spotted orchidea ; it touches the poppy, it becomes 
 
258 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTT. 
 
 a f umaria ; the iris, and it pouts into a gladiolus ; the lily, and 
 it chequers itself into a snake's-head, and secretes in the deep 
 of its bell, drops, pot of venom indeed, but honey-dew, as if 
 it were a healing serpent. For there is an Esculapian as well 
 as an evil serpentry among the Draconidse, .... a vast 
 group of herbs for healing, — all draconid in form — spotted, 
 and crested, and from their lip-like corollas named " labiatse ; " 
 full of various balm, and warm strength for healing, yet all 
 of them without splendid honor or perfect beauty, " ground 
 ivies," richest when crushed under the foot ; the best sweet- 
 ness and gentle brightness of the robes of the field, —thyme, 
 and marjoram and euphrasy. 
 
 The sum of all this is, that over the entire surface of the 
 earth and its waters, as influenced by the power of the air 
 under solar light, there is developed a series of changing 
 forms, in clouds, plants, and animals, all of which have refer- 
 ence in their action or nature, to the human intelligence that 
 perceives them ; and on which, in their aspect of horror and 
 beauty, and their qualities of good and evil, there is engraved 
 a series of myths, or words of the forming power, #iiich, ac- 
 cording to the true passion and energy of the human race, 
 they have been enabled to read into religion. And this form- 
 ing power has been by all nations partly confused with the 
 breath or air through which it acts, and partly understood as a 
 creative wisdom, proceeding from the Supreme Deity ; but en- 
 tering into and inspiring all intelligences that work in harmony 
 with Him. 
 
FRAGMENTS, 
 
 The truth of Nature is a part of the truth of God ; to him 
 who does not search it out, darkness, as it is to him who does 
 infinity. 
 
 "Whenever people do not look at nature they always think 
 
 that they can improve her. 
 
 # 
 
 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. 
 
 * 
 
 Practice patience, I can tell you that requires nearly as much 
 practicing as music ; and we are continually losing our les- 
 sons when the master comes. 
 
 To all true modesty the necessary business is not inlook but 
 outlook, and especially uplook. 
 
 We are not sent into the world to do anything into which 
 we cannot put our hearts. 
 
 259 
 
260 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 * 
 
 Physical purity — actual love of sweet light and fair color. 
 . . . Purifying, literally, purging and cleansing. That is 
 the first ' ' sacred art " all men have to learn. 
 
 * 
 
 To cultivate sympathy you must be among living creatures, 
 and thinking about them; and to cultivate admiration you 
 must be among beautiful things, and looking at them. 
 
 No more dangerous snare is set by the fiends for human 
 frailty, than the belief that our own enemies are also the 
 enemies of God. 
 
 * * 
 I rather believe that in periods of new effort and violent 
 change, disappointment is a wholesome medicine ; and that in 
 the secret of it, as in the twilight so beloved of Titian, we 
 may see the colors of things with deeper truth than in the 
 more dazzling sunshine. 
 
 The charge of plagiarism is hardly ever made but by plag- 
 iarists, and persons of the unhappy class who do not believe 
 in honesty but in evidence. 
 
 Noble mystery differs from ignoble, in being a veil thrown 
 between us and something definite, known and substantial; 
 but the ignoble mystery is a veil cast before chaos, the stu- 
 dious concealment of Nothing. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 261 
 
 
 What we like determines what we are, and to teach taste is 
 inevitably to form character. 
 
 * 
 
 Let heart-sickness pass beyond a certain bitter point, and 
 
 the heart loses its life forever. 
 
 # 
 
 # * 
 
 Be in your heart a Sister of Charity always, without either 
 
 veiled or voluble declaration of it. 
 
 # 
 
 There are deadly feelings of delight ; but the natural ones 
 
 are vital, necessary to very life. 
 
 # 
 
 * * 
 
 The worst romance is not so corrupting as false history, 
 
 false philosophy, or false political essays. 
 
 * 
 
 Great men do not play stage tricks with doctrines of life 
 
 and death ; only little men do that. 
 
 * 
 
 What must of necessity be clone, you can always find out, 
 beyond question, how to do. 
 
 A precious thing is all the more precious to us if it has 
 been won by work or economy. 
 
 The very cheapness of literature is making even wise peo- 
 ple forget that if a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 * 
 
 It is impossible for every one rightly trained — to love 
 any one whose gentle counsel he cannot trust, or whose 
 prayerful command he can hesitate to obey. 
 
 There is no music in a " rest" that I know of, but there's 
 the making of music in it. And people are always missing 
 that part of the life-melody, and scrambling on without 
 counting — not that it's easy to count ; but nothing on which 
 so much depends ever is easy. People are always talking of 
 perseverance and courage and fortitude ; but patience is the 
 finest and worthiest part of fortitude, and the rarest too. 
 
 # 
 
 Patience lies at the root of all pleasure, as well as of all 
 powers. Hope herself ceases to be happiness, when Impa- 
 tience companions her. 
 
 * 
 
 " No fountain from a rocky cave 
 
 E'er tripped with foot so free, 
 She seemed as happy as a wave 
 
 That dances on the sea." 
 
 A girl is always like that when everything is right with her. 
 
 No man ever lived a right life who had not been chastened 
 by woman's love, strengthened by her courage, and guided 
 by her discretion. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 * # 
 No human actions ever were intended by the Maker of 
 men to be guided by balances of expediency, but by balances 
 of justice. 
 
 Treat the servant kindly, with the idea of turning his 
 gratitude to account, and you will get, as you deserve, no 
 gratitude, nor any value for your kindness; but treat him 
 kindly without any economical purpose, and all economical pur- 
 poses will be answered; in this, as in all other matters, who- 
 soever will save his life shall lose it, and whoso loses it shall 
 find it. 
 
 Everything has its own wonders. 
 
 There are some enemies so base that even to hold them 
 captive is a kind of dishonor. 
 
 There is a true Church wherever one hand meets another 
 helpfully, and that is the only holy or Mother Church which 
 ever was, or ever shall be. 
 
 There is but one way in which man can ever help God — 
 that is, by letting God help him; and there is no way in 
 which God's name is more guiltily taken in vain, than by call- 
 ing the abandonment of our own work, the performance of 
 His. 
 
264 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 The word " virtue " means not " conduct," but M strength," 
 vital energy in the heart. 
 
 When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows 
 out of their work, as the color-petals out of a fruitful flower ; 
 — when they are faithfully helpful and compassionate, all 
 their emotions become steady, deep, perpetual, and vivifying 
 to the soul as the natural pulse to the body. 
 
 Unless you are deliberately kind to every creature, you will 
 often be cruel to many. 
 
 Life ! — some of us are ready enough to throw that away, 
 
 joyless as we have made it. But — " Station in Life " — how 
 
 many of us are ready to quit that? Is it not always the 
 
 great objection, where there is question of finding something 
 
 useful to do — " We cannot leave our Stations in Life?" 
 
 * 
 
 I do not say that a man cannot think, having false basis 
 and material for thought, but that a false thought is worse 
 than the want of thought, and therefore is not art. 
 
 # # 
 
 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 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 265 
 
 direct connection with the mystery of that communicated 
 life ; and all the strength, and all the arts of men, are meas- 
 ured by, and founded upon, their reverence for the passion, 
 and their guardianship of the purity of Love. 
 
 A man's happiness consists infinitely more in admiration 
 of the faculties of others than in confidence in his own. 
 That reverent admiration is the perfect human gift in him ; 
 all lower animals are happy and noble in the degree they can 
 share it. A dog reverences you, a fly does not; the capacity 
 of partly understanding a creature above him, is the dog's no- 
 bility. Increase such reverence in human beings and you in- 
 crease daily their happiness, peace and dignity ; take it away 
 and you make them wretched as well as vile. 
 
 Any law which we magnify and keep through pride is al- 
 ways the law of the letter; but that which we love and keep 
 through humility is the law of the Spirit ; and the letter killeth, 
 
 but the Spirit giveth life. 
 
 * 
 
 It is popularly supposed that it benefits a nature to invent a 
 want. But the fact is, that the true benefit is in extinguish- 
 ing a want, in living with as few wants as possible. 
 
 # 
 
 The true strength of every human soul is to be dependent 
 on as many nobler as it can discern, and to be depended upon, 
 by as many inferior as it can reach. 
 
206 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 
 When power of any kind is given, there is responsibility at- 
 tached. 
 
 # 
 
 Pride is the most universal, perhaps the most fatal of all 
 sin, fretting the whole depth of our humanity into storm. 
 
 Give not only noble teachings, but noble teachers. 
 
 # # 
 He did pause in anger — but bidding its time, which the 
 anger of a strong man always can, and burn hotter for the 
 waiting, which is one of the chief reasons for Christians be- 
 ing told not to let the sun go clown upon it. 
 
 m 
 
 Under all sorrow there is the force of virtue ; over all ruin, 
 the restoring charity of God. 
 
 The great Book, of which no syllable was ever yet to be un- 
 derstood but through a deed. 
 
 When you begin to think of things rightly, the ideas of 
 smallness and largeness pass away. 
 
 We can make ourselves uncomfortable to any extent with 
 perhapses. You may stick perhapses into your minds, like 
 pins, till you are as uncomfortable as the Liliputians made 
 Gulliver with their arrows when he would not lie quiet. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 207 
 
 Some dreams are truer than some wakings. 
 * 
 
 All one's life is a music, if one touches the notes rightly, 
 and in time. But there must be no hurry. 
 
 No road to any good knowledge is wholly among the lilies 
 and the grass ; there is rough climbing to be done always. 
 
 * # 
 
 My own belief is, that the best study of all is the most beau- 
 tiful ; and that a quiet glade of forest, or the nook of a lake 
 shore, are worth all the schoolrooms in Christendom, when 
 once you are past the multiplication table. 
 
 The faults of a work of art, are the faults of its workman, 
 
 and its virtues his virtues. 
 
 * 
 
 You should at least know two Latin words ; recollect that 
 "mors" means death and delaying, and "vita" means life 
 and growing, and try always not to mortify yourself, but to 
 
 vivify yourself. 
 
 * 
 
 * # 
 
 A thing is worth precisely what it can do for you, not what 
 
 you choose to pay for it. 
 
 * 
 
 The true instruments of reformation are employment and 
 reward : — not punishment. 
 
268 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 What you were, others may answer for, what you tried to 
 
 be, you must answer for yourself — was the heart pure and 
 
 true? 
 
 # 
 
 A wholesome human employment is the first and best 
 method of education, mental, as well as bodily. 
 
 In a general way remember it is a far better thing to find 
 out other great men, than to become one yourself : for you 
 can but become one at best, but you may bring others to the 
 light in numbers. 
 
 # * 
 Knowledge is good, and light is good, yet man perished in 
 seeking knowledge, and moths perished in seeking light ; and if 
 we, who are crushed before the moth, will not accept such mys- 
 tery as is needful for us, we shall perish in like manner. 
 But accepted in humbleness, it instantly becomes an element 
 of pleasure, and I think that every rightly constituted mind 
 ought to rejoice, not so much in knowing anything clearly, as 
 
 in feeling that there is infinitely more which it cannot know. 
 
 * 
 
 The more readily we admit the possibility of our own cher- 
 ished convictions being mixed with error, the more vital and 
 helpful whatever is right in them will become ; and no error 
 is so conclusively fatal as the idea that God will not allow us 
 to err, thougj[i He has allowed all other men to do so. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 269 
 
 The best thoughts are generally those which come without 
 
 being forced, one does not know how. 
 
 * 
 
 The greatest picture is that which conveys to the mind of 
 
 the spectator the greatest number of the greatest ideas. 
 
 # 
 
 When the time comes for us to wake out of the world's 
 sleep, why should it be otherwise than out of the dreams of the 
 night? Singing of birds, first, broken and low, as not to dying 
 eyes, but eyes that wake to Life, ' ' the casement slowly grows a 
 glimmering square ; " and then the gray, and then the rose of 
 dawn ; and last the light whose going forth is to the ends of 
 Heaven. 
 
 # * 
 
 The flower is to him a living creature, with histories writ- 
 ten on its leaves, and passions breathing in its motion. . . 
 It is a voice rising from the earth, a new chord of the mind's 
 music. 
 
 * * 
 
 All the purposes of good that the beauty of nature can ac- 
 complish may be better fulfilled by the meanest of her reali- 
 ties than by the brighest of imitations. For prolonged enter- 
 tainment no picture can be compared with the wealth of 
 interest which may be found in the herbage of the poorest 
 field, or blossoms of the narrowest copse. As suggestive of 
 supernatural power, the passing away of a fitful rain-cloud, 
 
270 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 or opening of dawn, are in their change and mystery more 
 pregnant than any picture. A child would, I suppose, receive 
 a religious lesson from a flower more willingly than from a 
 print of one, and might be taught to understand the nine- 
 teenth Psalm, on a starry night, better than by diagrams of 
 the constellations. 
 
 The power of the masters is shown by their self-annihila- 
 tion. It is commensurate with the degree in which they 
 themselves appear not in their work. The harp of the min- 
 strel is untruly touched, if his own glory is all that it re- 
 cords. 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. 
 
 Believe me, every virtue of the higher phases of manly 
 character begins in this : — in truth and modesty before the 
 face of all maidens ; in truth and pity, or truth and reverence 
 
 to all womanhood. 
 
 # 
 
 * # 
 
 Among the many mistakes we have lately fallen into, touch- 
 ing Charity, one of the worst is our careless habit of always 
 thinking of her as pitiful, and to be concerned only with 
 miserable and wretched persons; whereas her chief joy is in 
 being reverent and concerned mainly with noble and vener- 
 able persons. Her poorest function is the giving of pity ; 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 271 
 
 her highest is the giving of praise. For there are many 
 men, who, however fallen, do not like to be pitied ; but all 
 men, however far risen, like to be praised. 
 
 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. 
 
 The nobleness of life depends on its consistency, — clearness 
 of purpose, — quiet and ceaseless energy. All doubt, and 
 repenting, and botching, and retouching, and wondering 
 what it will be best to do next, are vice, as well as misery. 
 
 Your intelligence should always be far in advance of your 
 act. Whenever you do not know what you are about, you 
 are sure to do wrong. 
 
 The great difficulty is always to open people's eyes; to 
 touch their feelings and break their hearts is easy ; the diffi- 
 cult thing is to break their heads. 
 
 The best virtues are shown in fighting faults. 
 
 The crystal must be either dirty or clean. . . . So it is 
 with one's hands, and with one's heart — only you can wash 
 
272 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 your hands without changing them, but not hearts, nor 
 
 crystals. On the whole, while you are young, it will be as 
 
 well to take care that your hearts don't want much washing ; 
 
 for they may perhaps need wringing also, when they do. 
 
 * 
 
 No study that is worth pursuing seriously can be pursued 
 without effort; but we need never make the effort painful 
 merely for the sake of preserving our dignity. 
 
 Wisdom stands calling at the corners of the streets, and 
 
 the blessing of heaven waits ready to rain down upon us, 
 
 deeper than the rivers, and broader than the dew, if only we 
 
 will obey the first principles of humanity, and the first plain 
 
 precepts of the skies: "Execute true judgment and show 
 
 mercy and compassion every man to his brother, and let none 
 
 of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart." 
 
 # 
 
 Your own character will form your style ; your own zeal 
 will direct it; your own obstinacy or ignorance, my limit or 
 exaggerate it. 
 
 No man is worth reading to form your style, who does not 
 
 mean what he says ; nor was any great style ever invented 
 
 but by some man who meant what he said. 
 
 # 
 
 For us every day is a day of judgment — every day is a 
 Dies Irae, and writes its irrevocable verdict in the flame of 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 273 
 
 its West. Think you that judgment waits till the doors of 
 the grave are opened? It waits at the doors of your houses 
 
 — it waits at the corners of your streets; we are in the 
 midst of judgment — the insects that we crush are our judges 
 
 — the moments we fret away are our judges — the elements 
 that feed us, judge as they minister — and the pleasures that 
 deceive us judge as they indulge. 
 
 * 
 
 Sentiment, that thing which many wise people affect to de- 
 spise, is the commanding thing as regards popular impulses, 
 and popular action. 
 
 * 
 
 The best romance becomes dangerous, if, by its excite- 
 ment, it renders the ordinary course of life uninteresting, 
 and increases the morbid thirst for useless acquaintance 
 with scenes in which we shall never be called upon to act. 
 
 * 
 
 Whether novels, or poetry, or history be read, they should 
 be chosen, not for what is out of them, but for what is in 
 them. 
 
 * 
 
 There is never any real doubt about the path, but you may 
 have to walk very slowly. 
 
 * 
 
 Did you ever hear of anything else so ill-named as the phan- 
 tom called the " Philosopher's " Stone? A talisman that shall 
 turn base metal into precious metal, nature acknowledges not ; 
 
274 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 nor would any but fools seek after it. But a talisman to turn 
 base souls into noble souls, nature has given us ! and that is 
 a " Philosopher's " Stone indeed, but it is a stone which the 
 builders refuse. 
 
 Do not talk but of what you know ; do not think but of what 
 you have materials to think justly upon ; and do not look for 
 things only that you like when there are others to be seen. 
 
 There is not the thing left to the choice of man to do or not 
 to do, but there is some degree of duty involved in his deter- 
 mination. 
 
 # 
 
 * * 
 
 Out of suffering comes the serious mincl ; out of salvation, 
 the grateful heart ; out of endurance, fortitude ; out of deliver- 
 ance, faith. 
 
 There is a large difference between indolent impatience of 
 labor, and intellectual impatience of delay, large difference be- 
 tween leaving things unfinished because we have more to do, 
 
 or because we are satisfied with what we have clone. 
 
 # 
 
 * # 
 
 We judge of the excellence of a rising writer, not so 
 much by the resemblance of his works to what has been done 
 before, as by their difference from it; and while we advise 
 him, in his first trials of strength, to set certain models before 
 him with respect to inferior points, — one for versification, 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 275 
 
 another for arrangement, another for treatment, — we yet 
 admit not his greatness until he has broken away from all 
 models, and struck forth versification, arrangement, and treat- 
 ment of his own. 
 
 # * 
 It will not do to walk at a snail's pace all our lives for fear 
 
 Be assured of this great truth — that what is impossible in 
 reality is ridiculous in fancy. 
 
 The more powerful the intellect, the less will its works re- 
 semble those of other men, whether predecessors or contem- 
 poraries. 
 
 We must be cautious not to lose sight of the real use of 
 what has been left us by antiquity, nor to take that for a 
 model of perfection which is, in many cases only a guide to 
 it. 
 
 There are degrees of pain, as degrees of faithfulness, which 
 
 are altogether conquerable, and which seem to be merely 
 
 forms of wholesome trial or discipline. 
 
 # 
 
 No science can be learned in play ; but it is often possible, 
 in play, to bring good fruit out of past labor, or show suffi- 
 cient reasons for the labor of the future. 
 
2 76 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 * 
 
 I have always found that the less we speak of our intentions, 
 the more chance there is of our realizing them. 
 
 
 There are cases in which men feel too keenly to be silent, 
 and perhaps too strongly to be wrong. 
 
 
 It is not a question of how much we are to do, but of how 
 it is to be done ; it is not a question of doing more, but of do- 
 ing better. 
 
 * 
 
 * * 
 
 Nothing is a great work of art, for the production of which 
 
 either rules or models can be given. 
 
 * 
 
 There is this great advantage in the writing real letters, 
 that the direct correspondence is a sufficient reason for say- 
 ing, in or out of order, everything that the chances of the 
 day bring into one's head, in connection with the matter in 
 hand : and as such things very usually go out of one's head 
 again, after they get tired of their lodging, they would other- 
 wise never get said at all. 
 
 A picture or a poem is often little more than a feeble utter- 
 ance of man's admiration of something out of himself. 
 
 The higher a man stands the more the word vulgar becomes 
 
 unintelligible to him. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 277 
 
 In all things throughout the world, the men who look for the 
 crooked will see the crooked, and the men who look for the 
 straight will see the straight. 
 
 One thing I solemnly desire to see all children taught — 
 obedience; and one to all persons entering into life — the 
 power of unselfish admiration. 
 
 Childhood often holds a truth with its feeble fingers, which 
 the grasp of manhood cannot retain — which it is the pride of 
 utmost age to recover. 
 
 # 
 
 There is not the thing left to the choice of man to do, or 
 not to do, but there is some sort of duty involved in his deter- 
 mination. 
 
 If we try to obtain perpetual change, change itself will be- 
 come monotonous. 
 
 Everything which men rightly accomplish is indeed done by 
 Divine help, but under a consistent law which is never de- 
 parted from. 
 
 All men accustomed to investigation will confirm me in say- 
 ing that it is a great step when we are personally quite cer- 
 tain what we do not know. 
 
278 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTT. 
 
 All great song, from the first day when human lips contrived 
 
 syllables, has been sincere song. 
 
 * 
 
 The order, " sell that thou hast," is not given without the 
 promise, — " thou shalt have treasure in heaven; " and well 
 for the modern Christian if he accepts the alternative as his 
 Master left it — and does not practically read the command 
 and promise thus: " Sell that thou hast in the best market, 
 and thou shalt have treasure in eternity also." 
 
 We know in reality, less than nothing of the dealings of our 
 Maker with our fellow-men ; and can only reason or conjec- 
 ture safely about them, when we have sincerely humble 
 thoughts of ourselves and our creeds. 
 
 It little becomes us to speak contemptuously of the religion 
 
 of races ; . . . . nor do I think any man of modesty or 
 
 thoughtfulness will ever speak so of any religion, in which God 
 
 has allowed one good man to die, trusting. 
 
 # 
 
 Covetousness is not natural to man — generosity is : — The 
 moment we can use our possessions to any good purpose our- 
 selves, 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 ; . . . . but once 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 279 
 
 fix your desire on anything useless, and all the pride and folly 
 in your heart will mix with the desire, and make you out at 
 last wholly inhuman, — a mere ugly lump. . . . like a 
 cuttle-fish. 
 
 " Time is money " — the words tingle in my ears. . . . 
 Is it nothing better, then? If we could thoroughly under- 
 stand that time was — itself — would it not be more to the pur- 
 pose? A thing of which loss or gain was absolute loss, and 
 
 perfect gain. 
 
 * 
 
 In whatever is an object of life, in whatever may be infi- 
 nitely and for itself desired, we may be sure there is some- 
 thing of divine ; for God will not make anything an object of 
 life to His creatures which does not point to, or partake of 
 
 Himself. 
 
 * 
 
 We cannot justly interpret the religion of any people, un- 
 less we are prepared to admit that we ourselves, as well as 
 they, are liable to error in matters of faith : and that the con- 
 victions of others, however singular, may in some points have 
 been well founded, while our own, however reasonable, may 
 
 in some particulars be mistaken. 
 
 # 
 
 # * 
 
 The real and proper use of the word romantic is simply to 
 characterize an impossible or unaccustomed degree of beauty, 
 sublimity or virtue. 
 
280 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 I do not merely believe there is such a place as hell. I know 
 
 there is such a place ; and I know also that when men have 
 
 got to the point of believing virtue impossible but through 
 
 dread of it, they have got into it. 
 
 # 
 
 All political economy, as well as higher virtue, depends first 
 on sound work. 
 
 Out of imperfect knowledge springs terror, dissension, 
 danger and disdain; but from perfect knowledge strength 
 and peace. 
 
 Human nature is a noble and beautiful thing ; not a foul nor 
 a base thing. All the sin of men I esteem as their disease, 
 not their nature ; as a folly which may be prevented, not a 
 necessity which must be accepted. . . . Thinking it high, 
 I always find it a higher thing than I thought it ; while those 
 who think it low, find it, and will find it always, lower than 
 they thought. 
 
 Surely nobody can always know what is right? Yes, you 
 always can for to-clay ; and if you do what you see of it to- 
 day, you will see more of it, and more clearly to-morrow. 
 
 Observe, this feeling which you are accustomed to despise, 
 this secret and poetical enthusiasm in all your hearts, which 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 281 
 
 as practical men you try to restrain — is indeed one of the 
 holiest parts of your being. It is the instinctive delight in, 
 and admiration for sublimity, beauty and virtue, unusually 
 manifested. And so far from being a dangerous guide, it is 
 the truest part of your being. 
 
 Genius must not be sold ; the sale of it involves, in a tran- 
 scendental, but perfectly true sense, the guilt both of simony 
 and prostitution. Your labor only may be sold ; your soul 
 
 must not. 
 
 # 
 
 There is nothing so small or contemptible, but it may be 
 beautiful in its own sight. 
 
 Talkative facts are always more interesting and more im- 
 portant than silent ones. 
 
 * * 
 Nothing is ever done so as really to please our Great Father, 
 unless we would also have done it, though we had had no 
 Father to know of it. 
 
 # 
 
 The thinking man watches the sunrise, he sees something 
 in the color of a ray, or. the change of a cloud that is new to 
 him. 
 
 * 
 
 By right discipline we can increase our strength of noble 
 will and passion, or destroy both. 
 
2S2 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 * 
 
 * # 
 
 Beware always of contending for words; you will find 
 them not easy to grasp, if you know them in several lan- 
 guages. 
 
 # 
 
 Read with patience, and human sympathy, the thoughts 
 of men who lived without blame in a darkness they could not 
 dispel, and remember, that, whatever charge of folly, may 
 justly attach to the saying, "There is no God," the folly is 
 prouder, deeper, and less pardonable in saying, " There is no 
 God but for me." 
 
 Will God be satisfied with us, think you, if we read His 
 words, merely for the sake of an entirely meaningless poet- 
 ical sensation? 
 
 Make either your belief, or your difficulty, definite ; but do 
 not go on, all through your life, believing nothing intelli- 
 gently, and yet supposing that your having read the words 
 of a divine book must give you the right to despise every 
 
 religion but your own. 
 
 * 
 
 Neither days nor lives can be made holy by doing nothing 
 In them. 
 
 Remember, that nothing is ever done beautifully, which is 
 done in rivalship ; nor nobly, which is done in pride. 
 
THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 # 
 
 * # 
 
 We may always be thankful for a graceful word, whatever 
 
 it means. 
 
 
 What a boundless capacity for sleep, and for serene stu- 
 pidity, there is in the human mind ! 
 
 Unmitigated pain would kill any of us in a few hours ; pain 
 
 equal to our pleasures would make us loathe life. 
 
 * 
 
 For ambition and for passion there is no rest, no fruition. 
 
 # * 
 
 We have the misfortune to live in an epoch of transition 
 from irrational dullness to irrational excitement; and while 
 once it was the highest courage of science to question any- 
 thing, it is now an agony to her to leave anything unques- 
 tioned. 
 
 # # 
 
 We may discern assuredly this, every true light of science, 
 every mercifully granted power, every wisely restrained 
 thought, teach us more clearly day by day, that in the Heavens 
 above, and the earth beneath, there is one continual and 
 omnipotent presence of help, and of peace, for all men who 
 know they live, and remember that they die. 
 
 # # 
 
 Admiration is the Faculty of giving Honor. It is the best 
 word we have for the various feelings of wonder, reverence, 
 
284 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 
 
 awe, and humility, which are needful for all lovely work, and 
 which constitute the habitual temper of all noble and clear- 
 sighted persons, as opposed to the " impudence " of base and 
 blind ones. 
 
 # # 
 This is the thing which JT know — and which, if you labor 
 faithfully, you shall also know — that in Eeverence is the 
 chief joy and power of life; — Eeverence for what is pure 
 and bright in your own youth ; for what is true and tried in 
 the age of others ; for all that is gracious among the living, 
 great among the dead — and marvellous in the Powers that 
 
 cannot die. 
 
 * 
 
 Literature does its duty, not in wasting our hours in polit- 
 ical discussion, or in idle fiction, but in raising our fancy to 
 the height of what may be noble, honest, and felicitous in 
 actual life ; in giving us, though we may ourselves be poor 
 and unknown, the companionship of the wisest fellow-spirits 
 of every age and country, — and in aiding the communication 
 of clear thoughts and faithful purposes, among distant na- 
 tions, which will at last breathe calm upon the sea of lawless 
 passion, and change into such halcyon days the winter of 
 the world, that the birds of the air may have their nests in 
 peace, and the Son of Man where to lay his head. 
 
 Early Christian men never cared to expound the motive of 
 this or that virtue, for they knew that the believer who had 
 
THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 285 
 
 Christ, had all. — Did he need fortitude? Christ was his 
 Eock. Equity? Christ was his righteousness. Holiness? 
 Christ was his sanctiflcation. Wisdom ? Christ was his light. 
 Truthfulness? Christ was the truth. Charity? Christ was 
 
 love. 
 
 * 
 
 "We have, with Christianity, recognized the individual value 
 of every soul ; and there is no intelligence so feeble but that 
 its single ray may in some sort contribute to the general 
 
 light. 
 
 * 
 
 The noblest word in the catalogue of social virtue is "Loy- 
 alty," and the sweetest which men have learned in the pas- 
 tures of the wilderness is "Fold." 
 
 * # 
 
 There is no law of right which consecrates dulness. The 
 proof of a thing's being right is, that it has power over the 
 heart; that it excites us, wins us, or helps us. 
 
 * * 
 
 God never imposes a duty without giving the time to do it. 
 
 * * 
 
 There is nothing so great or so goodly in creation but that 
 it is a mere symbol of the Gospel of Christ, and of the things 
 He has prepared for those who love Him. 
 
 There is no true potency, remember, but that of help ; nor 
 true ambition, but ambition to save. 
 
286 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 
 
 * * 
 
 Did ever a soul in its immediate distress or desolation, find 
 the form of petition learnt, in childhood, lifeless on the lips 
 of age? 
 
 In science, you must not talk before you know. In art, yon 
 must not talk before you do. In literature, you must not 
 talk before you — think. • 
 
 The lives good for most people, and intended for them, are 
 the lives of sheep and robins ; and they may be every evening 
 and morning thankful that they have fields to lie down in, and 
 banks to build nests in, and are not called by Heaven to the 
 sorrow of thrones. 
 
 A gentleman always makes his servants gentle. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Bible 173-179 
 
 Books 1G3-173 
 
 Beauty . . . 229-234 
 
 Birds 119-122 ^ 
 
 Clouds 26-39 l^~ 
 
 Color 122-126 
 
 Church 139-143 
 
 Earth 54-57 «^" 
 
 Earnestness 148-150 
 
 Education 159-162 
 
 Eyes > . . 188-190 
 
 Firmament 19-26 
 
 Freedom 207-211 
 
 Flowers 114-118 \X 
 
 Flowers as Sjmibols 244-248 
 
 Fragments 259-286 
 
 Grass 104-111^ 
 
 Good and Evil 193-199 
 
 Humility 216-219 
 
 Home 234-236 
 
 Knowledge 219-222 
 
 Law 190-191 
 
 Leaves 101-104 
 
 289 
 
290 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Life 126-130 
 
 Love 131-136 
 
 Money 212-216 
 
 Myths 248-258 
 
 Man and Woman 236-243 
 
 Mountains 58-68 
 
 Mountain Glory ....... 68-86 
 
 Mosses 112-113 
 
 Peaee 151-154 
 
 Play 192 
 
 Prayer 144-147 
 
 Religion 137-138 
 
 Rocks 87-89 
 
 Rain 40-42 
 
 Repose 225-228 
 
 Sensation 200-201 
 
 Sacrifice 202-206 
 
 Sky 15-18 
 
 Stones 90-91 
 
 Trees 92-101 
 
 Truth 180-184 
 
 Unity 222-225 
 
 Vanity 211-212 
 
 Water 43-53 
 
 Work 154-159 
 
 Words 185-188 
 
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